"The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester

Gully Foyle, Mechanic's Mate 3rd Class aboard the spacecraft "Nomad", an uneducated man with no ambitions, has been floating inside a coffin-sized piece of wreckage of his vessel for the last one hundred and seventy days. When the spacecraft "Vorga" passes by to inspect the wreckage and upon hearing his distress call ignores him and continues on it's way, something inside Foyle snaps. Swearing a murderous revenge on the Vorga and her crew, he finds the motivation to repair and launch the scraps of the Nomad, where he is eventually rescued by a strange cult living a secluded life amongst a scrapyard of derelict space vessels in the asteroid belt. The members of the cult tattoo his face and adopt him into their clan. Driven by his quest for revenge, Foyle hijacks a working vessel and returns to Earth, killing several clan members in the launch.

Gully Foyle lives in a twenty-fourth century future where people can "jaunte", a form of self-teleportation using one's mind over distances of up to one thousand kilometers. Other methods of transport have become redundant (excepting inter-planetary spaceships which travel across distance too far for jaunting). The rich and powerful lock themselves up in jaunte-proof mazes inside their mansions and a state of war exists between the inner and outer planets and moons of the solar system. The Vorga is owned by the Presteign Industrial Clan, a powerful corporation with political ambitions; when Foyle attempts to destroy the ship, he is captured and interrogated about his knowledge of "PyrE", a mysterious and powerful substance that could turn the tide of the war, and was being transported by the spacecraft Nomad when the vessel was attacked and destroyed. He is thrown into a jaunte-proof underground prison when he meets fellow-inmate Jisbella McQueen, with whom he escapes and is taught to channel his rage into more productive plans for revenge. Returning to the wreckage of the Nomad, the pair recover a quantity of PyrE and a large fortune in platinum, but soldiers hired under the Presteign clan interrupt the salvage operation and Jisbella is left behind as Foyle flies off into the sunset. Using his discovered fortune, Foyle assumes the identity of a rich socialite, undergoes surgery to receive implants that provide him with commando-like killing abilities and ultra-fast movement and starts to hunt down the crew of the Vorga. His killing spree eventually leads him to Olivia Presteign, daughter of the head of the Presteign-clan, who was responsible for the decision to abandon him and the Nomad; he is smitten by her and her sadistic hatred for the world, and struggles with reconciling these feelings with the desire for revenge. Upon further research by the Presteign group, acting independently of Olivia, it is discovered that during his time in the wreckage of the Nomad, Foyle had sub-consciously jaunted over six hundred thousand kilometers, a feat never before achieved. Eventually Foyle is wrapped up in the race to recover PyrE (when turns out to be a highly powerful, planet-destroying explosive) where he is knocked unconscious during an explosion, trigged by a telepath hired by the Presteign group. Foyle suffers synesthesia, bringing on more powerful latent jaunting capabilities that allow him to jaunte through inter-stellar space and time. Discovering other worlds that humankind could colonise, he returns to Earth, shares his discovered secrets of inter-stellar jaunting and invites the rest of humanity to abandon the war and join him amongst the stars.

"The Stars My Destination" seems to be fairly highly regarded in reviews of the last twenty years or so, and is mentioned frequently in "top-ten sf novel" lists. It is exciting and frenetically-paced, with a fantastically loveable (and hate-able) anti-hero Gully Foyle, and must have been quite exceptional for it's time (I find it so hard to believe this was written in the 1950s!). It introduced so many concepts that would be taken up as main-stream by the "cyber-punk" genre that really only kicked-in in the 1980s (the combination of the amoral-hero, evil mega-corporations, ultra-violence, nihilistic attitude to human life, radical change/breakdown in social order (in this case after the discovery of jaunting) etc.). On reflection there is also a bit in common here with Samuel Delany's "Babel-17", although I think with a slightly less optimistic tone. Overall, I enjoyed the book, but there is a lot going on, and it sometimes felt that too many threads were opened up all at the one time and not all of them resolved. I feel like it was an enjoyable read, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't make my top ten .. perhaps there's something here that speaks to other readers that I don't quite get. In any case, recommended for sf fans or those exploring the genre.

"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein

Michael Valentine Smith was born aboard the spacecraft "Envoy", during the first manned-mission to Mars. After landing, all radio contact was lost between the Envoy and Earth and when the remains of the spacecraft are discovered twenty five years later during the second mission to Mars, Michael Smith is also found alive and well, raised by Martians for the majority of his life. Smith returns to Earth and is an instant celebrity, and owner of a great fortune, owing to his parent's heritage and his claim to being the first human alive on Mars. Due to his Martian upbringing, Smith has a fair degree of difficulty in understanding human behaviour; he has never seen a women, has trouble understanding clothing, money and religion, amongst other things that don't exist in the Martian culture. To "protect" him from Earth-culture he is isolated in hospital and kept under guard. Nurse Gillian Boardman, sneaking into his private room, inadvertently becomes his first "water brother" by sharing a glass of water with him, a sacred act in Martian culture. Eventually she helps him escape, with the aid of reporter Ben Caxton to the mansion of Jubal Harshaw, famous author, lawyer and doctor who seeing Mike initially as naive, assumes the role of protecting him legally from the outside world. Mike exhibits telekinetic powers and the ability make things instantly and permanently disappear if he considers a "wrongness" in them, which he does when government agents try to arrest him and his friends. Eventually he is secured legal rights against those who try to exploit his situation, and leaves the care of Jubal to explore the world. Studying religion through his interactions with members of the fictional "Fosterite Church of the New Revelation", Mike starts his own "Church of all Worlds", inspired by Martian culture and elements of Human religion, where members learn the Martian language and associated psychic and telekinetic abilities. His new church creates a scandal with it's liberal ideas on monogamy and the afterlife and is eventually labelled as blasphemous, and burnt down by an angry mob of Fosterites and Mike is arrested by the police. After saving his followers and assuring his fortune will be bequested to the continuance of the church, Mike preaches to an angry mob and is beaten and killed.

Overall the concept of the book was an interesting one; we see Human society from the eyes of an outsider (i.e. Mike) providing a mechanism by which to analyse and criticise institutions such as marriage and the Church. The problem is that as the book was written in the 1950's the treatment of the issues feels very dated. One of the big ideas explored in the book is that of free-love vs. monogamy. Although, through Mike's philosophy, Heinlein advocates freedom of sexual expression, overall the text is still very sexist with too many fixed ideas about gender roles in love/sex. The book is fairly constrained in the notion of "free-love"; the definition here really only covers heterosexual relationships and where the woman's role is passive. Perhaps going any further might not have been accepted by the audience of the time. As in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (and as I hear in other Heinlein novels) there's a fair bit "preaching" in the conversations between his characters (i.e. characters go on rants about their firm political or philosophical ideas, quite possibly thinly veiled versions of the author's own beliefs).

All that said, the book is still an interesting read; Heinlein's writing is well-paced and easy to read and he keeps the action moving along well. Although the "preaching" can get a bit much, at least it's mostly written in an engaging fashion, so even though I found myself cringing sometimes, I wasn't really too bored with it. Based on what I found in the second-hand bookstore, I picked-up a 1991 re-published version of the book based on Heinlein's original manuscript (about 650 pages) which differed from the version published in 1961 that had been cut down significantly (for excessive length and to remove more controversial elements). I kind of wish I had read the original print because they were right about it being too long.

"The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury

The Martian Chronicles is a series of short stories, originally published across several science fiction magazines in the 1940's, telling of the human colonisation of Mars. The book is composed of both short stories and small vignettes that are pieced together into a chronological order. The early stories focus the repeated attempts of the first Human explorers on Mars who encounter a telepathic Martian civilisation. The first two astronauts to arrive on Mars are shot by a jealous Martian husband when his wife dreams of their arrival on Mars. The crew of the second mission to Mars are mistaken for Martians suffering from a mental illness and thus euthanised by a Martian psychologist, as is customary in Martian culture (because of their telepathy, Martians can project their appearance into the minds of others, and the psychologist had assumed their Human-identities were a product of their deranged minds). During the third mission to Mars, the crew are lead into a telepathically-created fantasy town of their youth, populated by their long-dead loved ones, before being killed off by the Martians who have laid the trap. The fourth mission to Mars discovers the decaying ruins of Martian civilisation after all but a handful of its inhabitants were wiped out by Human diseases brought to Mars during the first landings. The later stories focus on Humans coming to Mars, colonising the planet and transforming it into an image of home. In "The Green Morning", a colonist travels around Mars planting the seeds of Earth trees (perhaps as an analogy of American legend "Johnny Appleseed"). In "The Musicians", young boys venture into deserted Martian cities to play amongst the debris and on the rib-cages of dead Martians before "the firemen" come to remove the debris and end the fun. In "The Martian", a lone Martian enters a Human town, shapeshifting into the appearance of the townsfolk's deceased and missing loved ones before dying of exhaustion. The final set of stories tell of impending nuclear war on Earth, to which most of the Martian colonists return home to and the eventual destruction of our planet. The remaining Humans on Mars live out a lonely and isolated existence.

This was a fantastic book and an absolute pleasure to read. Bradbury's writing style is poetic and ranges from melancholic and nostalgic to downright funny. This is an important novel in sf because of it's lack of the "hard-science" of other science fiction, instead focussing on aesthetically creating mood and atmosphere, making it more accessible to an non-sf audience, and therefore carrying greater popular appeal. The novel is somewhat an analogue of the North American frontier and westward expansion; Bradbury provides a subtle criticism of the colonist's rampant desire to plow Mars into a carbon-copy of their mid-western American towns and creates nostalgia over the loss of the Martian civilisation and culture.

Particularly good stories included: "Night Meeting" in which a Human colonist encounters a Martian "ghost" who insists that his version of reality (at the peak of Martian civilisation) is just as real (and thus equally fleeting) as the current Human colony that the colonist perceives; "Way in the Middle of the Air" which tells of african-americans emigrating to Mars to escape the racism encountered in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century; "The Martian", "The Silent Towns" (very funny) and "There Will Come Soft Rains" which describes an automated house going about its daily work long after it's Human inhabitants have been killed during a nuclear apocalypse (this one was pretty chilling really). The exact nature of the Martians is never exactly explained and always a mystery, erring on the side of the surreal. The Martians are ghost-like and presented almost like one of the colonists might have dreamed of them having visited the deserted cities and relics of their past.

Definitely recommended reading for anyone and everyone.

"Dune" by Frank Herbert

Set within the feudal interstellar society of the far future of the human race, Dune tells the story of the struggle for control of the desert planet Arrakis (otherwise known as Dune) and it's production of "spice" (also known as melange), an extremely valuable psychoactive substance used for several purposes. Duke Leto Atreides, the ruler over the House Atreides on the water-covered planet of Caladan, is granted control of the planet Arrakis in exchange for Caladan by the Emperor Shaddam IV of the ruling house Corrino. The granting of Arrakis to Atreides is a politically-motived move by the emperor to destroy the duke, who has gained popularity in the Landsraad, an alliance of houses whose power rivals that of the imperium. The emperor provides house Harkonnen, a rival to Atreides led by the devious Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, with powerful Sardaukar imperial troops in an effort to destroy Atreides before the house is given sufficient time to organise defences after moving in on Arrakis. Harkonnen and Sardaukar troops are aided by a traitor within house Atreides and take control of the planet, killing the Duke while his son Paul and lover, concubine and mother to his only son and heir Lady Jessica escape into the desert. Jessica is a member of the Bene Gesserit, an ancient order of women trained in the art of mental power over others. Myth tells that a Bene Gesserit will eventually give birth to a male Bene Gesserit known as the "Kwisatz Haderach", a kind of prophet with the power to see past, present and future all at once. Paul is believed by some to be the Kwisatz Haderach, and has already shown promise through the Bene Gesserit training received by his mother. Jessica and Paul are greeted and taken in by the Fremen, native desert-dwellers on Arrakis that are fierce fighters and hold strong ties to the native giant sandworms of Arrakis whose movement and breeding cycle and responsible for producing the spice on the planet. The Fremen ingest spice as part of their diet and it plays an important role in religious ceremony, granting a degree of prescience to those who use it. The myth of the Kwisatz Haderach spreads amongst the Fremen and they rally behind Paul, believing he will lead them to victory against the occupying force of House Harkonnen. Paul consumes the Water of Life, an essence of spice in a test of whether he really is the Kwisatz Haderach and gains the power to see future events. He witnesses the Fremen defeating the Harkonnens, regaining control over Arrakis and going on to wage a terrible interstellar Jihad against the imperium and the rest of known space. Led by Paul, the Fremen attack the Harkonnen stronghold on the planet defeating the overlords and capturing the emperor himself, who was on the planet to oversee the final destruction of the Fremen and gain ultimate control over the production of spice. The emperor is forced to abdicate and grant control over the imperium to Paul when he threatens to use his control over the Fremen to destroy all of the spice of Arrakis, which would have devastating consequences for the rest of the galaxy.

Dune is a dense and complex book that knits together a tapestry of invented ancient history, myths, rituals, language, cultural and religious references. The novel describes in rich detail the environment and ecology of the Arrakis desert and marries this to the detailed culture of desert-dwelling Fremen to who water is valued above all else; all daily activities revolve around it's conservation and the water in one's body is considered the property of the group in which one travels. The book also explores the complex political life of the great houses and the imperium with rivalries, back-stabbing, double-crossing and "Kanly", a system of strict rules and customs pertaining to feuds or vendettas. Between the chapters, the novel is filled with passages taken from invented historical texts that exist in the time following the events of the novel, written by the Princess Irulan, the emperor's daughter who was betrothed to Paul Atreides after the emperor was forced to abdicate.

A quote by Arthur C. Clarke about the novel "I know nothing comparable to it except Lord of the Rings" really rings true; it is unique in it's construction of such a detailed world with it's own style that I've not seen anything else like in all I've read. Admittedly I don't read a lot of fantasy, and I assume that the level of detail of these aspects in Dune is perhaps more commonplace within this genre. I really liked the vivid picture of the desert world and the associated ecology; I think this must have had at least some influence on other authors' work such as Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. I think one of the main reasons for the book's success and popularity is that it creates a very engaging "hero's journey" in Paul's ascendancy from young prince in exile to all powerful ruler of Arrakis. It's interesting that Herbert has stated that he wanted his story to carry the message "beware of heros" and to provide a sort of critique to the classic version of the hero's journey. This is probably something that comes out more in the sequels set in the same universe.

Overall a great book and easy to see why it's considered on some lists to be the most popular science fiction novel of all time.

"Slaughterhouse Five" by Kurt Vonnegut

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time; so the book begins. Billy experiences sequences from his life in a random order. Lying down to sleep as a middle-age man he wakes up as a prisoner of war in Germany in the Second World War; moving through a door way, he is an old man in the future and hearing a song, he is back in his childhood. At one point in his life, Billy is kidnapped by Tralfamadorians, an alien race that experience time as a fourth dimension that they can move back and forward in as they please. They keep him in a zoo for several years with Montana Wildhack, another kidnapped Earthling and movie star, with whom he mates with. They explain to him the nature of time and that it's not all linear and moving in a single direction so that when someone dies, it is only in that part of time that they are dead but have been and always will be alive in another part of time. So it goes. As a young man, Billy attends six months at college to become an optometrist, before being drafted into the war in Europe. After the war, Billy returns home to Ilium, New York and marries a rich optometrist's obese daughter, and raises two children. Years later Billy is the sole survivor of a plane crash, which leaves him comatose for several weeks, during which his wife dies in a car accident while rushing to his hospital bedside. After recovering, Billy goes on to tell the world about what he has learned about the Tralfamadorians and the nature of time before he is assassinated by a laser-beam while giving a public address on UFOs in 1976 after World War Three. He had always known this was how he was going to die because he had visited his death several times. During the war Billy was captured by the Germans in the battle of the bulge and sent to work in Dresden, where he witnessed the allied firebombing of the city on the night of the 13th February 1945 that was responsible for killing over 25,000 civilians. Billy along with the other POWs and four guards survived the attack inside an underground meat locker, slaughterhouse-five, which had been their temporary home during their service. Edgar Derby, a fellow POW is tried and shot for stealing a teapot from a collapsed bomb shelter while helping to clean up the city after the attack, and one morning, not long after, the war is over and Billy finds himself a free man. While walking the streets, a bird says to Billy "Poo-tee-weet?"; so the book ends.

Slaughterhouse five is a somewhat semi-autobiographical account of the Second World War and the firebombing of Dresden; Vonnegut was actually an American POW in the Second World War and witnessed the fire-bombing, escaping the ensuing firestorm by staying inside the disused slaughterhouse as Billy Pilgrim did. The opening chapter is written explicitly from the voice of Vonnegut himself where he talks about the bombings and his struggle to structure a novel around his experience. Throughout the rest of the novel, events are narrated and often Vonnegut identifies himself in the story: "That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book". The novel is satirical and is at times both funny and harrowing; events are described in loose detail, the facts are stated straight up from the start and then down the track the story returns to each event and describes it in more detail. The satire and absurdity of the story seem to be a sort reaction to the horrors of war witnessed by Vonnegut and the inability to write anything sensible about a massacre (likewise Billy and Eliot Rosewater turn to the topsy-turvyness of science fiction while recovering from post-traumatic stress from the war). Similarly, one interpretation of Billy's uncontrolled time travel is that it is a product of the trauma he has sustained during the war. The novel explores the notion of determinism and free will; Billy is taught by the Tralfamadorians that all moments in time simply exist and have always existed the way they are and that of all the species in the universe only Humans have any notion of the concept of free will.

This was a great read; short and immensely readable. I loved all the little humorous vignettes of Billy's life and the characters in them. I really liked all the different characters Vonnegut paints such as the nasty, rugged-up Roland Weary and his delusions of grandeur, Paul Lazzaro and his lust for revenge and the weird and jaded Kilgore Trout. The novel is all the more amazing because a lot of the events really happened and were witnessed by the author. The novel has only a loose claim as being science fiction; it's more a sort of post-modernist satire where the time travel and aliens are more mechanisms that are symbolic of the post-traumatic stress experienced by the central character (and presumably the author). Still really glad it was on the list such that I got to experience it. Recommended reading.

"I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov

"I, Robot" is a series of short stories, originally published in "Super Science Stories" and "Astounding Science Fiction" magazine in the 1940's that explore the fictional future development of robotics. The stories are framed around the recollections of Dr. Susan Calvin, head "Robopsychologist" at US Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. during an interview with a reporter from the Interplanetary Press. Dr. Calvin's stories follow the exploits of experimental roboticists Gregory Powell and Mike Donovan, researchers Alfred Lanning and Peter Bogert, Stephen Byerley, a robotic politician and of course Dr. Susan Calvin herself. The stories typically explore themes of human and robotic morality via the "three laws of robotics" (built into every positronic-brained robot) that loosely state that robots may not harm humans (or allow them harm via their own inaction), must obey humans and must not allow harm to come to themselves (in that order of priority). Interesting stories include a robot which becomes stuck between the opposing forces of the second and third laws while trying to retrieve a much-needed chemical substance at great personal risk, a self-learning skeptical robot that refuses to believe he was created by humans, and a mind-reading robot who lies to prevent humans undergoing emotional hardship (an interpretation of the first law).

I really wanted to say something good about this book, because it is a bit of a popular favourite, but I found it hard. On a positive note, it's a short and easy read with some nice ideas and a few moments that really shine. The philosophical reasoning of QT-1 in "Reason" was quite fun, as was the relationship between the little girl and her robot-companion in "Robbie". I found Asimov's optimistic perspective on robots having a really positive influence on humanity refreshing given the typical "frankenstein-complex" of robots turning on their masters typically found in science fiction.

Generally speaking though, "I, Robot" is rather dull (particularly the characters and the robots themselves) and there were ideas and concepts that didn't really work and that I think could of been explored with a bit more complexity. I thought "Runaround", "Reason", "Liar!" and "Evidence" were the only stories I really enjoyed; I felt the other stories followed too much of a formula of providing an almost unsolvable premise and ending with either (sorry to use the cliche) a deus-ex-machina or what I interpreted as a twisting of the laws to make things fit. A lot of the endings just didn't feel clever. It felt like there were so many more aspects of human morality and ethical dilemmas which could have been explored from the perspective of the robotic mind.

"The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon

"The Yiddish Policeman's Union" is set in an alternate reality in which the 1940 "Slattery Report" was passed in the United States congress and a temporary independent Jewish settlement was created in Sitka, Alaska. As a result, two million Jews were killed in the Nazi holocaust (rather than six million), the second world war continued into 1946 (when the atomic bomb was dropped on Berlin) and the state of Israel failed in 1948, and Jerusalem is still part of Palestine (amongst other small differences). After sixty years, the lease is up on Sitka and the "Reversion" back to Alaskan control of the territory is due in two months. The story's hero, Meyer Landsman, a homicide detective with the Sitka police, is down-and-out on his luck; living in a run-down hotel on a diet of alcohol and nicotine after separating with his wife two years ago and still dealing with the mysterious death of his younger sister last April, Landsman is struggling to hold on to his glory days as Sitka's finest. The novel opens as Landsman is called in to investigate the execution-style murder of man in the room down the hallway in his own hotel, Mendel Shpilman, the runaway son of Rebbe Shpilman, Sitka's most powerful religious man (and organised crime boss). To complicate matters. Landsman's ex-wife, Bina, is back in town after being promoted into the role of Landsman's new boss, and pressure "from the top" is calling for all eleven of Landsman's open cases to be closed in one way or another before the Reversion begins.

Landsman and his trusty half-Jew-half-Tinglit native American partner Berko Shemets, set off to investigate Mendel Shpilman's death and through the course of the novel uncover the real killers of his younger sister Naomi (who, by circumstance, was wound up in Mendel's affairs) and a plot between hardline Zionist Jews and the United States government to bomb the Dome of the Rock, a Jerusalem holy site, and setup a new Jewish homeland in the aftermath. Landsman and Shemets, with the help of Bina, track Mendel's killing back to the hands of Hertz Shemets, Berko's ex-FBI and counterintelligence agent father. After saving the day, Meyer and Bina reunite, ready to face an uncertain post-Reversion future together.

"The Yiddish Policeman's Union" is a great novel; I definitely wouldn't call it science fiction, perhaps speculative fiction, but really its just a cracker of a detective mystery novel. I was fooled into putting it on my list because it won both the Nebula and Hugo awards, but I'm glad I did, because its a great read. Chabon creates a fantastic array of characters in his world-that-never-was; I love how he brings out such rich colour to Jewish Sitka through the quirks and charms of its residents. Berko and Bina are great and Landsman evokes a great feeling of sympathy for his plight and really had me rooting for him the whole way through. Chabon has a poetic-like mastery of metaphors which he splashes around that brings real humour to the story; he really is a great writer (he did win a Pulitzer after all).

I would recommend this book to anyone really, particularly fans of the crime-mystery genre.