Musing Mondays - April 6, 2015

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme sponsored by A Daily Rhythm that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

• I’m currently reading…
• Up next I think I’ll read…
• I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
• I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
• I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
• I can’t wait to get a copy of…
• I wish I could read ___, but…
• I blogged about ____ this past week…

THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: What was your favorite book as a child?

I loved the first science fiction book I read.  I was around 10 when I saw this book with a rocket on the spine.  Rockets sounded like fun so I checked it out.  The book?  Trouble on Titian by Alan E. Nourse.  I checked to out numerous times and started looking for other science Fiction Books.  That is something I still do.  SciFi books are my very favorite and first choice always.  It is still in print and available at Amazon.

Fuzzy Nation, by John Scalzi

Science Fiction

Billed as a reboot of Little Fuzzy, Fuzzy Nation is indeed a reboot. Gone are mentions of contragravity and collapsium. Also gone is the Yeoman Farmer pipe-dream that was always a hallmark of H. Beam Piper’s work. There is a hint of it at the beginning, but it evaporates by the end. While I did miss contragrav and ExTeeThree, the story rings true and Scalzi kept my attention.

The story begins much the same as the original, with the addition of a running gag that’s present throughout. And it works. The list of characters is a bit different, but still full of rivalry and tension. Whereas Holloway of the original was a gunslinger, Scalzi’s Holloway is a schemer. It’s a sad state of affairs but it’s not an indictment of the work; merely an observation Scalzi wove into the story line. Perhaps it’s also a wry comment on the current state of our schizophrenic Nash Equilibrium obsessed world.

I’m a bit of a retro-grouch and protective of my childhood scifi. Even so, I can still recommend Fuzzy Nation.

Review written by Christopher Jones