2024 has been a busy year, with the "completion" of The Nod/Wells Timelines, the release of my first two audiobooks, and the announcement of "8" and its associated "story singles" but there's even more to come! Give me a follow so you don't miss anything!
Anne McCaffrey often reminded readers that her Pern novels were science fiction. This scene from ALL THE WEYRS OF PERN did exactly that and was originally chosen for the cover. 1/3
#JustFinished Where Peace Is Lost by Valerie Valdes.
Very different from her series starting with Chilling Effect, Where Peace Is Lost is much more serious. It reads as a quest to save a world, a journey or personal forgiveness, romance, and anti-capitalist philosophy. That's a lot to cram into 12 hours. It's all well done though, not seeming patchwork at all. Thus I zoomed through the story in two days.
Valdes delivers a solid book, perhaps leading us to "the further adventure of..."
Rebeccsa Mozo, the narrator, had a handful of mispronouciations that should have been caught by someone. Not enough to be ruinous, but distracting nonetheless. ☹️ Pronouncing buffet as the noun form, for instance, when it was used as the verb form.
Alien was released in 1979. It is hard to believe that film was made 45 years ago. Some plot details in the movie are still so relevant today. The sci-fi styling, visual aesthetics and music also really hold up.
Interior illustrations from NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PICTURE ATLAS OF OUR UNIVERSE by Roy A. Gallant. This particular section was a whimsical "what if" look at possible alien life in the solar system.
I backed Tales of the Valiant and Shadowdark and probably a few others I’m forgetting, but I find I can’t get excited about them because at their heart, they are still 5e D&D and I’m just tired of anything directly evolved from D&D. I’ve played enough of them over the years, and I really want new games.
That said I’m excited by the new version of Talislanta, even though I don’t expect it to be very different at all. But that’s getting a classic back in print.
New important futurology topic – the dystopia of utopia – a common scifi trope. We should remain aware of is the flawed logic and failure of utopia, especially in the context of Futurology. A utopia would be ‘an ideal commonwealth whose inhabitants exist under seemingly perfect conditions. Hence utopian and utopianism are words used to denote visionary reform that tends to be impossibly idealistic.’
Why is utopia impossible for humanity? Who wouldn’t want to live that way? Let’s take a few moments to talk about why utopia doesn’t work, and consider some historic examples of aborted utopias.
First and foremost – utopias don’t work for people and here’s why: my idea of ‘perfect’ is different from yours. Billy Fleming makes an important point about utopia in this article. ‘Margaret Atwood reminds us in The Handmaid’s Tale, an ideal society is never ideal for everyone. The difference between utopia and dystopia is often little more than one’s vantage point.’
Humanity’s innate diversity means we’re constantly at odds with each other when it comes to what we want out of life, what makes us tick. The only way to solve that ‘problem’ is for everyone to live, think, and see things the same way. Know what you get when you do that? ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers.’ I’ll have more to say about that later.
Another problem – balancing priorities, resources, and power. Power is corrosive and corrupting to humanity. We’d constantly be fighting the influence of bad actors tipping the balance of power in their favor. Those bad actors might be coming from inside or outside the community, forcing you to treat citizens and neighbors as both assets and liabilities. If you ever figure out how to do that correctly, let me know.
How do I know that utopia won’t work? History. We’ve tried this before! New Harmony, Indiana thrived for a while on principles of equal rights and equality of duties only to fall apart due to competing ideologies, quarrels, and ‘ nature’s own inherent law of diversity.’ The Oneida Community pursued the idea of ‘individual spiritual perfection within a harmonious society‘ but declined over practices like ‘complex marriage’ and ‘community criticism’ sessions. (Fun fact – the Oneida community founded the company that makes your favorite forks and knives – they’re still in business today!)
There are other examples, too. The Amana Colonies were founded by Inspirationists, and based their society on shared religious principles for over seventy years, only to fall victim to external economic pressure. Even the former Soviet Union, on paper, was an attempt to create a society based on Marxist-Leninst principles of socialism. We all know how that ended.
Could utopia work under the right circumstances? Sure, maybe. AI-based governance could be a way for us to cede authority to an objective resource but even modern AIs have a serious problem – they’re learning from humans. When it comes to computers, it’s ‘garbage in – garbage out’ – and we’re the garbage. Could we fix that? Will advancements in quantum technology allow us to simulate future outcomes before assimilation into our universe?
Again, maybe – but that brings up a new potential danger: Quantum annihilation. We’d be constructing and destroying other universes as a science experiment. What consequences would we face, if other citizens of the multiverse started coming back through the doors we’re opening? I talk about that in The Conquered.
What are other possibilities? Virtual reality? Best case scenario – Ready Player One. Worst case scenario – Mark Zuckerberg. Either way, the odds are good but the goods are odd. No bueno.
So yeah – utopia – it’s a third rail for humanity. If you take nothing else from this, remember: there’s a ‘dystopia’ that comes with ‘utopia.’ Scifi loves to pontificate about ‘here’s how utopia could work,’ but the reality is utopia is also dystopia, depending on who you talk to.
#JustFinished Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice.
Rice weaves a gorgeous follow-up to Moon of the Crusted Snow. About 12 years have passed since the power went out, and the Anishinaabe in what was the northern Ontario province are in need of a new home as local resources are dwindling. Moon of the Turning Leaves follows a group south and east as they search for a better place, preferably in their ancestral lands.
Along the way, they learn more of their world, both past and present. I felt that the characters learning they were big fish in a little pond was a nice touch, as many times lead characters are practically infallible.
Rice's prose is lyric, and his characters are rounded out. As soon as I saw he'd written another book in this world, I knew I had to read it. Billy Merasty, the narrator, adds to the immersion of the story.
Reading a simple sci-fi space opera, humans against space spiders, mindless fun, and then ...
The protagonist's spaceship has to rendezvous with a space station orbiting Mercury. Fair enough. The narrator talks about how the station has to stay in the planet's shadow. OK, that makes sense. Summer's a bitch that close to good old Sol.
They then go on to say that Mercury is tidally-locked to the Sun. ARGH!
It's not. It's rotation period is ⅔ of it's orbit period (88 days), meaning the planet slowly turns to toast it's whole surface. That's been known since the 1960's. Frown.
Then, more egregiously, states that the station orbits at around 1,000 km from the planet's surface. WTAF?
A geostationary orbit for Mercury (needed to stay in shadow) given it's mass and rotation period, would be 240,420 km from the surface. Angry grimace.