Last book of the year - great SciFi

I missed my reading challenge goal by rather a lot this year - I've read 25 of the 75 books I'd initially pledged and I only made it to a full 1/3 of the way because I powered through the last forty pages of this wonderful little scifi collection tonight.

13 Great Stories of Science-Fiction lives up to its title - there are a couple of stinkers in here but what's good is really good, and occasionally existentially haunting in a way that I didn't expect a little pre-moon-landing book of pulp to be.

Also this book was a gift from my friend Dani's mother, so thanks Mrs. Hopkins - I really appreciate ending 2017 on a high note thanks to you.

And now, a quick response to each of the stories in the book:

"The War is Over" by Algis Budrys: Okay, this one fucked me up and if you can find it I highly recommend it, holy shit, I don't want to say more because this story is going to stick with me for a long time and I want you to have the same opportunity for wistful joy.

"The Light" by Poul Anderson: Look, it's weird as fuck to read stories about landing on the moon written before we actually landed on the moon. There's a lot this story gets wrong from a scientific perspective, but from a story perspective it does a fantastic job.

"Compassion Circuit" by John Wyndham: Creepy. Very creepy. But in a good, healthy, Asimov way. A cool story about robots and our eternal fear of them that is surprisingly apt in this era of discussions of uploaded consciousnesses.

"Volpa" by Wyman Guin: Hey what's up I hated this story but I think I was at least supposed to hate its main character but really I hated everything, check out this page from the book:

Moving on.

"Silence, Please!" by Arthur C. Clarke: It's always great to get to read early works from authors who would blow the fuck up later in their careers, especially if it's in little forgotten anthologies. This story is hilarious and silly and a wonderful joke at people who exploit scientists by profiteering off their patents. A+

"Allegory" by William T. Powers - *FANTASTIC* just wonderful, a great little story about bureaucracy, the unwillingness to admit progress, and the social model of sanity.

"Soap Opera" by Alan Nelson: Gosh you know, a lot of the stories in this book are really exceptionally funny. This is one of them. It's absurd and lovely and sweet and snarky and I dig it.

"Shipping Clerk" by William Morrison: Another funny one - this one is also compassionate and weird and gross and larger than it seems like it should be. Good shit, maybe my favorite story in the collection.

"Technological Retreat" by G. C. Edmondson: Funny again, but in a more biting way that's a pretty strong critique of capitalism and humans as a whole.

"The Analogues" by Damon Knight: Fucking Scary. Foreboding. Full of the kind of totalitarian promise that continues to unnerve and upset us.

"Available Data on the Worp Reaction" by Lion Miller: Weird, cute, and kitschy. The language used to describe neurodivergence at the time leaves something to be desired, but I'm also fascinated by the fact that this is a SF story with an autistic protagonist written from a relatively sympathetic standpoint at some time in the 50s.

"The Skills of Xanadu" by Theodore Sturgeon: This story answers the question of "What if Paul Atredies had been a hedonist who defeated the Harkonnens through technology" and that's a spoiler and I don't care. Sturgeon telegraphs that spoiler all the way through and watching it build up is half the fun. A remarkably complete little world for a 20 page story.

"The Machine" by Richard Gehmen: Fucking Hilarious. Also maddeningly familiar in an era of fake news, but tremendously amusing, a great way to round out the collection and the end of my year.

Thanks for reading, happy new year, and I'll catch you in 2018.

Cheers,
     - Alli

December is for Star Wars

Look, we're all stoked when we get to see a new Star Wars move but sometimes I'm a little sick of the hype.

The Last Jedi is far from the worst film in the series, but I will happily and loudly disagree with anyone who says it's the best. The parts of it that I liked I like more than I like most of the rest of the series, the parts of it that I disliked are more irksome to me than the worst of the prequels.

TLJ needed a heavier hand with the editing - there are about three main stories happening all at the same time and while I know it's typical to bounce between mains in a Star Wars movie at least most of the time all of the stories are doing something that matters. That's not the case here, and unfortunately it seems like only one of the stories really makes a difference in-universe. It fucking sucks that the Leia storyline and the Finn storyline are the least interesting and least impactful.

There's also some shitty writing going on here. I feel like with a couple of relatively simple changes the film could have felt a lot more whole and complete.

Spoilers here:

Admiral Ackbar's death is pointless and meaningless and the audience isn't given a chance to feel it or care about it. You know what would be a really easy way to fix this? Skip Laura Dern's character and fill that role with Admiral Ackbar. There's no need to waste time (in an already extremely long movie) with characterization on a one-and-done character while denying a legacy character the death both he and the audience deserve when you've got it right fucking there. It would make more sense for Ackbar to butt heads with Poe, for Ackbar to sacrifice himself for the remains of the resistance, for Ackbar to survive the bridge exposion and still die - it would give us a moment of real tragedy  instead of the blank "wait, did Ackbar just die" moment followed by the vast hollow depths of my inability to give a shit about Holdo's death (because I don't know her, I don't know her history, I don't respect her because all I've seen her do up until this point is fuckin drive into the goddamned nether when for real IF THE HYPERSPACE TRACKER IS ONLY ENABLED ON THE SUPREMACY SHIP THEN WHY DID THEY WAIT FOR SO MUCH OF THE RESISTANCE TO GET SHOT DOWN AND DEPLETE FUEL IN THAT RUN TO CRAIT MOTERHFUCKERS ADMIRAL ACKBAR COULD HAVE DIED A HERO TAKING OUT THE SUPREMACY AFTER ALL CREW HAD BEEN MOVED TO VESSELS THAT STILL HAD FUNCTIONAL WEAPONS AND SOME TRAVEL ABILITY YOU JACKHOLES. WHY DID YOU SAVE THAT FOR YOUR BIG END MOVE AND LET MOST OF YOUR FORCES DIE IN A LONG AND POINTLESS SLOG THROUGH SPACE INSTEAD OF SENDING ONE FUCKIN PILOT THROUGH THE FUCKIN SUPREMACY AT LIGHTSPEED WHILE EVERYONE ELSE STILL HAD THE ABILITY TO GET AWAY GODDAMNIT).

Anyway, I feel like the film could have used a couple more treatments.

Kylo and Rey's force bond, their fight in Snoke's throne room, his betrayal of her, Leia's first onscreen use of the force, Poe's love for BB8, Rose's sister (though not her fucking ridiculous bomber), DJ, and everything having to do with Luke was fantastic and I loved it.

Finn and Rose were wasted in this film, though Finn's role in the fight on Crait and Rose's freeing of the animal on that incredibly boring gambling planet were very nice.

Again, a couple more treatments or a heavier hand with editing and I feel like this would have been a fucking amazing Star Wars movie. As it is, it's flawed and I enjoy large parts of it but other large parts of it are just frustrating.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Highway to Hell's Angels

Even though it seems that he always felt bad about himself reading Hunter S. Thompson is a good way to make you feel bad about yourself. Or good about yourself. It depends.

I spent August and September working my way through The Proud Highway, a collection of Thompson's letters from his young adulthood. It makes me feel awful about myself because 17-year-old Thompson had found a style of expression that I can't even begin to emulate (in terms of hilarity, originality, maturity, and cynicism) as a person almost twice that age. It makes me feel great about myself because I may not be as witty as Thompson but at least I've never ended up stranded in Puerto Rico burning bridges of friendship as I leave my abandoned belongings with someone unwise enough to be generous with me.

Thompson had a turbulent, exciting, patently ridiculous life and reading his letters really gets to the heart of that in a way that his essays and novels don't. He was chaotic and mean and ballsy, he's easy to loathe and easy to admire in his writing.

I can't recommend this collection to everyone - there's a fair helping of racism that is difficult to look beyond and is upsetting to experience through his eyes. But if you're looking for a novel way to explore language or play with pacing then reading some Thompson would not be amiss.

There are two further volumes of Thompson's letters that I want to read someday, and reading this book made me want to give Hell's Angels a second pass (these letters lead up to the publication of that book and I want to read it with fresh insight into Thompson's perspective while writing it). I think I'll always enjoy reading Thompson's work, but there's always an edge of mania that galls and there's usually too much bitterness or outright hatred for me to approve of, but the words can be transcendent. 

Cheers,
     - Alli

Book Wrap Ups in 2017

Old-timey racism still isn't cute

Okay, I'm reading some Wilkie Collins because of a Stephen King book. In The Long Walk one of the characters is dying and mentions that The Woman in White is his favorite book and since I read The Long Walk for the first time I've wanted to read The Woman in White.

But it wasn't available as a free e-book until recently so I read The Moonstone instead.

The book is fine? Like the story is fine and I'm actually pretty pleased with how the narrative structure was arranged. That's peachy.

But oh wow is it kind of pretty damn racist. I mean hey, yeah, big surprise, here's a book written by a white British Victorian dude, who would have thought he'd be pretty fucking rude about Indians? Yeah.

The plot of the novel is compelling, unfortunately it's rooted in the idea that three "savage" Indians are tracking down a gemstone that was stolen from their sacred temple as a war trophy and that the "savage" Indians are wholly in the wrong here.

This would be *so* easy to fix by making it a haunted gemstone, or a gemstone belonging to a local conniving duke whose sons are tracking down their ill-gotten gains or whatever. But that's not what happens and so we can't really get around it.

I enjoyed significant parts of this book, it can be extremely funny. But it isn't commenting on the harms of racism and imperialism, the way that Twain did, it's reveling in the idea that pure, virginal British women are threatened by foreigners motivated by mysterious magic.

And that just kinda sucks.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Gotta Light?

I've been extremely behind on this blog, so we're going to talk about Twin Peaks: The Return even though I started watching it nearly a year ago and haven't re-watched it since the end of its initial run in September.

My sister hated it, and I don't think my parents were fans, but we dutifully sat down and watched each episode as a family, diving into the weirdness of Lynch together.

I loved it, but that's totally in character for me. I liked the journeys we took with the characters we already knew and I liked the places we went with the characters who were novel to us as viewers. I liked the visual textures and sonic assault that threaded through every episode. I loved the rock-slow pace of the thing, drawing and dragging you with it as it went to strange places. I wanted to get up and dance in the netherworld of the Roadhouse.

It didn't make sense because magic doesn't make sense. But in many ways it felt more wholly a part of Twin Peaks than some of the later episodes from season 2.

Anyway, spoilers? Spoilers.

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I kind of wish they hadn't brought Dale back. I kind of wish it had just been a quest for Dale and the realization that he was lost, that some things end.

And I kind of like the way they got there anyway - bringing Dale back didn't matter. He didn't get to go home. Sometimes things don't work. Sometimes evil wins.

However 10000000% I am here for Lucy getting her big hero moment. Lucy fuckin rules.

I want to rewatch the series, I have both of the books associated with this release and have to read them. I want to keep spending time in this world and learning more about it. It's beautiful and sad. It hurts and cleanses.

Cheers,
     - Alli