once a spy

Keith Thomson is pretty new to the novel gig. Having written this book as his first novel, it looks like he's gone on since Once a Spy was published in 2010, to write two more, one of which is a follow-up to this one. He's also written at least one non-fiction book about pirates, which, according to Thomson's website, was published today, and is based--at least in part--on his own treasure hunting exploits. Thomson has also written scripts, does some painting, is interested in aircraft, was an editorial cartoonist for a paper out of New York, and played semi-pro baseball in France. So... busy guy.

I've read a fair amount of spy, and spy-type books, and this one comes at the genre from a whole different direction, which is refreshing. There were some things about this story that reminded me of the Chuck TV show. * And I'm a little surprised to hear that there is a sequel to this book, but I can imagine how that might be something the publisher might have been interested in, and the author did have a little wiggle room to continue the story.

Like a lot of good spy stories, there are a number of plot lines cranking along from the beginning, and it isn't always clear where and how the come together. Thomson did a good job of weaving those plot lines to leave us guessing. I'm going to keep my eye out for the follow-up.

 

* Chuck ran for 5 seasons on NBC beginning in 2007. Chuck was good, by the way, so check it out if you have the chance.

the martian

The Martian is Andy Weir's first book. Obviously this book made a big splash, especially when you consider that Weir self-published this book originally! Gives hope to all the struggling novelists out there, right? yeah, me too I saw the movie a few years ago, and it was good and I figured I'd read this at some point, and as it often happens, I run into a book like this at a book sale. This copy came from a library book sale, and looks like a British copy, which may have been purchased for a flight home perhaps?

I read another book by Weir a couple of years ago, which I recommended. I said then that I'd seen some murmurs on line about potentially making a movie based on that book. Haven't seen it yet, but who knows. The Martian as a book, is much more involved than the movie, as is typically the case. So seeing the movie a few years ago didn't prevent me from enjoying this book at all. Writing a novel with a single protagonist, who has no one to speak to, seems like a daunting challenge, but Weir does a good job of delivering this story in way that kept me engaged from beginning to end. I enjoyed this more than I expected to.

What I think holds this story together is the science, and the problem solving Weir's character Mark Watney has to continually do in order to stay alive. As I said to my wife, understanding modern science and technology, the ability to project forward where the technology might go, and then using fiction to test those technologies is a tactic that many great SF authors have used. Asimov and Stephenson are two authors that come to mind that do this.

Read this book.