The Hemingway Hoax
Puppy: retired Word of the day: minion
My, I’m behind. I want to mention The Hemingway Hoax, and newly outstanding are The Uplift War and a re-read of The Martian Chronicles. I tried to read Cherryh’s Cyteen, but I found it implausible that so much could be alleged to have changed about man, while the politics were still like something out of Disraeli. It was so thick I couldn’t face infinitely many more chapters like the first few I’d read. Downbelow Station, on the other hand, held my interest the entire time, although the level she was writing at was not one I’d like to see another author try. I suppose it was a distance from the many characters like Kim Stanley Robinson held, although the characters themselves were more likeable. The plot was good, if, again, more politics than science. Cherryh is a nice author to visit but I wouldn’t want to read all her fic.
The Hemingway Hoax by Joe Haldeman, started out very, very well. The sci-fi bits were few and far between, but the character and plot were so good I kept right on reading. However, the book didn’t go in the direction that I expected (which was saving the Earth). Instead, the main character lost everything in a series of universe-hops, and eventually turned into someone else in the convoluted and unsatisfying ending. I’m not even sure whether or not he died. I’m not going to run out and read more Joe Haldeman (though I do have to hunt down The Forever War someday) - there can only be one Kurt Vonnegut, fooling the masses into thinking he’s not writing scifi, and fooling the scifi readers into thinking he is. Joe Haldeman is no Kurt Vonnegut.