2017 Reading Challenge discussion

Share your science fiction challenge book here.

I read The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. I decided to read this based on liking the Amazon Prime series first season. I had difficulty with the style - incomplete sentences or thought trails. For example, "Body of yin, soul of yang. Metal and fire unified. The outer and inner; microcosmos [sic] in my palm." That said, the concept is interesting - what happened if the US had lost WWII?

I read by . I highly recommend this book,especially if sci fi is not your favorite category. It's futuristic but extremely accessible. I loved it. Great character development, tons of action and shocking twists/turns. The second one is coming out this year and I am really looking forward to it.

Clay's Ark - Octavia Butler

Butler has been on my radar for a while, and when in a used bookstore recently I found this book, part of her Patternist series. Fortunately it doesn't matter if you read the books in order, as this is third chronologically in the series - I just learned today.

Anyhow, it's the story of an small group of people infected with an alien microbe who live isolated in the desert. They try hard to keep the microbe from spreading, but are also driven by the microbe to infect others. Slightly dated (published in 1984), but still a good read!

Anne wrote: "
Clay's Ark - Octavia Butler

Butler has been on my radar for a while, and when in a used bookstore recently I found this book, part of her Patternist series. Fortunatel..."

I adore Butler. I always recommend Kindred to people as a great starting point to her works. The Xenogenesis trilogy is amazing too, although I think some people are put off by the "hard sci fi" attention to detail.

Audettekills wrote: "Anne wrote: "
Clay's Ark - Octavia Butler

Butler has been on my radar for a while, and when in a used bookstore recently I found this book, part of her Patternist serie..."

I need to read this series. I just love Butler, too. Kindred is my favorite of her stories, followed by Xenogenesis. I have also read Earthseed, but I didn't feel it measured up to the others. She was an amazing writer.

For the first time I read H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine"...a great look into the future, especially since it was written before airplanes. It's surreal to see how Wells envisioned the future, and his reasoning behind it. His imagination is just - great.

I've finally read ! And it was as good as I was led to believe! I love Amie Kaufman's writing ever since the Starbound trilogy and this book is just as good. I love the whole idea of telling a story through a dossier of documents, it made the reading more dynamic and easier, but at times I think it failed to convey some of the characters personalities. Still, an amazing book. The writing style and the way the story is build is similar to what was done in the Starbound trilogy and I love this way of telling a story - through 3 different pairs of main characters, and the events in each book taking place in different locations, but everything intercepting between them, and the MC's of each book uniting at some point. I also loved the little details that the authors inserted in the book to bring life to this world, and all the pop culture, classic literature and mythology references thrown in here.

Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man" - a great collection of 18 short stories from a brilliant writer. His imagination and ability to the capture the human psyche is genius. I would have given this 5 stars, but even though the Space Race was in full swing in the '50s when Bradbury was writing this, it tends to be a tad top heavy on the Mars stories. Still, I loved it all. Definitely recommend!

11.22.63
LOVED this book, 5 stars! This book is about a time traveler that is trying to stop the assignation of JFK. It takes place in the 1950's and 60's. So very different from his other books, highly recommended!!