WHAT have you finished reading recently? Hello, Everybody! The Dawn of American Radio.
WHAT are you reading now & WHAT are you reading next?
I included those questions together because I am currently reading The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea and The Rise and Reign of the Mammals, one (Gulf) more ardently than the others.
Long and Short Reviews’ Weekly Prompt: Whatcha think about mysteries?
I’m generally a fan, though I tend to encounter them more in the thriller context. Over the years I’ve read quite a few police procedurals and cozy mysteries, but thrillers from the likes of Greg Iles & Ruth Ware are more common.
Sci-Fi Month Prompt #13: Cyberpunk
In honor of William Gibson’s bday, today’s prompt is simply “cyberpunk“. This is one of my favorite subgenres of SF, in part because of aesthetics, but mostly because it addresses my own concerns with the technological future — the takeover of human bodies and human societies by the cynical machine. We seem to be being pushed further and further into a future where humans are not persons, but commodities.
Get to Know the SF Reader Tag
Alex over at At Boundary’s Edge was thoughtful enough to tag me in a SF reading tag.
1- What is your sci-fi origin story? (How you came to read your first sci-fi novel)
I’ve mentioned this before, but my first SF story would’ve been a Great Illustrated Classics edition of either The War of the Worlds or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea — though at that time, I had no conception of “science fiction” and wouldn’t begin thinking of myself as an SF reader until my mid-twenties, despite reading it my entire life.
2- If you could be the hero in a sci-fi novel, who would be the author, and what’s one trope you’d insist be in the story?
Well, definitely not David Mack. He’s a brilliant author but his characters go through hell and there’s often death. As far as tropes, I’d always up for a man vs machine story, especially if the machine is a haughty AI that gets smashed.
3- What is a sci-fi you’ve read this year, that you want more people to read?
Oh, SHELLI! It’s a this-year release that touched on a lot of interesting themes within a techo-action thriller story.
4- What is your favourite sci-fi subgenre? What subgenre have you not read much from?
Near-future SF and cyberpunk would be my favorite subgenres, and I’ve only ever read one steampunk novel.
6- How do you typically find sci-fi recommendations?
I often use amazon’s “related books” feature to explore books that are like a book I already like. Most of the bloggers I follow don’t do SF on a regular basis, though I’ve found some this year that have provided some promising leads. I also search GoodReads for lists of particular themes — novels with AI, near-future SF, etc.
7- What is one upcoming sci-fi release you’re looking forward to?
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds : Asylum just released last week, and I’m looking forward to checking it out. It appears to go into the Pike-Una backstory.
8- What is one sci-fi misconception you’d like to lay to rest?
I suppose most people associate SF with space, aliens, that sort of thing. A lot of my favorite SF, like Daniel Suarez’s DAEMON, or Blake Crouch’s Upgrade, has nothing to do with that at all.
9- If someone had never read a sci-fi book before and asked you to recommend the first 3 books that came to mind as places to start, what would your recommendations be?
I’d have to know the person, really, but I think I’d go with a cross-section:
The Circle, Dave Eggers. Very near-future SF that addresses the power of Amazon/Google/Apple/Facebook on our lives and society.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein. More intermediate SF (not near-future, not far-out future) and a book that showcases SF’s ability to provide political commentary.
Foundation, Isaac Asimov. Not only would this be a taste of the ‘golden age of SF’, but it’s an example of what Asimov regarded as the third stage of SF – the ‘sociological’ commentary.
10- Who is the most recent sci-fi reading content creator you’ve come across that you’d like to shoutout?
Earlier in the year I encountered a SF “visual novel” that unfolds like a video game, and I really like its soundtrack. So, cheers to “Obfusc”, or Joseph X. Burke, for creating music that was perfect for cruising around a Blade Runner type city at night.
I fell out with both wings of the old uniparty in the mid-2000s over the war on terror and its attendant police state, which both parties supported despite some gum-flapping on the part of the Dems during the Bush years. Consequently, I wasn’t tuned in to what was happening with the GOP until Trump swept the Republican convention in 2016, knocking both establishment honchos like Jeb and the rising “Tea Party” champions like Cruz aside. American Carnage is an extremely detailed history of how the Republican party changed in recognition that its base was becoming more primed towards belligerent anti-state populism, rather than a defined ideological disposition like Reaganism. Although it’s written with a distinct animosity towards the populists, Carnage doesn’t demonize them. It recognizes that legitimate concerns and fears were fueling the animosity towards the establishment, principally the toll that NAFTA had taken on American industry and the communities it sustained. Given how fine-grained the reportage is here (meetings, interviews, meetings secret meetings, interviews, meetings), this is probably written more for wonks, but I enjoyed it all the same. I was particularly fascinated by Thomas Massie’s disappointed realization that voters were supporting liberty iconoclasts like himself, Amash, and Rand not necessarily out of libertarian principles, but because those voters wanted “the craziest SOB in the race” to attack the establishment. This is how the same populism that fueled the fiscal-conservative-oriented Tea Party could also fuel Trump: raging against the machine was more important than policy, and the new era of social media allowed populists to bypass gatekeeping media and gatekeeping party infrastructure that controlled funding. For readers already familiar, this book is also an interesting character study into Boehner and Ryan in their attempts to be responsible to the people and the party, while also having to deal with Trump’s unpredictability and the disruptive energy of the populists who were now not only pushing for increasingly challenging candidates, but sometimes taking office themselves. Unfortunately, this book doesn’t really address the sources of the populist energy– economics, the power elite’s increasingly transparent contempt for flyover country, etc — but just looks at how that energy disrupted the GOP. Fascinating stuff for wonks, I’m sure.
Palin’s resonance with Republican voters was, above all, an indictment of the party’s tone-deaf arrogance. Having catered to the aristocrat caste atop the GOP for decades, winning far more elections than they lost along the way, Republicans were blissfully ignorant of the discontent simmering below the surface. When it boiled over, the defensiveness of the elites—reproaching Palin, for example—only made things worse.
Boehner and McCarthy agreed to attend the Bakersfield Tea Party event on the condition that they not give any remarks. Boehner suspected with some justification that these crowds would be just as hostile to Republican politicians, especially leadership officials, as they were to Democrats. “We’re at this event, and there’s some people who are really happy that we showed up,” Boehner recalls. “But there were others that just looked at us with more disdain than you could ever imagine. They thought we were the enemy.”
He recalls wondering how, if Republicans took back the House, Boehner would handle a mob of rookie revolutionaries. When they met in Washington, shortly before Election Day, Boehner’s answer was simple: They would fall in line. Freshmen always fall in line. But the party chairman was not convinced. “These guys are out there blowing up Republicans as much as they’re blowing up Democrats,” Steele told Boehner. “You mean to tell me you can’t see that?”
As people watched their jobs disappearing, their communities hollowing out, and their national character changing, they wanted a brawler—not a bookkeeper.
[Cruz] had spent his teenage years touring the state of Texas delivering the Constitution from memory as part of a free-market troupe and had also been involved in drama club, briefly considering a career as a thespian. (On the Bush campaign, he was known to launch into various recitations of his favorite film, The Princess Bride, capturing every line and every character’s accent with precision.)
What Bush and his Republican peers failed to understand was the degree to which Putin had become an appealing figure for many on the American right—not for the particulars of his government’s cruelty, necessarily, but rather, for the masculinity he radiated in such sharp contrast to his U.S. counterpart.
Trump did not suffer from a lack of teachability; he simply preferred to dictate the flow of information, rather than be dictated to. Lengthy briefings and conference calls were never a staple of his executive style. He favored an aggressive, inquisitive approach, learning about issues, and about people, with rapid-fire questioning, consuming what he needed from the answers and discarding the rest.
“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” he decreed.
That summer, having breakfast with a blissfully retired Boehner, I asked him whether the Republican Party could survive Trumpism. “There is no Rep—” He stopped himself. There is no Republican Party? He shrugged. “There is. But what does it even mean? Donald Trump’s not a Republican. He’s not a Democrat. He’s a populist.”
“Twenty years ago, you and I might disagree strongly on politics, but we’re on the board of the same PTA, and our kids go to the same school, they play on the same sports teams, and we go to the same church on Sunday. I knew you as a whole person,” Rubio says. “Today, we increasingly know people only by their political views—or we just don’t know people unlike [us] at all.
A lot of people think Trump is a footnote, that he’s just here for four or eight years, and then it goes back to normal. But I think that’s wrong. I think the party is changed for good,” she says. “And it won’t be sustainable. We’re in a period of incredible change as a country where the extremes of the left and right are going to converge, and you’re going to wind up with a third party. Over the next two or four years? No. But in the next twenty? For sure.”
“Who in tarnation are you?” said Jayne. He still had a hand clamped over his forearm, to try to stem the blood flow from the savaging he had received. “You’re no grizzly, that’s for damn sure.” “Of course I’m not a grizzly,” said the bear. (Firefly: Life Signs)
“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” (Hello Everybody! The Dawn of American Radio)
But even more fascinating are some of the extinct mammals that have never quite made it into pop culture stardom. There were once wee mammals that glided over the heads of dinosaurs and others that ate baby dinosaurs for breakfast, armadillos the size of Volkswagens, sloths so tall they could dunk a basketball, and “thunder beasts” with three-foot-long battering-ram horns. There were oddballs called chalicotheres that looked like an unholy horse-gorilla hybrid, which walked on their knuckles and pulled down tree branches with their stretched claws. Before it docked with North America, South America was an island continent for tens of millions of years, and hosted a whole family of wacky hoofed species whose Frankenstein mashup of anatomical features flummoxed Charles Darwin—and whose true relationships to other mammals has only just been revealed by the shocking discovery of ancient DNA. Elephants were once the size of miniature poodles, camels and horses and rhinos once galloped across an American savanna, and whales once had legs and could walk. (The Rise and Reign of the Mammals)
I am back from three days in Pensacola, feeling refreshed and ready to finish out the year in style. I intended to spend four days in Pensacola, but a flat tire in the middle of nowhere consumed a lot of Friday, and by the time I arrived in Pensacola it was dusk already and I wasn’t able to do what I’d planned — shopping on Palofax followed by a sunset dinner on the pier. (I had a jack and a spare, but couldn’t risk the drive on a spare, and so had to find a tire shop.) But, life happens and we move on!
Ham steak & Nassau grits. I’d intended to go back, but — so many restaurants, so little time.
I began early the next morning by eating at a place recommended to me by my lady-friend, “The Coffee Cup Restaurant”. Founded in 1945, it serves a hearty breakfast that includes “Nassau grits”. (This includes onions and tomatoes.) I took in the weekly street market on Palofax after this, but it was so crowded I didn’t linger the way I did last time, instead deciding to head for Gulf Breeze Zoo. Gulf Breeze is an interesting community, located three miles across the Bay from Pensacola and composing a strip surrounded by ocean.
Drove across this six times this weekend, twice in pouring rain. (Followed by the sign “UNLAWFUL TO RUN OUT OF FUEL ON BRIDGE”.)
Despite this, there’s still land to waste on self-storage businesses. A lot of the architecture is adapted for life on the beachfront, so even the elementary school is elevated. As someone who lives hundreds of miles inland, every bit of this fascinated me.
I’d expected the zoo to be a bit like the Living Desert Zoo in Carlsbad, NM, oriented around the particular ecosystem of the gulf coast. This was not the case: it was a fairly normal zoo, if a bit more compact than most, and used multi-layer walkways to make the most use of its space: an elevated walkway takes visitors above plains and other habitats where we could gaze upon rhinos and the like from above. Gulf Breeze Zoo leans heavily into interaction, with multiple areas where visitors can feed animals or sign up for “Adventures” in which a zookeeper takes a few people into exhibits. I’m not sure if I saw everything, but for me a hit exhibit was the orangutan, who I got to see playing with her baby at length. I saw two animals here I haven’t seen at other zoos: camels, and red-handed tamarin. They have a gorilla, but unfortunately he was playing the shy boy and staying inside.
This fella was determined to get something green, but could never quite manage it. He kept eyeballing me like, “SOME HELP, PLEASE?” Not sure of the species: there was no placard.
After this I drove to Pensacola Beach, but instead of venturing out near the boardwalk, I continued driving through Gulf Coast National Park until I was far, far away from the city. I found a quiet spot where I could sit and admire the wind and angry waves — a Red Flag warning was in effect — and just hung out for a while. I literally just sat in the sand, Buddha style, and reveled in the majesty of the white-crashing waves and the wind.
This far from any developments, there were few people: a fisherman who occasionally reeled in some critter from the large waves, and a couple with astonishing stamina making out while standing up. They were there for some 20 minutes at least. After an hour or so I spotted people arriving with folding chairs and a wedding arch: evidently some nuptials were planned, so I gave them their privacy and began making way back into town.
My first dark beer.
My plan was to find the honey and mead shop, and get a refill of the bottle I’d bought last time. They proved to be an easier place to find in traffic than on foot, and I wound up in the Irish pub I’d enjoyed some coffee at last month. After eating their house burger and fries over a pint of Guinness, a couple in their fifties approached me wanting to know if I was from Boston. I was wearing a Red Sox hat and shirt, so it wasn’t as random a question as it seemed. They’d lived in Bahston, among other places, and were intrigued at the Red Sox representation this far south. This turned into a lengthy (2 hours!) conversation in which I learned the guy was an ATF agent. Still, he treated me to a brew, so my libertarian scruples were becalmed. It was one of those random encounters that was full of different tangents — we were discussing crime dramas like The Sopranoes, Breaking Bad, and The Wire. (I can quote two obsessively: I’ve never watched the third.)
Oh, I’m going to make this town a habit. Palofax Street is awesome.
Having forgotten about the mead shop, I returned to my car and hotel for the evening, finishing Oppenheimer and beginning Dirty Harry. The next morning was Sunday, so I was going to make my second appearance at Christ Church: I needed some things from Walmart, though, and discovered an extent motor lodge en route.
As I learned in The Motel in America, these motor courts were the predecessors to ‘full’ motels, so I was surprised to see one in the flesh: this one is surrounded by fencing declaring it to be a construction zone. The local paper is completely paywalled, but I’ve found articles indicating that it’s going to be turned into “affordable housing”, either by converting the units themselves or by ….(sigh)….demolishing them to build something hideous. I saw plenty of empty lots on this stretch that could be used for construction without destroying a unique bit of history! The 8:00 service at Christ Church was good, though there was no choir in attendance: lining up to receive the Eucharist while being surrounded by choristers was a heavenly experience last time, so I missed it. Because tomorrow is Armistice Day / Veteran’s Day, Adult Formation was suspended for a Thanksgiving for Veterans service in which we were treated to a brief talk by a member of the church, who is the director of the National Naval Aviation Museum I enjoyed so thoroughly last time. I noticed that their Stations of the Cross paintings are all Orthodox-style icons, which I found interesting: I asked the rector about it and evidently icons have a history at this church. Fascinating!
Heading back to Gulf Breeze & Pensacola Beach. I wound up making this drive every single day.
After this, given the rain, I asked a parishioner what he’d suggest on a rainy day, and he directed me to Fort Pickens. The fort is one of two existing structures that used to guard the bay (the other is Fort Barrancas, and is inaccessible outside weekends in May – September). The original structure, I learned, was finished in 1834 and later augmented with ‘modern’ concrete elements.
The beach was so saturated with water from wave activity and the rain that it was reclaiming the road, so there were several times where traffic had to time-share their use of lanes.
I spent most of the late morning and early afternoon exploring the fort, and discovered that its Stony corridors made for fun acoustics. If anyone heard ghostly singing that involved ranting and roaring and being true English sailors, it was no spectre but me — testing different spaces to see how it sounded. (There is probably a reason I mostly vacation alone. Also, thank you David Warren for singing that in the Horatio Hornblower movies and thus introducing me to it.) I drove back to Pensacola in the rain, and but was able to find the mead shop and refill my bottle. Despite the rain, Palafox was busy, and after I refilled my mead growler (this time with apple pie mead) I found a Lebanese restaurant (The Levant) and had a sample platter. I have no idea what I ate beyond chicken, lamb, and stuffed grape leaves, but it was good.
Chicken, lamb,. feta cheese salad, two mysterious gloop-piles that were good for dipping bread in, stuffed grape leaves, and a thing I ate with the gloop. Also a lemon. Can you see why I was only eating one meal a day?
I didn’t do much the rest of Sunday, having worn myself out at Fort Pickens. I’d bought a book on the Gulf there and was anxious to dive in, so I went to the hotel, took a nap, and then got to it. My plan for the next morning was to wake up at oh-dark-thirty, go back to the beach to see the ocean in the early AM and possibly witness a sunrise, then go back to downtown Pensacola before they closed off the bay front area for the Veterans Day parade. As it happened, I woke up at 5:00 to a steady downpour, sighed, and opted to sleep in, instead.
A departing float. The closest I came as seeing the parade.
Although I went downtown to see the parade, it was a total bust: not only were roads closed in anticipation of the Big Planned Parade, but the continuing rain evidently led to a much smaller parade than expected, and it was over in 20 minutes. I learned this from pestering fellow pedestrians. After walking around in the rain for an hour I found refuge in “The Garden”, an enclosed open space with multiple food trucks and stalls in it.
I….smell…..COFFEE!
This early in the morning, only a coffee place was open, but it gave me a spot to sit and enjoy my breakfast (a blueberry muffin + coffee) while waiting for the roads to re-open. I then went back across the bay, deciding to explore the boardwalk proper before leaving town.
The Red Rider will hit 100K crossing the Pensacola Bay Bridge!
Because of the continuing downpour, nobody but my crazy self was on the beach and boardwalk. I should note that I was wearing swimming trunks, a swimming top, a rainjacket, and a ball cap, so the rain didn’t bother me at all. Far from it! Being saturated by the elements — the rain, the wind, the ocean spray, the salt — was invigorating, and I happily explored the area, I found some lounge chairs right at the waterfront and sat a spell, then ventured forth for some lunch.
“Flounder’s Chowder House” was highly reccommended to me, so I went there. The two teen hostesses stared at my drippiness and I explained that this was the last day of a four-day visit to Pensacola, and since I was from 300 miles inland, I wanted to “soak it in — literally”. They were, or at least acted, appropriately amused.
The Birds want me to share. Considering that my leftovers plate was blown away by the wind, they got their wish. As the hostess noted, “That’ll make some birds happy!”
After enjoying most of a shrimp salad and some frozen concoction, I reluctantly made my exit, driving back towards home and real life in a constant downpour.
It literally stopped raining when I drove into Alabama, around the Flomaton AL/FL line. Governor DeSantis must have a weather-control device.
Despite rain dominating the weekend, I think I made the most of it and thoroughly enjoyed it, and plan to return — perhaps in early March, avoiding Selma’s big tourist invasion. I’m increasingly interested in exploring the Gulf more broadly. I’d planned to visit Mobile this trip, but with the lost time from tires and rain that didn’t happen. Mobile deserves a weekend of its own, anyway!
Although we in the US honor those who served in the Armed Forces today — and well we should, for such service is both honorable and laudable — we should by no means forget that originally here, and elsewhere broad even today, this day is remembered as the end of World War 1. They called it the great War and it was the great catastrophe, butchering an entire generation of young boys across the continents for no reason other than damn-fool politicians’ mutual pride and lust for domination. Millions dead for Serbian pride, Austrian pride, Russian pride, German pride, French pride, British pride, Wilson’s arrogance! Studying this war taught me to question war in general and and especially to hate the modern state that grows from every drop of spilled blood.
So here’s to all the young men who were destroyed, to their families who grieved — to us stupid fools who never learn the lesson those countless white crosses strain to teach.
Well how do you do, Private William McBride? Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside, And I’ll rest for a while in the warm summer sun? I’ve been walkin’ all day long, and I’m nearly done. I see by your gravestone you were only 19 When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916 Well, I hope you died quick, and I hope you died clean, Or Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
Chorus: Did they beat the drums slowly, Did they sound the fife lowly, Did the rifles fire o’ ye as they lowered you down? Did the bugle sing The Last Post in chorus? Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest? And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined? And though you died back in 1916, To that loyal heart are you always 19? Or are you a stranger without even a name, Forever enshrined behind some glass pane In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained, And fading to yellow in a brown, leather frame?
Did they beat the drums slowly, Did they sound the fife lowly, Did the rifles fire o’ ye as they lowered you down? Did the bugle sing The Last Post in chorus?
Well the sun’s shining now on these green fields of France; The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance. The trenches have vanished long under the plough No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now. But here in this graveyard that’s still No Man’s Land The countless white crosses in mute witness stand To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man, And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.
Did they beat the drums slowly, Did they sound the fife lowly, Did the rifles fire o’ ye as they lowered you down? Did the bugle sing The Last Post in chorus?
And I can’t help but wonder, no Willie McBride, Do all those who lie here, know why they died? Did you really believe them when they told you ‘The Cause?’ You really believe that this war would end wars? The suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame, The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain, For Willie McBride, it all happened again, And again, and again, and again, and again!
Did they beat the drums slowly, Did they sound the fife lowly, Did the rifles fire o’ ye as they lowered you down? Did the bugle sing The Last Post in chorus? Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
Today we’re talking about our favorite captains in science fiction. And….since it’s me, it’s all Star Trek with a little Firefly. Also, I’m off to Pensacola for a four-day weekend. Live long and prosper.
#1-5: Anson Mount’s Captain Pike
“Giving up our values in the name of security is to lose the battle in advance. Did you sideline the Enterprise because you knew I’d never stop reminding you of that?”
“One last bit of housekeeping before I can leave this ship. Discovery will need a new captain……and it’s OCTOPUS HEAD!”
I…love Anson Mount’s Captain Pike. Granted, the guy from the Abrams movies was really good at the gravtias of Pike, but Mount is so charismatic and inspiring it’s ridiculous.
“So your dad dies. So you can settle for a mediocre life. Or do you think you were meant for something else? Something better? Your captain was captain of a starship for eight minutes. He saved hundreds of lives, including yours. I dare you to do better.”
#6: Captain Benjamin Sisko
Commander, then Captain, Sisko, was my first Favorite Captain and he was not displaced until I met Cap’n Pike. Granted, it helped that Deep Space Nine was the only Star Trek show that I got to watch in full as it aired. I didn’t grow to appreciate Captain Picard until I was able to watch the shows on VHS and DVDs. I loved Sisko’s passion. Avery Brooks does….ridiculous intensity very well. “IT’S THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND! BUT WHERE ARE THE FLYING CARS? I WAS PROMISED FLYING CARS! I DON’T SEE ANY FLYING CARS! WHY?! WHY?! WHY?!”
Brooks was a superb dramatic actor who managed to convey the moral complexity of Sisko, who had to deal with some dark choices during the Dominion War.
“I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover the crimes of other men. I am an….accessory to murder. But the most damning thing of all….I think I can live with it. And if I had to do it all over again, I would. Garak was right about one thing: a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So, I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can….live with it…….? Computer, erase that entire personal log.”
#7: Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Not need for much commentary here. Picard is such a superb character — intelligent, curious, passionate, idealistic.
“Commander, it is possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.”
$8 Cap’n Mal. To be honest I’d probably identify with Mal over Picard, simply because Mal is a cynical rebel who fought a losin’ cause but has great loyalty to his people.
“They say that mercy is the act of a great man.” (stab) “Guess I’m just a good one.” (stab) “Well, I’m all right.”
#9: Cap’n Kate
I was able to watch Voyager off and on, but most of my affiliation with Voyager comes from playing ST Elite Force in high school. I still count Voyager (4-7) as some of my favorite Trek, in part because of Mulgrew, Picardo, and Ryan’s acting, and in part because of sheer nostalgia.
” I don’t think you realize that you are NOT IN CONTROL HERE.”
#10 Captain Kira Nerys
The storyline of Kira Nerys, former terrorist turned militia colonel turned Responsible Authority Figure, was one of the best in Star Trek Deep Space Nine — and that show was so complex, so beautiful, that that’s saying something. No Star Trek has ever matched it — even come close — as far as depth goes.
Kira: If Cardassia is going to change, it will need people like you. Bajoran Rando: stabbity-stab-stab Kira: WHY? He wasn’t Dar’heel! WHY?! Rando: He’s Cardassian! That’s reason enough! Kira: ….no. No, it’s not. (intense character growth)
“The odds of—” “Yeah, Doc, okay, we get it,” Mal said, waving a hand. “Between slim and nothing. Thing is, me and my crew have bucked those odds before, and we can do it again.”
SciFi Month prompt #7 is, “What’s your favorite SF book read in the last year”, which is easy: Influx by Daniel Suarez. The ending was too “make this a movie, you guys, Michael Bay will make it EPIC”, but the majority of the book was absolutely gripping. Begin with an interesting-as-hell concept and then move into psychological drama, then close with action: great stuff.
It’s business as usual aboard Serenity: money is tight, jobs are few, and Mal just escaped death from one of the many uber-rich criminals he’s angered over the years. But now something’s come up that derails Mal’s business-as-usual attitude: Inara, the Companion who once used Serenity to conduct her business, is gravely ill from cancer and not expected to last the month. Shaken, Mal grasps at straws and begins looking for an up-and-becoming medical researcher who, rumor has it, had invented a revolutionary new approach to cancer treatment that might’ve been universally applicable. Only…he angered someone in the Alliance, and has evidently been dispatched a frozen prison-planet where the conditions are so harsh there are no guards. Determined to do anything he can do to save Inara, Mal and the crew sally forth to invade this ‘verse’s version of Alcatraz and see if they can’t find this miracle-working doc. In due time half the crew is in peril on the planet and half the crew is in peril in space, but this is Firefly and they are used to doing the impossible.
James Lovegrove’s books have been my favorite in the Firefly series, thanks in part to how he handles the characters: he has an excellent ear for their voices, how they might react in a situation, and his books are careful to give each person aboard the Serenity their time in the spotlight. Here, the ‘bruisers’ of the crew are all on the planet, where Zoe finds a way to earn the trust of the prison-colony in a way that Jeeves would appreciate, if not its violent approach. On the ship are left Kaylee, Wash, and River, the latter of whom is forced to step up and pilot the ship after a nasty run-in with an Alliance corvette disables Wash completely. There’s an interesting dynamic between Zoe and one of the women in the prison who later becomes an antagonist, sort of a “great and worthy opponent” situation. Lovegrove does an excellent job of moderating tension: there are no dull moments here, only periods of relief between spikes in intensity. I zoomed through most of it in one night! I can’t believe it’s been four years since I read in this series, but will be continuing in it. This is an especially good novel for those who are into the Simon/Kaylee and Mal/Inara relationships.
WHAT have you finished reading? Firefly: Life Signs. Just about, anyway.
WHAT are you reading now? American Carnage: on the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War, a history of the populist takeover of the Republican Party from the late 2000s forward. Not sure if I’ll commit to it yet, as it’s 600 pages. Based on the results tonight so far, it’s going to remain relevant.
WHAT are you reading next? Something SF.
Today’s SciFi Month prompt is a wild space, so I’m going to highlight some of my favorite SF ships.
The NX Defiant. Starfleet’s first warship, designed to beat the Borg. She was one of the stars of ST DS9. Spartan and militant! I love the Defiant, so much that I sometimes use this shot as my avatar on SFF forums.
The original Constitution-class Enterprise. No bloody A, B, D, or C. Or NX, for that matter.
The Firefly-class ship.
The Akira class, another Dominion War-era “warship”. I wrote fanfiction based on an Akira ship named Invictus, though I’ve lost it all over the years.
Ahhh, the Sovereign class. I will admit that in both this case and the Akira I’m biased by playing the game ST Armada in my youth. The Akiras were early-game necessities, the Sovs late-game battleships.
The MF Falcon. It did the Kessell run in twelve parsecs.
I like the flying spoon.
Romulan battleship, D’Deridex classAlthough I’d prefer to have a Vor’cha or a Negh’Var on my side, the B’rel class Klingon cruiser is the quintessential Klingon battleship. Mac’CHA!
I encountered Joseph Pearce over a decade ago via a podcast on literature: he is a man whose life was transformed through literature and the grace he experienced through it. His passion seeking the ‘good, the true, and the beautiful’ was infectious, and I’ve read him avidly ever since. Beauteous Truth is not an academic treatise on the three transcendentals, but rather a substantial collection of essays on literature, culture, meaning, and Catholicism. If that sounds dense and philosophical, for the most part it’s truly not: essays about the works of Tolkien, Chesterton, & Lewis predominate, and they’re quite accessible. Readers new to Pearce will have to accommodate themselves to his ardent love of wordplay (the man loves alliteration and puns). The book does not consist solely of essays: there are also book reviews and book forwards. Although the aforementioned trinity dominate the book, other frequent subjects are Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, Solzhenitsyn, E.F. Schumacher and a few Catholic poets. Given how long I’ve enjoyed Pearce’s works, there was no question of my delighting in this. I was especially glad to see Schumacher, because Schumacher is why I know Pearce at all: his treatment of the Catholic social doctrine insmall is beautiful led me to a podcast platform that also featured one of Pearce’s literary discussions. The book does suffer a bit if you read it all in one go, since the hundred or so pieces were written independently of one another and share similar quotations depending on the subject. If you’re a fan of Christian literature, especially Catholic, you’ll find a lot of worth here.
Today’s TTT is “Top Ten Covers with ______ on them”, and for the mystery noun is…BICYCLES. But first, teases!
“I’m guessing you didn’t slip a sedative into my drink and drag me all the way out into the boondocks and drape me from a tree just to discuss, I don’t know, philosophy. ’Less you have, in which case I apologize for misreadin’ the situation. It’s just, you don’t look the philosophy type.” (Firefly: Life Signs)
“Sometimes you just have to accept there’s nothing you can do. Things are what they are. Raging at them, fighting them—it’s pointless.” “Raging and fighting’s what I do. What I’ve always done.” “I know, and I’m asking you to be different now, Mal. For my sake, and for yours.(Firefly: Life Signs)
For this list I mostly used my /bicycles tag, but four on the bottom row are ones I’ve not read. There’s a goodreads list for this! The books are:
A Hole in the Wind. A climate scientist pedals around the US to talk to people about environmental changes they’re observing
Bikenomics
Wheels of Change, on bicycles and women’s progress
By the Book
Biketopia: Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction
The Summer Before the War
The Wheels of Chance. A funny story from H.G Wells, believe it or not.
And now, the SciFI prompt for today is “Future Cities”. Obviously, Foundation comes to mind, given its planet-city of Trantor, later the inspiration for Coruscant in Star Wars. Asimov — a man of New York — believed humanity would create hyper-urban environments, including underground. Metatropolis, a collection of short stories set in the next century or so, is all about humans having to adapt the built environment to the social collapse that may follow environmental issues, so it’s worth mentioning.
Reading Freely 