Lucas Blogs About Books

As cool as the picture is, no such scene occurs in the book. So, what's this book's dea—wait a minute! Is that a regular book? What do you mean by that? You know what I mean, a book that isn't a comic or The Canterbury Tales ? Oh. . . yeah. I still read some of those sometimes. Anyway, the deal with this particular book is that it's a novella by Becky Chambers and it's called To Be Taught if Fortunate . In spite of the person floating in space without a helmet, it's what you might call hard science fiction. Oh was it difficult to get through? What? Oh I see, you're pretending to not know about the distinction between "hard" and "soft" science fiction so that I can explain it. Does pointing out the purpose of a rhetorical device render the whole thing moot? Maybe. But generally the dividing line between hard and soft science fiction is whether the story generally comports with the current scientific understanding of what is possible. Also,...

Huh, this is familiar . So, what's this book's de—hey! We had a whole bit about this last time , if you're going to be blogging about each of these novellas individually, you gotta have a picture with their title! My bad! How prescient! That's better. So, then, this book's deal is? Well, like "Uncharted Territory," "Remake" is a sci-fi novella that Connie Willis published in the 1990s. Unlike "Uncharted Territory" it seems to take place on Earth in what must be the early 21st Century. How d'ya figure? Well, one of the characters was born the year Fred Astaire died, which was 1987, meaning that she's only a few years younger than me. It's probably set in the late 2000s or early 2010s. Well, as scintillating as this discussion of how old one of the characters in the story is, would you care to elaborate on its deal? Oh, right. Anyway, we open on our protagonist Tom, an on-again-off-again film student who...

What do any of these pictures have to do with each other? So, what's this book's de–Hey! The title of this blog post and the title on the cover are different,   though slightly similar. What gives? Well, you may have noticed that the cover also says, "Three Novellas," so I figured I could write up each one independently. And turn one book into three posts? Well, since the first two novellas are each more than one hundred pages long, I'd say they'd be better served by being reviewed separately rather than together. Also, you gotta generate content somehow. I'll allow it. How kind of you, Hypothetical Reader. I'm nothing if not understanding. See, it's a reviewable item, I think. Anyway, this book's deal is that it's a novella, originally published in the 90s and now collected as part of a new book by Nebula and Hugo award winning writer Connie Willis. It's a sci-fi western about a couple of human surveyors mappin...