#dailybookrecs

Quasit's Daily Book Recommendations: "Oath of Fealty" (1981) by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle Age Range: 17 to adult Genre: Science Fiction Here's a book that's a bit different: it's about an arcology. Are you familiar with arcologies? If not, I'm guessing you're not an architect. An archology is essentially a whole city contained in a single huge building. It includes residential apartments, shops, parks, swimming pools...anything a person could want. In theory you could live your whole life in one and never need to leave. A lot of architects have taken interest in the concept over the years, and there are a few partially-built or complete archologies in existence. "Oath of Fealty" takes place in the near-to-mid future. After a massive fire in Los Angeles, a major corporation arranged to build an archology on the land: Todos Santos. It's a huge building, four square miles with a population of nearly 250,000 residents. But Todos Santos has enemies. Politicians, environmental terrorists, and hostile citizens of Los Angeles. The management are experts, and some of them have a special advantage: neural links to the archology computer. It's not AI, but it's like having the internet constantly on tap just by thinking about it. [The tables were long and narrow, with a pair of moving beltways down the center. Dirty dishes came from their right, and a continuous stream of food and beverages and clean utensils poured from some cornucopia to the left. "Take a place," Art Bonner said. "You can choose your own company, or wait for someone to choose you." "No reservations?" Reedy asked. "No. It's a random proposition." Bonner led them to an empty stretch at a long table. "Scheduling's going to catch hell for this if it doesn't fill up." He paused for a moment to stare at nothing. That's the value of that implant, Rand thought. He's just made a note, with all the details, and tomorrow MILLIE will remind him to think about schedules.] It's a thick book and a long story, but it's not a tedious read. It feels like a cross between science fiction and a thick mainstream epic or disaster novel. Which isn't surprising, because Niven and Pournelle wrote a few such books. I'll note that the villains are a bit dated; crazed environmental activists who hate progress and technology, but are proven utterly wrong. Niven and Pournelle are a pair of old right-wingers, and it shows. But they're not TOO obnoxious about it. As with yesterday's novel, the politics don't get in the way of the story. If the concept of archologies interests you, Mack Reynolds also wrote some novels about them. I'll be recommending some of those novels in the future. The book's still in print, and it's available in ebook format from the usual suspects as well (please don't use Amazon). You'd have a good chance of finding used copies in used book shops. And it's available to borrow freely from the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/oathoffealty0000larr You can find a complete spreadsheet of all the books I've recommended here to date (along with links to each post) here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSzubtaPojvprNwZCeR6N4xzCpZzMeb4xrrEHPtk6Bvx3RGj1Bxdg2KWY0CcjHjxUfMTGTF1eYpyoFn/pubhtml Happy reading! 🤓📖 #Books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction #BookRecs #BookRecommendations #DailyBookRecs #QuasitBookRecs

Quasit's Daily Book Recommendations: "The Stainless Steel Rat" (1979) by Harry Harrison Age Range: 14 to adult Genre: Science Fiction, Humor "The Stainless Steel Rat" is the first book in one of the best series of humorous science fiction. It starts with a bang–literally. [When the office door opened suddenly I knew the game was up. It had been a money-maker—but it was all over. As the cop walked in I sat back in the chair and put on a happy grin. He had the same somber expression and heavy foot that they all have—and the same lack of humor. I almost knew to the word what he was going to say before he uttered a syllable. “James Bolivar diGriz I arrest you on the charge—” I was waiting for the word •charge•, I thought it made a nice touch that way. As he said it I pressed the button that set off the charge of black powder in the ceiling, the crossbeam buckled and the three-ton safe dropped through right on the top of the cop’s head. He squashed very nicely, thank you. The cloud of plaster dust settled and all I could see of him was one hand, slightly crumpled. It twitched a bit and the index finger pointed at me accusingly. His voice was a little muffled by the safe and sounded a bit annoyed. In fact he repeated himself a bit. “ … On the charge of illegal entry, theft, forgery—” He ran on like that for quite a while, it was an impressive list but I had heard it all before. I didn’t let it interfere with my stuffing all the money from the desk drawers into my suitcase. The list ended with a new charge and I would swear on a stack of thousand credit notes •that• high that there was a hurt tone in his voice. “In addition the charge of assaulting a police robot will be added to your record. This was foolish since my brain and larynx are armored and in my midsection—” “That I know well, George, but your little two-way radio is in the top of your pointed head and I don’t want you reporting to your friends just yet.”] James Bolivar diGriz is the Stainless Steel Rat, a criminal in a world–or rather, worlds–of high technology, advanced science, and space travel. [It is a proud and lonely thing to be a stainless steel rat—and it is the greatest experience in the galaxy if you can get away with it.] Jim robs banks, runs scams, and is generally open to any kind of crime you can think of–except murder. That's one thing he won't do. But he does everything else with verve, gusto, and humor. But nothing lasts forever, so it isn't long before–wait. That's a spoiler, so I'll put it a content-warned comment below. The series is pretty big. Most of the books start with "The Stainless Steel Rat", such as "The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge", "The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted", or "The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell". You can look up the whole series on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat There's another classic series of humorous science fiction that in some ways is similar to the SSR series, but •that• one could be seen as a bit sexist (and possibly even racist towards aliens). I'll recommend it later nonetheless (it's very funny), but I decided to go with the SSR series first. Jim's a little old-fashioned, but women are treated with more respect than in the other series. As far as I can tell ALL of the Stainless Steel Rat books are still in print, and all of them are available as ebooks as well. You can also borrow "The Stainless Steel Rat" (and, no doubt, many of the sequels) for free from the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/stainlesssteelra0000unse There's a complete spreadsheet of all the books I've recommended here to date (along with links to each post) available online. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSzubtaPojvprNwZCeR6N4xzCpZzMeb4xrrEHPtk6Bvx3RGj1Bxdg2KWY0CcjHjxUfMTGTF1eYpyoFn/pubhtml Happy reading! 🤓📖 #Books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction #Humor #BookRecs #BookRecommendations #DailyBookRecs #QuasitBookRecs