What I Read in October

I fell a little behind in my reading this month. Mostly this was for good reasons as I hope to reveal either next month or January. Even so, there were a few stories that caught my eye that I’ll talk up below.

For Salvation by Michael B Tager. (Gamine Fiction volume 1) This was my favorite story from the Gold Shader “Game Fiction Volume 1” anthology my story “Distractions appeared in last month. This is a bit of a slow burn but the story gives clear sense of dread and purpose.
Ice by Rich Larson (Clarkesworld) This slice of life story set on a frozen world called New Greenland revolves around the efforts to human civilization to adapt to environments clearly not meant for human civilization. Curious story in that it's about the tension between all sorts of post-human elaboration and the always perilous crust of brother relations. As someone with a brother, this story really registered.
Cats’ Game by Michelle Muenzler. (DSF) A little bit of the Lottery mixed with a character study of a truly formitable Russian Great Grandmother. Very much like how the ending is handled, making it clear what happened without telling.
Some Gods of El Paso by Maria Dahvana Headley (Tor.com) Great first line. This is about living in the middle of things, being an outlaw with feet in two worlds. A story told in a delirious half-drunk manner about two delirious profane and lusty shamans. Its dry as dust fairy tale style really works for this take. Modern myth making at its finest.
Hold Time Violations by John Chu (Tor.com) Interesting story set in Boston about universes glitching and a daughter trying to heal them through the half-remembered instructions of her mother. ANother example of a hard-sci using magical realism elements to tell a truly fantastic and yet tightly speculative story. Good stuff.

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Death's End by Liu Cixin

Having recently finished the last book in Liu Cixin's instant classic "The Remembrance of Earth's Past" series, Death's End, I can only report a feeling of total amazement and awe. There is so much about this novel that blew my mind, that offered different and better ways of viewing the universe. This novel did what I wish more novels would, serve up a new universe entire, evoking beauty and horror, nobility and disgust, in a timeless monument to unfettered speculation. Obviously, in discussing the events of the last of a trilogy books, spoilers are to be expected. I am, however, going to try to avoid discussing much beyond the first 100 pages of the third novel. I read the translation of this novel, as ushered into being by the amazing talent of Ken Liu. Ken has written of a certain prickliness when it comes to translating work. He makes an effort not to anglicize the source material, not smudging away the occasional difficulties in bringing Cixin...

A Reaction to Peter Watts' "Echopraxia"

Peter Watts’ Echopraxia is a side-sequel to his previous hard sf horror novel Blindsight . Daniel Bruks, a biologist in the Eastern Oregonian desert, gets stuck in the middle of a war between a fugitive vampire and a cult of rewired post-humans called Bicamerals, ultimately kidnapped by them as they head towards the sun. The goal of post-human and vampire alike is to investigate a possible alien intelligence gaining strength there, to determine if it poses a threat, or offers a weapon for the two sides as they struggle for advantage. Bruks' goal is simple survival. Reading Watts is a simultaneously bracing and discouraging experience. Bracing because his depiction of the future and the oddities who inhabit it continue to get better and better, his plots more complicated and more involving, his characters less like sock-puppets for his ideas and more like actual human beings (or whatevers). Discouraging because Watts uses his considerable gifts, artistic and academic, ...

The Dorsia Brevia Solution

While "Green Mars," didn't include nearly as much mind-blowing speculative awesomeness as the first book in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, it did include one set-piece that I enjoyed very much: The Dorsa Brevia Declaration. As mentioned in my review earlier this week, the plot of Green Mars focuses on the approach of a second Martian revolution. The first revolution, as described in Red Mars, was a spasm of senseless violence, mayhem, and targeted assassination, accomplishing little besides the deaths of many, many important characters in the story. As would-be revolutionaries gather in an enormous lava tube named Dorsa Brevia, the central question is how would any future revolution escape the fate of the first. The process, which I'll describe below, was very familiar to me. During the course of my path to teaching history in Middle School, I worked at an afterschool program named Citizen Schools based in Boston. Citizen Schools had its ups and down...

Ancient Logic

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