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"Ok if you've never read sci-fi why not try this one," I said giving her Wool by Hugh Howey. "Why do they always do the cleaning?" she asked half an hour later. "You'll have to find out for yourself," I said. She read Wool over the next few days. Like me she thought that maybe the last 100 pages could have been tightened but she really liked it. It was her first science fiction novel and now she had a taste for the genre. A taste that I knew had to be treated like a rare orchid. "What's next?" she asked. I thought about The Wind Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi which I had loved but knew that that would kill the orchid stone dead. So next I gave her The Martian by Andy Weir. Despite not being a math or engineering geek like me she loved that one too. "One more," she said so now I've kicked it up a notch and she's reading China Mieville's The City And The City. If she likes that I may have her try Perdido Street Station or her first Philip K Dick but that might be a step too far...It's early days yet but through careful curating I may have brought another convert over to the dark side. Maybe she'll even go see Star Wars VII with me now...
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My review of The City And The City, here.
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My review of The City And The City, here.