Future Thoughts

One of the reasons that I enjoy reading science fiction books is the different perspectives the genre gives you on yourself and your perceptions of 'normal'. I remember reading a book that was about a war that took place between humans and an alien race. Since the space ships travelled close to the speed of light many years passed in society while the soldiers were flying around in space. Each time the soldiers returned home home had changed pretty dramatically. One such change was that in order to control over population on Earth the government had encouraged homosexuality, and all births were test tubes. The poor soldier went away when he was normal, and when he came back everyone was horrified at his sexual tendencies. I found that pretty funny for some reason.
Peter Hamilton puts one of those perspective check experiences in Fallen Dragon. The main character is visiting his girlfriend's family when he finds out that he has been fed real meat. Horror of horrors they gave him something that wasn't grown in a protein vat!
Fallen Dragon is a pretty good book. It follows Lawrence Newton in his journey from being a science fiction loving youth to a disenchanted adult when he finds out space travel is not all he thought it would be. Like all of the Peter Hamilton books that I have read there is an undercurrent of today's environmental movement to the book, but it never comes across as 'preachy'. I enjoyed Hamilton's science fiction mystery series more than this book, but they covered pretty different topics. Fallen Dragon dealt with issues of terrorism, planetary exploitation and corporate greed, while the Mindstar series was more just a mystery set in the future.
I wanted a little break from science fiction when I finished this one, so I went to one of my favorite authors, Bernard Cornwell, and his book, Scoundrel.

Trip Books

My regularly scheduled reading is sometimes interrupted by 'Trip Books'. A trip book is a book that you pack in your carry-on for the plane ride, or your bag for a road trip. This book should be fast paced, easy to read, and you should be able to finish it before your trip is complete. Since the family and I were headed to L.A. last weekend I needed to grab a trip book to throw in the bag while packing. After perusing my 'to be read' book stack I settled on God Save The Child, by Robert Parker. Parker is an author that I started reading not too long ago, mainly because I remember Spenser: For Hire fondly. As an author he is amazingly prolific, and his books definitely fit the trip book category. The Spenser character is a private detective in Boston who is standard for the genre: ex-cop, ex-boxer, Vietnam war vet, smart mouthed, has a long term girl friend but doesn't ever get married. As the series moved on he develops a close friendship with a hood named Hawk. The early books are mainly Spenser, with the later books almost always including Hawk.
God Save the Child is one of the earliest Spenser novels, it actually is the book where he meets his long term love interest, Susan Silverman. The story centers around Spenser searching for a missing teenager, who may or may not have been kidnapped. After getting to know the parents Spenser begins to have doubts about the kidnapping aspect, and the rest of the story follows Spenser as he pulls at the strings of the tale to get at the truth. Entertaining, fast paced, lots of action. A great example of a Trip Book.
One aspect of Parker's writing that I enjoy is Spenser's no-nonsense look at life, he calls a spade a spade. I don't know why, but it sure seems like we have trouble doing that today.
My thoughts on Fallen Dragon should be arriving soon...