Dream with Our Eyes Open

The Earth is ruled by the authoritarian Mandate, which like all such governments is constantly alert for threats to its stability. This extends to its scientific research: although the Mandate has explored space and discovered a number of exoplanets (a few of which have some form of life), it still insists that scientific discoveries must support the philosophy of the Mandate, which holds that human beings are the pinnacle of creation and that other life forms must all be in the process of striving to achieve that same state of being.

Ecologist and xeno-ecologist Arton Daghdev chafes against both these mental manacles and the Mandate in general. Some time before the story opens, he becomes part of a cell of would-be revolutionaries. After discovery of his improper views and rebellious actions, he is sentenced to what is meant to be a short life assisting research on the planet Imno 27g, casually known as Kiln for the strange clusters of pottery buildings scattered over its surface.

Life as a prisoner on Kiln within the research enclave is brutal in all the ways any such prison can be, when the prisoners are nothing but human-shaped machinery to accomplish the goals of their jailers. The Mandate's leadership has absolute control over who among their prisoners lives or dies, and if anyone should harbor the intent to escape, the environment outside the base is all too lively. The death rate among the workers is appalling, but new shipments of convicted crooks and malcontents arrive all the time, so it hardly matters.

None of the weird aliens seem to be builders of the sort needed to create the clusters of mysterious structures or indeed intelligent in any way beyond, perhaps, the level of social insects on Earth. Yet somehow the small, dysfunctional cadre of scientists on Kiln must serve up the desired tidbits of discovery to keep their commandant happy with them: evidence that there once were intelligent humanoids on Kiln.

I am an emotional person, and I want to like at least some of the characters about whom I'm reading. Daghdev is prickly, snarky, and fatalistic — but then, he has cause. He's also an unreliable narrator who only reveals to the reader what he wants, when he wants. The situation is really excruciating: people with a deep dislike of body horror might want to avoid this book. And there is not, in fact, a happy ending (at least not IMO).

On the other hand, this is very well written. For me, it moved along at a fantastic clip, and when I went back to check some particulars for this write-up, I found myself reading far more than I had intended because the story caught me up again. Some of the scientific ideas reminded me of other works (Sue Burke's Semiosis surfaced in my thoughts a couple of time), and sometimes I was reminded of something more elusive, a source that I can't recall. Does anyone else who has already read this have thoughts on the book's likely ancestors?

From my viewpoint, this was one of the most "science fictional" of this year's finalists. I think it might be my first choice in the vote.

In 2005, artist Rhea Ewing had a lot of questions about their own gender identity. Some of those questions were so big and so formless that they didn't even know how to ask them.

They started a kind of study, gathering people who were willing to talk to Ewing about their gender identities. Because Ewing thought in visuals, they turned it into a comic. It was originally meant to be maybe 30 pages, a little project for their final university project. Ewing soon realized that this work was too complex and multifaceted to be that simple booklet, and in fact, they didn't finish the comic until the early 2020s.

The book is arranged by topics, starting with Femininity and Masculinity and then working through more of the interviewees' experiences within themselves and then out in the world of other people, through Hormones, Healthcare, Queer Community, and much more. Under each topic are relevant snippets of the actual interviews, drawn as lively, expressive comics, and the words of the interviewees are thought-provoking and sometimes heart-rending.

Some reviewers I've read are miffed with Ewing, because the artist doesn't come up with a specific plan or specific answers to the issue of gender in today's society (and yes, there is acknowledgement and discussion of variations in culture within that society). But in fact, there are conclusions, expressed on the last couple of pages before the acknowledgments. What there isn't is a step-by-step recipe for "solving" the question of gender. And if you really read that far, you should appreciate why.

I'm just wrapping up a F&H re-read: in the story, it's Hallowe'en, and Oxford student Polly is about to face her final battle for Tom.

I went to look at some reviews of it, and as usual, people are freaking out about the age difference between the two of them. Someone cited what turns out to be a fantastic essay that lays out this issue clearly in terms of both the story and DWJ's context as a woman who grew up in the 1950s and was writing this novel in the 1970s:

Solving Fire and Hemlock (MASSIVE SPOILERS) by Hashtag Sarah

Woke up after far too little sleep and went to watch our town's parade. Most of the usual suspects were there: the police color guard, the local politicians and heads of educational institutions in vintage cars, the day care centers, the dog training school, locals bands on trucks, part of the Washington Revels company (complete with Morris dancers), fire trucks, town maintenance department heavy equipment, Shriners, a youth dance/cheer school, cub scouts, the local wooden bat ball team, a coouple of religious groups(with, thankfully, Congregation Tifereth Israel to balance the Christian groups), and the car plastered with names of local businesses who sponsored the event.

Crowd-pleasers included the heavy equipment (always popular with the kids), the rival youth swim clubs — the Hammerheads and "The Feet," the Panquility steel drum band, a couple of acrobatic cheerleaders from the local high school, and our Representative Jamie Raskin (Democrat, 8th Congressional District), surrounded by friends and his re-election committee.

Then I went home and crashed, completely missing the traditional July 4th ice cream making at my friend Kat's house.

"Leave tomorrow for tomorrow." I did my best.

The planet Sask-E (Sasky to its devoted caretakers) has the potential to be of great value to its owners, an outfit called Verdance. To this end they have started terraforming it, intending to re-create the Late Pleistocene for the enjoyment of well-heeled tourists. Although the process will achieve an Earth-type planet in much less time than it took for the original Earth to reach this stage, it's still a long-term project. That doesn't bother the owners, though: they have lifespans typically measured in centuries (or possibly even larger increments).

In the ground, working in the dirt, are the terraformers, led by the Environmental Rescue Team. The reader's experience in the first of three sections is focused on Destry, who is deeply devoted to her planet. So much so that in the opening of the story, she murders an apparently illicit visitor who is killing and eating the carefully placed wild animals. The repercussions of this impetuous action have her assigned to a back-country exploration trip with her faithful intelligent moose Whistle, where they make a discovery that slowly but completely changes the next millennium of Sasky's development.

The tone of this book was nostalgic for me. It read rather like Andre Norton, full of charming little details that show the reader the differences in this new culture from ours, with appealing characters, but it's also overall slightly flat. Newitz strikes me as a dutiful writer rather than an inspired one,

It's this nostalgic and naïve voice that tripped me up: I somehow entirely missed the significance of a statement early on, attributed to the owner-company's bitchy mouthpiece (emphasis added):

"Verdance had paid to build this planet, including its biological labor force…everything here — other than rocks, water, and the magnetic field — was part of Verdance’s proprietary ecosystem development kit. And that meant every life form was legally the company’s property, including Destry and Whistle."

It becomes all too clear what this means for the protagonists as the story progresses through its three sections.

I liked the book. In addition to Norton, it reminds me of Janet Kagan's Mirabile stories in the whimsy of the biological inventions, and there is also a bit of Becky Chambers-style hopepunk in the social structures and physical communities of the biological labor force.

I read this in the run-up to the Hugo nominations. It was honored with inclusion in various "best of 2023" lists, including the Locus Reading List.

Last month.

Lina and her monkey-bot brother Bador live in Shantiport, a failing spaceport city that's been run by a succession of power-hungry animal-themed clans over the centuries. Now the city is drowning, sinking into the surrounding wetlands even while its Tiger Clan overlords, crime bosses, and tech oligarchs fight over who gets to rule what's still working. Lina, who works as a tour guide for off-world visitors, loves the city and wishes she could save it. Bador, far more childish, wants to leave the soggy wreck and explore the universe. Unexpectedly, a side-gig that Lina accepts puts the siblings into the heart of the political maelstrom that Shantiport has become.

The novel explores some serious themes—the civil rights of artificial intelligences, the ethics of embedding loyalties into living beings, what does political leadership owe those it rules, and more— but the framing and narrative techniques ultimately didn't work for me. Action will stop while characters engage in lengthy debates with each other, the protagonists will suddenly break character and play out a stereotyped scene seemingly imported from some other genre, and viewpoint of the majority of the story is at two removes from the reader, so that everyone seems flat and distant.

The setting is vivid and it's always refreshing to have a set of source cultures that are beyond the typical SF U.S./Europe analogs, but ultimately it wasn't enough. In fact, I nearly gave up until somewhere about the halfway point, when suddenly some of the chickens starting coming home to roost for both the leads and their adversaries.

I've seen this flaw of not being able to engage the reader immediately in several of the books I've read recently. It's as though the author has a big set-piece that they are dying to present to the reader but haven't given enough thought about how to get the reader there.

The Black Lagoon manga is back after another hiatus.

The crime organizations that run the city of Roanapur have reached a fragile and likely temporary peace. The ceasefire might be shattered by the latest events, though: someone (actually, several someones) has been targeting big black men around the city. The victims are associated with a variety of Roanapur's leading crime syndicates, so the heads of those organizations together request the Lagoon Company to investigate. It seems clear that Dutch will be on the list of targets, so the Lagoon crew don't hesitate for a nanosecond to accept the job.

And besides, this may give Rock, Revy, and Benny more information about their mysterious boss.

Hiroe's art style has gone weirdly backwards: he's using the classic manga Big Eyes, Small Mouth style seen in the first couple of tankoubon volumes. In the previous couple of volumes, his drawings of Dutch and Benny in particular were showing a craggier, more realistic look, and Balalaika, Rock, and Revy were drawn a bit more realistically as well. Now everyone except Dutch looks rather like the child assassins Hansel and Gretel from the early days: youthful and creepily doll-like.

This arc is not resolved. I hope we don't have to wait another two and three years for it to finish.

Hi! I'm back too!

The novel begins: “Today he would become a god. His mother had told him so.” But after the smashing opening chapter, the book settles down into an outline I seem to have read or heard about a number of times recently: characters from different backgrounds experience adventures and growth as their journeys bring them together for a magical crisis.

In this case, the characters are in general older than such protagonists usually are, and their background cultures are more expertly fleshed out and varied, as one might expect from Rebecca Roanhorse.

At the end of February, I had told my management I was going to retire at the end of March, and. I realized that Hugo nominations were due mid-March. So I rather frantically obtained a bunch of novels that were on the Locus and other lists

I hadn't finished them when time came to put in my nominations, but nothing could stop me now! I was a reading machine! So I finished everything I'd downloaded, and then realized that I had books I had downloaded earlier but never read. So I read those. And then I realized that sequels had dropped for a couple of series I was following. So I obtained and read those.

When the dust settled, and I switched to a re-read of something for a writing exchange, I had 11 unreviewed books. If I did one per week (which would be a vast improvement over what I've managed recently), that would still take me into the summer.

Help me prioritize. Which books do people actually want to read about? You can vote for more than one.

Thanks!!