Ever Notice This?

 It seems that, whenever I get engrossed in a thing - an idea or a project - the world suddenly joins me by going along with the theme...

I'm sure that it's a matter of becoming sensitized to a subject and therefore noticing what you'd otherwise overlook.  (Like the expectant parent suddenly noticing children everywhere!) Surely the world doesn't start stalking you?  But, however it works, I'm being stalked by the subjects of Space and AI.

Well, AI is the subject everywhere right now... As regular, non-tech-first people begin to see and to understand AI's presence everywhere.  And its growing threat to jobs, certainly, but more than that. (Threatening jobs is bad enough: no jobs means no money and no health insurance here in the US. And where will young career people get their experience, if AI does all the"easy" work? It's worth worrying about.)  

And Space?  I'm on quite a reading binge, having just discovered the Liaden Universe series, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. (Only 30 years late!)  An excellent, page-turning, many-volumed space opera which I'm really enjoying... in that great "Oh. Is it 2:00 am?" way.  Loving it! (I'd suggest starting with Agent of Change HERE.)

On a whim yesterday, one in my household (possibly tired of watching me read?) suggested we go to the matinee of the latest play at Kitchen Dog Theater: Absentee, by Julia Doolittle.

Really, really good!  I'll put the blurb at the bottom of the page, if you're curious, but, basically, it's set in space and features AI.  Chiming perfectly with my personal theme-of-the-moment.  Life is funny that way.  This is an excellent production: the script, the acting, and the production values!  (I had to turn down designing this show and now I'm so sad.  The set, by Brian Woffard, is wonderful!  Now I'm having those envious doubts... would I have thought of a set this cool?!)  The lighting too and... well, see for yourself.  Grab a ticket!

Far out in the Milky Way, “Beacons” serve as lighthouses for warping spaceships around the galaxy. When a U.S. Space Forces ship explodes near Beacon 44.AR.90, its Operator finds herself alone in deep space with only her ship’s A.I. for companionship. That is, until a persistent canvasser calls, desperate to convince her to vote absentee in the 2088 election. As the Operator finds herself waiting over days and weeks and months for the clean up to be over, she finds she has to come to terms with her isolation, grief, and her political voice. Winner of the 2019-2020 Woodward/Newman Drama Award

e-Book Advantage

I've just discovered a new advantage to e-readers that I never expected.

A favorite author, Lois McMaster Bujold, has a new book coming out, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance.  In November.

Long wait!  Like any devoted fan, I've been ticking off days in my calendar until I could get my hands on a copy.  But now the author and publisher, Baen Books, have had a brain wave: let eager readers buy the electronic Advanced Readers Copy...

NOW!

Having devoured the book at (almost) one sitting yesterday, I can safely say this is a very fan-satisfying novel. It wraps up all kinds of loose ends for the title character, long a favorite, and in way I at least never expected.

For new readers, I would probably not recommend starting Bujold's award-winning science fiction series about the planet Barrayar and the Vorkosigan family with this book; better to start with Cordelia's Honor (or Shards of Honor), then work through the books in internal chronological order.  This new novel fits in the series time-frame just after Diplomatic Immunity.  But read in publication order, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance makes a very good capstone to the series so far.

One of the things I like about Bujold's Barrayar series is that each book has a distinct character - space opera, adventure, romance, mystery, or in this case, a sort of heist caper with (this is Ivan!) romantic and humorous overtones.

All Bujold's novels develop the classic S-F "what-if?" where some scientific and/or social development is expanded to its logical conclusions. (Speculation that is exactly what I love about S-F.)  Bujold's books all contain humor, often of a comedy-of-manners style, and can have elements of romance.  But an amusing tone and the biological sciences she speculates upon - rather than rocketry or ray guns - can fool a reader into overlooking how "hard" her science is and how ruthlessly she spins out its social effects.  Her books discuss exactly the scientific, medical, ethical, social, and legal issues our present day society grapples with: life extension, genetic manipulation, cloning.

But while Bujold's fictional science and time-frame are futuristic, she keeps her human characters very... human.  Even her evolving-super-race, the Centagandan Hauts, have recognizably human motives like revenge and spite (as this novel illustrates).  

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold, Baen Books

I don't want to spoil Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, so I'll just say that Bujold's new book lives up to her usual high standards of writing and invention with some particularly comic moments.  As a long-time series fan, I enjoyed the tidbits about other characters sidelined in this plot and was very satisfied with this resolution to the Idiot-Ivan dilemma - great fun to read a book with his viewpoint! I really enjoyed this book's ride.  


Thank you Ms. Bujold.  I'll start re-reading immediately.


You!  Go buy a copy of either Captain Vorpatril's Alliance HERE or, if you're a newbie, buy or check out Cordelia's Honor and get to reading!

Film Fest - Cowboys and Aliens

This up-date of the great American Western feels like a Western. Cowboys and Aliens sidesteps all the cheese-potential of its title to give us a stand-up, straight-shooting classic frontier tale that just happens to have an alien scout ship as the evil territorial invader.

I thought it was really well plotted, touching on many classic western tropes and character types, as well as some science fiction tradition, but the film managed still to surprise me a couple times: I won't spoil it, but in one memorable scene the movie-world gets a sharp twist to the right that delighted me.  Daniel Craig makes a great Clint Eastwood style nameless outlaw and Harrison Ford has finally found his late career groove with this over-powerful rancher character.

I really liked Cowboys and Aliens.  Between this and True Grit, the modern Western is alive and doin' jus fine, Ma'am.

A cowboy, Sturgis, Dakota Territory, 1887. Photo by J.C.H. Grabill. Public domain.

Film Fest Monsters

Last night I watched the 2010 film Monsters.  The storyline: a NASA probe crashed into northern Mexico, now a Contaminated Zone where alien monsters run amok.. . Our heroes, a male journalist and a female tourist, have to travel through this to return to the U.S.  There's a pretty obvious metaphor.

I liked the film.  It's done on a modest budget, but it's wonderfully gritty and authentic (with one quibble) and beautifully photographed.  Good performances, I thought.  The story is logical, the escalating problems caused by the journalist's idiocy (ya wanna smack him).  I especially liked the - for once! - intelligent attention paid to alien biology.  A credible life-cycle is presented with reasonable explanation of the aliens' violent outbursts.  Even the attraction to light, especially flickery light like a TV's, had a suggested reason.  I love intelligent science fiction.  Aliens are filmed with effective restraint, which works so much better than the look!-another-special-effect! style of some Big films.  Monsters is good.  Late in the film comes the first, last, and rather beautiful image of the monsters.

The quibble?  It was shot in Costa Rico, Mexico, and Galveston, Texas - after it was devastated by hurricane Ike.  After getting such a good grade in Xenobiology (at least surface-believable - give it an A), Monsters totally flunked North American Geography.  Sorry, no jungles or mesoamerican pyramids near the Mexico/U.S. border.  Even if there were, topography wouldn't so suddenly switch to coastal sand flat, just steps beyond the protecto-wall.  Nevertheless, it was a personal thrill to see Ike-damaged Galveston.  Good to see that mess useful to somebody: it made very convincing alien damage.

Somehow that seems to sum up this film for me - the clever use of difficult circumstances to create something rather special.

Monsters film still courtesy of The Brag