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@picklish@books.theunseen.city Nice review. Thanks for bringing the book to my attention.

On the surface, this is a future sf book about discovering sentient octopuses and trying to communicate with them. But, this is no Children of Ruin or even a Feed Them Silence; it hinges less on plot and characters, and feels more about worldbuilding in service to philosophy.

I quite enjoyed this book, and the strongest part was just how tightly the book's themes and ideas intertwined through the book's different point of views and the worldbuilding. It's a not-so-far future book with sentient octopuses, overfished waters, AI boats that drive themselves in search of profit, drones driven by humans in tanks, and the first android (but one reviled by humanity). It's a book about language and communication, memory and forgetting, what it means to be human and exist in community, and about fear of others.

@jzacsh Interesting. Thanks for bringing the book to my attention.

A classic Scalzi one-shot novel--a fluffy snack with some good twists.

The basic setup is that down-on-his-luck Charlie Fitzer unexpectedly inherits his estranged billionaire uncle's villainous empire and now has to fend with other villains who were pissed at his uncle.

Key features:

• volcano lair
• jerk dolphins who want to unionize
• zoom call power plays

Brian Kernighan provides an enjoyable read detailing the creation of Unix.

I really enjoyed the "behind the scenes" stories that describe the whys & hows that led to the development of some of the programs and tools we use to this day, such as: pipes, grep/egrep, the C language itself, the Bourne shell, Make, Sed & Awk, and on and on!

The mini biographies of the many talented folks (e.g., Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Doug McIlroy) who were instrumental in creating Unix was a fund read as well.

On the free INTERZONE Patreon tier (free!), some early sketches by Martin Hanford for the ‘Benji the Killbot’ art 👇🏼

https://www.patreon.com/posts/hanford-and-102074617

And free to read in IZ’s sister zine @IZDigital another Hanfor-illustrated drone tale: Dale Smith’s ‘Joy’ (‘a masterful piece of science fiction’ — Maria Haskins)

https://interzone.digital/joy/

@mrdalesmith

#WayBackWednesday

New issue of @bcsmagazine is here! Featuring stories by Christine Hanolsy and Liana Richmond and cover art by Nele Diel: https://weightlessbooks.com/beneath-ceaseless-skies-issue-405/

I've been monitoring the ups and downs of rebuilding subscriptions post-Amazon for the magazines that have been impacted. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that survival depends on us being more shameless. So...

If you like what we do, maybe it's time to subscribe: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/subscribe/

In an alternate Egypt, a princess with the ability to 'throw' her consciousness into birds to control them and see what they see, gets involved in a conspiracy by European powers to sabotage a company she has shares in. Working (perhaps romantically) with an American actress (who is more than just an actress), they spy on proceedings to uncover the plot. The princess' ability would involve her into doing quick acts with the birds to help save the day.

🤯

A Kobo e-reader comparison table to compare every Kobo e-reader ever released, on all of their specs & features!

https://comparisontabl.es/kobo-e-readers/

#ebooks #eReader #Kobo #EInk