Transcendental  by James Gunn

If you took The Canterbury Tales, Ship of Fools, The Origin of Species, and And Then There Were None, mixed them all up and added a pinch of Asimov, Brin, Blish and maybe a few others, you’d have something approximating James Gunn’s newest novel, Transcendental. While those are some quality ingredients, and there were some long moments of pure deliciousness, in the end the blend felt a bit off in its proportions (I wanted more Chaucer) and the novel left me feeling a bit unsatisfied.

Lest one think I’m reading too much into the literary associations, I’ll merely point out that Gunn gives us a spaceship named Geoffrey, an AI that recites “Thanne longen folk to go... Read More

Transgalactic by James Gunn

Last year I gave a qualified thumbs-up to James Gunn’s Transcendental, which as I noted in the review, read like a mix of old guard sci-fi, The Canterbury Tales, Ship of Fools, and And Then There Were None. I absolutely loved (seriously, loved) the Chaucerian aspect, which were a series of stories embedded in the larger narrative that explained how various individuals — human and alien — ended up aboard the spaceship on a pilgrimage in search of the rumored Transcendental Machine (TM). The rest of the novel, however, I found far less successful. Now Gunn is back with the sequel, Transgalactic, and unfortunately, those... Read More