What Book Are You Reading XV - The Pile Keeps Growing!

[Josu]

Never read it, but when parts have been told to me it matches a lot of things I've learned in the ivory tower.

I got lost, what do you mean by Ivory Tower?

 

[EgonSpengler]

Spoilers for Persepolis Rising (2017) and all seasons of the SyFy & Amazon series The Expanse:

Spoiler :

So I already knew that the portrayal of Drummer in the series combined aspects of Drummer with Michio Pa from the books. As I was rereading this book, I wondered for a moment whether the series' portrayal of Drummer might have influenced the book's portrayal. That is, whether the authors saw the popularity of the character as portrayed by Cara Gee and decided to make her a central part of Book 7. But that seems unlikely. Gee didn't appear in the series until season 2, which premiered in 2017, the same year the book was published. Could the authors have seen her before they started writing? Seems like a stretch. Likewise, I don't know if the writers of the show could've read Persepolis before deciding to make Drummer a key part of their version of the story. Was this pure coincidence, then? Like some kind of 'convergent evolution' in writing?

We have no reason to think that Amazon will ever do a 7th season of the show - in fact, right now I'd say it's unlikely - but if they did, fans of both the books and the show have to be wondering how they'd handle the time-jump. But I was also thinking about how they would handle Drummer, who's a central figure in Persepolis Rising. In the books, she's the 4th or 5th President of the Transport Union when the Laconian invasion begins. At the very end of the Amazon series, Drummer is the first President. Even if the writers of a 7th season figured out some way to have the Laconians return after only a handful of years instead of nearly 30, would Drummer still be in charge? I guess it's plausible that she could be President for, like, 10-12 years. That would probably be a better choice than either introducing a whole new character to occupy Drummer's place in the book or 'promoting' a character we're already familiar with into that role.

The only existing character in the show who I think would be a reasonable choice to one day succeed Drummer is Naomi, who so far has done nearly nothing in the book. I suppose if they got around to a season 7 and Cara Gee couldn't do it, but they had Dominique Tipper aboard, then the writers could pivot that direction. If both women decided to come back, I think they'd need to somehow get Naomi into the thick of the story, because I'm about 1/3rd of the way through the novel and so far Naomi hasn't done jack (but they'd have to do it without compromising Drummer/Gee's role).

 

[Synobun]

Spoilers for Persepolis Rising (2017) and all seasons of the SyFy & Amazon series The Expanse:

Spoiler :

So I already knew that the portrayal of Drummer in the series combined aspects of Drummer with Michio Pa from the books. As I was rereading this book, I wondered for a moment whether the series' portrayal of Drummer might have influenced the book's portrayal. That is, whether the authors saw the popularity of the character as portrayed by Cara Gee and decided to make her a central part of Book 7. But that seems unlikely. Gee didn't appear in the series until season 2, which premiered in 2017, the same year the book was published. Could the authors have seen her before they started writing? Seems like a stretch. Likewise, I don't know if the writers of the show could've read Persepolis before deciding to make Drummer a key part of their version of the story. Was this pure coincidence, then? Like some kind of 'convergent evolution' in writing?

We have no reason to think that Amazon will ever do a 7th season of the show - in fact, right now I'd say it's unlikely - but if they did, fans of both the books and the show have to be wondering how they'd handle the time-jump. But I was also thinking about how they would handle Drummer, who's a central figure in Persepolis Rising. In the books, she's the 4th or 5th President of the Transport Union when the Laconian invasion begins. At the very end of the Amazon series, Drummer is the first President. Even if the writers of a 7th season figured out some way to have the Laconians return after only a handful of years instead of nearly 30, would Drummer still be in charge? I guess it's plausible that she could be President for, like, 10-12 years. That would probably be a better choice than either introducing a whole new character to occupy Drummer's place in the book or 'promoting' a character we're already familiar with into that role.

The only existing character in the show who I think would be a reasonable choice to one day succeed Drummer is Naomi, who so far has done nearly nothing in the book. I suppose if they got around to a season 7 and Cara Gee couldn't do it, but they had Dominique Tipper aboard, then the writers could pivot that direction. If both women decided to come back, I think they'd need to somehow get Naomi into the thick of the story, because I'm about 1/3rd of the way through the novel and so far Naomi hasn't done jack (but they'd have to do it without compromising Drummer/Gee's role).

Spoiler :

I think that discrepancy can be resolved easily: president steps down, next president screws everything up, old president comes back to clean up the mess. It's not unheard of IRL (Disney just did it), so there's no reason to think continuous reign is necessary here.

 

[Kyriakos]

So, why is it called Persepolis?

 

[EgonSpengler]

So, why is it called Persepolis?

An allusion to Cyrus? Just a guess. The titles of these books are all evocative rather than literal.

 

[Smellincoffee]

The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Currently reading Duchess of Milan, as well as various fanfics both in print and online (so an assortment of Highlander, Harry Potter, and Merlin). Thanks to becoming recently immersed in Merlin, I'm contemplating a re-read of Mists of Avalon. It's been decades since I last read that.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat claims to be a summary of the fundamental notes of cooking and good food. The author Samin Nosrat uses her Iranian upbringing, experience at the renowned Chez Panisse, and various travels as the background for the writing. Cooking Lessons and Flavor Maps illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton bring the lessons in the text into vivid, full-color diagrams. The edition I read has a foreword by Michael Pollan. The greater message of the book is learning how to build recipes and menus from the elements of cooking, with the Suggested Menus at the end serving as a starting point. The overall focus is on good taste, with little regard for considerations of budget, health, or dietary constraints.

Salt is essential for bringing out flavor and performs other functions such as suppressing bitterness, moistening meat, softening fruits, and toughening grains. Fat carries flavor, allows browning, adds creaminess, and is essential to a lot of baking. Acid's brightness acts as a balancing factor in flavor, changes the color of plants, toughens vegetables, bonds fruit sugars, tenderizes and then coagulates proteins. Heat is the essence of cooking itself, with the ideal of finishing both the interior and the surface of foods at the same time as judged by various sensory cues. All 4 elements are demonstrated in the following recipes which span the gamut from salads to sweets.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Yesterday I finished reading:

Starclimber

by

Kenneth Oppel

It is a sci-fi adventure book about a ship travelling up an Earth-Counterweight tether set in an alternative universe
with airships where Canada and France are the great powers and 19th century technology and culture continued.

 

[Ajidica]

I got Harold Wilson: The Winner by Nick Thomas-Symonds for Christmas which (surprise surprise!) a biography of UK PM Harold Wilson. Not a bad biography, well written and easy to follow. Though the author spends too little time on Wilson's second term as PM, glossing over a lot of the major legislation passed in the second term and how chaotic Britain was becoming. Though bonus points for addressing the "Wilson Plots" in a good manner.
Though I did giggle at the quote on the front cover from Keir Starmer "Deserves to be widely read not only as a fine work of history but also for its lessons in how Labour wins." I have to wonder of Starmer read the same book as me, given how much the author emphasized Wilson's #1 goal was keeping the Labour party in one piece and having to pander to the Labour right (figures like Wadical Woy and Shirley Williams) so they wouldn't go off and do something stupid (like, say split the anti-Thatcher vote with the SDP).

Not a very weighty biography, and the author skips over the 70s too lightly, but solid enough. 7/10.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Yesterday I finished reading:

Dead Lies Dreaming

by

Charles Stross

For adults.

Unlike most of his stories I'd read that are sci-fi, this one is very much a fantasy horror adventure book.

It is set in 19th and 21 st London in a world, apparently where computational developments enable the
return of magic (that had previously declined due to its ability to support time travel resulting in paradoxes
thereby editing magic out). Lots of nasty themes and evil people, but the good guys finally won out.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yesterday I finished reading:

Dead Lies Dreaming

by

Charles Stross

For adults.

Unlike most of his stories I'd read that are sci-fi, this one is very much a fantasy horror adventure book.

It is set in 19th and 21 st London in a world, apparently where computational developments enable the
return of magic (that had previously declined due to its ability to support time travel resulting in paradoxes
thereby editing magic out). Lots of nasty themes and evil people, but the good guys finally won out.

Well, I could have foreseen the subgenre, by the title (it's part of a phrase about Cthulhu)

 

[EnglishEdward]

I am not familiar with the Cthulhu mythos, but duckduckgo gives some great images.

 

[Kyriakos]

I am not familiar with the Cthulhu mythos, but duckduckgo gives some great images.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Persepolis Rising (The Expanse, book 7) re-read.

The death of Clarissa was more affecting that I remembered it being. I wonder if it's because I sort of got to know them a little bit better through the show than I had previously in the books.

Spoiler :

Naomi cradled her head and she noticed she was lying down. Her mouth tasted like bile. The guards and the traitor were spread throughout the hallway. The air stank of blood and gunpowder. It looked like a scene from Hell. All of the years she'd spent living with her regret, doing quiet penance for the lives she'd ended, and now the only thing she could think was 'That was fun.'

Words were happening somewhere nearby. 'Stay with me, Claire.' She remembered Naomi was there and opened her eyes again. She didn't remember closing them. Naomi was spattered with blood, her face pale. Ren stood behind her. He was wearing some kind of black robe that made her think of Jesuits.

"I'm a monster" Clarissa said.

'No you aren't, baby. You're not a monster. You're not.' Which meant Naomi had misunderstood. Clarissa had meant, 'I'm not afraid.' She tried to think what to say that would clarify that, but it was a lot of effort. And what did it really matter if anyone else understood? She knew.

'[Fudge] it', she thought. 'Some things you take to your grave.'

Clarissa Melpomene Mao closed her eyes.

I have to admit, I had to blow my nose after that.

While I was reading this scene, I was imagining how it might be staged in the show, picturing Nadine Nicole and Dominique Tipper in my head. The scene is described in minute, blow-by-blow detail in the book, but of course the action is probably over in 1½-2 seconds from when Clarissa activates her mod. A blur of motion; 6 or 7 gunshots, 2 of which hit Clarissa; a scream, a shout; 4 bodies hit the floor. So I imagined it happening visually in super-slow motion, like "Bullet Time" in The Matrix. I was listening to music while I was reading, and purely by chance, "Xavier" by Dead Can Dance was playing, not just at the end that I quoted here, but all through the slow-motion fight. I'm not sure I'd choose that exact song, but I like the idea of playing the whole scene as tragic, rather than exciting or triumphant. From the moment the guards have Clarissa and Naomi face-down on the floor, Clarissa is committing suicide, like Vasquez and Lt. Gorman clutching the grenade in Aliens, to save Naomi and cover everyone else's escape.

It's not 100% clear in the book, but in my mind, Clarissa and Naomi are facing each other on the floor and Naomi sees Clarissa work her jaw and hears the little click. I think Tipper did a great job in some of the worldless scenes she had to play in the show, so I would put the camera on her face right before the proverbial bomb goes off, like she knows Clarissa is saying goodbye. I also like the idea of getting a clear look at Clarissa in motion for the first time in her final scene. Every other time she deployed her mod in the show, the camera was frenetic and avoided showing her kill people. Maybe it was to save money, or because they wanted to keep a certain maturity rating, but the show did kind of avert its eyes a lot. I'm thinking of the scene with Amos and the thugs in the showers as another one, but I thought that was super-effective, and was better than seeing the fight played out onscreen. I would go the other way with this scene, and put every breaking bone and knee to the throat right there for the viewer to see. It was inside a tight space, too, like the elevator fight in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Note that Ren was Clarissa's supervisor on the ship where she was planting the bombs to frame Holden, when everybody was going to the Ring Gate for the first time. He was played by John Kapelos (Forever Knight) in the show. She liked him, he found one of her bombs, and she caved his head in and never recovered. "I'm a monster" is a reference to Clarissa's mantra, "I have killed, but I am not a killer, because killers are monsters, and monsters are not afraid." At the end of her life, she had to give in and kill four more people to save her family and she wasn't afraid anymore.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Yesterday I finished reading:

Starclimber

by

Kenneth Oppel

It is a sci-fi adventure book about a ship travelling up an Earth-Counterweight tether set in an alternative universe
with airships where Canada and France are the great powers and 19th century technology and culture continued.

Bringing a space elevator to steampunk isn't something I've ever seen before. I think the futuristic renderings I've seen of a space elevator portray the cars moving up it as being something like a Shinkansen or TGV train. But in a steampunk version, I suppose it would be more like a fancy locomotive or a steamship. In the Shinkansen version, a ride up a space elevator at 300 kph would take almost 5 days. In a steampunk version that resembles a robust locomotive hurtling along at a hair-raising 150 kph, it would take 10 days. If the elevator is more like a fast steamship (25-30 knots, 45-55 kph), it would be more like a month. (Google says that a space-station sitting in geosynchronous orbit on a space elevator would be about 22,000 miles/35,000 km above the surface of the Earth.)

Yesterday I finished reading:

Dead Lies Dreaming

by

Charles Stross

For adults.

Unlike most of his stories I'd read that are sci-fi, this one is very much a fantasy horror adventure book.

It is set in 19th and 21 st London in a world, apparently where computational developments enable the
return of magic (that had previously declined due to its ability to support time travel resulting in paradoxes
thereby editing magic out). Lots of nasty themes and evil people, but the good guys finally won out.

I like the idea of whatever enables time travel just kind of deleting itself.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Space craft ascent was powered by electricity supplied up the tether.

Reluctant to say more as that would spoil the story.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Early this morning, I stayed up to finish reading:

The Outpost

by

Mike Resnick

copyright 2001

which is a delightful amalgram of run together stories with a
mixture of western, sci-fi, humour and philosophical topics.

The scenario is a bar on a planet at the fringe of the galaxy
where heroes, eccentrics, beauties, robots and aliens tell stories.

A definite recommend, albeit for adult and near adult readers only.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@El_Machinae

Dying Young At a Late Age

Jellyfish Age Backwards

By Nicklas Brendborg
(Little, Brown, 268 pages, $29)

When Benjamin Franklin wrote that “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” he must have thought he was stating an eternal truth. But if biotechnology researcher Nicklas Brendborg is to be believed, Franklin’s joke may need some updating. According to Mr. Brendborg, scientists have discovered a jellyfish the size of a fingernail that responds to stress by “ageing backwards,” reversing the normal direction of its development to become a bottom-dwelling polyp. This trick can be repeated over and over again with “no physiological recollection of having been older,” he explains, making this jellyfish “an example of the holy grail of ageing research—biological immortality.”

This tiny Methuselah is one of the striking examples in Mr. Brendborg’s breezy survey of the science of longevity, “Jellyfish Age Backwards,” which the author has translated from the Danish with Elizabeth DeNoma.....

Wall Street Journal

ereader.wsj.net

 

[El_Machinae]

Oh yeah, the progress has been more slow than I would have liked. When you're in the weeds of it, you just see opportunity. Now that I'm more 'out', I see the friction that's just everywhere. So, cures for aging will be arriving later than I'd hoped. AND, I definitely was unreasonably optimistic regarding some pathways that could be tweaked. Lots of my dreams have changed since my injury, though. I'm inordinately lucky to be where I am, but I do feel like I've fully hopped off of my optimism train.

I'm definitely seeing mainstream progress, though. Not all of my ideas were original, but I now see high-level executives use phrases that we were using two decades ago. So, a true believer putting in 60+ hours per week in the lab will generate some momentum. But someone with $200 million budgets they need to spend, where 10% is 'high risk, high reward' is another tale entirely.

I basically see the future in graphs. Exponential environmental risks. Exponential economic risks. And this barreling exponential line of 'technological progress'. Who knows where it ends?