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| May 21, 2024
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really liked it
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I could not put ‘The Last Murder at the End of the World’ by Stuart Turton down! I only stopped to sleep, shower and eat. It is a terrific mystery! ‘T
I could not put ‘The Last Murder at the End of the World’ by Stuart Turton down! I only stopped to sleep, shower and eat. It is a terrific mystery! ‘The Last Murder at the End of the World’ is a story that in describing too much of it will cause prospective readers to have a less than exciting experience in reading the book. I had no clue myself when I started the novel what it was about since I didn’t read any reviews. It was a book club selection, and I had only read the title and author in the email I received so that I could put a hold on it at my local library. I had a very happy time being totally amazed at every twisty and turny reveal! There were, I think, some dangling threads, and I felt the book could have used more explanatory filler here and there, but I didn’t really stop to examine the plot intellectually until writing this review. The pounding of my heart because of thrills and chills drove me on! And, here you are, gentler reader, into a book review. Ok, then. I highly recommend ‘The Last Murder at the End of the World’! It is more murder mystery and thriller than science fiction imho, but all of the genre elements are necessary to make it work. I suggest reading a hard/digital copy rather than only an audiobook. There is a list of characters which explain the relationships between them, which are important insofar as how they emotionally interact. Which is odd, actually, because of one of the reveals left me with a lot of questions about this. Emotions are thicker than blood in this case? I have copied the book blurb: ”From the bestselling author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water comes an inventive, high-concept murder mystery: an ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, and an audacious solution. Solve the murder to save what's left of the world. Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched. On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists. Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island—and everyone on it. But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer—and they don't even know it. And the clock is ticking.” There are some red herrings which I think were unnecessary or simply nonsensical, logically speaking, but it was Abi who was throwing fog mist at everyone’s eyes, so to speak. Perhaps she had absorbed the plots of a lot of mystery novels and she had become a fan. Who is Abi? Not telling. Is she good or bad, wise or philosophically corrupted? I’m still mulling that one over… The book is a fun and exciting thrill ride! ...more |
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Sep 22, 2024
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Sep 23, 2024
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Sep 22, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 0063072645
| 9780063072640
| 0063072645
| 3.83
| 60,218
| Jan 18, 2022
| Jan 18, 2022
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really liked it
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‘How High We Go in the Dark’ by Sequoia Nagamatsu is a beautifully written elegy about life and civilization on Earth when a pandemic strikes. There a
‘How High We Go in the Dark’ by Sequoia Nagamatsu is a beautifully written elegy about life and civilization on Earth when a pandemic strikes. There are several linked short stories which, altogether, show the changes on society caused by the mutating virus, and the various responses by individuals who lose loved ones to it. The book is not a dystopic look at a self-destructing Humanity which falls into depravity as everything falls apart. Instead, it is more of eulogy about the resilience of most people who use their grief to continue to walk forward, even if only one step forward at a time if that is what they are able to manage. I have copied the book blurb: ”Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Best Science Fiction (2022), Nominee for Best Debut Novel (2022) Dr. Cliff Miyashiro arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue his recently deceased daughter's research, only to discover a virus, newly unearthed from melting permafrost. The plague unleashed reshapes life on earth for generations. Yet even while struggling to counter this destructive force, humanity stubbornly persists in myriad moving and ever inventive ways. Among those adjusting to this new normal are an aspiring comedian, employed by a theme park designed for terminally ill children, who falls in love with a mother trying desperately to keep her son alive; a scientist who, having failed to save his own son from the plague, gets a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects-a pig-develops human speech; a man who, after recovering from his own coma, plans a block party for his neighbours who have also woken up to find that they alone have survived their families; and a widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter who must set off on cosmic quest to locate a new home planet. From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead, How High We Go in the Dark follows a cast of intricately linked characters spanning hundreds of years as humanity endeavours to restore the delicate balance of the world. This is a story of unshakable hope that crosses literary lines to give us a world rebuilding itself through an endless capacity for love, resilience and reinvention. Wonderful and disquieting, dreamlike and all too possible.” I was moved to tears by several of these stories. The titles are: -30,000 Years Beneath a Eulogy -City of Laughter* -Through the Garden of Memory -Pig Son* -Elegy Hotel -Speak, Fetch, Say I Love You* -Songs of Your Decay -Life Around the Event Horizon -A Gallery A Century, a Cry a Millennium -The Used-To-Be Party -Melancholy Nights in a Tokyo Virtual Cafe -Before You Melt into the Sea -The Scope of Possibility *imho, the best ones. However, ‘The Scope of Possibility’ made me guffaw out loud. What the actual fukc? I still find myself chuckling at odd moments today as I eat my breakfast, knit a few rows, playing with my cat. (I am happy my current cat is not yet two years old, though, this book did remind me of previous losses of beloved pets.) I suppose the author meant ‘The Scope of Possibility’ not as a joke, but a science fiction speculation. However, that is not how it hit me. This is a serious book, one that focuses on the positive aspects of people, and on the middle-class, who live in today’s Western World. There are a lot of speculative explorations about the responses of individuals and society using current science techniques and social trends. It does this while using personal narratives of individual characters, highlighting their personal feelings about what is happening, not the science. It assumes governments and people keep themselves or are led to keep themselves under self-control despite the scary deaths caused by the virus. Ultimately, it is not about the terrifying horrors of a pandemic, it is about the resilience and positive emotional creativity of the survivors. But damn! That last story is an outlier, imho! Really? Really? It is simply wrong, an off-key final note to what was otherwise a really fine song about Humanity. ...more |
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Sep 15, 2024
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Sep 22, 2024
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Sep 15, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 1250275067
| 9781250275066
| B09Y45J7S1
| 3.95
| 4,719
| Mar 14, 2023
| Mar 14, 2023
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really liked it
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‘AntiMatter Blues’ by Edward Ashton is the second book in the Mickey7 series. Readers should read Mickey7 before this one since the books are not stan
‘AntiMatter Blues’ by Edward Ashton is the second book in the Mickey7 series. Readers should read Mickey7 before this one since the books are not standalone. Mickey7 is the narrator, and he’s been killed six times. Well, it was thought to be seven times, and Mickey8 was created before it was known Mickey7 hadn’t actually died yet. The rule was if two expendables were unintentionally alive, both copies had to go down the recycle hole. It didn’t go down like that as it should have by the rulebook. A lot of mistakes were made! But Mickey7 is the expendable who knows where he hid the bomb, so he is still alive. It’s a convoluted story, which is why it is best if the reader start with book one before this one. It is always interesting times for an expendable! I have copied the book blurb: ”Edward Ashton's Antimatter Blues is the thrilling follow up to Mickey7 in which an expendable heads out to explore new terrain for human habitation. Summer has come to Niflheim. The lichens are growing, the six-winged bat-things are chirping, and much to his own surprise, Mickey Barnes is still alive—that last part thanks almost entirely to the fact that Commander Marshall believes that the colony’s creeper neighbors are holding an antimatter bomb, and that Mickey is the only one who’s keeping them from using it. Mickey’s just another colonist now. Instead of cleaning out the reactor core, he spends his time these days cleaning out the rabbit hutches. It’s not a bad life. It’s not going to last. It may be sunny now, but winter is coming. The antimatter that fuels the colony is running low, and Marshall wants his bomb back. If Mickey agrees to retrieve it, he’ll be giving up the only thing that’s kept his head off of the chopping block. If he refuses, he might doom the entire colony. Meanwhile, the creepers have their own worries, and they’re not going to surrender the bomb without getting something in return. Once again, Mickey finds the fate of two species resting in his hands. If something goes wrong this time, though, he won’t be coming back.” In the previous novel, it was discovered the Creepers are sentient. They don’t have a culture like people, so it took awhile for the colonists to realize the Creepers can talk. The Creepers, in turn, did not understand how humans work. It caused a misunderstanding, with deaths. After all, it IS the Creepers’ planet. But Mickey7 is the only human who can talk to them (read the first book). Things are very tense between Creeper and human. It gets worse, because in this book, the colony makes the sad discovery the Creepers are not the only bug colony as they had thought! Well. Maybe the enemy of my enemies is my enemy? This is an excellent science fiction series! It is a fun entertainment written with light-hearted humor despite the seriousness of the troubles the little colony faces. I highly recommend it. ...more |
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Sep 11, 2024
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Sep 14, 2024
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Sep 11, 2024
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| 1542049148
| 9781542049146
| B073QRYR6G
| 3.89
| 531,486
| 1895
| Aug 22, 2017
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it was amazing
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‘The Time Machine’ by H. G. Wells is absolutely fun and exciting to read! It was originally published in 1895, but it hasn’t aged at all. It is such a
‘The Time Machine’ by H. G. Wells is absolutely fun and exciting to read! It was originally published in 1895, but it hasn’t aged at all. It is such a marvelous tale that I think the people who made the movie in 1960 that was based on it, which I have seen many times, did not want to change the bones of Wells story very much at all in bringing the book to the screen. The book is naturally cinematic (as are most of Wells’ novels). I noticed, however, that the Time Traveler who narrates his adventure in Wells’ story makes more deadly mistakes than his movie counterpart. There are also added scenes in the movie of additional stops in Time as the Time Traveler moves forward until he meets Weena, an Eloi, in 802,701 AD. In the movie, these stops in Time show an accurately depicted future that Wells could not predict since he wrote the book in 1895, not 1960. Being a man of science, though, Wells does include what the Time Traveler sees when he moves forward 30 million years. This was not in the movie! I have copied the book blurb: ”A scientist and gentleman inventor in industrialized Victorian England claims to have irrefutable proof that time is not simply a concept - it's a whole other dimension. When he reveals the prototype of a time-traveling machine to his peers, he's met with skepticism at first ... until he returns one week later, disheveled, bloody, and with a fantastic story to tell. A cornerstone of speculative science fiction, The Time Machine launched the time-traveling genre, influenced generations of writers, and is recognized as a prescient vision of twenty-first-century fears - those of an impending environmental nightmare and the irreversible fate of a dying planet.” Gentler reader, if the terms Eloi and Morlock sound familiar, this is the novel those words are from. Eloi are childlike humans, beautiful and ignorant and almost completely without empathy. They spend the days eating fruit and playing gentle games and having sex without guilt (implied). They barely have a spoken language, and do not know how to read or write. Yet they have clothes and other manufactured items which they need! These are the people the Time Traveler first meets in the far future, the year 802,701. The weather is mostly warm and sunny, and when it rains it is brief. Whatever few buildings the Time Traveler sees are falling apart, but they were obviously beautiful and built for communal use. The park-like land where they live is full of flowers, streams, and trees. Morlocks, whom the Traveler meets next in 802,701, are bestial, living underground in darkness. They apparently are creating and maintaining machines which sustain the Eloi in their Eden. Why do they nurture the Eloi? Hmmmm. At night, the Traveler learns some of the Eloi often disappear, never to be seen again. The defenseless Eloi are terrified of the dark and of the Morlocks. Could it be Humanity has split into two new species? Are the Eloi the result from the 1%-ers lifestyle? Are the Morlocks the result of what happened to the oppressed classes that were spit on, abused and ignored by the 1%-ers? The Time Traveler thinks so. I think Wells was a writing genius! Almost every book he wrote has been made into a movie. Every novel, each a story of science speculation never before written of with such imaginative flair and verve when it was published, has birthed millions of science fiction plots in following centuries which either directly copy or reboot Well’s original stories, or have extrapolated new stories from what was an original Wells’ plot. Even more incredibly, they have held up generally despite the centuries that have passed since he wrote them. Also, given that most of the books Wells wrote were also moralistic with some satire, being sometimes a sermon on environmental destruction or about unethical scientists or about societal problems caused by the psychological rottenness of people (selfishness, those quick to do violence, lack of moral backbone, the indolent 1%ers living their lives of extremely soft landings which is often supported by the backbreaking and unacknowledged labor of the much more impoverished 99%), it is amazing these books have survived current censorship and banning. Oh, there are some things in his stories which show Wells did not escape the cultural misperceptions of his era, but they are few. Wells is truly the Father of all current science fiction novels! ...more |
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1
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Sep 06, 2024
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Sep 10, 2024
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Sep 06, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| B06WPBWQMM
| 4.00
| 22,138
| Jan 16, 2018
| Jan 16, 2018
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liked it
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‘Binti: The Night Masquerade’, book three in the Binti series by Nnedi Okorafor, left a lot of loose threads dangling after I turned the last page. (R
‘Binti: The Night Masquerade’, book three in the Binti series by Nnedi Okorafor, left a lot of loose threads dangling after I turned the last page. (Readers should start with book one, Binti) It is difficult to write a review of a book three in a continuing series without spoilers, and I don’t think I did a good job of not doing so. If you haven’t read book one or two in the Binti series, I would stop reading this review NOW. (view spoiler)[There is a violent war which has begun near the end of this book between two groups, the Khoush and the Meduse. Binti appears to be on the cusp of being part of a ménage à trois. She decided to go back to university and her studies, despite leaving several serious messes on Earth behind, and despite that she feels guilty she is the catalyst that started the messes. There still are a lot of unanswered questions about the edan device as well as about an alien race which has not yet made an appearance although they are responsible for performing sort of a nanobot ‘uplift’ to Binti and one of her related tribes. (hide spoiler)] Strange changes have been made to Binti’s body but so far we readers don’t know what powers the changes will give Binti. She hasn’t had any reason to use most of them. She really has only used some of her new abilities to communicate with different friends and family, but she is extremely reluctant to do even that. Why did the author introduce these elements without having them be much of a part of the story, other than to amaze and frighten Binti into mostly avoiding using her powers? At this point, I can’t understand why Binti is feeling naked without her otjize clay. She has had changes to her physical body, and her mind has been opened from seeing the many different social customs of hundreds of aliens. She has learned every tribe and alien race, especially her own Himba people, has archaic customs that are not the holy rituals she used to feel they were. She has caught her village elders in lies, and has discovered the elders, all male, have been tricking the women into being compliant and obedient through creating fear of powerful witchlike demons. Yet, she has seemingly decided to hang on to many of her tribe’s beliefs and definitions of what is a woman’s place in her tribe and what her proper duties are to be considered a proper Himba woman as much as she can. However, circumstances are forcing her to be all that she truly is, going beyond what she is supposed to limit herself to, but she is reluctantly defying those limitations her tribe wants to place on her. She still feels like shit about not staying in her place. With all of the shocking things she has learned about herself and her tribe, this would have had me moving on with more confidence about my choices in breaking away from those gender-limiting rules, and not at all hanging on to her tribe’s world view of staying isolated, with their strict conservative rules. I would feel much rage, in fact, at the lies and tricks and hypocrisy. When Binti does get mad about the lies, though, she feels bad about getting mad because it makes her feel she is not being a proper Himba female. Wow. Stupid, right? However, despite what I feel is a chaotic last (apparently) chapter in the series which doesn’t finish the story at all, the world-building is awesome. I have copied the book blurb: ”Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Best Science Fiction (2018) The concluding part of the highly-acclaimed science fiction trilogy that began with Nnedi Okorafor's Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning Binti. Binti has returned to her home planet, believing that the violence of the Meduse has been left behind. Unfortunately, although her people are peaceful on the whole, the same cannot be said for the Khoush, who fan the flames of their ancient rivalry with the Meduse. Far from her village when the conflicts start, Binti hurries home, but anger and resentment has already claimed the lives of many close to her. Once again it is up to Binti, and her intriguing new friend Mwinyi, to intervene—though the elders of her people do not entirely trust her motives—and try to prevent a war that could wipe out her people, once and for all. Don't miss this essential concluding volume in the Binti trilogy.” While I am disappointed by the lack of closure to this story, the world-building is very unique and interesting. Okorafor’s writing style is different from many other authors, seemingly being occasionally done in what rhythms an African storyteller would use in speaking. I have heard tapes of African story tellers telling stories about African myths. The series is a curious mix of the expected urban science-fiction thrills this American is accustomed to while at the same time often voiced in a perspective that seems to be very African. In any case, I liked the series. ...more |
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1
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Sep 03, 2024
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Sep 04, 2024
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Sep 04, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| B01EROMI1S
| 4.04
| 28,729
| Jan 31, 2017
| Jan 2019
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really liked it
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‘Binti: Home’ by Nnedi Okorafor is book two in the Binti series. It is a middle book of a trilogy, and it has all of the pluses and minuses of being a
‘Binti: Home’ by Nnedi Okorafor is book two in the Binti series. It is a middle book of a trilogy, and it has all of the pluses and minuses of being a middle novel in a continuing series! For instance, some mysteries that the first novel in the series, Binti, left readers with, are resolved, but more mysteries arise, to be resolved in the next book. Binti is more fully experiencing the relentless erosion of the beliefs taught her in her conservative upbringing in this book. Not only is Binti trying to decide whether to move forward into a new paradigm of understanding the universe that is different from her isolated tribe, or of making the decision instead to not go forward at all and stick to her tribe’s rituals and beliefs, but she is still trying to come to terms in the first place with the new ideas. The confusions of new ideas and of acquiring new skills necessary to handle the actual complexity of her expanding horizons, such as learning she is racially mixed, has her desperately wanting to “go home.” I think the desperation she is feeling is of wanting to be as simple as a child again, a time of blind acceptance of her parents and in her tribe’s teachings, and in her previous locked-in world of unquestioned rituals and rules. Every book so far brings new challenges to Binti’s former mindset, forcing her to see how wrong her beliefs were in the now clearly erroneous foundational teachings of her parents and of her tribe. One parent in particular has been bending her natural abilities into a shape that suits his desires of belonging to the ‘right’ family. Binti has been offplanet, and she has gone to college with many different species with different beliefs than those with which she was raised. Her new teachers have been leading her to explore those parts of her that her family had been suppressing. Like it or not, she has become an outsider. In this novel, she is struggling with that realization. I will be continuing on to the next, and final novel in the series. ...more |
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1
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Aug 31, 2024
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Sep 02, 2024
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Aug 31, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| B092T7R689
| 3.76
| 15,949
| Feb 15, 2022
| Feb 15, 2022
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really liked it
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I enjoyed the science fiction novel ‘Mickey7: a Novel ’ by Edward Ashton, but it was only after a few chapters into the book that that was true. For m
I enjoyed the science fiction novel ‘Mickey7: a Novel ’ by Edward Ashton, but it was only after a few chapters into the book that that was true. For me, it was a slow burner in my liking the novel, primarily because the main character, Mickey Barnes, seemed to me a type of guy I don’t like much. He doesn’t apply himself to really learning a skill, full stop. He enjoys reading history, but only for his own pleasure. His excuse for this lack of intellectual energy or having any self-improvement motivation is he isn’t good at anything. While he is dissatisfied with his life on his home planet, Midgard, he spends his time going to the cafs, using up his meager monthly government stipend on small entertainments, and meeting up with his best friend, fighter pilot Berto Gomez. I would label him a slacker. However, that changes. Mickey changes. When he makes a stupid gambling decision, and becomes a victim under threat of constant torture from a local gangster until he pays off his debt, he feels he must somehow get transportation off the planet to solve the problem. Not having ever applied himself to develop a skillset, the choice he makes to save himself from the gangster is one about which he doesn’t entirely think through the consequences. I have copied the book blurb: ”Mickey7 is an Expendable: a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim. Whenever there’s a mission that’s too dangerous—even suicidal—the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal…and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it. On a fairly routine scouting mission, Mickey7 goes missing and is presumed dead. By the time he returns to the colony base, surprisingly helped back by native life, Mickey7’s fate has been sealed. There’s a new clone, Mickey8, reporting for Expendable duties. The idea of duplicate Expendables is universally loathed, and if caught, they will likely be thrown into the recycler for protein. Mickey7 must keep his double a secret from the rest of the colony. Meanwhile, life on Niflheim is getting worse. The atmosphere is unsuitable for humans, food is in short supply, and terraforming is going poorly. The native species are growing curious about their new neighbors, and that curiosity has Commander Marshall very afraid. Ultimately, the survival of both lifeforms will come down to Mickey7. That is, if he can just keep from dying for good.” Some readers wanted a deep literary masterpiece I think, given the themes which are introduced in the story. Some readers probably wanted more in-depth exploring of the various moral and philosophical ideas dropped into the plot, like Dune. But it is simply an inventive, well-plotted beach read, lightly done, with two timelines, the present (Mickey7, the narrator) and Mickey1/2/3/4/5/6/’s past. However, the issues that readers who do want more meat on the bones of their novels are definitely included. Those issues are simply introduced and made humorous rather than ponderous. I enjoyed (eventually) the story for what it is, a lightly humorous and entertaining science fiction. But imho, despite the light tone, it definitely gives much ‘food’ (pun intended) for thought. For me, the main themes developed in this novel about duplicating people was not a new one. I first came across this idea in Kiln People by David Brin. I recommend it highly too. ...more |
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1
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Aug 23, 2024
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Aug 24, 2024
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Aug 23, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| B00Y7RWXHU
| 3.86
| 75,320
| Sep 22, 2015
| Sep 22, 2015
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liked it
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‘Binti’ by Nnedi Okorafor is the first book of a trilogy. This novella-sized story left me wanting more! I have copied the book blurb, because it says ‘Binti’ by Nnedi Okorafor is the first book of a trilogy. This novella-sized story left me wanting more! I have copied the book blurb, because it says it all: ”Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs. Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach. If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself — but first she has to make it there, alive. The Binti Series Book 1: Binti Book 2: Binti: Home Book 3: Binti: The Night Masquerade” Binti’s narration seems to me to be in the cadences of an African storyteller despite the science fiction subject of traveling through space to a university on another planet for further education. Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kapipka is only 16 years old, but her origin family believes in the value of studying advance subjects, including in mathematics. But the mathematics Binti’s family members study can seemingly alter the state of atoms! This is not fully explained. However, Himba people do not believe in leaving their community for any reason! They do not welcome strangers of any kind to their villages. When Binti is offered a scholarship by Oomza University because of her academic strength in mathematics, she has to make plans in secret to accept the scholarship. Binti’s family will ostracize her for the decision she has made. Binti feels very alone, given the turning of her family’s back on her, and the whispers and snickers of some of the others she meets when arriving at the terminal where she will board the space ship. As an Himba, she covers her body with a red clay mixture called otjize. The comments she overhears are along the lines of “the Himba cover themselves with shit, actual shit and dirt.” She is the only Himba wherever she goes, so no one understands the Himba people do not have much water where they live. Otjize protects and cleans their skin. Sigh. The space ship, Third Fish, is living technology based on a type of shrimp. It has a living exoskeleton that can withstand the vacuum and radiation of space. On the 18th day of the journey in space, while at dinner, an alien being with the appearance of a jellyfish, called the Meduse, attacks the students at table and begins killing all of them. All. of them. But somehow, Binti escapes to her room and locks the door. This is only a temporary shelter. She knows she will die of thirst before the ship arrives at its destination, if the Meduse don’t kill her first…. The Himba are not fictional! From Wikipedia: ”The Himba are indigenous peoples with an estimated population of about 50,000 people living in northern Namibia, in the Kunene Region (formerly Kaokoland) and on the other side of the Kunene River in Angola. There are also a few groups left of the OvaTwa, who are also OvaHimba, but are hunter-gatherers. The OvaHimba are a semi-nomadic, pastoralist people in northern Namibia and southern Angola, and speak OtjiHimba, a variety of Herero, which belongs to the Bantu family within Niger-Congo. The OvaHimbo are considered the last (semi-) nomadic people of Namibia.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himba_p... Many reviewers who I admire, and whose reviews I read avidly, were disappointed with ‘Binti’. Well, I liked it. Nnedi Okorafor’s parents are from Nigeria. She visits there often to see relatives. What I enjoyed most about ‘Binti’ is that it is written by someone with an authentic Nigerian voice by someone who is a child of Africa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nnedi_O... ...more |
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Aug 20, 2024
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Aug 22, 2024
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Aug 20, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 1616964154
| 9781616964153
| B0CVS2RDH8
| 4.04
| 451
| Apr 23, 2024
| Apr 23, 2024
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really liked it
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‘The Wings Upon Her Back’ by Samantha Mills is an awesome novel which accurately describes what I think of as the ecstasy of worship. I know, I felt i
‘The Wings Upon Her Back’ by Samantha Mills is an awesome novel which accurately describes what I think of as the ecstasy of worship. I know, I felt it once in a church where I was dragged by friends. Emotional exultant feelings caused by worship can happen when standing in the shadow of someone or something which feels powerful, someone or something whom you admire or wish you could be. It always translates from the mental/brain world of feeling into the world of extremely powerful physical all-over body sensations. If the cause is because of religious belief, or a lot of other similar emotion-inducing mind/brain experience phenomenons like an intense admiration of a celebrity or adoring an animal’s characteristics or skydiving or rock climbing without aids or the first time looking out the window of the International Space Station (I imagine), the feeling is boosted by the presence of other believers, amplifying your emotions with other folks’ affirmations and perhaps seemingly accepting you into their sect of worshipers. A crowd of fellow worshipers definitely hits all of the mental/physical buttons of needs every human requires! Go Mariners! Go Seattle Storm! Go Seahawks! Go Sounders! Go Seattle Kraken! However. But. As many ex-believers of all stripes discover, belonging to any group of admirers of something or someone comes with strings. Specific group laws, rules, judgements, rituals, even involving what clothes and hair styles are acceptable to fully belong to the inner circle of a group, and increasingly severe punishments for so-called ‘disobedience’, must be obeyed. Most believers are unaware such rigid enforcement of inner-circle rules are slowly erasing individualism, personalities, burning out whatever common sense or sense of self-protection true believers may have once possessed before joining any ‘The Group’ of so-called elites of unfaltering faith. A person’s sense of self can be replaced with group-think, or a belief in a seemingly superior-to-you person’s authority to rule, think, exist. Talk to almost any abused spouse and you will hear affirmations of the abused spouse’s absolute unquestioning faith that the abuser is all-powerful, whose strength resides in an innate superiority of knowledge and power over everyone else. These ideas are always accompanied by the abused spouse’s belief they are lesser beings, and their protection from bad things can only be provided by the powerful spouse, and from living in the powerful spouse’s shadow or circle of power. I have copied the book blurb: ”A loyal warrior in a crisis of faith must fight to regain her place and begin her life again while questioning the events of her past. This gripping science-fantasy novel from a Nebula and Locus Award-winning debut author is a complex, action-packed exploration of the costs of zealous faith, brutal war, and unquestioning loyalty. Five gods lie mysteriously sleeping above the city of Radezhda. Five gods who once bestowed great technologies and wisdom, each inspiring the devotion of their own sect. When the gods turned away from humanity, their followers built towers to the heavens to find out why. But when no answer was given, the collective grief of the sects turned to desperation, and eventually to war. Zenya was a teenager when she ran away from home to join the mechanically-modified warrior sect. She was determined to earn mechanized wings and protect the people and city she loved. Under the strict tutelage of a mercurial, charismatic leader, Zenya became Winged Zemolai. But after twenty-six years of service, Zemolai is disillusioned with her role as an enforcer in an increasingly fascist state. After one tragic act of mercy, she is cast out, and loses everything she worked for. As Zemolai fights for her life, she begins to understand the true nature of her sect, her leader, and the gods themselves.” I have often wondered about those folks who seem to require rules developed by others, especially those rules and rituals which are punitive, designed to redefine a human body or mind into agonizing pretzels of illogic that are damaging to a person’s life. Why do some people require punitive rules and group-think acceptance to live their lives? Once was enough for me. But those under the spell of trying to experience self-induced emotional exultant worship over and over from whatever the cause appear to be like drug addicts to me. I have experienced exercise ecstasy, caused by running track in high school. It is an unreal emotional/physical rush! If you push the body physically by running, some of us can become overwhelmed by a sense of fantastic well-being and more, a natural high. I wanted to run more and more to achieve that rush, but it didn’t happen as powerfully as it did the first time. Anyone who is a former smoker can also relate because of the experience of that first cigarette of the day. Or it happens in a more milder fashion with the first cup of coffee, right? My point is that that emotional mental rush of ecstasy actually has a physical experience component. Religious ecstasy can be induced as a physical experience by mental processes, especially a need to attach to something or someone that seems like a better, more powerful thing than yourself. Young folks, or people who feel they are close to death, especially desire the existence of a powerful something or someone who can fix it. As a kid, my ‘group’ of elementary children often carried a lucky charm for protection or power, like a coin, jewelry or a rabbit’s foot. I understand after finishing ‘The Wings Upon Her Back’ much better why there are literally billions of versions of the five main religions. Zenya is a person who requires a person/object/thing to worship, otherwise, she misses the emotional exultation of worshiping. Since all faith erodes eventually into the disappointment of overfamiliarity or in noticing failures of supposed omniscience, or in having become aware of many falsehoods behind the supposed presentation of power and authority, sometimes the worshiper cannot give up the act of worshipping, and of being a follower of something they feel is perfection/bigger/better/faster/stronger. So, they create/seek a new god/person/object/thing to worship to recreate that feeling of what I am naming worship exultation. In my life, I lost my religious faith, so I grok Zenya. Like Zenya, I never felt like looking for something else to recreate that worship exultation. Some of us finally understand there are no gods, and that worship is harmful to one’s sense of self, like any drug of addiction. ...more |
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it was amazing
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‘Exhalation: Stories’ by Ted Chiang is a wonderful collection of science fiction stories! The usual science fiction world-building tropes with the usu
‘Exhalation: Stories’ by Ted Chiang is a wonderful collection of science fiction stories! The usual science fiction world-building tropes with the usual stereotypes as characters are not what this collection is about. My review might reveal TMI, gentler reader, although I did try to not do so. However, a lot of reviewers are also writing descriptions of each story in this collection as I am. Some are revealing more than me, others less. Despite that it may seem I am describing too much, I am not. The author takes each story to places that are weird and wonderful. I do not put those exotic mental places in my descriptions. Chiang is an original fish in an ocean of science fiction writers, and none of these stories are the usual entertainment readers have come to expect. The stories are: -The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate Fuwaad ibn Abbas is a fine fabrics trader living in Baghdad. While browsing shops in the district of metalsmiths, he walks into the store owned by Bashaarat, a maker of science implements and mechanisms. Impressed by these things as Fuwaad is, when Bashaarat shows him a metal hoop that is mounted on a pedestal, he is even more impressed by its function. It is a doorway to the future. What would it mean to know what has happened to you twenty years from today? While Bashaarat is pondering whether he should travel through the time portal, Bashaarat tells him stories of previous travelers. -Exhalation A world of sentient robots who need to constantly fill up their lungs with argon to live is in trouble. They usually stop at filling stations and remove their almost empty lungs, replacing them with full lungs. But a rather weird discrepancy with their time pieces started occurring. Are clocks running faster than usual? Yes! Why? Does this strange effect of Time mean something is happening to the universe? -What’s Expected of Us The story is a warning to those who buy Predictors. Predictors send a signal back in time. The goal is to press a button after seeing a flash of light. However, if you try to break the rules by having the intention to push the button without seeing the flash, moving your finger towards the button, the flash immediately appears. No matter how fast you move to push the button, the flash appears before you manage to get your finger on the button. If you wait for the flash, the flash never happens. The light always precedes the button press when you DO try to push the button first. What this means is there is no free will! Many people succumb to lethargy and stay in bed. Doctors try to tell people, “”We had all been living happy, active lives before, they reason, and we hadn’t had free will then either. Why should anything change?”” -The Lifecycle of Software Objects Ana Alvardo, the main character, is part of a society that uses computers and on-line gaming with chats almost exclusively in order to live their lives, interact with friends, employers, shopping, school, and socializing. Avatars are used while on-line. Ana has been working in the real world at a zoo for six years. The zoo recently closed, but she has earned a certificate in software testing and is hoping to get a new job with her refreshed education. She is hired by Blue Gamma, a company experimenting with enhanced AI digients, sentient beings who live on-line inside programmed worlds and games. The ‘children’, who are designed as animals, or anything, but without any picture perfect cuteness. They need Ana’s animal training skills. She loved working with real-life animals, but can she love virtual monkeys, for instance? However, when people tire of their on-line children, they can “suspend” them. There are other, extremely interesting moral dilemmas. Owners are narcissistic, which causes their digients to become neurotic, for example. While many digients are loved, others are neglected. Digients are real people who live on-line - how do the moral choices of society towards sentient digients play out? In this novella, Chiang explores all of the implications. -Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny People who are nannies come with all kinds of baggage and skill sets. Some are wonderful teachers and full of warmth and affection towards the children they are hired to care for, others are none of that. Reginald Dacey is a Victorian mathematician born in 1861 London. He needs a nanny for his son Lionel because his wife died in childbirth. Years later, he perfects and patents his invention, the automatic nanny. He believes children will be raised rationally under the care of a robot. While his robot nanny invention is built too late for raising Lionel, he sells a number of the robots to people, but one of the nannies accidentally kills a child. Riginalds’ robot nanny company closes. When Lionel becomes an adult, a mathematician like his father, he reboots his father’s robot nannies company, but it is not successful. However, having adopted a son, Edmund, he uses a robot nanny to raise Edmund for two years. The story ends in an outcome which I think author Aldus Huxley would have found interesting. -The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling Two alternating stories about literacy and memory: in one of them, the narrator tells the story of his daughter Nicole growing up in a society where everyone records on video their entire life. She cannot write well or spell, but since she can easily recall a video of every scene of her life, she does not have to deal with the ambiguities of remembering an event. This has a social impact Nicole’s father is not prepared for, having grown up without “Remem”, the service that keeps a video diary of one’s entire life; the other story is told by Jijingi, who lives in an African village in the past, Tivland. Jijingi is thirteen years old when he meets Europeans for the first time, and they change everything in Tivland. However, the village manages to change only those things necessary to accommodate the rules and power of the Europeans while holding onto their old ways. A missionary, Moseby arrives, and he teaches Jijingi how to read and write, so he learns what European children learn. Jijingi is startled by what happens when he acquires a skill and knowledge the others of his tribe do not have. What happens to Jijingi happened to me after I graduated from college and attempted to ‘go home again.’ No one else in my immediate social group had gone to college. It also happened to me when I graduated from high school. My parents were not high school graduates. -The Great Silence Humans are continuously seeking extraterrestial life, especially sentient life. However, there exists on earth sentient life already, particularly parrots. But many species of parrots are either endangered or extinct because people are killing them by destroying their habitats or utilizing their feathers in marketable goods, or as pets. Many parrots talk, some can be taught to communicate with people in any human language. For now. I got very emotional reading this story. “You be good. I love you.” Last words of Alex, an African gray parrot. -Omphalos It is the twenty-first century, and science is a job of proving Christian realities, such as the proving Christian relics are from the relevant eras, cataloging the 5,872 stars in the sky, the number of which hasn’t changed since 1745, and the world is 8,912 years old. But then, astronomers discover a sun is rotating around a planet….and it is “”stationary relative to the luminiferous aether, meaning that it’s the sole object in the universe that is at absolute rest.”” Is this planet God’s favored planet?????? And life on earth is a total accident, not just unloved by God, but He is not aware of us at all? Scientific crisis follows. This is a fun story! -Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom Prisms (Plaga interworld signaling mechanism) have been invented which permit people to talk to themselves in other universes. Each prism has a limited life span, running down eventually like batteries do except when they stop working they can no longer be used to connect to the specific universe they were tuned to. Use of a prism creates two newly divergent timelines, allowing communication between the two, while also creating a branching of future possibilities, changing outcomes and personalities despite ‘being the same person.’ There are other rules, restrictions in how the prisms can be used. Services are started to help people use prisms, and people being people, unscrupulous prism businesses con customers out of money. This story is about two con artists, Nat and Morrow, who work for SelfTalk, a store that was very successful when people had to go to a store to use a prism. However, now people can buy their own prisms, and it is mostly senior citizens who still are customers. Morrow tries to steal money from customers, while Nat deals with their demanding clients. It also is about Dana, a psychiatrist, who treats people who have become emotionally damaged by their experiences in using prisms. The world-building is amazing! These stories are not the usual science fiction speculations and adventure dramas! ...more |
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Jul 14, 2024
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Jul 14, 2024
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| 244,997
| Jul 16, 2019
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really liked it
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‘This is How You Lose the Time War’ by Amul El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is Shakespeare transformed into a science fiction romance! But the stage is ma
‘This is How You Lose the Time War’ by Amul El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is Shakespeare transformed into a science fiction romance! But the stage is made of gossamer threads which are tiptoed upon by ghostly beings, and the play is words written only in the atomic sparking of the electrical/chemical space made of seeds or built of motherboards. Two beings, Red and Blue, are each warriers from opposite sides in a Time war. They can shapeshift, possess human bodies not their own, and ride space threads and weave and re-weave braids of Time. They each visit the past of Earth’s history, undoing it, reshaping it, acting as assassins or lovers as required, both under command to re-create history in favor of their side. One works for Garden, grown from a seed, and she is a fighter for a world of vines and flowers. The other is a cyborg, and she works for Agency. Her Commandant gives her assignments to change Earth’s history in favor of Agency. Organic vs. inorganic. Agency and Garden undo the other’s changes of history, over and over. The character Red, the cyborg, is written by Max Gladstone. Blue is written by Amul El-Mohtar. I have copied the book blurb: ”Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Best Science Fiction (2019) From award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone comes an enthralling, romantic novel spanning time and space about two time-traveling rivals who fall in love and must change the past to ensure their future. Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, becomes something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean the death of each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win. That’s how war works, right? Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.” If you, gentler reader, do not enjoy poetic prose or literary fantasies, this novella is not for you. If you don’t like epistolary exposition, this novella is not for you. However, if you do - Quotes: Red - ”The letter begins in the tree’s heart. Rings, thicker here and thinner there, form symbols in an alphabet no one present knows but Red. The words are small, sometimes smudged, but still: ten years per line of text, and many lines. Mapping roots, depositing or draining nutrients year by year, the message must have taken a century to craft. Perhaps local legends tell of some fairy or frozen goddess in these woods, seen for an instant, then gone. Red wonder what espression she wore as she placed the needle. She memorizes the message. She feels it ridge by ridge, line by line, and performs a slow arithmetic of years.” Blue - ”London Next—the same day, month, year, but one strand over—is the kind of London other Londons dream: sepia tinted, skies strung with dirigibles, the viciousness of empire acknowledged only as a rosy backdrop glow redolent of spice and petalled sugar. Mannered as a novel, filthy only where story requires it, all meat pies and monarchy—this is a place Blue loves, and hates herself for loving.” “She pours her tea, delicately, without straining the leaves. She lifts her teaspoon to the light—can see that it’s coated with a downthread substance she thinks she recognizes but sniffs to be sure. She will herself not to look around, commands every atom of her body into stillness, forbids the need to leap into the kitchen and pursue and hunt and catch— Instead, she stirs the spoon, empty, into the tea, and watches as the leaves unclump, swirl, spindle into letters. Each rotation is slow, and she marks paragraph breaks with small sips; every sip undoes the letters until she swirls them into meaning again.” Blue - “It feels harder to write than it should. It feels easier to write than it should, as well. I’m contradicting myself. The geometers would be ashamed. I sent them away. Each being’s entitled to her privacy, so I refused to let them see me. I was the only person on that tiny rock, and I made the world go dark. Wind blows. High places grow cold at night. Sharp rocks hurt my feet. For the first time in thirteen years I was alone. I, whatever I was, whatever I am tumbled first up, into the stars, then down to be broken land. I dug into the soil. Night birds called; something like a wolf, but solitary and larger with six legs and double-banked eyes, padded past. The tears dried. And I felt lonely. I missed those voices. I missed the minds behind them. I wanted to be seen. That need dug into the heart of me. if felt good. I’m not certain how to compare this to something you would know, but, imagine a person melded to a Thing, an artificial god the size of mountains, built for making war in the far corners of the cosmos. Imagine that great weight of metal all around her, pressing her down, giving her strength, its hoses melding with her flesh. Imagine she shears the hoses off, steps out: frail, sapped weak, free. I was light, hollowed, hungry. The sun rose. I found no revelation.” Red - “It’s so hard to move, here, and reply to your last letter. I feel—I can’t say precisely what. I’m shaken. You know the edges of old maps that promise monsters and mermaids? Here there be dragons? I do not know what roads lead forward. But your letter hungers for reply. I’ve read your last missive and reread it—in memory, as you warned me I would so long ago, preparing myself for a fall. I see you as a wave, as a bird, as a wolf. (My wolf, with the six legs and double-banked eyes.) I try not to think of you the same way twice. Thinking builds patterns in the brain, and those patterns can be read by one sufficiently determined,and Commandant, sometimes, is sufficiently determined—I think you’d like her. So I change your shape in my thoughts. It’s amazing how much blue there is in the world, if you look. you’re different colors of lame: Bismuth burns blue, and cerium, germanium, and arsenic. See? I pour you into things. I suspect you see me plain by now—imagine me shifting, uncomfortable, exposed. My way was always the straightforward push, in one direction, without hesitation or restraint. I only worried you might view these long letters as the sign of a simple or a desperate mind. I worried—maybe you’ll laugh—that you responded on sufferance. So: Let me be clear. I like writing you. I like reading you. When I finish your letters, I spend frantic hours in secret composing my replies, pondering ways to send them. I can trigger any combination of chemical ups and downs with a carefully worded phrase; a factory within me will smelt any drug I seek. But there’s a rush in reading and sending against which no drug compares.” Blue - “My Heart’s Own Blood, I dance to you in a body built for sweetness, a body that tears itself apart in defense of what it loves. This letter will sting you when it’s done. Let it, and read a postscript in its death throes. I dance—this will be a very boring letter—because this thing in me, this piping heat, this rising sun that hardly fits in the sky of me won’t stay put. To know you my equal in this, too—this beat of my blood’s drum, this feast that won’t diminish no matter how I ravage it—Red. Red, Red, Red, I want to write you poetry, and I am laughing, understand, as I teach this small body my joy, laughing at the joke of me and the relief, the relief of being supine on a stone slab with a knife above me and seeing your hand and eyes guiding it. That surrender should be satiety. That it should have taken me this long to learn that. Red, I love you. Red, I will send you letters from everywhen telling you so, letters of only one word, letters that will brush your cheek and grip your hair, letters that will bite you, letters that will mark you, I’ll write you by bullet ant and spider wasp; I’ll write you by shark’s tooth and scallop shell; I’ll write you by virus and the salt of a ninth wave flooding your lungs; I’ll stop, here, I’ll stop.” Red - “Your letter, the sting, the beauty of it. Those forevers you promise. Neptune. I want to meet you in every place I ever loved. Listen to me—I am your echo. I would rather break the world than lose you.” We all know how Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet ended. Is that the future-past for Red and Blue? I’m not telling…. ...more |
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Jul 06, 2024
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Jul 08, 2024
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Jul 06, 2024
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| B09QX2C1ZQ
| 3.70
| 2,212
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| Apr 17, 2019
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liked it
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‘Trouble on Triton’ by Samuel R Delaney is a thought experiment of social ideas disguised as speculative science fiction about a society where sexual
‘Trouble on Triton’ by Samuel R Delaney is a thought experiment of social ideas disguised as speculative science fiction about a society where sexual fluidity drives everyone’s social life. A man, Bron Helstron, lives in the city Tethys on Neptune’s moon Triton. On Triton people can change their gender and sexual preferences in 6 hours by making appointments at neighborhood medical clinics. It is seemingly as socially acceptable as getting a new hairstyle. Individuals can either go to work naked or dress as they please, but individuals do dress to declare what their jobs are or what neighborhood they live in. They have their cliques. Bron and his friends discuss about whether people must be “types”, since certain types appear to primarily make certain choices of jobs, lifestyles and dress/hygiene. People live in apartment communes with people who share their sexual and gender preferences. It seems like an utopia of gender choices. I have copied the book blurb: ”In a story as exciting as any science fiction adventure written, Samuel R. Delany's 1976 SF novel, originally published as Triton, takes us on a tour of a utopian society at war with . . . our own Earth! High wit in this future comedy of manners allows Delany to question gender roles and sexual expectations at a level that, 20 years after it was written, still make it a coruscating portrait of the happily reasonable man, Bron Helstrom -- an immigrant to the embattled world of Triton, whose troubles become more and more complex, till there is nothing left for him to do but become a woman. Against a background of high adventure, this minuet of a novel dances from the farthest limits of the solar system to Earth's own Outer Mongolia. Alternately funny and moving, it is a wide-ranging tale in which character after character turns out not to be what he -- or she -- seems. I don’t believe the book is at all exciting. It is wordily dense with philosophical conversations about community mores and personality types, with underlying themes about the intersection of political control and social mores, and certain scientific digressions, some of which are nonsense. Besides the obvious social commentary on gender and sexuality, imho the author is also making fun of the tendency of academics to study things that are basically subjective but injecting into the study mathematical proofs, and maybe also utilizing logic premises/conclusions, to reboot whatever the subjective experience into an objective scientific model for research. Like, possibly psychology? ...more |
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Jun 19, 2024
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Jun 23, 2024
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Jun 19, 2024
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| 3.85
| 3,539
| Jan 16, 2024
| Jan 16, 2024
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liked it
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‘The Tusks of Extinction’’ by Ray Naylor is both hopeful and sad. Written with an underlying elegiac tone, it is a novella of speculative science fict
‘The Tusks of Extinction’’ by Ray Naylor is both hopeful and sad. Written with an underlying elegiac tone, it is a novella of speculative science fiction and wishful thinking. I copied the book blurb: ”When you bring back a long-extinct species, there’s more to success than the DNA. Moscow has resurrected the mammoth. But someone must teach them how to be mammoths, or they are doomed to die out again. Dr. Damira Khismatullina, an expert in elephant behavior, was brutally murdered trying to defend the world's last elephants from the brutal ivory trade. Now, her digitized consciousness has been downloaded into the mind of a mammoth. As the herd's new matriarch, can Damira help fend off poachers long enough for the species to take hold? Or will her own ghosts, and Moscow's real reason for bringing the mammoth back, doom them to a new extinction? A tense SF thriller from a new master of the genre.” There is a chaotic timeline in ‘The Tusks of Extinction’ which is confusing because Damira has two bodies, two lives, and the chapters alternate between her two lives without much explanatory exposition for awhile. In one life, she is a human being. Being human is in her past. Her new existence is living as a mammoth. Being the leader and teacher of her pack is her present. There also are chapters narrated by two different groups of hunters trying to kill the mammoths. One group of hunters are poor simple villagers who hope to sell the tusks chopped off from the mammoths. It would make them millionaires. The other group of hunters, members of an organization dedicated to protect the mammoths, are hired by a wealthy man who likes to kill rare animals for sport. The organization believes permitting one or two mammoths “to be harvested” for an enormous fee paid by a wealthy man is a good thing, financially, in helping the organization support and protect the rest of the herd. However. Damira no longer feels much like a human anymore. She doesn’t care about human sensibilities and thoughts very much, only about protecting and growing her herd. There is a third way to handle humanity…. ...more |
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May 18, 2024
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| 9781668025703
| B0BX7CK5VG
| 3.86
| 16,872
| Nov 07, 2023
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really liked it
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‘The Future’ by Naomi Alderman is the kind of wish-fulfillment story I love! The author uses what is technologically happening to our American society ‘The Future’ by Naomi Alderman is the kind of wish-fulfillment story I love! The author uses what is technologically happening to our American society today to develop a science-fiction story about a future which could/might result from that. She is not saying technology itself will save/harm the societies of the Earth in this novel, instead she is saying the people in charge of the technology have the power to save/harm the Earth through the technologies under their control. The book opens with an apocalypse! But it is more of one of the mind than reality. Which, in actuality, is also what many critics today are doing to us through hair-raising hypothetical extrapolations about the effects the corporations of Facebook, X formerly known as Twitter, Google, and Apple are having on society. I really really love my Ipad Pro, and my iPhone. My life is much more easier and full because of these products and their apps. Of course, I am aware of the vast number of physical technologies which are fundamental in supporting the use of these products too, many of which are causing global warming and environmental degradation. I am also full of despair over the growing economic disparities between the general public’s share of earned income and that of the CEO’s and founders of the tech companies. I have copied the book blurb, which is a lot of hyperbolic teaser and not much else: ”Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Best Science Fiction (2023) The Future—as the richest people on the planet have discovered—is where the money is. The Future is a few billionaires leading the world to destruction while safeguarding their own survival with secret lavish bunkers. The Future is private weather, technological prophecy and highly deniable weapons. The Future is a handful of friends—the daughter of a cult leader, a non-binary hacker, an ousted Silicon Valley visionary, the concerned wife of a dangerous CEO, and an internet-famous survivalist—hatching a daring plan. It could be the greatest heist ever. Or the cataclysmic end of civilization. The Future is what you see if you don’t look behind you. The Future is the only reason to do anything, the only object of desire. The Future is here.” Frankly, this blurb kinda loses it in verbal flights of nonsense. Alderman is more on target in the novel, although I have to admit she also kinda loses it with vaguely appropriate inclusions of many of today’s talking-points about technology. She sometimes clumsily, imho, creates tie-ins to the many conversations today’s real-life critics are having about socially-disrupting technologies and the involved companies’ manner of handling of them. The book is an overdone comic-con cornucopia of progressive complaints and inventive technology of 4K science-fiction movies, worthy and spot on as those individual talking points and movie ideas may be. I don’t think ‘The Future’ is as good as her previous book, The Power. However, unlike many reviewers on Goodreads, as well as some professional critics, I enjoyed reading ‘The Future’. There was a cool interpretation of the story involving the biblical character Lot, and his part in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah which I had never come across before. I enjoyed this bit a lot! I was surprised to discover some Goodreads’ reviewers hated the imagined on-line community discussion, not understanding its connection to the plot or finding it threw off the pacing of the action. I also found its connection to the story to be fragmental. That is a pun, gentler reader, which you will understand after reading the book. But it did disrupt the flow of the story. The book is oddly lacking in emotional impact generally, and maybe it is because the pacing is odd, I think sacrificed to a wandering about in scenes briefly reflective of today’s talking points about technological corporations and religious zealots of all sorts instead of a beeline focus of action. The characters are more caricature than fully realized people. I was reminded of a Comic Con Convention, with its mix of costumed participants from many different story lines. This story wanted to be let loose to become a biting satire very very badly, imho, but instead it was as if Alderman couldn’t decide to go all in, like she did in ‘The Power.’ She held it back. I think Alderman was trying to show the different faces of zealotry, I suspect in a literary fashion, which is why she invented and included the Enochites to oppose technology and the people who support technology. Zealotry = destruction. Full stop. Maybe the main theme of ‘The Future’? Lot opposed God’s zealotry, didn’t he? One good man, or three good women (Lot’s wife and daughters, Alderman’s tech wives and child), found among the bad would save the rest of the depraved citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah from God’s judgement? Do tech bro’s talk about being gods? Yes, they have done so. Angels of light, photons and electrons, enticing us to hell. Basically, the book is great with ideas about the uses of imagined and actual technology. Alderman certainly wanted to focus on the self-aggrandizing greed of tech executives which is tearing down society more than it is helping with forward progress, but the story is too fragmented with unessential, even if somewhat connected, side issues. But still. Even so. I did like the book. Alderman has a playful, dark, gothic mind. I like it even better than this book. ...more |
Notes are private!
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May 05, 2024
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May 11, 2024
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May 05, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 0532601467
| 9780532601463
| 0532601467
| 3.84
| 3,869
| 1950
| Jan 01, 1963
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really liked it
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‘Voyage of the Space Beagle’ by A. E. van Vogt was eye-opening for me! The science fiction novel is actually four linked stories in the manner pursued
‘Voyage of the Space Beagle’ by A. E. van Vogt was eye-opening for me! The science fiction novel is actually four linked stories in the manner pursued by the newer Star Trek series - the having of one major story or a character’s dilemma carried in the background from episode to episode until a Big Finish episode, while each of the episodes individually had a new story in the foreground. The four stories originally were published separately in popular science fiction magazines. The Space Beagle is an intergalactic space ship traveling through space: “Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before!” Does this sound familiar? Three of these stories were written in 1939, the fourth being written in 1943. But there’s more! In one story, there is a space creature which is almost invincible. It lays eggs inside of living people. The egg, upon hatching inside a person, eats it way out. One of the crewman, thirty-one-year-old Elliott Grosvenor (our apparently selfless hero), practices a holistic self-education system called Nexialism, “… integration of many sciences…”. It’s about learning a little about a lot of stuff, not specializing in any single field of science. Nexialists specialize in training the mind’s mental approaches to acquiring knowledge and information, so that a practitioner is able to be more of a polymath than an expert in one thing. Practitioners also learn emotional self-control. Their Big Picture mental process puts facts before emotions even as the practitioner takes care to examine the emotions of everyone around them, taking the feelings of individuals psychologically into account as a factor in conclusions. The purpose is to arrive at logical conclusions which are the best option for survival of the many, even at the expense of the one. Sound familiar? Of course, almost every department head, military leader and technician boss on the ship thinks Grosvenor is too stupid to live. Only their subordinates and junior scientists bother to answer his questions - IF their bosses haven’t ordered them not to talk to him. Which some of them have done so. The ship’s crew are divided into two groups of men with authority: scientists and military types, with the military men believing the scientists are fools, and the scientists thinking the non-scientists incapable of logic or having intelligence. Since the stories were written in 1939 and 1943, there are no women aboard. Such a happy ship! Clearly they will pull all together in facing several strange monsters who attack them before they understand the nature of what is attacking them or why. No, not. Sigh. Gentler readers, this is a novel which is the source of many ideas which were extrapolated by science fiction writers later in the twentieth century! There are a lot of science and sociology discussions between the various scientists that reminded me of the discussions that happen on the Star Trek shows, especially the newer ones, as the specialists try to understand the nature of the monsters and how to defend the ship against them. I have to admit I enjoyed the book the most in identifying what plot points have been rebooted and make-overed by our current crop of science fiction writers. Some quotes from the novel are eerily appropriate in the interrogation of recent witnesses who were summoned by U.S. Congress extreme right-wing Republicans to a hearing before a House subcommittee. The witnesses/scientists were insulted, threatened and verbally intimidated in Congressional hearings by House Representatives who are followers of Donald Trump’s manner of controlling everyone around him. From the book: ””I notice,” said Grosvenor, “you didn’t say anything about his qualifications for the job.”” “”It’s not a vital position, generally speaking. He can get advice from experts on anything he wants to know.”” McCann pursed his lips. ““It’s hard to put Kent’s appeal into words, but I think that scientists are constantly on the defensive about their alleged unfeeling intellectualism. So they like to have someone fronting for them who is emotional but whose scientific qualifications cannot be questioned.”” Grosvenor shook his head. ““I disagree with you about the director’s job not being vital. It all depends on the individual as to how he exercises the very considerable authority involved.”” McCann studied him shrewdly. He said finally, ““Strictly logical men like you have always had a hard time understanding the mass appeal of the Kents. They haven’t much chance against his type, politically.”” Grosvenor smiled grimly. “”It’s not their devotion to the scientific method that defeats the technologists. It’s their integrity. The average trained man often understand the tactics that are used against him better than the person who uses them, but he cannot bring himself to retaliate in kind without feeling tarnished.”” The Republicans are definitely using the approach the character Kent uses to acquire power over the other men traveling in the Space Beagle. Truth be damned, even if one’s lies or one’s egotistical need to be in charge kills more people. The crazy nonsensical attack approach using exaggerations, misdirections, false narratives, the not-relevant sideways issues and lies: https://youtu.be/vIwFeG1TAxY?si=AL2m5... https://youtu.be/hk6y19AbLNE?si=GJ62C... https://youtu.be/vCq6haTQZtg?si=9ZWjb... https://youtu.be/2GgpKRoRYGE?si=XxMNv... https://youtu.be/zWwuOZ18ABA?si=H5KCq... https://youtu.be/u2CVFS6MT1E?si=v3lNu... The more fact-based, but still obviously hostile, not accepting anything you say, spinning the truth to suit the beliefs of the ignorant, approach: https://youtu.be/b7Q28CcUEzw?si=duK_c... https://youtu.be/hahOJNKFLRI?si=ZMT7R... https://youtu.be/HxOhlnje_GA?si=i5af1... https://youtu.be/RARlZ3eIKCM?si=ywUEb... https://youtu.be/K-O-QtDEwyU?si=_r8IL... In the hearing, various Republicans accuse Dr. Fauci and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of being responsible for bringing the virus Covid-19 to America. In tones of severe disapproval, the Republicans express amazement that this rumored creation of Covid-19 for the NIH and Dr. Fauci was paid for by American taxpayer money. The Republicans give no reason WHY the NIH or Dr. Fauci would want the American people specifically to die from Covid. Republicans are convinced the proof of their suspicions have been deleted from computers. The absence of proof is the proof. They also quote from published articles stating suspicions and opinions of individual medical professionals who are known to be on the fringes of real science supporting their accusations. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) gave a small amount of money, $120,000, to the Wuhan lnstitute of Virology, which has an annual billion-dollar budget of operating funds. NIH did NOT instruct the Chinese scientists to create Covid-19 with the money from the NIH. It was for another study, for which there is ample proof. Plus, there is no way $120,000 would begin to cover the cost of development of a virus like Covid-19. There is absolutely NO proof at all that the NIH or Dr. Fauci personally required the Chinese to develop the Covid-19 virus for the purpose of distributing the virus throughout America to kill American citizens. Every country in the world had people dying from Covid, including Chinese people. I find it difficult to believe the Chinese government had a design of genocide to kill off all of Humanity, including their own people. Since Covid-19 was deadly mostly to the elderly and the sick and the immune-compromised, I think this is a very strange designer virus for genocide, created apparently by the Chinese on behalf of Dr. Fauci’s and the NIH’s plot to kill everyone in the world. It clearly isn’t very efficient at killing everyone, unless you are sick, immune-compromised or old, which, hello, is not EvErYOnE, is it? Making children wear masks is not a type of torture. Making adults wear masks is not type of torture. Wearing a mask does not hurt at all. Many Republicans in the hearing equate it with being an evil torture terrible to endure. I have worn a variety of masks. None of them hurt me. I have friends, relatives and neighbors who wore masks. None of them expressed any pain from doing do. Beating up a kid hurts a kid. Burning a kid with fire hurts a kid. Breaking a kid’s bones hurts a kid. Spanking a kid hurts a kid. Physically assaulting a kid hurts a kid. Falling down hurts a kid. These are facts. A kid wearing a mask does not hurt a kid’s face, or his body for the matter. Lots of kids wore masks during the pandemic without any pain. Some experienced annoyance, though. Wearing a mask does not hurt. Since it doesn’t hurt, it can’t be defined as a torture. Full stop. This is a fact. Statistically, children are more resistant to Covid, but they can carry the virus home to their parents and grandparents who do not have the resistance that children have. Many children were discovered to carry the virus if they were exposed but they were asymptomatic. However, when adult teachers, parents, grandparents, fellow adult passengers on trains/planes/cars/buses are exposed to Covid-19 consisting of virus particles being breathed out by asymptomatic and not-sick-at-all kids, the adults around them can get very sick. Teachers were very afraid of catching Covid-19 from the kids, not vice versa. Not that any of the Republicans mentioned this FACT. Many teachers refused to come to work because they were afraid of catching Covid-19 from their kids. Fact. This is why kids were required to wear masks. It wasn’t the kid who needed protecting from Covid, generally. Also, sidebar, many kids are immune-compromised because of health issues. They COULD get sick and die from Covid-19. Also, a mask was intended not only to protect the wearer from the virus which might be being passed around in the room by another person, but they were worn to protect others from a person who had the virus and was wearing a mask because they were breathing it out of their mouth. They also went after Dr. Fauci for recommending people get vaccinated. Most private corporations and state institutions gave people the choice to get the vaccination or not. If they didn’t get it, they were told to stay home. Many of the unvaccinated lost their jobs because they weren’t permitted to go to their place of work to do their jobs unvaccinated. If they had got vaccinated, they would have kept their jobs. The corporations and institutions, and especially the government which would and did foot most of the bills from taxpayer money to care for sick people, did not want the other employees to get sick with Covid, mild as it was if one was vaccinated. Or worse, while vaccinated employees might be asymptomatic because they were vaccinated, they could still pass on the virus carried into the room by the unvaccinated to elderly or immune-compromised family members or friends or neighbors at home who could not get the vaccination safely due to poor health or youth. From what I heard from non-vaxxers and the House Republicans, they did not think passing on the virus to their fellow employees, family members and friends and children, and possibly killing them, was as important as what they felt was their own right to not get vaccinated. They want to choose to not get vaccinated even if it meant killing other people who could not get vaccinated because of their health or for whom the vaccine did not work well. Somehow, non-vaxxers can’t hear themselves, I guess, because what they are actually saying is “I will kill you if your genetics has made you susceptible to the virus, and your immune-compromised children, your elderly parents and grandparents, by giving you the virus to make you sick and then pass on, because I don’t want to get vaccinated. Or wear a painless mask that doesn’t hurt but it annoys me.” The Republicans pointed out vaccination didn’t work for everyone. In their spinning of the science, that made the recommendation of getting vaccinated or getting fired if one doesn’t get vaccinated an evil demand without merit. Many of them would not allow Dr. Fauci to point out the obvious reasons why the vaccine didn’t work for everyone, interrupting his explanations. A few questioners finally allowed him to talk and explain. The main reason is the Covid virus mutates. A Covid vaccine works very well on one variety of Covid. But soon there is another variety of Covid circulating and the vaccine being used doesn’t work on it. So another vaccine has to be created to deal with the new type of Covid virus. Simple, yes? Dr. Fauci pointed out the measles virus does not mutate, so the vaccine one gets for the measles lasts for decades. This is not true with Covid-19 vaccines because the Covid virus in the wild mutates all of the time. The Republicans didn’t want him to really respond, though, and shouted him down with insults and misdirection. Another reason the vaccine does not work was the vaccine designed for a specific type of Covid stops working in time, its protective effect of stimulating the body’s immune system working less and less. The science answer to that is booster shots. I mean, it is what it is. Perhaps in the future the scientists will develop a vaccine which works for decades against all the different mutations of Covid-19, but that day is not here. But, as far as the Republicans are concerned, these unavoidable problems with vaccinating people against Covid with the current manufacturing processes and science discoveries about the virus are a conspiracy against the American people. Again, can these Republicans hear themselves? They are angry that people are being saved by getting vaccinated? The vaccinated are not killing the immune-compromised and the elderly and others who have weakened immune systems, by passing on the virus to them because they got vaccinated? Well, the character Kent reminded me a lot of these House Republicans. Grosvener reminded me of poor Dr. Fauci. If those Youtube videos on that wild so-called hearing to discover facts that was performed by House Republicans doesn’t blow your mind, here is what was recommended by a different United States Congress, along with many other countries around the world faced with a pandemic exactly similar to the one caused by Covid: ”Responses Public health management Coromandel Hospital Board (New Zealand) advice to influenza sufferers (1918) In September 1918, the Red Cross recommended two-layer gauze masks to halt the spread of "plague". 1918 Chicago newspaper headlines reflect mitigation strategies such as increased ventilation, arrests for not wearing face masks, sequenced inoculations, limitations on crowd size, selective closing of businesses, curfews, and lockdowns. After October's strict containment measures showed some success, Armistice Day celebrations in November and relaxed attitudes by Thanksgiving caused a resurgence. While systems for alerting public health authorities of infectious spread did exist in 1918, they did not generally include influenza, leading to a delayed response. Nevertheless, actions were taken. Maritime quarantines were declared on islands such as Iceland, Australia, and American Samoa, saving many lives. Social distancing measures were introduced, for example closing schools, theatres, and places of worship, limiting public transportation, and banning mass gatherings. Wearing face masks became common in some places, such as Japan, though there were debates over their efficacy.[228] There was also some resistance to their use, as exemplified by the Anti-Mask League of San Francisco. Vaccines were also developed, but as these were based on bacteria and not the actual virus, they could only help with secondary infections. The actual enforcement of various restrictions varied. To a large extent, the New York City health commissioner ordered businesses to open and close on staggered shifts to avoid overcrowding on the subways.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 04, 2024
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Jun 07, 2024
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May 04, 2024
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Unknown Binding
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| 1250163846
| 9781250163844
| B0756JDSZM
| 3.60
| 2,771
| Mar 13, 2018
| Mar 13, 2018
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it was amazing
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The book ‘Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach’ by Kelly Robson is very good, except that it felt incomplete to me, like it was missing the last chapte
The book ‘Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach’ by Kelly Robson is very good, except that it felt incomplete to me, like it was missing the last chapter. Of course, in real life, all of us currently alive are right now missing the final chapter of our actual future, aren’t we? We aren’t capable of traveling into the future like Doctor Who and his Tardis. In this sense, our personal stories are incomplete, although most of us are able to extrapolate what is likely to happen. Ok, ok, I am getting carried away. ‘Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach’ did that to me. I think the novel is an extreme mind game of literary playfulness. Of course, maybe I am reading too much into it. Until the last page, I was completely immersed in this science fiction story. It manages in only a few hundred pages to present a future which is both hopeful and dystopian. The Earth is a ruined and poisoned mess caused by Mankind, but some people have climbed out of the underground cities they built to survive and are scientifically attempting to fix the ecological damage on the surface of the planet. Technology is very very advanced. People can opt for body modifications for improved mobility and functionality. However, not everyone agrees with moving forward in fixing the present state (actually, our future state, in two meanings of the word, literally and figuratively, fictionally, haha) of Earth that way because time travel has been invented. Banks, with the power of financing scientific projects if they so choose to do so, hold all of the cards of what the future will look like, and also the past…my head is starting to hurt, gentler reader… I have copied the book blurb: ”Discover a shifting history of adventure as humanity clashes over whether to repair their ruined planet or luxuriate in a less tainted past. In 2267, Earth has just begun to recover from worldwide ecological disasters. Minh is part of the generation that first moved back up to the surface of the Earth from the underground hells, to reclaim humanity's ancestral habitat. She's spent her entire life restoring river ecosystems, but lately the kind of long-term restoration projects Minh works on have been stalled due to the invention of time travel. When she gets the opportunity take a team to 2000 BC to survey the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, she jumps at the chance to uncover the secrets of the shadowy think tank that controls time travel technology.” The writing is concise with no unnecessary verbiage, with two parallel narratives happening in our present timeline at the same time, at least in my uncollapsed timeline of reading the novel now, but actually being a future and past story being told concurrently. Readers will need to pay close attention as every word matters to understanding what is going on. The author does give readers everything they need to know until the ending, where she leaves readers suspended in Time, lost, not knowing what happens in the future or in the new past. I felt like I was in a weird language arts class studying a huge past perfect simple tense joke used to drive the plot forward (and back) in a science fiction story after finishing (?). Discuss. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Apr 11, 2024
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Apr 18, 2024
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Apr 11, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| B081FDB3BM
| 3.68
| 15,215
| Jul 11, 2020
| Aug 11, 2020
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liked it
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For me, reading ‘The New Wilderness’ by Diane Cook was like finding myself among people who have a very different outlook and set of interests than I
For me, reading ‘The New Wilderness’ by Diane Cook was like finding myself among people who have a very different outlook and set of interests than I can ever understand or want for myself. I have copied the book blurb: ”Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Best Science Fiction (2020) Bea's five-year old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away in front of her. The smog and pollution of the City--the over-populated, over-built metropolis where most of the population lives in buildings on top of buildings, where there is no room for parks or plants--is destroying her lungs. If they stay in the City, Agnes will die. Across the country is the Wilderness State, a huge swath of protected land, remote and unwelcoming, a refuge for wildlife with nowhere else to go. It is a place of open spaces and clean air, wild animals, trees, forests, desert plains. No people have ever been allowed into the Wilderness State. Until now. Bea and Agnes will be among the first. Along with a handful of others, they are invited into the Wilderness State, to live as nomadic hunter gatherers. This motley group of twenty people are part of a study to see if humans can co-exist with nature and not just dominate it as they have always done. Can they be part of the wilderness and not put too heavy an imprint on the land? They spend their days wandering through this grand country, hunting, gathering, avoiding animal attacks, bickering among themselves, and doing a surprising amount of paperwork. Their nit-picking overseers, The Rangers, wrangle with them and badger them into adhering to the rules of the Government, the most important being Leave No Trace. They slowly learn how to live, and survive, on the unpredictable, often dangerous land, and they build a new kind of community, fighting among themselves for power, betraying and saving one another. Each day they will walk to another point on the horizon and try to make sense of new lives they now spend closer to their animal soul. Bea discovers that fleeing to the Wilderness State to save Agnes means that she loses her in a different way. Agnes grows wild and belongs to the landscape while Bea, raised in the City, will always be of that place and drawn to it, no matter how many deer she skins. The real bond between mother and daughter will be tested by their growing difference. As these modern nomads come to think of the Wilderness State as home, this land will come under attack from the Government which plans to develop it. Do the Settlers stay on as renegades, or move back to newly created urban areas? This mild dystopian book is about some city people who feel a desperate need to do things like hike, camp, sleep out under the stars, to cut wood and hunt deer for their meat to eat and their skins to make clothes. They are willing to leave their apartments and jobs in the polluted and cramped city and learn how to survive in a forest. They are willing to endure hardships, injuries and death from living in the wild. Parents are willing to bring their young children with them. Because they have agreed to form what they call The Community, they travel together as a tribe. They decide to have a democracy, more or less. Decisions on rules of behavior, sharing, hunting, division of labor, how to hike together, are all decided after debate. Couples break up and form new relationships. They have babies in the forest. They love living this way, no matter what other reasons they may have had to join the experiment of becoming tribal nomads like aboriginals from millennia ago. The novel is also about a mother and her daughter. Agnes is only eight years old when Bea joins the experiment of living in the forest. Bea is trying to save her daughter’s life. From a brief description, I think Agnes has some sort of lung disease. After living in the forest for three years, she is cured. She also becomes adept at living the life of a forest aboriginal. She is a wild child of the forest. She vaguely remembers her city life. Agnes loves her mother, but she finds herself often angry at her mother too. Agnes feels deserted by her mother sometimes, and there are more and more things they disagree on as time goes on. There is a final break socially, and Agnes and Bea go their own ways. Agnes, being a wild child, attuned to the forest, is very capable of taking care of herself there. Bea longs for some of the things that are only available in the city, although she also has become adept at living in the forest. The book is beautifully descriptive of the wild forest. The author is lyrical and elegiac by turns in writing of the wonders of plants and streams, of woods and animals. I have sometimes gone on short walks in national parks on marked trails and the book brings those experiences to life. But while the writing is always extraordinarily illustrative and picturesque, I got tired of hundreds of pages describing The Community’s hiking and camping, of their enchantment with the wild. I am not enthralled with any kind of camping. I dislike camping. A lot. I don’t want forests or parks to destroyed! I want them to continue to exist and I believe they need to be protected for their beauty and animal life as well as for controlling global warming! But I really do not enjoy living in them for any length of time. I am a city kid through and through. I also am a bit of a loner. The tribe’s socializing and tiffs and judging each other’s every habit or lack of enthusiasm for some assigned task made me claustrophobic. The group’s dynamics changed by necessity over the years because of the deaths of some influential people and the rise of others who wanted more control over decisions only increased my sense of claustrophobia. I never had kids, so I tend to empathize in Bildungsroman plots with the kid more than the adults, but not in this case. (view spoiler)[I also could not understand why Bea stayed and stayed in the forest when she could have left sooner than she did. (hide spoiler)] In fact, I was not able to really empathize or connect with any character in the novel. In the end I did not enjoy the novel although I continued to see that the writing is excellent from the first page to the last. I have a physical condition called EDS - Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Ehlers-Danlos syndrome affects connective tissue, primarily the skin, joints, and blood vessel walls. Symptoms include overly flexible joints that can dislocate, and skin that's translucent, elastic, and bruises easily. In some cases, there may be dilation and even rupture of major blood vessels. I do not have the stamina most people have. I get tired and need to sit down on the ground if I stand up for about an hour, like waiting in a line to see a movie. Although I exercise regularly, I have to limit how much I do because if I do too much I feel ill. I have been weaker than the people around me all of my life. Because my ligaments have too much stretch, my muscles cannot get the opposing force they need to build up like they do when people without this condition work out. When I was a kid, my body operated more like a cooked spaghetti noodle. I could put my heels behind my neck. During physical education classes in school, the PE teachers were well aware I could never be an athlete. I didn’t know why I was like I was until a few years ago, when a physical therapist named my condition, gave me a diagnosis. There is no cure. The older I get, the less stamina and muscle strength I have although I am no longer as flexible. Instead, I must wear compression sleeves on my knees and elbows to be able to bear weight on my joints, to be able to lift, open cans with a can opener, etc. I can no longer do bicycle rides or even walk very far before my joints hurt too much. My joints feel as is they are going to pop out of their sockets unless I am wearing compression sleeves. One of my knees sometimes bends too far the wrong way, sideways, when I turn in bed. It hurts a lot. I’ve had to pop it back where it should be in the joint. So. I do not enjoy the forest. I enjoy parks because they are made comfortable for day walkers, with amenities nearby. I do not like hikes because they are tiring and often painful for me. I don’t like being in areas where bugs abound because I am unfortunately one of those people bugs love more than other people. Being in bright sun has always made me sick for some reason if I am out on sunny days for an hour. I break out in a rash on my arms and face from sunshine over time. I can’t stand hot days at all. Anything over 78 F and I need to lie down or stay immobilized under a fan. I could not understand why I had so many more issues than everybody else whenever hiking, camping, swimming, etc. My skin has always been on the thin side, so I easily am scratched and bruised. I could not have fun when I was feeling utterly exhausted, with itchy bug bites all over, and far too hot, feeling sick. Even going to fairs or amusement parks exhausted me. And then - I was diagnosed with EDS. So. Now I know why I don’t have fun like everyone else. I feel absolutely miserable in forests, fairs, amusement parks, etc., if I am there doing stuff too long. Ultimately I was bored by all the words describing camping life in the woods. I like beautiful writing and I wondered what would happen to Agnes, so I finished the novel. But instead of being connected to Agnes in any way except by my curiosity about her fate, ultimately I couldn’t join her in her enthusiasm for dirt, grime, weather and hiking a lot. But I suspect a lot of literary readers and mothers and daughters with fraught love/hate relationships who enjoy reading books about similar relationships will like ‘The New Wilderness.’ Of course, underlying the story, is the prediction of a future dystopia, of how losing the wild to the overpopulation of humans and our cementing over forests and killing wildlife for building houses and polluted cities is a terrible loss of beauty and a reason for humans to enjoy being alive at all. At least, for poor humans. Rich humans will always be able to build and buy their houses and land in a forest. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 25, 2024
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Mar 28, 2024
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Mar 25, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 1504034570
| 9781504034579
| B01C54MIMG
| 3.65
| 17,159
| Jan 01, 1901
| Mar 15, 2016
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it was amazing
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‘The First Men in the Moon’ by H. G. Wells charmed me despite the dark horrors it reveals! This is an entertaining 1901 science fiction story! Gentler ‘The First Men in the Moon’ by H. G. Wells charmed me despite the dark horrors it reveals! This is an entertaining 1901 science fiction story! Gentler reader, I am not speaking about any horrors in the astonishing discoveries the main protagonists, Bedford and Cavor, learn about the Selenite civilization on the moon. The Selenites have developed, apparently, a utopia of order and discipline, not at all peculiar for a race which resembles that of an ant colony on Earth. The amazing foodstuffs and moon climate and topography, the different types of Selenites and their machines, made me wish for illustrations! (Ok, we’ve learned the moon is different than what Wells imagined. So what? Bite me.) The horrors are brought by the shallow and narcissistic Bedford, an opportunist and a scoundrel. As Bedford is the narrator, he is clearly unaware of what kind of human being he is - a gambler, a waster, always looking for an easy buck, a failure at many enterprises he has tried. He has become a writer in his latest venture - an amusing tongue-in-cheek joke included by Wells I suspect. He believes he is simply a practical person. Bedford thinks Cavor is stupid in the ways of the world, which unfortunately, he is. Cavor is a scientist, and he is very likely what conservatives are talking about when they call someone today “a snowflake.” (view spoiler)[ Cavor sees an ideal civilization suitable to its environment and species, where Bedford sees intolerable differences, scary and possibly dangerous to his own life and beyond his ability to cope with. (hide spoiler)] Between these two characters, we have the basic inventors and engineers of most of Earth’s societies, our unfortunate Yin/Yang Human condition. Imho. I have copied the book blurb: ”A pair of unlikely explorers journey to the moon in this imaginative tale of science and adventure from the author of The War of the Worlds. Hounded by creditors, Mr. Bedford retreats to a remote English village, where he meets the eccentric Mr. Cavor. Though he may not look it, Cavor is a genius and one of the world’s greatest inventors. His breakthrough is cavorite, an astonishing new substance manufactured from helium that is not bound by the laws of gravity. Bedford immediately sees the business potential of Cavor’s creation, reckoning a ship made of cavorite could take him to the moon—the first step on a path to riches beyond his wildest dreams. When Bedford and Cavor set out for the moon in a cavorite sphere, they find the Earth’s satellite to be more wonderful than either of them ever imagined. But they soon discover they are not alone on the lush lunar surface—and the natives are not exactly friendly. A thrilling adventure story that offers fascinating insights into the nature of mankind, The First Men in the Moon is a timeless classic from “the father of modern science fiction.” This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.” In comparing the two best known authors of early speculative science fiction, H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, Wells, in my opinion, is the Father of all current science fiction! Every element we readers have come to expect from this now mainstream genre are there in this author’s books. Jules Verne is more of a proto-science fiction novelist, arguably so I guess, the grandfather to this type of genre. Verne focuses particularly on the speculative science in his imaginative books, reaching very hard for the possibility of real-life scientific validation of his fictional theories. He weaves a more secondary negative critique into his stories than Wells does of the ills of Humanity. Wells focuses more directly on the ills and foibles of Humanity screwing up the wonderful science and inventions individuals discover and invent, bringing on more of the intensity of a thriller into his tales, I think. Wells often has the wonderful science his characters make or find lead to deadly nightmares, causing his protagonists life-threatening thrills and chills! I much prefer the novels of H. G. Wells over Jules Verne’s, although some readers may find the archaic early-century English words a little tough to decipher. That said, both Wells and Verne are much fun to read. But if you enjoy Michael Crichton novels, you will like H. G. Wells best over Verne, imho. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 20, 2024
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Feb 25, 2024
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Feb 20, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 1857237633
| 9781857237634
| 1857237633
| 3.95
| 18,775
| Jun 1998
| May 01, 1999
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really liked it
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‘Inversions’ by Iain M Banks, listed as #6 in the Culture series, actually appears to not be part of the Culture space opera series for many pages. In
‘Inversions’ by Iain M Banks, listed as #6 in the Culture series, actually appears to not be part of the Culture space opera series for many pages. In alternating chapters, readers learn about two different medieval societies. One is ruled by a noble, General UrLeyn, who killed the previously ruling king of the protectorate Tassasen, and the other, the country of Haspidus, is ruled by King Quience. It seems to be two separate books sandwiched together for some reason into one volume for awhile. At first, I thought it was two different timelines about the same sword-and-horse society, with the chapters describing King Quience’s timeline happening before General UrLeyn’s rule. Nay, not so! I have copied the book blurb: ”The sixth Culture book from the awesome imagination of Iain M. Banks, a modern master of science fiction. In the winter palace, the King's new physician has more enemies than she at first realises. But then she also has more remedies to hand than those who wish her ill can know about. In another palace across the mountains, in the service of the regicidal Protector General, the chief bodyguard, too, has his enemies. But his enemies strike more swiftly, and his means of combating them are more traditional. Spiralling round a central core of secrecy, deceit, love and betrayal, INVERSIONS is a spectacular work of science fiction, brilliantly told and wildly imaginative, from an author who has set genre fiction alight.” There are two narrators. The first narrator, Oelph, is a spy working for a noble, Adlain, whose job is to protect King Quience. Oelph has been assigned to serve, as well as spy on, Dr. Vosill, who is originally from a neighboring country called Drezen. Dr. Vosill is absolutely trusted by King Quience since she is a superior doctor of medicine, far more knowledgeable than the King’s usual doctors. However, in having the King’s trust, she has become a target of jealousy and suspicion by the nobles of Haspidus. The second narrator is Dewar, bodyguard to the Prime Protector of Tassasen, General UrLean. He is very good at his job, devoted to duty. He is acutely aware of undercurrents happening around UrLean, especially since UrLean has sent troops to a Tassasen district where rebellious Barons are attempting to secede from UrLean’s control. Dewar is close to one of General UrLean’s concubines, Lady Perrund. She has a crippled arm, injured while saving UrLean from assassins. Who are the bad guys? Are there bad guys? How is the Culture involved, if they are? Hint: there IS someone who has infiltrated one of these kingdoms. The Culture is definitely trying on one of its usually secretive goals - surreptitiously directing events into a more positive outcome, at least they hope so. This is an exceptionally well-written novel, despite being a bit confusing initially. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 16, 2024
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Feb 26, 2024
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Feb 16, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1662516789
| 9781662516788
| B0C4QR4SX7
| 3.87
| 6,094
| Jun 27, 2023
| Jun 27, 2023
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it was amazing
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‘Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach’ by Nnedi Okorafor was an interesting short story about inexperienced space adventurers. Seven who qualified for the expe
‘Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach’ by Nnedi Okorafor was an interesting short story about inexperienced space adventurers. Seven who qualified for the experiment have to pass a test which involves bonding with a sentient spaceship. The ships, called Miri’s, are created with DNA from various other creatures, and are designed to be 100% compatible with one of the selected humans. I have copied the book blurb: ”A revolutionary experiment in space opens a woman’s eyes to the meaning of solitude in a thought-provoking short story by New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor. Tornado Onwubiko is one of seven people on Earth paired with sentient ships to explore and research the cosmos for twenty million euros. A decade of solitary life for a lifetime of wealth. Five years into the ten-year mission of total isolation comes a a temporary meetup among fellow travelers. A lot can happen in a week. For Tornado, who left a normal life behind, a little company can be life-changing. Nnedi Okorafor’s Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach is part of The Far Reaches , a collection of science-fiction stories that stretch the imagination and open the heart. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.” The story is about relationships and personalities. How would the solitude of space affect them? Very interesting. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jan 31, 2024
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Feb 02, 2024
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Jan 31, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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aPriL does feral sometimes
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science-fiction
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really liked it
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Sep 22, 2024
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it was amazing
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really liked it
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Sep 02, 2024
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really liked it
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Aug 24, 2024
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really liked it
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it was amazing
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really liked it
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Jul 08, 2024
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| 3.70
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| 3.85
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May 19, 2024
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| 3.86
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really liked it
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May 11, 2024
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really liked it
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Jun 07, 2024
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| 3.60
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it was amazing
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it was amazing
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really liked it
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Feb 26, 2024
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| 3.87
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it was amazing
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Feb 02, 2024
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Jan 31, 2024
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