DUNE Series

The DUNE series written by Frank Herbert and the continued by his son Brian Herbert and science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson were another big and interesting read.

As you probably figured it out by your self I read the books chronologically, because I prefer to do so.

Hunting Harkonnens
The Butlerian Jihad
Whipping Mek
The Machine Crusade
The Faces of a Martyr
The Battle of Corrin
Sisterhood of Dune
House Atreides
House Harkonnen
House Corrino
Paul of Dune
Wedding Silk
The Winds of Dune
A Whisper of Caladan Seas
Dune
The Winds of Dune
The Road to Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Sea Child
Chapterhouse
Hunters of Dune
Treasure in the Sand
Sandworms of Dune

They don't call it the greatest SF novel of all time for nothing. I have to admit this was the biggest journey into imagination that I ever took. The world Frank Herbert created is amazing, the ideas, mind blowing.

It all begins on Earth, when people begun to be too lazy to do chores for them selves, so they had robots and computers to do this. Sounds familiar?

Anyway, a group of humans were disgusted of what humanity became and decided to become superior human beings and rule the world. So they moved their brains into machines to have the best of the two worlds. And so appeared the Titans, in front with their leader Agamemnon.
They have used the computer Omnius and his sidekick, the robot Erasmus to enslave humanity, but they ended up enslaved together with humanity.

In the initial battle during the Butlerian Jihad, humanity barely survived, Earth was destroyed and computers or any kind of thinking machines were forever banned.

Some factions evolved from this. The Bene Gesserit, the Mentats, the Suk Doctors, the Spacing Guild and the Navigators.

The Bene Gesserit were very powerful women. They had overwhelming mental capabilities, they could cure themselves from diseases, transmit memories from one to another and fight very good. They take as their responsibility the continuity of the human race and begin a complex breeding program to achieve the perfect human, the Kwisatz Haderach.

The Mentats were people trained to think like a computer. They were able to remember impressive amounts of data and make projections depending on the available information.They were in hight demand after the computers were banned, and all noble families had a Mentat as adviser.

The Suk Doctors were very competent professionals, highly regarded for their skills in medicine.

The Spacing Guild was a group that handled interplanetary transport. They were using the Navigators to fold space and travel long distances very fast.

The Navigators were initially humans, exposed to large quantities of melange (spice) that enriched their mental capabilities making them able to direct ships safely through space. At the same time, their body was transformed and minimized. They spent their life in melange filled tanks and their addiction was so strong that they died if there was no more spice.

Then we have the great families that fight for supremacy. The most important were the Atreides (the good guys) and the Harkonnens (the bad guys mostly).

And some extra characters like the Ixians that lived on planet X and were responsible for all the technological breakthroughs. And the Tleilaxu, small revolting creatures that were handling biological research and cloning.

It is interesting how all these factions interact until the day the common enemy reappears.

Also the entire story around the desert planet Dune (also called Arrakis) where the creatures that produced spice lived. And how they evolved from sand-trout, an organism that was able to terraform planets to make them livable for the worms. The powerful drug called spice that enhanced the mind and the body but produced a fatal addiction, with the secondary effect that it gave a strong blue color to the eyes.

And many, many other interesting characters and stories.

Also it is interesting to see how closely Frank Herbert studied the Muslim culture and the Arabic world. Many terms come from this culture and the way he describes the people of the desert is so respectful and attentive.

Again the motif of religious war and what people would do for religion is sadly and painfully similar to what is happening now in the world...

I haven't finished the last novel "Sandworms of Dune" but I look forward to what will happen next.

What can I say, the DUNE Saga it's definitively a must read.

Ender's Game series

Ender's Game is a serie written by Orson Scott Card that has won may SF literature awards and in my opinion no movie was yet made to be better than the book.

I have read the following novels in chronological order,  and loved every bit of it:
Earth Unaware
Earth Afire
Earth Awakens
Ender's Game
Ender's Shadow
A War of Gifts
Shadow of the Hegemon
Shadow Puppets
Shadow of the Giant
Ender in Exile
Shadows in Flight
First Meetings
Speaker for the Dead
Xenocide
Children of the Mind

4 more books are forthcoming.

The universe that Orson Scott Card created is so wonderful and complex it makes you dizzy. The most popular book is of course Ender's Game, but this is the simplest and easiest of them all. It tells how Ender grew up, about his family, about his training and how he was able to defeat the formics, by understanding them.

But if you read only this, it's like never leaving the house, never going into an adventure, a holiday or even the neighbor city. My personal favorites were Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide. They talk about how humans colonized a planet where some strange beings were living. They called them "piggies" and tried to communicate with them.

I had a lot of food for thought in these books. The piggies were interesting life forms. They had several development levels. The females were very small and gave birth to some kind of larvae, then died. The ones who were not fertile were called "mothers" and took care of the larvae. The males developed to maturity and they were the "workers". The most brave and respected were granted the honor to be killed and berried into the ground. From here they grew into a tree that could communicate with the others, a symbol of wisdom. This final state of evolution was called "thinkers" and it was only for the most worthy. The female larvae were put on the tree branches and this is how they were fecundated, and the circle of life continued.

What I thought it was interesting is how amazed they were that humans were born as "workers" in their understanding, and died and all was over.

It made me stop and think. We also have workers and thinkers. We have the opportunity to be both workers and thinkers in our life. So we should stop and think from time to time:
- Who are we?
- Do we like what we are?
- Can we change something for the better?

Also interesting were the political conspiracies done by world powers that used Ender's colleagues as weapons, the religious wars and the details and specifics that Orson Scott Card created for each country. It was interesting to read this book now and make a parallel with what is happening in the world. It is scarily close...

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones - aka A Song of Ice and Fire is a series written by George R R Martin, and probably one of the most popular at the moment.

I have read the first 5 novels:
A Game of Thrones
A Clash of Kings
A Storm of Swords
A Feast for Crows
A Dance with Dragons

Two more are forthcoming.

I have read all the books, after the First season played on HBO. Then looking at the movie the rest of the seasons was a torment. The episodes were happening so fast. Each episode was like 200 or 300 hundred pages in the book...

Anyway, an interesting thing happened. You know when you read a book (without seeing the movie first) your imagination builds the characters. They all become distinct individuals, and most of the time they are very different from the actors. What happened now is that I got corrupted.. Because of the movie, some of the characters could not be changed. For example Cersei Lanister, or Aria and Sansa Stark, John Snow, The Hound, The Mountain, Tyrion Lanister, and Daenerys were built the same way in my imagination, to the very small details. While Bran for example looks completely different. Maybe the fact that they changed the character, and I did not get very accustomed to him. Who knows?

So the plot is actually pretty simple, I am amazed why it is so popular actually. George R R Martin must have eaten something when he was little to get so lucky as to get produced by HBO.
You have some families that own some lands and they are fighting for territory. Then the weird shit comes in. Dragons exist and giants and of course the white walkers, aka frozen zombies. Nobody froze zombies before, from what I know. So let's say there is some innovation involved. But really it's like a fairy tale for grownups.

Things that were interesting in this book? I liked Aria's training for the many faced god, and I liked some of the dialogs Tyrion had with other characters.

To be continued...

Project "Series"

Ok guys, I know I haven't written anything for a long time. I apologize, but that doesn't mean I stopped reading.

I have actually upgraded to reading on a Kindle Paperwhite. It is incredible. Saves trees, much easier to read than a book, can read with lights off, and it constantly tells you about your progress (eg: you have 4 min left in the chapter, or 11 hours to finish the book, and you are at 20%).

So here is what I've been up to:
I got a little bored of the "Nobel Prize Books" project I started. I will continue it at some point, but right now I had a little fantasy and SF break.

Since last time I have written a post about books, I have read:
1. Game of Thrones (the first 5 volumes) waiting for the rest
2. Ender's Game (the existing 15 volumes) waiting for the rest
3. DUNE (the existing 25 or 26 volumes, I lost the count) and yes there is more, not published yet.

I will tell you a little bit about them, in the next posts. Currently I am at the last volume of DUNE "Sandworms of Dune", 30% through... I'll keep you posted :)

After this, project "Series" will also go on Hold, and I will see what I feel like reading next.