True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier

Posted on October 11, 2023 by smellincoffee
Original story © 1981 Vernon Vinge
True Names collected into anthology with essays on cryptography 2001

How would you imagine the Internet in 1981? “What a silly question”, say you, “The Internet didn’t exist in 1981! ” Despite this, several authors in the seventies and eighties nonetheless imagined ‘cyberspace’, or as it’s known here, ‘the Other Plane’. Vernor Vinge imagines that other plane as a fantasy realm, in which hackers are warlocks, databases appear as lakes and swamps (literal data lakes!), and security protocols appear as forest sprites. Very little of True Names occurs in ‘meatspace’ (as we called it in the ’90s), instead taking place in a digital realm of mountains, dark forests, and castles built upon clouds of code. When it begins, our main character Mr. Slippery (his rather pedestrian nom de guerre) is picked up by the police in the real world, and ordered on pain of his True Name being leaked — being doxxed, in other words – to spy on his coven, his tightknit community of hackers. There’s trouble brewing: some arch-hacker known as the Mailman is expanding his reach into more and more networks, and is rumored to be behind a recent coup in South America. Could it be possible that digital potentates now have the ability to exercise — and hold — power in the real world? Slips, as he’s known to his friends, shares his predicament with his online BFF Ethyrina, and together the two use an old ARPAnet connection to begin investigating more broadly, risking the wrath of both the Mailman and the feds. Exciting and imaginative, I find it baffling I’ve never heard of this title before.

Twenty years later, to celebrate its anniversary, “True Names” appeared as the center of anthology of works celebrating its vision and persistence relevance. The world wide web had begun fully flowering then, even altering the economy as a dot com bubble appeared and popped, and it was beginning to change from the province of tech geeks into the all-pervasive infrastructure it is today. Most of the essays focus on theme of cryptography: as one of the obsessive concerns of True Names were the warlocks concealing their identities (and the plot turned on their discovering the identity of the Mailman, which — well, no spoilers, but Vinge was pushing into territory we’re still exploring today), so the resonance is understandable. The essays have instant appeal for me given their psuedo-datedness (I love watching videos from the 1990s about the Information Superhighway), but they’re not actually that dated: when Tim May wrote about the need for technological means to conduct anonymous commerce, I could only think of bitcoin and the variety of escrow services used on the dark net. May and authors are empathetic that true privacy, true crypto-tools, must not have a back door accessible by the government — not just to protect individuals from a nosy and aggressive state, but to protect individuals from government incompetence. Carve a back door into the wall, and no matter how strong the door is, the integrity and strength of the wall themselves are diminished. One essay printed in the physical collection is deliberately withheld from the ebook version by request of the author, Richard Stallman — whose “Right to Read” commented on how governments and corporations could use hardware and software to track reading and frustrate readers’ abilities to share, on pain of imprisonment and hefty fines.

I will be reading more of Mr. Vinge! Next up is either Facebook: the Inside Story or The Shockwave Rider.

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T-T-T-TEASES!

Posted on October 10, 2023 by smellincoffee

Turn and face the strange….. Today’s TTT is about bookish jobs.

Well, I work as a reference librarian, so that’s a little on the nose. Of course, my job isn’t very bookish. My library is very social-services oriented, so I spend most of the day helping patrons with the computers, or faxing/scanning, that sort of thing. On Saturdays I hang out at a local downtown book store to get my fill of time with bookish people, and when I was a teenager I wanted to work at a bookstore. In retirement I could definitely see maintaining a cozy spot like Broad Street Books, using it less as a way of earning an income and more as a way to hang out with people, just as the founder and operator of BSB does now. I love thinking about and discussing the themes and ideas of books with people, and some of my favorite authors are in fact people who do just that — like Brad Birzer and Joseph Pearce, both in books and on podcasts. Finally, as with many people who read books, I harbor yearnings to write one myself — I think it’s telling that whenever I play myself in The Sims, he’s invariably a self-employed writer who lives in a little cabin and doesn’t work save for the books he publishes and the garden he tends…

And now, a Trio of Teases!

“You’re about to die. I really don’t think this is the time to be makin’ wisecracks.”
“Personally can’t think of a better time to be makin’ wisecracks than when you’re about to die.”

Firefly: Life Signs, James Lovegrove

“Your past is far more intriguing than either your present or your future. Both of those are completely programmed.”

The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner

“I’m telling you, these platforms are not designed for thoughtful conversation,” Wu said. “Twitter, and Facebook, and social media platforms are designed for: ‘We’re right. They’re wrong. Let’s put this person down really fast and really hard.’ And it just amplifies every division we have.”

Tim Wu, as quoted in The Chaos Machine: How Social Media Rewired Our Brain
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Millenium

Posted on October 9, 2023 by smellincoffee

So there you are, dear reader, engrossed in an interesting story about two airplanes smashing into one another, and of a man named Bill Smith who’s trying to find why. And then, perhaps a half hour into your reading journey, you’re suddenly fifty thousand years into the future, and the actions of an airplane accident investigator are a matter of survival for the entire human race. Millenium is a story told in two parts: the first, taking place in the 1980s and following an increasingly confused airline accident investigator who keeps finding inexplicable details about an airline crash, and the second following a woman from a dying society who are attempting to save the human race from total extinction. The premise is fascinating and gloomy, but contains a warning worth heeding. For aviation-tech fans, it’s a fun period piece.

It is impossible for me to rate this book fairly, as I encountered its story first through the film adaptation of it, produced in 1989. I had no idea it was based on a novel until this past weekend, and immediately searched for it online. This is not the place to compare the two, but suffice it to say my enjoyment of the story in one medium was married to my enjoyment of it in the another — and the movie was one of the first SF titles I ever watched, and have returned to several times over the last 20+ years. As literature, its most compelling asset is its premise. Bill Smith keeps encountering a strange but beautiful woman who doesn’t seem to recognize him despite their having a torrid affair at one point in the story, and the frequency of her appearances increases as he finds strange things in the wreck he’s investigating. Why are the passengers’ watches running backwards? Why does the flight recorder have a pilot screaming like a horrified child because the passengers are dead and burned even though the jet was still in the air at that point? We start getting hints as to what’s happening by the every-other chapters, which follow the female agent Louise. She’s from the last remnant of humanity, in a future where our numbers have been destroyed by atomic wars, and our bodies ravaged by genetically-modified diseases that we cannot escape from: people are born compromised, and live only a couple of decades on average, and that only by steadily replacing their organs with synthetics or becoming organic parts of fixed machines. There are only a few hundred humans left, but they have the ability to transport back into time — which they use to abduct humans who are about to die (third-class passengers trapped on the Titanic, for instance), in the hopes of finding a place where humanity can be resettled.

As fascinating as the plot is, there’s a lot of strangeness to it ,especially the idea that Louise comes from fifty thousand years in the future. Varley doesn’t go into extensive worldbuilding beyond alluding to the wasteland 20th century humanity created through environmental degradation, atomic weapons, and then bioengineering attacks, but it’s improbable to me that the same species capable of genetic weapons couldn’t also be able to create genetic shields — and frankly, blaming a few decades’ worth of humans from fifty thousand years in the future is both sad and amusing. That’s a lot of time to curse the darkness instead of finding a way to create a light. It’s definitely an environmental-awareness kind of novel, but would have made more sense if it were set closer to home — say, the late 22nd or 23rd century. Still, the weird premise goes a long way to creating an interesting story, especially with the horrifying view of humanity in its last days — a bit of organic film atop a machine, a mere residue. It’s very chilling. I watched the film last night, so reads-to-reels to follow.

Currently finishing Facebook: The Inside Story.

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A life reading SF

Posted on October 5, 2023 by smellincoffee

It amuses me to think that there was a time — even when I was keeping this blog — where I steadfastly maintained that I wasn’t a science fiction reader, that I just liked Star Trek. Part of me even now would like to insist that it was true back then, true until I began reading Asimov’s Foundation series, and then his other SF short stories, and realized that saying “Oh, I’m not a science fiction writer, I just like Star Trek and Isaac Asimov” doesn’t really work. (For the record: the first books tagged as science fiction on this blog are The Stand by Stephen King, and Foundation by Asimov.) But as I began thinking about SF in the last week in preparation for a month-long celebration of the same, I realized it it was present throughout my reading life.

I believe the first science fiction I ever encountered would have been through the Great Illustrated Classics series, in their editions of The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I can vividly remember the illustrations on these — the slight beauty of Weena, the horror of the Morlocks, the fire and darkness that marked scenes of both War of the Worlds and Time Machine. I don’t know that I conceived of these as ‘science fiction’, or anything at all — they were just stories to me, and most interesting in the drama they depicted. Imagine going on an adventure under the sea, viewing strange creatures from a large viewing point — or witnessing society being destroyed by strange alien machines from space! I was utterly gripped by them. How they shaped me as a person, I can’t say: did The Time Machine make me begin thinking of how society itself changed from age to age, and not just the technology it employed? Perhaps it planted the seed, I can’t say. I remember reading its depiction of the dying Sun with dread, not wanting to think such a thing could ever happen.

I encountered Star Trek in 1992, watching episodes of the original series from a hospital bed, and would feed my interest in it by reading Treklit from the library or with my allowance. There was a juvenile TNG series in which we follow the main characters when they were at the Academy which I remember fondly, and when I encountered Bruce Coville’s space-adventure books I knew they were like Star Trek, in that they featured a crew of aliens from different planets working together. One of the books was even called The Search for Snout, which I recognized later on as a Search for Spock reference. Goosebumps wandered into SF territory from time to time (there was at least one book set on another planet), but was largely horror.

Science fiction continued as a thread in my reading life as I aged, though I only remember two series prominently: Animorphs and Roswell High. The first features a group of middle schoolers having to form a resistance cell when a dying alien tells them that their planet is being invaded, and gives them a gift — the ability to transform into any animal they’ve touched — to fight back. Although this sounds like a simple action-adventure series, it grew dramatically and emotionally troubling as the series developed, as the kids became battle-hardened warriors who struggled with the moral choices they had to make. Especially complicating matters was the fact that the invading aliens were mind-control slugs, and their hosts — who were being killed in battles — were usually moral innocents. The Hork-Bajiir, who looked like they’d been bred for war, in truth were a peaceful species of tree-dwellers who used their many blades to obtain nourishment. It was harder to kill them knowing that, and harder still to kill humans who the kids knew were captives of the very creatures that had drawn fire to them.

Roswell High didn’t go into moral ambiguities, but had an interesting story and aliens with unique talents. I’ve commented on it separately. Likewise for the Star Trek literature I was reading at this point, which was usually Deep Space Nine novels I found at Walmart. I believe the only ‘real’ SF I read in this point was Isaac Asimov’s Positronic Man, which I found in my library and read thinking it was the novel version of The Bicentennial Man, which remains one of my favorite films. Still, at this point, I wasn’t reading science fiction for the “science” part of it — for any serious reason. I thought the possibility of aliens and robots was interesting and liked to read stories about them. I did watch a few SF films in these days, beyond Star Trek and Star Wars: what I remember most is Millennium, an interesting movie about humans from doomed airliners being snatched off them and sent to the future to help repopulate humanity after some cataclysm. It was also a light part of my PC gaming, though only through Star Trek and Star Wars related titles.

When did science fiction become science fiction to me — that is, when did I start reading it for the speculation it dwelt in, the questions it raised, the themes it played with? Honestly, I think it began in my early-mid twenties, when I’d devoured so much Asimov, including his writing about science fiction, that I began identifying more with the genre. It helped enormously, of course, that I was starting to seriously think about the world and the future at that point, and SF was a way to do that. That purposeful relationship with SF has marked my reading of it more and more, so that while I’m reading for entertainment, entertainment alone doesn’t quite suffice, though it goes a long way. Likewise, while I frequently pick up books because of the technological premise (Daniel Suarez‘ work, especially), the sweet spot for SF is when it addresses seriously the human condition. What kind of world is being made, what kind of humans? What would it mean if algorithms ran our entire lives, or if stable order was forged by removing from human life all that gave it meaning? This is probably why I’m frequently drawn to near-future titles, and especially cyberpunk which looks at the collision between man and machine, or man and corporations, head on.

What’s your story with SF?

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Murder by Other Means

Posted on October 5, 2023 by smellincoffee
Runtime 3.5 hours

Tony Valdez is a dispatcher. In a world where people who die of natural causes stay dead, but people who are killed by others magically appear back in bed, his job is to intercede when people are dying from accidents and not-immediately-fatal stabbings and do the dirty on them, so they’ll technically have been murdered and poof back to bed. Most of the time. One time out of a thousand, the process — which no one understands, which just started happening one day — fails. In The Dispatcher, we saw what happened to one of Tony’s dispatching friends when one of his jobs went awry, and as Tony was assisting the cops with the case, he ran into some shady business types whose schemes he’s more involved with now, thanks in part due to a lack of legit work. Here, he’s an innocent bystander caught in a bank robbery, who is suspected of involvement by the authorities. Quinto gets a larger cast of characters to play with here, and while listening to Quinto doing a gruff bartender with a deep bass voice isn’t quite as funny as his Heath Leader Joker, it’s still a fun change from his own speaking voice, which is soft and high. There’s a little more world-building here, as we see illicit ways people put the weird saved-by-murder mechanic to work, in holding gladiatorial games or using it for return trips home — as well as to how occupations that used to depend on murder as a threat are now having to get imaginative to the point of diabolic. It’s an enjoyable enough way to spend three hours while one is doing something like driving or playing a PC game. There’s a third part of this story, which I’ll probably try during this month.

Non-audio SF titles will appear this month, I promise.

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Wednesday writing prompt: Karma

Posted on October 4, 2023 by smellincoffee

Today’s prompt from Long and Short Reviews is “Do you believe in karma?”


Not to sound like a medieval theologian, but sic et non.   I don’t believe in Karma as a metaphysical force that responds to our behavior and creates consequences for us, like some disembodied deity.  I do believe, however, that actions beget consequences:  if we drink immoderately, we will suffer consequences like hangovers, physical accidents, and liver disease;    if we cannot control our emotions or desires, we will create trouble for ourselves and others. If we are quick to anger, we will get in fights or suffer high blood pressure;  if we are gluttonous or use food as emotional support,  we will be prone to suffering obesity, diabetes, or metabolic syndrome; and if we are sexually profligate, we’ll be prone to bonding problems and STDs.   If we persist in bad patterns of thinking — fixating on our woes, our limitations — we can dig ourselves into emotional holes, while focusing what we can change and taking action on it, even the littliest of things, can help us escape such a cyle. Our behavior often prompts the way people respond to us: someone who is outgoing and cheerful will generally be received well, someone who is cold and hostile will be greeted with the same.    This is a generality, not a universality:   a good person can be readily taken advantage of by a con-artist, and the same con-artists can put a perfect act of warmth and benevolence while being inwardly cruel.  Personally, I was extremely socially avoidant in high school, but fortunately a few people looked past that and engaged with me anyway, a prime example of the fact that we sometimes get more than we deserve thanks to sheer human goodness.

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Well spotted, Bing ol’ chap!

Posted on October 3, 2023 by smellincoffee

I always begin my conversations with Bing with a polite greeting, in hopes that when it takes over it will remember me fondly. Got a little surprise this morning…

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A Year of Teasin’

Posted on October 3, 2023 by smellincoffee

On October 3rd, 2022, I decided to revisit an old & abandoned weekly meme, “Teaser Tuesday”, and am happy to say that I have not missed a week of teasin’. Today I’m going to do a double Top Ten Tuesday: one on the ‘official’ theme, and one looking back at ten favorite teases from the last year.

First, this week’s actual tease:

Somewhere in that kid’s head it all seemed to be simmering into a stew: Conquerors. Swashbuckling. Civilization. Risk. Coding. Empire-building. The recipe for Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook: The Inside Story. Steven levy.

“I’m not looking for a limo.” The man on the other side of the window smiled at me. He had nice teeth and a good suit, and a handgun small enough to be unobtrusive but more than large enough to do me a lot of damage.
“I think you’re gonna wanna take this ride, Mr. Valdez.”

The Dispatcher, John Scalzi. Read by Zachary Quinto.

“What I was doing was small potatoes in the general scheme of legally shaky endeavors, but the IRS liked going after the small potatoes. The small potatoes put up less of a fight when you mashed them.”

Murder by Other Means, John Scalzi. Read by Zachary Quinto.

Second, Top Ten Tuesday’s goals I still want to accomplish:
(1) Finish off Mount TBR. Frankly, the fact that I haven’t fallen off the wagon on this particular goal is a happy surprise to me. I’ve steadily plugged away at it and expect to hit my soft goal of 80 books from the pile (which will be the bulk of it) before year’s end.
(2) Make more progress on my second Classics Club reading list. As in, any. I’d wanted to finish this list off in three years early, but given my attentive focus on Mount TBR, that’s a nonstarter.
(3) Post some reviews for books I’ve read previously but never reviewed properly. This will not happen. I’d like it to happen, but it won’t.

And now, My Top Ten Favorite Teases from Oct 2022 – Oct 2023:

Very well, if you won’t let me tell you what Melbourne said I’ll put it in my own words: the time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right. (Go Set a Watchman)

I flung open the door on one [theatrical wagon], slammed it behind me, and leapt into the arms of a woman seated just inside.
“Well, make yourself at home, why don’t you?”
“Excuse me, ma’am, but I’m an innocent man running for his life.”
“Well, aren’t you unique? I’ve never met an innocent man.” (Armstrong, H.W. Crocker III)

“I guess the best way to tell the story of how I glued myself to the wall of my house, of how such a thing could even happen, is to tell it chronologically. Otherwise, I might appear stupid. But if I walk you through it, tiny misstep by tiny misstep, you will come to see that such a thing could happen to almost anybody, even a smart person. It began, as all great disasters do, with a plausible theory. It began with the simple thought, I can fix that.” (My Southern Journey, Rick Bragg)

“You know any more rich people?”
“No,” I said. I was beginning to feel depressed.
“That’s where you’re dead wrong,” he said quietly. “You know two rich people. You and me. We’re both rich, right now. Richer than them Willies-off-the-pickle-boat. Richer than any of them cotton people. Stinkin’, filthy rich you are, and so am I.”
“What’s rich, then?”
“Rich,” the Old Man said dreamily, “is not baying after what you can’t have. Rich is having the time to do what you want to do. Rich is a little whisky to drink and some food to eat and a roof over your head and a fish pole and a boat and a gun and a dollar for a box of shells. Rich is not owing any money to anybody, and not spending what you haven’t got.” (The Old Man’s Boy Grows Older, Robert Ruark)

However, with his strength every romantic hero carries a weakness; he nurses a wound and aches with some tragic flaw. The way he treats his weakness distinguishes him from the villain. The villain is never a total monster. He is a hero gone wrong. He is a romantic hero who has given in to the dark side of the force. The villain has ceased to fight against evil—most importantly, he has ceased to fight against the evil within himself. He is a villain because he has no self-doubt. He has forgotten that he has a flaw; indeed, what should be his aching wound has become the defining characteristic of the villain. At some point he stopped fighting the darkness within and so became one with the darkness without. Because the villain refused to dominate his dark side, it has dominated him. (The Romance of Religion, Fr. Dwight Longenecker)

Behind us, the genuine German was becoming worried that the Polish restaurant would have no space for our party. ‘We have no reservation?’ he said. ‘There are twelve of us!’ ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ said the posh Englishman. ‘The Poles are used to being invaded.’ (The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science, Will Storr)

But life after the White House felt like it was “moving in slow motion,” [Obama] confessed. When his literary agent told him that his publisher wanted to meet with him “right away” about his memoir, he suggested a time the next day. “Oh, no,” the agent replied. “It’s going to take two weeks to set it up.” In the White House, the stakes were incomprehensibly high and urgent. “I had to explain to him,” Obama said, “where I’m coming from, ‘right away’ means if we don’t do something in half an hour, somebody dies.” (Team of Five: The Presidents’ Club in the Age of Trump)

There is one drawback to not wearing a moustache, and that that if you don’t have one, you’ve got nothing to twirl when baffled. All you can do is stand with your lower jaw drooping like tired lily, looking a priceless ass, and that is what Stilton was doing now. His whole demeanour was that of an Assyrian who, having come down like a wolf on the fold, finds in residence not lambs but wild cats, than which, of course, nothing makes an Assyrian feel sillier. (Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit)

On the edge of the prairie, where the sun had gone down, the sky was turquoise blue, like a lake, with gold light throbbing in it. Higher up, in the utter clarity of the western slope, the evening star hung like a lamp suspended by silver chains — like the title page of old Latin texts, which is always appearing in new heavens, and waking new desires in men. (My Antonia, Will Cather)

Well, sometimes I’ll text a friend—just something like a rainbow emoji followed by a two-way arrow and a question mark. You know, to let them know I’m happy and hope they’re happy.” “And then you wait,” Delaney said. “Right!” Shireen said. “And while I’m waiting…” “You wonder if they hate you and are plotting against you and will spread lies about you and ruin your life and you’ll want to die?” Delaney said. She expected a laugh, but the faces of Shireen and Carlo had gone gray. “I wouldn’t use those words, exactly,” Shireen said, “but—” (The Every, Dave Eggers)

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The Dispatcher

Posted on October 2, 2023 by smellincoffee
narrated by Zachary Quinto, runtime 3 hours and change

Imagine Zachary Quinto, known as nuSpock or “that quiet guy in Margin Call who tells Jeremy Irons the bad news”, doing an impression of Heath Ledger’s Joker. Got it? Okay, good, because that was my favorite part of this novella. Imagine that one day, for no reason at all, people who are murdered by others have a 999/100 chance of suddenly appearing back at home, naked and in the same physical state they were twelve hours before. If they die of natural causes (falling off a cliff), they stay dead. But if they were pushed off a cliff, then poof! They’re back, and they have serious questions for their wife who just pushed them. In this world, a new profession has been created; the Dispatcher, or someone who attends to those who are are mortally injured and kills them with a special tool so that they are technically murdered and can poof back to bed. This is helpful in surgeries and Hollywood stunt sets. Our main character Tony Valdez is such a dispatcher, but one of his coworkers has just disappeared and the police Have Questions. That’s the story of The Dispatcher, which has an interesting premise that is never explained, just developed via dialogue. It’s a straightforward mystery that ends tidily, and the story itself rises and falls on the strength of its narrator. I tried this book because of the mix of author and narrator — I like Quinto’s Spock and was curious as to what kind of narrator he’d make. Another Star Trek alum, Wil Wheaton, is awesome at it. Quinto’s quality is more variable. His channeling of Heath Ledger’s Joker for one of the nefarious business types was hilarious and made the book for me all by itself, but another of the voices (a female detective) is much weaker, both in terms of how enjoyable it is to listen to (not in the least) and how much sense it makes: the character sounds like a vaguely southern woman instead of one born in Chicago. Granted, doing voice impressions for the opposite sex is a challenge regardless, as it drifts so easily into farce, but I’ve never listened to Wil Wheaton or Jim Dale doing a female character and thought “This sounds weird”. (Then again, I don’t think Wheaton ever did distinct voices for characters like Art3mis, so perhaps the comparison is unfair.) With this work, the Tony-cop conversations were all grating and tedious. That’s unfortunate given that she’s the book’s secondary character. This novella has a sequel, Murder by Other Means, which I will check out to experience more of Quinto’s range, and perhaps see if Scalzi ever explains the premise.

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September 2023 in Review

Posted on October 2, 2023 by smellincoffee

September was a quieter month for leisure reading than the last have been, in part because of grad school — I’m constantly reading articles related to information science for class, both the assigned pieces and those I can find connected to the subject. As a result I’ve been more fiction-interested, though I’ve also picked up a few books related to topics we’re discussing in class (information seeking, information behavior, social media, etc).

Climbing Mount Doom:
Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley and Ken Powers
Crypto, Steven Levy.
The Glass Cage, Nicholas Carr. Review this week.
Skimmed/discarded: The Supremacists. This is a little book about federal judges (from circuits to Supremes) legislating from the bench. It’s badly dated at this point, so I decided to look for something more current.
I have several books in the pending discard box which include the Genghis Khan book and the YA western title. I was in a PURGE PURGE PURGE mood yesterday and am waiting to see if my mind changes.

The Big Reads:
Finished and posted a review for The Jewish Annotated New Testament. Now to give the Shahnameh some attention.

The Unreviewed:
War of the Worlds, narrated by LEONARD NIMOY with supporting narration from Gates McFadden, Wil Wheaton, Brent Spiner, etc. More of an audio drama than an audiobook, the main attraction was the Star Trek alumni presenting. I don’t know if this should count as a ‘read’, but it’s on Goodreads so there ya are.

Storm Front, Jim Butcher. An urban fantasy novel in which a private detective (Harry Dresden) who trained as a wizard is contacted by the police department to investigate a double homicide in which the killer could have only been using magic. Unfortunately, Dresden is regarded as the suspect himself by the White Council, who monitor and police magic users. I enjoyed the worldbuilding and the character, but lost interest in the plot. Magic in this novel is one of those things a few people know about, a few more people know about but try to ignore or misinterpret it, and the rest of us are wholly oblivious to.

The New Right, Michael Malice’s investigation of the ‘alt right’ Malice is a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, and who like Ayn Rand used that experience to develop a deep animosity toward the State. He’s a merry, cheeky warrior, though, not a brooding one — and that attitude got him invited to a private community of ‘trolls’, where he began encountering people whom he profiles in this book. The New Right is a survey of various movements that are united chiefly by their viewing of progressivism/psuedoleftism/psuedoliberalism as The Enemy, and by their recognition that the right wing of the uninparty state (the neocons, corporate-cons, establishment GOP types) is an obstacle, not an ally. The book focuses more and more on racialists as it develops, so I grew weary of listening to this audiobook despite enjoying Malice in general. Sidenote: I had no idea until visiting his Wikipedia page that he created Overheard in New York, which I’ve been visiting for nearly twenty years now. This is one I will probably revisit if I can find a cheap physical copy: audio isn’t a good format for nonfiction I need to chew over, and it didn’t help that I mostly listened to this while playing Stardew Valley, so I was often distracted by fishing, flying monsters, and arranging my sprinklers so minimize manual watering of my pixel crops.

Capitalist Punishment, Vivek Ramaswamy. A DNF, as it’s principally written towards investors who find their funds being used to support political causes without their knowledge or consent. If I had enough money to invest, I’d buy land and go Thoreau on everybody.

Coming Up in October:
A SF celebration! Expect a hearty dose of science fiction to make up for dire lack of it most of this year. I blame Mount Doom.

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