Aug

17

Posted by : atcampbell | On : August 17, 2008

The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez

This special meeting was held at ArmadilloCon. Our topic was The Automatic Detective, a robot mystery novel written by A. Lee Martinez, one of the authors attending the con. We had a dozen attendees, including the ArmadilloCon Fan Guest of Honor and one visitor from Dallas. Six of us had read Martinez before. Ten started the book, and eight finished.

We enjoyed the narrator, Mike Megaton, who was built to be a warrior robot but developed the “free will glitch” and turned on his creator. Some commented that his narration and adventures (particularly getting beat up often) are reminiscent of

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Aug

04

Posted by : atcampbell | On : August 4, 2008

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Nine people attended a discussion of Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War. Everybody in the group had read a book, most of them decades ago, and most of those people had not reread it recently. A few of them did not remember much about the book except that it was underwhelming. “For me there wasn’t much “there” there, even though I had friends who died in the war,” said a reader. Another reader, who generally doesn’t enjoy war novels (with exception of Ender’s Game) didn’t like this book because he happened to pick it up when he wanted to read something with the sense of wonder, but this was too depressing. He also saw no reason why the guy who survives the war should be the only one to do so, when he is nothing special.

Most people agreed that it was rather depressing. Some thought the only thing

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