Star Trek: Savage Trade

Posted on May 27, 2024 by smellincoffee
“We took the fight to them, Kirk! We truly did! I haven’t felt this exhilarated since Trafalgar.”
“Sir, you died there.”

When Captain James Kirk ordered the Enterprise to find out what happened to the crew of a science outpost that had gone missing, doubtless he never expected to help George Washington with a political revolution, or fight at the side of Admiral Lord Nelson. These things do have a way of happening aboard Kirk’s ship. Those familiar with the original series may remember a certain episode called “The Savage Curtain”, which I’d describe as particularly weird episode if not for the fact that TOS excelled in absolutely inexplicable plots by our standards. Remember the time Apollo grabbed the Enterprise and tried to get the crew to worship him? Or the time Kirk and company found a planet where a conquered people regarded Freedom as a worship word and had both the Declaration of Independence and an American flag? Anyhoo, in “The Savage Curtain” we met a race called the Excalibans, and they recreated heroes and villains from Earth’s past in an effort to understand morality; here, a small number of them are attempting to flee their collective, and had taken refuge at the science center where they were being studied, at least until the space pirates showed up and ruined everyone’s day. Savage Trade is that story, and while it’s not a serious or intense, it’s absurd fun that might hit a reader’s sweet spot in the right mood.

The Excalibans have some interesting quirks: for one, these ‘refugees’ as they describe themselves can no longer shift into their original forms, and the more they spend time as the historic personages, the more human they feel. Their bodies continually maintain themselves as their historic appearances, and if they remain in living quarters for some time then those quarters themselves will become appropriate to the character: quills appearing in George Washington’s room, for instance, woolen curtains over a viewport elsewhere. After Kirk rescues everyone and returns back to the station, he finds a Vulcan diplomatic figure waiting for him — someone from Starfleet Command who has been given authority over all Federation and Starfleet activity in this system. Turns out the Excalibans hadn’t just found the station: they were deliberately put there so they could be studied and their appeal for Federation citizenship evaluated, and there’s a careful game being played because the other Excalibans are rather nasty creatures. It’s generally fun, featuring Spock and Galileo talking in Latin, Scotty drinking Scotch with James Watts, and Admiral Lord Nelson entertaining Kirk’s crew with stories of the old days. I enjoyed it for the most part, especially for absurd sentences that I’d never expect to read, but I must re-iterate that this is a mood kind of book: if you go into it looking for a serious science thriller like Christopher L Bennett’s, or an intense political and character drama like David Mack’s, you’ll be disappointed. This is more “Sometimes, Number One, you just have to embrace the absurd” kind of storytelling. As it happened, I was in just the mood for it.

Highlights:

The man straightened up, stared a crystal-clear, gray-eyed stare at Kirk, and removed his hat. He made a partial bow. “I am George Washington.”
“The George Washington.”
“I am the president of the United States of America.”
“Former president,” Kirk replied. “For me it does not seem that way,” the other replied. “In my own perception, I am president still.” “
We’re talking about the George Washington from the American Revolutionary War?” “Captain, we both know that is an impossibility.”
“Then who or what are you?” “Perhaps we should discuss this another time, outside of this accursed nebula, and face-to-face—”

When Benjamin Franklin spoke to Spock, he could tell his first officer was quite intrigued.

Also, that’s why poor Marcel Proust is no more. He became incensed during a card game and attempted to draw a weapon on Bill Hickok. Hickok had equipped himself with a phaser in addition to his Colt 1851 revolver. He swears it was merely for defensive purposes.

Wisdom and mercy are the fruits of logic. When there is discord, you will find irrationality at the bottom of it.

“Quantum physics, she is whimsical,” Galileo replied. “Effervescent and beautiful, with a smile like the Mona Lisa. Leonardo, he senses this. His true mistress is the universe, you know!”

“Vulcans gossip?”
“It is logical to provide oneself with as much information as possible.”

“We took the fight to them, Kirk! We truly did! I haven’t felt this exhilarated since Trafalgar.”
“Sir, you died there.”

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Sassy galaxies & road-tripping the solar backwoods

Posted on May 24, 2024 by smellincoffee

This week has seen a little action on the Science Survey, as I read titles for the Local Astronomy and Cosmology & Astrophysics sections.

First up, The Big Backyard is a short look at the outer reaches of our own solar system, drawing on the New Horizons mission to offer a new look at Pluto, the Kupiter Belt, and the Oort Cloud after a preliminary section on the solar system’s formation that explains why the distant backyard of the solar system is the way it is. Most of the interest for me came in the Pluto information, because it’s a seriously interesting little ice-ball in space. The author refers to it as a binary planet along with Charon, in a brazen dismissal of IAU orthodoxy. Pluto has a lot more going on than previously expected: it evidently still has an active core, one that’s possibly creating new mountains, and there’s reason to believe that a layer of liquid water exists under its crust. When it’s close to the sun, as it is now, it has a bit of atmosphere — enough for haze and winds. It’s presently moving further away from the Sun, and as it does its atmosphere will become frozen ice on the surface. All very interesting stuff! If you’re interested in the New Horizons mission itself, last year I read Chasing New Horizons, on the decades-long process of getting a proper Pluto survey done. Interestingly, the volume is illustrated with art, not photographs.

After this I read The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy, by Moiya McTier. This is a history of the Milky Way delivered in a personal voice, with mixed levels of anthropomorphizing: Milky describes neighboring galaxies in the local groups as if they were friends, rivals, or barely tolerable neighbors, but also reiterates she doesn’t have eyes to roll, that sort of thing. There’s more anthropomorphizing than not: Milky relates to the stars as children, and talks about black holes as though they were pockmarks or scars: the big one at her center as a source of great internal trauma. (There’s even a little suicide intervention footnote at the end of that chapter.) McTier, who is pursuing an interesting speciality of combining science and folklore, deserves credit for approaching this field in a unique way: instead of an imposing text with tables and graphs and the like, this is a very approachable way to learn about the formation of the galaxy, the importance of dark matter in the same, why galaxies take different shapes, the life cycle of different kinds of stars, and so on. She also highlights a number of astronomers who have gotten overlooked by pop-history approaches to astronomy that hit a few big names. The limit of the personal approach, though, is the person: Milky struck me as frequently vain and conceited, generally deriding humans unless we were telling stories or studying her. (I was reminded a little bit of the version of Joan Crawford in Mommy Dearest…) Of course, people are a matter of taste: what I regard as obnoxious others might find charming. I’ve certainly been friends with my share of boors! This is certainly a novel approach to science: if you’re curious about the stars but spooked by straight-edge approaches, An Autobiography may be just the ticket for you. Personally, I enjoyed the referesher but think I’ll just re-watch the original Cosmos again. (…I was listening to its soundtrack while reading both of these, so I’m in the mood.)

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The Rosie Project

Posted on May 23, 2024 by smellincoffee

Imagine if Sheldon Cooper wrote a memoir about falling in love, and you’ll have something like The Rosie Project. Don Tillman is a genetics professor with a rigorously scientific approach to life, who has standardized even his meals to simplify shopping. He has difficulties navigating social situations, however, and reading people’s emotions. Despite this, he’s developed a few close friendships, and one casual remark from an aging friend — the observation that he would make a great husband — launches him on a new goal, The Wife Project. It will change his life, though not in the way he expects. Being a man of science, he proceeds in a logical matter — by establishing parameters, creating a questionnaire that will determine if a woman falls outside of those parameters (if she smokes, for instance, or can’t perform basic arithmetic), and then distribute said questionnaires to interested parties. Then a woman appears in his office who he mistakingly believes is an applicant, and life begins taking him in unexpected directions. The Wife Project is soon sidelined by another one altogether, a hunt inspired by his new friend Rosie that will take the pair of them across the world. The Rosie Project is a sweet but fun novel, in which there’s a steady stream of accidental humor caused by Don’s unusual take on situations, and complications created by his often-unexpected responses. The novel is largely one of personal growth, as his friendship with Rosie and the joint project they’re working on force him out of his very comfortable routines and structure — and Don’s perspectives on others as he grows, coupled with his readiness to share his pointed opinions, also forces growth and change from the other characters. The novel illustrates how we can deprive ourselves by not being open to new experiences, or by boxing ourselves in with labels and judgment, and Rosie herself is unpredictable enough that the reader has almost as much fun getting to know her as Don does. What I most appreciated, though, was that this isn’t some Grease-esque story in which Don transforms himself to be loved: while he does change a bit (getting out of ruts and such), he finds joy in using his quirks and pecuilar strengths to connect meaningfully to others. Rather tempted to continue the trilogy, but I’ve a serious NF deficit to remedy first.

Coming up: SPACE!

Highlights:

“So, did you have fun?” asked Gene. I informed him that his question was irrelevant: my goal was to find a partner and Rosie was patently unsuitable. Gene had caused me to waste an evening. “But did you have fun?” he repeated.

Hurtling back to town, in a red Porsche driven by a beautiful woman, with the song playing, I had the sense of standing on the brink of another world. I recognized the feeling, which, if anything, became stronger as the rain started falling and the convertible roof malfunctioned so we were unable to raise it. It was the same feeling that I had experienced looking over the city after the Balcony Meal, and again after Rosie had written down her phone number. Another world, another life, proximate but inaccessible.

“Overview, overview. Sunday to Wednesday. One sentence per day. Leave out eating, sleeping, and travel.” That made it easy.
“Sunday, Museum of Natural History; Monday, Museum of Natural History; Tuesday, Museum of Natural History; Wednesday—”
“Stop, wait! Don’t tell me Wednesday. Keep it as a surprise.”

By the time Rosie came back, I had performed a brain reboot, an exercise requiring a considerable effort of will. But I was now configured for adaptability.

Rosie put her arms around me and kissed me. I think it is likely that my brain is wired in a nonstandard configuration, but my ancestors would not have succeeded in breeding without understanding and responding to basic sexual signals. That aptitude was hardwired in. I kissed Rosie back. She responded.

Walking back to the hotel, I realized that I had behaved in stereotypical male fashion, drinking beer in a bar, watching television, and talking about sports. It is generally known that women have a negative attitude to such behavior. I asked Rosie if I had offended her. “Not at all. I had fun watching you being a guy—fitting in.” I told her that this was a highly unusual response from a feminist but that it would make her a very attractive partner to conventional men.
“If I was interested in conventional men.”

I was relieved. The basic male-male tough advice protocol had been effective. It had not been necessary to slug him.

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WWW Wednesday

Posted on May 22, 2024 by smellincoffee

WWW Wednesday is a meme hosted by Taking on a World of Words, in which participants must answer these questions three: WHAT is your name? WHAT is your quest? WHAT –

…..Oh, sorry. It’s about reading. The questions:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

I’m currently reading The Rosie Project, in which a man with Aspergers attempts to find Ms. Right. It’s a bit like a romantic memoir penned by Sheldon Cooper; just swap out the string theory for genetics. I’m also reading Solarflare, a collection of solarpunk stories. I recently finished reading SHELLI and The Shadow of War, one a new SF release with an android detective, and the other a novel depicting the Cuban missile crisis. I’m not positive about my next read, but I’ve been neglecting nonfiction for a bit (this is very unusual, nonfiction is usually 70% of my reading) so probably something in that direction. Perhaps Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, on the mental health of Gen Z & Gen Alphas.

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The Shadow of War

Posted on May 22, 2024 by smellincoffee
“We can all expect that our next step shall lead to a next step by the Soviets. In that event, it is the fourth and fifth steps that we should all be worried about, because by that time none of us will be around.”

JFK’s presidency is off to a… start. Dismissed as a greenhorn who has no idea what he’s up to, he’s just had to eat crow on the national stage after admitting to the fiasco that was the Bay of Pigs invasion. Sure, it was the CIA who dropped the ball — they were probably distracted by murdering children in the third world somewhere — but it’s JFK who has to take the blame,. When new crises arrive, he’s determined to prove he’s man enough for the challenge. Kruschev, who came to power the dirty way, knows he has to deliver results to maintain his standing in the Party — and that means asserting the Soviet Union’s interests in an aggressive way. Although the Berlin issue put things on edge — American and Russian troops eying one another nervously, any misinterpretation of intentions a possible spark for global war — photographs have just come across his desk that indicate the Russians are building missile bases a stone’s throw from Florida. Kennedy and Kruschev are both staring down one another, but also the firebrands within their ranks who insist that things need to be pushed further — chests to be beaten harder, flags waved with more ferocity. It’s a matter of honor, neveremind that it would lead to the Earth being reduced to a smoking, glowing cinder.

Having not experienced the Cuban missile crisis except through fiction (most memorably, in Mr. Feeny’s lecture on it in Boy Meets World), I don’t know how well Shaara captures the growing tension of those days. Certainly tension is increasingly present in this book, especially when a ship is being confronted by the US Navy with intent to board it, and again when a recon plane is shot down over Cuba just as things are at their most tense. What detracts from this is that 90% of the book is dialogue: JFK and RFK talking to one another and their advisors, Krushev talking (or arguing) with his advisors. I’m fairly certain this book has Shaara’s most high-profile viewpoint characters to date, with only token contributions from non-world leaders. A college professor gives us intermittent civilian takes on the growing crisis, and during the blockade we step aboard the USS Joseph P. Kennedy, facing down an approaching freighter and knowing there’s a Soviet sub on the way. The book has obvious relevance today, amid growing American participation in a war inaugurated by Russia aggressively pushing back against what it perceives as aggression. In Kruschev’s day, that was missiles in Turkey, aimed at it: today it’s a coup-installed regime in Ukraine supported by the NATO powers. I appreciated that Shaara gave the Russians a voice here, and allows Kennedy to realize that yes, missiles in Cuba are a bit like missiles in Turkey, and instead of shoving knives at people’s throats and expecting them to cower, we should back up, have a drink, and look for a solution that doesn’t involve expanding the war.

In short, The Shadow of War was enjoyable if not captivating. The heavy role of conversation (again, 90% of the book) kept it from being as exciting as his more conventional war stories. It opened my eyes to some things I hadn’t appreciated, like the Berlin crisis. Shaara opens and closes with nonfiction brackets that introduce the context and look at the later ramifications, though, which makes it extremely accessible to readers who don’t know much or anything about the crisis.

Related:
The Lunar Missile Crisis, Rhett C. Bruno & Jaime Castle. JFK in space.
Star Trek: Brinkmanship. The Cuban Missile crisis in space.

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Science fiction book bingo?

Posted on May 21, 2024 by smellincoffee

Today while visiting a new-to-me blog, Dragon Rambles, I saw a link to a bookish game called Science Fiction Book Bingo. It’s a bit like a scavenger hunt or a reading challenge.

Now, what can I claim?

Small Beginnings: Start a series. The Eighth Continent, Bruno & Castle. May use this one for Better Together, actually.
Beep Boop: A book with a robot or AI: Shelli, David Brode.
Good Things Come in Small Packages. The Downloaded, Robert Sawyer. 183 pages.
All Tied Up: a tie-in novel. Plan 9 from Outer Space.
You are Here: A book with a location in the title. Lunar Missile Crisis.

Based on my current & planned reading, I’m pretty sure I can knock out the fifth column.

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Plan 9 from Outer Space: Ed Woods attacks!

Posted on May 21, 2024 by smellincoffee

I love watching strange science fiction movies from the fifties and sixties, especially the B+ movies with outlandish costuming, strange set design, and bizarre characters. Ed Woods’ Plan 9 from Outer Space delivered all those in spades, along with genre confusion (we have aliens, but let’s add some vampires, too!), transparent physical effects, and some of the worst line deliveries in human history. For those who have somehow missed this cinematic misasterpiece, the movie involves a group of aliens attempting to contact the Earth to tell them not to weaponize a new element, because it will lead to the entire universe blowing up. Because Earthers don’t seem to be hearing their messages, the aliens are now resurrecting the dead to force Earth governments to acknowledge them. Plan 9 from Outer Space is Bret Nelson’s attempt to turn the convoluted plot into a coherent story, while at the same time papering over the movie’s visual inconsistencies and general weirdness. To this end, he’s largely successful, though given the raw materials there’s not a great deal he could do. This book is aimed at fans of the movie, who love its campy awfulness and who will take special pleasure in spotting the parts of the novel that are doing their damnest to make the story work. The stilted dialogue between the aliens and humans, for instance, is explained by the fact that there are multiple layers of translation involved, and that the human translation machine is a rickety prototype: similarly, dramatic changes in the time of day between scenes is handwaved by characters losing track of time, or things simply becoming mysteriously darker in the presence of an alien spacecraft. This isn’t a real explanation, more of a handwave, but if this story were completely rewritten to be sensible, it wouldn’t be fun at all. Of course, the switch in mediums does some work by itself: human dialogue that sounds dreadful on screen because of its delivery can be prettied up in the mind of the reader: in our heads, the intonation and cadence are up to us! I enjoyed Nelson’s treatment of Plan 9: it covers up some of the worst seams of the original while not completely transforming it into something unrecognizable. I would definitely recommend watching the movie first to most appreciate Nelson’s glow-up work.

Disclosure: I was provided a copy of this via Booksirens in exchange for a fair review. The book will be released in October. Will you be prepared for…..Grave Robbers from Outer Space?!

Related:
Before Plan 9: Plans 1-8 from Outer Space, various authors

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Top Ten Authors I Want Another Book Out of

Posted on May 21, 2024 by smellincoffee

Today’s TTT is authors we’d like another book from, either because they’ve stopped writing series or they’ve inconveniently died. But first, a tease!

Hurtling back to town, in a red Porsche driven by a beautiful woman, with the song playing, I had the sense of standing on the brink of another world. I recognized the feeling, which, if anything, became stronger as the rain started falling and the convertible roof malfunctioned so we were unable to raise it. It was the same feeling that I had experienced looking over the city after the Balcony Meal, and again after Rosie had written down her phone number. Another world, another life, proximate but inaccessible. (The Rosie Project)

“What about this part at the end?” he said, then read aloud. “‘Can your heart stand the shocking facts about grave robbers from outer space?’ That’s monster movie stuff. His credibility flies out the window.” (Plan 9 from Outer Space)

(1) Neil Postman. Postman was a critic of how technological shaped society around itself, often to destructive ends: would that he were alive to witness what cellphones and social media have done to us! Reading Postman at an early age is why I didn’t buy a smartphone until 2017.

(2) Bernard Cornwell’s Copperhead series. He wrote three novels about a northern lad who found himself fighting in the Confederate army during the American Civil War, hired to guard a wealthy man’s son.

(3) Carl Sagan. Sagan would have been thrilled to witness the landing of the Curiosity rover and the James Webb telescope, and I have to wonder what the author of The Demon Haunted World would have made of internet-driven nonsense.

(4) Isaac Asimov. Asimov wrote about everything under the rainbow. I’m sure he’d be amazed to see the way computers & AI have grown since his death in 1992.

(5) C.S. Lewis. As with Postman, his thoughts on how society has changed so radcially would be interesting.

(6)) Will and Arial Durant. Autthors of magisterial The Story of Civilization series, comprehensive histories of different eras that covered art, politics, society, economics, intellectual life, etc. They stopped at The Age of Napoleon.

(7) Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. A writer of urban fantasy, Atwater-Rhodes published her first novel In the Forests of the Night at age 15. She may be the reason I know “The Tyger”. The books I’ve read by her have all concerned vampires.

(8) Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera, whose lovely The Awakening of Ms. Prim charmed me with its mix of philosophy and cozy village conversation.

(9) Anita Amirrezvani, who has written two historical fiction novels set in Persia. They both incorporated Persian poetry and literature into them, introducing me to the Shahnameh

(10) . S.E. Hinton. She actually wrote a novel for adults fifteen+ years or so ago. I loved her teen books growing up.

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SHELLI

Posted on May 20, 2024 by smellincoffee

Jake August is a young agent of Homeland Security who has just been welcomed into a special subsection devoted to investigating crimes committed by replican- errr, synthetics. Synths have been integrated into society as intelligent, humanoid tools oriented toward a particular purpose, and it appears that one of them has just crushed the heart of a US senator — quite literally. A synth shouldn’t be able to perpetuate deliberate murder: at most, his new department has dealt with synths which were malfunctioning because of technical issues — like a cleaning synth deciding that the easiest way to keep the house clean was to remove the elements (i.e. the humans) that kept cluttering it up. And yet, as August and his new partner Shelli (named for Mary Shelley, naturally) discover, this latest murder was no accident. The senator was investigating the unsanctioned manufacture of experimental synths whose functionality went far beyond those approved by regulation, and it appears someone wanted her out of the picture August has never even fired a gun before, but now he’s a field agent who will soon be in trouble well over his head.. The deeper the investigation goes, the more trouble Shelli and August find for themselves — and that trouble is coming from behind them, too, because higher ups in the government aren’t too enthused about the direction things are going, and as the story develops Jake has the sense that he can’t trust anyone — perhaps not even Shelli, for whom her Purpose is more important than anything else, like the law. What begins as a detective story with a cool premise turns into a techno action thriller that touches on themes like technohumanism and distributed intelligences. Given Shelli’s attributes — a machine-logical mind and a physical form that is arrestingly attractive– I immediately voiced her with Jeri Ryan, and I have a strong suspicion that Brode was drawing on her Seven of Nine, as well: she has two lines[*] that are word-for-word repeats of Seven’s dialogue. Granted, it could be a coincidence, but I choose to believe Brode is a major Trekkie and working in subtle references. This was a cool find: not groundbreaking conceptually, but it’s a fun action thriller in a SF setting.

Coming up: the Cuban missile crisis and a romantic memoir as though written by Sheldon Cooper.

Related:
Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, Robots of Dawn, Isaac Asimov. Very different era & tone, but this also features a human-android pairing, Elijah Baley and R.Daneel Olivaw. Listened to a superb audio drama based on it back in college.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Phillip K. Dick. Human detective tracking replicants.
Upgrade, Blake Crouch. Also touches on transhumanist themes.

[*] “I am undamaged,” and “Doctor, I require your assistance.”

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Amy ain’t no spice girl

Posted on May 18, 2024 by smellincoffee
“I don’t write songs to be famous. I write songs because I have to. I have to make something good out of something bad.”

Back in 2004 or 2005 I heard NPR reviewing a new album, “Frank”, and after hearing samples from it I immediately became a fan of its creator, Amy Winehouse. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t resonate with any of the themes in her music — I’d never fallen in love at that point, never yet had my heart broken, never been used, etc. But I was overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the music, and I’ve listened to her avidly since. Tonight I watched the biopic of her life, framed by the relationship that drove her toward self-destruction (literally: she died at age 27 in 2011), and was thoroughly impressed. Marisa Abela nails her accent, costumes, and mannerisms on stage, and I say this as someone who has probably spent more hours watching her video performances than is healthy. (When it comes to certain artists, like Amy, Rachael Price, and Morgan Wade, it’s not enough to listen to them sing: I want to see them sing, to see the emotions playing on their eyes and faces and body language.) In scenes that are more creative, Abela proves several times to be a powerful emotive actress, especially when singing about a lost love in the face of her husband declaring to her that they were codependent and he was moving on. There were some great shots, most notably the last one which I won’t mention because fans of Amy know perfectly well what happens when that beautiful songbird is ascending into golden light and she’s going upstairs, her broken for the last and fatal time. Anyway, if you like Amy or music at all, go give it some love. I was one of two people in the theater during my showing, and the other was there at my invitation. Anyway, here’s the real McCoy — the song whose sound made me immediately begin looking for more of her. Planning on reading Amy Winehouse in Her Own Words soon.

Oh, and here’s her last writer Mark Ronson doing kinda of a tribute to her:

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