Tag: Science Fiction Books

In 1938, acclaimed science fiction author John W. Campbell published the novella Who Goes There?, about a team of scientists in Antarctica who discover and are terrorized by a monstrous, shape-shifting alien entity. The story would later be adapted into John Carpenter’s iconic movie The Thing (following an earlier film adaptation in 1951). The published novella was actually an abridged version of Campbell’s original story, called Frozen Hell, which had to be shortened for publication.

The copy I at least have a super long first word from the publishers about the author and what he wrote before and after this book came out. So it ended about that my copy was 300 pages long but the story itself was 150 pages. However I give my copy extra point for the fancy the illustrations which are pretty much super fun to look when you are read the story.

This book was was published in 1938 and when we look at this book from the 2020 perspective then we will see that this book isn’t that unique after all. Because because there are a lot of books and series / movies which are very similar in plots to this book. But when we look back at 1938 then this whole idea behind the plot was pretty fresh and not so overused as it is today. So keep that in mind.

This book since it was published in 1938 was more or less a part of the origin stories behind the whole alien concept we see today in movies, books and series.

As you can expect the characters in this book are pretty flat and boring. I personally had very hard time to separating them apart, because many of these characters are so much similar in behavior that it makes it hard to say who is who in this book. It almost feels like that the author didn’t care as much about the characters as he did about the whole plot. If you want me to be honest here I need to say that all character in this book feels like just different version of the same person.

The descriptions about the characters aren’t much better from the characters themselves. What the author does with the descriptions about the characters is pretty much “he have blue jeans on, and she have nice shoes on”.

The decisions which are taken by the character feels like decisions taken by a 2 year olds and not like decisions taken by scientist with hopefully some experience. 

Writing style is actually good. To be honest the writing the style was the best part of the whole book. The writing style was interesting, and it was keeping me interesting. But there are times where it felt like it was written by a 14 year old.

The dialogs in this book were pretty hard to follow up with, it almost felt like the author smoked too much weed before writing the dialogs in this book. Because there were times where the dialogs on the same page felt like the chapters were separating them.

I give this book 2 / 5

A nine-member team of Academy scholars from the planet Avalon led by the astrophysicist Karoly d’Branin are searching for the volcryn, an enigmatic alien species with an advanced interstellar travel technology. The main protagonist is Melantha Jhirl, a dark-skinned genetically engineered human who is a head taller than the other scholars. Due to limited funds, d’Branin has hired the services of the Nightflyer, a modified trader owned by captain Royd Eris. The enigmatic Royd keeps to his own sphere of the ship, preferring to correspond with the passengers via hologram. Royd secretly spies on the passengers using computer monitors.

To be honest this book was the first George R.R Martin book I’ve read. Game of thrones books are on my 2021 TBR list, so expect these reviews in a couple of months.

I didn’t knew anything about this book when I was going into it. This book is sort of science fiction type of book. There is a lot of spaceship action. 99% of this book takes place in a spaceship.

The characters here are super flat and it is very difficult to tell them apart. Because they are so similar to each other and none of them have anything unique about them or something which will make you go “yeah thats that person”.  All these characters (expect of two) are so similar in behaviour that you will have very hard time separating them apart.

Writing style in this book are kind of similar to something which a 10-year-old would have written for a school assignment. The whole writing in this book is more or less “this happened and that happened.” For me personally the whole writing style felt lazy and it was almost like George R.R Martin was bored out of his mind when he was writing this book.

The ending is well bad, but still it is the best part of the book. This ending is the same as almost every other science fiction book or movie.

This book would be much better if it was longer and if George R.R Martin would bother to make the characters interesting and make us care about them.

In the end I need to give this book points for the unique idea behind it which we don’t see a lot of in science fiction books or shows.

It is important to say that this book have the potential to have more books written about it. Because it sort of leaves an open ending which means that there can be sequels, etc.

There are some very uncomfortable lines and there is way too much sexism. There are two lines which was used more than 5 times on every single page. These two lines were “I’m an improved model” and “I’m a sex machine”. Don’t think that these two lines were said by multiple characters in this book. These two lines were said by the same character over and over again. Every time that character said something it was involving one of these two lines. For me personally it was a torture.

Plot holes are also a huge part of this book. This book jumps in time like a lot. You will be reading one page and it will be about Day 1 of the adventures and then to begin to read page two and there will be like Day 50 of the adventures.

I promise you that you will have a lot of questions while you will read this book. And most of them will not be answered.

Descriptions feels like they were written by a 10-year-old. The descriptions are pretty much empty words without any deeper meaning.

Action in this book had the potential to be amazing and unique, but again George R.R Martin didn’t bother to give us this. There could be much more action than it actually was and the connection between the characters could have been shown but of course it wasn’t. And the dialogues aren’t much better. For the most part they are boring or cringe.

I give this book 1 / 5