Post Human Trilogy Book Review

I happened upon this trilogy while browsing through amazon prime. My overall opinion on this series....its above average.


So we are on Earth...and the current regime in control is an odd group of soldiers called "purists"....these people do not believe in any sort of augmentation and they hate anyone human who has been augmented.The rebel group is lead by this man who has developed/developing an Artificial Intelligence...along with a pretty sweet augmentation for humans and other technological advancements. They have gotten advanced to the point where people can be reanimated as long as their bodies don't sustain too much damage. These rebels (post humans) have developed tiny robots that live in the human and repair/rebuild damaged parts so they are relatively difficult to kill but certainly not impossible. What makes the post humans more difficult to kill is their tiny fission reactor implanted into the base of their spinal cord. This augmentation allows them to produce a magnetic field of varying degrees.Three main abilities of post humans include: protective cocoon, flight, and disruptive blasts of energy that will render humans unconscious.Anyhow so the purists are after the post humans because they fear the Artificial Intelligence. Before the battle to destroy the post humans happens a newly animated body (old timer they call him later on) gets tricked and ends up being injected with the AI. He is then put on the platform and sent through to a different time and space, where the purists cannot follow, or so they hoped. He ends up somewhere in the arctic circle with no idea how to operate his reactor...no cocoon and no flight...he is about to die and the AI has not had an opportunity to integrate into his system yet. He falls into the water and is about to die when he remembers he can fly! However he has not gone through the calibration process and just when he gets out of the water he has to go back down in order to complete the calibration.....he almost dies because of this costly error...but eventually the AI guides him to a massive ship, but he is still about to succumb to hypothermia and the AI cannot make his stay awake. Eventually the AI gives him a shock that wakes him from this near death and Craig/Old timer comes to realize his is on the titanic just before its going to collide with the ice berg.The AI tried to tell him to leave events alone but he insists on changing the events of the past. So Craig and the AI make the ship run head first into the iceberg instead of the historic glancing blow. The ships stays afloat, but unfortunately the purists have followed through using another platform and they sink the ship. This makes Craig very sad as he makes his way back to his platform. His next jump takes him to the scene of 9/11....again he wants to intervene and again the purists follow him and make the buildings crash anyhow....this really makes Craig mad....so he goes to confront the purists and realize he knows the general...in fact they served before together and Craig allows himself to be taken into custody.
After the assault on the post humans only like three of them remain alive and two are in captivity. The one that is alive and gets away is the father of this technology and he can make contact with the other post humans until they ultimately get murdered.
The end of book one happens when the AI gets into the mainframe for the entire world and ends this silly battle between the purists and the post humans.
The next two books lead up toward this massive battle across the solar system.There is terraforming on Mars and VenusPost Humans are now very common and the purists are only a tiny portion of their former might.Everyone has nanobots in their bodies and fission reactors in their spines....
Without ruining the book or going into too much detail things start to go haywire soon enough and the machines turn on the humans....this is when the series gets really interesting so if you want a good Sci Fi book then I certainly recommend

Stranger in a strange land by Heinlein

Robert A Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

This novel was said to be Heinlein's masterpiece. "The most famous science fiction novel ever written" the front page boasts...well I just finished the four hundred and thirty eight page novel and I am left with many mixed feelings. This story is most surely a must read for any science fiction fan, and if you have an open mind about the world around you...you may just learn something about yourself.

I have only read one other of Heinlein's novels, "Have Spacesuit - Will Travel" so I had some idea of the authors writing style...but this novel was something else entirely. All of the main characters are well developed which allows the reader to fully "grok" every character in their fullness. This term is used over and over and over again however there is nothing like it in the English language. The entire book is about human trying to understand what it means to "grok" something...which simply means to "comprehend it in its fullness"...but not just that simple, you must develop an understanding on a intimate and molecular level before something is "grokked to fullness".

The novel starts with a team of scientists and physicists traveling to Mars. There are six married couples on the voyage and each has a particular skill set to ensure the success of the exploration party. The ship never makes the trip home and the Federation sends a larger ship to investigate.

The Champion send Earth three messages:

"Rocket Ship Envoy located...no survivors"

second was "Mars is inhabited" and third

"Correction to dispatch 23-105: One survivor of Envoy located."

And that is where the plot begins to unfold. The survivor was not of the original crew, but a child that was conceived from two of the parents from Envoy...however the parents were not married. The child grew up with the Martians and he learned the way of the Martians. Their race is much more patient and tolerant than humans could ever dream. They also have great ability to have total control over their mind and body to the point where no one ever dies or get killed...they simply "discorporate"...not a sad happening but a joyous occasion, for once discorporate the Martian joins the "Old Ones"...the ancestors/ghosts of the civilization.

Valentine Michael Smith aka the Man from Mars has, because of his family and some odd government laws, inherited everything from all of the members of Envoy. Several businesses, a large fortune, and the rights to colonize Mars....unfortunately he has no idea what any of this means and can't even stand on Earth by himself. The government has his held up in a hospital where no one can see or speak with him. Eventually the Federation says the Man from Mars is on retreat somewhere else, but a nurse happens to find him in the same room of the hospital. Gillian decides to rescue the man from Mars before it is too late....however she does not really know where to go so she takes the Martian Man to her friends place to get him in proper clothes and make an escape.

Unfortunately some men show up from the Federation to take her and the Man from Mars into custody however when one of the men in a suit pulls a gun he disappears...and then the other man disappears. Apparently Martians have a few skills humans cannot begin to comprehend. Valentine Michael Smith has the ability to rotate anything he "groks" as badness 90 degrees from everything else...

It took me a while to understand exactly...but if you think about it something perpendicular to everything else does not exist in this dimension at all...so in effect Michael can make this disappear, but that is only the beginning to what he can do.

And I stop there to hopefully keep the plot twists a secret and entice you to read the novel yourself...

Water for Elephants - a book review

Water for Elephants 6/10

 

I was in need of a book to read and I happened upon water for elephants. The girlfriend explained how it was suppose to be a good read and since I was short on time I decided to give it a read. I will have to admit it was a pretty decent read...like any other book at first it seems boring, but after you get a few bites the book is difficult to put down.

This book gets a lower rating mostly because it is simply not my genera...no magic, dragons, knights, war...etc etc

At first the reader is confused because we get the viewpoint from a senior citizen for a while...this person, even though he has trouble remembering who he is, is the main character present day. He keeps retelling the tale of his life through flashbacks...so the whole time

It is about a young man in the early 1900's he is out of high school and about to get into a college when his folks die...he is very distraught and runs away.

Every so often the reader will return to the viewpoint of the old man, stuck in a home, who is losing his grip on reality. It just happened to be the time of year the circus came to town. The narrator started working for the circus after he jumped a train...which happened to be one for a traveling circus. One day at lunch he is at a table and someone was getting too much attention talking about the circus. This other old guy was telling all the old ladies that he used to work for a circus. This irritates the narrator, because he had actually worked for a circus, so he started to question the other older man.

"What did you do in the circus" asks the main character

"Carried water for Elephants" replies the other old man

and all the old hens "oohed" and "aaahed" however since the narrator had come to be the traveling veterinary for the circus he had a great deal of experience with elephants. Elephants drink an enormous amount of water. His day would be consumed by carrying buckets upon buckets day and night for a single elephant.

We jump back and forth in time every other chapter until a plot begins to develop and we see there is going to be a conflict between the main character and....imagine it, a woman. The woman is obviously already taken by someone else so nothing should be happening between the main character and her, however push comes to shove...and a conflict develops.

The end is pretty good...If you like the circus or like reading stuff from early 1900's then I certainly recommend reading water for elephants