hail mary

Andy Weir, of The Martian fame, has revisited those roots for Project Hail Mary. The protagonist, Ryland Grace, has many of the same traits as the astronaut, Mark Watney in The Martian: he's a scientist at heart, and because of his love of science, he believes in the scientific method and its ability to solve problems. And man, are there problems. Weir's infectious love of science is clearly the seed planted in both of these characters, and his ability to use it to drive a story is what makes his stories stand out. 

What I read years ago, is that hard science fiction, relied on the futuristic technologies to support the story line, whereas soft sci-fi are more character driven stories, and the future and its technologies are more of a setting, which may help to enable the character stories in ways that may not be possible with our current understanding of science and technology. Weir is, by contrast, writing science fiction built on known science and technologies. Not as much in this book, as The Martian, however. Things get pretty wild in this one, but Weir's Ryland Grace uses the scientific method to understand and adapt these newer technologies and materials to solve problems.

What these two stories have in common then, are that they are both like complicated puzzle rooms, that if not solved will kill you. In The Martian, the astronaut had to continuously solve problems, using science and logic, to prevent his instant death. If only to increase the chances that he might ultimately survive. Project Hail Mary steps it up a notch. Not only does Ryland Grace have to work to stay alive, he simultaneously needs to solve a larger puzzle, which has all of humanity on the line. So this one steps further into that hard sci-fi sub-genre.

Weir uses an interesting plot structure that relies on flashbacks which Ryland Grace can't make sense of at first, as he recovers from memory loss. Memory loss which also hampers his ability to problem solve in some ways, at a time when its obviously critically needed.

According to the interwebs buzz, this book has been optioned for a movie, and we may actually see that in the next year or two. Based on my reading, its seems like a good candidate for a movie. This is Weir's third novel (that I'm aware of.) His second, Artemis was good too. You can read my review of that book here.

Read this book. Especially if you liked his other novels.

This review is for a book I read a while ago, and I'm trying to catch-up on the pile of books I read in 2024 that I didn't write about. You can see that hole in my blog entries listed on The Books tab at the top of the page.

utopia avenue

I'm a fan of David Mitchell and his surrealistic, fantastical worlds--which in some ways, all seem to be related to one another--that flow beneath our own world, occasionally rising to the surface, to turn and twist into our reality. Cloud Atlas is what turned me, and probably many others, on to Mitchell's writing. Cloud Atlas is a series of stories strung out on a very long timeline, but nevertheless are woven together. In Cloud Atlas, we see inklings of how not just these stories, but perhaps all stories are connected, often by much less than seven degrees of separation.*

Utopia Avenue takes its title from a fictional 1960s psychedelic rock band from England, that makes a small splash in the rock world of the time, releasing just two albums, and rubbing elbows with a whole cast of rock legends, who are written in as supporting characters, that interact with, and in some cases support and advise, members of the band and their manager, during their short tour of the United States. 

Mitchell has gone out of his way to create a rock band and a manager that defies the typical rock genre novel; all of the band members seem to get a long, and their manager isn't trying to screw them. Its amazing to a read a story about a rock band without these tropes, if only that in their absence, the writer needs something else to build narrative tension with. Mitchell does that by giving us a story about the very human interactions between the band members, their manager, and those they encounter in their initial struggles, rise to fame, and somewhat abrupt exit from fame and renown, which Mitchell uses cleverly to give us the impression that Utopia Avenue was so short lived, and with just a few hit songs, that they could have actually been there, and we just missed them or perhaps forgotten them in the decades since.

This one was probably more based in reality, with less dips below the surface, than some of Mitchell's other works, which some have compared to Black Swan Green, on the reality to fantastical scale. There were clear references to other stories however, including the connection between the tour de force lead guitarist Jasper de Zoet and his ancestor Jacob de Zoet, from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. But that isn't all, there were a few other things I noticed that I won't get into here.** If you are interested in these connections (which may contain spoilers) the supergeeks over at Wikipedia have a whole list of interconnections to other stories identified. †

This is a review of a book I read earlier in 2024 when I wasn't doing a great job keeping up with the blog. These impressions are from early in January 2025, so its been some time since I've read this book, but I wanted to get it down before I forgot. You can see a list of the books I read, including those from last year that I haven't written about in The Books tab at the top of the page.

* When I originally read Cloud Atlas, I hadn't seen the movie, and looking back at my review of the book, I couldn't imagine how you'd make a movie given the story's complexity, but they pulled it off. The movie, which I eventually saw was pretty good, but not nearly as complex as the book.

** Some of the things I noticed while reading were not conscience connections. Just niggling feelings that there is something there that relates to something else I've read or encountered before. That, in my opinion, can be even more fun; knowing that something you've just read is somehow tied to something else, but without know exactly what it is. It could be another Mitchell book, or perhaps something else...

† The other thing you'll find on the wiki page is a list of Mitchell's short stories, published in various periodicals, and some of them include links. I just read "Muggins Here" on the Guardian website, and that too, has connections to Mitchell's other works. Those connections were put down in this Reddit thread by someone with the handle FormalDinner7.

space between worlds

I'm pretty sure this book came from the book sale at my local library. It didn't seem like anyone had even opened it when I picked it up (for a dollar or two!) so I assume it was a gift or something. you missed out, bro! Micaiah Johnson is a young author from the desert west, and The Space Between Worlds is her first book, from 2020. She has a new one out now, which is called Those Beyond the Wall.

Sci Fi is one of my go-tos but I don't often get the chance to read something new and great, and this was both. Johnson has created an alternative world, which may be in our future, or it may be in an alternate universe, very similar to ours. And we aren't alone. Johnson's protagonist, Cara, is a bridge between the world of poverty and oppression she was born into, and the shining white city on a hill where she is currently employed. She is also the bridge between the infinite worlds of the multiverse, playing the various versions of people and places that exist in each, but only tuned to a different frequency, Cara finds that she can learn from, borrow from, and interact with different versions of the people she knows, weaving their frequencies together in a song only she can hear, discordant though it may be.

There is also conflict within Cara, between the two parts of herself that struggle with wanting to be true to her roots in poverty, while striving to become accepted in the city she works in. To complicate her struggle, their are people she loves in both worlds, people she both wants to be with, and not disappoint.

The interplay and layers of realities and relationships, and how Cara finds her way between and around them, is what makes this story work so well. Classicism and prejudice are more ingrained, more ineradicable, in this world. And because that is so, its all the more grating and ruinous. The peoples that populate this world take it for granted; its a given, and that starkness is both an unflattering mirror of our own world, and heartbreaking in its despair. 

Johnson has created a world that is both hard to look at, and too beautiful to ignore, peopled by characters with similar qualities. I enjoyed this all the way through. Good for you Micaiah Johnson. 

Read this book.

path of vengeance

Star Wars: The High Republic: Path of Vengeance is a novel published by Disney Lucasfilm Press, so is is a novel or is it film related merchandise? I'm not sure, but it does seem clear that the author is likely working for the publisher, or is (was) under contract to produce this novel. Why do I say that? Well, if this author decided to write this on their own and just submitted it to Disney in hopes that they'd publish it, then this is fan fiction, and if this was an assignment that Disney gave to them then its merchandise, right? At least it is first and foremost; in my mind anyway.

Why is that important? For the same reason that when you pick up a book in the bookstore that has Tom Clancy or James Patterson's name on it. Those people aren't writing the stories, someone else is. Who? Somebody, but you'll probably have to dig a little to find their name. you can find your own links, I'm not going there

So what is the difference between an author who has been published in their own right, and an author who works for a corporation like Disney or James Patterson? Well, I don't think these companies are author mills, but the focus does appear to be more on cranking out the material (merch) rather than publishing the highest quality novels they can.

Long introduction (rant?) concluded. That said, here's where I am on Path of Vengeance and its author, Cavan Scott: The story was interesting, the writing isn't that great. 

I looked up Cavan Scott, who seems to be a good comic artist, and many comic artists are talented story tellers. Scott seems to have come up with a pretty good story, and it also seems like he originally started with Disney doing comics for them, and then started writing for them more recently. When you take a look at his work, it seems mostly to be comics. The writing isn't awful, its just a little flat, and has way too many clichés and idioms. Clichés aren't the worse things, but when you're writing about people living in a galaxy far, far away, its just unlikely that they are going to say things like we do, and that takes us out of the narrative. It lifts the veil. see what I did there? It disturbs our need to suspend disbelief while reading fiction. Here are some examples from the first few pages:

"the skin of her... teeth" p. 4 

"his nose had... been put out of joint" p. 8

They're pretty regular all the way through, and even the similes pull the reader out of the galaxy where the story takes place. Like the slur about Evereni being "sharks" or describing a creature that "ran on four legs like a lion." I assume they don't have sharks and lions in their galaxy. Its just the easy way out.

One cliché I couldn't find when writing this entry was something like 'lit up like a Light Festival bough.' That's just a lit up like a Christmas tree, with a few words changed. Try harder, bro.

Am I a snob? Maybe, but I probably won't go looking for more of these books. This one was a gift, and I'm very grateful. The story was fun, and it was interesting to look back at the Star Wars universe at a time when the republic was at peace, and things were good. This era seems ripe for stories, shows and movies, as well as books and comics. I just think the production value should be there regardless of the medium.

Here's an interview with Cavan Scott and 4 other authors working for Disney on these books and comics.

punch the future in the dick

Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick* is the second novel in the Zoey Ashe series by Jason "David Wong" Pargin. The first installment was good; I bragged about it to people like I wrote it myself, and at least one person went out and got a copy, and they enjoyed it too. The second installment was good, but perhaps not as good at the first. A lot of what was new in the first one, things I hadn't read about before, and what made the future that Zoey Ashe inhabits so interesting, are repeated in volume two. Mostly by necessity. 

I don't mind that so much, its what we expect when we read a sequel, but what the first one had in adventure, and character development, was lacking here. There are some new characters, but we don't learn too much new about the character's we met in book one, except a few scraps. So I guess this was a sequel, but it felt a little it like a Zoey Ashe adventure, rather than a stand alone novel. It was good, it just wasn't great.

This book, like the first, was published under Jason Pargin's pen name, 'David Wong.' Why? I don't know, but a lot of his previous books were published using the David Wong name as well. More recently, he's been using hi real name. When doing a little research for this blog entry, I found that he has written another book in the Zoey Ashe series, called Zoey is Too Drunk for This Dystopia, which just came out this year, and also has his real name on the cover. Not only that, but newer printings of his older books have revised cover art featuring Pargin's real name as well.

I thought this book was good, as I said, and will probably pick up book three at the library at some point. If and when I do, I'll try and write about it here. I will also say, as I did in my review of the first book, these stories have movie potential.

* I don't think its a spoiler to report that the future's reproductive organs we not actually harmed at any point in this novel; for those of you who may have been worried.

sea of tranquility

Sea of Tranquility was on the New York Times Bestseller List, according to the cover of this paperback I picked up at my library's book sale while waiting for my shot at the second book in a trilogy I just started. That's not why I bought it, it was because the blurb on the back cover made this one sound like a wild romp with some Cloud Atlas vibes.

It was, but not AS out there as Cloud Atlas.

Emily St. John Mandel tells a pretty good tale. She probably best known as the author of Station Eleven, which they apparently made a mini-series out of over at the HBO Max, which, in case it isn't obvious, I haven't seen. St. John Mandel is also the author of The Glass Hotel, a blurb of which is included in the backmatter of this book, and if i understand that paragraph correctly, that book may include some of the same characters as this one. Another reminder of David Mitchell.

And I just needed to read the first line of this book to know that St. John Mandel is a funny woman.

Sea of Tranquility did nod in the David Mitchell direction, for me, but the story line was completely original, albeit with some time traveling antics that I guess we've all seen before, but how they're woven together here was a treat. This was a good one, and I'll keep my eye out for books by Emily St. John Mandel.*

Read this book.

 

* Moments after publishing this post, I was cleaning up by closing browser tabs and read at the very top of Emily St. John Mandel's website, these words, "St. John is my middle name. The books go under M." I guess that's pretty clear, and apparently happens often enough that its the first line on her page. Mandel is a funny woman.

shift

Book 2 in the Silo Series by Hugh Howey is Shift. I just read the first in the series, called Wool. I didn't like this one as much as Wool, and I guess I'd call this a prequel, rather than the second in a series, but this is based on publish date rather than a series in the traditional sense. The last in the series is called Dust, and based on what I've read thus far, I'll read that one too. But if my library doesn't have it on the shelf, I won't be running out to buy it, if you get what I mean.

Maybe prequel is too grand for this book. I know right? is this review going to get worse bro? Shift is more like the back story an author prepares for his main book, and then goes back and fleshes it out to make into a book. I'm tempted to say, Silmarillion, I'm looking at you, but that's not right. Silmarillion is a series of stories and lore from the first age of middle earth, and while they help to inform the later stories, they also stand on their own. I'm not sure if Shift came out first, if anyone would have been interested enough to read Wool.

Maybe I'm coming down too hard. There were some interesting parts to Shift, but I'm not sure I needed as much text to tell me what I learned, and I'm also wondering how much more text it would have taken to tell me everything I wanted to know. Here's my less hard critique: Story is pretty good, but it needs some tightening. This book is a lot like me; it just needs to lose 10% of its body weight and it will be fine. The story is pretty grim, and unlike some other stories involving supervillains, Shift gives us a group of villains, who have some twisted views on how to make the world a better place (yep, been there, seen that) and enough power to institute their evil plans (okay, seen that too) but apparently not enough smarts and/or foresight to understand either the short-term, mid-term or long-term drawbacks in their ridiculous plan.

Its as if they all got together and talked about this big, crazy idea, and all the while everyone assumed that it was just them that not only thought this idea was crazy, but that everyone else must be smarter than them and knew better than they did. "Go along to get along" may be a useful tactic in some situations, but a worldwide mass extinction pact is not one of those situations.

wool

Wool is one of those books I had on a list somewhere, so that probably means I heard it was good at some point. Maybe Will told me about this one? Wool is the first book in a trilogy that I think is called the Silo Series by Hugh Howey. I don’t recall reading anything by Howey before but I’ll check here on the blog as I’m writing this sitting on a plane to Florida and I can’t check. [Just checked: nope]

Wool falls into the dystopian, soft sci fi box but it differs from a lot of the other stuff in that box in many ways. The premise is pretty original, at least in my experience, and the scope is very limited which I think helps the story because it’s so pared down.

The focus of the story seems to shift from where we thought we were when we first started reading, and then once we refocus, it shifts again. I think that helps to create empathy with the characters in the story as the story arc reveals more about this place, these people, and their situation.

Howey is able to build tension along the way while still keeping tight control of the narrative and how much we learn as we go.

There is intrigue, passion, righteousness, love, rebellion, murder, ingenuity, mystery, and a little taste of the horrifying.

I’ll be looking for the next books in this series. [Update: picked the next one up at the library. Its next.]

Read this book.

klara and the sun

I read one of Kazuo Ishiguro's novels a few years ago, and it just didn't kick it for me.

Klara and the Sun did. I didn't love this book, but at least I got it. The story is solid, and looks at a potential future we may all experience at some point when robotics and artificial intelligence get to the point that they make it into the home, in much the same way that personal computers, and the internet did. Its not clear to me that Artificial Friends or AFs as Ishiguro calls them will make the leap from page to reality in our homes as quickly as the PC or the interwebs, but I do think its out there as a possibility.

In the future that Ishiguro has created, all AFs are a little bit different. This is what I'd call soft SF, so he doesn't get into why exactly they're all different, but I'm under the impression that its due to their brains. Perhaps they're manufactured in some kind of self-assembling process, which allows for variations? In any case, Klara is different than her peers: she is more observant of the subtleties expressed in the humans she interacts with. She does however remain naive about many of the basic things around her, regardless of how long she spends in the world. There is also a mysterious observational quirk Klara experiences, often when she is in stressful situations, and whether that is just part of what differentiates her from other AFs or if its typical for AFs is also a mystery.

This book was interesting, and the interactions between humans and AFs was examined in interesting ways, that reminded me a little of my post on the emotional ties humans may eventually develop for robots as they take on these important, supportive rolls in our lives.

sirens of titan

1959.

That's when The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr was published. I read a paperback copy that I found on the (many!) shelves of the house we stayed in up in New Hampshire over the Independence Day weekend. This has become an annual trip with my family, and this year's foray was another success. I had never read this sci fi blast from the past, and it looked pretty good, and not all that long, so I took it for a whirl.

So, right off, folks reading this book today will  see that its dated. Not just in the wildly inventive scientific speculations, which have clearly been been proven false since it was written, but also the number of quirks about 1959 society that Vonnegut assumed would last into the indefinite future, and, you know...haven't.

I've seen this a number of times in classic SF, from Asimov and others, who foresaw a world where alien carrying spaceships bopped around our solar system, and humans are augmented and/or armed with super-cool laser technologies, but where women are still fetching coffee. asimov, one could argue, got it even worse

That said, this book has got some pretty original thinking, some wild ideas, and speculates on some pretty crazy ways to accomplish one's goals, despite the worse-case scenarios you may be living in. Its also witty in many places, and pretty funny in some others. There are also some over-arching themes, and even some interesting views on the development--and potentially the very existence--of human life on earth, that reminded my a little of the Hitchhiker's Guide.

This was a fun little throwback, and a treat to read for those interested in classic Sci Fi.

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.

ready player two

I didn't read Ready Player One, I saw the movie. I know, bad reader. <rolled newspaper to the snout> * I have, however, now recently read Ready Player Two, and it was pretty good. It was fast moving, funny, adventurous (in a what-I-assume-a-gamer-D&D-mash-up-in-the-future-would-be way) romantic, sweet, and slightly sickening around the edges. Ernest Cline is a few years younger than I am, so he was exposed to a lot of the same pop culture stuff I was, but I'm a little older and so missed al\ lot of the video game wave that came just as I went off to college while kids of his age were discovering video games outside the arcade, which is where I was most likely to play them. My dad did bring home a Pong console, with woodgrain contact paper on it, that we attached to our TV for tennis and racketball games. that was it tho

Cline has created a group of characters, that between them, have encyclopedic knowledge of of their areas of interest that would make any geek proud. It has always amazed me how so much minutia can be absorbed by a serious fan of something, when every outward sign would seem to indicate that they geek in question would be incapable of that knowledge. But that is what I think Cline's genius is; getting us to understand that the enthusiasts** in his stories aren't unlike us, or incapable, or in any way inferior to any of us who don't happen to know Gandalf's real name, all of Inigo Montoya's lines in The Princess Bride, Prince's songwriting credits for other artists, or the name of the first female protagonist video game.***

And like any good video game there were plenty of Easter eggs. Most of which, I probably missed, but go geeks! I had fun reading this, there were plenty of things for me to geek out on given the time period these future protagonists are looking back to (the last 40 years or so.) It went fast, and I would definitely read another one based on this read, but it looks like it took about 10 years to get this one done since the last, so we shouldn't hold our collective breath. Next question: will Spielberg make a movie of this one two? Maybe, I think is the answer. The first movie did really well so, my money is on yes.

* I know, relax, no one does that to dogs anymore; where you gonna find a newspaper?

**  yes, enthusiast = geek hey, are you reading ahead?

*** that's just good trivia, you'll have to figure that one out yourself.

termination shock

I will read whatever Neal Stephenson writes, and I'm typically not disappointed. Termination Shock however, was a little slow. I borrowed this book from the library, and I had it for 4 weeks and a day. maybe two days? That's not because I didn't read it, I did. I read a little everyday, but I wasn't absorbed, it didn't take over my life, I didn't spend hours on the couch after weekend breakfasts gobbling this one up. It was good... it just wasn't great.

After an exciting start, this really book got rolling at about page 100. You know; characters developed, stage pieces set, a few teasers floating out there to keep us interested, and I'm ready for that baseline to drop...

Page 300, and the baseline hasn't dropped.

Inspired by Moby Dick, you say? Maybe, that's a good guess. MD is pretty slow, after all. Written in time when folks had nothing better to do, and perhaps appreciated a long tale to stave off boredom. And maybe this is Stephenson's answer to that in our times, with COVID and folks having no place to go. But I'm not buying that. Melville's Pequod perhaps could hold the attention of his audience, but Stephenson's audience has the interwebs, and Netflix. And Candy Crush, or whatever.

A timely glimpse into our possible future? Yep. A well thought out story arc, based on real world problems and science/reality based solutions, as well as believable and appropriate reactions to said problems, and their proposed solutions, helping us to better understand how these news stories we hear about today may actually play out in our futures? Yep, yes, and right on. All that is there, as you'd expect from Neal Stephenson, as well as that well plotted story arc. Just... you know... not enough juice.

For me anyway.

I'm not recommending this one,* but this experience alone doesn't change my stance on Stephenson, he hasn't always knocked it out of the park. Read some of the other stuff. I'd start with Seveneves, and Snow Crash, and then perhaps Diamond Age. You can see all of the Stephenson books I've read (since this blog started) by going to The Books tab. You'll find 10 of his books listed there along with links to my reviews/comments. And if you look to the right, you'll also see that Snow Crash is enshrined in my list of 'great' reads.

* If you love Neal Stephenson and who doesn't you should go ahead and read this. Its a good story, the characters are great, and he's just so smart, its a pleasure to read his prose. Its just a little slow-paced.

recursion

Recursion is a novel by Blake Crouch that seems to be a riff on a time-loop theme that we've all seen before in movies like Terminator, Edge of Tomorrow, Looper, and even Dr. Strange. There are piles of movies, and even more books. A search of 'time loop books' actually brought back another book by Blake Crouch called Dark Matter. its promoted on the of this book! see! its right there.

Anyway, I got distracted. Its Sunday and dinner won't be ready for hours, so pre-dinner drinks and a quick visit from the in-laws have taken a small toll on my train of thought... read: ability to for coherent thoughts I'm pretty sure that what I was trying to say is that Crouch has taken a shot at a well worn trope, but he has managed to build a story that surprisingly has an interesting new twist. You'd think that ground this well plowed would have little fruitful crop to be harvested how's that for a tortured metaphor? or is it a simile? gulp

Recursion follows the exploits of New York City detective Barry Sutton, who is driven to understand the suicide of a random jumper with a wild story of false memories; and Helena Smith, the creator of a new scientific breakthrough she has been working on to try and record, retrieve, or recreate her dementia-ridden mother's memories. You can perhaps see how these two might meet in the Big Apple, but where their story leads is not what I was expecting. There was even a small taste of Freaky Friday on this one, altho I expect that anyone else who has read this may find that a stretch. i said there were drinks! But maybe we'll just agree that it was freaky, and leave it at that. There was a small amount of repetitiveness, that repeated itself a little, but only a few times over again, before we got to the climax, but it was only a little bit, and then it was over, and we got to the climax.

Crouch is apparently pretty well know for Dark Matter, and maybe I'll take a look if I run across it. This one was pretty good.

machines like me

I don't think I'm giving too much away when I say that Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me is an alternate history soft-SciFi story that takes place in the 1980s. This is an interesting take in that it isn't set in a what-if future, rather its set in a possible past which may have been different for all of us if just a few things had played out a little differently. That premise, al by itself, is a fun thing to think about and is a little brain-bendy.

The main protagonist, Charlie Friend, tells the story first person, which is where the 'like me' comparative phrase in the title comes from. Mr. Friend sounds made up (scoff) is a little insecure, has some vague experience writing, and maybe some office-type work in his past but has given it up for self-employment. A venture he is not always successful at, but keeps at it nonetheless. Mr. Friend admits that he hasn't always made sound monetary decisions, but that doesn't keep him from pushing on. 

Just upstairs lives Miranda, Charlie's friend, who is also a graduate student and mid-twenties to his early thirties. Charlie's insecurity extends to his feelings for Miranda, which complicates their friendship, if only because Charlie is in his head too much and not really living. Into this complicated dynamic, Charlie brings a machine, and what he (and we) thought was complicated before, gets even more complex.

McEwan has spun an intriguing story here that reminds me of Asimov's I, Robot series in its examination of what it means when thinking machines become part of our lives, both for us, and for them.

ship breaker

I've had a few books tucked away in my public library account read list; Ship Breaker, a young adult novel by Paolo Bacigalupi, is not one of them. Drowned Cities by the same author is, but it wasn't until after I read that one that I discovered that its part of a series, and this current read is the first in that series. Good news is, it doesn't seem to matter much in what order these were read, at least that is my impression after reading two of the three in the series.

Ship Breaker definitely takes place in the same dystopian future Earth as the The Drowned Cities, after what I assume is run away global warming has led to massive ocean level rise and the breakdown of organized governments in favor of a few massive corporations and the rest of humanity living hand-to-mouth in a kind of Mad Max lawlessness, which pockets of semi-civilized population centers that are just mentioned as remote and inaccessible to the poor protagonists that inhabit this series.

One of the characters from The Drowned Cities features in this story as well, so I predict that it may be that character that ties these stories together. I guess we'll see. The third in the series is called Tool of War so I've made my bet already and I'm feeling pretty good about the odds.

thousand autumns

I put the novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet on my read list because of other books I've read by the author David Mitchell. Mitchell writes on that wobbly line between--or maybe its the smeary overlap in the Venn diagram--of science fiction, speculative fiction, and fantasy. Maybe David Mitchell would hate that description, I don't know. I guess he could describe it better himself, and perhaps has, elsewhere. What I do know is that Mitchell seems to have a fascination with time, and how we, as humans (and perhaps other human-adjacent creatures) move through it.

This novel seems to fall more squarely into the historical fiction genre, but I wasn't too far in before I began to get a sense of time as a character in this story. de Zoet is a carefully told story, of Europeans in c. 1800 Japan, where they were not welcome, and were mostly segregated from the populace to prevent European influence in the general culture. The pacing of the story recalls that attachment to history, tradition, and sameness the leaders of Japan held dear tat the time. Jacob de Zoet himself is a classic reluctant hero, in the form of a mid-level clerk who see himself as an uphold of what is righteous and true, which is mostly expressed in his manners and dignity, until he is called upon to uphold those ideals in a more taxing sense.

Mitchell thumbs his nose at the demand for fast paced, action drama and paints a picture of 'modern' Europeans, doing their best to take advantage of the closed Japanese culture, while the Japanese did the same from their point of view, all the while both looking at the other as the barbarian. Mitchell uses this backdrop to explore the relationships between the very few people on either side of this cultural divide who saw one another as human, with similar feelings, thoughts, and goals, and who reached across this divide toward one another, while early geopolitics tried to hold them back.

There is a whole chapter where Mitchell gives himself up to the poetry of what he is doing. Its like a treasure or a hidden message for us in the midst of of this love letter to an earlier time, which tries to express how different we are, and how much the same.

drowned cities

Apparently, The Drowned Cities is part of a trilogy, and as luck would have it, this is book two. The front matter in this book indicates that it is a 'companion book' to Ship Breaker, and it doesn't talk about a trilogy. But maybe this is one of those things where the third book just grew out of the success of the first two. Ship Breaker won a couple of awards; Drowned Cities was nominated for a few as well. The Ship Breaker Trilogy is rounded out by Tool of War. So, I guess I'll stick that on the list as well.

The Drowned Cities is listed as teen or young adult science fiction, so it is a little simpler in its overall story arc than either The Water Knife or The Windup Girl, which I have to say, I enjoyed more. That said, I did enjoy this, and it was a welcome break from the crime/spy novels I've been reading.

A quick look at the cover art will tell you that this story takes place in a time in the not too distant future when society has broken down. That post-apocalyptic world is Paolo Bacigalupi's playground, based on the stories I've read thus far. I assume the stories share the same universe, and therefor the same apocalypse, but that isn't touched on specifically in this book. The world does seem hotter however, so... there is no such thing as global warming. note: this sarcastic remark is posted in the color of smog. see, that's art

This story goes together like a kit of parts. Its fast moving, not overly complicated, has some compelling characters, and an interesting backstory that seems to drive the background narrative. Easy, right? I burned through this pretty quickly, and not just because its written in an easy-to-read manner, but because its engaging. I have ordered book 1 (Ship Breaker) from the library; our local library is doing self-service holds, so I can just put them on hold on the interwebs, and then trot down and pick them up.

An interesting aside from our local library. When I picked this book up, along with the Charles Yu book, about 3 weeks ago, a sign on the door read "Masks Welcome." Now the sign on the library door says "Masks Required." My city went to masks required in all public buildings in the middle of August, sometime. I assume its in advance of school starting up, and the Commonwealth's DESE (Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) decision to not allow remote learning in public schools this year.

science fictional universe

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu was pretty popular when it came out in 2010 if I remember correctly. I added to my reading list then, but I haven't gotten around to it until now. I get a kick out of the cover art, which appears to be a study in old school ray gun design, along with a Star Trek font for the text. A closer look at the ray guns shows that they aren't all different--which is slightly disappointing--and one of them isn't a ray gun at all.

What is great about this story is that it reads a little like an autobiography (written in first person, and the protagonist's name is Charles Yu) and a little like the diary of an emotionally damaged man, and a little like the service manual for a futuristic device that isn't really well explained, and a little like a letter to one's future self about how to be better, and a little like wholly metaphoric construct created to path to reckoning with regret and time wasted.

I think that amorphous quality of the story may be what makes it so popular. It has the ability, like a good fortune teller does, to spin a tale charged enough to latch onto our shared experiences, and vague enough to allow us to bring more of ourselves to the story as readers. In the end, it looks like Yu has told us a story of himself, and ourselves, and maybe hasn't told a science fiction story at all.

Read this book.

wonder woman - final final

My final design. click to see larger.

I know, I said final, but after it sits with you for a little bit, and you think about it, sometimes you need to go back in and do some tweaking. That's what happened, and here's where I'm at. As much as I don't like it, and I don't see the need for it, Wonder Woman iconography is pretty well tied to the tiara. If you didn't know the 'final' drawing I posted was a image of Wonder Woman, you may not immediately guess. So I've added a very understated head adornment. I was going for something small, like those eleven crowns from The Lord of the Rings movies.*

I also added a few highlights to the drawing, which made way more of a difference than I thought it would. If I haven't bragged enough about how good this drawing/painting application is, here I go. This was all done with Sketchbook which you can download for free from AutoDesk, the folks that make AutoCAD, among other things.

 

That's it! Let me know what you think.

* Bro, I don't remember crowns in the books. The only thing I recall that was similar is the Star of Eärendil which was given to him by his wife, Elwing, after being recovered from Morgoth's iron crown by Beren and Lúthien. Eärendil wore it on his brow, to light his way, and I assumed that it was set in something metal. Other than that, I don't recall crowns. Am I missing anything nerds?