It's A Binary World 2.0

InvestiGators by John Patrick Green
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Read this to my four-year-olds and I found it to be a blast. Most of the word-play went over their heads. In fact, after finishing it with my four-year-olds, I recommended it to my 8-year-old. We’ll see what she thinks. This is definitely one of those books you can read with the kids and, if you like Dad Jokes and Puns, you’ll be enjoying it rather than wishing you were doing something else.

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Jumpstarting the Onion Omega2 by Wolfram Donat
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A good intro to the Onion Omega2 and Omega2+ boards. Unfortunately, the Onion folks have changed their interface, making a large portion of the book no longer accurate. You can kind of work your way through it if you’re technical and have a history with Linux on embedded devices.

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Getting Started with Soldering: A Hands-On Guide to Making Electrical and Mechanical Connections by Marc de Vinck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I haven’t soldered in at least a good 15 years, if not more. I couldn’t remember the technique and I didn’t want to mess up my components for a new project I’m working on, so I read this book. It does a VERY good job of walking you through the basics, including what to do when things get messed up. It even has an advanced chapter at the end for surface mount soldering. I would highly recommend anyone who’s either new to soldering or wants to renew their skills.

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Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 142 by Neil Clarke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An almost perfect issue (in terms of my tastes) in which I loved all but one of the stories. Here are my thoughts-per-story, which may have some more text than my status updates if I came up against character limits during updates:

Gubbinal: In a future where we’ve colonized Saturn’s moons, our protagonist hunts for artifacts created by self-replicating robots. The plot then shifts into something perhaps more fantasy than SF and ends in quite a fascinating way.

A Gaze of Faces: Take Assassin’s Creed and mix in Wool. Then add a dash of Alien. Make it a short story. It sounds crazy, but it’s a great mix that works really well to tell a very different take on the trope of on the colony thinking back to “Origin Earth” that’s been a trope since at least Asimov’s Foundation when one of the characters mentions that the idea of an origin planet for humans is just superstitious fables. I’d love to spend more time in this world. Perhaps as a series of short stories or novellas as was done for Wool.

The James Machine: Explores how people deal with love and loss through the lens of SF. It’s a pretty moving story and I really loved it. It was also interesting how each “chapter” was titled with what seems like a click-bait headline.

For What Are Delusions if not Dreams: The theme of this issue seems to revolve around past information, AI, identity. This one was not my favorite. I don’t like these short stories where I spend most of it confused about what the heck is going on. I think I kind of understood by the end and it had a decent ending for the story it was trying to tell.

To Fly like an Angel: (In Bill Hader’s Stefan voice) This story has everything: A future in which everything we readers know is true is considered a conspiracy theory (like clouds causing rain), a supposed Utopia that’s actually a Dystopyia, an awesome cyberpunk hacker lady-person, and a few twists and turns – all in a short story.

Swift as a Dream and Fleeting as a Sigh: I really loved this story. Ostensibly it was about an AI psychologist. It seemed to be about how the AI could think so much faster than a human – a trope I’ve seen before. Yet in the background, the conversations the AI is having with hits patients reveals a really neat SF world. And then a neat plot twist right at the end is the cherry on top.

Last Gods: In a post-apocalyptic future after intense global warming and possibly other issues, the remaining humans have developed a new set of gods. A deeply intense story about love and identity. Worked quite well.

Non-Fiction:
The Monster at the Movies: Film Adaptations of Frankenstein: The author explores the themes of the novel Frankenstein and how various movie adaptations have tackled these themes. I could actually see this expanded to perhaps a novella-length non-fiction book and get a lot out of it.

Author interview: a look at some themes the author has explored in anthologies and sorry stories

Another word: your life is epic: about recognizing when the mundane events in your life can be used as the core to your story. It doesn’t always have to be the dramatic moments

Editor’s desk: a threat followed through: Neil mentions getting some ideas for future columns and invites readers to send in their own ideas


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Jumpstarting the Raspberry Pi Zero W by Akkana Peck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a great introduction to creating electronics projects with the smallest raspberry pi at this time. Seriously, it’s the same size as an Arduino MKR board – like a stick of gum. I wish I’d read it before starting my raspberry pi adventures, because I learned a few tips, particularly for running headless. The author spots a good job providing code examples and a decent variety of projects. The wearable project is the most impractical when you compared to an adafruit flora, but still provides important information. Overall a great resource if you want to go the raspberry pi route for electronics hacking.

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The Crimson Campaign by Brian McClellan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This trilogy is definitely turning out to be one of those 1 book broken up into 3 trilogies than a series of stories following the main characters. The last book was a slightly cleaner break, but still ended with a lot still unresolved. This one, on the other hand, ends on a cliffhanger….well on a cliff….a mountain. Almost nothing is resolved in this book. Although one of the plots was, thankfully, resolved; that’s a good thing because I don’t think the protagonist involved in that plot could take much more.

As the middle of a narrative, it’s hard to write a review that isn’t spoiler-filled, but I’d like to focus on a few things that I think this book does very well compared to a lot of other fantasy and military fiction I’ve read. First of all, I like that this book deals with PTSD in more of a realistic way than most fiction. It’s not normal to just kill lots of others and get through that trauma without issues. I don’t know what happened in the Greek and Roman times, but in more modern times, most men (and, later on, women) haven’t had an easy time of it. One of the ways to cope is with drugs and McClellan has a character spend time in an period-appropriate fantasy equivalent of an opium den. I don’t think all our media needs necessarily have all the characters get shell-shocked, but having some more representation is a good thing. If anything else, it tempers some of the “excitement” that can end up being glorification of violence.

Second, I think McClellan does a good job of making use of a world that doesn’t have cell phones or even telegraph lines. A lot of the characters find themselves in plots that wouldn’t happen if everyone had perfect knowledge of what was happening around the world. It was quite the reminder of how spoiled we’ve become. (And makes me think of this article from 9 years ago about 10 classic Seinfeld episodes that fall apart if they have cell phones: https://gizmodo.com/10-classic-seinfe…)

Finally, a topic that has been discussed over the past 10 years (or more?) – rape narratives. There’s a tension in writing a violent narrative. On the one hand, rape is a real thing that happens to real people (both men and women) and if you see the phrase ” _____ and pillage” you know what the first word is. It’s a real issue during wars – both ancient and modern. But, on the other hand, writers have been so lazy for so long: Does your Hero need a reason to be moved to action? Rape or Kill his significant other! (see women in fridges: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph…) I *think* McClelland does a good job balancing things across these two entries in the trilogy. It’s a real threat that a few of the women characters deal with (including wondering if the cost of being helped is an expectation to bed the helper), but it’s not something that ends up happening. I think that keeps it realistic while not having to resort to tired tropes or retraumatize readers who may have gone through that in real life. I could be way off base here, but compared to other similar situations I’ve read in other books where the writers took the lazy out, I prefer this way.

Overall, McClellan continues an exciting war narrative in a world full of magic that is in a period of transition from monarchy to some kind of Republic or Democracy.

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Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 141 by Neil Clarke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of those issues where I liked every story and every non-fiction essay. Read below for my thoughts per story.

A space of one’s own: a whimsical dystopia that reminds me of the Terry Gilliam film Brazil. I’m a world of overcrowding buildings can be resized and reconfigured.

Vault: another dystopia. This time there is a bit of a video game metaphor (at least to me) in the fact that the protagonists gain energy based on how many athletic tricks they do while traversing a planet. Explained away as causing their suits to collect more sunlight. The climax comes late, but could be an interesting universe for more stories.

The cosmonaut’s caretaker: An alternate future where the USSR still exists in a space-faring universe. The story takes some time to do world building, but expertly so, with practically no info dumps. Then it gets to the main thrust of the plot which involves our Captain’s current job when his post catches up to him. Didn’t want to stop reading until I was done.

Your multicolored life: this story definitely went places I didn’t expect with each of its protagonists, but it won me over by the end.

Heron of Earth: A post-human story unlike any I’ve ever read. It’s not about the trials and tribulations of becoming post-human. It’s not about whether we should do it. It’s more of a story that takes place after all that is over. It’s a short journey and I’m not even sure if it fulfills the MICE criteria. But it reads like a meditation and I’d like to see more of this world.

The Deeps of the Sky: An alien world in which insect-like creatures mine metals from a storm. It seems to take place on a Saturn or Jupiter-style planet where everything needs to live in the atmosphere and if there is a surface, it’s below a crushing amount of atmosphere. Another of those short stories that makes me desire more stories in the same universe.

Meridian: A SF version of what happens when a kid is put into the adoption system and it fails him. Made me sad to realize it’d probably continue to be a problem in the future. A good ending that doesn’t pander to the reader.

Non-Fiction:

The Effects of Space and Other Worlds on the Human Body: Going deeper than many popular articles I’ve read on the topic of the effects of space on the human body, it looks at how many different aspects of physiology and even baterial adaptation could affect our ability to expand beyond planet Earth.
Book covers, Moorcock, and The Mexicanx Initiative: A Conversation with John Picacio: A conversation with an artist who does book covers as well as other art about his history and his process.

Another Word: The Future, Ordinary: Cat Rambo takes some time to celebrate the SF that adheres to the trope “15 Minutes into the Future”. She talks about what we can take away from it, how it can help us think about how we structure society, and how it can make your stories out of date before they’re even published. As usual, Rambo’s prose does an excellent job of making me think and makes me think it would be delightful to have a conversation about SFF with them.

Editor’s Desk: A eulogy for Gardner Dozois, who, among among other things, was the reprints editor at Clarkesworld.


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Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 141 by Neil Clarke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of those issues where I liked every story and every non-fiction essay. Read below for my thoughts per story.

A space of one’s own: a whimsical dystopia that reminds me of the Terry Gilliam film Brazil. I’m a world of overcrowding buildings can be resized and reconfigured.

Vault: another dystopia. This time there is a bit of a video game metaphor (at least to me) in the fact that the protagonists gain energy based on how many athletic tricks they do while traversing a planet. Explained away as causing their suits to collect more sunlight. The climax comes late, but could be an interesting universe for more stories.

The cosmonaut’s caretaker: An alternate future where the USSR still exists in a space-faring universe. The story takes some time to do world building, but expertly so, with practically no info dumps. Then it gets to the main thrust of the plot which involves our Captain’s current job when his post catches up to him. Didn’t want to stop reading until I was done.

Your multicolored life: this story definitely went places I didn’t expect with each of its protagonists, but it won me over by the end.

Heron of Earth: A post-human story unlike any I’ve ever read. It’s not about the trials and tribulations of becoming post-human. It’s not about whether we should do it. It’s more of a story that takes place after all that is over. It’s a short journey and I’m not even sure if it fulfills the MICE criteria. But it reads like a meditation and I’d like to see more of this world.

The Deeps of the Sky: An alien world in which insect-like creatures mine metals from a storm. It seems to take place on a Saturn or Jupiter-style planet where everything needs to live in the atmosphere and if there is a surface, it’s below a crushing amount of atmosphere. Another of those short stories that makes me desire more stories in the same universe.

Meridian: A SF version of what happens when a kid is put into the adoption system and it fails him. Made me sad to realize it’d probably continue to be a problem in the future. A good ending that doesn’t pander to the reader.

Non-Fiction:

The Effects of Space and Other Worlds on the Human Body: Going deeper than many popular articles I’ve read on the topic of the effects of space on the human body, it looks at how many different aspects of physiology and even baterial adaptation could affect our ability to expand beyond planet Earth.
Book covers, Moorcock, and The Mexicanx Initiative: A Conversation with John Picacio: A conversation with an artist who does book covers as well as other art about his history and his process.

Another Word: The Future, Ordinary: Cat Rambo takes some time to celebrate the SF that adheres to the trope “15 Minutes into the Future”. She talks about what we can take away from it, how it can help us think about how we structure society, and how it can make your stories out of date before they’re even published. As usual, Rambo’s prose does an excellent job of making me think and makes me think it would be delightful to have a conversation about SFF with them.

Editor’s Desk: A eulogy for Gardner Dozois, who, among among other things, was the reprints editor at Clarkesworld.


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Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 140 by Neil Clarke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A nice balanced collection. My favorite was Cold Comfort. Below are my per story reviews and/or thoughts.

——-


A Vastness: A very interesting story of what we do when we’re so driven, we are willing to risk everything. And a great ending that was very unexpected. It felt a bit shorter than these usually are, so it was extra neat to have it work so well.


Not Now: A story about how messed up the media can be and how uncaring about those they’re covering. It focuses specially on how it can tear families apart.


Fleeing Oslyge: a war narrative about the psychology of attackers and victims by making the attackers aliens. Pretty harrowing and really makes me think even more about the consequences of war.


Farewell, Doraemon: A pretty deep story about growing up in the middle of nowhere, consequences of actions, and relationships. It takes place in China so the details are different, but it definitely has a lot of similar themes to American stories of going from the sticks to the big city and back. The SF elements are somewhat tangential to most of the story. So if you read it without wondering when it’s going to get SF, you’ll get more out of it.

Cold comfort: A story about a scientist willing to do what it takes to get their anti-climate change research to work. Had a surprisingly neat ending.

In panic town, on the backward moon: an alternate universe detective story on Mars. Fun prose and style.

Metallic mayhem in the movies: a history of Mecha in film and tv

Spies, radios, and the afterlife: The conversation goes a number is interesting places: what it’s like to be a bilingual author and have your work translated by someone else, the odd situation in the 1917 Russian revolution, and the afterlife.

Another word: Chinese Science fiction going abroad: a survey of the history of the translation of Chinese Science fiction. What I thought was interesting considering the size of China was how long it took Chinese SF to be translated and published outside of China. And after that it’s crazy how long it took to snowball in popularity.

Editor’s desk: a look at how Neil is working to increase the author pool for clarkesworld to be more diverse across national boundaries and other dimensions.

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Rave Master Vol. 9 by Hiro Mashima
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While this continues the shonen tropes of the hero who can’t be beaten just because of his “can-do” attitude, Mr. Mashima increases the stakes and gives a compelling story behind the rise of Demon Card and the paths of the two Gales. It even has a silly joke to make up for the ridiculous name “Demon Card”. Apparently it was supposed to be “Demon Guard” and a typo messed it up. I wonder if it’s one of those katakana/kanji jokes or not.

As for the plot, I found myself wondering how we could be at this point in the story at volume 9 out of (what i know in the future compared to when Mr. Mashima was writing it) 33 volumes. Turns out he was thinking about ending the story here so that he could work on another project. Then he decided to explore more of the world and continue the story. We’ll see if the new and different stakes make the plot work better, worse, or just the same.

Onto Vol 10….

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Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m a huge world-building junkie. It’s one of the reasons I love science fiction and fantasy. And, as I realized while writing the previous sentence, it’s also why I love history non-fiction books and podcasts. I love learning about the society and what drives people to act the way they act. Humans are all human and have always had the same desires, but how those manifest and how we react to them are defined within our cultural contexts. An insult that might have demanded a duel in 1800s America might now simply result in a screed on Twitter. So, I loved the first book’s building up of Radchai culture. In the first book, the plot was almost incidental. It was a TRUE trilogy in that it reads, in retrospect, as the beginning of an incredibly long book.

This book, being the middle, proceeds with quite a bit stronger plot presence. It is STILL very strongly about culture and the intersection of colonialism and the conquered. It is STILL very much about how a strongly regimented etiquette system (as I’ve seen depicted in historical Britain and, to some degree, modern Japan) regulates what people can say and do in ways that Ms. Leckie uses to great effect. But the plot moves forward in a much more straightforward manner. Kind of….

Because this entry in the series is essentially a political thriller in a Robert Ludlum sense. Breq is sent on a mission by one half of Anaander Mianaai to a planet where he is unfamiliar and has no idea who to trust. Within that context a series of smaller mysteries have to be solved in the service of the larger mystery – all with very large consequences for the space station, the planet it orbits, and the system at large. (view spoiler)[ Proud of myself for figuring out the Ghost Gate’s important about 100 or more pages before Breq does – or at least before he states it. (hide spoiler)]

As I mentioned in one of my status updates, between the insistence on drinking tea and the intense feelings of superiority of the Rachai over those they’ve conquered and their inability to even attempt to distinguish various subcultures in the planets they’ve conquered, draws a stark parallel with the British and the way they wreaked havok on the world that we’re still reaping the consequences for; namely the way they created random countries in the Middle East, Africa, and the Indian Sub-continent. Although, their constant use of “Citizen” also feels perhaps Roman. And it does seem that they are having trouble due to over-expansion, as the Romans did.

If there’s one final thing, it’s that it was incredibly spooky to read this book in the wake of the George Floyd protests. This book was published in 2014, which means it was probably done writing and in the publisher’s hands at the beginning of 2014 or end of 2013. And yet, it had the following parts in it that each made me almost drop the Kobo in shock as if Ms. Leckie was reaching into the future when she wrote the book.

First scene, one of the minorities on the station had an interaction with the cops for painting on an unauthorized wall. Things escalate and then Breq has this line:

“That hold,” I interrupted, “is not suitable for use on citizens. And it’s entirely possible to suffocate someone by kneeling on their back that way.”

WHAT!?!? HOW!?!? Then 12 chapters later:

Breq is having a conversation with the Governor:

“…I suppose you know her field workers are threatening to stop working unless she meets a whole list of demand?”
“I only just heard a few hours ago.”
“And by dealing with them in such circumstances, we are rewarding these people for threatening us. What do you think they’ll do but try it again, since it go them what they wanted once already? And we need things calm here.”
“These people are citizens.” I replied, my voice as calm and even as I could make it… “When they behave properly, you will say there is no problem. When they complain loudly, you will say they cause their own problems with their impropriety. And when they are driven to extremes, you say you will not reward such actions. What will it take for you to listen?”

Damn. This book isn’t for everyone. If you aren’t a world-building nut, you may find a lot of that tedious. If you hated the first book, I wouldn’t recommend this one either. But if you were even luke-warm on that first book – it was place-setting so that this one could hit so hard. Read this book and experience the amazing work of Ms. Ann Leckie.

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Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 139 by Neil Clarke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A nice, solid collection this month. Here are my per-story thoughts:

Carouseling: An extremely sad and touching story about a couple and an experiment at a CERN-like lab. Wonder if the story was written/conceived back when everyone was afraid the collider would make a black hole. (That’s not what happens, but I could definitely see it as an inspiration).

What will we do without exile: I’ve read many stories, both fiction and non-fiction about exiles from war. This is one of the first that deals with the friction between the new and old exiles. As someone who’s the child of exiles (as is my wife), this story really hit home.

Violets on the Tongue: Another tale of exile, but this time it becomes more of an existential tale and eventually morphs into a mind-bending trip. Fun to read, though.

Logistics: Most fun opening sentence I’ve read in a short story in a while. This story was a bit tough to read in the middle of COVID-19. But I enjoyed the tone and it was different from the usual post-apocalyptic story in a few interesting ways. Fun to see how the genre is evolving.

The Wings of Earth (translated): I would say it’s kind of a Chinese 2001: A Space Odessy. It’s interesting in how the narrative flows. It’s a little different that what I’m used to. But it was still a very interesting story that kept me guessing until the end.

The Baby Eaters: A very neat examination of another culture and their norms by using an alien race. I thought the alien culture was well conceived and the story flowed quite well. I’d read more in this universe.

Kit: Some Assembly Required: Kit Marlowe keeps appearing in various stories. I wonder why he has such a hold on writers. He was in the first book that gave me a deep dive into the Sidhe (or perhaps the second, I read them within the same year, I believe) as a character. Here once again as an emergent AI. This short story has an interesting structure where the narrative of the story is intermingled with a narrative that seems to me (who still knows nothing of Marlowe) to be autobiographical. It’s an interesting story and an interesting take on emergent AI when there seem to be more and more of these stories as we get closer to potentially achieving the goal of AI. I was quite amused.

Non-Fiction

Inspiring Writers with Four Scientific Breakthroughs: The author guides the reader through a series of technologies that are currently in early stages and can serve as a basis for inspiration for near-future SF stories or extrapolated out to further future stories.

Quarks, Colonialism, and Alternate Realities: A conversation with Vandana Singh: This one was less about any individual story of Ms. Singh’s and more about how her life and culture shape her outlook and her stories. I found it fascinating. Both types of interviews work well, but when I’m not familiar with the author, I really prefer this type of interview because I love learning about how other people see the world.

Another word: Breathing Life into Characters: One of my favorite readers to do work for Escape Artists explains how she gets into the head space of the characters.

Editor’s Desk: Nine, Three, Six: A little about anthology releases and then a little about some Hugo nominees who’d appeared in Clarkesworld.

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