XML apologist. Erlang enthusiast. Currently JVMs & Performance stuff at Netflix. Previously JVMs & performative stuff at Twitter. He/him.
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Tough to read many of these. Children, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers...so many meet a sad end. Also wild to see the accepted practices of the world at the turn of the century. Worth a read, but buckle up and brace yourself for a rough go.
From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration …
A really wonderful take on colonization and identity. Fast paced and full of some truly original takes on technology and the balances (and imbalances) of power resulting from the dynamics of capitalism in a seemingly post-scarcity era.
Who owns the land? What is intelligence and what rights (if any) does intelligence deserve? What if naked mole rats could talk and what if Miyazaki's catbus was part of an anarchist collective that lived under an active volcano?
These and many other questions are wrestled with in the this light and heavy sci-fi gem.
Content warning Mild ones, really, but maybe read the book first.
Not quite as compelling as the first, but man, still a mind-bender. Mild spoiler here is it does travel into the past. One of the things that makes "Wool" so good is it is entirely in the future. That provides the prose some latitude and that can help make or break a book when it starts to get into the awkward drama around social mechanics and institutions we are already familiar with. Anyway, before you read this write down the Silo numbers from wool, and the names of the key characters. Also don't look up anything online because spoilers abound.
Holy smokes! This was such a fun read by @scalzi@mastodon.social. Funny as hell, and with barely any tears. Maybe even no tears if you are a desiccated and empty shell like so many of us these days. Anyway, this book is brain-floss perfection, full of laughs and wit. The auther, per the note at the end, wrote this in 2021 after COVID and January 6th and writer's block and at least one existential crisis. Coincidentally I read this book after a week of the family and I, hundreds of miles from home and alledgedly on vacation, dealing with our second trip through COVID. I'd also just ripped through the first two books of Hugh Howey's "Silo" series ("Wool" & "Shift") while in the grips of the virus. Those are pretty heavy reads, and a mild fever only added to the emotional weight. This book was the perfect antidote to …
Holy smokes! This was such a fun read by @scalzi@mastodon.social. Funny as hell, and with barely any tears. Maybe even no tears if you are a desiccated and empty shell like so many of us these days. Anyway, this book is brain-floss perfection, full of laughs and wit. The auther, per the note at the end, wrote this in 2021 after COVID and January 6th and writer's block and at least one existential crisis. Coincidentally I read this book after a week of the family and I, hundreds of miles from home and alledgedly on vacation, dealing with our second trip through COVID. I'd also just ripped through the first two books of Hugh Howey's "Silo" series ("Wool" & "Shift") while in the grips of the virus. Those are pretty heavy reads, and a mild fever only added to the emotional weight. This book was the perfect antidote to wherever the fuck my head was at after all of that, and a great way to use one of the few remaining days of our "vacation". Anyway, what I am trying to say is that this a wonderfully written, fast-moving, fun-as-heck rip of a read.
You will love it. Probably.
Man, what a trip.
No spoilers, but in the Sci-Fi spectrum of humanity coming together in the face of apocalypse or everyone fro themselves (with Rebecca Solnit's "A Paradise Built in Hell" on one end, and parts of Atwood's "Oryx and Crake" or the edges of John Wyndham's works) "Wool" is decidedly on the sharp stick-end end of that scale.
Anyway, wonderfully paced, and great world-building. Excited for the next books in the trilogy!
A strong open, and a big idea, is undone by a weak ending.
As usual, Wyndham takes a simple premise and peels it apart to tease out contradictions and consquences invisible from the surface. Buried within the prose are occasional aphorisms that apply nicely to our current predicaments. But, by far, the most striking aspect of this book, published in 1960, is how it reflects (and supports) that era's nascent feminist wave. Worth a read, even though it waters out in the last act.
Fascinating concept, and a narrative that leverages the rot and evil of America, and the racist AF legacy of H.P. Lovecraft to create a more...realistic universe. The writing was a little weak, though the narrative arc was well-sustained through a number of stories. A fun, quick read and ultimately worth it. Beats watching it on TV I suspect.
In the sleepy English village of Midwich, a mysterious silver object appears and all the …
A weird one. Absolutely in line with Wyndham’s other works in dealing with existential evolutionary threats. Worth noting the similarities with Lou Cixin’s "The Three Body Problem".
It started with fireballs raining down from the sky and crashing into the oceans' deeps. …
Content warning Mild spoiler alert. Read the book first. It is a good one.
A fantastic (and perhaps prescient) account of the end of the world. Aliens or climate change, the ultimate cause of our doom will be the limits on our ability as a species to rise above the limits of our humanity. As with any good apocalypse story some aspects of humanity are quickly disposed of, just not the ones needed to carry the day.
When Bill Masen wakes up blindfolded in hospital there is a bitter irony in his …
Content warning Spoiler alert.
The plot is a bit spoiled as the novel served as inspiration for the equally disturbing/terrifying movie "28 Days Later", though there are no zombies in this one. More than one heartbreaking scene in this book, so reader beware.
Qven was created to be a Presger translator. The pride of their Clade, they always …
Leckie continues to build worlds and cultures that turn a lens back onto contemporary struggles around identity and sovereignty. It is helpful, but not necessary, to have read her other Radch books as they do build on some earlier stories and a few characters turn up again. There is also a deeper dive into the Presgers (or at least the Presger Translators), but the author does a great job keeping terrible mysteries mysterious.
Finally, a slight spoiler, in this installment Leckie fixes the greatest flaw in her universe: the lack of coffee. I applaud her courage in bringing this beverage into a heretofore tea-centric narrative.
A fascinating look at the life of John Le Carré (né David Cornwell) as the author weaves the (mostly) true history of his life as a writer with the fictional characters inspired by his real life encounters and acquaintances. Looming throughout, and dealt with directly in the defining chapter of the book, is the spectre of Ronnie, Cornwell/Le Carré's grifter of a father. Another weighty thread linking a number of these brief sketches together is the presence of Kim Philby. These two outsized deceivers are wonderfully linked in Le Carré's "A Perfect Spy" which feels even deeper and personal having seen glimpses of the rage and anger the author felt towards these two men. The short anecdotes that make up most of the book's chapters are riddled with surprising (and often dismaying) characters from the Cold War era as well as the chaotic muddle of Eastern Europe following the fall …
A fascinating look at the life of John Le Carré (né David Cornwell) as the author weaves the (mostly) true history of his life as a writer with the fictional characters inspired by his real life encounters and acquaintances. Looming throughout, and dealt with directly in the defining chapter of the book, is the spectre of Ronnie, Cornwell/Le Carré's grifter of a father. Another weighty thread linking a number of these brief sketches together is the presence of Kim Philby. These two outsized deceivers are wonderfully linked in Le Carré's "A Perfect Spy" which feels even deeper and personal having seen glimpses of the rage and anger the author felt towards these two men. The short anecdotes that make up most of the book's chapters are riddled with surprising (and often dismaying) characters from the Cold War era as well as the chaotic muddle of Eastern Europe following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some of these monsters have gone on to become bigger monsters, others are captured before a tragic end or before a horrible comeuppance. In one recounting Le Carré reflects on a conspiracy theory around the death of Robert Maxwell who died after an allegedly accidental fall from his yacht "The Lady Ghislaine" (named after his daughter, yes, that Ghislaine Maxwell). Russians gangsters, German radicals, spooks and spies of all sorts fill the pages along with movies stars and literary luminaries. It is a dizzying and exciting tour through the life of one of the English language's best writers. Ultimately though, and I think Le Carré/Cornwell would agree, his best writing remains the wonderful fiction he's left behind, but this is a thoroughly enjoyable peek behind the scenes.
