Category: Science Fiction Page 11 of 30

With Grimm Resolve by Jeffrey H. Haskell: Buckle Up, Grimm and the Interceptor are Back!

With Grimm ResolveWith Grimm Resolve

by Jeffrey H. Haskell

DETAILS:
Series: Grimm's War, #2
Publisher: Aethon Books
Publication Date: May 17, 2022
Format: Kindle Edition
Length: 373 pg.
Read Date: July 15-18, 2022

“Kim, any ideas?” he asked.

He didn’t need to tell her what for— her stations repeated everything he saw and kept her apprised of the situation.

“Other than we run? Nothing, sir. I know that’s not what you were hoping to hear.”

“I can’t expect you to solve the impossible every day. Maybe just on Tuesdays,” he said with false cheer.

What’s With Grimm Resolve About?

Grimm’s back from command school and the USS Interceptor is back on patrol. His crew has become the well-oiled machine he knew they could be. There’s been a little shuffling of the crew between books, but by and large, those secondary characters you enjoyed before are back and ready for more.

I really don’t know what else to say shy of recapping the whole novel—the crew looks into a distress call on a fairly remote station, and finds both action and a mystery. Chasing breadcrumbs leads them to a couple of discoveries that blow their minds (and don’t do wonders for the structural integrity of the ship, come to think of it). Coupled with what they uncovered/witnessed in the first volume, Grimm and his crew know that things for their Navy and the Alliance will never be the same.

Its Place in the Series

Initially, I saw this advertised as a trilogy (and it still looks like one on the publisher’s website, as of the time I write this)—and there’s at least one reference in the book to a trilogy.

However, Amazon tells me there’s a fourth book coming in September. I’m refusing to read anything about it, so I don’t inadvertently learn anything about the third volume, One Decisive Victory. But I can’t stop speculating—was there just too much to wrap up in One Decisive Victory, so Haskell had to split it? (I can 100% believe that given the events of this book) Did he finish the trilogy and decide he was having too much fun/success to leave it there and came up with something new? (Another theory I could absolutely believe).

Regardless, With Grimm Resolve functions as a middle novel of a trilogy—it’s darker, the stakes are higher, and it certainly appears that Grimm, the Interceptor, her crew, and potentially the entire Alliance are in dire straits—straits so dire I should probably capitalize them. At the same time, we get a complete story here—Haskell only leaves the minimum unresolved. There’s clearly more to come, but we get a resolution on most of the important events here. One Decisive Victory will be about the repercussions of this novel.

So, what did I think about With Grimm Resolve?

Against All Odds started slowly, establishing the status quo for the Navy, the political realities in the Alliance, and the state of relations with other governments—in addition to everything about Grimm and the Interceptor. Once that’s established, he takes the brakes off and it becomes a thrill ride. As we start this novel by focusing on a different group and their activities threatening the Alliance, I assumed we’d get something similar.

And we sort of do—but it’s quicker, Haskell doesn’t have much to do in order to orient his readers, and the action hits before we’re a quarter of the way in—and it really doesn’t let up. Yes, there are moments of rest for the reader and characters, it’s not all danger and combat for the last three-quarters. But the plot doesn’t stop and no one gets out of the woods until the end. There’s a tension throughout that doesn’t let up.

Along those lines, I should mention a nice trick by Haskell. The series is called Grimm’s War, and whether it goes on for one or two (or more) books, you know Grimm makes it through Book 2, or the series would be called something else. Yet, there’s more than once where you can see Grimm being killed and you can’t help but wonder if Haskell has fooled you into thinking he’s safe. I love that he was able to do that.

With Grimm Resolve ended in a way that made me consider tossing off my schedule and jumping on to the next one right away. I’m thoroughly enjoying this series and can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t. Give this series a try!


4 Stars

20 Books of Summer

20 Books of Summer 2022: June Check-in

20 Books of Summer
Just a quick check-in on the challenge hosted by Cathy at 746 Books.

I’ve read 5 of the 20–and am about halfway through a sixth. Compared to last year at this time, I’m in great shape–because I hadn’t read anything off my list. I’d hoped for a little more, but since I don’t have anything of the weight and length of The Border left on my list, I figure I’ll breeze through most of this (there are at 4-6 likely one-day reads on the list, so that’ll help). I picked a good and entertaining list this year—and I’m chipping away at ol’ Mt. TBR, too.

1. The Deepest Grave by Harry Bingham
2. Condemned by R.C. Bridgstock
✔ 3. Payback by R.C. Bridgstock
4. Persecution by R.C. Bridgstock
5. AMORALMAN: A True Story and Other Lies by Derek DelGaudio
✔ 6. Against All Odds by Jeffery H. Haskell
7. One Decisive Victory by Jeffery H. Haskell
8. With Grimm Resolve by Jeffery H. Haskell
9. A World Without Whom: The Essential Guide to Language in the Buzzfeed Age by Emmy J. Favilla
10. Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker
11. Divine and Conquer by J.C. Jackson
12. Mortgaged Mortality by J.C. Jackson
13. The Ghost Machine by James Lovegrove
14. Roses for the Dead by Chris McDonald
✔ 15. A Wash of Black by Chris McDonald
16. Whispers in the Dark by Chris McDonald
17. Down the River unto the Sea by Walter Mosely
✔ 18. Crazy in Poughkeepsie by Daniel Pinkwater
19. Ghost of a Chance by Dan Willis
✔ 20. The Border by Don Winslow

(subject to change, as is allowed, but I’m going to resist the impulse to tweak as much as I can).
20 Books of Summer '22 Chart

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Audiobook) by Dennis E. Taylor, Ray Porter (Narrator): Big Laughs and Big Ideas Litter this SF Adventure

We Are Legion (We Are Bob)We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

by Dennis E. Taylor, Ray Porter (Narrator)

DETAILS:
Series: Bobiverse, Book 1
Publisher: Audible Studios
Publication Date: December 26, 2016
Format: Audible Original
Length: 9 hr.,  56 min.
Read Date: June 10-5, 2022
Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org

What’s We Are Legion (We Are Bob) About?

Bob Johansson is a nerd—he’s both into SF and actual space travel, and the technology we’re developing to study space—he’s also come into some pretty good money by selling off his software company. Just as you start to like the guy, he’s killed in a freak accident—and he wakes up 117 years in the future.

Between cryogenics not really working out the way anyone intended, some change in governmental policies, and a bunch of other stuff better described in the book—Bob finds himself as a sentient AI, a possession of a post-USA government. Assuming he functions well enough to pass some training, Bob’s destined to control a space probe—one capable of making duplicates of itself (himself?).

Bob and his clones are charged with finding new planets for humans to colonize—a task made urgent after events that happen after the initial launch.

The Tone

What I haven’t said anything about there is the tone—this is a comedy. There’s interstellar travel, combat, death, destruction, and the threat of human extinction—but Bob and his clones are a hoot and they’ll keep you grinning and chuckling throughout.

It’s not a comedy like Adams—it’s more along the lines of John Scalzi or Scott Meyer—there’s a decent plot and a mostly serious story with actual stakes—but the characters are ridiculous and/or consistently funny and quirky.

How was the Narration?

I thought the description I read for this book had promise, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to give it a try until I saw that Ray Porter was narrating it. A no-longer active book blogger had told me Porter was her favorite narrator, and I thought he did a fantastic job with Winslow’s The Dawn Patrol. His involvement convinced me.

I’m so glad it did—he was great. I think I would’ve enjoyed this with most narrators or in text form, but something about Porter’s narration and characterization of the clones added just the right element to an already fun book. Part of the conceit of the book is that the clones have slight (but noticeable)-to-significant variations in personality. I think making some of those with the slight variations noticeably different in the first-person narration is a great achievement—it’s hard to describe, I realize. You need to hear it for yourself.

So, what did I think about We Are Legion (We Are Bob)?

I don’t have a lot to say about this, sadly, it’s one of those I wish I could say a lot about. I had a lot of fun listening to it, and couldn’t wait to get back to it when I walked away.

It had just the right amount of seriousness to keep it from being nothing but jokes, and you really got invested in all/almost all the clones—that level of investment in AIs is rare for me. Bob (well, the Bob that woke up an AI) and his several clones are nothing but fun.

I spent most of the book thinking that as much fun I was having, I probably wouldn’t continue. But by the time I finished, I knew I’d be back for more. I’ve read/listened to a little more SF this year than I normally do, and it’s books like this that are fueling that.


3.5 Stars

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions expressed are my own.

Against All Odds by Jeffery H. Haskell: It’s the Chance He’s Gotta Take

Against All OddsAgainst All Odds

by Jeffrey H. Haskell

DETAILS:
Series: Grimm's War, #1
Publisher: Aethon Books
Publication Date: April 19, 2022
Format: Kindle Edition
Length: 448 pgs.
Read Date: June 13-16, 2022

Chief Boudreqx rolled the ship until the belly faced Kremlin and the cockpit looed out into open space…open except for her.

The Interceptor. The front of her hull was painted like a shark’s head, but it was old and faded, scratched and worn.

Jacob had spent most of his life waiting for this moment, and in it, all his concerns about his past, his present, and his future faded away.

He didn’t care if she looked like a beaten prizefighter with her armored hull dented and streaked from action. Or if the turrets were scratched, streaked, and patched.

Only that she was his.

What’s Against All Odds About?

Two years ago, Lt. Jacob Grimm, did the right thing in a crisis situation. Sadly, the optics of his action were horrible and the political fallout from it turned a promising Naval career into a dead-end endeavor. He’s assigned to an obscure post—where he does well but is destined to fall into obscurity and having to leave the navy.

Then politics intervenes again—and he’s assigned a ship to command. The commander unexpectedly died of natural causes a couple of months ago, and Interceptor needs someone to get it back into shape. Grimm doesn’t know the politics behind this assignment—and doesn’t care. This is his last hope of doing anything with his time in the Navy that won’t be covered in scandal.

In the intervening months, the ship has fallen into disrepair (its major drive component is missing!), and there’s little-to-no discipline among the crew. Grimm has his work cut out for him.

Meanwhile, a hostile (foreign) government, pirates, other criminals, and an obsessed scientist are at work in this sector—naval high command is up to something, too. Grimm and his crew only know about the pirates, so they don’t realize just how interesting/dangerous life is going to get.

The Technology of this Universe

He wasn’t in uniform, but the cap was a universal spacer adornment. Ships were almost always on the cold side, enough to be uncomfortable without warm clothes and a watch cap. If a ship was warm, something was terribly wrong.

One thing every book about interstellar travel has to deal with is how both travel and communication are handled. I appreciated Haskell’s approach, it feels as grounded as any series that’s not going to force generation ships on everything can be.

The way he designed the technology/construction/etc. of the ships really appealed to me. There’s a very Star Trek-feel to the whole thing, but without the shiny panels and great lighting, the physical aspects of the ships are more Firefly-like. Think Moore’s Battlestar Galactica, just slightly less advanced.* There’s also a feel of 20th Century Navy ships and submarines—unforgiving metal everywhere, a focus on function over comfort/aesthetics; cold temperatures everywhere; worrying about what could happen to things that aren’t bolted down while the ship moves; food that’s nutritious, but not necessarily appealing.

* I’m a little annoyed with myself here. I spent the entire novel thinking about the Star Trek/Firefly comparison and only got around to BSG because I wanted to throw on some Bear McCreary as I wrote this. BSG is a better way to envision the tech/atmosphere. There’s a very non-subtle Star Trek homage in the novel, so I feel okay getting it stuck in my mind.

So, what did I think about Against All Odds?

I’ve enjoyed the first two novels in Haskell’s Full Metal Superhero series (and have been kicking myself for years for not reading more of them), but this? He’s clearly been working his craft since 2017, and it has paid off here.

I spent a good portion of the novel wishing he’d spend less time on the subplots—assuming they’d end up being important, but all I wanted to do was get back to the Interceptor. It made me question several of my reading choices over the last couple of years—why didn’t I read more things like this? There was a brief spy vs. spy thing, too, as part of a subplot—I could’ve used more of that. But once the subplots started converging on the Grimm/Interceptor story? It was like having my cake, eating it, too—and not caring about my A1C levels.

My impatience aside, this was skillfully paced—he kept the tension mounting as you become more invested in the various crews and characters, and as the layers of the plot get pulled back to reveal Haskell’s game plan. The combat scenes—the ship vs. ship scenes in particular—were great. There are times I feel shallow and adolescent for enjoying that kind of thing the way I do, but I get over that pretty quickly.

I would say the Epilogue felt unnecessary—if the reader didn’t assume most of what we got there already, I’m not sure they were paying attention. I think it’d have been better for Haskell to trust the reader to assume the Epilogue and/or to see the effects of it play out over the next book or two without spelling it out quite the way he did. That’s my major beef with the book, and if it takes until the Epilogue to get something like that? That’s a pretty good sign. There were a couple of other choices I questioned, but I want to see what Haskell does with them before I spend too much ink on them.

I’ve got Book 2, With Grimm Resolve, scheduled for mid-July—and at least one too many books on my June schedule—but it took all my discipline not to dive into it after finishing this. Do yourself a favor, grab some popcorn and settle down with this for a couple of hours—you’ll have a whale of a time.


4 Stars

20 Books of Summer

EXCERPT from There Goes The Neighbourhood by S Reed

There Goes The Neighbourhood Poster
For the next part of my stop on The Love Books Blog Tour for S Reed’s There Goes The Neighbourhood, I present to you this little excerpt from the novel. Enjoy!


Underappreciated

Poppy Field Lane is like any typical American suburb of the 50s… but it’s the mid-90s and the (mostly) terrible fashion notwithstanding, the Lane is a time capsule of life in Upstate New York before the feminist movement. The men go to work, and the women stay home and look after the house. The men have all the fun, and the women clean up afterwards. The men set all the rules, and the women abide by them… except when the men are out of town. None of these rules apply to eccentric widowed billionaire Ignatius Feltrap who is as young as she is rich.

She lived in the biggest house – a mansion, really – the biggest in all of Poppy Field Lane, but one day, she decided she no longer liked her neighbors, so she paid an extortionate amount of money to have her house moved to the beachfront.

Not because she liked the view, but so it would spoil the stunning vistas for her abhorrent neighbors, Carol and Frank, the Lilinsters (there are better names that Ignatius likes to call them by, but none of them are polite). Ignatius is convinced they have risen from the fiery depths of hell just to try and ruin her life; try to, anyway. It also gave her a chance to throw even wilder parties without the worry (not that she did) of a noise complaint from said neighbors. In fact, if it weren’t for them, most of the town wouldn’t mind her. And don’t think she doesn’t take pleasure in their indignation. Carol, especially, lived for calling the cops to Feltrap Manor, although she would never give it that name. She’d usually say something like “That woman, I believe her name is Ignatius, yes, the widow, well, she’s throwing an illegal party again”, and she would purr over the word ‘widow’ and let it hang in the receiver’s ear like a moldy piece of fruit. Ignatius hoped taking that power away from the vile witch would make her melt, but it only seemed to exacerbate the tension between the two of them. To Ignatius’s disdain, Carol and her brusque husband tick on. How she loathes the ground they walk on. If you ask her, the Lilinsters are to blame for her being outcast from the rest of Poppy Field Lane. If it weren’t for them, she would be accepted by the town, despite being ‘new money’. And despite her rambunctious attitude, she does want to be accepted, but she will not conform to the Lane’s outdated ways.

There is an unspoken understanding that they and Ignatius are civil toward each other in the street… However, only one of them got the memo and read it. The other, it seems, set it on fire… with a flamethrower.

 


Read the rest in There Goes The Neighbourhood by S Reed.

My thanks to Love Books Group for the invitation to participate in this Tour.

Love Books Group

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: There Goes The Neighbourhood by S Reed

Today is the day for The Irresponsible Reader’s Book Tour Stop for S Reed’s There Goes The Neighbourhood—an eccentric SF with a lot of heart.

There Goes The Neighbourhood Poster

Book Details:

Book Title: There Goes The Neighbourhood by S Reed
Publisher: Lake Country Press
Release date: April 26, 2022
Format: Ebook/Paperback
Length: 258 pages

There Goes The Neighbourhood Cover

About the Book:

They say there are only five kinds of alien contact…

But what if there is a sixth kind?

Befriending one…

Poppy Field Lane is the place to be in the ’90s. It’s a quiet, affluent New York suburb filled with a few eccentric residents. One, in particular, Ignatius Feltrap.

Ignatius doesn’t abide by the snobbish rules of her cliché cul de sac, but when she stumbles upon the secret of a lifetime while walking on the beach… her life is thrown for an out of this world loop.

Turns out, extra-terrestrials are real.

Enter Væson, a sassy alien on the run from their home planet. Væon has blended in for years, while trying to evade capture from their own evil government along with Earth’s mysterious agency until, of course, Ignatius and her trusty Labrador, Alfie, blunder upon them. It doesn’t take long for a once in a lifetime friendship to form, and Ignatius vows to protect Væson at any cost.

Can they solve the mystery of Ignatius’s late husband’s death before the alien government and Earth’s top-secret one find where Væson is? And more importantly; can they do it before the annual Neighborhood Fete…

Purchase Link:

Amazon UK ~ Amazon US

My thanks to Love Books Group for the invitation to participate in this Tour.

Love Books Group

20 Books of Summer 2022: Kickoff

20 Books of Summer
Cathy at 746 Books is hosting 20 Books of Summer again. This challenge has been fun the last couple of years, and has proved to be a good way for me to actually read some of those “I need to read those one day” books. I’m being very ambitious this year with some of my selections, but some of those are pulling double-duty and are taking care of another reading challenge, too. It’s going to be an actual challenge to get all of these read, but I think I’m up for it. It’s a little risky with two trilogies and three books from another new-to-me series—I could end up really disliking myself, but I really want to clean up some of my shelves, you know?

I’m going with the unofficial US Dates for Summer—Memorial Day to Labor Day (today through September 5th), just because it’s easier for me to think that way. And I’ve needed those first few days of September the last two years, but let’s not think about that. Well, I say I’m starting today, but it’s going to be next Tuesday at the earliest that I get to read one of these books…proper planning and all that…

This summer, my 20 are going to be:

1. The Deepest Grave by Harry Bingham
2. Condemned by R.C. Bridgstock
3. Payback by R.C. Bridgstock
4. Persecution by R.C. Bridgstock
5. AMORALMAN: A True Story and Other Lies by Derek DelGaudio
6. Against All Odds by Jeffery H. Haskell
7. One Decisive Victory by Jeffery H. Haskell
8. With Grimm Resolve by Jeffery H. Haskell
9. A World Without Whom: The Essential Guide to Language in the Buzzfeed Age by Emmy J. Favilla
10. Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker
11. Divine and Conquer by J.C. Jackson
12. Mortgaged Mortality by J.C. Jackson
13. The Ghost Machine by James Lovegrove
14. Roses for the Dead by Chris McDonald
15. A Wash of Black by Chris McDonald
16. Whispers in the Dark by Chris McDonald
17. Down the River unto the Sea by Walter Mosely
18. Crazy in Poughkeepsie by Daniel Pinkwater
19. Ghost of a Chance by Dan Willis
20. The Border by Don Winslow

(subject to change, as is allowed, but I’m going to resist the impulse to tweak as much as I can).
20 Books of Summer '22 Chart

Towel Day ’22: Some of my favorite Adams lines . . .

(updated 5/25/22)

There’s a great temptation here for me to go crazy and use so many quotations that I’d get in copyright trouble. I’ll refrain from that and just list some of his best lines . . .*

* The fact that this list keeps expanding from year to year says something about my position on flirting with temptation.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

This must be Thursday. . . I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

“You’d better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.”

“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”

“You ask a glass of water.”

(I’m not sure why, but this has always made me chuckle, if not actually laugh out loud. It’s just never not funny. It’s possibly the line that made me a fan of Adams)

He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centuari. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before . . .

“Look,” said Arthur, “would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?”

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.


The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85 percent of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N-N-T’Nix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian “chinanto/mnigs” which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan “tzjin-anthony-ks” which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.

Reality is frequently inaccurate.

Life is wasted on the living.


Life, The Universe and Everything

Life, the Universe, and Everything

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying. There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

(It goes on for quite a while after this—and I love every bit of it.)

“One of the interesting things about space,” Arthur heard Slartibartfast saying . . . “is how dull it is?”

“Dull?” . . .

“Yes,” said Slartibartfast, “staggeringly dull. Bewilderingly so. You see, there’s so much of it and so little in it.”


So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Of course, one never has the slightest notion what size or shape different species are going to turn out to be, but if you were to take the findings of the latest Mid-Galactic Census report as any kind of accurate guide to statistical averages you would probably guess that the craft would hold about six people, and you would be right. You’d probably guessed that anyway. The Census report, like most such surveys, had cost an awful lot of money and told nobody anything they didn’t already know—except that every single person in the Galaxy had 2.4 legs and owned a hyena. Since this was clearly not true the whole thing eventually had to be scrapped.

Here was something that Ford felt he could speak about with authority. “Life,” he said, “is like a grapefruit.”

“Er, how so?”

“Well, it’s sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It’s got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast.”

“Is there anyone else out there I can talk to?”

Arthur had a swordfish steak and said it made him angry. He grabbed a passing waitress by the arm and berated her. “Why’s this fish so bloody good?” he demanded, angrily.

“Please excuse my friend,” said Fenchurch to the startled waitress. “I think he’s having a nice day at last.”


Mostly Harmless

Mostly Harmless

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Fall, though, is the worst. Few things are worse than fall in New York. Some of the things that live in the lower intestines of rats would disagree, but most of the things that live in the lower intestines of rats are highly disagreeable anyways, so their opinion can and should be discounted.


Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

There is no point in using the word ‘impossible’ to describe something that has clearly happened.

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.

Let’s think the unthinkable, let’s do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.

(I’ve often been tempted to get a tattoo of this)


The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, ‘As pretty as an airport.’

The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.

She stared at them with the worried frown of a drunk trying to work out why the door is dancing.

It was his subconscious which told him this—that infuriating part of a person’s brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.

As she lay beneath a pile of rubble, in pain, darkness, and choking dust, trying to find sensation in her limbs, she was at least relieved to be able to think that she hadn’t merely been imagining that this was a bad day. So thinking, she passed out.


The Last Chance to See

The Last Chance to See

“So what do we do if we get bitten by something deadly?” I asked.

He looked at me as if I were stupid. “You die, of course. That’s what deadly means.”

I’ve never understood all this fuss people make about the dawn. I’ve seen a few and they’re never as good as the photographs, which have the additional advantage of being things you can look at when you’re in the right frame of mind, which is usually around lunchtime.

I have the instinctive reaction of a Western man when confronted with sublimely incomprehensible. I grab my camera and start to photograph it.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

The aye-aye is a nocturnal lemur. It is a very strange-looking creature that seems to have been assembled from bits of other animals. It looks a little like a large cat with a bat’s ears, a beaver’s teeth, a tail like a large ostrich feather, a middle finger like a long dead twig and enormous eyes that seem to peer past you into a totally different world which exists just over your left shoulder.

One of the characteristics that laymen find most odd about zoologists is their insatiable enthusiasm for animal droppings. I can understand, of course, that the droppings yield a great deal of information about the habits and diets of the animals concerned, but nothing quite explains the sheer glee that the actual objects seem to inspire.

I mean, animals may not be intelligent, but they’re not as stupid as a lot of human beings.


The Salmon of Doubt

The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.


And a couple of lines I’ve seen in assorted places, articles, books, and whatnot

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

A learning experience is one of those things that says, “You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.”

The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.

Solutions nearly always come from the direction you least expect, which means there’s no point trying to look in that direction because it won’t be coming from there.

Towel Day ’22: Do You Know Where Your Towel Is?

(updated and revised this 5/25/22)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

Towel Day, for the few who don’t know, is the annual celebration of Douglas Adams’ life and work. It was first held two weeks after his death, fans were to carry a towel with them for the day to use as a talking point to encourage those who have never read HHGTTG to do so, or to just converse with someone about Adams. Adams is one of that handful of authors that I can’t imagine I’d be the same without having encountered/read/re-read/re-re-re-re-read, and so I do my best to pay a little tribute to him each year, even if it’s just carrying around a towel.

Some time in 7th or 8th grade (I believe), I was at a friend’s house and his brother let us try his copy of the text-based Hitchhiker’s Guide game, and we were no good at it at all. Really, it was embarrassing. However, his brother had a copy of the novel, and we all figured that the novel held the keys we needed for success with the game (alas, for us it did not). My friends all decided that I’d be the one to read the book and come back in a few days as an expert.

I quickly forgot about the game. Adams’ irreverent style rocked my world—could people actually get away with saying some of these things? His skewed take on the world, his style, his humor…and a depressed robot, too! It was love at first read.

It was one of those experiences that, looking back, I can say shaped my reading and thinking for the rest of my life (make of that what you will). Were my life the subject of a Doctor Who or Legends of Tomorrow episode, it’d be one of those immutable fixed points. I read the books (particularly the first) so many times that I can quote significant portions of it, and frequently do so without noticing that I’m doing that. I have (at this time) two literary-inspired tattoos, one of which is the planet logo*. In essence, I’m saying that Adams has had an outsized influence on my life and is probably my biggest enduring fandom. If carrying around a (massively useful) piece of cloth for a day in some small way honors his memory? Sure, I’m in.

* I didn’t know it at the time, but Adams didn’t like that guy. Whoops.

One of my long-delayed goals is to write up a good all-purpose Tribute to Douglas Adams and his work post, and another Towel Day has come without me doing so. Belgium. Next year . . . or later. (he says for at least the 8th straight year, a work ethic I like to believe Adams would endorse).

In the meantime, here’s some of what I’ve written about Adams. A few years back, I did a re-read of all of Adams’ (completed) fiction. For reasons beyond my ken (or recollection), I didn’t get around to blogging about the Dirk Gently books, but I did do the Hitchhiker’s Trilogy:
bullet The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
bullet The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
bullet Life, The Universe and Everything
bullet So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish
bullet Mostly Harmless
bullet I had a thing or two to say about the 40th Anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
bullet Last year, I took a look at the 42nd Anniversary Illustrated Edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Also, I should mention the one book Adams/Hitchhiker’s aficionado needs to read is Don’t Panic by Neil Gaiman, David K. Dickson and MJ Simpson. If you’re more in the mood for a podcast, I’d suggest The Waterstones Podcast How We Made: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—I’ve listened to several podcast episodes about this book, and generally roll my eyes at them. But this is just fantastic. Were it available, I’d listen to a Peter Jackson-length version of the episode.

I’ve only been able to get one of my sons into Adams, he’s the taller, thinner one in the picture from a few years ago.

You really need to check out this comic from Sheldon Comics—part of the Anatomy of Authors series: The Anatomy of Douglas Adams.

TowelDay.org is the best collection of resources on the day. One of my favorite posts there is this pretty cool video, shot on the ISS by astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.

Even better—here’s an appearance by Douglas Adams himself from the old Letterman show—I’m so glad someone preserved this:

Love the anecdote (Also, I want this tie.)

Catch-Up Quick Takes: A Few Words on a Few Books

I tried to write a full post on most of these, and I just wasn’t able to come up with enough to say. So, I guess it’s time for another one of these quick takes posts. The point of these is to catch up on my “To Write About” stack—emphasizing pithiness, not thoroughness. It wasn’t until I was well into writing this one that I realized there was a theme throughout this one. I was underwhelmed to varying degrees by all four of these books. On the plus side, my “To Write About” stack is a bit smaller.


Fight and FlightFight and Flight

by Scott Meyer, Luke Daniels (Narrator)

DETAILS:
Series: Magic 2.0, #4
Publisher: Audible Studios on Brilliance
Publication Date: March 11, 2019
Format: Unabridged Audiobook
Length: 10 hr., 26 min.
Read Date: April 4-7, 2022
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(the official blurb)
Okay, sure, this was amusing. Luke Daniels is great. I enjoyed spending time with these characters again.

But…

This was a thin excuse of a story, were this a novella, it’d probably be pretty good—but stretched out this far, it just didn’t work.

However, the last chapter made the whole thing worthwhile, and what it introduces/sets up for the future makes me pretty excited to see what Meyer has up his sleeve.
3 Stars

Goodbye, ThingsGoodbye, Things:
The New Japanese Minimalism

by Fumio Sasaki, Eriko Sugita (Translator), Keith Szarabajka (Narrator)

DETAILS:
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Publication Date: April 10, 2017
Format: Unabridged Audiobook
Length: 4 hr., 32 min.
Read Date: April 18, 2022
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(the official blurb)
Ummm….yeah, so this was a thing I listened to. A friend was pretty excited about the book, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

Sasaki didn’t convince me—the picture he painted of himself—as well as his readers/listeners—is of a pretty shallow person. I don’t think he is—or was, before he went through this period of self-improvement—but he sure did a lousy job of depicting a person who had any depth.

He describes an interesting way of life, but didn’t make me at all interested in trying it. I didn’t hate the book, but I can’t find anything to commend about it.

Szarabajka’s work was fine, I should add—nothing too flashy, which fits the book. I’d listen to other books he narrated.
2 Stars

Taming Demons for BeginnersTaming Demons for Beginners

by Annette Marie, Cris Dukehart (Narrator)

DETAILS:
Series: Guild Codex: Demonized, #1
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Publication Date: December 30, 2019
Format: Unabridged Audiobook
Length: 7 hr., 52 min.
Read Date: April 26-27, 2022
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(the official blurb)
While I was listening to this, I said, “this protagonist is doing nothing but making foolish/stupid moves—I have to pause occasionally just to growl at her.” I’m used to protagonists making foolish mistakes, that’s not the problem. But this woman seemed to be deliberately choosing the worst thing to do at every moment.

I’m not sure that she really got past that, but at some point, it stopped being annoying. I’m not sure why. Part of it has to do with the way that this book tied into Demon Magic and a Martini—Marie’s done this before, but the way she pulled that off in this case was plenty of fun. I don’t know that I’m sold on this series, but I do want to see what happens next, and that’s good enough.

Dukehart did a fine job—maybe a little bit too close to her work in The Guild Codex: Spellbound, but it’s easy enough to get past that.
3 Stars

RosebudRosebud

by Paul Cornell

DETAILS:
Publisher: Tor
Publication Date: April 25, 2022
Format: Kindle Edition
Length: 112 pg.
Read Date: May 3, 2022
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(the official blurb)
I…I just don’t know what to say about this. It’s a clever premise, and Cornell (as one expects) writes well—there are some nice sentences throughout. Basically…I should be singing the praises of this one.

And yet…

I can’t. I don’t know why, but I could not convince myself that I was enjoying this. I just didn’t respond to any of it. I’ve been a fan of Cornell’s for years, this is just a blip, I’m sure, and I’ll be gung-ho about his next work. But this just wasn’t for me.
2 1/2 Stars

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