Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

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Book 37 of 2026: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.

⭐️: Actively disliked this one; a rare instance where I came very close to bailing out and DNF’ing, and only stuck it out because it’s part of my Hugo Best Novel reading project.

A dystopic future where fossil fuels have run out (and, apparently, renewable options like wind (except for sailing ships), solar, hydro, etc. just…aren’t a thing? anywhere? for no discernible reason?) and power comes through kinetic energy stored in ‘kink springs’, and the resulting societal collapse combined with ecological change has devastated food supplies worldwide. The overall background is basically colonialism; substitute genetic engineering agriculture companies for the East India Tea Company and Thailand for India, and you’ve got the gist. Genetic engineering has progressed enough that there are now “New People”; genetically created intelligent artificial life that is genetically encoded to be servile.

One of these New People is the titular “windup girl” (who isn’t actually windup, but New People are intentionally given a way of moving that mimics stop motion/clockwork creations), a sex slave who is repeatedly abused over the course of the story, with some of these instances being explicitly detailed across multiple pages of the story. The first instance within the first few chapters was more than enough for me, having it happen again and in greater detail and length later on was when I almost bailed out of the book entirely. Instead, I just skimmed past and kept skimming through the rest of the book just to get it done with.

Obviously enough people liked it and found it worthwhile for it to win a Best Novel Hugo award, but I can’t recommend it.

Me holding The Windup Girl.

Night of the Living Trekkies by Kevin David Anderson and Sam Stall

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Book 36 of 2026: Night of the Living Trekkies by Kevin David Anderson and Sam Stall.

⭐️⭐️⭐️: An entertaining adventure as a Star Trek convention becomes ground zero for the zombie apocalypse. A few things here and there that bothered me a bit, but mostly nothing really major. The biggest thing for me was that the authors couldn’t resist giving nearly every person and place very obvious Trek nods for names (the hero is Jim Pike, the hotel is the Botany Bay, and many, many others), and yet, somehow, it seems that none of the die-hard Trek fans at the convention ever notice this or think it’s at all noteworthy. While identifying the names was a fun mini-game as I read, within the context of the story, it broke my suspension of disbelief (apparently, zombies are fine, but insufficiently observant and pedantic Trekkies is over the line).

Me holding Night of the Living Trekkies.

Eric by Terry Pratchett

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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.

Me holding Eric

Star Trek: The Enterprise Logs

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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.

Me holding The Enterprise Logs

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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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.

Me holding Service Model

A Fury Scorned by Pamela Sargent and George Zebrowski

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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.

Me holding A Fury Scorned

The Edge of Space-Time by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

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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.

Me holding The Edge of Space-Time.