Fiction and Hamilton
Max Gladstone, Last First Snow: Gladstone has said that he has reasons for writing his Craft Sequence out of chronological order, but I can’t say I see what they are. Here, we learn some backstory of Elayne Kevarian, the King in Red, and Temoc, who are brought together as part of a city redevelopment plan that threatens to throw longtime residents out of their homes. Gentrification, it turns out, is controversial even in a world where law is a kind of magic. It’s well-told, but I felt that knowing how it had to end took some of the air out of the story. And then, when I was writing up my review, I found out that Gladstone has a Craft short story in a collection put together by the Sad Puppies dude, and now I am sad.
Seth Dickinson, The Traitor Baru Cormorant: Baru Cormorant is plucked from her “savage native” family to be educated by the empire that’s taking over her homeland. She’s identified as a savant, and is sent to pacify a different conquered nation. The empire brings vaccination and good roads, but also death for sodomites and tribadists, as well as forced breeding and sterilization for eugenic purposes. Hating all the time, Baru tries to figure out how to keep her new province from rebelling-or maybe how to make that happen. The title makes it pretty clear: the central question is whether Baru is a traitor, and to what exactly. Will her sacrifices (usually of others) put her in a position to liberate her home? What kind of person will she be by the time she accumulates the power to do anything? And what will be left of her home, even then? It’s an interesting but also depressing story.
Sophia McDougall, Mars Evacuees: I get the Smekday comparisons I’ve seen-there’s an alien invasion, a juvenile protagonist on a journey, and a lot of humor contrasting with the huge, traumatic events. Here, our protagonist is sent to Mars to train with the military and to be safe from the aliens who’ve invaded Earth and started turning it colder and colder. She makes friends with a young genius and a young James T. Kirk type. It’s very good-think Heinlein juvenile with diversity as a default instead of weird conservative politics, or any rollicking space adventure without the distractions of sexual attraction.
David Brin, Insistence of Vision: Short story collection, generally on the lines of The Practice Effect--irony and hope and ad astra per aspera, with bonus alien encounters forcing us to reconsider our presuppositions about the meaning of life. I’m a big fan of The Practice Effect and I liked these too, including a Sundiver novella (warning for sexual abuse of a dolphin by other dolphins). One “oh David Brin no” moment where he blatantly ignores the obvious applicability of existing criminal law in order to make his plot work (so there’s no law against helping an alien find a person when you know that, when they find the person, they’ll kill that person). Some nice opening musings about sf’s aspirations for golden ages ahead of us, not behind us, though muddies the waters a bit by classifying sf as fantasy when it is retrograde, and fantasy as sf when it’s not. Brin likes sf that tries to change tragedy into options, rejecting pre-ordained fate; even the dystopias he prefers are messages that it could have been different. “[W]e should always be aware whether a story is trying to convince us to try harder … or to give up.” On the other hand, the ending essay asserts that “we” pity Mr. Spock and ‘come away from each episode relieved that we aren’t like him.” Speak for yourself, dude. He dares to suggest that Spock is pitiable because he lacks what Brin calls “[]ability to wage war with reality,” to imagine a different world. Excuse me? http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Requiem_for_Methuselah_(episode) Requiem for Methuselah aside, the Spock I remember chose to serve on a Federation starship, hardly suggestive of a lack of imagination. Brin might be right about the need to marry logic and imagination, but why pick on Spock to make his point? Okay, my wild overreaction to one side, it’s exactly what one would want from a short story collection by Brin.
Jeremy Haun, Jason Hurley & John Rauch, The Beauty: A new sexually transmitted disease makes people beautiful, and two years after it’s identified, half the world has it. Now it’s started to kill people, and only two New York City detectives can stop it-one previously infected without her knowledge, and the other happily married, and just turned Beautiful. Nudity, exploding heads, evil pharmaceutical companies-your basic horror comic.
How lucky we are to be alive right now! It’s a bit strange to share a fandom with people I know as non-fans. Like, I met a colleague’s husband and she mentioned/complained how he played the soundtrack incessantly on the weekends, and we recognized each other as similar souls! (I can only assume that she just wasn’t hearing it during the week, when he played it at work.) On the other hand, I nearly got into a screaming fight with another colleague about whether the genius of the musical depends on its transformativeness or is independent of that transformativeness (both at the level of Founding history and rap music)-the answer is the former, of course, but the discussion got a bit heated. So weird! Also I am about to go see Hamilton--tomorrow night, yay!--and I am so excited I could burst.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Seth Dickinson, The Traitor Baru Cormorant: Baru Cormorant is plucked from her “savage native” family to be educated by the empire that’s taking over her homeland. She’s identified as a savant, and is sent to pacify a different conquered nation. The empire brings vaccination and good roads, but also death for sodomites and tribadists, as well as forced breeding and sterilization for eugenic purposes. Hating all the time, Baru tries to figure out how to keep her new province from rebelling-or maybe how to make that happen. The title makes it pretty clear: the central question is whether Baru is a traitor, and to what exactly. Will her sacrifices (usually of others) put her in a position to liberate her home? What kind of person will she be by the time she accumulates the power to do anything? And what will be left of her home, even then? It’s an interesting but also depressing story.
Sophia McDougall, Mars Evacuees: I get the Smekday comparisons I’ve seen-there’s an alien invasion, a juvenile protagonist on a journey, and a lot of humor contrasting with the huge, traumatic events. Here, our protagonist is sent to Mars to train with the military and to be safe from the aliens who’ve invaded Earth and started turning it colder and colder. She makes friends with a young genius and a young James T. Kirk type. It’s very good-think Heinlein juvenile with diversity as a default instead of weird conservative politics, or any rollicking space adventure without the distractions of sexual attraction.
David Brin, Insistence of Vision: Short story collection, generally on the lines of The Practice Effect--irony and hope and ad astra per aspera, with bonus alien encounters forcing us to reconsider our presuppositions about the meaning of life. I’m a big fan of The Practice Effect and I liked these too, including a Sundiver novella (warning for sexual abuse of a dolphin by other dolphins). One “oh David Brin no” moment where he blatantly ignores the obvious applicability of existing criminal law in order to make his plot work (so there’s no law against helping an alien find a person when you know that, when they find the person, they’ll kill that person). Some nice opening musings about sf’s aspirations for golden ages ahead of us, not behind us, though muddies the waters a bit by classifying sf as fantasy when it is retrograde, and fantasy as sf when it’s not. Brin likes sf that tries to change tragedy into options, rejecting pre-ordained fate; even the dystopias he prefers are messages that it could have been different. “[W]e should always be aware whether a story is trying to convince us to try harder … or to give up.” On the other hand, the ending essay asserts that “we” pity Mr. Spock and ‘come away from each episode relieved that we aren’t like him.” Speak for yourself, dude. He dares to suggest that Spock is pitiable because he lacks what Brin calls “[]ability to wage war with reality,” to imagine a different world. Excuse me? http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Requiem_for_Methuselah_(episode) Requiem for Methuselah aside, the Spock I remember chose to serve on a Federation starship, hardly suggestive of a lack of imagination. Brin might be right about the need to marry logic and imagination, but why pick on Spock to make his point? Okay, my wild overreaction to one side, it’s exactly what one would want from a short story collection by Brin.
Jeremy Haun, Jason Hurley & John Rauch, The Beauty: A new sexually transmitted disease makes people beautiful, and two years after it’s identified, half the world has it. Now it’s started to kill people, and only two New York City detectives can stop it-one previously infected without her knowledge, and the other happily married, and just turned Beautiful. Nudity, exploding heads, evil pharmaceutical companies-your basic horror comic.
How lucky we are to be alive right now! It’s a bit strange to share a fandom with people I know as non-fans. Like, I met a colleague’s husband and she mentioned/complained how he played the soundtrack incessantly on the weekends, and we recognized each other as similar souls! (I can only assume that she just wasn’t hearing it during the week, when he played it at work.) On the other hand, I nearly got into a screaming fight with another colleague about whether the genius of the musical depends on its transformativeness or is independent of that transformativeness (both at the level of Founding history and rap music)-the answer is the former, of course, but the discussion got a bit heated. So weird! Also I am about to go see Hamilton--tomorrow night, yay!--and I am so excited I could burst.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.