Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
64/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
As with many mid-points of trilogies, not quite as strong as the first, though still better than average. Some flashback scenes are written in with the main narrative and occasionally mildly confusing when scenes switch between present and past battles, and there are a few unfortunate typos swapping similarly named characters. Once those are accounted for, though, a decent enough middle chapter.
63/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
TOS events as seen trough the eyes of a disguised Klingon operative serving as part of the Enterprise’s security crew. On the one hand, it’s a combination of common tropes: the outsider/enemy coming to understand humanity through living among them and a “lower decks” view of life on a starship. On the other hand, it’s done quite well, without being too “wink-wink, nudge-nudge, remember this bit?” when the book’s events intersect with known missions. A good start to the trilogy (or hexology, I suppose, as there is another trilogy following the events of this one).
This is a long rant by Cat Valente – and it’s really, really good. Though I’m quoting a particularly good bit from the end, it’s worth reading the whole thing.
Don’t ever stop talking to each other. It’s what the internet is really and truly for. Talk to each other and listen to each other. But don’t ever stop connecting. Be a prodigy of the new world. Stand up for the truth no matter how often they take our voices away and try to replace the idea of reality with fucking insane Lovecraftian shit. Don’t give up, don’t let them have this world. Love things. Love people. Love the small and the weird and the new.
Because that’s what fascists can’t do. They don’t love white people or straight people or silent women or binary enforced gender or forced birth or even really money. They want those things to be the only acceptable or even visible choices, but they don’t love them. They don’t even want to think about them. They want them to be automatically considered superior and universally mandated so they don’t have to think about them—or else what do you think the fury over other people wearing masks was ever about? The need to be right without thinking about it, and never have to see anything that wakens a spark of doubt in their own choices.
Obey, do not imagine, do not differ.
That’s nothing to do with love. Love is gentle, love is kind, remember? They need the attention being terrible brings them, but they don’t love it any more than a car loves gas. Sometimes I don’t even think they love themselves. Sometimes I’m pretty sure of it. They certainly never seem happy, even when they win. Musk doesn’t seem happy at all.
Geeks, though. Us weird geeks making communities in the ether? We love. We love so stupidly hard. We try to be happy. We get enthusiastic and devote ourselves to saving whales and trees and cancelled science fiction shows and each other. The energy we make in these spaces, the energy we make when we support and uplift and encourage and excite each other is something people like Musk can never understand or experience, which is why they keep smashing the windows in to try and get it, only to find the light they hungered for is already gone. Moved on, always a little beyond their reach.
62/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Eight tales of holiday-themed speculative fiction mysteries by four authors, all from the Seattle area (at least at the time of publication, according to their bios), each contributing two stories. Space Santa and the mob, time traveling through Germanic folklore, a retro-future pageant mystery…quite a few of the offering here were very enjoyable. G. Clemans’ ‘Bevel & Turn’ and Raven Oak’s ‘The Ringers’ were my particular favorites.
Spirited (2022): ⭐️⭐️: This shouldn’t have been a musical.
It’s a good cast, an amusing take on the Christmas Carol story, some very clever lines, and several fun nods to several other famous Christmas Carol adaptations (plus at least one other famous Christmas film). And yet, every time they break into song (with one exception), it all drags down to a rather painful slog — and they break into song a lot.
It’s not a bad film, but it’s also not nearly as good as it could have been. It either needed to be just a comedy, or perhaps different songwriters, but the most enjoyable parts — save for a very rousing “good afternoon” — were the non-musical parts.
Following a pandemic-induced shutdown, local SeaGoth bar/dance club The Mercury has been reopened for just over a year now. I haven’t returned yet, but I’d heard through the grapevine that they’d done a lot of work on their HVAC system during their hiatus, and apparently have a system that meets or exceeds what’s expected for hospital grade systems.
Sounds pretty good — but I was curious as to just what that meant for their air quality, especially as this is a basement club, and with any such place, is likely to have a lot of people talking and breathing heavily when out on the dance floor. Plus, while I’ve been told that many people are wearing masks while they’re there, it’s by no means 100% (and, of course, it’s safe to assume that those who don’t/won’t mask are at higher risk than those who do).
I had a friend who was heading out there last Saturday night for a little while, and between the one-year re-opening anniversary and there being a merchandise table to distribute shirts and hoodies that people had purchased in a recent fundraiser, we could expect that there would be a good number of people there, even early in the evening. My friend was kind enough to carry along my Aranet4 CO2 monitor during their time there.
Though only there for about an hour, while there, in order to get the best possible “worst case” scenario, they made sure to sit near the merchandise table where people were gathering, and went out on the dance floor a few times. Yesterday I picked up the monitor and loaded its record to see the results.
The end result was, to be entirely honest, much better than I’d expected. The air quality stayed in the green the entire time they were there, averaging around 800 ppm. This is really impressive for that sort of situation.
Of course, there are some definite caveats to this:
Since community transmission levels for the Seattle area are still pretty high, I’d still definitely recommend wearing a mask when out clubbing.
However, seeing measurements like this tells me that the money, time, and effort spent upgrading the club’s systems was well spent. I’m still keeping an eye on community transmission levels before I go out, but when I do, I’ll feel a lot more comfortable (though I will be staying masked as well).
(The spikes at the beginning and end of the graph are from when my friend was in their car going to and from the club.)
61/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1985 Hugo Best Novel
Still feels almost like it could have been written today — a rather impressive recognition of just how influential it was and still is.
A Christmas Story Christmas (2022): ⭐️⭐️⭐️: A bit slow to start, but found its footing midway through. Definitely not a rewatch-every-year classic like the original, but it’s sweet and has its moments. And it was really impressive that they got all the original kid actors back to play their adult selves.
Bullet Train (2022): ⭐️⭐️⭐️: Thoroughly entertaining action movie goofiness. Really enjoyed all the close-quarters improvised-weapons fight scenes — Brat Pitt isn’t Jackie Chan, sure, but he and the rest of the cast gave it their best, and I was definitely entertained.
60/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’d call this a guilty pleasure, except that I don’t think I need to feel guilt about the things I enjoy, even if they have their issues…which this book definitely has. I first discovered it in the early ‘00s, and loved its lighthearted take on a murder mystery at a SF/F convention. At some point I lost my copy, but recently found one at a used bookstore. Re-reading it now, its flaws are a little more apparent, but it’s still mostly enjoyable fluff.
Pros: The general sense of weirdness of the con atmosphere, with its disparate groups of fans connected by their overall fandom. The surreality of the mix of costumes and mundanes, and what it must be like for people unconnected to a con to find themselves in the middle of it. And, yes, the recognizable tendency for some fen to be a little too wrapped up in things. Plus, I really enjoy that because the book was written in the late ‘80s, this is a con of the time, with things like video programming rooms and a “high tech” room with things like demonstrations of personal computers.
Cons: There is a relatively heavy reliance on the “poorly socialized misfits” trope that’s often seen when cons or SF/F fans are part of the setting or plot; though the main characters tend to be real-people-who-are-fans, most of the peripheral characters fall solidly into barely-functional-in-the-real-world territory. But the biggest flaw is the ongoing fat-shaming, where one character exists entirely as an extended “laugh at the overweight woman and her quest to find a partner socially inept enough to accept her” joke. Nothing about this plot line advances or even really engages with the main plot, and it really stands out as a misstep.
