Reading Wednesday: Machineries of Empire by Yoon Ha Lee (New Material + Re-Read)

[chomiji]

So, hi, it's been a while. I'm going to try to do this more often.

Also, we're approaching the Hugo nominations deadline (mid-March), and I have no effing idea what to read. So let me know if you have any ideas about that.

Disclaimer: Yoon Ha Lee is an online friend whom I have met in person a couple of times over the past year, in the context of conventions.

I'll start sometime before Christmas/Hanukkah, when I read Hexarchate Stories by Yoon Ha Lee. This contains some stories about characters who do not feature in the main "Machineries of Empire" trilogy, which I enjoyed and appreciated because they give other views of the setting, and also a bunch of background/future stories about characters that are involved in the main series, particularly Jedao and Cheris. And I loved those to pieces, because it's like Lee is writing fanfiction about his own characters. Almost all of them were new to me, except for the novelette "Extracurricular Activities," which I'd read for the Hugo the year after it came out. I especially enjoyed "Glass Cannon," which follows pretty immediately after the conclusion of Revenant Gun.

This spurred me into re-reading the entire trilogy, and I'm very glad I did. As is so often the case for me with exciting books, I had raced through Ninefox Gambit, Raven Strategem, and Revenant Gun as fast as I could, spurred on by a morbid desire to know not only who survived but in what condition. (This is definitely a universe where there are fates worse than death.) So this re-read, particularly in conversation with the new material, made me slow down and appreciate the characters much more. I'm now feeling all sorts of warm fuzzies about the extended series, because it's moved from being some exciting books to being a group of old friends whom I intend to revisit.

Some have complained that the "science" of the science fiction in the series is not really there. Myself, I'll say that as far as that goes, "Machineries" is in the fine old tradition of grand-scale space opera. Let's consider the technology of, for example,"Star Wars," or for that matter, Dune. Calendrical consensus reality is harder-edged than the Force and at least on par with the biology of Dune, IMO.

If you haven't read the original series, the one warning I will give is that body-horror things happen quite a lot, sometimes as a result of weapons that utilize the universe-bending technologies made possible by the Hexarchate's enforced population-wide mental synergies. So if this is a major squick for you, you have been warned.

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Hmm ... some people having been saying that book posts generate more comments and discussion when they don't cover multiple books. Given that this covers essentially four books, I'll end here and try to drop another catch-up post before next Wednesday. When I look at my Kindle, I can see that I actually read a lot of things between October and now, and some of it was new works (as opposed to re-reads of comfort books).

Comments

[muccamukk]

I've actually never found the single book posts = more discussion thing to be true.

[skygiants]

I've noted it seems to be less single-book posts than single-topic posts -- if I post about four books in the same series, that's about the same as posting about a single book, and people will generate some good and interesting discussion about that series! but if I post about four unrelated books not linked by any particular topic, even if I get some discussion about those things, people won't necessarily talk to each other because they'll all be responding to different things.

[muccamukk]

I haven't found even that. If I post about a couple unrelated books, I seem to get about the same amount of discussion on each as I do just posting about one. Regardless of them being related or not.

[sovay]

I've noted it seems to be less single-book posts than single-topic posts

I have given up on trying to read the auspices of DW-comments because I can't predict what will generate them and I just wind up sort of squirrelly about my self-esteem if I try.

[isis]

If I could give this a +1/kudos/like I would. I completely agree!

[chomiji]

I hear you on that last part! I know that my having been semi-offline for a couple of months hasn't helped at all, in my case. I'm hoping to remedy that by posting more often.

[chomiji]

Welp, darn, there goes my plot to get more discussion going! XD

[isis]

I agree about Hexarchate Stories - in fact, even though I enjoyed the stories, my favorite parts were the bits of meta, because it was like a peek behind the scenes.

[chomiji]

Indeed! I always enjoy seeing the author's own headcanon for things that don't make it directly into the books. You can get that sort of thing on authors' Patreon accounts, too.