Reviews and Comments

Reading "Near-Past" nonfiction is always an interesting exercise. Recent enough that I remember when what the book is talking about was news, far enough away that I can feel justified in feeling jaded that nothing has changed in the intervening years.

Everyone knows social media presents novel problems that didn't exist a generation ago, and no one really has a viable solution that makes everyone happy yet. On the "Companies should 100% self-regulate" end of the spectrum, we see problems as companies are unable or outright unwilling to moderate content on their platforms, either because they're not provided enough guidance on specifics from local governments (fair), or don't want to risk losing advertising income (boo). However in the "Governments should control social media platforms" camp... I mean, I don't feel like I have to explain the pitfalls of this approach, but the book does so anyway, highlighting specific cases in Iran and Kenya.

There are some interesting ideas bandied about in the Conclusions chapter including stuff I've never heard before. Multinational media corporations should have localized content moderation offices on country-by-country bases instead of a one-size-fits-all approach. Companies should identify "particularly vulnerable users based on status (e.g. race, religion, migrant, sexual orientation, gender, etc.) and develop programs aimed at protecting the space for their engagement on the platforms and to protect them from off-platform threats."(Not sure how I feel about that one, but it's a first for me.) Companies should publish regularly-scheduled transparency reports announcing which governments have requested what information on their users and how frequently. Governments should approach companies through independent (non-governmental, but also non-private) court systems for requests for information for counter-terrorism/national security threats.

I wish there was a better roadmap for how these changes could come about and how both multinational corporations and sovereign governments could be incentivized to adopt these proposals, but I appreciate that at least someone has put thought into how things could be better.

Any self-respecting geography nerd is constantly on the lookout for new bits of trivia to learn about this spinning rock we all live on. I went into this expecting a refresher on stuff I mostly already knew, but there are some niche geographic insights here that tend to get glossed over in other macrohistories.

Poor old South America (and really the entire Western Hemisphere) gets ignored again and besides brief detours to Australia and low Earth orbit, there's a strong Afro-Eurasian bias for which countries were given chapters. But that landmass is more than half of all the land on Earth, so maybe that's fair. Each chapter is a mix of what makes that region geographically distinct and how that shaped its history up through post-COVID years, but despite the overall title of the book there wasn't much theorizing about what the future might look like. Maybe the author was playing their cards close to the chest, but I don't mind the occasional geopolitical fanfiction that near-future predictions often come across as.

Still, the guy clearly knows his stuff and it looks likely that other regions that felt conspicuously absent from this book (East Asia, Panama, Singapore) are probably already discussed in his other books, which I wouldn't be opposed to seeking out when I get the chance.

It's always a little amusing to read old sci-fi stories that look into the then-future which is the now-present. Originally written in 1992 but set in 2026 (a scant 8 days away as I write this), this is a good example of the post-Cold War optimism people of that time felt. The idea of sending 100 human beings to Mars within the next 12 months seems laughably out of reach to me, but don't let that get in the way of a good story.

We have a big cast of characters here who are all instant celebrities (being one of the first 100 people on Mars will do that), and we get a half dozen different POV chapters among the more important ones. They're presumably all scientists with specialized fields, but they quickly slot into the role of playing avatars of a given political philosophy: the communist, the capitalist, the environmentalist, the centrist, etc. That didn't take away from my enjoyment, but it was hard to ignore with how unsubtle it all was.

A common complaint my friends brought up during our book club discussion for this read was how it felt selectively "hard" when it came to the science part of science fiction. There is a lot of discussion on geology and atmospheric engineering, but other aspects like where all these factories were coming from and how life support was never an issue within these prefab habitats are just sort of hand waved away as non-issues. Again, didn't bother me, but felt important to mention.

The middle did sag pretty heavily for me and I think I could've given this rating a whole other star if John and Frank's chapters weren't so long. I'll need a breather and a few palate cleansers after this, but I won't completely rule out revisiting this series in the future because it does end on a cliffhanger that I wouldn't mind following.

"I'm gay," Bumbleborn says. "Uh... what?" I stammer, a little confused. "That's cool." "I just wanted to say that clearly in this story instead of claiming years later it was there in the subtext the whole time," the woolly mammoth continues.

Listen, I've never read a Tingler before this, but I went into this with my eyes wide open; I knew what I was signing up for. I was excited that I'd finally found a physical copy out in the wild (shout out to Wooden Shoe Books in Philly), and while I didn't have high expectations like I was about to read a Candide-levels of biting satire, I was still banking on something a little more coherent than this.

If anything the central theme about creative professionals chasing inspiration and struggling with writer's block was harped on more than any direct attacks against the source material (or its author). The love triangle and on-rails plot felt like it was tacked on to serve as a vehicle for delivering the message of, "being an artist is hard." And the silly characters felt like we were just filling in blank spaces in a Mad Libs prompt because to me there was no discernible reason for the love interest to be a dinosaur or the antagonist to be a sentient motorcycle (a sentence I'll never type again).

I don't think I'm a stick in the mud who hates fun, but at least now I know this flavor of absurdism isn't for me. This was like visiting an uber-popular tourist attraction: glad that I did it, but once was enough.

It must be challenging to write a story that attempts to straddle two different genres. Like yeah, I get that you want these characters to get freaky in their downtime, but I'm still distracted by the serial killer that we just established is still on the loose! Girl, this isn't the time for all that!

At heart this is a police procedural, which is an interesting premise for a gay romance given the... lets say complicated relationship between the gay community and the police historically. That is touched upon here, and I respect August's "change the system from the inside" goal, but it sure made him seem like a purely fictional character and didn't remind me of anyone in the community I know. But as far as suspension of disbelief goes, I've certainly had worse asked of me.

We avoid some of the more egregious tropes like the female best friend who exists solely to play matchmaker and the middle-aged protagonist who somehow is only just now discovering an attraction towards other men, and for that I'm thankful. But I think that's more a function of the plot really treating this first and foremost as a cold case murder mystery that starts heating up again with fresh killings with the same MO. Yeah our two leads have chemistry and are paced well, but I almost kinda wished only one of them was gay. It would've allowed more focus on August's pursuit of justice for his community without getting distracted with his moving-past-grief sidequest.

Also, I hate that (spoiler) one of the main antagonists targeting gay men was in the closet himself, and that a perfectly set-up, "How's your head?" joke wasn't followed up with, "Haven't had any complaints." It was right there...

I waited for the first irl snowfall of the winter to begin this book to really get myself in the right mindset for some chilling tales. I wish this book could have met my enthusiasm halfway by being good.

I'm no stranger to short story collections, but I tend to opt for single-author books rather than anthologies because I find the latter tend to have a wider spread in quality between entries. Not really the case here (unfortunately). While I concede that each of the 13 stories (at least they got that right) clearly met the prompt of a central theme about cold temperatures and the scary things that can lurk in them, most simply didn't hold my interest. Entries that didn't feature supernatural elements felt like they were trying too hard for shock factor, and the ones that did were so camp they made me roll my eyes. Maybe each author was constrained by a limited wordcount (they all had pretty consistent lengths at least) and would have fared better with slightly more breathing room. I don't know.

I will at least call out my three favorites: Saturn by Frederick Street (excellent use of a title to instill dread if you know your Roman mythology), The Final Report on the Gerrard Report by Matt Dodge (I'm always a sucker for epistolary set in the Arctic Circle), and Cold Case by Neil Williamson (was not expecting a noir/detective case set in Scotland to slot into a collection like this so neatly). I won't say these three are strong enough to carry the book as a whole, but I wouldn't mind reading them again in a few years.

Sometimes I wonder if an author is making a protagonist unlikable on purpose to make a point, or if they're not even aware they're doing it. Though I guess if you wanted to tell a story with multiple different high and low points, it would be convenient for your main character to be an unintentional dramatic conflict generator.

It's important to contextualize this book in 2025 vs when it was first published in 2009. 16 years has felt like a century in terms of acceptance of gay rights, and a book with this much caution and secrecy wouldn't be written the same way today. And maybe that's coloring my perception of the overall work and I would've enjoyed it more had I read it when it came out, but it still serves as an interesting time capsule for the culture.

Simon is a self-deprecating pessimist with no filter, and even his closest friends who act as important supporting characters in this plot are absent for long stretches because even they need a break from him (no such luck for the reader). But for some reason they, as well as our love interest Declan, see something in him that I did not that makes them keep coming back. From Declan's perspective, I guess I can see the appeal for a closeted AFL player at the peak of his career seeking out a partner who isn't starstruck and worships the very ground he walks on like the rest of the general public does. But the initial stages of the relationship felt very rushed to me and seemed to hinge on a dangerously thin: "I just like you."

There are interesting themes underneath the plot here: the challenges of dating someone in the closet while you're out, dating a celebrity when you're not, dating a professional athlete and getting blamed for their poor performance on the field, how involved a friend should get in a new relationship to prevent people from getting hurt. Turns out that's all really hard. And while some of the ups and downs and twists and turns are due to external forces such as the tabloid press, Simon does share a fair amount of the blame for the drama that goes down in this book. He does ultimately clear the air with Declan for as happy an ending two men could get in that era, but part of me can't help wonder if that was the best outcome for both of them.

I'm sure this love letter to the 1980's would've landed better for me if I, you know, had any memories of that decade. But I don't, so this felt a lot like your uncle regaling you with crazy stories from his high school days, complete with a soundtrack of song names doubling as chapter titles.

I don't know, this one just kinda washed over me and nothing stuck. Possession stories never really captivate me and they aren't my favorite subgenre of horror, but I've definitely read worse than this. While this didn't really read as YA to me in terms of tone and content, I'm just generally not interested in teenager protagonists. And I definitely don't enjoy media that reminds me what being in high school was like, which is horrific in a whole other way.

Still, it felt earnest and clearly was a labor of love on the author's part in a way I can respect. There are some eerie scenes and if you're not bothered by animal death or discussions of rape/casual bigotry, maybe you'll get more out of it than I did. At the very least hopefully we can agree that the paperback version has excellent cover art.