warpspire-com-bhv7lv.txt (16486B)
1 [1] 2 3 • [2]Now 4 • [3]Giving 5 • [4]Offsets 6 • [5]About Me 7 8 Some Favorite Reads From 2022 9 10 January 15, 2023 11 12 Another year, and another [6]blog post (singular). Oh well. I always have 13 aspirations to publish more! But you know, one of the joys of being 14 semi-retired is not having to do anything. You know, it’s been a hard few 15 years. So I tried to take it easy on myself in 2022. I spent a lot of time 16 exploring, a lot of time reflecting, and a good bit of time just doing whatever 17 felt right at the time. 18 19 For example, going on a road trip with my mountain bike 20 21 Recently I’ve been reflecting on some of my favorite things from last year. 22 Maybe as a way to focus on the positive. Maybe as a way to keep track of time 23 in our time sick world. Maybe just to get back into the habit of writing. So 24 here’s some of my favorite reads of 2022. 25 26 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 27 28 Books 29 30 I really enjoy reading, but this year I kind of gave myself a pass on anything 31 too serious — mostly sticking to my trusty home base of science fiction. 32 33 • [7] [this-is-ho] 34 35 This is How You Lose The Time War 36 37 • [8] [rendevous-] 38 39 Rendevous with Rama 40 41 • [9] [elder-race] 42 43 Elder Race 44 45 • [10] [artifact-s] 46 47 Artifact Space 48 49 Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s [11]This is How You Lose the Time War 50 51 From the publisher: 52 53 Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a 54 letter. It reads: Burn before reading. 55 56 Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on 57 securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what 58 began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, becomes something more. Something 59 epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the 60 future. 61 62 I fucking loved this book. I started it based on a recommendation from a 63 friend, and didn’t really look into it much before I started. This book is much 64 less about the plot (which is a play off The End of Eternity) and more about 65 the writing and world building. The best way I could describe it is a spy story 66 told through love letters in a poetic universe. 67 68 Think of birds as a comms channel I can open and close seasonally; fellow 69 operatives relate their work to me at the equinoxes; Garden blooms more 70 brightly in my belly. There’s enough traffic that it’s a simple matter to 71 disguise incoming and outgoing correspondence, misdirect, hide in plain 72 sight. 73 74 It’s also a short read, which was a nice breath of fresh air after finishing 75 off the Dune series prior to picking this one up. I have a feeling this is 76 going to be one of my most recommended books going forward. 77 78 Arthur C. Clarke’s [12]Rendevous with Rama 79 80 From the publisher: 81 82 An enormous cylindrical object has entered Earth’s solar system on a 83 collision course with the sun. A team of astronauts are sent to explore the 84 mysterious craft, which the denizens of the solar system name Rama. What 85 they find is astonishing evidence of a civilization far more advanced than 86 ours. They find an interior stretching over fifty kilometers; a forbidding 87 cylindrical sea; mysterious and inaccessible buildings; and strange 88 machine-animal hybrids, or “biots,” that inhabit the ship. But what they 89 don’t find is an alien presence. So who–and where–are the Ramans? 90 91 I’d never read the Rama books before, so when I heard that Denis Villeneuve was 92 going to be [13]tackling Rendevous with Rama, I took the opportunity to read 93 the whole series (Rendevous with Rama, Rama II, The Garden of Rama, and Rama 94 Revealed). 95 96 Rendevous with Rama is a fantastically Clarke book. A team of highly trained 97 professionals all work together to explore a mysterious object in space. Does 98 much more need to be said? This book went down like a peanut butter and jelly 99 sandwich. My only criticism is that it left me wanting for was more. 100 101 Rama is a cosmic egg, being warmed by the fires of the Sun. It may hatch at 102 any moment. 103 104 And unfortunately, there is more. 105 106 Clarke teamed up with Gentry Lee to write three more novels — Rama II, The 107 Garden of Rama, and Rama Revealed and I all I can say is: I do not recommend 108 them. They are upsetting in very odd child-bride wedding night kinds of ways. 109 110 Adrian Tchaikovsky’s [14]Elder Race 111 112 From the publisher: 113 114 A junior anthropologist on a distant planet must help the locals he has 115 sworn to study to save a planet from an unbeatable foe. 116 117 I loved Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time, so when I heard Jason Snell offer up 118 Elder Race on The Incomperable, I decided to give it a go. I absolutely love 119 the premise of this book. It’s a singular story told from two different 120 viewpoints, one of them science fiction, and the other fantasy — both happening 121 in parallel — because the two main characters don’t share enough dialect to 122 explain themselves to each other. 123 124 They think I’m a wizard. They think I’m a fucking wizard. That’s what I am 125 to them, some weird goblin man from another time with magic powers. And I 126 literally do not have the language to tell them otherwise. I say, 127 “scientist,” “scholar,” but when I speak to them, in their language, these 128 are both cognates for “wizard.” I imagine myself standing there speaking to 129 Lyn and saying, “I’m not a wizard; I’m a wizard, or at best a wizard.” It’s 130 not funny. 131 132 And who doesn’t love an old, cranky wizard anthropologist? 133 134 Miles Cameron’s [15]Artifact Space 135 136 From the publisher: 137 138 Out in the darkness of space, something is targeting the Greatships. 139 140 With their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the 141 Greatships are the lifeblood of human occupied space, transporting an 142 unimaginable volume - and value - of goods from City, the greatest human 143 orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with 144 an unknowable alien species. 145 146 This was another recommendation from a friend, and I’m glad I picked it up. At 147 it’s core, it’s about highly competent people all working together, pushing 148 their limits, and achieving success. It’s the kind of genre someone once 149 described to me as competency porn — Star Trek: The Next Generation being the 150 ultimate example. 151 152 There was very little drama in Space Operations. In fact, every station 153 projected an elaborate aura of calm, as if they were competing to be dry 154 and emotionless. No one swore, no one spat, no one was angry or afraid. 155 Nbaro loved it. 156 157 This book pulls from a lot of familiar ideas — the Greatships are an obvious 158 call back to Battlestars, while a lot of the socialist themes call back to Star 159 Trek’s economy. My biggest criticism of this book is the maddening way Cameron 160 switches back and forth between using character’s first and last names — even 161 within the same scene! It makes it incredibly difficult to keep track of who is 162 who with such a large cast, and toward the end I caught myself not even 163 remembering who a certain person was. 164 165 Dennis E. Taylor’s [16]Heaven’s River (Audiobook) 166 167 From the publisher: 168 169 More than a hundred years ago, Bender set out for the stars and was never 170 heard from again. There has been no trace of him despite numerous searches 171 by his clone-mates. Now Bob is determined to organize an expedition to 172 learn Bender’s fate—whatever the cost. 173 174 The Bobiverse is probably my favorite audiobook series of all time. It’s all a 175 part of a grand space opera spanning the galaxy… but also pretty sarcastic and 176 silly? Ray Porter does an amazing job of narrating these books, and is a large 177 part of why I enjoy them so much. 178 179 Heaven’s River finds a way to pull the series back from the infinite and 180 focuses back down on a single planet for a great little beaver adventure. 181 182 Well, space beavers. 183 184 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 185 186 Even More Books 187 188 Neal Stephenson’s [17]Termination Shock: Okay, I actually like Stephenson, and 189 this is a very good book about the inevitable future of Geoengineering and it’s 190 political consequences. Coupled with a very weird Queen fetish. It’s weird. 191 Weird enough to take away from the story line. But if the climate angle of the 192 book interests you — I highly recommend [18]After Geoengineering as a 193 follow-up. 194 195 Baoshu’s [19]The Redemption of Time: A semi-official 4th book of the Three Body 196 Problem. This is a great continuation of the series, and a good way to answer 197 some lingering questions about the Trisolarians. 198 199 Frank Herbert’s [20]Heretics of Dune (Dune 5): I was a little shocked at how 200 much I loved this book. I mean, I love Dune. But this one ended up being one of 201 my favorites of the series. Great new characters, new technologies, and a whole 202 new set of powers for the Atreides genetics. 203 204 Adrian Tchaikovsky’s [21]Children of Time: This was actually a re-read in 205 preparation of reading Children of Ruin and the upcoming Children of Memory. 206 What can I say? It’s one of my favorite science fiction books of all time — 207 even if only for the worldbuilding. Sentient spiders? Sentient spiders! 208 209 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 210 211 Newsletters 212 213 Alex Steffen’s [22]The Snap Forward 214 215 From [23]Discontinuity is the Job: 216 217 To be alive right now is to find ourselves flattened against the fact that 218 the entire human world—our cities and infrastructure, our economy and 219 education system, our farms and factories, our laws and politics—was built 220 for a different planet. 221 222 I can’t remember exactly how I stumbled on Alex Steffen’s The Snap Forward but 223 the idea instantly clicked with me. His newsletter focuses on how climate has 224 affected our infrastructure, our society, and our relationship to the world. I 225 love his newsletter because it makes me feel more sane in a world that keeps 226 trying to sell a new carbon offset marketplace as the solution. 227 228 From [24]Tempo, Timing, and the Translucence of the Future 229 230 The tempo of change, and our refusal to acknowledge its acceleration, has 231 turned our visions of continuity, stability and value into fantasy worlds. 232 We’re cosplaying people who live in past decades before discontinuity ate 233 our societies. 234 235 I wouldn’t classify The Snap Forward as doomerism, either. It’s a focus on 236 accepting the world as it is and looking for solutions within that framework. 237 Even if all emissions were cut to zero tomorrow, we’d still be facing a myriad 238 of very challenging futures. What do we do with that knowledge? How do we 239 prepare for the transapocalyptic now? 240 241 Matt Levine’s [25]Money Stuff 242 243 I’ve been reading Money Stuff for a few years now, and I can’t really put my 244 thumb on why I love it so much. Sure, it’s about finance… but kind of the weird 245 stuff in finance. More about the cogs of the machinery and the weird 246 personalities in the news than it is about whether the S&P 500 is going to go 247 up or down next week. 248 249 From [26]FTX’s Balance Sheet Was Bad: 250 251 But then there is the “Hidden, poorly internally labeled ‘fiat@’ account,” 252 with a balance of negative $8 billion. I don’t actually think that you’re 253 supposed to subtract that number from net equity — though I do not know how 254 this balance sheet is supposed to work! — but it doesn’t matter. If you try 255 to calculate the equity of a balance sheet with an entry for HIDDEN POORLY 256 INTERNALLY LABELED ACCOUNT, Microsoft Clippy will appear before you in the 257 flesh, bloodshot and staggering, with a knife in his little paper-clip 258 hand, saying “just what do you think you’re doing Dave?” You cannot apply 259 ordinary arithmetic to numbers in a cell labeled “HIDDEN POORLY INTERNALLY 260 LABELED ACCOUNT.” The result of adding or subtracting those numbers with 261 ordinary numbers is not a number; it is prison. 262 263 It’s an understatement to say I don’t love finance, but I do enjoy me some 264 Money Stuff. 265 266 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 267 268 What’s Next? 269 270 I’ve really been enjoying re-visiting some of my favorite authors and finishing 271 off big series I never quite got around to. Last year I finally finished off 272 the whole of Frank Herbert’s Dune (never having read 5 & 6 before), and this 273 year I’m getting the itch to do the same for Foundation. To be frank, I don’t 274 even remember where I ended with that series. But it does feel like a good 275 opportunity to maybe just re-visit the entirety of the Asimov Universe… [27]in 276 chronological order. I’m also getting a terrible itch to revisit a bunch of 277 Vonnegut’s work after watching the excellent [28]Unstuck in Time. But I like 278 new authors too! 279 280 I’m also interested in finding more books and newsletters about… I guess you’d 281 call it urban design. Stuff like [29]Strong Towns and other sources of how to 282 adapt our cities into resilient communities. I actually have background in city 283 planning from my Civil Engineering days, but I feel like there’s been a big 284 surge in new thinking that goes farther than the YIMBY/NIMBY noise of the past 285 decade. 286 287 Have some recommendations? Hit me up on Mastadon: [30]@[email protected]. 288 289 Est. 2003 • Do Hard Things • Build. Learn. Explore. 290 291 292 References: 293 294 [1] https://warpspire.com/ 295 [2] https://warpspire.com/now 296 [3] https://warpspire.com/giving 297 [4] https://warpspire.com/offset 298 [5] https://warpspire.com/about 299 [6] https://warpspire.com/posts/money-pit 300 [7] https://bookshop.org/p/books/this-is-how-you-lose-the-time-war-amal-el-mohtar/18270911?aid=13508&ean=9781534430990&gclid=CjwKCAiAy_CcBhBeEiwAcoMRHMYspqPk88ZoP8--CUUbXYfJi5-1npSPEUSq-QroPTijJK-cIC1CAxoCIGsQAvD_BwE&listref=this-is-how-you-lose-the-time-war 301 [8] https://bookshop.org/p/books/rendezvous-with-rama-arthur-c-clarke/8296887?ean=9780358380221 302 [9] https://bookshop.org/p/books/elder-race-adrian-tchaikovsky/15877279 303 [10] https://bookshop.org/p/books/artifact-space-miles-cameron/18367466?ean=9781473232617 304 [11] https://bookshop.org/p/books/this-is-how-you-lose-the-time-war-amal-el-mohtar/18270911?aid=13508&ean=9781534430990&gclid=CjwKCAiAy_CcBhBeEiwAcoMRHMYspqPk88ZoP8--CUUbXYfJi5-1npSPEUSq-QroPTijJK-cIC1CAxoCIGsQAvD_BwE&listref=this-is-how-you-lose-the-time-war 305 [12] https://bookshop.org/p/books/rendezvous-with-rama-arthur-c-clarke/8296887?ean=9780358380221 306 [13] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/denis-villeneuve-rendezvous-with-rama-movie-1235062337/ 307 [14] https://bookshop.org/p/books/elder-race-adrian-tchaikovsky/15877279 308 [15] https://bookshop.org/p/books/artifact-space-miles-cameron/18367466?ean=9781473232617 309 [16] https://www.amazon.com/Heavens-River-Bobiverse-Book-4/dp/B088C51F5H/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= 310 [17] https://bookshop.org/p/books/termination-shock-neal-stephenson/18272978?ean=9780063028067 311 [18] https://bookshop.org/books/after-geoengineering-climate-tragedy-repair-and-restoration/9781788730365 312 [19] https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-redemption-of-time-a-three-body-problem-novel-baoshu/6986329?ean=9781250306005 313 [20] https://bookshop.org/p/books/heretics-of-dune-frank-herbert/7513860?ean=9780593098264 314 [21] https://bookshop.org/p/books/children-of-time-adrian-tchaikovsky/113411?ean=9780316452502 315 [22] https://alexsteffen.substack.com/ 316 [23] https://alexsteffen.substack.com/p/discontinuity-is-the-job 317 [24] https://alexsteffen.substack.com/p/tempo-timing-and-the-translucence 318 [25] https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/money-stuff 319 [26] https://newsletters.feedbinusercontent.com/818/8185a1196937308adee75e80f544a29a36b34a5f.html 320 [27] https://gist.github.com/kneath/27a2772f5e1871e3c314ef05a4cacd44 321 [28] https://www.vonnegutmovie.com/ 322 [29] https://www.strongtowns.org/ 323 [30] https://indieweb.social/@kneath