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Fiction

Outsystem

This is a decent space adventure following Major Tanis Richards and her efforts to save the Intrepid, a colony ship, from sabotage. There is some industrial competition for the contract to terraform a planet and a rival corporation is taking it seriously enough that blowing up section of habitation ring seems like a viable option.

Some of the dialogue required me to put aside it stilted nature and just enjoy the story, but it wasn't so bad that any part was unreadable.

Overall good story and I'll jump into the next book after I've got through a few other fiction books that have come my way.

A Path in the Darkness

This is the second book in the Intrepid Saga, the first being Outsystem. This time the story starts with Tanis being awakened while the ship is offline and falling into a star, long before she should have been up from stasis. Seems there is someone set on sabotage aboard the ship. It's a race against time and physics to see if they can get the fuel they need and the repairs done so they can make a course correction instead of drifting in space for eternity.

Building Victoria

Here is the third and final entry in the Intrepid Saga. This time we get to meet inhabitants of other star systems fleeing the oppressive caste based system of government. They manage to turn their mining rig into a ship, while evading notice of those in power until the last minute. The Intrepid arrives just as a battle is about to start where the entire working population will be wiped out as retribution for daring to take control of their own destiny.

After the battle the Intrepid helps build the Victoria settlement in return for the mining efforts of the newly free people. This takes around 50 years though so before they get to leave, other crisis's intervene over the decades though so leaving the system and continuing on their journey is at risk.

Again, another decent space romp with a bit of weak dialogue. I'd read it again.

Rogue Protocol - Martha Wells

Pesky feelings, Muderbot can't stop having them when it encounters humans. This time Murderbot is heading out to a remote station to try and collect data on why GrayCris abandoned a perfectly decent terraforming operation. Could they have been looking for, and found, exotic alien stuff and want to cover up what was never a terraforming effort in the first place?

Then Murderbot encounters a pet bot Miki, and makes a friend it doesn't want. Murderbot is also overcome with how nice the humans around Miki treat their bot, even allowing to ignore direct orders to save itself.

This was another quick fun adventure in space with Murderbot.

Isles of the Emberdark - Brandon Sanderson

Yet another secret project from Sanderson gives us more insight into the wider Cosmere as a backwater planet suddenly becomes a key point connecting Shadesmear with reality. Sixth of Dusk has been trained to survive in Shadesmear in a way that the rest of the Cosmere doesn't understand and with that skill he finds another way out of the predicament his planet has found itself in, between great intergalactic powers.

Add to this a dragon bound to human form, a horde, and many other misfits that form a crew and we have an excellent entry in Sanderson's Cosmere. I teared up a bit at the end.

Non-fiction

At a Loss for Words - Carol Off

In an age of polarization, Carol Off, takes a look at how some key words in our language have been weaponized to create divisions in society. It's impossible to have good conversations when you can't agree on the meaning of words.

Off walks through 6 words:

  • freedom
  • democracy
  • truth
  • woke
  • choice
  • taxes

These are the words she feels have the most politically polarized views. There are solid undertones of things like freedom meaning freedom for white people, while excluding black and indigenous voices. Democracy being dismantled by the Koch brothers as they support Far Right activist groups so that only those with gilded privilege get to decide how governments are run. Truth is at odds with science in a vibes based feeling world.

Reading the book is good, and also depressing. I think one of the key ideas I've seen lately is that we don't allow people to hold two ideas that seem contradictory at once. You can't detest what Hamas did in Israel and agree that Israel is now committing genocide. You must pick a side and deviation from your side is met with vitrol from both the radical left and the radical right.

We covered some of these ideas as well in:

Had it Coming - Robyn Doolittle

Doolittle explores the messy convoluted realm of rape culture and the interactions between men and women. She does an effective job at not answering the questions, but muddling through the messy parts where victims are victimized by the people that are supposed to protect them.

She even digs into what redemption looks like, without merely saying that we look for ways to absolve men, even though that is what we do. Doolittle is willing to examine the type of work that makes an assailant worthy of a chance to come back due to the work they've done to understand their acts of victimization.

How to Stand Up to a Dictator

It's funny that we say autocrats are "strongmen" when the truth is they have paper thin skin and can't stand any type of challenge to their word. This is where Maria Ressa starts as she looks at the fall of the Philippines back to autocracy and how social media, Facebook specifically, enables the subversion of the democratic ideal they claim to hold.

In 2011 Ressa was excited about the possibilities that social media was bringing. It allowed the news organizations she worked with to communicate directly to the people and bypass any of the lethargic gatekeepers in society. Over the years though she watched Facebook give tools that autocrats in history would have dreamed of.

Governments have the ability to amplify their messages with bot farms, and humans paid to spread the autocratic misinformation the government wants to spread. Algorithms serve content that radicalize us, as they push towards ever more sensational ideas that outrage us, because outrage juices time on site. Facebook doesn't care if it's a lie or truth, they just want your eyeballs.

This should serve as a stark warning to those that think democracy is unbreakable in the west. Influence campaigns test out their theories in countries with weak government and weak regulations. Then they find what works and bring it to countries with stricter regulations.

If we're not vigilant, western democracy will die.