Second Quarter 2023 Roundup

Counting The Days of Blogging

This post markss halfway through the year, and nine and a half years of blogging every day!  (That’s more than a century in “blog years” : – ) )

I intend to keep going to round out the ten years.  Can’t stop now, can I!

A Solar Anniversary

This solstice marked the first anniversary of my solar panels, which were energized on 21 June 2022.  The reports shows that over the first year, our small array generated enough to displace over 2.5 Mwh of consumption, which the web app reckons saved about 2 tons of Carbon emissions.  (This is something like 1 / 2 billionth of global emissions.)

The Dave Barry Tribute “Great Names For A Band”

As always, I collect great names for a band.  These phrases are real terms from real technical articles—I am not making them up!

“Insect Ears”
“Fluent Pomposity”
“Catastrophic forgetting”
“Model collapse”
“End Effectors”

Books

As always, each week I reviewed books I read.  This quarter covered 4 non-fiction, 16 fiction books.

Fiction

Give Unto Others by Donna Leon
So Shall You Reap by Donna Leon
The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett 
Confidence by Rafael Frumkin
Hopeland by Ian McDonald
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton 
Sea Change by Gina Chung 
Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
Someone in Time: Tales of Time Crossed Romance edited by Jonathan Strahan  
Swamp Story by Dave Barry
The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks
Yellowface by R. F. Kuang 
Season of Skulls by Charles Stross
Fractal Noise by Christopher Paolini 
White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link

Non-Fiction

The Wandering Mind by Jamie Kreiner
The Status Revolution by Chuck Thompson
People of the Ecotone By Robert Michael Morrissey
On the Origin of Time by Thomas Hertog     

Book Review: “Hopeland” by Ian McDonald

Hopeland by Ian McDonald

You had me on page 5, when love fell from the sky.  : – )

Anyone who knows me, knows I’m a sentimental fool who can’t (and won’t even try to) resist a good “boy meets girl, boy loses girl” story.

Ian McDonald has been writing great science fiction for a long time now, and Hopeland is just what we expect from this master.  A mind-blowing future with a complex society.

The titular ‘Hopeland’ is a take on how to create a giant, transnational, social group.  Whether you buy it or not, it’s a fascinating, if utopian vision. I have to say that McDonald makes it believable and makes you want to join.

In this story, the Hopeland family also seems to be part of a not-well-explained supernatural cabal of wizards.  I didn’t really understand, but let’s just go with it.

There are also islands in this story. Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Kalaallit Nunaat (formerly Greenland), and a fictional small south pacific island.  Island cultures are another take on how to organize future society—small, hyperlocal, and self-reliant by necessity. 

Islands are also highly vulnerable to the effects climate change, and much of the plot is driven by challenges and responses to climate change. 

Young Raisa herself strives to not just respond, but to think up and create 1,000-year responses.  The whole problem is short term thinking, she feels.  So, let’s do something that only make sense in the long term.  Thinking way more than one lifetime ahead. 

Raisa is not one to mess about, nor to be satisfied with just one 1,000-year project.  No siree.

After some rollicking, but less than successful adventures in London and Ireland, she arrives in Iceland.  Where she promptly decides to plant a forest, aiming to rewild the island to the pre-Viking state (i.e., before the people and their damn sheep ate all the trees). 

Then a roadside geothermal hydroponic vegetable stand (hyperlocal, sustainable food); then she leaps into developing industrial scale geothermal hydrogen generation with a goal to decarbonize sea transport. 

Bored with success, she then moves to Greenland to expand her geothermal operations into the infrastructure for carbon-free trans-Atlantic shipping systems, complete with geothermal platforms atop the mid-ocean rifts and a couple of entirely new cities on the now ice free former-Greenland.

All this in a couple of decades, while, by the way, raising a child as a single mom.

It’s definitely a utopian vision of techno-economic change.  One determined woman musters money, people, know how, and political clout to build up a new world, nearly instantly with no set back or resistance?  Why does this seem just a smidge utopian to me?

Oh, I almost forgot.  There is also a lot of fussing about personal pronouns and gender identity.  In this particular utopian future, gender is complicated.  Very complicated.  More complicated than it needs to be, IMO. But the good news is that, no matter what I think, the kids will be all right.

I guess with a title like “Hopeland”, McDonald was determined to show us an optimistic vision of “what could go right”.   And this story certainly is chock-a-block with glorious, magical, and optimistic visions. 

The wizards of lightning.  “The Music” that lives in the Golden Land, and will play for 1,000 years.  Great future tech.  A thrilling climate migration.  Multiple takes on the beauty and strength and wisdom of “family” (for many different values of “family”).

And, of course, a love story.

McDonald is a master. Get it. Read it.

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1. Ian McDonald, Hopeland, New York, Tor, 2023.

Sunday Book Reviews

Year End Roundup for 2019

This New Years marks close to six years of blogging every day.  I write ‘em, a few of you click on ‘em.

The Traffic Stats Were Weird

The total hits on this blog increased again, up more than 10% from 2018.  As before, there is a huge amount of “long tail” in this traffic, with hits spread widely over the thousands of posts from the last 8 years.

But it isn’t clear exactly how many people actually look at this blog.  The stats I get are defaults from wordpress, so I don’t really know much about them.

This year saw a couple of mysterious blips.  I don’t know how much of this is real traffic, and how much of it is artifacts of the data collection.

Early in the year, the daily hits dropped dramatically.  This approximately corresponds to the European data privacy requirements, and the dearth of hits from that region suggest that the blog is either not available to some people (not being compliant in some way I don’t know about) or accesses are not reported (not having permission to collect that data).   I dunno.

But then, around August, traffic picked up.  Really picked up, to 100 hits per day.  During this burst, it tended to be bursty, with a few days of high traffic, as much a 300 hits per day, and then several days of low traffic.  From the imperfect information I can see, the bursts might be from Hong Kong (perhaps scraping the internet to make a copy to be used inside China?)

Then, around November, traffic dropped off again and has stayed low.  This drop approximately coincides with the increasing troubles in HK, so perhaps this reflects a cut off of Internet access there.

I really don’t know.

The Usual Stuff

The blog continued to cover the usual stuff.

Cryptocurrencies, the Future of Work (and Coworking), Dinosaurs, Birds, Robots, the Ice Is Melting, Renewable Energy.

I blog about anything that interests me and is worth the trouble.  I try to have something useful to say, though sometimes it’s mainly a link with “this is cool”

Many of the things I discuss are from current academic papers, which I cite and generally try to read at least the abstract and always point to the original sources.

“Coworking – The Book” and other Writing

My 2018 book “What is Coworking?” continues to sell like hot cakes–if nobody had ever heard of hot cakes.  I think it sold a couple dozen copies.  My plans for a new villa are on hold…. : – )

Writing is hard.  Selling books is even harder.

Speaking of writing, I also contributed an article to a local free paper, which I really like the title to:

1. Robert E. McGrath, Think Heliocentrically, Act Locally, in The Public I: A Paper of the People. 2019. http://publici.ucimc.org/2019/04/think-heliocentrically-act-locally/

I archived a report on the 2013 Alma Mater project.  Versions of this report was rejected by several conferences and journals.  A problem with working outside the box is that the journals of boxology won’t publish your results.

1. Robert E. McGrath, A Digital Rescue for a Graduation Ritual. Urbana, Illinois, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105503

Onward

This blog will continue in the same vein, and daily posts will continue at least for now.

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Band Names

In a continuing homage to Dave Berry, I have identified a bunch of phrases that would make great names for a band.  In general, these phrases are taken from actual, real scientific and technical papers.  So I am not making them up—just repurposing them.

Here is this year’s crop.

gerbil’s casket
Preen Oil
Carolina Preen Oil
Carolina Junco
Dark eyed Junco
Arctic Albedo
Mean Surface Albedo
Arctic Amplification
Amplified Arctic Warming
Surface Air Temperature
Snow Cover Fraction
Buckypaper
Pacific Pumice Raft
Sichuan Mudslides  (also a great name for cocktail)
Soft Exo Suits
The Weddell Gyre
Giant Miocene Parrots
Eocene Whale
Chicxulub ejecta
Perching Drones
Perch And Stare Mission
Due to a lack of sunlight in Scotland
Blogging Birds Of Scotland
Huddle Pod
Cuddle Pod
Giant Hopping Tree Rats
Kangaroo Ancestors
Prehistoric kangaroos
Tiny Pronking Robots
Computational Periscopy

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Books

As always, I have continued the weekly review of one or more books that I read this year. This year I wrote about a total of 73 books, 24 non-fiction, 49 fiction.

Some Favorite Books of the Year

Fiction:

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Angels of Music by Kim Newman

Non-Fiction

Breaking and Entering by Jeremey N. Smith
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer
You Look Like A Thing And I Love You by Janelle Shane

All the books reviewed (in no particular order)

Fiction

Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear
Stone Mad by Elizabeth Bear
Grand Union by Zadie Smith
Equoid (2013) by Charles Stross
Toast (2002) by Charles Stross
Speak Easy (2015) by Catherynne M. Valente
Six Gun Snow White (2016) by Catherynne M. Valente
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
The Dakota Winters by Tom Barbash
Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré
Anno Dracula 1999 Daikaiju by Kim Newman
The Princess Beard by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
Grave Importance by Vivian Shaw
The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey
Amnesty by Lara Elena
Outside Looking In by T. C. Boyle
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Noir Fatale ed. by Larry Correia and Kacey Ezell
Inland by Téa Obreht
The Origins of Sense by Adam Erlich Sachs
Fall by Neal Stephenson
Gather The Fortunes by Bryan Camp
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
The Future is Blue by Catherynne M. Valente
No Country For Old Gnomes by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
Early Riser by Jasper Fforde
European Travels for the Monstrous Gentlewoman by Theodora Goss
The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman
The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman
Luna: Moon Rising by Ian McDonald
Revolutionaries by Joshua Furst
Someone Who Will Love You in all Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg
Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq
Unto Us A Son Is Given by Donna Leon
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
Angels of Music by Kim Newman
The Burglar by Thomas Perry
Grim Expectations by K. W. Jeter
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua
Macbeth by Jo Nesbø
No Sunscreen for the Dead by Tim Dorsey
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
Infernal Devices  by K. W. Jeter
Fiendish Schemes by K. W. Jeter

Non Fiction

Lakota America by Pekka Hämäläinen
The Laundromat by Jake Bernstein
You Look Like A Thing And I Love You by Janelle Shane
They Will Have To Die Now by James Verini
Hollywood’s Eve by Lili Anolik
Proof!  By Amir Alexander
How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Four Queens by Nancy Goldstone
The Next Billion Users by Payal Arora
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
Places and Names by Elliot Ackerman
Eyes in the Sky by Arthur Holland Michel
American Carnage by Tim Alberta
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
The Ice At The End Of The World by Jon Gertner
Dinosaurs Rediscovered by Michael J. Benton
Devices and Desires by Kate Hubbard
Stony The Road by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The Rise and Fall of Alexandria by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid
Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff
Breaking and Entering by Jeremey N. Smith
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee” by David Treuer
Brilliant Green by Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohllenben
Before and After Alexander by Richard A. Billows

 

Q2 2019 roundup

This quarter marked the milestone: 2K days in a row!

This quarter also saw a dramatic drop in hits reported in the stats.  (I have states only about hits.)  The drop seems to coincide with the shutdown of Google+ on April 1.  I had been automatically posting every blog article to Google+, so maybe that was getting them more visible in Google searches. I dunno.

The Usual Suspects

This quarter saw lots of posts about the usual suspects: The Cryosphere, Solar power, as well as the usual Cryptocurrency Thursdays and Robot Wednesdays and so on.

A couple of great names for band:

Eocene Whale
Chicxulub ejecta

Books Reviewed This Quarter

Weekly book reviews continued every Sunday.  Here is a list (in no particular order).

Fiction

Gather The Fortunes by Bryan Camp
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
The Future is Blue by Catherynne M. Valente
No Country For Old Gnomes by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
Early Riser by Jasper Fforde
European Travels for the Monstrous Gentlewoman by Theodora Goss
The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman
The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman
Luna: Moon Rising by Ian McDonald
Revolutionaries by Joshua Furst
Someone Who Will Love You in all Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg

Non Fiction

Dinosaurs Rediscovered by Michael J. Benton
Devices and Desires by Kate Hubbard
Stony The Road by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The Rise and Fall of Alexandria by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid

 

Book Review: “Luna: Moon Rising” by Ian McDonald

Luna: Moon Rising by Ian McDonald

Finally!  The third and climactic book in the Luna stories.  In earlier stories (Luna: New Moon (2015), Luna: Wolf Moon (2017)), things were getting crazy, and dangerous.  And, in this book the “game of dragons” is teetering on the edge of total catastrophe.  Fighting among the powers on the moon has let in Earth powers, and the new owners care about nothing but profit.

Many of the complex power struggles and private loves and hates in this third book.  Not everyone dies.  Love wins, at least in some fortunate cases.  The moon may be about to lead humanity out into the solar system.

McDonald is a great story teller, so it’s gonna be a good story, right?

Well, it’s an OK story.  He wrapped things up, but there was so much to wrap up that there is a ton of Deus Ex Machina goin’ on.

Did you know the who far side of the moon was a gigantic, independent Super University?  Did you know that it is politically independent and the most powerful organization on the Moon and possibly both planets?  Neither did I.

I was also kind of surprised that, seventy years into the moon colony, they were just starting to dream of asteroids and orbital solar farms.  I mean, out here in the corn fields, we’ve been dreaming of these things since before Armstrong walked on the Moon.

And it seems like most of the software has very convenient back doors that let the good guys subvert and surprise the bad guys over and over.  Sigh.   Deus In The Machina

And so on.

From the dozen or more glaring typos and non sequiturs, I suspect that this whole book was a rush job.  The production seems hasty, and maybe the story was too.

And, by the way, the story is scarcely over.  Everyone is dancing in the streets at the end, joyous at the political reshuffle and lucky lovers who were reunited.  But I can’t believe that the underlying challenge from Earth is truly over, nor does the new regime look particularly stable to me.

So will there be more stories?  That’s up to the author, but it kind of looks like he is done with it.

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1. Ian McDonald, Luna: Moon Rising, New Yoir, TOR Books, 2019

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Sunday Book Reviews

 

2017 Roundup and list of Books Reviewed

This year I continued daily posts, which I have done for just under four years now.  Overall, traffic to the blog was up about 18% over 2016.

As always, the coverage is mainly review and commentary on topics of interest to me, including “the new way of work”, robots, dinosaurs, cryptocurrency/blockchain, quantum cryptography, internet of too Many things, computer software in general, and so on.

This year I continued weekly posts noting and commenting on books I have read.  Most of the books were recently published, with a few older ones.   (Listed below.)

Throughout the year, I offered a number of “great names for a band”, in tribute to Dave Barry who pioneered the genre.  Most of these are “sciency”, inspired by technical articles I read and commented on.

Countershading
Banded tail
Dinosaur bandit mask
Paleocoloration
Beryllium hydride
Biomimetic Robotic Zebrafish
Chicxulub    [Note:  pronounced ( /ˈtʃiːkʃʊluːb/; Mayan: [tʃʼikʃuluɓ])]
The Chicxulub Event
We Are Children of Chicxulub
Thanks to Chicxulub
Brought to You By Chicxulub
Service Office Industry
Comfortable edgy fit outs
As Greenland Darkens
Recent Mass Loss
Larsen C
My Raptor Posse
A Rip of Raptors
Personal Raptor
The Robot Raptor Revue
Final Five Orbits
Kuiper Belt & Braces
A Belt of Kuiper
The Grand Finale Toolkit
Fog World Congress
Penguin Guano
Adelie Census
Fog Orchestra
Shape Changing Fog Screen
The Fog and the Eye
First Ringplane Crossing
Grand Finale Dive #2
The Grand Finale Toolkit
Last View of Earth
Final – and Fateful – Titan Flyby
Robots On Europa
Gay Robots on Europa

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Books Reviewed in 2017

Overall I posted 79 book reviews, 58 fiction and 21 non-fiction.

In fiction, these include old favorites (Donna Leon, Charles Stross, Thomas Perry, Tim Dorsey, Ian McDonald, Gregory Maguire, Tom Holt).

Some new favorites include Richard Kadrey,  Viet Thanh Nguyen, Emma Straub.

I really liked Robin Sloan’s Sourdough, and Touch by Courtney Maum, but my best reads for the year have to be

Joe Ide,  IQ and Righteious.  <<links>> Righteous by Joe Ide

In non-fiction, I liked Weird Dinosaurs by John Pickrell and Eugenia Chengs Beyond Infinity.  How America Lost Its Secrets by Edward Jay Epstein is both good and important.

<<links>>

But at the top, I’d probably pick

The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness by Paula Poundstone

List of Books Reviewed

Q4

Fiction

First Person Singularities by Robert Silverberg
The Adventurist by J. Bradford Hipps
Artemis by Andy Weir
Hiddensee by Gregory Maguire
Willful Behavior by Donna Leon
A Selfie As Big As The Ritz by Lara Williams
Righteous by Joe Ide
Shylock is My Name by Howard Jacobson
The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson
Border Child by Michel Stone
Dunbar by Edward St. Aubyn
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
The Muse by Jessie Burton
Sourdough by Robin Sloan

Non-fiction

Napoleon in Egypt by Paul Strathern
After Piketty edited by Heather Boushey, J. Bradford DeLong, and Marshall Steinbaum

Books Reviewed In Q3 2017

Fiction

Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan
The Answers by Catherine Lacey
Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki
The Management Style of Supreme Beings by Tom Holt
The Delirium Brief by Charles Stross
Shiver Hitch by Linda Greenlaw
Dichronauts by Greg Egan
Killing is My Business by Adam Christopher
The Painted Queen by Elizabeth Peters and Joan Hess
Standard Hollywood Depravity by Adam Christopher
Seven Wonders by Adam Christopher
Will Save Galaxy For Food by Yahtzee Croshaw
Reincarnation Blues by Michael Poore
Arlington Park by Rachael Cusk
Transition by Rachael Cusk
Death at La Fenece by Donna Leon
A Sea of Troubles by Donna Leon

Non Fiction

Giant of the Senate by Al Franken
Weird Dinosaurs by John Pickrell
Made With Creative Commons by Paul Stacey and Sarah Hinchli Pearson
How Not To Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg
Beyond Infinity by Eugenia Cheng

Books Reviewed Second Quarter

Fiction

New Boy by Tracy Chevalier
The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente
Touch by Courtney Maum
Mother Land by Paul Theroux
Walkaway by Cory Doctorow
Startup by Doree Shafrir
Off Rock by Kieran Shea
The Wrong Dead Guy by Richard Kadrey
Earthly Remains by Donna Leon
The Underwriting by Michelle Miller
Luna: Wolf Moon by Ian McDonald
Huck Out West by Robert Coover

Non-Fiction

Half-Earth by Edward O. Wilson
The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams
Solve For Happy by Mo Gawdat
The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness by Paula Poundstone
Lenin on the Train by Catherine Merridale
The Spider Network by David Enright
Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare by Giles Milton

Books Reviewed Q1 2017

Fiction

Revenger by Alistair Reynolds
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Girls by Emma Cline
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
The People’s Police by Norman Spinrad
IQ by Joe Ide
Clownfish Blues by Tim Dorsey
The Vacationers by Emma Straub
Empire Games by Charles Stross
The Cold Eye by Laura Anne Gilman
Modern Lovers by Emma Straub
The Golden Gate by Robert Buettner
The Old Man by Thomas Perry
Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson

Non Fiction

The Caliphate by Hugh Kennedy
The New Better Off or Reinventing the American Dream by Courtney E. Martin
How America Lost Its Secrets by Edward Jay Epstein
Valley of the Gods by Alexandra Wolfe
Wonderland by Steven Johnson
Measure for Measure by Thomas Levenson

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That’s all for 2017!  Happy New Year!

 

Housekeeping: Second Quarter Roundup, Books Reviewed

A bit of housekeeping at the end of Q2.

The usual

This quarter has seen daily posts, a steady stream of comments on research papers* and general articles on favorite topics including blockchains, the new economy, solar power, environmental sensing, computer security, and “brilliantly executed BS”.

I’ve begun to pay attention to Quantum Computing, which is surely a coming thing.

And Robots! And Dinosaurs!

*Note: discussion of scientific and technical research always refers to the primary sources.

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Books Reviewed This Quarter

A summary of the books reviewed in the second quarter.

Fiction

New Boy by Tracy Chevalier
The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente
Touch by Courtney Maum
Mother Land by Paul Theroux
Walkaway by Cory Doctorow
Startup by Doree Shafrir
Off Rock by Kieran Shea
The Wrong Dead Guy by Richard Kadrey
Earthly Remains by Donna Leon
The Underwriting by Michelle Miller
Luna: Wolf Moon by Ian McDonald
Huck Out West by Robert Coover

Non-Fiction

Half-Earth by Edward O. Wilson
The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams
Solve For Happy by Mo Gawdat
The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness by Paula Poundstone
Lenin on the Train by Catherine Merridale
The Spider Network by David Enright
Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare by Giles Milton

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Some ideas for band names

 Following the lead of Sensei Dave Barry, I occasionally suggest names for bands.

This quarter’s harvest include:

Penguin Guano
Adelie Census
Fog Orchestra
Shape Changing Fog Screen
The Fog and the Eye
First Ringplane Crossing
Grand Finale Dive #2
The Grand Finale Toolkit
Last View of Earth
Final – and Fateful – Titan Flyby
Robots On Europa
Gay Robots on Europa

 

 

 

Book Review: “Luna: Wolf Moon” by Ian McDonald

Luna: Wolf Moon by Ian McDonald

Wolf Moon is a sequel to the earlier Luna: New Moon. MacDonald’s stories are consistently great, and full of wonder, and this one is no exception.

The Guardian’s reviewer hit it on the nose, calling this “A Game of Moons”. Like GOT, this story is a fierce and violent power struggle among the “Dragons”, the major corporate powers on the Moon in the 2160s.

At the end of Luna : New Moon, the Cortas were overthrown, and this story takes up what happens next to the scattered remnants of the vanquished, and the other feuding clans. It isn’t pretty. Strike and counter strike. Death and destruction. Betrayal.

Worse, at long last the powers on Earth want to take control of the Lunar colony. Nothing good can be expected from this political development.

(The “Wolf Moon” is a reference to the full moon in January in Northern climates, which is a bleak and dangerous time, with hungry packs of wolves on the prowl.)

McDonald gives us more views of the complex and fascinating cultures on the moon.  These societies on the moon seem to take every idea ever imagined on Earth, and implemented it.  It is  far beyond “diversity”, to the edge of our imagination. Some of it is cool, and some of it is just, “whoa!”

But regardless of the strangeness of the culture, the story is full of love, courage, heroism, and compassion.

This story is far from finished, so we  all await the next installment.

Get it. Read it. McDonald is not to be missed.

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1. Ian McDonald, Luna: Wolf Moon, New York, TOR, 2017.

 

Sunday Book Reviews

Books Reviewed 2015

Here is  housekeeping post, collecting all the books reviewed here in 2015.

Looking back at this list, I see that this year saw Terry Pratchette’s last book (a wrenching experience), and new novels by old favorites Stross, Perry, Macguire, Holt, Gaiman, among others. I also read older but still good histories by Goodwin and Graeber. I read several books about banking, Papal and otherwise, and overlapping works about Italy, fictional and (supposedly) real.

Over the year, I reviewed a sampling of important books about contemporary digital life, including cryptocurrency, the “sharing economy”, social media, and “mind change”.   These works covered a spectrum from enthusiasm to dark worry, giving us much to think about. There are many more I did not have time or energy for. (I will say more on this topic in another post)

Throughout 2015 I continued my ongoing investigation of the question, “what is coworking?”, including reviews of two recent (self published) books about coworking by practitioners. (More on coworking in another post.)

Shall I name some “Best Books” out of my list? Why not?

Fiction:

There were so many to pick from. I mean, with Neil Gaiman in the list, how can I choose? But let me mention two that are especially memorable

Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente
Very imaginative and well written, and, for once, not so horribly dark. This book lodged in my memory more than others that are probably equally good.

Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
Published a few years ago, but I didn’t read it until this year. A wonderful, intricate story. The flight of the parrot is still in my memory.

Nonfiction:

There were many important works about digital life, and I shall try to comment on them in another post. But three books that really hit me are:

Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
From several years ago, but I didn’t read it until this year. Highly influential on the ‘occupy’ and other left-ish thinking. This is an astonishingly good book, and long form anthropology, to boot. Wow!

Reimagination Station: Creating a Game-Changing In-Home Coworking Space by Lori Kane
An exlectic little self-published book about “home coworking”, which I didn’t know was a thing. Kane walked the walk, and made me think in new ways about community and coworking.

Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy by Sam Maggs
Unexpected amounts of fun reading this short book. It does an old, graying nerd no end of good to see that at least some of the kids are OK. Really, really, OK.

List of books reviewed in 2015

Fiction

A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias
After Alice by Gregory Maguire
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
Bats of the Republic by Zachary Thomas Dodson
Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen
Chasing the Phoenix by Michael Swanwick
Candy Apple Red by Nancy Bush
Chicks and Balances edited by Esther Friesner and John Helfers
Corsair by James L. Cambias
Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright
Diaspora by Greg Egan
Distress by Greg Egan
Electric Blue by Nancy Bush
Forty Thieves by Thomas Perry
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong
Get In Trouble by Kelly Link
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear
Koko the Mighty by Kieran Shea
Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald
Mort(e) by Robert Repino
Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente
Rebirths of Tao by Wesley Chu
Redeployment by Phil Klay
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Shark Skin Suite by Tim Dorsey
String of Beads by Thomas Perry
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross
The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume Nine ed. by Jonathan Strahan
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff
The First Bad Man by Miranda July
The Fortress in Orion by Mike Resnick
The Future Falls by Tanya Huff
The Good, the Bad, and The Smug by Tom Holt
The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray
The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett
The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu
The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss by Max Wirestone
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff
Time Salvager by Wesley Chu
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman
Ultraviolet by Nancy Bush
We Are Pirates by Daniel Handler
Witches Be Crazy by Logan J. Hunder
Zer0es by Chuck Wendig

Non Fiction

Arrival of the Fittest by Andreas Wagner
Blue Mind by Wallace J. Nichols
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper
Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy by Sam Maggs
God’s Bankers by Gerald Posner
LaFayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell
Let’s Be Less Stupid by Patricia Marx
Live Right and Find Happiness by Dave Barry
Merchants in the Temple by Gianluigi Nuzzi
Mind Change by Susan Greenfield
Mindsharing by Lior Zoref
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
No More Sink Full of Mugs by Tony Bacigalupo
Not Impossible by Mick Ebeling
Pax Technica by Phillip N. Howard
Peers, Inc by Robin Chase
Reimagination Station: Creating a Game-Changing In-Home Coworking Space by Lori Kane
Speculative Everything by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Age of Cryptocurrency by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey
The Art of Forgery by Noah Charney
The Next Species by Michael Tennesen
The Reputation Economy by Michael Fertik and David C. Thompson
The Social Labs Revolution by Zaid Hassan
The Ugly Renaissance by Alexander Lee
Twentyfirst Century Robot by Brian David Johnson
Women of Will:  Following the Feminine in Shakespeare’s Plays by Tina Packer

 

Book Reviews

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review: “Luna: New Moon” by Ian McDonald

Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald

Ian McDonald’s latest story live up to our expectations, a complex and strange story, set in a gritty technological future—filled with actual people trying to make it. If you haven’t read his other works, go to your library and check them out.

In this case, the setting is the moon about a hundred years from now. About a million and a half people live on the moon, mining it for minerals and Helium 3 to power Earth’s fusion plants. He fleshes out awe inspiring technology and the society that has developed.

The moon is technically run by the Lunar Development Corporation, so everyone on the planet is an employee not a citizen. Everyone has a chip implanted in their eye that continuously ticks down their resource usage, air, carbon, power, and data. If you run our of money, you are cut off. When you die, you are recycled, possibly to pay off your debts.

There is no government, no criminal or civil law. There is only contract law, which permeates all human interactions. Everyone is under contract, possibly many contracts. The culture is a wild blend of Earth derived ideas, and has developed a really, really, really free wheeling sexual ethos. The common argot does not even have words for straight or gay, only a spectrum of preferences. And humans can get very creative when they are free to make it up any way they want. At points we can only gape and , like one new immigrant in the story, say, “Goodness!”

In this environment, the society is extremely unequal, with the “Five Dragons” at the top. These five extended families/corporations control key economic monopolies, and operate as aristocratic fiefdoms, with many retainers, servants, and employees, dynastic marriages, and private armed forces.

Much of the story is about the internal and dynastic struggles of these families. The characters are realistic, if larger than life. But the super rich do tend to be peculiar, because they can do whatever they want. I can’t say I liked most of these bastards, but we are allowed to see glimpses of humanity and continue to hope that the little people will come out OK. Not likely, but we wish it so.

Of course, the technology is amazing, nearly magical in some cases, but totally believable. Giant orbital slings, huge rolling solar foundries,astonishing nano and biotech, and so on.

And much of the social organization is straight out of Silicon Valley’s playbook: everyone is networked and has personal agents, everyone is constantly executing micro contracts, corporations have data about everything and everyone, and everything is organized around “producing value for the stockholders”.

I’m trying to say, this is a really fine book.

And there is plenty of room for sequels: the fights are not over, there are deep waters that he hasn’t visited yet, and hints at some important secrets yet to be revealed.

It also occurs to me that, McDonald may have intended this to be a fitting tribute as we come up on the fiftieth anniversary of Heinlein’s seminal “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”. Yet another miserable, oppressed lunar colony, with a twisted libertarian philosophy. Yet more political violence in a pressurized rat maze where death is only a few inches away. Yet another lesson in There Ain’t Any Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

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1. Ian McDonald, Luna: New Moon, New York, Tor, 2015.

 

Sunday Book Reviews