Star Trek: The Destiny Era: Takedown

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Takedown
by John Jackson Miller

late November 2385 (concurrent to The Missing)

Published: 2015
Acquired: May 2016
Read: June 2023

The premise of this book sounds fun, and potentially interesting: Admiral Riker has gone rogue, and Captain Picard has to stop him. Picard has spent a career bringing in evil admirals... but what if that evil admiral is the man he trusts most in the universe? Immediate Hunt for Red October vibes. It's a cracker of a premise.

Unfortunately, if you're a writer, you have to work back from and figure out what circumstances would bring this about. And, alas, there's not really any. Riker is not going to become an evil admiral. So it's got to be mind control. And if you're John Jackson Miller, you fish through old Star Trek episodes to find one that's ripe for a sequel. (I feel like every Star Trek book of his I've read has done this, bar The Enterprise War.) "The Nth Degree" is a perfectly logical choice for a follow-up; well, I guess so, anyway, as it's one of those TNG episodes I've never gotten around to! But it seems to have some intriguing loose ends, and the powers of the Cytherians make good sense for giving Riker both a motivation and an advantage.

But once you construct it like that, I feel like the premise is fulfilled only in a purely mechanical way. All this is to say, I thought the first half of the book, where the characters and the reader are trying to figure out what's going on, worked well. It's fast, it's sharp, it's tense.

...but the Picard vs. Riker thing never really materializes. Riker is so smart, no one can really compete with him at all. So what we get instead is more Riker vs. Riker, Riker's conscience vs. Riker's programming. But this is all external, because Riker isn't a viewpoint character once he's possessed. And Riker comes up with plan after plan; we don't see Picard having to do clever things to outwit his old friend. Indeed, the cleverest ploy comes from Dax on the Aventine when she fiddles with the lights.

The second half of the novel, I thought, really fizzled away the potential of the first. Once you find out what's going on, it doesn't even really feel like anything's at stake. In the first half, you're like, who's trying to short out communications across the galaxy? what's this all in aid of? In the second half, the answer is it's not really in aid of anything, it's just an end in itself. There's not actually really any kind of danger coming. The book swerves into making the Cytherian-controlled people other than Riker into a new threat, but this never really convinces; one is a comedy Ferengi whose plan is to sell the Federation mortgages. On top of this, I found the action around the climax fairly confusing.

One of the things tie-in books live or die on is characterization: do the writers capture the characters from the shows? But in reading Takedown I came to realize this actually has two parts. One is, obviously, capturing voices, the feeling that you can imagine the actors delivering the lines. Miller is great at this. But there's another: the feeling that you learned something about the characters you didn't already know. Sometimes this is a change in character, but I think it can be a new situation, a new turn, something you didn't expect. Takedown doesn't really achieve this. (And I know Miller can do this, because I think he did it in both Pike books.) Riker, Picard, Dax... they're all just kind of there, reading their lines as they go through the plot. The non-tv characters feel pretty thin. I think there's potentially a great Riker-as-admiral book to be written, but I still don't feel like I really know that Riker yet. Riker went through this whole experience, but it didn't give me much insight into him; Picard had to potentially do a big thing, but I don't know him any better either.

Maybe I'm being unfair. It has a good zip to it, and the first half is solid. But I feel like a better book with this basic premise exists somewhere in the multiverse, and I wish I'd read it.

Continuity Notes:

• Somehow in the middle of this galactic terrorism crisis, no one mentions the other galactic terrorism crisis everyone is experiencing right now!
• The events of Absent Enemies are repeatedly referred to as "months" ago, but in fact took place in the same month.
  

Other Notes:

• Riker experiences a holoprogram of the Titan, and one of his clues it's a fake is that some of the ranks are wrong. "Always getting the ranks wrong," sighs the creator of the program. "I forget how closely people pay attention." Miller's Titan novella, Absent Enemies, received some flack for getting the ranks wrong, so it's a cute reference.
• I found the account of the political career of Senator Bretorius totally hilarious, especially the jokes about his biographers and his (lack of) participation in Shinzon's coup. His last line is also great.

I read Destiny-era Star Trek books in batches of five every few months. Next up in sequence: Prometheus: In the Heart of Chaos by Bernd Perplies and Christian Humberg

Reading Roundup Wrapup: August 2023

Pick of the month: Symphony for the City of the Dead by M. T. Anderson. Didn't expect to pick a YA nonfiction biography of Shostakovich... but it was by M. T. Anderson, so maybe I should have! Grim, detailed, moving.

All books read:

1. Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M. T. Anderson
2. Black Panther Epic Collection: Panther’s Prey by Don McGregor, Sandy Plunkett, Gene Colan, Dwayne Turner, Denys Cowan, Don Hillsman II, et al.
3. Handy Mandy in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson, illustrated by John R. Neill
4. Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher
5. Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan
6. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely
7. The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal
8. Terra by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Amanda Conner
9. Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes by Rob Wilkins
10. Bernice Summerfield: In Time edited by Xanna Eve Chown
11. Once & Future, Volume Four: Monarchies in the U.K. by Kieron Gillen and Dan Mora
12. Power Girl: Power Trip by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Geoff Johns, and Amanda Conner
13. A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow
14. The Silver Princess in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson, illustrated by John R. Neill 

Mostly Hugo reading, but managed to squeeze in breakfast-time comics (#2, 8, 12), Oz books with my son (#3, 14), and even a couple other things too (#1, 10)! 

All books acquired:

1. Power Girl: Power Trip by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Geoff Johns, and Amanda Conner
2. Star Trek: Countdown to Darkness by Roberto Orci, Mike Johnson, David Messina, et al.
3. Star Trek: The New Adventures, Volume 3 by Mike Johnson, Erfan Fajar, Yasmin Liang, Joe Corroney, et al.
4. Terra by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Amanda Conner
5. Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century: Tomorrow’s Heroes by J. Torres, Sanford Greene, Alexander Serra, Nathan Massengil, Steve Uy, et al.

I needed two comics for my JSA project this month (#1, 4), but shipping discounts persuaded me into picking up three more.

Currently reading:

• Sword & Citadel: the second half of The Book of the New Sun: The Sword of the Lictor and The Citadel of the Autarch by Gene Wolfe
• The Privilege of the Happy Ending: small/medium/large stories by Kij Johnson

Up next in my rotations:

1. Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett
2. Otherworld Barbara Vol. 2 by Moto Hagio
3. Adventures With the Wife in Space: Living with Doctor Who by Neil Perryman with Sue Perryman
4. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Long Mirage by David R. George III
   

Books remaining on "To be read" list: 669 (up 3)

Picking up those extra comics brought an end to my streak of no increase on this stat, alas. But I feel good about next year!

 

William Shakespeare Punches a Friggin' Shark by Ryan North

William Shakespeare Punches a Friggin' Shark and/or Other Stories by Ryan North

Each of Ryan North's "chooseable-path adventure" Shakespeare adaptations came with a bonus electronic adventure. To Be or Not To Be came with the prequel Poor Yorick, while Romeo and/or Juliet came with That Time Samuel Ampson Got His Thumb Bit, which was both a prequel to Romeo and/or Juliet and a sequel to To Be or Not To Be. This small book collects both of them, with a frame story where you play as William Shakespeare. Along the way, you find yourself writing Poor Yorick and Samuel Ampson and thus playing them; you may also elect to punch a friggin' shark.

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2013-17
Acquired: December 2017
Read: June 2023

It's basically fine. If you've read North's other Shakespeare adaptations, you know how the joke works by now. I didn't bother to replay Poor Yorick, not having found it terribly exciting the first time, to be honest. The punching a shark joke isn't very interesting to read about, but I did enjoy the bit where Shakespeare is attacked by a robber and pays him off by writing poems. Samuel Ampson was fine, but again, it's jokes you know already if you've read the two full-length Shakespeare books. The best jokes here are the book's spine (seriously!) and some of the sentences in the back of the book, which you can (ostensibly) cut out and paste into other parts of the book to change the narrative even more.

So if you're a Ryan North does Shakespeare completist, pick it up I guess (I did after all), but if not, you're not missing out on much.

I Hurricane I

This week marked our third hurricane since moving to the Tampa area—and our third "I" hurricane to boot: Irma (2017), Ian (2022), and now Idalia. Whereas we had many days leading up to Ian last year, Idalia felt like it popped up out of nowhere. The first I really knew of it was when my wife told me to do the weekly shopping Saturday, not Sunday. Whereas with Ian we knew school was cancelled for the whole week going into the weekend with an expected Tuesday landfall, Idalia had an expected Tuesday night landfall, but it wasn't until Monday afternoon that either the local schools or my university called off for Tuesday.

Monday was actually my first day of classes; the university spent the weekend and Monday morning beating the "no operational changes at this time" drum, which was annoying because we all knew something was coming. When I went over the schedule with my two morning classes, I was like, "Something about this will change, I will not see you Wednesday, but I don't know what." Finally around noon they called Tuesday and Wednesday off, so when I had my Monday afternoon classes, I had already adjusted the course schedule to make our next meeting Friday.

Son One helps put deck furniture in the shed.

We did our prep Tuesday morning (though I still kept a dentist appointment I had made), which was pretty low key: tie stuff down or move it to safe locations, make sure devices were charged and that we had ice in the event of a power outage. But even as we did all this and the rains began, across the course of the day it became clear the track was moving further and further west and we would have little to fear. (Storm surge closer to the coast, of course, but we are pretty far inland for that.) When we went to bed Tuesday night, it was raining decently hard, but there was no sign of even tropical storm–force winds, much less hurricane ones.

So Wednesday was a pretty chill day at home with my wife and the kids; the public schools resumed Thursday, and UT reopened at noon yesterday, meaning I will get my second day of class today, but if you have a Tuesday/Thursday morning class, you will go the whole first week without meeting your students!

Star Trek: The Destiny Era: The Missing

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Missing
by Una McCormack

late November 2385

Published: 2015
Acquired: February 2021
Read: June 2023

Well, look! Following on from Lust's Latinum Lost, our first DS9-branded book in five years, we now get our first actual DS9-branded novel, shelved right next to The Never-Ending Sacrifice.

But as a Deep Space Nine novel, it might seem a bit odd. Its main characters are Beverly Crusher and Katherine Pulaski, both main characters on The Next Generation. Beyond that, there's a lot of Ro Laren, who appeared in TNG on screen, though she became a DS9 prose character way back in 2001's Avatar, Book One. Plus, it follows up some on the events of Typhon Pact: Brinkmanship, a TNG novel in all but name, and it features chapter openers extracted from Captain Picard's logs!

Yet, I said "it might" because until it was pointed out by a poster on the TrekBBS, I didn't even really notice! It felt like a DS9 novel right from the off. I think this is down to a few reasons. One is that Pulaski, prickly and full of personality, but fundamentally decent, fits right in with the DS9 cast. I really enjoyed the way McCormack wrote Pulaski, which felt a bit redemptive, in that I think it's what TNG might have been going for in season two, but didn't quite accomplish most of the time. I liked her developing friendship with Crusher, and McCormack does a good job of writing her as someone whose personality traits are sometimes weaknesses, but which she knows how to leverage as strengths. I never thought I'd say this, but more Pulaski please.

Another plus is the return of Odo to the fold. I guess he was up to something in The Fall that I didn't remember, but here he comes to DS9 to intervene on behalf of an old Cardassian colleague and ends up drawn into the events of the novel. McCormack excels with Odo just as she does so many other DS9 characters, capturing his dialogue—and his occasional lack of it. The scenes between him and the Tzenkethi asylee Cory were a particular highlight, both when he runs into her in the station temple and when he seeks her ought in the station security cells. Plus there's some great stuff with Quark and Odo. (And just Quark in general; he's not a big part of this book, but all his scenes work well.)

But most of all this works as a Deep Space Nine book because it feels like a Deep Space Nine book. It's about the kind of things Deep Space Nine was about: the legacies of colonialism, empire, and war, the tension between idealism and realpolitik in espionage, and the making of families by people who have none. There's four plotlines here: a group of travellers called the People of the Open Sky come to DS9 and there's something a little suspicious about them, the civilian science vessel Athene Donald launches with a crew including Typhon Pact members and immediately runs into some belligerent aliens, the Tzenkethi expert from Starfleet Intelligence, Peter Alden, comes to DS9 with asylee Cory and she runs away, and Ro and Odo try to track down some Cardassian prisoners who never returned home after the Dominion War. All four plots intersect with those three themes.

Colonialism, empire, and war always run through DS9, of course; here we see them in the People fleeing them, but unable to ever fully leave them behind; Ro must deal with some harsh crimes perpetrated against the people who once did much the same to her people. That tension between idealism and realpolitik is a key one, and the novel keeps it complicated. Should Castellan Garak do what is political or what is right? Is Peter Alden too suspicious for his own good? Is he exploiting Cory? It would be easy to sneer at Peter (some in the review thread for this book on the TrekBBS seemed to find him a caricature), but though Pulaski sneers at him, I don't think the novel does; sometimes he's wrong... but he's also right a couple times, and without his know-how Pulaski would have never saved the day... and in the end, it turns out she's been the one who's too pessimistic.

And then we come to family. The "missing" of the title are the children, family, and friends we've lost. Maybe we left them because we had to walk away, maybe they left us. Maybe we were left by them. The People leave their original society, Odo is left by his people, the Cardassians leave prisoners with the Romulans, Cory leaves Ab-Tzenketh, Pulaski and the Athene Donald leave the Federation, Ro left her people way back when. Even Crusher leaves hers. They are all missing. But what goes missing can be found: the People find a new home and a new family, Odo made his own family on DS9, the Cardassians made a new home and so even do Cory and Peter, Ro made a new family in Starfleet even if it took a long time. And at the end Crusher goes back to her family: missing and found.

That's not all; the book plunges into questions of exploration and first contact in ways that feel very Star Trek but also put some pressure on it—surely the most Deep Space Nine of moves. You can see the influence of Ursula K. Le Guin here; her League of All Worlds, later the Ekumen, comes across as influenced by Star Trek's Federation in some ways, and here the influence comes back, some of the questions Le Guin posed being returned to their point of origin. Crusher even cites Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," and I found this a much more interesting engagement with its ideas than the somewhat ham-handed take on them in Strange New Worlds.

All of this is wrapped up, of course, in McCormack's deft characterization and strong narrative voice. I often feel that Star Trek novels are written by people who want the words to be as unobtrusive as possible, as though the words get in the way of the story. But the words are the story, and McCormack's playful narrative voice is fun to hang out with. It's not perfect—one occasionally feels something important to the plot has been elided or rushed (is there no Defiant to help the Athene Donald?)—but what is important to the book is always there in full so it's hard to be annoyed with it since you're always being entertained by it.

I keep thinking about a line from the very first chapter, what Picard thinks is the ultimate challenge: "the challenge that one sets oneself: to be pitted against the unknown and to find within oneself the capacity to respond not with fear but with curiosity, empathy, and humility." It's a good summation of what Star Trek teaches us we can do, and what this novel reminds us that we must find in ourselves to do again each day.

image courtesy ScreenRant

Continuity Notes:

• Doctor Crusher is taking a leave from the Enterprise to replace Bashir as CMO of Deep Space 9 following the events of The Fall. This was a thing I totally did not remember happening. To be honest, I remembered hardly anything about the status quo of DS9 following The Fall, and had to be reminded and/or look a lot of stuff up.
• I read this after Picard: Second Self but of course it was published first; both books focus on the fallout of the Romulan/Cardassian front during the Dominion War, describing it as one of the most brutal. I don't think this derives from anything on screen, so McCormack is carrying over one of her own ideas from the Destiny continuity into the new one.
  
• One would think if there was an ongoing galactic terrorism crisis targeting space stations where the perpetrators seemingly had the ability to just appear anywhere it would come up in this book set on a space station where the villains have the ability to just appear anywhere. One would think.

Other Notes:

• I felt like there was a bit of meta shade directed at earlier books when Pulaski observed it didn't make sense for someone in a marriage to work through a problem by temporarily splitting up.
  
• O'Brien appears very suddenly and very late, almost like two-thirds of the way through the book someone reminded the writer he was back on the station so she started using him as a character from that point on.
• Starfleet's worst chief of security, Jefferson Blackmer, appears in this book. Not even McCormack can totally salvage a character whose entire personality is "likes space stations," but he is more interesting here than in any of his David R. George III–penned appearances. He offers his resignation to Ro, but alas, she does not take it.
• Oh! Garak is in this. He's well written, of course, but my favorite part was how Odo responds to Garak's new position of authority.
  
• McCormack's inspiration was a tweet from Dan Tostevin, my former editor at Unreality SF. He showed me this tweet back when the novel came out, but I think his twitter has vanished now.
  
• I want to know what "excellent speculative novel" about a first contact Picard mentions reading. It sounds Le Guinnish but doesn't map onto anything I can think of from Le Guin.

I read Destiny-era Star Trek books in batches of five every few months. Next up in sequence: The Next Generation: Takedown by John Jackson Miller

Hugos 2023: The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

This is a science fiction murder mystery, set in the 2070s aboard a Luna-Mars cruise; it's a bit of a Thin Man take, I guess, except I've never seen any of those films. (My knowledge of The Thin Man entirely derives from knowing that DC's Elongated Man is also a bit of a Thin Man take.) That is to say, the protagonist is married to a retired detective who is framed for murder, so she must investigate the crime to exonerate him.

Published: 2022
Acquired: July 2023
Read: August 2023

It has some interesting stuff going for it: reasonably consistent worldbuilding (which is important for a murder mystery), cocktail recipes as chapter epigraphs (some of which I would like to try), some fun stuff with a lawyer on an ever-increasing communications delay, accurate-feeling depictions of disability and service animals, but also good extrapolation of how they might work in the future.

I'm not a terribly prolific reader of mysteries, but I have read my fair share (mostly Sue Grafton and Elizabeth George), and I did not think this was a very good example of the genre. It takes a while for it to get started: the murder happens pretty early on, but it's over eighty pages in before the protagonist actually starts asking questions. There are a lot of characters who are technically suspects, but none of them really feel like suspects; you as a reader are never like, "oh i bet that guy did it" because you are not really given enough to grab on to with all the many characters to be suspicious of them. Or even to be not suspicious of them, which is itself suspicious in a murder mystery. There are a few too many coincidences: three owners of major technology companies just happen to be on this cruise. One character has a completely coincidental link to the backstory of the protagonist and another completely coincidental link to the backstory of her husband. The solution depends on a piece of information not revealed to the reader until the end... but it felt like something that could have very easily but subtly been revealed much earlier to good effect.

I also struggled with the protagonist and her husband. She was basically fine, but I felt like Kowal is capable of better character work than we ultimately got with her. There are a lot of good ingredients to her—genius inventor, wealthy heiress, PTSD sufferer—but I didn't think they came together in a meaningful way. As for him, I struggled to understand his reasons for not wanting to get involved. I mean, sure, he's retired... but if you're the murder suspect and shipboard security clearly incompetent and the murderer is still on the loose, maybe your retirement rationale of "i got too famous to be effective" isn't very relevant any more!

(Despite the repeated assertions of someone I talked to on LibraryThing, this is clearly not set in Kowal's "Lady Astronaut" universe, but our own future.)

Twenty-First Century Science Fiction

Twenty-First Century Science Fiction
edited by David G. Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden

This is an anthology of post-2000 sf written by authors who "came to prominence" after 2000. That is to say, they may have published something prior to 2000, but they didn't break through into wider consciousness until after; see for example Charles Stross, whose first publication is all the way back in 1985, but achieved wider acclaim with his 2001 novel The Atrocity Archive. I got the book as a parting gift from my boss back when it came out in 2013, but as is usual for me, did not get around to reading it for another decade. In a way, this was helpful for evaluating the book's "argument."

Collection published: 2013
Contents originally published: 2003-11
Acquired: December 2013
Read: April–June 2023

It's been my thesis that large anthologies (and this one clocks in at 572 pages, with over thirty stories) are arguments. In this case, the argument seems to be: "These writers are the future of science fiction." In that case, reading it ten years late lets me estimate how right the editors got it. Did these talents pan out?

Overall, I have to say yes, but sort of with reservations. There's no denying that, say, Mary Robinette Kowal has gone on to be a juggernaut of twenty-first century science fiction. But enjoy as I might her "Lady Astronaut" books, the story included here ("Evil Robot Monkey") didn't grab me—this isn't the reason. (Though given the story was a Hugo finalist, it must have grabbed other people.) Similarly, some of the stories feel like stretches, in that they're sf tales from writers much better known for publishing fantasy or even horror, like Jo Walton's "Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction" or Daryl Gregory's "Second Person, Present Tense"; these were two stories I enjoyed a lot, actually, but I wouldn't put either Walton or Gregory in the pantheon of great twenty-first century sf writers, based on what I've read of them at least.

And of course, there are a couple stories I found outright bad... but they're by writers whose work in general I struggled to enjoy yet I cannot deny that those writers are generally popular. I speak here of John Scalzi's "The Tale of the Wicked," which requires all of its main characters to be idiots, and Catherynne M. Valente's "How to Become a Mars Overlord" which at eight pages still had me skimming to get to the end. So I guess the anthology is right to include them: both works read as fairly typical for their writers even if I did not like them. They are a key part of twenty-first century sf. I just wish they weren't.

But of course there are areas where the editors totally get it right. I always like a bit of Vandana Singh, and her story "Infinities" (one of only three rereads for me in the book) is a typically excellent piece of work. I don't think Rachel Swirsky has ever published a novel, but her story "Eros, Philia, Agape" is astounding, a masterful tale of what might it mean for an android to love, and she's an acclaimed writer of short science fiction and fantasy, with two Nebula wins and a number of Hugo and Nebula finalists. Madeleine Ashby is someone I haven't read much of, but I really enjoyed her story "The Education of Junior Number 12" here (another story of androids in love, actually, but very different from the Swirsky) and everything else I have read by her I have enjoyed; she's an incisive writer on the cutting edge of current technology, and now I want to seek our her related novel, vN. Ken Liu is an acclaimed writer of short sf, and though I've personally found his stuff hit or miss, "The Algorithm of Love" is probably the best thing I've read by him, a dark meditation on the implications AI might have for human consciousness.

"A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel" is a pretty typical piece by Yoon Ha Lee: told in the form of a series of encyclopedia entries, so purely exposition, it nonetheless manages to say interesting things about how societies interact, especially with a really strong last line, and it's no wonder he went on to do acclaimed work like Machineries of Empire. Peter Watts is a highly acclaimed writer of hard sf about consciousness, and his story "The Island" here is great on many levels, examining how people think, how machines think, and how something we don't even understand thinks, and how different that might or might not be; dark but highly effective. There's a Cory Doctorow story here, too: "Chicken Little," about a lot of stuff, including immortality, marketing, and rational calculations of risk. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a Doctorow story before, but I thought this was great. So you have a lot of great stuff here by acclaimed writers.

Beyond that, though, you have great stuff from writers I actually had never heard of... but if Hartwell and Nielsen Hayden are making an argument, it's that I should have heard of them, and so I'm prepared to accept that it's not the anthology that's at fault but the universe—or, perhaps, me. I'd never heard of David Moles, but I loved his story "Finisterra" about a gas giant with an Earth-like atmosphere where people build communities on the backs of giant floating life-forms. Similarly, I didn't know Karl Schroeder but found his "To Hie from Far Cilenia" very intriguing, a story about digital communities overlapping with the physical world that we might not even notice unless we learn how to see differently. "The Prophet of Flores" by Ted Kosmatka was fascinating, set in a world where the Earth really was created in 4,000 B.C. but otherwise science is the same, and exploring what implications the discovery of the so-called hobbits of Flores would have. It was expanded into a novel, which I'll have to seek out. These people ought to be the face of twenty-first century sf if they're not.

It's not all great, of course; I've mentioned a couple I didn't like already, and there were some more that I bounced off of, including Stross's "Rogue Farm" (too clever for me, maybe), Marissa Lingen's "The Calculus Plague" (some improbably bad research ethics; where's the IRB?), Paul Cornell's "One of Our Bastards Is Missing" (I love Cornell but have never gotten much out of his Hamilton shorts), Oliver Morton's "The Albian Message" (less a story, more a thought experiment), and Alaya Dawn Johnson's "Third Day Lights" (I just could not be bothered to work out what was actually happening). But most of what was left was usually good, if not great, or among the best short stories I've read in the past year.

One story is a bit tragic: Kage Baker's "Plotters and Shooters" was good fun, a take on Ender's Game where the protagonists are all thirty-year-olds who are stuck in their mothers' basements. But Kage Baker can't be the future of sf, because she unfortunately died at the age of 57 in 2010. It reminded me I really must get around to finishing her Company series, though.

There's a lot of great stuff here; I think this probably has one of the best hit rates for an anthology I've read outside of something like The Science Fiction Hall of Fame volumes. Perhaps the real argument here is that "Twenty-first century science fiction is in rude health." If that's the case, then the editors have assembled evidence that demonstrates their conclusions thirty times over.

Recipe: Sweet Potato Pozole

So the confession to make here is that I've never had authentic pozole! I adapted this recipe from one in a Moosewood vegetarian cookbook, but their recipe uses squash, and I'm not a big squash guy; over the years, I've made other refinements. My wife once brought leftovers into work, and her actual Mexican coworkers made fun of her for it, and gave her a recipe for the authentic stuff... but I lost it. I keep meaning to get some pozole at a Mexican restaurant, but we haven't gotten around to it yet.

But regardless of its authenticity, I really like this and that's what matters; like many soups, it's even better after it sits in the fridge overnight and you reheat the leftovers. (I need to come back and take a picture of this dish, otherwise it's not an authentic food blog post.)

Ingredients:

• vegetable oil
• 1 chopped onion
• 2 garlic cloves, pressed
• salt
• 28-oz. can chopped tomatoes, with juice
• 2 sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
  
• can of beer
• three bell peppers (one red, one orange, one yellow), chopped
  
• 2 15-oz. cans hominy, drained
• 2 tsp. lime juice
• tiny dash red pepper flakes
  
• 1 tbsp. oregano
• shredded Mexican cheese, avocado cubes, and/or crushed tortilla chips for garnish

Directions:

1. Warm oil in a soup pot. Add onion and sauté on medium-high heat for 5-7 minutes, until golden.
2. Stir in garlic and ⅛ tsp. salt and sauté for 2 more minutes.
3. Add tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and beer and simmer for about 10 minutes.
4. Add bell peppers, cover, and cook for 10-15 minutes, until sweet potatoes are tender.
5. Stir in hominy, lime juice, red pepper flakes, ¼ tsp. salt, and oregano. Simmer for 5 minutes.
6. Serve with your favorite garnishes.

Most recently I used a lager for the beer (specifically Landshark), and I think that came out really good; one time I used a beer I thought did not work at all but I don't remember what that was, sorry. The original recipe calls for 2-3 tbsp. chiles in adobo sauce, but there's no way my wife or children would go for that, so I dialed it back to just the red pepper flakes.

I think it pairs well with cornbread. My favorite garnishes are the cheese and chips, but I'm sure you can think of other good stuff too!

Bernice Summerfield: True Stories edited by Xanna Eve Chown

Bernice Summerfield: True Stories
edited by Xanna Eve Chown

This Bernice Summerfield anthology is set during the run of the Doctor Who: The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield audio box sets from Big Finish, specifically between volumes three and four, when Benny is stranded in the "unbound" universe introduced in 2003's Sympathy for the Devil, where David Warner is the Doctor, the Time Lords all perished in a devastating war, and the end of the universe is imminent. Though of course the Doctor and the Time Lords can't be mentioned directly, because this anthology lacks the "Doctor Who" branding.

Originally published: 2017
Acquired: April 2021
Read: June 2023

It's basically fine. It feels to me like this set-up ought to have been a rich one for Benny stories—what is the point of an archaeologist when history itself is coming to an end?—but what we get here is a pretty generic set of Benny stories, the fairly typical mad escapades. The set-up here is only loosely depicted, and there's not much done with Benny as a person, even by the usually dependable Kate Orman ("Hue and Cry," cowritten with Q(!)) and Jonathan Blum ("Never the Way," cowritten with Rupert Booth). Both of these stories felt like they could have used another draft to make them pop more, though I did like Benny's sense of resigned responsibility upon realizing that she's trapped in predestination paradox for the umpteenth time. But how does she feel about the situation in this universe? Why is she going on random adventures when reality is coming to an end? I feel like something more akin to the thematically linked anthologies of the Collection era (e.g., A Life Worth Living, Collected Works) could have worked a charm here, but alas, this is all pretty frothy stuff instead. I think Victoria C.W. Simpson's "Futureproof" is the one story trying to engage with the series premise meaningfully, but it didn't really go anywhere, unfortunately.

That said, my favorite of the mere six stories was one of the frothiest ones: Tim Gambrell's "Stockholm from Home," where Benny is inadvertently enrolled into an old-person's home... from which there is no escape! And at the same time, the aliens are invading and Benny is getting spam e-mail from a would-be insectoid lover. Bonkers but fairly entertaining.

I read a post–New Doctor Who Adventures novel every three months. Next up in sequence: Bernice Summerfield: In Time

Hugos 2023: Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow

Collection published: 2022
Contents originally published: 2021-22
Acquired: July 2023
Read: August 2023

Writer: Tom King

Artist: Bilquis Evely

Colorist: Matheus Lopez

Letterer: Clayton Cowles

This is Tom King's third nomination for the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story or Comic, this time with artist Bilquis Evely for a Supergirl story. While the previous Tom King comics I've read have all been about taking apart heroes, breaking them down in the face of the violence at the core of the medium, this one takes a different approach to Supergirl, showing what makes her keep going (even if admitting to a bit of tragedy and darkness).

The basic premise is that on Kara's twenty-first birthday, she travels to an alien planet with a red sun in order to get drunk and feel it without her powers; she happens to get caught up in the quest of a girl named Ruthye to hunt down the man who killed her father—and then that killer makes off with Kara's ship into space. So Supergirl and Ruthye go on a quest across galaxies to find that man and bring him to justice. The story is narrated by Ruthye, and we entirely see Supergirl through her eyes, always at a remove. The narration is dense, but it really works, and what the narration doesn't give us, Evely's beautiful art does, highlighting the strength and flaws of this powerful woman.

The story shows what make Supergirl Supergirl: not the powers (though they certainly help), but how she chooses to use them—which goes back, as one flashback chapter points out, to before she had the powers. I though that issue (#6: "Home, Family, and Revenge") was the single best Supergirl origin I have read, really tapping into the tragedy in a way that other origins (such as Jeph Loeb and Michael Turner's shit) have neglected, and it's beautifully paired with Supergirl riding Comet the Super-Horse in a desperate race. King embraces the tragedy of Kara Zor-El, but he also doesn't shy away from the ridiculousness of the history of the character.

Overall, I really liked it. Surely the best of Big Two superhero comics, and I was glad to have an excuse to pick it up and read it. It's my first Best Graphic Story finalist, but it feels like the one to beat.

(I will say, though, that content appropriateness choices at DC continue to baffle me, just like with Strange Adventures. Genocide and mass graves? A-okay! Someone saying "fuck"? Better cover that #%$&@ up with grawlixes! They throw me out every time. Either actually swear or don't.)