Gate of Ivrel by C.J. Cherryh. #bookstodon #books #reading #sundayread #scifi #fantasy #cjcherryh
Gate of Ivrel by C.J. Cherryh. #bookstodon #books #reading #sundayread #scifi #fantasy #cjcherryh
One thing I like in #CJCherryh's "Serpent's Reach" was the idea that each majat (space ant) was an individual, but each time two majat meet they "take taste", i.e. exchange saliva, which updates their memories to be identical.
#vendredilecture avec Les Champs de la Lune, de Catherine Dufour qui s'annonce vraiment bien.
Pour la suite, #crackage sur une ancienne série de SF / Fantasy de C.J. Cherryh: Le Cycle de Morgane, trouvée sur ABE Books. Ma PaL est maintenant à 1m42...
via #wikipedia
"Ce cycle explore un thème inédit de la Science-fiction sous une approche Heroïc-Fantasy : Comment empêcher que l'Humanité ne disparaisse dans un paradoxe temporel, comme l'ont fait les deux espèces ayant découvert le voyage spatio-temporel avant elle ?
Un groupe s'est consacré à la fermeture des « Portes » émaillant les restes de l'empire stellaire Qjal. Universellement détestés, les Qjals sont une espèce presque éteinte. Les mondes qu'ils ont colonisés ou fait pousser se sont effondrés avec eux, retournant à une organisation médiévale. Mais les très rares Qjals restants y ont survécu en volant les corps d'un seigneur local après l'autre.
Quand commence le premier tome, l'un d'eux vient d'anéantir quatre des cinq derniers fermeurs de Porte et toute la chevalerie du continent. Seule survivante d'une armée énorme, Morgane est maintenant traitée en sorcière et en traîtresse par les clans guerriers qui ont survécu. Aux abois, elle n'échappe à ses poursuivants qu'en faisant un bond dans le temps à travers une Porte.
Vanye est le fils bâtard d'un seigneur de ces clans. Banni pour avoir tué son demi-frère en légitime défense, il est devenu un Illin (une sorte de Ronin) obligé d'offrir pour un an la vassalité la plus abjecte à tout seigneur qui le réquisitionne. Sa route croise Morgane au moment où elle réapparaît. Les sagas des bardes ne laissent aucun doute sur qui elle est et ce qu'elle a fait 100 ans plus tôt… ainsi que sur ses droits seigneuriaux.
Elle doit continuer sa mission à n'importe quel prix. Pour ce faire, elle a besoin de quelqu'un comprenant le monde moyenâgeux et assez fiable pour veiller sur son repos. Deux sens du devoir se télescopent."
Miam, ça fait envie!
#CJCherryh #ScienceFiction #Fantasy
Let me introduce you to Pyanfar Chanur, hard-boiled middle-aged merchant captain in CJ Cherryh’s wonderful Chanur series in her Alliance-Union Universe. When human contact threatens to destabilize the multi species trade Compact her felinoid Haan belong to, she finds herself taking on leadership no one had expected.
Start with ‘Pride of Chanur’.
Cherryh is a Grand Master of Science Fiction, a 3 time Hugo award winner. Many of her books are from the perspective of characters adjacent to major events.
@MichaelWhelan did the wonderful cover.
@futurebird if you've never read this book. I hope you'll please consider reading it. And if you ever do, please tell me what you think. It's one closest to my heart. #ants #aliens #alienants #giantants #cjcherryh
Cached US Kindle giveaway on bsky: 10 copies of C.J. Cherryh's THE PRIDE OF CHANUR, over at https://bsky.app/profile/kithrup.bsky.social/post/3li3gqb4nmc2i
If you haven’t read anything by Grand Master CJ Cherryh, would highly recommend checking her out.
She’s prolific and has written in a wide range of subgenres. Rereading her books is my usual starting point when I’m unwell.
Her two best novel Hugo winners are massive books - Downbelow Station and Cyteen. But she also wrote many of the short novels that were the norm in the late 1970s and early 80s.
Hard Military SF, political crises, diplomatic complexities horror, fantasy, found family and multigenerational saga are all represented across the scope of her writing.
Both Arkady Martin and Ann Leckie acknowledge her influence on their work. The author of The Expanse should.
Many critics have argued that multiple Hugo winner CJ Cherryh writes the most alien and credible aliens in science fiction.
So, super surprised not to see her represented.
She also has books on artificial human populations as well as intentional and unintentional adaptations of humans to cohabit with aliens.
There are newer authors that may match that but if you haven’t read Cherryh, strongly recommend checking her out.
[Also as an aside because The Expanse has come up in this thread, the world building in that series owes a great deal to Cherryh’s Alliance-Union Universe, especially the Company Wars period - right down to the Belters and their tattoos, but also the broader conflict between colonies, corporations, scientific research stations and merchant ships.]
Several of her books would be suitable for your course.
1] Chanur series, starting with ‘Pride of Chanur’ addresses the upheaval when a trade compact of diverse species -- feline, primate, reptile and even methane-breathers — comes into contact with humanity.
2] ‘40,000 in Gehenna’ a multigenerational of a failed colony on a planet with a very different kind of animal intelligence/sentience.
3] Downbelow Station [1982 Hugo] is a large canvas novel at the end of a war, centered on action on a planet Downbelow in the Tau Ceti system, its station. The indigenous population is one of the affected parties.
4] Serpents Reach - involves sentient antlike hive species under threat and the humans adapted to live with them.
5] Cukoo’s Egg in which an apparently human child, with no knowledge of his origins, is raised by aliens.
6] her Foreigner series is more diplomatic/political in focus, but the setting is an isolated colony of lost humans that settled on the planet of another sentient species with very different biological imperatives.
@maxthefox CJ Cherryh’s ‘Forge of Heaven’ (2004) might fit what you’re looking for.
It’s a sequel, hundreds of years later, to a very different book ‘Hammerfall’. It stands on its own however.
Transhumanism is in there, alongside biological catastrophe, and intermixing of genetics originating in very different planetary environments.
@corujosilva @HippieScubaSteve
I posed this question to another fandom contact here recently: have you read CJ Cherryh’s Alliance-Union universe books and, if you have and have also read The Expanse books, what do you think?
I love the television adaptation of The Expanse and consider to be some of the best scifi television ever.
But my partner and I DNFd the first books - I didn’t finish Leviathan Wakes and my partner checked out on the second book. We found them too derivative, and I took exception to what seemed to be direct lifts of social conflict in human space expansion, especially with Belters, from CJ Cherryh’s excellent books Heavy Time and Hellburner (sold as an omnibus under the title ‘Devil to the Belt’.)
While I generally don’t mind scifi tropes being revisited by different authors, and am always interested in new voices and perspectives, it grated that two male authors were getting and continue to receive a lot of hype credit for something that a woman mapped out in popular and critically acclaimed novels twenty years earlier. (The protomolecule seems a lift from Star Trek’s protomatter, especially as developed in the Vanguard novels, but that seemed less objectionable.)
As context, Cherryh is a woman science fiction writer, with multiple Hugos. (Her publisher asked her to use her initials and add a H to the end of her family name so as not to appear feminine.) She’s also in a long term committed relationship with Jane Fancher who has become her coauthor in recent years. Despite the critical acclaim she was subjected to controversy and backlash by male writers when she won her first Hugo for ‘Downbelow Station’ in 1982. It’s not clear why her books haven’t been adapted for streaming television but they would be natural candidates.
Now, with others reminding me that sci-fi often retells the same stories, I am wondering if it’s worth my time to give The Expanse books a second chance. I suppose am looking for someone who’s read both Cherryh’s series and The Expanse to share their perspective on why it’s worth another attempt.
Do other people go back and reread the endings of books they've just finished reading? Like, after the mad gallop to the grand finale, I need to go back and savor the machinations, and most importantly, the character interaction I was reading too breathlessly to absorb.
So yeah, finished reading CJ Cherryh's Regenesis today. Won't reread a lot of it, but maybe 50 pages or so of the end.
I'd really love to see these characters a few years down their road, but if they are competent there won't be a breakneck catastrophe to to avert, and then you don't have much of a story. Sigh.
Looking forward to hearing your take on it!
Finally making time to read this while on holiday.
CJ Cherryh remains one of my favourite, always-buy science fiction authors. Best wishes for health and long life to her!
Can only enthusiastically recommend for others to give her work a try if they have not yet done so. She deserves all the hype that arguably lesser cishet male authors of her generation continue to garner.
As the Hugo-winner for 1982, ‘Downbelow Station’ was the book that introduced me to her work and remains one of the best entry points. It was on the 1987 Locus list of top 50 all time science fiction.
Can’t imagine dropping a few hundred on a book to keep never-read in a collector’s dust jacket though.
I do though wish that the 1980s and 90s fashion for leather-bound releases of major SFF books was still a regular thing. (I certainly was too much of a poor student to indulge then.) I’d even just welcome hard cover reprint editions of her earlier books printed on acid-free paper to replace my crumbling paperbacks.
Folio Society has branched out to luxury editions of Dune and classic Marvel and DC Comic omnibuses. But no Cherryh, it’s a shame.
20 books that have had an impact on who you are. One book a day for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just book covers (don't forget the alt text).
9/20
Chap 2 is where the action starts, and it's already intense. There's a lot of info about the world and characters conveyed in the action, from how good at organisation stationers are to the character of Signy. It's good stuff. There's also some hints in there about "native workers" that does not bode well for how the Pell's planet is being treated!
2/2
So I've started Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh, and I'm jotting down thoughts here as I go.
It's been a while since I've read 20th century sci-fi and the writing style is taking a little getting used to. It starts with a lot of exposition, which I could maybe have picked up from context, but the worldbuilding is great.
1/2
@lunastation Over the last decade, reading new books has become almost impossible. I reread my favourite authors who support me dealing with life's hurdles, in different ways.
#SarahMonette #KatherineAddison #CJCherryh
@not_gagarin
‘Pride of Chanur’ is the first in that series of 4 books.
But #CJCherryh is a top #sciencefiction author, & is considered one that can write the most credibly alien aliens. If you’re not familiar with her work, strongly recommend.