Galactic Energies - Luca Rossi

***** Science fiction you don't expect

Luca Rossi has got the special talent to tell stories you don't expect in a way which is similarly unexpected. Each one of these short stories is characterised by this peculiarity, while you face completely different worlds and protagonists, each one able to amaze us in its own way. Moving among science fiction, fantasy and eroticism each story captivates us and meets our desire of a narration which is less than expected, where really everything can happen.
Suggested to science fiction enthusiasts who would like to be surprised.

Discover Galactic Energies on Amazon.com.

Find more about Luca Rossi on Goodreads.

State of Fear - Michael Crichton

***** Great work of Crichton between novel and essay 

Only years after the death of Crichton I finally discovered his great value as a writer and it happened with this book, bought almost casually without knowing exactly what it was about, and that turned out to be very interesting for me. 

The topic is that of the so-called theory of anthropogenic global warming, which is being analysed while the author tells a great story of action and adventure and in doing so offer us a lot of scientific pieces of information, all confirmed with real references, which can be checked, as they are listed in the large bibliography of the volume.

Considering the way in which the author dismantles the theory of global warming and complaints the speculation and sensationalism that accompany it, I completely understand why this book has never become a movie. It's too much against the trend. It goes against the economic interest of the moment.

Never allow the people read it and believe it!

Maybe one day, when public opinion will have enough of this ecological drama we are witnessing, the opposite theory will appear (will they tell us we are moving towards an ice age again?) and then maybe this book will come out and will be properly manipulated.

What the book says instead is that mankind is currently not able to demonstrate whether our planet is really going towards a global warming, so much so that every theory from 20 years ago was later denied. Much less mankind is able to prove whether they are able to influence these events (both positively and negatively) and to what extent.

Personally I doubt it, because in reality, as the same Crichton says, we are fragile in the face of nature's power and the only thing we can do is run and hide.

Being able to affect it is pure presumption.

State of Fear on Amazon.com.

Gravity - Tess Gerritsen

***** Technically perfect 

I was very torn while rating this book. Though it is certainly better than many others which I awarded with 4 stars, I could not avoid to detect some small flaws. I still decided to give it 5, because it is undoubtedly one of the few books that got me really involved in the reading in the latest months. I had to force myself not to finish it in a couple of days and it was not easy.

It is a techno-thriller with medical and science fiction implications that undoubtedly associates the work of Gerritsen to that of Crichton. The topic is super interesting, or at least it is for me. The story set in the era of the Space Shuttle narrates of a medical emergency on board the International Space Station (ISS), which has very dramatic and at times even horror implications. The pace is tight, the characters are very well defined and you find yourself living their drama, especially Emma Watson and her almost ex-husband Jack McCallum, both astronauts and doctors. The concern and anxiety to see what will happen next forces you to keep reading. If I'd had the time, I would probably read it in just one session. This is definitely a sign that I found myself in front of a great novel.

The technical part is flawless. This book, although fiction, allows you to get to know the procedures of NASA at the time. There's even a useful glossary at the end of it. All this makes "Gravity" in some respects an educational text that I will no doubt keep aside for future reference.

To great characters and excellent technical part, it adds a perfectly built storyline, with the right timing and the correct scene combination. Paradoxically, this is precisely a flaw of the book. I was at 17% of reading, and I knew exactly how it would end, I had also made a rough idea, later confirmed, about the mechanisms by which the story would come to its resolution. Despite this, I really enjoyed reading, proof that you can satisfy and entertain even the most sly reader with such standard a novel.

In short, you can almost neglect this flaw of too much perfection.

The story takes place in a very cinematic way, and certainly this is not a defect. It is so, however, the fact that in some occasions the author, for reasons unknown to me, has decided to include scenes from an omniscient point of view to show events that no character was able to see. The same facts are then discovered by the characters, but in this way the reader has been deprived of the pleasure to get astonished and scared with them. Why has she wanted to deny this pleasure to us? By completely eliminating those scenes, the book would have been even nicer.

But the reason why I was torn on whether to give it 5 stars is another: the ending. Not so much because of its obviousness, but for the way in which it has been shown. Considering it was entirely predictable, it would be very important to devote special care to the ending emphasizing the emotional part rather than the facts, which, I repeat, were obvious from the beginning. But the author has not done so. The resolutive scene is not narrated from the point of view of one of the two protagonists, but at a distance through mission control, depriving us of the pleasure of seeing their reaction, in particular that of Watson, to the incredible situation in which they find themselves. This is really a shame and I admit I have felt disappointed. I think this is really a missed opportunity. It is as if Gerritsen in the rush to complete the story has forgotten about the characters or, worse, has not known how to manage them at that moment. In a nutshell, I had the impression that with this novel she has made her quite accurate homework, but without putting her heart in it.

What a pity.

Anyway I highly recommend this novel to lovers of astronautics, but I would advise against it for real astronauts, especially when it comes to impressionable people. It could be the cause to more than a few restless sleep for those who are really up there in the ISS.

I beg you, dear astronauts, if you come across some blue-green substance of unknown nature, do not play with it: incinerate it now!

Gravity on Amazon.com.

Limit - Frank Schätzing

**** Immense, but excessive work

First of all I must say that I love long science fiction novels. I love them because they have complex plots and do not end immediately. And, if a novel is beautiful, you do not want it to end. For this reason I faced fearlessly the 1300 pages of “Limit”. I came out with conflicting opinions.

I awarded it with four stars because in the end the author really made it. The final part (say the last third of the book) is in fact the most successful and overall I have to say that I had fun. But I could not go further because, with all my good will, the book has more than a few flaws.

First of all, the author employs perhaps a hundred pages at the beginning to present all the characters. It goes without saying that it creates a great confusion in your head, as you do not have the time to assimilate the information. There is a list of all the characters at the end of the book, but it does not seem right to me that the reader should consult it every time. It would have been more appropriate to introduce them slowly in the unfolding of the story, so as not to kill the interest and the pace at the beginning.

Another aspect that puzzled me is the passing of the author from an omniscient point of view (which also sees what the characters cannot see) to a limited point of view, even within the same scene. More than once I had to re-read a paragraph from the beginning to figure out who was thinking about what was being written. In short, I found it a bit confusing. As the story continues, however, the problem is reduced since the author tends to assign scenes to the individual character and avoid showing what nobody could see.

In all this, however, I tend to find a certain inconsistency.

But by far the biggest problem with this book is the excess of info-dump. At least one third of the novel consists of information that could be summarized or simply omitted. Pages and pages of unlikely political fiction or background of the characters, which the reader forgets a second after reading them, unless they skip or read them diagonally. Not to mention the fact that the inclusion of these absolutely fake parts completely arrests the action even for fifty pages, creating unnatural pauses in the scenes. The characters find themselves doing long and complicated conversations, therefore improbable, that look like real lessons and certainly not normal chatting. Honestly, I could not imagine that certain characters could stay so long concentrated to talk about stuff like that.

In short, boredom.

Finally the finish is predictable. Once you kill almost everybody and slow down the action, you give the reader all the tools to understand who the leader of the bad guys is, well before the revelation. On the other hand a reader who engages in a novel of 1300 pages is sly, therefore to greater reason they feel undervalued if you propose them such an obvious ending.

After all these criticisms you may wonder why such a high rating. Simple. The parts on the Moon and space are stunning. The action scenes are well orchestrated and exciting. The setting is the most impressive I have read in recent times. But most of all I loved the character of Julian Orley, crazy, visionary and optimistic, as well as his daughter Lynn (mad as a hatter) and son Tim (loving and practical), and the latter’s wife Amber (the one who understands them all). They are very well built and you can really feel in tune with them.

Instead, I have appreciated less Owen Jericho, who measured with much less fascinating places and situations, but he sometimes failed to keep up with the majesty of the plot. He is a character with many weaknesses, who would have demanded a higher real depth and perhaps a real growth at the end of the story. The author has tried to develop him and to tell (but do not to show) his growth, but in my opinion he didn’t succeed. Yoyo, instead, is annoying and unnecessary.

Finally, a mention to the villains. I was annoyed that the survived one was also, so to speak, devoid of soul, stereotyped, in short the supervillain, while another more interesting villain was killed in a rather stupid way. I liked him because he basically acted according to his own logic, showing to have a consciousness. The killing of such a character was really a pity. 

Limit on Amazon.com (release date: 5 November 2013).

Nova Swing - M. John Harrison

**** A pleasant surprise 

I started reading this novel with very low expectations dictated from having read the reviews by other readers and I must admit, instead, that I was pleasantly surprised, demonstrating once again how reading the opinions of others can be misleading.

Actually at the beginning of the reading I felt disoriented, with all those descriptions of situations and characters that are hard to imagine and especially with the remarkably static narrative. Going forward, however, I managed to get used to the unusual language of the author and appreciate the evocative aspect. Meanwhile, the story came alive and took hold of me forcing me to go ever further, so much that it became difficult to stop.

It is an original work, in which you cannot imagine what will happen next or the real implications of what has happened, where the main characters are annoying and you’re apparently happy to realize that at the end the story abandons them, giving space to much more interesting secondary characters.

The lingering in improbable descriptions of improbable places and the author’s ability to get out of each narrative scheme keeping you glued to the pages, whilst in your head an incredible universe takes shape that only the written word can evoke, are in my opinion the strengths of this novel. Not everybody is probably able to appreciate them, but it is undoubtedly a type of science fiction that is in my comfort zone.

Nova Swing on Amazon.com.

Cutting Right to the Chase - Stefania Mattana

***** Fast and... cutting

This small collection of short stories has so much originality in itself, starting from the combination of an English (former) detective living in Italy. This aspect in itself allows us to compare the personal characteristics of a typically British character in a setting which for him is somehow exotic.

A second element of originality is the choice to write short stories of just a thousand words made for a "stolen" reading in the so-called idle time, for example when travelling by bus or on the tube. This choice represents a small literary experiment that deserves praise apart from all the rest, since it is proposed to a specific target.

The third element of originality is the author, born and raised in Italy, who is wrestling with great skill in his second language, managing to convey to the reader the authority of the mother tongue both in terms of style and for the way in which she is able identify herself in the protagonist Chase Williams.

To all these elements, which would be sufficient to arouse the curiosity of the reader of this genre, you add some great stories, some real pearls, which let themselves be read in a moment, not only for the sake of brevity but also for the ability to capture your attention and force you to go on until the end. And it happens that after the first story you cannot help but move to the second one and then the third one and so on.

After this brief look into the literary world by Stefania Mattana I'd be curious to dive back into it, maybe in a good crime novel.

Cutting Right to the Chase on Amazon.com.