FACT SF Reading Group

January 1999

January 5: Murder in the Solid State by Wil McCarthy

Eleven people attended this meeting. This meeting's book, Murder in the Solid State, is a near-future thriller about a young physicist who has been implicated in the murder of a prominent scientist. Suspecting that the local police intend to do him harm, he evades incarceration as he looks to prove himself innocent and find the real killer.

We felt that McCarthy's prose style was engaging, and the plot kept us all turning the pages. Some of the characters were memorable and original, particular the protagonist's best friend. We felt that this was overall a good story and would recommend it as a decent reading experience, but no one considered the book anything special.

Our main problem with this book is that it was not what we expected to read. While the cover material markets this book as "hard SF", we didn't feel that the scientific component of the plot was large enough to justify this label. We felt that the book was more appropriately considered a thriller in the tradition of Michael Crichton's work. While it was a successful thriller, those of us hoping for a novel full of bold scientific extrapolation and big ideas were disappointed.

At the end of the discussion, we picked new books for the reading schedule: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, The Border by Marina Fitch, A King of Infinite Space by Allen Steele, Jack Faust by Michael Swanwick, Mars Underground by William K. Hartmann, Greenwar by Steven Gould & Laura Mixon, and Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman.

January 19: Bone Wars by Brett Davis

Seven people attended the discussion of Bone Wars. This is an alternate history SF novel about paleontologists who get mixed up with aliens in Montana near the end of the 1800s.

Only three of us had finished the book. We all felt that the book had started slowly, although those who persevered said that it got better later on. From the cover material and the author's previous work, we had expected this book to contain a lot of humor, but that expectation went unfulfilled. The book is told straightforwardly and has a fairly simple plot, leading some of us to wonder if the book was intended for younger readers. The book seemed longer than it needed to be, with many of us commenting that it felt "padded".

This book had some good elements. Many felt that the academic rivalry between the scientists was enjoyable and realistically depicted. We liked some of the characters, particular a Native American leader who was a supporting character. One of the characters in the book is an aspiring writer of "penny adventure" novels, and in many ways this book reads like an example of that literary tradition.

One problem was that this book's subject matter invited comparison to much better books: Petrogypsies by Rory Harper, Them Bones by Howard Waldrop, and many of the works of H. Rider Haggard. We felt that if Davis wanted to explore material covered well by these good books, he needed to work harder if he didn't want to suffer in comparison.

-- A. T. Campbell, III