Space Opera

Once again, Alastair Reynolds cranks out a weighty tome in Redemption Ark (Part of the Revelation Space universe) that proves, at least to me, hard SciFi can be surprisingly entertaining. Part of the problem with sticking directly to physics, as Alastair with his Ph.D. in Astronomy is likely to do, is that space travel is necessarily limited to current breakthroughs in physics, even when targeted hundreds or thousands of years in the future.

I just finished The Short Victorious War by David Weber and I’m starting to notice a pattern here: Honor Harrington thrust into difficult situation complicated by politics. Honor thwarts an invasion while overcoming said politics. Profit. Now, I understand these have to be somewhat formulaic, and this book was in fact, enjoyable, so I can’t complain excessively here. The real weakness of this book is that it’s so short, and Honor plays such a minimal part in the action.