Karl's Reading List

Published by Victor Gollancz Ltd: London, 1974 (1963). First published 1949. I first read this story as a kid, and have fond memories of it. It is also very weird, something that Elise pointed out as well. This is the only book I have read (so far) of Robert A Heinlein, and yet I know by reputation that he was a prominent science-fiction writer in his day. This book, first written in 1949, is certainly of its day. We get a Mars with canals, native plant and animal life, and a sentient Martian species with ruined cities on the surface and still-thriving (if less populated) sections underground.  Our main character, Jim Marlowe Jr, is a teenager living in South Colony. He has befriended a local 'bouncer', a basketball-sized Martian creature that can perfectly mimic what it hears, parrot-like, and also has some level of intelligence. 'Willis', as Jim calls the creature, is a hugely important part of the plot, helping Jim and his friend Frank get out of numerous scrapes, as...

  Publ is hed by Hyperion Books, New York: 2009 (2007). This is quite an odd but relatively humorous book, set in a not-too-distant future where an alien race named the Boov have taken over the planet. Humans are being rounded up and send to "reservations" (Florida in the USA, although this is later transferred to Arizona after the Boov decide they like Florida as well), and our protagonist - an 11 year old girl named Gratuity Tucci - sets out from home, driving, to travel to the reservation with her pet cat, Pig. On the way Gratuity (who goes by the nickname 'Tip') picks up a Boov calling himself "J.Lo", and the two begin to bond in true 'road trip movie' fashion: bickering but growing to value one another. The first part of the book is presented as an essay Gratuity is writing for her school about the "true meaning of Smekday", which we gradually learn is the day the Boov arrived on earth, as well as the day that the Boov eventually leave...

Published by HarperVoyager: London, England, 2008 (1953). As the first of the two epigraphs at the beginning of the book tells us, Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which book-paper catches fire. Opening the book with this information not only gives us pertinent information about the plot we're about to read - the story follows the journey of Guy Montag, employed as a "fireman" whose job it is to burn books in a society that has outlawed their existence - but also subtly (to my thinking) comments on the stupidity of such a law; where can someone learn that Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which a book burns if they haven't read it somewhere? First written as a novel in 1953 (and apparently published in early issues of Playboy !), the novel reads like a condemnation of our modern entertainment-driven society written before much of that society even existed! Like Jules Verne predicting submarines and rocket ships, Ray Bradbury predicts a world where peopl...