Books Received in December 2023

Many thanks to Kensington Books for an eARC of Escape Velocity.

Escape Velocity by Victor Manibo - I love murder mysteries in space, and this one adds in the class disparity that makes it topical. Out May 21st, 2024.

A decades-old murder looms over the glamorous clientele of a high-end space hotel . . . while an unforeseen threat percolates in the service corridors. The guests are about to experience the hospitality they deserve.

Space Habitat Altaire is the premier luxury resort in low Earth orbit, playground of the privileged and the perfect location to host reunions for the Rochford Institute. Rochford boasts only the best: the wealthiest, most promising students with the most impressive pedigrees. Complete with space walks, these lavish reunions are a prime opportunity for alumni to jockey for power with old friends and rivals—and crucially, to advance their applications to live in an exclusive Mars settlement. Earth is dying, and only the best deserve to save themselves.

Aboard the Altaire for their 25th reunion, finance magnate Ava pursues the truth about her brother’s murder during their senior year, which cast a dark shadow over their time at Rochford. Laz, ambassador and political scion, hopes to finally win Ava’s heart. Sloane, collecting secrets to conceal his family’s decline, angles for a key client. And Henry, heir to a healthcare empire, creates an unorthodox opportunity to get to Mars in a last-ditch effort to outrun a childhood secret.

While these erstwhile friends settle scores and rack up points, they fail to notice that other agendas are afoot at the Space Habitat Altaire, and their own futures aren’t the only ones at stake—“the best” will soon regret underestimating those they would leave behind on Earth.

 

Happy Holidays!

Wishing a very merry Christmas to those who celebrate it!

Movie Review: Soldier

Directed by: Paul W. S. Anderson, 1998
IMDb listing

Todd 3456 is a soldier, trained from birth. When a squad of upgraded solders come of age, the older generation are retired. After a test between the squads ends badly, Todd is presumed dead and dumped on a waste planet. There he finds survivors from a crashed colony ship and discovers what a family is.

This was a surprisingly good film. The story of Todd trying to fit into regular society while he clearly has massive PTSD was unexpectedly sad and touching.

The special effects looked rather cheesy and their grasp of space travel is pure science fiction but those are very minor elements of the film and easily overlooked.

The last third of the film is one massive fight scene with lots of death and explosions.

I really enjoyed this film.

Movie Review: Oxygen

Directed by: Alexandre Aja, 2021
IMDb listing

A woman wakes up in a medical cryogenic unit with no memory of how she got there and her oxygen supply quickly running out.

This is a pretty good French science fiction movie centered around a single actor. Watching the woman try various ways to get out of the medical unit, get help, and regain her memories, alternates between horrifying and inspiring. She’s clever and comes up with numerous ideas. The actress, Melanie Laurent, does an amazing job in a challenging role.

As an outside observer, there is a twist that’s easy for us to guess but understandably hard for her to consider. She did annoy/frustrate me a few times, but given the circumstances, her panic was deserved.

The special effects were decent. The main set had lots of detail and really felt claustrophobic and highly scientific.

There are a few gory bits and one very successful jump scare but on the whole the horror is more due to being trapped in a box with a timer counting down.

If you like psychological horror and don't mind subtitles, this is a good film.

Italy trip photos

My recent trip to Italy was done to research as many medieval (and older) sites as I could hit. I saw a number of baptistries, cathedrals, churches, museums, and old cities. It was amazing.

I've made an album with some of the more interesting photos from my trip to Italy. If you want information on the photos, check out the album at Flickr. 

The Escapist video team starts Second Wind

I'm not sure what my audience here is interested in, so I'm basically posting the kinds of things that interest me. I've been watching the video game youtube channel The Escapist for years. I remember when Yahtzee Croshaw and Jim Sterling did poetry jams. The last few years the channel grew and added a lot of new shows and personnel. One of my favourite shows there is the D&D campaign Adventure is Nigh (season 1).

A few weeks ago, The Escapist's parent company fired the editor-in-chief, and the entire video team quit in protest. They've created a new company: Second Wind. So far their youtube channel's uploaded a few videos either wholesale from The Escapist (if the creator was an independent) or a modified version (if the creator was a full employee, whose IP videos belong to The Escapist). 

So, Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation, a sarcastic video game review show, has been reborn as Fully Ramblomatic. It's a fun show so long as you're ok with adult content and swearing. I also enjoy Design Delve (if you're interested in what makes video games work behind the scenes), and Cold Take (if you like to consider the philosophical side of games). I'm hoping they start a new D&D campaign too.

The Second Wind crew's great and it's really impressive how quickly they've bounced back with this channel and content. I'm looking forward to see what new shows they come up with and watching them for years to come.

I'm back from Vacation

I spent a month in Italy on a research trip, taking photos of lots of churches, baptistries, hill towns and more. Jetlag's been hard to kick, so it's taking me longer to get back up to speed than I'd like.

Last year I promised to post some photos of France and apparently I forgot to do so. One reason is that I had a lot of blurry shots and got a photo sharpening ai program. Fixing those photos took up a lot of time. But I will try to get some photos of both France and Italy up on my blog on the sooner side. I got an account on flickr so I can share photos here more easily (I hope).

I didn't get any reading done on the trip. The stress of going from place to place, plus the amount of time it took for me to back-up my photos every night in case something went wrong/was lost/stolen meant I didn't have much free time. I saw a lot of great stuff and took a LOT of photos.

I have another research trip I'm planning for so I'm not sure how much fiction I'll be reading in the next few months. Probably not much. I have a long list of history and religion books I want to get through as well as general city research for each place on my itinerary. I prepare detailed floor plans for churches, with diagrams or layouts of the more interesting sculptural programs (generally on portals and the west facade). All of this takes a lot of time.

So while I'm hoping to keep up posting here, it may be bi-weekly for the next few months. I'll have to see.