Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

EDIT: references to the Mises Institute removed: see bottom of post for reasons and alternative links

We, by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin.

“[Zamyatin’s] intuitive grasp of the irrational side of totalitarianism — human sacrifice, cruelty as an end in itself — makes [We] superior to Huxley’s [Brave New World].” —George Orwell

An inspiration for George Orwell’s 1984 and a precursor to the work of Philip K. Dick, Ayn Rand (Anthem), and Stanislaw Lem, We is a classic of dystopian science fiction ripe for rediscovery. Written in 1921 by the Russian revolutionary Yevgeny Zamyatin, this story of the thirtieth century is set in the One State, a society where all live for the collective good and individual freedom does not exist.

Although fiction, it is a story informed by the war communism of the Soviet Union, and was of course completely banned in Russia. But the collectivism is of a recognizable type, one that threatens every society in all times. To come to understand its features and markings is the benefit of the dystopian genre. The reality that dawns on the reader is that this seeming fiction is all-too real in our times.

The novel takes the form of the diary of state mathematician D-503, who, to his shock, experiences the most disruptive emotion imaginable: love for another human being.

At once satirical and sobering, We speaks to all who have suffered under repression of their personal, economic, and cultural freedom.

“One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.” –Irving Howe

And free to download, as a PDF. It came up as a $2 ebook on my daily ebook newsletters, and my brain went 'if it was an inspiration for George Orwell, surely it isn't under copyright?' My brain then went 'It probably isn't under copyright and you should look him up on Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg, and STOP CALLING ME SHIRLEY!' The American, Canadian, and Australian Gutenbergs didn't have it, but his Wikipedia page had a link to the Mises site!

I like free stuff. And PDFs are supported by all ebook readers.

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL15196400M/We

https://monoskop.org/images/2/28/Zamyatin_Yevgeny_We_1972.pdf

Why Mises Institute was removed: As pointed out in the comments by Tiametschild, The Mises Institute is not an Austrian institution, it's an Alabama organization classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a Neo-Con group, which I will not support for obvious reasons. The Monoskop.org link will take you to a PDF scan of a paperback copy of the book.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2000/neo-confederates

Available on Archive.org. The first issue, dated February 1951, contains the Ray Bradbury story The Firemen, which he would later publish as the book Fahrenheit 451. These are available to read online or as free downloads in epub, Mobi and other formats. They're not formatted well, but they're perfectly readable. From the web site: "Galaxy Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1980."

https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine

Thanks for posting this, Alex! I love her comments on Amazon, of course, she has an advantage with living in Portland of having direct access to Powells. Still, I haven't bought a book from Amazon since their various attempts at bullying began.

She has to be one of the few remaining second generation Grandmasters of Science Fiction.

http://news.streetroots.org/2014/08/14/otherworldly-and-utterly-portland-ursula-k-le-guin

“Low-level entertainment lawyer Nick Carter thinks it's a prank, not an alien encounter, when a redheaded mullah and a curvaceous nun show up at his office. But Frampton and Carley are highly advanced (if bumbling) extraterrestrials. And boy, do they have news.

The entire cosmos, they tell him, has been hopelessly hooked on humanity's music ever since “Year Zero” (1977 to us), when pop songs first reached alien ears. This addiction has driven a vast intergalactic society to commit the biggest copyright violation since the Big Bang. The resulting fines and penalties have bankrupted the whole universe. We humans suddenly own everything and the aliens are not amused.”

Thus the inside of the dust jacket of Rob Reid's new book, Year Zero, begins. The author is the founder of Listen.com, which became the Rhapsody music service, so he has lots of insider knowledge of the inner workings of the music industry. It releases at most major book stores on July 10, New Book Tuesday. John Hodgeman read the audiobook, and Reid has some animations on his web site which I have sadly not yet seen.

I learned of this book a month ago or so when he wrote a column for Wired that described a solution that worked for him to get past writer's block: give your characters play lists. Since his entire book, and a lot of his professional background, revolves around music, this makes sense. From there I went to his blog where he was holding a contest to give away 30 hardback copies of his book, all you had to do was make a post suggesting a song that we could give the aliens and why, and he'd pick ten from his Facebook page, ten from Twitter, and ten from his web site. I won on the web site and the book was sitting on my doorstep when I got back from a seven week road trip last Sunday.

It is an interesting first contact story, though it reminded me a lot of John Scalzi's Agent to the Stars, also a first contact story involving the entertainment industry (available free at http://www.scalzi.com/agent/, also available in print edition). Rob's aliens are quite interesting and reminiscent of something that you might find in Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers series.

I liked this book. The aliens are very alien and tremendously advanced though still somewhat hopeless, the tech is tremendously advanced but can still be used by humans, and lots of music references and jokes along the way (especially Frampton and Carley's father's name). Humans are decidedly at an overall disadvantage but are still viable and not totally eclipsed by the aliens, not at all the fish out of water that Arthur Dent was (except for in HHGTTG book 4). I've worked with attorneys before and in various legal environments, and Reid's lawyers read true to me, which added a nice additional dimension. The problems for the good guys to overcome are quite spectacular, their opposition is quite ruthless and cunning, and it all comes together in a pretty good story.

I do have to ding it on one count, though. It's not the story, it's the printing. Rob uses footnotes quite a bit, and I had a very hard time spotting the in-text mark, so frequently I gave up and just read down to the bottom of the page and bored through the footnotes. Also, and again this is probably a layout issue and not Rob's fault, some of the footnotes spanned multiple pages. I thought the layout could have been better balanced, but it still worked.

And I have to give one commendation for the printing: I did not notice a single typo. It seems like more and more these days I find typos in hardbacks, I'm beginning to wonder if we're paying top dollar for betas so they can fix the paperbacks.

http://readrobreid.com

http://www.amazon.com/Year-Zero-Novel-Rob-Reid/dp/0345534417


And in the spirit of Rob creating play lists for the main characters, here's my Top 25 Most Played as reported by iTunes: (from most played to least)

Afternoons & Coffeespoons - Crash Test Dummies
Solsbury Hill - Peter Gabriel
For A Rocker - Jackson Browne
The Barry Williams Show - Peter Gabriel
Ramble On - Led Zeppelin
Loves Me Like a Rock - Paul Simon
Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revival
Stuck In The Middle With You - Eddie Bauer Collection (I don't know who the artist is, but it's a great cover)
All For One - Blackmore's Night
I Wish They'd Do It Now - John Roberts and Tony Barrand
Me and Julio Down By the School Yard - Paul Simon
The Coachman - John Roberts and Tony Barrand
My Karma Broke Down - Three Weird Sisters
Wilbury Twist - The Traveling Wilburys
Mexican Radio - Wall of Voodoo
Dead Man's Party - Oingo Boingo
Funky Nassau - Blues Brothers
Friend of the Devil - The Grateful Dead
Rolling Down To Old Maui - Stan Rogers
Heavy Cloud No Rain – Sting
Burning Down the House - Talking Heads
Bedrock Anthem - Weird Al Yankovic
March of Cambreadth - Heather Alexander
Truckin' - The Grateful Dead
Weird Science - Oingo Boingo

If you like military science fiction along the lines of John Ringo or David Weber, you should check out Elizabeth Moon. She's a former US Marine Officer and has written two military SF series (along with a very good heroic fantasy series, The Deed of Paksenarrion series, also highly recommended), one is known as the Familias Reagnant series and is something like 8 books, the other is the Vatta's War series (Trading In Danger, Marque and Reprisal, Engaging the Enemy, Command Decision, and Victory Conditions), for which the hardback of book 5 came out a couple of months ago or so (Moon has won a Nebula and was nominated for a Hugo, also received the Robert A. Heinlein Award and was nominated for a Clarke, Moon also coauthored a series with Anne McCaffrey). I was a little bit flush with cash, and impatient to wait for it to come out in paperback, so I picked it up last week along with another Tanya Huff Confederation book. So I take off the dust jacket, find a nice book mark, and start reading it.

And I'm immediately lost.

There seems to be a huge disconnect between books 4 and 5, so I decide to re-read the series. I finished book 3 last night and couldn't find book 4, so I go to B&N pick it up and start reading it. My wife and I were sitting on the couch, and I commented that this wasn't familiar. It finally dawned on me that I'd never read it! I think I read the preview semi-chapter at the end of 3, which, along with other information in book 3, almost made sense in the opening of 5, but not enough to carry on reading it.

I'm now about half way through 4, I'll probably finish it tomorrow. Very much looking forward to getting into 5 and seeing how the series ends!


I mentioned Tanya Huff. She's a very good writer who did a series known as the Blood books about a former RCMP homicide investigator who had to retire due to a degenerating eye disease that was slowly blinding her and eventually would kill her (IIRC) who encounters a demon and eventually teams up with the bastard son of Henry the Eighth, who happens to be a vampire who writes romance stories. It's now a TV series, though sadly (IMHO) they've changed the vampire to a comic graphic artist, I think the romance novelist was infinitely better. ANYWAY, highly recommended series. That series segued into a series (of three so far) called Smoke, wherein Vickie (the former detective) and Henry (the vamp) have to part ways. Excellent books. Now, there is a new series of Blood books based on the TV show, and I can't vouch for them as I haven't read them, but I don't think they're written by Huff.

ANYWAY, I wanted to talk about the Confederation books. They are space marine military SF, perhaps more along the lines of Ringo's Posleen series than Weber & Moon's space SF. If you have any interest in military history, you will find her gimmick very interesting, but I'm not going to reveal what it is. We have the first two books, and the hardback of the third came out and I got it at the same time as the Moon book. So while I was at the book store, I picked up a single book collecting the first two Confederation books as I don't remember them very well. I saunter over to the new book rack, and there's a Confederation paperback there on the bottom -- of the THIRD book. Turns out the hard back that I'd bought is the FOURTH Confederation book!

Lots of good military SF to read. Wayne is a happy camper. Or a hampy capper. Campy happer? Wayne is tired and should go back to bed.