Shout-Out: Her True Name by Ryan Elainska

She doesn’t have a name, because she never keeps one for very long. You’ve seen her face a thousand times, but it always wears a different mask. Her exploits are legendary, but no one has ever heard of her. She tries to be like everyone else, but she finds she can only ever be herself, over and over again.

What if many of the heroes of myth and folklore were all one immortal woman, who has been alive for millennia? These are a few fragments of this Unnamed Heroine's history—eight short stories, scattered throughout the centuries.

Video: Primitive Technology

We often greatly underestimate what our ancient forebears were capable of, which is why these videos, by an Australian making things using primitive techniques and technology, are so fascinating.

Book Review: Brain Plague by Joan Slonczewski

Pros: brilliant world-building, fascinating characters, thought-provoking

Cons: 

Chrysoberyl of Dolomoth is a pyroscape artist with the Seven Stars. In order to improve her financial and artistic positions she agrees to become a carrier. Carriers play host to sentient microbial symbionts, visible to the host via their optic neuroports. Chrys’ ‘people’, the Eleutherians, call her the God of Mercy, but they don’t always act in her best interests. And there are other strains of micros going around, ones that take over their hosts, turning them into vampires and drug addicts. These hosts eventually travel to the Slave World, a place no one ever returns from. 

You’re dropped into this complex world with no explanation, so it takes a few chapters to become familiar with all the terms, characters, and ideas. You do learn about the micros and how being a carrier works along with Chrys, but there’s a lot outside of that to take in: Chrys’ art, elves, sentients, simians, the Underworld, vampires, anti-simian groups, etc. The world is multi-layered and realistically complex.

The characters, both humanoid and micro, are quite fascinating. Chris must learn how to deal with the little people in her head and their demands on her time (for themselves and for the larger micro community as a whole) while also continuing with her own life (her art, lost friends, religious family, learning how to handle money, personal relationships).

The book does… meander a bit. While there are several linear plot threads, there are also a fair number of asides into complementary issues. The author examines different problems associated with being a host, and how different hosts treat their people. It also goes into how the hosts treat each other - both in the carrier community and outside of it. Then there’s the inter-racial problems: simians and physician sentients face discrimination, elves believe their society is perfect and so ignore the real threat one of their members poses everyone, should micros have the same rights as carriers, etc.

I really enjoyed the book. It’s fascinating seeing the different groups interact, and the micros are so much fun.   

Shout-Out: City of Endless Night by Milo Hastings

Written in 1919, City of Endless Night has recently been reprinted by Dover.  It's a public domain novel and also available for free through Project Gutenberg. I've read a fair number of dystopian novels, so I was delighted when I learned of this one. Though, given the current descent into dystopia I'm observing in the US, I may not read this for a while (I need things that don't remind me of the current state of the world).

In Berlin of 2041, millions of people live underground. The city is in a state of perpetual war with the rest of the world, its besieged population locked beneath an impenetrable dome. Strictly rationed food is available only to workers, Christianity is banned, and breeding is governed by eugenics. But a ray of hope descends into the underworld when a young American chemist manages to penetrate the subterranean society in an attempt to rally the demoralized citizens and spark a revolution.

Written toward the end of World War I and published in 1919, this gripping dystopian novel offers remarkably prescient views of Germany's resurgence and the rise of fascism. City of Endless Night's many anticipations of Nazi ideology include rigid governmental control of the press, promotion of eugenics, and the embrace of the concept of a master race. A landmark of science fiction, this pioneering novel was the precursor of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and other visionary tales.

Video: Chicken Attack

The Gregory Brothers (AKA Schmoyoho) are touring the world and making... interesting music videos. Here's one they did in Japan with Takeo Ischi, the Chicken Yodeler.

Shout-Out: Resistance by Mikhaeyla Kopievsky

The Announcer calls my name, but she does not speak to me. This macabre spectacle has nothing to do with me. And everything to do with them. This is all for the thousands below – the compliant citizens of Otpor, the witnesses to my Execution, the silent and transfixed. This is their moment. Their reconditioning.

In a future post-apocalyptic Paris, a rebellion threatens to upset the city’s perfectly-structured balance and plunge its citizens into anarchy.

Two generations after the Execution of Kane 148 and Otpor’s return to Orthodoxy, forbidden murals are appearing on crumbling concrete walls – calling citizens to action. Calling for Resistance.

The murals will change the utopian lives of all citizens. But, for Anaiya 234, they will change who she is.

A Peacekeeper of the uncompromising Fire Element, Anaiya free-runs through city’s precincts to enforce the Orthodoxy without hesitation or mercy. Her selection for a high-risk mission gives Otpor’s Cooperative the chance it needs to eliminate the Heterodoxy and Anaiya the opportunity she craves to erase a shameful past.

Books Received in January, 2017

Many, many thanks as always to the amazing publishers that send me books for review. I can't read all of them, but I do try.

The City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett - This is the final book in the Divine Cities trilogy. I have loved every book in this series. This book is brilliant, and beautifully wraps things up. It's out in May, and my review (already written) will be published a week or two before it's release.

Revenge. It’s something Sigrud je Harkvaldsson is very, very good at. Maybe the only thing.

So when he learns that his oldest friend and ally, former Prime Minister Shara Komayd, has been assassinated, he knows exactly what to do—and that no mortal force can stop him from meting out the suffering Shara’s killers deserve.

Yet as Sigrud pursues his quarry with his customary terrifying efficiency, he begins to fear that this battle is an unwinnable one. Because discovering the truth behind Shara’s death will require him to take up arms in a secret, decades-long war, face down an angry young god, and unravel the last mysteries of Bulikov, the city of miracles itself. And—perhaps most daunting of all—finally face the truth about his own cursed existence.

Big Buttes Book: Annotated Dyets Dry Dinner (1599), by Henry Buttes, with Elizabethan Recipes by Michelle Enzinas - I got this through a Library Thing giveaway, and it was pretty interesting. If you're interested in Elizabethan or medieval/renaissance cooking, it's got a fair number of recipes, information on humour theory, and more. You can read my review of it here.














From Ice to Ashes by Rhett Bruno - This kind of reminds me of The Expanse, the first book of which is sitting on my to be read pile.

A humble laborer is caught in the tensions between Earth and Titan, the now-colonized moon of Saturn, in a standalone novel set in the universe of Titanborn (“Sci-fi noir at its finest!”—David Simpson, author of the Post-Human series). 

Kale Drayton knows his place. As a Ringer born on Titan, he’s used to keeping his head down and his mouth shut—no matter how much the Earthers abuse him or his own kind berate him. So when he’s caught stealing from a wealthy merchant, he’s lucky to be sentenced to low-paying maintenance work on a gas-harvesting ship instead of life in a cell . . . or worse.

The Vindication of Man by John C. Wright - This is the fifth book in his Count to the Eschaton Sequence.

The Vindication of Man is the epic and mind-blowing continuation of John C. Wright's visionary space opera series surpasses all expectation. 

Menelaus Montrose, having renewed his enmity with his immortal adversary, Ximen del Azarchel, awaits the return of the posthuman princess Rania, their shared lost love. Rania brings with her the judgment of the Dominions ruling the known cosmos, which will determine the fate of humanity, once and for all. Vindication or destruction? And if it is somehow both, what manner of future awaits them?