Day 5: Going out last night means a tired day today. Add in some stresses I’d hoped not to revisit, and there have definitely been better days.
Photos
Photos, usually taken by me. May be mirrored or imported from other services.
Year 50 Day 4
Day 4: At the Mercury to celebrate my birthday with a few friends.
Year 50 Day 3
Day 3: A long and tiring day of running around making sure captions work and doing impromptu tech support for professional development day at work. The frog shirt is another birthday addition.
Year 50 Day 1
For my 50th year, I’m going to try to post an selfie (or image with me in it) a day. Day one: From my birthday trip to Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, having fun with their new A Bug’s Eye View exhibit.
📚 Semiosis by Sue Burke
23/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Fascinating story of colonists struggling to survive on a new planet and working to communicate with the intelligences already on this world. Rather than a single central protagonist, the first few chapters are almost individual standalone stories, jumping a few decades at a time, before events accelerate towards the latter half of the book into a somewhat more traditional narrative. Really neat ideas on how very different species might find ways to communicate with each other. Enjoyed this enough that I just ordered its sequel.
📚 A Choice of Catastrophes by Michael Schuster and Steve Mollmann
22/2023 – ⭐️⭐️
Much of the story focuses on McCoy being forced to deal self-doubt driven by his past mistakes. While it’s meant to be an exploration into McCoy’s psyche and history, it ended up just kind of dragging on and getting monotonous.
📚 Otherness by David Brin
21/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Not bad, but it as it turns out, I definitely prefer Brin’s novels to his short fiction. To my mind, he does better when he can really dive into something. His shorter works are missing a certain spark.
📚 The Uplift War by David Brin
20/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1988 Hugo Best Novel
I find it kind of fascinating that Brin wrote his first three Uplift novels (particularly the second and third) as obviously connected and part of the same universe, but not directly continuing the story, even when the story is obviously unfinished. The events of Startide Rising are referred to and influence the events of this story, and the same overall mystery is a major driving element of both, but they’re otherwise unconnected. It’s a neat way to approach a very fully realized universe. I also really enjoy the way Brin creates aliens (both extraterrestrial and terrestrial) and other intelligences; close enough to human to be relatable, but also different enough to be alien. I’ve really enjoyed all of his first three Uplift novels, and one of these days plan to continue on to the second trilogy.
📚 Allegiance in Exile by David R. George III
19/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Not quite what I expected. There’s a pretty standard Trek adventure as a framing story (with a surprising connection to post-TOS Trek that I’m curious about), but it’s really more focused on Sulu and his having to deal with a tragic event. Not bad, just be aware the back cover blurb is a very small part of the actual plot.
