Paper
I have loved everything I’ve read by Mark Kurlansky. So when I was in a small bookshop in a small town and saw a new book from him, I was pretty stoked. I half considered buying it as an e-version, partly because OH THE IRONY, but then my darling fawned her how pretty it is (and it really is very pretty, with rough-edged paper and all), so I bought the bard-back. Supporting small book shops for the win.
Tragically, I am disappointed.
I was trying to pin down exactly why the book didn’t work, and halfway through I realised: each paragraph felt like an extended dot point. Like he had all of these great ideas and fascinating points, mostly connected to paper, but… couldn’t quite nail the flow and structure. There are weird disjointed bits that entirely lack in connection, there are some fascinating bits about language and so on that aren’t clearly tied to paper, and… well. Disappointed.
I appreciated his discussion of the technological fallacy: that tech happens and then society follows. Rather, he argues, society creates a demand and THEN technology follows, playing catch up: why else is so much money spent on market research? So I liked that bit. However, as someone has pointed out to me, Kurlansky is entirely too linear in his perspective on the relationship between change and society. Civilisation just isn’t like that.
More serious than the lack of sequencing, though, were a few points where he was just… kinda wrong. For instance: he suggests that some people credit Ada Lovelace with inventing computers, and then reveals that actually she was inspired by Charles Babbage. And, uh, no. She invented the first computer language, and it’s no secret she worked with Babbage! … so this makes me a little concerned when he’s discussing those bits of history that I don’t actually have knowledge of. Because… can I trust him?
I gave it a four over on Goodreads because the ideas and the history really are fascinating, but the book itself as a piece of text ought to get a three.
River of Teeth
This novella was sent to me by the publisher at no expense. It will be on sale at Tor.com on May 23.
HIPPOS. Hippos, folks. There need to be more hippos in my literature.
The foreword states that the American Congress debated importing hippos at the start of the 20th century, to resolve a meat shortage. I have no idea whether this is true. I presume it is; the foreword says it is. I could google it… but I choose not to, and live in the world where I believe that America actually considered ranching hippos. Because that’s way more fun than not.
And what’s even more fun than living in that world is this, Sarah Gailey’s debut. (Seriously? debut? kick. ass.) It’s an alternative history (which means it’s definitely not true, despite some recent definitions of ‘alternative’), pushing the date of hippo-introduction back half a century and imagining the consequences of actually hippo-ranching. Like cowboys riding hippos, and hippos going feral, and breeding hippos for stealth to help deal with the ones being raised for meat.
I’m just going to stop here for a moment and consider eating hippo-meat. Because… I dunno, the Anglo-Celt of my heritage just wants to gag.
Anyway, this is a crazy romp filled with wonderful characters and, as the name suggests, a whole lot of hippo-teeth-gnashing. Winslow Remington Houndstooth, putative lead and leader, is filled with desires for revenge and does his own share of teeth-gnashing. He rides Ruby: black, sleek, fast and deadly. Wonderful as he is, I adore Regina Archambault more: “Nobody ever suspects the fat lady”… who pickpockets and breaks hearts and helps save the day. She rides Rosa: three thousand pounds of albino hippo. Hero is also wonderful, and all about blowing stuff up (always the way to my heart), and the rest of the team fills out nicely. There’s a good villain (or two, or three…), so that’s the character side all sorted. There’s explosions, and card games, and feral hippos that are happy to eat people; romance, confusion, and a lot of crankiness and snark. OH THE SNARK.
You’ll want to get your mitts on this one, folks. It’s just way too much fun to miss out on.
Movies and TV of 2016
New TV:
Molly * Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo * X-Files (reboot) * Sonic Highways * Once Upon A Time (season 1) * The Night Manager * Carmilla (season 2) * The Expanse (season 1) * Agents of SHIELD (season 3) * Orphan Black (season 4) * Trepalium * Revolution School * Games of Thrones (season 4) * Game of Thrones (season 5) * Games of Thrones (season 6) * The Americans (season 1) * The Americans (season 2) * The Americans (season 3) * The Durrells * Once Upon A Time (season 2) * Once Upon a Time (season 3) * Person of Interest (season 1) * Carmilla (season 3) *
TV, rewatched:
Fringe (season 2) * Fringe (season 3) * Fringe (season 4) * Pride and Prejudice (BBC) * Jericho (season 1 and 2)
New movies:
Dallas Buyers Club * San Andreas * State of Affairs * Captain America: Civil War * Deadpool * The Hollow Crown (Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, Henry V) * Ghostbusters 2016 * Frozen (um, without most of the singing) * Batman v Superman * Sherpa * Pride and Prejudice and Zombies * The Art of Flight * X-Men: Apocalypse * John Carter * The Huntsman: Winter’s War * Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children * The Congress * Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy * Only Lovers Left Alive * Lover Come Back * Underworld: Awakening * Jason Bourne * Suicide Squad * Star Trek Beyond * Independence Day: Resurgence * Rogue One *
Movies, rewatched:
Mad Max: Fury Road * Sahara * Aliens * Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade * Chronicles of Riddick * The Fifth Element * The Avengers * Ghostbusters (original) * The Edge of Tomorrow * Thor: The Dark World * Captain America: The Winter Soldier * Independence Day * Alien * Top Gun * Beverley Hills Cop * Beverley Hills Cop II * It Might Get Loud * Bridge of Spies * Crimson Tide * Stargate (the movie) * The Edge of Tomorrow * Underworld * Underworld Evolution * Blade Runner * Mr and Mrs Smith * Enemy of the State * Pacific Rim * RED
Galactic Suburbia 158
Happy New Year edition! One last episode before we squeak into 2017. In which we sum up a year of culture consumed and other interests, and mourn the recently departed. You can find us on iTunes or at Galactic Suburbia.
WHAT’S NEW ON THE INTERNET?
Carrie Fisher
George Michael
Richard Adams
Vera Rubin
(note: we recorded this ep before the death of Debbie Reynolds was reported)
CULTURE CONSUMED IN 2016:
Tansy: Rogue One
Alisa: Operation Apocalypse Plan (books mentioned: Will McIntosh’s Soft Apocalypse as a guide to the probable future, Defying Doomsday)
Alex: The Arrival
Tansy: Hurricane Heels by Isabel Yap (& Buffy rewatch with daughter, because this is what 11 yr olds are for)
Alisa: PhD & Jamberry
Alex: The Expanse
Tansy: Check Please fandom & Yuri on Ice
Alisa: Paleo Cinema Podcast
Alex: Octavia Butler
Link to call for Letters to Butler
Tansy — 2016 culture round ups in Smugglivus & Ambling Down the Aqueduct
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook, support us at Patreon and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Enemy of the State
Enemy of the State
Every … now and then… my beloved and I are watching a film by either Ridley or Tony Scott. We’re watching in chronological order. There are, of course, spoilers.
Tony: 1998
J: Straight into the action – with the same credits sound effect as Top Gun.
A: I haven’t seen this in ages… is it pre-2001? Yes, 1998. Because whoa, the whole thing about spying on American citizens… feeling very apropos.
J: Oh the poor Goldie.
A: Given that I’m also currently obsessed with Person of Interest, this is feeling a bit surreal. Urgh surveillance state.
Watching the credits and wait what? Jack Black is in this?? I had forgotten that!
Lisa Bonet, you are awesome. Will Smith, you look sharp as a lawyer, but I’m a bit worried about the dealings you two appear to be having.
Video player! And a mafioso… uh, mob… in a kitchen. Seems a bit old-fashioned frankly. Oh and now we have a mini video cassette player in the woods. Naw, 90s.
J: Love a good ops center… ‘Call it a training Op’ …. Duh …. Continue reading →
Sisters of Tomorrow
This book was sent to me by the publisher, Wesleyan University Press, at no cost. It’s available now.
It’s no secret that I like science fiction and history and am feminist, so books like this are like a perfect conjunction for me. I’ve previously read Helen Merrick’s Secret Feminist Cabal, and Justine Larbalestier’s Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction AND Daughter of Earth, which is a compilation of early female SF writers. So I’ve got a bit of background knowledge – not that you need it at all for this anthology, because Lisa Yaszek and Patrick B Sharp set the scene magnificently in their intro to the book and to the chapters.
Here’s the thing that makes this book really special: while the biggest section is on the authors, because they include some stories – including a fairly long novelette – the editors don’t stop there. They also have sections on the female poets, and artists, and journalists, and editors of the 30s and 40s. This blew my mind. I’d vaguely heard of Margaret Brundage, I think? But I certainly didn’t realise that there were women active and influential in all of those spheres. Yaszek and Sharp also cross into the amateur magazines, where women were also hugely important in the development of “understandings of science, society, and SF in different arenas of SF production” (xxiii). If you’re interested in early science fiction at all, if you’re interested in women in literature, if you’re interested in the history of SF – this is an excellent anthology.
Cooked, by Michael Pollan
This book was recommended to me by the sourdough baker whose course I took. It turned out that I had already one of Pollan’s books – The Botany of Desire, which was awesome and looked at various plants in light of the general idea of desire. (My biggest take away message: the Agricultural Revolution was the grasses using humanity to destroy the trees. Also that all edible apples are clones.)
This book is Pollan’s attempt to learn more about cooking, having looked at the gardening and the eating side for a long time. He divides the book into four sections: Fire, Water, Air, Earth. Or, basically: barbecue, braise, bread, and fermenting. Continue reading →
Galactic Suburbia: Bloodchild
In which parasites are creepy, pregnancy is body horror, and consent is important! You can get us from iTunes or at Galactic Suburbia.
Get comfy and listen to Alex & Tansy’s discussion of Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild” and her essay “Positive Obsessions,” both available in the Bloodchild & Other Stories collection (plus Bloodchild is available as a single story digitally).
Don’t forget: submissions for the Octavia Butler tribute anthology are due on Jan 8! See Submissions for details.
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook, support us at Patreon and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Blade Runner
Blade Runner
Ridley: 1982
Over this year my beloved and I are watching a film by either Ridley or Tony Scott. We’re watching in chronological order (well, except for this one, because it took us a while to find it…). There are, of course, spoilers.
J: Hello vintage opening … Like something from an 1980s computer game…
Also old school long from credits up front.
A: love a good scroll-up of back story. Early 21st century artificial people eh? Using them as slave labour? Not so hard to believe if you push it back another century or so. Love that this also imagined humanity was colonising other planets already.
J: Visual cues that link bank to Alien. The pyramids. Lights. Tones. Also Harrison is so young!
A: well that was a bleak opening. And I’m not just talking about the colours, but that is a big part of it. Did the giant ad on the side of the building of the Asian lady start with this movie? And you want young? Edward James Olmos! By golly he’s young! And his eyes are freaky.
J: Blue and teal started before Michael Bay … Just sayin’.
A: the music is going to be an interesting part of this care of Vangelis. Very noir-futuristic. I also wonder whether The Fifth Element was deliberately mirroring the Chinese takeaway scene. Continue reading →
Proof of Concept
This novella was sent to me by the publisher, Tor.com, at no cost. It will be out on 11 April, 2017.
Um. Wow. No seriously. Terrifying and amazing and absolutely captivating.
Jones is saying a lot about modern society in this novella and most of it isn’t very nice. She’s also presenting a compelling story and believable characters and… this is yet more evidence that novellas are a fantastic length for stories.
There’s been a lot of discussion recently about how facebook mediates news and how people who only get their news from facebook can end up in an echo-chamber, essentially, with their own opinions endlessly reflected back to them. Jones presents GAM: Global Audience Mediation. An avatar, the AI of GAM, asks questions for news broadcasts – it’s “the statistical sum of… real-time responses” from the global audience (4). It’s crowd-sourced journalism, where presumably minority views and questions get drowned out in the fantastically huge audience. No room for dissenting voices then. Then there’s the broadcasts of the VLDMT (Very Long Duration Mission Training) – in theory Earth 2-like training situations for people who might go on interstellar missions, but effectively ending up like reality tv – Big Brother in extremis.
And this isn’t even really what the story is about. They’re just creepy incidental issues that Jones throws in to show that this is a real and believable future story. I love Gwyneth Jones.
What the story is actually about is getting off Earth as the population and climactic situation gets progressively worse and worse. There are two solutions being proposed: the VLDMT people imagine a space ship, while Margrethe Patel is working on a method of hyperspatial travel that shifts within 4D information space. (Happily, Jones is not Greg Egan, so there’s no vector diagrams to attempt to understand.) The two groups come together when an enormous abyss is discovered under Poland and it appears to offer a place to practise for both groups. They need complete isolation from the rest of the planet, and things go from there…
Did I mention that the focal character, Kir, has an AI in her head? Yeh. There’s a huge amount going on here.
I loved Kir and how she faces the various problems – like annoying people and difficult work – that confront her. I was gutted by how Jones imagines this possible future, and I was enthralled by what she imagines as solutions. If you like science fiction you need to read this story. When it’s available.
Randomly Yours, Alex 