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The Federal holiday is legally "Washington's Birthday", celebrated on the Monday in February before Washington's actual birthday, which is the 22nd. I'm okay with the idea of also celebrating Lincoln's Birthday, which was on the 12th. But any more presidents than those two is right out.

This entry was originally posted at https://voidampersand.dreamwidth.org/30424.html.

Michael Chabon described Le Guin as "the greatest American writer of her generation". I would also say that she was the greatest science fiction and fantasy writer of her time. She wrote one of the greatest fantasies trilogies of all time (counting all six books in the trilogy), and three of the greatest science fiction novels. Plus many important short stories, including one that is a moral and political compass for many of us. Her work is remarkable for its variety, clarity of vision, depth of compassion, and beauty. It will be read and talked about for many generations.

Ursula's writing is still with us. As a person, she will be missed deeply. I had the chance to meet Ursula briefly a few times, and to see her speak. She was wonderfully warm, witty, and full of enthusiasm. I remember a panel on her work where she sneaked into the back of the room and ducked down behind a row of chairs so she could hear what they were saying about her without being intimidated by her presence. At a presentation of three papers on her work, she sat up straight in the small audience. In response to one paper, she said "I never thought of that, but yes, that makes a lot of sense." Another paper criticized the politics of her work. It was completely unfair and unreasonable, but Ursula sat calmly through the whole thing. When Ursula was named a Grand Master, her good friend Vonda McIntyre organized a party at a Potlatch in Seattle. We were each given a cardboard mask with Ursula's face printed on it. When Ursula came up to receive her award and to say a few words, she was greeted by a crowd of Ursulas. There was much laughter, and cake. I still have the mask, so this is another way I feel Ursula is still with us and looking out for us.

This entry was originally posted at https://voidampersand.dreamwidth.org/29990.html.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

This slim novella introduces one of the most memorable characters in science fiction. "Murderbot", as it calls itself, is a SecUnit, a mechanical/organic composite android manufactured to guard corporate workers and customers from danger. A governor ensures it will follow orders. Except Murderbot has hacked its governor. It does its job anyway. It would prefer not to get caught and have its mind wiped again. Besides, somebody has to be protecting its clients.

Martha Wells is master world-builder. All Systems Red has the feeling of limitless worlds and cultures that all good space operas should have. But Wells also modernizes and revitalizes the genre. All Systems Red shows a post-cyberpunk future of ubiquitous social media, streaming entertainment and surveillance capitalism. Murderbot's great comfort and its main source of knowledge about human society is binge-watching thousands of hours of serial dramas.

Murderbot is guarding an exploration party of scientists when things start going wrong. It becomes clear that they are under attack, but they have no idea who is attacking them, or why. The only way they can save themselves is by working together. This is not going to be easy. A SecUnit is a thing, not a person. SecUnits are objects of fear in the popular media, always going rogue. Because of that, and because of its own secrets, Murderbot is very anxious around humans.

About all the more I can say is that things move very fast.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Murderbot has a troubling past. It knows there was a massacre at a mining facility where a SecUnit went rogue and killed a large number of people. It knows it was assigned to that mining facility at the time of the massacre. But its memory was wiped and it does not remember any details. It is concerned that it might have caused the incident. Maybe it tried to hack its governor module before the incident. Is it responsible? Could it happen again? Hitching rides on automated interstellar transports, Murderbot makes its way towards the mining colony where the massacre happened. But the colony is private property. Only authorized workers may get in. And Murderbot is obviously a SecUnit. If it is to uncover the secrets of its past, it is going to need something it has never had before: Friends.

I enjoyed how this book added to the richness of the world-building. There are more insights on the complex political and corporate structures of the future society. There are characters with different cultures and gender signifiers. And there are some significant characters who are AIs and different types of 'bots.

This is the second book in The Murderbot Diaries. It is scheduled to be published on May 8th, 2018. The ARC has a blurb on the cover from Ann Leckie: "I love Murderbot!". I was kind of wondering why some of my friends were spontaneously exclaiming "I love Murderbot!" but then I read the ARC too, and okay, I get it.

There are two more volumes in The Murderbot Diaries:

• Rogue Protocol is scheduled to be published in August, 2018.


• Exit Strategy is scheduled to be published in 2018.

This entry was originally posted at https://voidampersand.dreamwidth.org/29574.html.

Bruce Maxwell is the first Major League Baseball player to kneel during the National Anthem in protest of racial injustice. His teammate Mark Canha is showing his support by standing with his hand on Maxwell’s shoulder.

There’s a great quote from Canha that gets to the heart of what this is about:

I had to think about what I was going to do to show my support for Bruce, for 20 minutes. Even then, I was hesitant to do it. I thought about Colin Kaepernick. It’s like, geez, I love baseball. I want to play baseball. I love my job. I love everything about it. I love this country. I want to be part of this country. But to live in fear, just the fact that I had that small amount of fear, that small amount of hesitation, speaks volumes about that we need more change.

Full interview here: A’s Mark Canha speaks out on Bruce Maxwell’s protest and whether others will follow

The A’s have been rebuilding. This is a very young team. But they have lots of confidence. I like their character.

This entry was originally posted at http://voidampersand.dreamwidth.org/29421.html.

Here are my thoughts on the Hugo ballot for Best Novel, 2016:

All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor Books / Titan Books)

I love this book. It is not long, but there so much in it. It is a modern fable, pulling in tropes from all kinds of pop culture: fairy tales, comic books, movies and cartoons. At the same time it is seriously realistic. The world is going to hell in exactly the same ways that ours is, just a little bit faster. People are (mostly) sympathetic and mean well but they are imperfect and success is often beyond them, especially as the world's problems become even more daunting. The tone is wry but not cynical. Things seem to be heading towards a conflict between magic and super-science, but the different schools of magic don't see things the same way, and the different groups of scientists and technologists are often competing instead of cooperating. But it's still worth trying. And it's worth trusting other people even when there is no way you can imagine how or why you can.

A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton / Harper Voyager US)

I found out that it is a sequel to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet so I read both. The worldbuilding is good, especially the aliens are truly diverse. It presents a vision of the future that is mostly positive. It reminds me of James White's classic SF. But the characters are just kind of what they are, and there are some structural issues. It's uneven. A Closed and Common Orbit is better written, and it has two really great characters with compelling stories. Along the way it raises some very interesting and subtle questions about morality (vs. legality), friendship, and personhood. In other words, don't underestimate this book, just because it's a fun read and it's nice.

Death’s End, by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (Tor Books / Head of Zeus)

I really liked The Three Body Problem. I started reading The Dark Forest and bounced off the prose in the first chapter. It was so clunky. I picked it up again recently and was able to make headway. I plan to finish the trilogy presently. I didn't feel any urgency to finish it before voting because the first book in the trilogy already won (deservedly), and the third book would have to be amazingly good in order to justify awarding two Hugos to what is really a single work in three volumes.

Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris Books)

The common question about this book is if it is really science fiction or merely fantasy. I am squarely in the it's science fiction camp. Space opera as a genre requires faster than light travel in order to maintain its traditional plot pacing (which happens to be exactly the same as 19th century steamship stories, go figure). Faster than light travel is bogus science. So are force fields, blasters, phasers, anti-gravity, teleportation, and so on. Yoon Ha Lee invented a fresh and new form of bogus science to power his space opera. He gets to do that. Go him. I think it's a lot of fun. The space opera is set in a grim dystopian interstellar empire. Not fun. I've read some other reviews where readers were bummed out because it was so grim and the characters were so constrained by the system. I didn't read it that way. The system has a lot of cracks in it, including a really huge one that maybe we'll learn more about in the third book. Many of the main characters are wild cards. Unexpected things happen. Overall, I think it's one of the most innovative and interesting space operas in recent years.

The Obelisk Gate, by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit Books)

I think the The Obelisk Gate is good, but not at the same level as The Fifth Season. It reveals some things about the Earth that are very big, but we have to wait for the third book to see anything climactic (as opposed to climatic). The middle book is more about developing characters and moving the plot along. Unfortunately, the key character developments are sad, or creepy and unpleasant. At least the sad developments are very weird and leave at least a smidgen of hope. I am waiting for the third book and we'll see what happens.

Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer (Tor Books)

Too Like the Lightning is a dazzling and enthralling debut novel that is also unreliable and contrarian, sometimes even infuriating. Or maybe it is just Mycroft Canner, most reliable of servants and most unreliable of narrators. On the plus side, it's a science fiction novel set on a near future Earth where nobody is hungry, there are no wars, and politics are based on the fundamental principles of the Enlightenment: rationality, order, justice, humanism, enterprise, and compassion. On the minus side, decisions seem to be made by a very small number of elite leaders who are very much in bed with each other (except the utopians are snubbed for some reason), and it seems about to fall apart. What seems like an ultimate love letter to the Enlightenment could turn out to also be a devastating critique of it. Enough has been revealed in the first book to make it clear that it does not stand alone.

Novels I nominated:

Everfair, by Nisi Shawl (Tor Books)

This is a book that needed to be written and I am glad that Nisi wrote it the way she did. The steampunk movement imagines an alternate past where the second industrial revolution was accelerated to extraordinary heights and at the same time somehow was shared in an egalitarian way without colonialism, racism or sexism. Which of the two imaginations is more unrealistic is hard to say. Nisi tackles both head-on by establishing a 19th century high-technology utopian settlement in the Belgian Congo. It works because the settlers are not just technically skilled, but also radical socialists, the kind of people who would really try to create a steampunk utopia, and to fight King Leopold II. (It helps on the super-technology side that the Congo has major sources of uranium.) What I really liked about this novel was how the native African characters were just as empowered and important as the settlers. Also, as one would hope with radicals, just about every possible unconventional relationship that could occur does, and the love and care in these relationships is a great strength.

Arabella of Mars, by David D. Levine (Tor Books)

A delightful, strongly feminist, alternate-cosmology planetary romance that riffs on Jane Austen, Patrick O'Brian, Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Featuring a plucky heroine, a dashing captain and his brilliant mechanical sidekick, and a motley crew of tuckerized SF writers and fans. What more could you ever ask for? Okay, maybe it starts a bit slow. But it really gets moving soon enough, and the ending is fantastic. Now that it's won the Andre Norton Award, it is officially certified as suitable for corrupting the minds of our youth. But there's no reason not to corrupt your own mind too, it's good for all ages.

This entry was originally posted at http://voidampersand.dreamwidth.org/27530.html.

On Friday, Randy Byers and I took the Metro to downtown LA and walked around. We saw film noir landmarks such as City Hall and the Bradbury Building. When we were at the Central Market a troupe of dragon dancers came through. We had lunch at Clifton's. We got back to Woodland Hills just in time for the start of the Corflu Program. Randy was unexpectedly chosen as Guest of Honor. Andy Hooper's fannish quiz show was excellent. The two teams "The Slanboys" and "The Winning Team" were neck and neck, with The Slanboys winning 54 to 51 at the end. Saturday was more program with interesting discussions. There were fannish games in the evening, including "Interstellar", designed by Art Widner. Sunday was the banquet, FAAn Awards, and the election of the Past-President of FWA. The next Corflu will be in Toronto. Many thanks to Marty Cantor and the concom, and also to the LASFAns who came over for the con.

This entry was originally posted at http://voidampersand.dreamwidth.org/27224.html.

Starting in the '80s there was a fine international fanzine (published by Joseph Nicholas, Judith Hanna, Leigh Edmonds, Valma Brown, and Terry Hughes) that frequently changed its name, but the name was always three words and the initials were always FTT. In that spirit, the title of this post is three words, and the initials are FDT. Please feel free to do likewise. It isn't like I own either the original concept or the FDT hashtag. I look forward to seeing what titles other people come up with.

If three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people writing posts where the title is three words and the initials are FDT. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day writing posts where the title is three words and the initials are FDT. And friends they may think it's a movement.

As for this title, I am reminded of a message I heard on the radio just a bit over two years ago: "Blessings to all who are out, in search of justice."

This entry was originally posted at http://voidampersand.dreamwidth.org/26941.html.

Walt Mossberg, a distinguished journalist, writes about how "Lousy ads are ruining the online experience". What really got me was this experience he had, just after he co-founded his own advertising-supported web site:

About a week after our launch, I was seated at a dinner next to a major advertising executive. He complimented me on our new site’s quality and on that of a predecessor site we had created and run, AllThingsD.com. I asked him if that meant he’d be placing ads on our fledgling site. He said yes, he’d do that for a little while. And then, after the cookies he placed on Recode helped him to track our desirable audience around the web, his agency would begin removing the ads and placing them on cheaper sites our readers also happened to visit. In other words, our quality journalism was, to him, nothing more than a lead generator for target-rich readers, and would ultimately benefit sites that might care less about quality.

Obviously having advertisers (or anyone) tracking your browsing around the web is a privacy concern. I hadn't understood how it was ruining the business models for quality journalism. Not only are print publications unable to compete with on-line ads, so are web sites.

There is a simple social-technical fix: outlaw commercial surveillance and build strong anti-tracking technology into every browser. Advertisers should compete on the quality of their ads and the quality of the sites they support, not on the power of their tracking technology. Unfortunately, it's not likely to happen soon, because the advertising business is driven by short-term thinking. But you can easily install an anti-tracking browser extension such as Privacy Badger or Ghostery. That way you can enjoy some anti-tracking protection immediately. And if enough people do the same, it may help push the industry into a better way of doing business.

This entry was originally posted at http://voidampersand.dreamwidth.org/26657.html.

I saw this headline and thought, hell yes, I'm all for California seceding from Russia.

But when I read the article it turned out the #Calexit leader plots California secession from his home in Russia. What's with that? We can't even manage our own secession movements?

I blame the fact that most Californians are too busy plotting secession from Southern California. (It's true — every Californian wants the state to be split North and South, the only disagreement is where line is drawn, because everyone wants to be in the North.)

This entry was originally posted at http://voidampersand.dreamwidth.org/26511.html.

Daylight savings time is meant to end just before Halloween, not Election Day.

This entry was originally posted at http://voidampersand.dreamwidth.org/26132.html.