Leviathan Wakes

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Idealistic Jim Holden discovers a derelict spaceship and unwittingly ignites a deadly war; meanwhile, run-down cop Detective Miller searches for a missing woman who may have the key to it all.

Growing tensions between Earth, Mars, and the scattered stations of the Belt lead to war in a galaxy where human annihilation is as simple as throwing rocks into a planet's atmosphere. The stars remain unreachable because human curiosity has stagnated amidst age-old societal problems. The ethnic racism of the past has turned into racism based on what level of gravity a person grew up in. Enter our heroes.

The starship Scopuli was empty when Jim Holden stumbled upon it, but someone is willing to start a war that could make humans extinct just to hide the truth behind its vanished crew. In the ensuing chaos, the fate of Julie Mao is easy to overlook. But Detective Miller, once a good cop and now burnt out alcoholic, finds himself drawn to the missing woman and determined to track her down.

This book is a perfect cocktail of horror, noir crime fiction, and space opera. It's science fiction that's all about the characters - an idealist and a cynic - and the disappointing parts of human nature. It's fast-moving, tense, and in places utterly terrifying - which is everything good space opera should be. (It reminded me of Firefly, too, which is awesome!) The story is dark, but because of the balance of likable characters it manages to be optimistic about human potential rather than veering into nihilism.

Leviathan Wakes feels like a self-contained story and can stand alone pretty well, but I'm definitely going to pick up the sequel, Caliban's War, as well as the third book of the Expanse series, Abaddon's Gate.

Final observations:

• The mystery element and world-building made me think of Isaac Asimov's classic The Caves of Steel.
• The authors (James S.A. Corey is actually the pen name for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) mention being influenced by the Dread Empire's Fall series by Walter Jon Williams, which starts with The Praxis.
• I would say it's the best space opera I've read since A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.
• Vomit zombies

The Robot War

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When the omnipresent robots begin slaughtering their human masters, a small group of survivors scattered across the world use their wits to fight back.

Cormac Wallace is a soldier who saw the war firsthand: from Zero Hour when smart cars began running people over in the street to the final battle to destroy Archos (Robopocalypse's Skynet). Wallace finds an archive of records made by Archos and pieces together stories of the people who ensured human victory over "Old Rob" (soldier slang for "robot"). This frame didn't always work logically, and the stories rely on a great deal of coincidence, but that didn't stop me racing through the pages.

Daniel H. Wilson is a roboticist who wrote How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion, so he's got killer robots on the brain. This solidly written novel pulls you into an iron grip and moves fast - I finished it in a day and my attention never flagged. There is a real tension as the survivors recount the eerie first days of the war, when trusted machines became the Enemy - parts of this could accurately be labeled horror.

The style and construction of the book are reminiscent of Max Brooks' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. (And strangely enough, Brooks wrote his own survival guide for his particular brand of apocalypse: The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. I guess great minds do think alike.)

And lest you think that Wilson is a complete anti-robot alarmist, the last section of the book has a surprise element that the robot-loving Asimov would have approved of (and in fact wrote about in the short story "Robot Dreams").

Robot Visions

Robot Visions by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Isaac Asimov thinks robots are cool, and I'm with him. The technology he writes about is very retro-future, but the ideas are still interesting. I am always fascinated by the logical puzzles he sets up to revolve around the Three Laws of Robotics, which are Asimov's most important innovation.

My favorite stories star robopsychologist Susan Calvin, who I love because she's usually right. Unfortunately Asimov sometimes paints her as a stereotypical sexless career woman (the story "Liar" is particularly annoying). Her fierce intelligence and overbearing personality make the sexist men she works with class her as something other than a normal female. Still, she's a woman who excels in a male-dominated career field. Pretty badass for a character originally created in the 1940s.

Calvin is also a misanthrope who prefers the company of robots. According to her, robots are not at all like human beings, since "Robots are essentially decent." It is true that robots gain the moral high ground in these stories, where the biggest stinkers are usually human.

For great Golden Age science fiction, you simply can't beat Asimov.


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