My top Sci-fi book series of the 2010s: Part 3

Concluding my rundown of favourite sci-fi series published this decade, both the trilogies listed in this post are still on-going with their respective third books yet to be published. For good measure, I’m finishing off this review with an “honorable mentions” list of great standalone sci-fi novels published in the 2010s.

The Book of Dust trilogy by Philip Pullman: La Belle Sauvage (2017) and The Secret Commonwealth (2019). These books are a continuation of the story from Pullman’s seminal His Dark Materials trilogy, with Lyra Belacqua at its narrative centre. The first book is set 12 years before the first novel of His Dark Materials when Lyra was a baby and the second book is set a few years after the conclusion of the first trilogy with Lyra a young woman. There is no confirmed publishing date for the final book. One naturally doesn’t experience the same thrill as when one first encounters the concepts of Dust and the Authority in the original trilogy. Nevertheless, these books continue to explore the physics of this world, specifically the properties of Dust and deliver well-paced adventure stories with strong characterizations. For those who have read the original trilogy, the new His Dark Materials series from BBC and HBO which just concluded its first season is highly recommended viewing.

English author Philip Pullman, with a copy of La Belle Sauvage, the first book in the Book of Dust trilogy

The Interdependency series by John Scalzi: The Collapsing Empire (2017) and The Consuming Fire (2018). This is a full blown space opera, with all the usual tropes one would expect from the genre – wormhole technology, a galactic empire that is spread across dozens of star systems and interstellar trade controlled by megacorporations. Typically, the key aspect of a space opera is figuring out the science for interplanetary travel…is it faster-than-light travel, is it through wormholes or through human-built technology, etc. John Scalzi is a seasoned writer who ensures that his science is properly thought through and this makes for a strong foundation upon which to build the plot. The two books are filled with highly entertaining (somewhat larger-than-life characters) doing quite extra-ordinary things…in the true sense of the term “space opera” it’s a soap opera taking place in space! The final book in the trilogy The Last Emperox will be released in April 2020.

I thought it also worth mentioning a few standalone sci-fi novels that really stood out for me in the last decade, some of which are good enough for me to wish that there would be a sequel.

Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds (2010): I wrote a detailed review of this novel in 2012, when my blogs were on the Weebly platform, so I don’t really need to add to what’s on the link. I have read four of Mr. Reynolds’ books but this remains my favourite.

The Martian by Andy Weir (2011): I wrote extensively about this book after I read it in 2014. I completely missed it when it came out in 2011 but heard about it when Ridley Scott’s film adaptation starring Matt Damon went into pre-production and of course, the movie was as big a hit as the book. This book ranks in the same “unputdownable page turner” category as Dan Brown’s Da Vince Code.

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson (2015): This is an epic multi-generational story grounded in hard science. It is one of the most intelligent books I have read and one that if I had the time, I would read again (difficult to do when one is constantly catching up with new stuff). This is a story of humanity and courage, as much as a story of science and ingenuity. A significant (and very harrowing) part of the story takes place in earth’s orbit while the latter part, several generations later, takes place back on the surface of a changed world.

American writer Neal Stephenson

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland (2017): This is a fun novel that brings together some big ideas (enough for two or more novels) into a riotous time-travel story. Unlike the grounded science of Mr. Stephenson’s previous book Seveneves, what we have here is ‘pop science’, the technology sounds plausible enough (if you don’t think too much about it) and serves adequately as the foundation for a high-stakes adventure story. The intent here is to have fun, as evidenced by the ridiculous acronym given to the Department of Diachronic Operations, the secret government department that manages time-travel operations. This is the sort of story that would be perfect for a big studio blockbuster; the big set-piece events and fast-moving action are designed for adequate suspension of disbelief.

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (2015): I have great respect for KSR’s Mars trilogy books for their verisimilitude (although this same quality also caused the narrative pace to drag at various points of the story). Perhaps his most ambitious and greatest literary achievement is The Years of Rice and Salt (2002). In Aurora, KSR tackles the very real challenges faced by a generation starship, namely that of a closed artificial bio-system of relatively small size with no natural thermal sources (sun or internal planetary heat) and finite raw materials will face challenges in maintaining integrity and viability after a few generations. The sheer scale of what the occupants of Aurora endure and achieve over the story is astounding, almost impossible to believe, but narrated with a degree of plausibility that makes the reader feel like this all really happened.

So there you have it – eight sci-fi series from 7 authors and five standalone novels from 4 authors which together constitute my favourite sci-fi reads published in the past decade.

My top Sci-fi book series of the 2010s: Part 2

Continuing the listing of my favourite Sci-fi book series published in the 2010s, this post will cover two very different trilogies from the same author and one military sci-fi series.

The Milkweed Triptych by Ian Tregillis: I’ve written about this series once in 2015 soon after I read it and once again a few days ago in reference to a similarly themed novel I’d just read, Lavie Tidhar’s The Violent Century. So, there’s not really much more to be said about this brilliant, gripping alternate history series. I can only hope that some TV network or streaming platform somewhere is putting a plan together to adapt this into a mini-series. The German superhuman Gretel who has the ability to see alternate futures is one of the most unhinged, purely evil characters I’ve ever read about and I would love to see on screen how British warlock Lord William Beauclerk and secret agent Raybould Marsh eventually turn the tables on her (at great personal cost). Surely, Tregillis’ mentor George R.R. Martin should be able to help him swing a deal at HBO!

Ian Tregillis, the brilliant physicist turned author of the Milkweed Triptych and The Alchemy Wars

The Alchemy Wars by Ian Tregillis: If any further proof were needed that Mr. Tregillis is one of the smartest, most creative minds in speculative fiction today, this equally entertaining follow-up to the The Milkweed Triptych would be it. The Alchemy Wars is a steampunk story set in an alternative timeline in which celebrated Dutch clockmaker and inventor Christiaan Huygens develops a mysterious ‘alchemical’ technology in the 17th century that acts as a power source for humanoid clockwork automatons (colloquially called Clakkers). Jump ahead to the early 20th century and the Dutch have leveraged this technology to build and sustain a dominant global empire. Their only potential rivals are the French government-in-exile, operating out of northern America who are at a political and military stalemate with the Dutch. The one point of Dutch vulnerability is the fact that Clakkers sometimes ‘go rogue’, somehow achieving sentience and ‘free will’ (the few who do are ruthlessly hunted down and eliminated). New France would love to get its hands on a rogue Clakker and/or the secrets of clockwork alchemy as a means to neutralize Dutch technology and claim back their homeland. These elements form the ingredients for a supremely entertaining, intricately plotted spy and adventure story filled with deadly assassins, scheming politicians and one heroic Clakker named Jax, who must make an epic journey to the New World to help overthrow the evil empire and obtain freedom for his kind.

Frontlines series by Marko Kloos: Terms of Enlistment (2013), Lines of Departure (2014), Angles of Attack (2015), Chains of Command (2016), Fields of Fire (2017) and Points of Impact (2018) plus a couple of short stories set between books 2 and 3. I resisted military sci-fi for years, as I felt that the stories would be repetitive and one-dimensional. Then I picked up and fell in love with R.M. Meluch’s brilliant (and pulpy) Tour of the Merrimack series. Thereafter, I’ve been more open-minded about the sub-genre and a couple of years ago, I discovered Marko Kloos’ Frontlines series. I referred to it in my June 2018 post about the scariest aliens in sci-fi, specifically, the nearly indestrucible ‘Lankies’ who are taking over Earth’s colonies one by one and terraforming them. In the books, we follow the fortunes of Andrew Grayson, a soldier with the Commonwealth Defense Corps, who along with his fellow troopers, is sent out on one dangerous interplanetary mission after another in an attempt to push back the alien threat. What makes the books interesting is the humanization of the characters…besides the large scale action, we also experience Andrew’s anxieties related to his girlfriend who is a pilot in the Defense Corps and his mother who has to contend with widespread poverty and civil unrest in the city-ghettos on Earth. I haven’t read the 6th book yet and I understand that there are three more books planned to close out the series, so there’s still quite a lot more of the story arc to get through. For those interested, both Mr. Tregillis and Mr. Kloos are contributors to the Wild Card universe, an ‘open-source’ universe of comic books, role playing games and novels concerning people who acquire super-powers via an alien virus, all of which are edited and managed by George R.R. Martin and his collaborator Melinda Snodgrass. Yes, that man has connections everywhere!

In a couple of days, I’ll publish the third and final part of my list of top sci-fi book series of the 2010s.

My top Sci-fi book series of the 2010s: Part 1

I’ve read 308 books this decade (2010-19), although 2010 was actually quite a fallow year for me, as I was busy moving base from Vietnam to Malaysia that year. Getting an iPad in 2011 and subsequently a Kindle at the end of 2014 really turbocharged my reading and took me back to the levels I maintained in India where we had easy access to high quality lending libraries.

Of those 308 books that I read in the 2010s, 167 were actually published within the decade. And not surprisingly for me, 97 of those were Sci-fi (although in some cases, I would be better off using the broader term “speculative fiction”). I spent an enjoyable hour yesterday scanning through my database and came up with this list of my favourite speculative fiction series of the decade.

The Passage series by Justin Cronin: The Passage (2010), The Twelve (2012) and The City of Mirrors (2016). This series combines one of my favourite sub-genres – post-apocalyptic fiction – with one of my least favourite – vampire fiction. I usually know within the first few pages if I like a particular writing style and if the characters are appealing. That was definitely the case with The Passage. Using different narrative devices, including emails and a research paper from the far future, we are introduced to the top-secret Project Noah and the main protagonist, six-year-old orphan Amy Bellafonte. I think what works about the series is that it is epic in scope but intimate in the way it explores the relationships and motivations of its large cast of characters. The first half of the first book was adapted into a series on Fox (produced by Ridley Scott) which was cancelled at the end of the first season. Somehow it didn’t capture the gravitas of the book and seemed to have more style than substance.

The Passage post-apocalyptic series by Justin Cronin

The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Caliban’s War (2012), Abaddon’s Gate (2013), Cibola Burn (2014), Nemesis Games (2015), Babylon’s Ashes (2016), Persepolis Rising (2017), Tiamat’s Wrath (2019) plus 7 short stories. I picked up the first book soon after it was published in 2011 and struggled to keep track of all the characters, spaceships and locations in the story! After a gap of several months, I restarted it and this time created notes and charts to make sure I could see all the moving parts of the narrative. It turned out to be a very rewarding read. But it then took me another 5 years before I picked up book 2 (for which I had to speed read through book 1 and refer to those notes again) and then read 5 of the sequels in reasonably quick succession. Even though the narrative is set a few centuries in the future, with humanity having expanded through the solar system, the science is still remarkably ‘grounded’ and realistic. What starts off as a conspiracy involving interplanetary politics and the quest for economic and scientific power eventually grows in scope, scale and personal stakes in the subsequent books. The central characters are a closely knit foursome who are inadvertently drawn into this power play. Driven by a sense of justice, they play a major role in the events that unfold across (and beyond) the solar system. They are frequently assisted by a ruthless but highly pragmatic old lady of South Asian descent named Chrisjen Avasarala, who holds a senior position in the United Nations and is not squeamish about using her power and connections to ‘do the right thing’. Of particular note is that the author is actually two people – Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck – who are part of a New Mexico speculative fiction collective which is closely associated with George R.R. Martin.

Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck – collectively known as James S.A. Corey, the author of the Expanse series

Silo series by Hugh Howey: This is actually a story arc that consists of three sub-series – Wool (5 books), Shift (3 books) and Dust (1 book). The first book in the series was self-published by Howey via Amazon’s Kindle direct publishing platform and became a word-of-mouth phenomenon. The silos in which people live in the post-apocalyptic future are an amazing example of world building, with an entire society surviving for years in a subterranean dwelling which extends to over a hundred levels connected only by a spiral staircase. The Shift is a prequel series to explain the events that led to the apocalypse and the entire story is closed out in Dust. Frankly, I feel the 5-book Wool series is the best in terms of narrative tension, with the subsequent books really just filling in the back story. Put together, the books make for a chilling and depressing read, so not really something that I feel compelled to re-read. I briefly referenced this series back in 2013 soon after reading the Wool and Shift books.

There are 5 more series in my list of top scifi series of the 2010s, including two trilogies which will only be completed in 2020 or later. I’ll cover these in Parts 2 and 3.

Lavie Tidhar’s The Violent Century: A grim story of super-powered anti-heroes

The New York Times posted an article in late November titled “33 Ways to Remember the 2010s“. It starts with Item #33, “Spandex ruled everything around us” and refers to the superhero phenomenon which pervades pop culture today in the movies and on TV. The sub-genre is now sufficiently commonplace that there is public appetite for the development of edgier content featuring graphic violence, adult themes and non-conformist genre deconstructions like The Umbrella Academy on Netflix, Watchmen on HBO and The Boys on Amazon. Naturally, the source material for all these movies and shows are comics and graphic novels – not just the Marvel and DC powerhouses, but other niche publishers like Dark Horse, Valiant and Image. However, in the past decade, the genre has attracted the attention of the occasional novelist – writers with an aptitude for sci-fi, who no longer need to go into outer space or into the future, but can explore concepts, characters and plots in a contemporary world where people with superpowers exist.

A few years ago, I fell in love with just such a story – a trilogy called The Milkweed Triptych, published between 2010 and 2013 by nuclear physicist turned novelist Ian Tregillis. Incidentally, Mr. Tregillis is part of a community of speculative fiction writers living in or around New Mexico, which includes George R.R. Martin (Game of Thrones) and Diana Gabaldon (Outlander); must be something in the water there! The Milkweed trilogy kicks off in the 1930’s with a German ‘mad’ scientist named Dr. von Westarp who has created a team of eight super-solders (the result of many years of illegal experimentation with orphan children). After ‘field testing’ them in the Spanish Civil War, they are unleashed by the German Reich into the European theater during World War II. The British respond by calling upon a small group of people who have found a way to tap into a trans-dimensional force which manifests itself as ‘magic’ (such as the ability to control weather on a massive scale). The consequences of the actions taken by both sides reverberate through the subsequent Cold War years before the ultimate bittersweet resolution.

And now, I’ve just finished reading another such novel with a similar timeline and story beats – The Violent Century, published in 2013 by Israeli-born and British-based author Lavie Tidhar. Both these stories are heavily influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch and so, not surprisingly, both have their roots in Germany. Here too, it’s a German scientist Dr. Vomacht, who creates a device in the 1930’s that unlocks a variety of latent powers in a handful of people around the world. As a result of the “Vomacht wave”, every nation ends up with super-powered people, many of whom are co-opted by their governments during World War II. Thereafter, the fates of these super-soldiers and super-spies are inextricably intertwined. With the agelessness that the Vomacht wave has conferred on these special few, they remain active through the violent years of the 20th century, across the major theaters of global conflict – Europe during the Cold War, Indochina and Afghanistan.

Lavie Tidhar’s The Violent Century, published 2013

The main protagonists of this spy story are two British operatives, Fogg and Oblivion (probably easy to guess what their powers are) and their boss, who is only referred to as the Old Man. The story of these three and the other men and women they fought and loved, is told through a series of flashback that zigs and zags across the seven decades from the 1930’s to the end of the twentieth century.

Mr. Tidhar has a staccato, stream-of-consciousness style of writing (at least in this book) that reminded me of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It takes some getting used to, but soon enough feels natural and makes for a brisk and engrossing read. Mr. Tidhar creates a grim and atmospheric world; the European post-war scenes evoked for me the imagery of Carol Reed’s The Third Man. Like The Milkweed Triptych books, an underlying sense of doom and tragedy laces the narrative. Over the course of the story, one realizes that there are no purely good or evil characters, only shades of grey, all anti-heroes. They do not age, but that does not mean that they cannot be killed. Either way, whether they live or die, there are no happy endings for anyone. Even though the story ends with Fogg seemingly reunited with the love of his life, the reader still feels a sense of loss…for all the suffering and loneliness experienced by these Übermensch through the years, as they are manipulated by those in power to achieve their own political ends.

In the final reckoning, it feels like there were never any heroes, only victims.

Random cinematic connections: Ford vs. Ferrari A Man and a Woman, via Quentin Tarantino and Sergio Corbucci

One of the most enjoyable aspects of watching movies is making connections (sometimes random, sometimes obscure) between films. I make these associations either based on a common theme or based on some connection between the cast and crew of different films, and get quite a kick out of it. Here’s a story of an interesting set of connections that emerged across three films I watched in the past two weeks.

The first was Ford v Ferrari, James Mangold’s outstanding action-drama about the American automobile giant’s successful assault on the iconic Italian team’s stranglehold of the Le Mans 24-hour racing crown in the late 60s. I am a big fan of motor racing, but wasn’t very familiar with this historic chapter of racing history and I learned a lot about Le Mans in particular, including the novelty of how the race starts – the drivers have to stand on the other side of the pit lane across from their cars, and when the race officially starts, they have to sprint across, jump into their cars, shut the doors, start the engines and go…quite chaotic and entertaining.

Race drivers run to their cars at the start of the Le Mans 24 hour race, as depicted in Ford v Ferrari (2019); the history making Ford GT40 cars are the first three in the foreground.

A couple of weeks later, I was thinking about the two beautiful sports cars featured in Quentin Tarantino’s highly enjoyable Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that I had watched earlier this summer. One was the VW Karmann-Ghia driven by Brad Pitt’s character. And the other was MG TD driven by Roman Polanski. Reminiscing about the movie led me to think about a key plot point involving Leonardo Di Caprio’s character Rick Dalton spending some months in Italy to act in films for a director named Sergio Corbucci. While Dalton’s character and the film he acted in were fictitious, Corbucci was in fact a real-life Italian director and directed films the famous spaghetti western, Django starring Franco Nero. Although not a household name like fellow Italian Sergio Leone, a couple of Corbucci’s westerns are revered by fans of the genre, including Quentin Tarantino.

A poster of the fictitious spaghetti western that Leonardo di Caprio’s character Rick Dalton acts in, titled Nebraska Jim, directed by real-life Italian director Sergio Corbucci

So, I resolved to watch a Corbucci film and got hold of his other highly regarded effort, the 1968 western The Great Silence. It was pretty clear that the film strongly influenced Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, both westerns taking place in the middle of a severe winter (in adjoining states of Utah and Wyoming respectively), featuring scores by the legendary Ennio Morricone and having scenes involving stagecoaches, lodges and of course, plenty of violence and death. In fact, The Great Silence shocked viewers for its relentlessly downbeat storyline and the fate of leads (this was well before Game of Thrones taught us that no character is sacred!). The main protagonist of the story, a mute gunslinger called Silence, is played by the French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant.

A poster for a real Sergio Corbucci film, The Great Silence (Il Grande Silenzio) released in 1968, starring French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant

After watching the film, I read up about Trintignant. I had only seen him in Costa Gavras’ Z many years ago and more recently in the highly acclaimed Amour for which he won the French Cesar for best actor in 2013. He comes from an affluent family and two of his uncles were race car drivers of repute. He was therefore very familiar with the world of automobiles and race tracks. This was one key factor in him being cast in Claude Lelouche’s 1966 classic romantic drama A Man and A Woman, where the male lead is a race car driver.

Since I was interested in watching some of Trintignant’s earlier films, I resolved to watch A Man and A Woman. I confess, a key factor in picking this film was his co-star in the film, the stunning French actress Anouk Aimee who had taken my breath away with her presence in Fellini’s 8 ½ many years ago. I watched the movie last night and thoroughly enjoyed it…the chemistry between the actors, the simplicity of the blossoming relationship between a widow and a widower, that amazing musical score and the stunning outdoor photography.

Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimee in Claude Lelouche’s 1966 classic A Man and a Woman

One of those outdoor scenes relates to Jean-Louis’ participation in…drumroll…the Le Mans 24 hour race! I was immediately transported to Ford v Ferrari, as I once again witnessed the entertaining start of Le Mans and other scenes from the race. And to seal the connection, a different scene in the film shows Trintignant’s character test driving an early version of the history-making Ford GT40 which is the centerpiece of Ford v Ferrari. His character incidentally also drives a Ford Mustang on the road and there are several beautiful shots of him racing through the French countryside.

So, this was the rather tenuous (but wildly exciting for me!) connection between James Mangold’s 2019 film Ford v Ferrari and Claude Lelouche’s 1966 film A Man and a Woman, created by way of Jean-Louis Trintignant’s presence in a 1968 Sergio Corbucci film The Great Silence which inspired Quentin Tarantino’s 2015 western The Hateful Eight and tangentially referenced in this year’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

I can think of taking these connections in other directions. Perhaps to rewatch the 1971 Steve McQueen classic Le Mans. Definitely need to watch Sergio Corbucci’s Django…maybe I’ll see some other visual cues used by Quentin Tarantino. And most certainly, I want to watch the two sequels that Claude Lelouche released in 1986 (A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later) and earlier this year (The Best Years of a Life), with the same two lead actors. I wonder what parallels I will find between these films and Richard Linklater’s hauntingly beautiful Before trilogy…