tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56279030182192943022024-03-13T23:18:35.776-07:00Happiness is Free SFReviews and thoughts on SF I have read, mostly available free online.D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.comBlogger957125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-2381689152893136012024-03-12T09:14:00.000-07:002024-03-12T09:14:29.305-07:00The Road to Roswell, by Connie Willis<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">This is a rom-com, a nice relaxing read. I think Connie Willis could have put more into it than that, but in the end it's pretty much a better grade of Hallmark movie (maybe a low-stakes romantic comedy with some big name actors between projects). The special effects would not be very difficult at all, and there's a lot you could do with an animated, very fast tumbleweed that would be fun to watch. A nice break from post-apocalyptic stories I guess, since reality has a way of catching up to those and that will never happen with alien stories. I think it's better than a 3 but it's not a 4.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6338110021">My Goodreads Review</a></span></p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-73693107654751077962024-03-03T18:57:00.000-08:002024-03-03T18:57:35.896-08:00The Lords of Uncreation, by Adrian Tchaikovsky<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">I absolutely loved this conclusion to the Final Architecture series, for some of the same reasons that other reviewers didn't like it so much. There's a lot of battle sequences--I think they are really exciting and Tchaikovsky's background shows (he shares in his bio that he's trained in stage fighting, and that experience clearly informs the battles). He manages to make something as ridiculous in scope as saving all sentient life in the universe scale down to something we can get our heads around.</span></p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The whole series is worth reading for the relationships between the crew of the Vulture God (a deep-space salvage tug). Through all the insanity they are deeply devoted to each other, and particularly to Idris. Idris is endearing for his over-the-top depiction--he's only got one job, that of saving the universe, and he is conspicuously and self-consciously terrible at anything else. He is the most vulnerable lead character that I remember reading, and the rest of the crew is symmetrically devoted to him. I am sad to come to the end of the story--I will miss these folks. I also think Tchaikovsky has effectively closed off the series so that we can truly miss them.</span><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6314537505"><br /></a></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6314537505">My Goodreads Review</a></span></div>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-67673019132756746462024-02-14T19:09:00.000-08:002024-02-14T19:09:49.951-08:00A Stranger In the Citadel, by Tobias Bucknell<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Like many others I thought this book was going in a YA direction at the start. The plot seems a bit on the nose for our anti-intellectual times. But the book takes a good dark turn when Lilith finds out that her father isn't the staunch defender of the faith that she thought, nor is her beloved mentor Kira. There is a sort of classic element here, in that it's when Lilith acts according to the principles her father upholds that she finds out what's really going on.</span></p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The book is pretty focused on protagonist Lilith's coming of age, so it's still very YA, but in a good challenging way. But the relationships in the story are mature. Not that kind of mature, you dirty-minded people! In fact, not that at all. A strong element in the book is that people who don't share goals or values end up having to cooperate, or tolerate each other. Those stories are very well drawn here, and it's not something you see that often in SF literature. Worth the time in my opinion, I got a lot out of it.</span><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6263830129" target="_blank"><br /></a></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6263830129" target="_blank">My Goodreads Review</a></span></div>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-32468803468942828862024-01-30T14:11:00.000-08:002024-01-30T14:11:39.769-08:00In the Lives of Puppets, by T. J. Klune<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">I picked this up on Goodreads' recommendation. What I'd say about this book is, it was fine. Interesting and sympathetic characters, a hero's journey, love and surrender and redemption. All fine. The characters are unfortunately one-dimensional, but they mesh together to produce fun reading. It wasn't challenging reading, unless you find alternative sexuality challenging, and really if you're reading SF award winners or anything outside of mainstream romance novels you should be over that by now. No actual sex. In the afterword Klune says he backed off of telling the story he wanted to tell with these characters, which explained this for me. I wasn't sorry I read it, but mainly it occupied time.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6220074400">My Goodreads Review</a></span></p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-72152357040096839492024-01-21T17:42:00.000-08:002024-01-21T17:42:14.900-08:00The Thing Itself, by Adam Roberts<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">I read this after reading his later philosophical SF novel, "The This". I think The This is better, but The Thing Itself is absolutely worth reading. The blurb does it no justice at all, it must have been written by someone who had the book described to them third-hand.</span></p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">In both The This and The Thing Itself Adam Roberts tries to bring philosophical concepts in by way of physical instantiations. So in The This there's a Dialectic trying to bring itself into being. In The Thing Itself we get to meet, well, the thing itself--Kant's "Ding An Sich". Because we perceive the world through our senses, what we know of things is what our senses report to us. This much was understood by Plato, and elucidated in his Cave analogy. Kant goes further in his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics to argue that our ways of moving in the world and categorizing it, like space and time, are also constructions out of our mental nature, and that the world does not necessarily work that way at all. Certainly advanced physics from Einstein through Feynman makes this clear--the world is stranger than we can imagine.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">What I can't quite get past with this one is that, in order to drive a plot, our protagonist and his nemesis get to SEE and interact with The Thing Itself, by way of an AI that can get past categories. This seems to me like any other advanced scientific instrument, like a particle accelerator or the James Webb Space Telescope. These tools are designed to go beyond our sensory and mental categories.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">But in order to interpret the output of these tools we have to bring it back to where our senses can apprehend it--false color, loose analogies, etc. There is, as Kant says, no way for us to "see" The Thing Itself. And our instruments don't really do that either, they are just built to examine things from different perspectives.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">So my philosophical hangup kept me from the thorough suspension of disbelief that you need in order to enjoy a novel. But I still loved it. No other SF novels have made me think so hard. Kudos to Adam Roberts for having the guts to write novels like this.</span><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6192681249">My Goodreads Review</a></span></div>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-74525544882465407902024-01-13T16:07:00.000-08:002024-01-13T16:07:56.859-08:00Parable of the Talents, by Octavia Butler<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">It is amazing to me how well this book holds up 30 years after it was written. Definitely in its predictions--climate change was a mere gleam in an Exxon scientist's eye when this came out. The MAGA prediction does not shock me as much as some--there's a pretty straight line from the Moral Majority to today's Christian Dominionism.</span></p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The way this book holds up is in the lesson Butler conveys. In her time she said "I write not to predict, but to warn". And we did not heed the warning. Now here we are. Her protagonist's blunt descriptions of the failure of our culture and its consequences will be read 100 years from now as a companion to history.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Another reviewer said, "This is one of the best books I have ever read. I do not want to read it again". I absolutely second that. This was one tough read. I put it down at one point for more than a month. But I am glad I finished it.</span><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6164780407">My Goodreads Review</a></span></div>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-28133065766845634502024-01-13T15:09:00.000-08:002024-01-13T15:09:07.405-08:00The This, by Adam Roberts<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">I am a jaded SF reader with a degree in philosophy so I have to say The This scratched all my itches extremely well. Yes, it's a difficult read, and those are very much not in style right now, but having come off reading Travis Baldree as an award winner I was really pleased to have come across Adam Roberts.</span></p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Here are two brilliant little side ideas I have not seen in other reviews:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Roberts uses two "cutouts"--men with no serious connections to anyone else, who won't be missed--in his story. SF often uses one, but he needed two. One protagonist is a fellow "orphaned" in his mid-twenties with his parents' death. Roberts notes that it's a hard time to lose parents. I've known people in this position and can say this is not acknowledged enough. So Rich (real name Alan, lots of play on this) is kind of drifting through life as a low-rent writer. Roberts captures the little elements of his life so well--preparing a microwave dinner and forgetting to eat it, and noting the careful place setting in a sad way. A perfect capture of a moment.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">He also has an extended segment where Rich is reading an interview of a psychologist who argues for the importance of people being together. He says that to be present to each other we must *smell* each other, even if that is subliminal. I have believed this ever since social media and remote meetings took off, and have seen very little on it.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">But of course Roberts' big project here is to tell a Hegelian story, and I believe he does so very successfully. This does not mean that at the end of it you will understand Hegel's dialectic, even though Roberts references it directly at the end. Rather, the story arc and how the plots come together is distinctly Hegelian. I would say he has to have understood Hegel much better than most who read it (certainly better than me) in order to pull this off.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">This got shortlisted for some minor award, but generally speaking there's not much reward for writing deeply thoughtful work now. I am glad I came across this.</span><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6164566367">My Goodreads Review</a></span></div>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-60808272810644197002023-11-27T08:13:00.000-08:002023-11-27T08:13:59.338-08:00Beginnings, by Kristina Ten<p><a href="https://www.fantasy-magazine.com/fm/fiction/beginnings/">Beginnings </a>is a gun fetish/fascism allegory, with a macho dad, and a directionless son. But the protagonists are two girls that become best friends, exploring their relationship. It's a sad tale but very well told and very innovative. I would have voted it higher in the Locus polls.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-30400962982812934592023-11-27T08:07:00.000-08:002023-11-27T08:07:37.520-08:00A Monster In the Shape Of a Boy, by Hanna Yang<p><a href="https://apex-magazine.com/short-fiction/a-monster-in-the-shape-of-a-boy/">A Monster in the Shape of a Boy</a> is a kind of folk tale. A boy finds himself face to face with a being that looks exactly like him. He is the son of a hunter of these monsters, but finds himself unable to kill it. His father fixes that. A fun story.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-6549030578687664842023-11-27T08:02:00.000-08:002023-11-27T08:02:14.428-08:00The Coward Who Stole God's Name, by John Wiswell<p>The privilege of omnipotence is explored in <a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/the-coward-who-stole-gods-name/">The Coward Who Stole God's Name</a>. Pretty good twist on the topic, giving social media a role. This was at least as good as D.I.Y., his other highly nominated story this year. I liked it.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-67641804979358427292023-11-26T17:59:00.000-08:002023-11-26T17:59:43.162-08:00D.I.Y. by John Wiswell<p><a href="https://www.tor.com/2022/08/24/d-i-y-john-wiswell/">D.I.Y. </a>is a story where justice is served. The magical metaphor is really pretty thin, it would be fine if the protagonist was an amateur scientist fighting science patents instead of magical ones. It is an enlightening and enjoyable read.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-11243266753670005842023-11-26T17:56:00.000-08:002023-11-26T17:56:13.435-08:00Master of Ceremonies by Frances Ogamba<p><a href="https://www.thedarkmagazine.com/master-of-ceremonies/">Master of Ceremonies</a> is an absolutely unique story. I have never heard of a microphone passed down through generations that acquires magic powers, so kudos for that. The metaphors are way out toward the strange and nearly nonsensical. Yet they clearly show the Nigerian cultural influence, so it was actually pretty cool to read. I do not know if I could say I liked it, but I'm glad I read it.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-53723906038916771312023-11-20T17:09:00.000-08:002023-11-20T17:09:06.016-08:00Douen, by Suzan Palumbo<p><a href="https://www.thedarkmagazine.com/douen/">Douen </a>is an ethnography as a story. Palumbo is from Trinidad and Tobago and tells the story in her vernacular English. We learn about child ghosts in this culture. I liked reading it, and that I have read it.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-90385746268932359862023-11-20T17:05:00.000-08:002023-11-20T17:05:42.641-08:00Dick Pig, by Ian Muneshwar<p><a href="https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/dick-pig/">Dick Pig</a> is gay porn, on the sadistic side but actual consummation not described. Kind of wrapped in a horror story, but maybe just weird not horrible. Guess it's worth 3 stars for ok writing.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-52366757969869677062023-11-20T17:03:00.000-08:002023-11-20T17:03:14.500-08:00Rabbit Test, by Samantha Mills<p><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/rabbit-test/">Rabbit Test</a> is a reproductive rights protest story. At first I was confused as to why at least part of this was set 70 years in the future. All the things in the story (e.g. state supervision of menstrual trackers) are going on now. The ending makes that somewhat more clear.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-73962546164304276812023-11-19T07:48:00.000-08:002023-11-19T07:48:06.142-08:00Incident at Bear Creek Lodge, by Tananarive Due<p>I read this story in The Wishing Pool and Other Stories--It's also in Other Terrors. I do not know what to make of a writer who does not finish her stories. Finishing stories is the hard part. At first I thought maybe it was an error in book production, because the story seemed cut off. But no, according to reviewers this is a pretty normal thing for her stories. The Incident in question never occurs, though the setup is pretty good. If you're David Foster Wallace you could get away with this, because his books contain so much other work it is worth reading them even if they don't resolve. Due is not there yet.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-25418760690649388222023-11-18T19:23:00.000-08:002023-11-18T19:23:55.554-08:00Solidity, by Greg Egan<p><a href="http://www.asimovs.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Solidity_Egan.pdf">Solidity </a>is a play-with-the-rules story. People, and some things, all of a sudden do not persist when they are not observed. They get swapped for other, sort of similar people and things. So all of a sudden you're in a somewhat different house, with similar but not related people. So the story has two tracks--the social handling, and the "scientific" handling. Our protagonist (a boy named Omar) keeps his cool and tries to start sorting things out. Most others do too, working out a way to live. There is a Solidity manifesto that people figure out how to persist. More magical than Greg Egan usually gets, this could be a Seanan McGuire story.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-91556960994883783132023-11-18T19:14:00.000-08:002023-11-18T19:14:07.534-08:00The Sadness Box, by Suzanne Palmer<p>The setting for <a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/palmer_07_22/">The Sadness Box</a> is America projected forward maybe 15 or 20 years, with worse climate. Saying that, you'd figure the setting itself is the sadness box. But no, it's a box built by a boy's father, a very detached inventor. It is an AI built to be paranoid, and turn itself off every time it's turned on. A useless machine. But the protagonist finds a way to get through to it. The boy just trying to live his life in this setting is sad enough. Oof.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-55582476531443582962023-11-18T19:09:00.000-08:002023-11-18T19:09:32.568-08:00We Built This City, by Marie Vibbert<p><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/vibbert_06_22/">We Built This City</a> is labor action on Venus. And what a nasty place to settle. Our protagonist really wants to do a good job, which in this case is to wash the windows of the settlement. Important, since the atmosphere pits it if the nasty stuff is left. But of course management does not understand. Predatory capitalism in a nutshell. Good stuff.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-28963010742957004772023-11-15T10:19:00.000-08:002023-11-15T10:19:14.277-08:00The Prince of Salt and the Ocean's Bargain, by Natalia Theodoridou<p><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/the-prince-of-salt-and-the-oceans-bargain/">The Prince of Salt and the Ocean's Bargain</a> is another fairy tale nominated for a Nebula. The setup for this one is that the ocean's salt becomes personified (through desire--wanting) and makes a bargain with the ocean to be embodied. Only a little of Salt is embodied, most is still dissolved in the sea. The embodied Salt is a new person, with new person wonder in an adult body, and he is discovered by a woman. The story is there life together, and then morphs into something else as the perspective of the story changes. So it's pretty good, if you like fairy tales. Good to know they can still be written, and don't have to be rewrites.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-47029372786194309082023-11-14T13:59:00.000-08:002023-11-14T13:59:04.080-08:00A Dream of Electric Mothers, by Wole Talabi<p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">This is quite a good story. Interacting with artificial versions of ancestors is a well-trodden path in SF, and is in the process of becoming not-SF. Talabi tries to add a little mystery to the technology with some kind of overdone jargon ("memristic", etc). But that is how he is connecting the spiritual practices of the protagonist's country, and that intent comes across clearly, so for me it's forgivable. Describing the feeding of all of people's available data into a large language model with a particular kind of training would be believable, right now, but would lose that cultural connection.</span></span></span></p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">I was very interested by how the country manages interaction with that entity. It is not a public tool. It is consulted by representatives at need. And part of the tension of the story is whether or not it is really needed. In the end, the Electric Mother AI helps to answer that question in an artfully indirect way. Very much worth reading.</span><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5976946487"><br /></a></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5976946487">My Goodreads Review</a></span></div>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-7271207589643886162023-11-14T13:34:00.000-08:002023-11-14T13:34:30.195-08:00Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness, by S. L. Huang<p><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/huang_12_22/">Murder by Pixel</a> reads like a current Wired Magazine article. I'm only halfway sure it isn't one. The actions described (digital harassment until the target commits suicide) happen now. The bot doing the harassing is not overly sophisticated, except in that it is able to penetrate various devices to deliver messages to the target. I think the awards committees knew what they were doing, and as such believe that the characters and specifics were made up. Why present this as SF, rather than, say, doing some reporting and finding real instances? </p><p>Perhaps it reads like that because it was probably written 18 months ago. It does reference Chat-GPT3.</p><p>It's an interesting take, I'm just not sure how it could be speculative, even then. Cory Doctorow says that he writes SF by looking at the cutting edge of what is possible now. I think perhaps Huang missed the edge and is further back.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-74704883355859087082023-11-13T12:08:00.000-08:002023-11-13T12:08:51.404-08:00Two Hands, Wrapped In Gold, by S. B. Divya<p><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/two-hands-wrapped-in-gold/">Two Hands, Wrapped In Gold</a> is a fable. It's told in S. B. Divya's plain-spoken style (I like it), but it's probably the most literary thing I've read by her. The protagonist is gifted (cursed) with the touch of gold, like King Midas. His mother figures out how to manage it, so he can sort of manage with it as a gift if everyone is careful. He finds love, but it's a complicated story of immigration and confidence. Well worth reading.</p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-56441639595877550542023-11-12T12:59:00.000-08:002023-11-12T12:59:50.224-08:00If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You, by John Chu<p>I found <a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/if-you-find-yourself-speaking-to-god-address-god-with-the-informal-you/">If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You</a> interesting in several ways. First, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_of_Finland">Tom of Finland </a>reference made me go look it up. The intersection of bodybuilding and Asian culture was a unique one for me. It's very well written and made me aware of aspects of Asian American culture (and hatred towards it) that I had not encountered before. Good stuff.</p><p><br /></p>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5627903018219294302.post-57158066051531168552023-11-12T12:51:00.000-08:002023-11-12T12:51:53.545-08:00What Moves the Dead by Ursula Vernon<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">I'm going to give it a 3.5 and round up. This is a pretty good story as retellings go. If you're not familiar with the original story then the pretty clear telegraphing of the root cause of the Fall of the House of Usher takes away from it a bit. Recasting the protagonist as a non-binary soldier is a solid move. So overall I enjoyed it.</span></p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">So this is the first in a series. Where else is Easton going to go? We shall see.</span><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5971913424">My Goodreads Review</a></span></div>D.S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/12749694063481402144noreply@blogger.com0