Q3 2021 Roundup

With the fall equinox, summer is now over.

This blog has passed 2800 daily posts in a row, though reported hits are way down from last year.  Posts will continue until readership improves.  : – )

This summer saw many posts on favorite topics, including dinosaurs, robots, solar energy, and cryptocurrencies.  And robot helicopters on Mars.   And the melting cryosphere.

If we hear about a solar powered robot dinosaur that eats cryptocurrency you know it will appear in this blog!  Especially if it emerges from a melting icecap and goes to Mars to transform into a helicopter.

Book Reviews

As always, weekly reviews of 14 fiction and 6 non fiction books.

Notable book:  The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor

Fiction

Antkind by Charlie Kaufman
The World Gives Way by Marissa Levien
The Very Nice Box by Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman
Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson
Captain Moxley and the Embers of Empire by Dan Hanks
The Paris Labyrinth by Gilles Legardinier
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Questland by Carrie Vaughn
The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente
Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
Elysium Fire by Alistair Reynolds
The Invention of Sound by Chuck Palahniuk
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Non-fiction

The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor
Area 51 by Annie Jacobsen
Venus and Aphrodite by Bettany Hughes
Forget the Alamo by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford
We Had A Little Real Estate Problem by Kliph Nesteroff
Pastels and Pedophiles by Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko

Great Names For a Band

Terms found in real technical papers, not made up at all.

“Spin Orbit Torques”
“Cadmium Telluride”

Book Review: Two Books by Alastair Reynolds

I have only read a couple of stories by Reynolds, but he’s definitely growing on me.  (Earlier posts here and here.)

This summer I read two more and I’m going to have to read some more.

Revelation Space (2000) is one of the foundational stories, introducing this sweeping space opera.

Elysium Fire (2018) is a relatively recent addition to his universe, though I’m not sure about the overall chrononology of the stories.

(With the weirdness of relativistic travel, the notion of an absolute time line is tricky.)

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Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds

OK, let’s carve ourselves out some storytelling space.

Humans have spread, first through sublight generation and sleeper ships, and then through some kind of worm holes (I think).  Humans have found evidence and artifacts of ancient civilizations dating back almost a billion years.  But the old ones seem to be gone, died out—or wiped out.

The story is chock-a-block with wheeze-bang technology, including human augmentations that pushes “human” to the point of “no-longer-human”.  

One of the interesting technologies is the recording and instantiation of “betas”, brain scans that are essentially incremental backups of a life history.  The highest quality betas operate as mentors and standins for the original, even after the Carbon-based unit dies. This kind of hi fidelity ghost creates a whole new dimension to the question of “who done it?”.

This story centers on investigations of a 900,000 year old archaeological site.  The ancient culture seems to have been just about to leap into space when they were wiped out.  What happened to them?  And who did it?  And, most important, are they still out there?

These investigations get tangled with local and interplanetary politics, including complicated dynastic fights.

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Elysium Fire by Alistair Reynolds

Meanwhile, across the galaxy….

This story is a police procedural set in the jaw dropping Glitter Band, ten thousand habitats in orbit around Yellowstone, home to Chasm City, the largest city ever built by humans. 

The Glitter Band operates as a near anarchy—there is so much space that you can generally find what you want or bug out and build what you want.  But the swarm does have a sort of overall government which a radical direct democracy of constant voting.  This is done through brain implants which makes it easy (and also impossible to get out of).

Let’s be clear.  This society depends on software.  Software inside your head.  Software than is relied on to be completely, 100% correct and secure at all times.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Panoply is a small police force dedicated to protecting the polling process, the habitats, and the people. These coppers are faced with a failing public confidence, a populist separatist uprising, and what appears to be serious covert attack on the information infrastructure.  Sound familiar?

The story progresses as they try to unwind multiple mysteries and hold things together.  There is plenty of high tech policing, as well as some awesome high tech settings.

Stuff happens.  There is a satisfactory conclusion to the case—but the story is far from over.

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There are several more stories set in this universe, and I’ll get to them directly.

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1. Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space, New York, Orbit, 2000.
2. Alistair Reynolds, Elysium Fire, New York, Orbit, 2018.

Sunday Book Reviews