Review: The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson

Hardcover, 251 pages
Published 1925 (originally 1885)

Borrowed from the library

Read July 2016

The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson

Written in collaboration with Mrs. Stevenson

     "Do you then propose, dear boy, that we should turn detectives?" inquired Challoner.
     "Do I propose it? No sir," cried Somerset. "It is reason, destiny, the plain face of the world, that commands and imposes it. Here all our merits tell; our manners, habit of the world, powers of conversation, vast stores of unconnected knowledge, all that we are and have builds up the character of the complete detective. It is, in short, the only profession for a gentleman." (8)

Three purposeless gentlemen of the kind one encounters in Victorian novels decide to become detectives: this turns out to be a flimsy pretext upon which to hang a series of short stories by the Stevensons. Each of the fellows goes on an adventure, and within his adventure, someone usually tells him a story, so this gives you an overall frame story, then three of what we might call sub-frame stories, and then three more embedded tales. The stories are diverse, but definitely depict a late-Victorian fascination with racial mixing (as in "The Story of the Fair Cuban") and Mormons (as in "The Story of the Destroying Angel"; just two years later, A. Conan Doyle would do almost the same thing in A Study in Scarlet). And it all comes together in a tale of terrorism-- which I think Stevenson might have been a little ahead in his time on, since most of the examples I can recall of terrorism literature are from the 1890s.

I liked the basic conceit of this book, but unfortunately the detectives are pretty dull and so are most of the adventures they get into. The embedded narratives are sometimes better ("The Story of the Destroying Angel" is tense) and sometimes worse. I did especially like Zero, the evil dynamiter, who uses a lot of the justifications I recognize as traditional, like you may call me indiscriminate, but war is indiscriminate! Or this speech: "We agree that humanity is the object, the glorious triumph of humanity; and being pledged to labour for that end, and face to face with the banded opposition of kings, parliaments, churches, and members of the force, who am I—who are we, dear sir—to affect a nicety about the tools employed?" (143-44) The Stevensons keeps Zero comic, which elevates him over similar characters from other books. I mean, he's obviously an out-and-out villain in an over-the-top fashion, but you have to love a guy who says the government is evil for using "hirelings," whereas terrorist groups nobly and generously provide their members with stipends (147). Completely different, of course! He's a scientist, but a shitty one (dynamiting is difficult because chemicals are as fickle as women!), and he's told off in the end: "You are ignorant of anything but science, which I can never regard as being truly knowledge; I, sir, have studied life" (236).

There's also some stuff about a prince in disguise? That stuff was so boring my eyes glazed right over it all. So, not exactly a great book or even a good one, but it had some good jokes and some okay insight into the cultural brew of the 1880s.

Faster than a DC Bullet: All-New All-Different DC, Part XIII: Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer

Comic trade paperback, 158 pages
Published 2008 (contents: 2007-08)
Borrowed from the library
Read March 2017

Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer

Writers: Ron Marz, Sean McKeever, Peter Johnson, Matt Cherniss, Brian Augustyn, Alan Burnett, Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti

Pencillers: Angel Unzueta, Jamal Igle, Kelley Jones, Eric Battle, Greg Tocchini, Travel Foreman, Kalman Andrasofszky, Jeremy Haun, David Hahn, David Baldeón
Inkers: Oliver Nome, Richard Friend, Saleem Crawford, Trevor Scott, Rob Hunter, Kelley Jones, Derek Fridolfs, Vicente Cifuentes, Jonathan Glapion, Jesse Delperdang, Paul Neary, Lorenzo Ruggiero, Kalman Andrasofszky, Norm Rapmund, Álvaro López, Rick Ketcham, David Hahn, Steve Bird
Colorists: Allen Passalaqua, John Kalisz, Mark Chiarello, Art Lyon, Rod Reis, Pete Pantazis, Kanila Tripp
Letterers: John J. Hill, Steve Wands, Travis Lanham

I read this because I thought that it would tie-in to The All New Atom in some way. I still assume it does, because the next volume of The All New Atom is called The Hunt For Ray Palmer!, but "all-new Atom" Ryan Choi does not put in an appearance here. Instead, this volume follows the so-called "Challengers from Beyond" from Countdown to Final Crisis, expanding on their multiverse-hopping search for the original Atom, Ray Palmer, covered in volumes two and three of that series. Honestly, though I know it would have inflated that series to five volumes, and no one out there wanted more of Countdown to Final Crisis, DC should have included these issues with those ones somehow, because they don't stand on their own in any way.

I will never ever care about Monarch, DC, no matter how hard you try.
from Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer: Wildstorm #1 (script by Ron Marz, art by Angel Unzueta and Oliver Nome & Richard Friend & Saleem Crawford & Trevor Scott)

The various issues collected here mostly show visits by the Challengers from Beyond to different worlds in the multiverse while they look for Ray Palmer, giving us extra adventures that went unseen in the main Countdown to Final Crisis series. As such, there's no real set-up (just a text page to recap salient points from the main series) and no resolution beyond an ad for Countdown to Final Crisis, Volume Three. And some parts are just confusing; for example, the Jokester from Earth-Three joins the Challengers at the end of one issue, but is nowhere to be seen in the next; that's because Countdown #30-22* took place between these two issues, and the Jokester died in #29, but there's no indication whatsoever of that here. And obviously I read Countdown to Final Crisis, but so long ago that I didn't remember this. C'mon, DC, at least try to make your collections readable. (Thanks to Cosmic Teams for being the only people on the whole Internet invested enough in Countdown to write an issue-by-issue timeline for it. Most of The Search for Ray Palmer occurs between issues #22 and 21 of Countdown, so during the middle of volume three.)

Hugos 2017 [Prelude]: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Trade paperback, 434 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2006)
Acquired and read May 2017

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

It took me a little bit to get into this book, which I'm reading because the third volume in the series it began is a 2017 finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. There are a lot of characters, and Liu sort of jerks you from character to character, especially at first, and the one the narrative ends up settling on doesn't really have a personality beyond "baffled but well-meaning scientist." This is definitely a sort of throwback science fiction, like The Martian, more the sf of ideas and technology than of character and society. Which turns out to be fine, because once I came to grips with that, I actually really got into the book.

The explorations of the simulated alien world of Trisolaris are really neat, especially the grappling with how would you devise scientific reasoning in a world that seemingly defied rational prediction. As things started to come together in the final third of the novel, I liked it even more-- as the narrative comes back to Ye Wenjie, she turns out to be a fascinating character. This isn't just a book about cool scientific concepts, it's also about the processes of history, and who gets left behind by history, and who feels betrayed by progress. Liu provides a mirrored vision for these issues, as we see them play out on both Trisolaris and in China. Those who struggle against history are of course themselves part of it, and even though this book just spans from 1967 to 2007, I can already see how this series will (quite appropriately) project hundreds of years into the future by the time it's done.

Next Week: A return to the world of The Broken Earth in The Obelisk Gate!

Review: Star Trek: The Prisoner of Vega by Sharon Lerner & Christopher Cerf and Robert Swanson

Hardcover, 43 pages
Published 1977
Acquired September 2012
Read August 2016

Star Trek: The Prisoner of Vega

written by Sharon Lerner and Christopher Cerf

illustrated by Robert Swanson

That I count this as an entry on my reading list is faintly ridiculous, given that it's a 43-page picture book aimed a five-year-olds, but I guess it counterbalances the 800-page Victorian baggy monsters. By any objective measure, it's not a very good book: Kirk and the Enterprise visit an alien planet to secure trade with the Federation, the Klingons are there, Kirk wins by beaming the Klingon commander up with a plan that depends on an incredible amount of coincidence and isn't really explained all that well.

What makes the book fun are the pictures by Robert Swanson, which are excellent, but weirdly inaccurate. Like, he gets the likenesses down perfectly, but no one has an assignment patch on their uniform:

And Captain Kirk has a digital wristwatch:

Steve and Hayley Watch Farscape: Season 1, Episodes 1-4

For a long time now, my wife and I have talked about watching Farscape... and now we finally are. I'm trying something different here on the blog; we're going to write up our thoughts together.

Introduction

• STEVE: Can we start by talking about what we know about Farscape going in and why we want to watch it?
• HAYLEY: I’ve only seen the first episode before.
• S: Really? I thought you’d seen more.
• H: I thought I’d seen a few, but after we watched “I, E.T.,” I realized I’d only seen the first episode. One of my friends in Kansas had me watch it after I’d seen all of Stargate SG-1. So I’ve seen Ben Browder and Claudia Black in that.
• S: I have seen exactly twelve episodes before. Oddly, six from the first season (I got a DVD from Blockbuster called Best of Season One or something), and the very last six of the whole show. But I’ve seen nothing in between that. We’ve talked about watching it for a long time, but why do you want to?
• H: Well, what I really loved about SG-1 was the group of characters going on adventures. Farscape is an ensemble of interesting characters going on adventures in a spaceship--which is also one of your favorite setups, too. So it’s up both our alleys.
• S: Yes, you’ve removed my need to answer this question. I just want to add that adhering to this template is why the original Star Wars movie will always be the best one.
• H: Other ’90s/’00s shows which feature good group ensembles: Buffy, Deep Space Nine, Firefly… all favorites.
• S: Exactly. Well, speaking of interesting characters let’s start with:

1x01: “Premiere”

• HAYLEY: John Crichton (Ben Browder) on Earth. The conversation with his dad is kinda hokey.
• STEVE: I liked his dad!
• H: It’s necessary setup. And I like their relationship. I’m into Crichton as a character. A stand-up, average Joe flung into outer space.
• S: Yeah, it could be a kind of thankless, blank character, but even in just the first episode, Browder is already bringing humor to the role.
• H: Next we’re introduced to Ka D’Argo and Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan.
• S: That’s her name!?
• H: I don’t know how to pronounce any of it except her last name.
• S: I think that’s all that matters in this case? The meeting with D’Argo and Zhaan was probably my favorite part of this episode, which has a pretty simple plot. The viewer, like Crichton, is really thrown in at the deep end and totally disoriented. (Though not so much me, since this is one of the twelve I’ve seen before.)

• H: Yeah, I like that, too. Oh, but we forgot about the cute robots! We see them first.
• S: My suspicion is that I am going to like these guys.
• H: Absolutely.
• S: We also meet Rygel XVI, dominar-in-exile, and Pilot, pilot, both puppet characters.
• H: Impressive Henson Studio work. For the most part, those really hold up, two decades later.
• S: I’m sort of jumping ahead, but there’s especially some good stuff with both characters in episode 2; they both have genuine, character-based conversations with Zhaan where you completely forget you’re watching a puppet at work.
• H: In this episode, we don’t get a lot of insight into any of the four alien characters. But there’s quite a lot set-up that seems as if it will pay off later.
• S: Yeah, Captain Crais has about five minutes in which to develop a blood vendetta that will lead him to pursue our heroes to the end of the galaxy.
• H: But I do already love Claudia Black’s character, Aeryn Sun.
• S: You would!

• H: She’s a badass female warrior who’s got a lot to discover about being a good person! Who wouldn’t?! Actually, not too different from her SG-1 character.
• S: I feel like we both thought the climax was a bit hokey, with Moya “slingshotting” around the planet to get away.
• H: I liked that, actually. Crichton had to establish that he has a role among this group of misfits.
• S: Fair enough.
• H: But I may have some issues with the science behind the “slingshot.” How can friction make you go faster?!

1x02: “I, E.T.”

• STEVE: In this episode, the crew discovers Moya is giving off a locator signal and has to hide on a twentieth-century Earth-style planet while they try to shut it off.
• HAYLEY: I thought it was really interesting that the Leviathan ship was just as much a prisoner of the Peacekeepers as Rygel, D’Argo, and Zhaan were. Although the control collar was present in the first episode, it wasn’t really explained.
• S: Yeah, I assume we’ll hear more about this stuff as the show goes on-- the idea of the Peacekeepers having a fleet of living ships enslaved to their will is intriguing, and I want to know more. Pilot seems to have come with the ship, for example.
• H: There were some good scenes with Zhaan, Rygel, Pilot, and Aeryn back at the ship. As you mentioned earlier.
• S: Yeah, I feel like the “second episode” is kind of a genre of its own, where you flesh out what you sort of sketched in in the first episode, and this really does that for almost everyone-- poor D’Argo just kind of stays in a tree most of the time.
• H: And Crichton gets the tables turned on him, as he’s the alien presence intruding into the lives of everyday people. What did you think of the alien woman (whose name is apparently Lyneea)?
• S: I wanted to like her more than I did. I felt like the actress was being, I dunno, too “alien” or too “quirky” at times, she seemed a little affected.
• H: I wanted to know more about her motivations. Like, why wasn’t she tempted to turn Crichton over to the military? She would have been set with funding for life.

• S: No more grant applications! Yeah, the military was just kind of said to be jerks, and that was that. That face she made when Crichton kissed her did funny things to me, though.
• H: Hahaha--I liked that reaction, too. Overall, a decent second episode, though I’m hoping it’s mostly uphill from here.
• S: Yeah, I found the B-plot on the ship more interesting than the A-plot with Crichton, and that more for the character stuff-- Rygel admitting he didn’t know how to use a tool because he had people to do that for him, or the implications that Aeryn cares for the others more then she lets on. The show is already starting to flesh these characters out.

1x03: “Exodus from Genesis”

• HAYLEY: I think for this episode, they were like, “Let’s do all the tropes for a show on a spaceship!” We’ve got a bug infestation of the ship, replicants of the main characters fighting with their duplicates, a misunderstood alien race that forms a truce once they can finally speak with each other, and a race of aliens that dies a horrible death when the temperature gets slightly uncomfortably warm.
• STEVE: Like the Ice Warriors?
• H: Yeah. Clearly the Peacekeeper suits should have some kind of cooling system if they’re going to die miserably when the other characters aren’t even sweating. Not a very plausible trait for a conquering race to not have adapted to by now.
• S: Yeah, D’Argo says it’s like a mild winter on his planet… so how did the Peacekeepers conquer this planet? Your list of sf spaceship tropes leaves out a dangerous malfunction that threatens to destroy the ship if something can’t be switched off. But did it all work for you?
• H: I’m not sure that it did, overall. But there were some good scenes. And some good character moments.
• S: Yeah, that’s basically what I was leaning toward saying here. The plot was kind of formulaic, but there were some nice moments between Zhaan and Rygel, and between Aeryn and Crichton, that provided some depth.

• H: I thought Zhaan’s speedy “spirit painting” was dumb, but I like the payoff when she suggested Crichton ask Rygel what Rygel the First would do. It was a good character moment for Rygel, and also resulted in some good jokes later on.
• S: This is the second episode in a row, though, where Rygel is humiliated by doing something only someone his size can do!
• H: Hey, they’re making good use of the ventilation shaft sets!
• S: Also I just realized another sf drama trope--the alien entity who has to possess a crewmember in order to speak.
• H: Hopefully we’ve now gotten most of those tropes out of the way, and in one episode, too.
• S: I thought at first that this (to highlight another science fiction cliche) was going to be a money-saving bottle episode after the expensive first couple episodes--main characters only, no locations or new sets--which was reinforced when duplicates and possession turned up, so the episode surprised me when the Peacekeeper commando squad turned up to complicate everything in the last fifteen minutes.
• H: With their terrible eye makeup.
• S: They were just terrible commandos all around.
• H: I’m not sure Crichton’s plan was the best, sending them back to Crais with tales that his nemesis can duplicate himself into an army. Seems likely to backfire.
• S: Heh, true.

• H: I know I’m kind of jumping around, but the other thing I really liked was the scene where Crichton fought with the bug in his bedroom. I liked how the bug went into a very bug-like defense mode, making itself appear larger and waving its antennae around and moving back and forth.
• S: Is this real bug behavior?
• H: Absolutely! It’s called deimatic behavior. Check out this mantis using it against a spider:

• S: My biology fact of the day.

1x04: “Throne for a Loss”

• STEVE: The crew gets involved in a trade deal that goes bad when raiders kidnap Rygel, hoping to ransom him for a fortune (because of Rygel’s own bluffing, they’re unaware he’s been deposed). I thought this one started very confusingly.
• HAYLEY: Yeah, this is only the second planet in the “uncharted territories” we’ve seen, so I thought it was a little odd that the viewer is left to figure out so much of the set-up necessary for the opening scene.
• S: Yeah, the mechanics of the trade deal are vague, and then the episode plunged straight into the action, which I thought looked goofy and was awkwardly shot, and then there’s this whole thing with the armband that gives people superpowers but also rage, and D’Argo steals it, and it all seemed pretty hokey at first.
• H: I thought the entire episode was all going to be about D’Argo being in charge and needing to get the armband off him, but thankfully the episode veered away from that.
• S: Once the focus of the episode became clear, I started to enjoy it more, but the first fifteen minutes or so were rough.

• H: Poor Rygel is always going to be used for humor, isn’t he?
• S: Apparently so, though I liked how this one show his ingenuity, such as when he managed to escape from the cell on his own.
• H: Only to be killed!
• S: Well, yes. Bad timing. The scene where he goes from laughing at his plight to crying was very well done.
• H: I thought so too. (Spoiler alert: he doesn’t stay dead.) But I think my favorite parts of the episode were the Zhaan scenes. She reveals a badass layer to her that isn’t usually front and center. It makes it easier to believe she was once an anarchist threat to her world.

• S: Through her attempts to deal with the raider they’ve captured, she also reveals more about her compassionate side, which we’ve seen some of before--but it’s one thing to be nice to Crichton who is 1) not evil and 2) wants her help, and another to be nice to a murderous alien. She came across as genuinely wanting to help this guy for his own sake, and there was a real connection there. But the episode also avoids anything too saccharine or preachy; he doesn’t get the crew killed when he has the chance, yet he still tries to take over Moya, and the episode ends with him going back on ketracel-white. (The aliens are basically the Jem’Hadar.)
• H: I liked the way that subplot ended. He doesn’t do a 180 conversion, but the simple statement he makes to Zhaan--“My choice”--speaks volumes.
• S: Yeah, it was a nice bittersweet ending. As for the main plot, I think my favorite parts of this somewhat simple story were, as always, the bits of character. I like that the crew is bonding, but in this episode D’Argo and Aeryn bond over how useless they both think Crichton is!
• H: I wanted to like their bonding scenes more. They lobbed insults back and forth throughout the episode, getting angry at being called “coward” and “barbarian,” which had a nice twist at the end where they reversed the insults while Aeryn was saving D’Argo’s life. It was kind of a nice moment, but I don’t think it carried the weight that it could have.
• S: I didn’t feel it was supposed to be weighty. It’s a nice moment, but I don’t think we’re supposed to see them as becoming serious friends yet-- it’s just a step.
• H: I suppose.

• S: I also liked that the climax involves Crichton attempting three or four different bluffs before just telling the truth, and that’s what works.
• H: “Have you ever heard of… chicken pox?” cracked me up. I liked it too.
• S: I feel like they’re almost making fun of themselves (already!) since the climax of the previous episode was based around an improbable Crichton bluff.
• H: Hmm. That makes his quick backtracking in this one seem less in character. Or maybe makes that bluff more out-of-character in retrospect. I hadn’t thought about that. But it seems inconsistent.
• S: Eh, I think he just goes with what works. Braindead Peacekeeper commandos are easier to fool. I would like to point out that this is the third episode in a row whose plot hinges on Moya being trapped due to a broken part. What kind of maintenance regime is Pilot running?

Focus on… Pilot

• HAYLEY: This is very much an aside, but I wanted to talk about it. While we were writing these, you said something about Pilot and used the pronoun “he.” And that was the first moment I realized Pilot was supposed to be male. You asked me why I was surprised by that, since Pilot’s voice actor is male, and I said that I had always envisioned Pilot to be androgynous. Or neither male nor female. Then you said that (like in Transformers) the default would then be male pronouns. (This is, after all, a couple decades before the singular ‘they’ started to become a thing.) Anyway, in my headcanon, Pilot is still androgynous, or maybe hermaphroditic. He’s an endosymbiont, and I assume it’s a mutual symbiosis--meaning neither Moya nor Pilot can survive without the other.
• STEVE: What is an endosymbiont?
• H: It means “internal symbiont”--
• S: Oh, duh.
• H: --or an organism that has to live inside another. Like our gut bacteria. Or tapeworms. Or the algae that live inside coral. In biology, I can’t think of a single endosymbiont that wouldn’t either be a hermaphrodite or reproduce asexually.

• S: Well, there’s a lot we still don’t know about Pilot. Has he always been with Moya? What does he want? Each of the other characters has some reason to be on the run, but Pilot wasn’t a criminal and yet he went right along with the prison break. Biologically and personally there’s much to learn.
• H: Good point. He clearly does have a complicated relationship with the Peacekeepers, because in the scenes with Aeryn in “Exodus from Genesis,” Aeryn seems to pick Pilot to open up to over everyone, but Pilot makes a comment about this being the first conversation with a Peacekeeper where he wasn’t afraid. I hope that future revelations about his past and character-- and biology-- are satisfying.
• S: Maybe there’s a Mrs. Pilot back at home.
• H: That would ruin my headcanon!

All screencaps courtesy FarscapeCaps.com.

Reading Roundup Wrapup: May 2017

Pick of the month: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Coincidentally, in the middle of a month where I'm furiously reading this year's Hugo finalists, I paused to read 2014's winner for Best Novel... and loved it! A well-deserved award for a tremendous and gripping novel; I stayed up late last night because I "only" had a quarter of it to go, and it was so worth it.

All books read:
1. On the Government of the Living: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1979-1980 by Michel Foucault
2. The Transformers: Dark Cybertron, Volume 2 by John Barber and James Roberts
3. The Broken Earth, Book One: The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
4. Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor: Unsung Hero: The Story of Robert McNeill by Harvey Pekar
5. Doctor Who: Little Rose Riding Hood by Justin Richards
6. Convergence: Crisis, Book 2 by Larry Hama, Len Wein, Fabian Nicieza, Marv Wolfman, and Dan Abnett
7. The New Doctor Who Adventures: Timewyrm: Revelation by Paul Cornell
8. Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes by Linda Holmen and Mary Santella-Johnson
9. Terra Ignota, Book I: Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
10. Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings by George Eliot
11. Scientific Attitudes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by Samuel Holmes Vasbinder
12. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
13. Black Panther: A Nation under Our Feet, Book One by Ta-Nehisi Coates
14. Heart and Science: A Story of the Present Time by Wilkie Collins
15. The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction by Neil Gaiman
16. Convergence: Infinite Earths, Book 1 by Justin Gray, Len Wein, Dan Abnett, Jerry Ordway, and Paul Levitz
17. The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
18. The Broken Earth, Book Two: The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin
19. A Yellow Aster by Iota
20. The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson
21. Paper Girls 1 by Brian K. Vaughan
22. Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016 with A Journal of a Writer’s Week by Ursula K. Le Guin
23. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
24. The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Volume 6 by James Roberts
25. Victorian Literature and the Victorian Visual Imagination edited by Carol T. Christ and John O. Jordan

This isn't my highest-ever month, but it's up there. Top Five, for sure. Obviously having a deadline to the Hugo finalists for helps, as does the fact that some are quick reads like novellas and four-issue comic compilations. But also I picked up my habit of reading on a schedule for the purposes of scholarship: two books every four days!

All books acquired:
1. The Broken Earth, Book One: The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
2. Terra Ignota, Book I: Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
3. The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
4. A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
5. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
6. The Broken Earth, Book Two: The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin
7. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
8. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
9. Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
10. Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016 with A Journal of a Writer's Week by Ursula K. Le Guin
11. Death's End by Cixin Liu
12. Saga, Book Two by Brian K. Vaughan
13. Wonder Woman by George Pérez Omnibus, Volume Two by George Pérez and Mindy Newell with Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis, Cary Bates, and Lee Marrs
14. Legionnaires, Book One by Tom McCraw, Tom Peyer, and Mark Waid
15. Dis-Orienting Planets: Racial Representations of Asia in Science Fiction by Isiah Lavender III

Almost all Hugo finalists, until the end of the month where a couple others just squeaked in.

Books remaining on "To be read" list: 650 (up 1)
Books remaining on "To review" list: 35 (down 9)

Faster than a DC Bullet: All-New All-Different DC, Part XII: Manhunter: Forgotten

Comic trade paperback, 189 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 2008-09)
Borrowed from the library
Read March 2017

Manhunter: Forgotten

Writer: Marc Andreyko

Artist: Michael Gaydos
Additional Artists: Carlos Magno, Dennis Calero, Fernando Blanco, Brad Walker, & Livesay
Colorists: Jose Villarrubia, Dennis Calero
Letterers: Sal Cipriano, Travis Lanham

In my first review of the series, I compared Manhunter to Alias. Well, for the final volume of Manhunter, the art is by none other than Michael Gaydos, the principal artist of Alias. But far from making Manhunter feel derivative, hiring Gaydos reveals the differences between Manhunter and Alias... though sort of in a bad way. What I mean by this is that superhero action doesn't really play to Gaydos's strengths as an artist, and Manhunter is much more action-packed than Alias ever was.

Gaydos drawing what Gaydos draws best: people having conversations. I would argue that he's one of few comics artists who can draw someone in a bra and not sexualize it.
from Manhunter vol. 3 #32 (art by Michael Gaydos)

In this volume, Kate ends up in El Paso when she hears about a lot of women going missing. To my immense pleasure, this means she ends up encountering Blue Beetle and La Dama! I was going to complain that Andreyko gets things slightly wrong in having Jaime's suit speak in English, but I think I'm slightly out of sequence here, so maybe this reflects events to come in future issues of Blue Beetle I haven't read yet. Jaime doesn't play a big role in the story, though, which sees Kate encounter the Birds of Prey and the Suicide Squad as she battles the evils of medical experimentation. It's a decent story, displaying Kate's stick-to-itivness and no-bullshit attitude, as she refuses to accept platitudes and non-explanations, and the way she handles things in the end nicely melds her two roles.

Hugos 2017: Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer

Trade paperback, 448 pages
Published 2017 (originally 2016)
Acquired and read May 2017

Terra Ignota, Book I: Too Like the Lightning
by Ada Palmer

I feel like it's been a long time since I was reading a book so much for the world in which it took place-- maybe Hyperion? Ada Palmer is a professor of history, and has spun a fascinating world, a future where the speed of travel means that nation-states based on geography became meaningless, religious wars led to the outlawing of organized religion, and public performance of gender has become taboo. Every couple chapters brings a new and interesting insight, and Palmer works in her exposition by having her narrator address the audience he imagines will read the book five hundred years hence, who might not know all the details of his time, allowing those of us four hundred years behind him some needed clarifications as well.

The book has a dizzying array of characters and a complicated plot, which sometimes made it hard going to me. Even once I got to the end, I wasn't really sure what the focus of the book was supposed to have been: the last chapter drops in some pretty dramatic revelations, but they feel immensely distant to what the rest of the book has been about, even though it was about many things (a kid with miraculous powers, a break-in with unclear motivation, a global power grab). And I found the narrator a little hard to get hold of. I know this is deliberate, and details are slowly dolled out about him, but I still don't know what motivates him. He seems to do a lot of different things, but what does he want to do, and what does he think about what he does do? I know less than I feel I ought to after 400-plus pages.

That said, these feel like quibbles because I really did enjoy the experience of reading it so much. Palmer is imaginative, and her ideas compelling; this world feels both plausible and alien, and given that history is plausible and alien, this seems exactly right. I particularly liked the characters of Carlyle Foster and the Major; I hope we see more of them in the book II that is necessary to finish off the story of this one.

This is the first of the finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Novel I've read; I'll be curious to see how the others stack up to this one. There are ways in which it will be hard to beat!

Next Week: The beginning of a cross-time saga in The Three-Body Problem!

Review: Time, Unincorporated, Vol. 2 edited by Graeme Burk and Robert Smith?

Trade paperback, 365 pages
Published 2010 (contents: 1978-2010)
Acquired August 2012
Read August 2016

Time, Unincorporated: The Doctor Who Fanzine Archives, Vol. 2: Writings on the Classic Series
edited by Graeme Burk and Robert Smith?

First off, I want to discuss some weird editorial choices, not all of which are necessarily the fault of this book and its editors. The first is the awful subtitle, Writings on the Classic Series. The book was announced under the title Classic Series Cornucopia (which is perhaps worse), while the running head thinks it's called Writings About the Classic Series (which is miscapitalized) and the foreword calls it Backwards In Time. The second is that the foreword promises at least four more volumes of Time, Unincorporated: one on the new series, one on "the universe of Doctor Who (including non-televised versions of Doctor Who)," one culled exclusively from the fanzine Time-Space Visualizer, and one from Matrix. Only the first of these actually appeared, curtailing Time, Unincorporated at three volumes. The problem this causes is that no essays from TSV or Matrix appear in this volume-- but, for some reason, there are around a dozen essays original to this volume, which hardly feels like a "best of." It's a shame these were included instead of TSV/Matrix essays, given that volumes four and onwards are MIA.*

Now: the book itself. It was pretty good. It wasn't great, but I can't think of any essays that were outright bad (with one exception), and many were great. I think it's kind of borderline to call the website The Doctor Who Ratings Guide a "fanzine," but I appreciated that the book had many contributions from Mike Morris, probably my favorite contributor to the DWRG back in the days when I pored over it nonstop. My favorite was probably "10 Official Writer's Guidelines for the Pertwee Era," which gently mocks the Barry Letts/Terrance Dicks era of the show. (I was sad they didn't have Morris's essay on Season 21, though, or very many contributions from Rob Matthews, another DWRG regular. The season reviews both did were usually excellent.)

Other highlights include Dave Rolinson's "Is Who Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", a surprisingly literate and theory-informed feminist take on the show; Gian-Luca Di Rocco's "Is the Doctor a Pacifist?" (no, of course not); Matthew Kilburn's examination of authorship in television in "Was There a Hinchcliffe era?" (not to mention Dave Rolinson's in "Authorship in the John Nathan-Turner Era"); Graeme Burk's "Miss Wright," which explains of why Barbara Wright is the best companion and inspired me to rewatch The Edge of Destruction; Colin and Anthony Wilson's "Occam's Daleks," a surprisingly compelling take on Dalek history (we didn't need another one but I liked it anyway!); and the essay in four parts, "Ghost Light: Four Views" by Kate Orman, Steven Caldwell, Nathan Bottomley, and Dallas Jones, is an excellent dissection of an excellent story, especially its biological, literary, and historical allusions.

As someone for whom the 1980s are largely a peak period of Doctor Who (minus Seasons 22 and 24), I was glad to see that the essays throughout the volume were largely celebratory. I mean, I think Season 17 is largely bunk, but many folks think the same about Season 19, so why not celebrate everything instead of slagging it? But the early John Nathan-Turner stories, in particular, come in for some due appreciation, not to mention that there's an essay celebrating The Trial of a Time Lord, though I wish Emily Monagahn's "Greater Than the Sum of its Parts" could just come out and say Mindwarp is excellent because it is. On the other hand, it's hard for me to disagree with Mike Morris's slagging of Season 22 in "Untrue Grit"! It really is a nadir of the program.

I don't know if Scott Clarke's six-part "The Key to a Time Lord" is the worst essay in the book, but it's definitely weak, and because it stretches out across the whole book (it's arranged as interludes between the different sections), you have to keep reading it again and again. Did you know that characterization is a key element of Doctor Who? By gum. It comes from Enlightenment, a 'zine edited by one of this book's co-editors that is probably over-represented in its pages; the other co-editor edits the DWRG, explaining that site's high representation here. Indeed, one last editorial complaint would be that in addition to overrepresenting their pet projects, the editors overrepresent themselves. It seems to me to involve a little chutzpah to pick your own work for a "best of" volume, but both Burk and Smith? have multiple pieces in here.

That said, there's probably no better tribute that halfway through reading this book, like I said, I rewatched The Edge of Destruction, and that upon finishing it, I decided I needed to own more classic Who on DVD-- there are so many gaps in my collection, and this book shows just how good the show is. I want to own it all, but for now, I'm glad I've finally got The Ambassadors of Death on DVD.

* Not that any of the new essays are bad; some of them are among the better essays in the book! But with so much fanzine material I'll never be able to access, I'm sad to miss the opportunity to read more of it.

Jury-Rigged: My First Car

My first car was a 1990 Toyota Corolla. I bought it with my own money, I guess. (Like I know that money came out of an account in my name, but I'm not exactly sure how that money got in that account, because it predated me having a job or anything. A lifetime's worth of gifts, I think.) I paid $2,000 for it-- my dad arranged for it to be bought off a coworker, actually a year before I was even eligible for a learner's permit, and so it sat in the yard for a year. This would have been in about the year 2000.

I know the acquisition of one's first car is supposed to be an American milestone, especially for boys, but I can't get very worked up about cars. Plus, at the time, I was terrified of driving, and was perfectly happy for my parents to continue to chauffeur me around.  (They were not perfectly happy to do so. My mom wanted me to get my driver's license more than I did.) Still, being able to stay out until 2am at will is a pretty liberating experience for any teenager, even if your main use of the privilege is to watch Babylon 5 and/or play RPGs until late at night.

The car had a good run. Mostly my memories of it now concern all the things that went wrong with it over the years. And thus my memories of it mostly concern the weird ways my father would figure out to repair it on the cheap.

This is not my car. But it's close.

The car had a sun-roof, which was awesome. The sun-roof was very difficult to get to close in such a way that it would actually seal shut, which was less awesome. So basically I could never open the sun-roof for the entire time I owned the car; in fact, I think it only got opened when friends would just poke the button to find out what it did. For some reason the paint on the sun-roof started rusting faster than the paint on the rest of the car, and my dad gave me a spray can of light blue paint to touch it up. Well, the light blue spray paint was not very close to the light blue of the car, so it resulted in a patchy looking sun-roof still. We dealt with this by just painting the entire sun roof, so it was at least internally consistent, and I drove around with a sun-roof of a different color for the rest of the time I owned that car.

Once a friend and I went downtown to see the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. We parked on a bad side street, and foolishly left a bunch of stuff in the backseat. Someone smashed in one of the little triangle windows in the back. My father cut a piece of plexiglass on his bandsaw, and we fitted it into position. No one was smashing though that again. Despite there being a bunch of stuff in the back, the only thing they took was a bag of Funyuns.

Once a bracket on the bottom of the car that held the exhaust pipe in place rusted through, meaning now the pipe was rattling like crazy. My father didn't have a bracket, but he did have a spring. So he wrapped one end of the spring around the pipe and pulled it tight, latching the other end to a random bit of the undercarriage, the tension on the spring meaning the pipe didn't have room it needed to rattle any more.

Once I ran into a deer while driving at night, and the left headlight was pushed backwards into the car by two inches. Whatever had held it in place was now gone, so my dad cut a two-inch block of wood and wedged it in there to stop it from sliding around.

Once all my coolant leaked out and the engine overheated and all sorts of alarms went off and I drove it all the way home anyway. I was later told that this was not a thing I should have done.

I sold that thing in 2008 for $1000 when I got my first full-time job and thus enough money to afford a newer car. I always wondered what the next owner thought whenever he did repairs and saw what my father had made of it. I presume it's not out there in the world anymore, but who knows, it was made of stern stuff.