Book 34 of 2026: The Enterprise Logs Volume 2
⭐️⭐️⭐️: As with the first, it’s not so much about the actual quality as the cringe entertainment value.
Geekery
Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.
Eric by Terry Pratchett
Book 33 of 2026: Eric by Terry Pratchett
⭐️⭐️⭐️: A shorter book, this is a relatively quick romp through a mashup of three wishes, Discworld’s version of The Odyssey (rather amusing, as I read this just as Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey film was in the theaters), and the joys of mid-level bureaucracy. Not bad, but not a standout.
Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
Book 32 of 2026: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
⭐️⭐️⭐️: Dragons large and small, guards of somewhat questionable repute, and, of course, evil schemes for power. Another fun adventure with Pratchett’s undercurrent of social commentary throughout.
Star Trek: The Enterprise Logs
Book 31 of 2026: Star Trek: The Enterprise Logs
⭐️⭐️⭐️: Look – by just about any realistic objective measure (script, plot, science, fidelity to nearly any aspect of Star Trek, printing quality, etc.), these are bad; two stars would be generous. But as artifacts of 1970s Trek comics medium, they’re certainly entertaining, if in a very cringey sort of way. Not really worth looking for unless you’re a Trek and/or comics collector, but if you run across them and are curious, you’ll likely get some chuckles.
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Book 30 of 2026: Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: This was excellent. Funny (many bits had me quite literally laughing out loud), but with an increasingly serious undertone as it goes. A valet robot kills his employer for reasons he does t understand, and embarks on a quest to figure out why, and then joins with a partner out to determine why society collapsed. From reliance on AI to what actually constitutes consciousness and personhood, there’s a lot of good stuff here, wrapped up in a mismatched buddy adventure. My favorite of Tchaikovsky’s books that I’ve read so far. Highly recommended.
A Fury Scorned by Pamela Sargent and George Zebrowski
Book 29 of 2026: A Fury Scorned by Pamela Sargent and George Zebrowski.
⭐️⭐️⭐️: The Enterprise is called to assist a planet about to be destroyed, and is unable to rescue the entire population. A subplot of seeing if they can pull off a miracle (guess what…), but most interesting as the crew actually attempts to grapple with their inability to save everyone. More introspective than most Trek novels.
The Edge of Space-Time by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Book 28 of 2026: The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: A neat exploration of quantum physics and the nature of the universe through lenses of Black perspectives, queer theory, and pop culture. Mostly really good, but for me, with one significant flaw. While I will happily accept the author’s expertise in physics, there is one specific sentence that is simply, surprisingly, and significantly wrong.
Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books are referenced multiple times, and on page 232, the poem “Jabberwocky” is mentioned: “It’s a poem that doesn’t make any sense, composed primarily with words that Lewis Carroll made up.” I’m baffled by the claim that “Jabberwocky” “doesn’t make sense” — yes, many of the words are invented nonsense words, but that’s precisely the beauty and brilliance of the poem, because it absolutely makes sense! The reader knows what is going on; the words may be unfamiliar, but where and how they are used, along with the fun-to-read onomatopoeic nature of them, conveys a very clear story. Honestly, it’s good that this claim showed up a little over two-thirds of the way into the book, due to how severely it threw me out of the book and shook my trust in the author. Any earlier and I might have struggled to keep going.
Still, all in all, a very good book — except for that one sentence.
The AI Compass
This “AI Compass” test was interesting. As with most such tests, it’s not perfect, and I have some quibbles with some of the questions and answers, particularly some where I think it falls into the usual trap of using “AI” for everything, and not adequately distinguishing between genAI and machine learning (ML), but still, not bad.
My result:
YOU ARE…
The Union Organizer
patron saint: Cory Doctorow.
AI is a real tool being used to extract real labor value from real people without paying them. You don’t care about the singularity — you care about the artists, writers, and workers getting strip-mined by capital. You’re not anti-technology. You’re anti-theft.
Looking at the full list of possible outcomes, I’d self-identify as one of the following. I think it’s my hedging slightly on some of the answers because of the genAI/ML confusion that pushed me into the result I got. They’re all in the same general “don’t like it, don’t trust it, don’t want it” quadrant, though.
The Luddite (Affectionate)
patron saint: Emily Bender
It doesn’t work the way they claim, it’s making everything worse, and you’d like your internet back, please. You can explain in precise technical detail why it’s a stochastic parrot, and you will, whether or not anyone asked. You’re funnier about this than people give you credit for.The Digital Hermit
patron saint: Jaron Lanier
You’ve been saying the framing is wrong since before most people had heard of any of this. AI is less a technology than a story Silicon Valley tells to consolidate power, and the story is bad. You read physical books and you don’t need a language model to tell you what they mean.The Skeptic
patron saint: Ed Zitron
It’s oversold, it’s losing staggering amounts of money, and the harms are arriving faster than the value. You’ve done the math on the unit economics and it doesn’t close. You are loud about this, prolific about this, and you suspect history will vindicate you.
Infiltrator by W.R. Thompson
Book 27 of 2026: Infiltrator by W.R. Thompson.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Descendants of Khan and his compatriots face off against the Federation. I found this one to be above average, with much of it being something of an early take on the same issues explored by Strange New Worlds with Number One’s status as an Illyrian in hiding, expanded to explore how a society of genetically engineered humans might deal with how they’d be perceived by the Federation. As often happens with any eugenics storyline, it would be improved if the Federation was more honest and introspective about how initial fear and caution has developed into long-standing systemic bigotry, but as Star Trek has yet to really tackle that aspect of the universe, I wouldn’t really have expected it from a thirty-year-old novel.
Foundling Fathers by Meg Elison
Book 26 of 2026: Foundling Fathers by Meg Ellison.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Conservative techbros clone America’s founding fathers and raise them in isolation as if it were the 18th century, training them to bring America back to its former glory…until one of them finds a stray iPhone. A very funny and incisive sci-fi political satire; highly recommended.
