The Doctor Who books (new 2005 series) are all short but very sweet. They are pretty simple, but I love how they convey the same humor and feelings that a traditional Doctor Who tv episode does. The books I have read so far all had that same great humor by the Doctor that I love, which is why these books are almost like comfort food for me.
In this book the Doctor (9th) and Rose find a genuine Neanderthal in the UK, in Bromley, in the twenty-first century. When they find out how he got there, they discover a colony of future humans living in 26.000 BC. They are using a crude time-travel device, and the Doctor needs to figure out what they are doing there and stop them using the device again. Meanwhile, there is also the problem of the Neaderthal to think of.
Like I said, a great short book, truly Doctor Who. Four out of five stars.

In Iain M. Banks Culture Universe, somewhere very far in the future, it is normal to make a back-up of yourself, your mind. If something definite would happen to your body, this means that you can be remade from the back-up, in any shape or form desired. There are also many virtual worlds where these back-ups can live without bodies. So essentially you are immortal, even though your body dies. For some species other than the culture, this concept is daunting, and to cope with this, they have fitted it into their existing belief structures. For people who “die” in those species, there is a virtual afterlife where they can live on. But how fair is it to give everyone a shot at a fantastic, everything-is-possible afterlife? What about the murderers, the villains, the crooks? Those species that felt that way have created virtual heavens and hells.
This book, like most Banks science fiction novels, follows several different story lines, that come together wonderfully at the end. We have Veppers, a rich business man who owns half a world and thinks himself to be quite something. We have Lededje, in essence his property and slave. We have the virtual war between the anti- and pro-Hell factions, a war to decide if the Hells should be destroyed. We have the Culture, who seems to have an opinion in this war but tries it’s “Culturally” best to remain neutral. We have other level 7 and level 8 species who seem to be involved in the war. And we have a real risk that the war will move from the virtual to the Real.
In the beginning of the book it took me a little while to get into it, because I was tired and busy, and it took some focus to get into the right frame of mind to grasp all that was happening. The descriptions of the experiences of two of the characters actually in one of the Hells were pretty graphic and made me a bit queasy sometimes, although I guess that was the point. Like I said, in the end it all came together great, and while I would have liked to see more Culture, I really liked this book. Four out of five stars.

When I bought (many) books on our last vacation to England I bought a lot of first books in series that everybody seems to love. I bought the first parts in the Discworld series, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant trilogy, Malazan Book of the Fallen series and The Dark Tower. This is the first part of The Dark Tower, a fantasy series written by Stephen King.
Because this book is so different from the horror that King normally writes, and because people are raving so much about this series, I found it hard to know what to expect. But I think this has been a good thing, because it is hard to describe this book. It follows Rolland, a gunslinger, who is following The Man in Black. It takes place in a world like our, but (to me) it was unclear if it is a parallel world, a dystopian future, a different planet. Some things come from our time (they sing Hey Jude, and one character knows New York), but all in all this world is very different. When reading it I found it hard to find orientation points on which I could anchor my experience with this book. This meant that it felt more like an experience, like an introduction to set the mood, than a full-fledged book one of seven. I am intrigued and want to read more, four out of five stars.

When I was younger (elementary school) I must have borrowed Het Oneindige Verhaal (The Neverending Story) dozens of times. In my memory it was a beautiful hardcover edition, printed in red and blue ink (red for the world, blue for Fantastica). I have been looking for such an edition for years, but it is quite hard to find. Last weekend, when looking through the books at a second-hand shop, I found an English paperback copy. Even though it doesn’t have the two colors (instead the distinction is made by cursive and non-cursive). I couldn’t keep this book in the case too long, so I immediately (re-)read it.
And it is as good as I remember. I had forgotten some parts (the length of Bastian’s part of the story), and misremembered some (I though the Childlike Empress was a lot less nice than she was). But I love this book. I love the characters, the story, the morale, the simple writing. I need to have this in Dutch to so I can read it to my future children. And I need to see the movie again. Five out of five stars.

This book was written at the same time as the script for the Stanley Kubrick movie. I have never seen the movie, but if it is as good as the book I must see it. All I knew about it before reading this book was about HAL, the onboard computer who says “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid can’t do that.”.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part takes place three million years ago, before humans were humans. The second part takes place in the nineties, when mankind discovers a strange artifact on the moon. The last, and biggest part, takes place during a mission to Saturn. This last part is where HAL shows up, the cognitive on board computer with its own mission.
I really liked this book, another one of those classic science fiction works that holds up well over time (if you ignore the dates, we should have bases in space by now). The ideas are original, realistic and out there. Especially great was the section in the back, written by Clarke in 1982, about how the book held up over time (it is from 1968, before the first moon landing even) and the influence it has had on space exploration since then. A must read for science fiction fans, four out of five stars.

In my quest to read more classic science fiction I couldn’t leave out Karel Capek’s War with the Newts. I have no idea how I know about this book, because when I look at the lists of best sci-fi books and the awards it has won, it is not that famous. But it is good. This book was published in 1936, but it doesn’t show its age. It could have been written recently and set in that time.
A captain who is travelling in the seas of Indonesia discovers a bay where according to the local people, devils live. His pearl-divers, also Asian, are terrified, but the captain is intrigued. He discovers that the ‘devils’ are in fact salamanders or newts that live in shallow salt water. They are pretty smart, and soon the captain teaches them to dive for pearls, language and defense (against the sharks, who eat them). A company is started that exploits the newts as pearl divers, and later as workers at the coast and under water. Harbors are expanded, coastlines are grown, and the newts multiply. They are pretty smart, so how long will this last in balance?
The book is told from many different view points, and also through minutes from meetings and articles from newspapers and magazines. In this way, this reminds me of books like World War Z and Robopocalypse. It feels surprisingly modern. The only qualm I have is that the ending feels… tacked on. The story goes, and in the next to last chapter life for the humans looks pretty bleak. But in the last chapter the writer has a discussion with his conscience in which he philosophizes about how humankind could survive. With my modern reading background this feels unnecessary. All in all a great book, and highly recommended. Four out of five stars.