Sally Strange started reading The Disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

The Disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
From a star theoretical physicist, a journey into the world of particle physics and the cosmos — and a call …
Interests: climate, science, sci-fi, fantasy, LGBTQIA+, history, anarchism, anti-racism, labor politics
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From a star theoretical physicist, a journey into the world of particle physics and the cosmos — and a call …
It was both fascinating and frustrating in parts. In the end, the fascination came out ahead.
Fascinating: thinking about how a small town self-governs without a formal government. There was a mayor in East Tinderwick Maine, where all the action takes place, before technology stopped working (in an event called "the Arrest," hence the name of the book), but she just stopped being the mayor and started making baskets (or something, I forget) instead. The town is on a peninsula, and they have an uneasy bargain with a group of semi-nomadic folks who accept their food in return for keeping outsiders from invading.
Frustrating: the main character, Journeyman. He's in Maine because he was visiting his sister when the Arrest happened. Before that, he was living in LA working as a writer, but only ever on other people's scripts and ideas. He is perpetually ignorant, indecisive, drifting and weightless. He …
It was both fascinating and frustrating in parts. In the end, the fascination came out ahead.
Fascinating: thinking about how a small town self-governs without a formal government. There was a mayor in East Tinderwick Maine, where all the action takes place, before technology stopped working (in an event called "the Arrest," hence the name of the book), but she just stopped being the mayor and started making baskets (or something, I forget) instead. The town is on a peninsula, and they have an uneasy bargain with a group of semi-nomadic folks who accept their food in return for keeping outsiders from invading.
Frustrating: the main character, Journeyman. He's in Maine because he was visiting his sister when the Arrest happened. Before that, he was living in LA working as a writer, but only ever on other people's scripts and ideas. He is perpetually ignorant, indecisive, drifting and weightless. He has no idea what's happening around him most of the time.
The arrival of the giant nuclear car shakes him forces him to have to make choices and take actions, and he seems to hate that. But his relationship with the car's driver is what gives the novel its meatiest sections. The driver is his old college buddy who made it big as a Hollywood producer. The old buddy is obsessed with an old idea for a sci-fi movie they had 30 years prior. The author uses their relationship to meditate on how we use scifi stories to not just escape from this world but also to create new ones.
The final confrontation is really quite satisfying, though.
Definitely worth reading. I'll be thinking about it for some time.
The concept of this book was probably more interesting to me than the narrative itself, but the way it deals with the policing of memory is interesting, especially when that process leads to its logical end.
FAR BENEATH the surface of the earth, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of …
The Renaissance is one of the most studied and celebrated eras of history. Spanning the end of the Middle Ages …
It feels kind of weird to suggest that a book about how history has kind of invented this period in time called the Renaissance is relatable, but this book ended up being extremely relatable. I ended up listening to the audiobook (a whopping 30-hour beast) and regularly found myself smiling and chuckling along as I did my daily commute even though I knew and still mostly nothing about the time period or really anything about Italy. I genuinely had never heard of most of the people who were talked about in this book, which I think is a pretty clear indication about how interestingly the information is laid out--though it would certainly be a nightmare for anyone who requires events in time to be explained in chronological order.
More than that though, I think what was really great about this book and something I wasn't expecting was about how hopeful …
It feels kind of weird to suggest that a book about how history has kind of invented this period in time called the Renaissance is relatable, but this book ended up being extremely relatable. I ended up listening to the audiobook (a whopping 30-hour beast) and regularly found myself smiling and chuckling along as I did my daily commute even though I knew and still mostly nothing about the time period or really anything about Italy. I genuinely had never heard of most of the people who were talked about in this book, which I think is a pretty clear indication about how interestingly the information is laid out--though it would certainly be a nightmare for anyone who requires events in time to be explained in chronological order.
More than that though, I think what was really great about this book and something I wasn't expecting was about how hopeful it is for our now. Many of the things the author brought up are struggles that we continue to have in different ways. Palmer spends a lot of time actually telling us not to push our own current values into time periods where those values didn't exist. At the same time though, we're also reminded that time isn't static. The people living then struggled just as we do now. We have progressed, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee that everything is improved and superior. But the hopeful bit is that progress is an ongoing and never ending thing. The scary of our now doesn't have to be forever and in fact almost certainly will not be.
I'd thought this one might be solarpunk. It most definitely is not that style, much more old-school, hard-SF. And it is full-on dystopian in the beginning. (The first chapter is traumatically good.)
But the rest of the book was like an economics lecture to me. Never hit emotionally. Plus, some of the solutions didn't seem plausible, so it was hard to see the characters as experts.
@sifuCJC KSR is far more optimistic about the possibilities of existing institutions to deal with climate change than current events seem to warrant. As such, his books are starting to seem quite dated to me.
A delightful gay science fiction novella about a carefully planned revenge against an empire. I read this because it's a nominee for the Nebula best novella this year.
Enemies to lovers tropes aren't always my thing, but it works for me here. Both sides personally have reasons to be attracted to the other, but aren't betraying their values because they each feel like they're using the other to their own ends. Moreover, this dynamic feeds into the larger double-crosses and secret-keeping going on.
This book went from good to great right at the stinger at the end of chapter seven, when the layers of deception start to peel back. I won't spoil the line directly, but chef's kiss.
Correction: The exiled Vegas priest is actually named Arturo.
Long ago, the earth's rains turned poisonous. Thus, the only places where humanity survives (barely) are in the deserts. The people who dwell in the North American desert west of the Mississippi call it "the Remainder." This is where Magdala is born.
But the desert also sickens and kills its occupants. Madgala must survive thirst, hunger, animal predators, human predators, and "stuffed men": those who've succumbed to the sickness and become one with the desert and its creatures. The sexual violence of human predators is dealt with realistically but not gratuitously. Although the author's vision of the future is dark, it's also shot through with threads of hope and rumors of miracles.
People who liked Rebecca Roanhorse's "Sixth World" series will love this. "Poetic precision" is a good phrase for the storytelling. In this world, there are still a few road …
Correction: The exiled Vegas priest is actually named Arturo.
Long ago, the earth's rains turned poisonous. Thus, the only places where humanity survives (barely) are in the deserts. The people who dwell in the North American desert west of the Mississippi call it "the Remainder." This is where Magdala is born.
But the desert also sickens and kills its occupants. Madgala must survive thirst, hunger, animal predators, human predators, and "stuffed men": those who've succumbed to the sickness and become one with the desert and its creatures. The sexual violence of human predators is dealt with realistically but not gratuitously. Although the author's vision of the future is dark, it's also shot through with threads of hope and rumors of miracles.
People who liked Rebecca Roanhorse's "Sixth World" series will love this. "Poetic precision" is a good phrase for the storytelling. In this world, there are still a few road signs and billboards here and there, and their fading words always seem to place the narrative's events in the perfect frame.
@technicat I just bought this...
@mouse pffft. I scoff at your unimportant tapestries!