The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3)

 Or, in other words, a three volume omnibus that includes All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy, Fugitive Telemetry, and System Collapse.

Yes, of course I've read Murderbot before.  But the books are mostly novellas and were previously released only as hardcovers at ~$26.99 each (or $99 CAD for the first four volumes).  And while I admire and very much enjoyed Martha Wells fantastic adventure series -- ouch.  I originally read all of these in library e-book editions.

When I discovered that the Murdot Diaries had finally been released in a more affordable paperback omnibus edition, it was time for an immediate purchase and an immediate re-read.

What do I think, five years after I first discovered our snarky, anti-social, but very much anti-murdering-humans rogue SecUnit?  

Firstly, and most embarrassingly, that I was unwittingly highly influenced by these books as I composed my own latest novel.  It's not that I didn't know what Murderbot was like as I wrote.  It's more that I absorbed rather more Murderbot than I realized or intended, and it came out on the page.  Oops.

Not that being like Murderbot is a bad thing in and of itself.  The books crackle with energy and personality, and you can't help but sympathize with SecUnit's desire to stand in a corner and watch media in preference to watching the humans it's trying to protect do their very best to get killed. Murderbot's snarky but relatable personality is why the series was such a hit, and why I (very much hope) that Martha Wells is now financially secure.

Highly recommended, even though by Book 6 I was starting to feel that it was time for Murderbot to have a little peace and happiness instead of another adventure.

A Pale Light in the Black by K.B. Wagers

I picked this up book up and put it down about three times when I was at Powell's in Portland.  I'd managed to squeak in an extra 3/4 of an hour for myself in the bookstore while everyone else was occupied, and I spent most of that time in the SFF section torn between the books that seemed like great comps and the books that I most wanted to read -- with the added complication of the question "will I ever find this again elsewhere?"

In the end, Loki's Ring is one of the books that made it home with me (on the 'I may never see this again' principle), while the K.B. Wagers books were at the top of the 'I guess I can't buy ALL THE BOOKS' pile.  But I made a careful note of the name and titles and managed to find the first book of Wagers' NeoG series at the public library recently.

If you want a brief summary of A Pale Light, you could do worse than the pull quote on the front cover "If The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet had more kickboxing matches and death-defying space rescues, this would be the book. -- Max Gladstone, author of Empress of Forever".  To whit:

• Protagonist is the rebel daughter of a powerful family who is following her own path -- CHECK
• Narrative centres a 'found family' of loveable misfits -- CHECK
• Female, NB, and queer characters are central -- CHECK
• Spaceships and adventure -- CHECK

But of course A Pale Light in the Black is its own book.  Our loveable band of misfits are members of the interplanetary Coast Guard (the NeoGs, or Near-Earth Orbital Guards), making this book a kind of modern Military SF.  In sharp contrast to most space operas, the team's immediate goal is not saving humanity or fighting aliens or protecting Earth.  The crew of Zuma's Ghost really wants to do well in the Boarding Games, an inter-Service Olympics that features events like computer hacking, cage fighting, and simulated 'take over the occupied space station' competitions.  Of course that's not the only plot -- the main drama involves the prodigal daughter finding her confidence as she becomes a fully integrated member of her NeoG team, while simultaneously uncovering a nefarious plot that OF COURSE involves her family and its business interests.

What did I think of the book?  Unlike some of the SFF I've reviewed lately, this is not a debut novel.  Wagers published five books before this one,  and their experience shows.  Characters are all three-dimensional, dialog is seamless, description is well-chosen, and the action moves along.  You care about Jenks (the tough, orphaned Petty Officer who would much rather get in a bar fight than admit that she might have Feelings for someone), and for Max, our low-confidence high competence protagonist.  Overall the book is very competently done, entertaining, and I enjoyed it a lot.  

My only criticism is a tiny pet peeve -- in real life of course people have full, multi-part names, they have titles ('Commander'), they have nicknames (and sometimes more than one  ('Jenks', 'Dai')).  And of course in real life these names and titles and nicknames might bear no obvious relationship to one another. But in fiction...oy.  Introducing multiple people in the first few pages while referring to each person in multiple different ways?  Realistic? Sure.  Effective?  I dunno.  I'm a person who has trouble enough keeping single names of the real folk that I meet straight. But take this criticism for whatever you think it's worth -- I'm also not a huge fan of the style of high fantasy that throws you into an unfamiliar situation without explanation and expects you to be satisfied by finally figuring out what was happening on page 1 by reading page 452. 

Loki's Ring by Stina Leicht

 Another space opera!  More spaceships, ship AIs (and other artificial persons) as characters, an interstellar crisis, even a ring world.

This one took me a long time to read, and I wasn't sure why.  The writing was good, the characterizations were distinct and consistent, characters were sympathetic, there was lots of action and clear stakes.  So why did I keep putting it down and not getting back to it for days?  Why did I find Doppelganger more gripping?

I think the first reason is the most important, and I'll simply make it by gesturing at the world around me.  If you're reading this in years to come, remember what the first month or two of the Trump II administration was like.  It's hard to concentrate.

The second reason didn't strike me until after I finished the book.  When I thought about the story I'd just read, I realized that at its heart, Loki's Ring is women's fiction.  The central conflict is not between the Norton Alliance and the TRW.  The struggle that drives the book is not Gita's need to rescue her AI daughter.  The mystery is not why illicit miners were trying to harvest something from the surface of Loki's Ring, and the horror is not the dastardly virus liberated by their efforts.  No, the central conflict of the book is internal to Gita:  she has to come to terms with the fact that there was no way to prevent the tragedy that she is haunted by, and she needs to reconcile with her family (including her AI daughters) and her estranged former partner. The mystery is exactly what happened (before our story begins) and how it has affected each character.  The true struggle is for personal growth.  

In other words the space opera elements are merely trappings, in the same way that Calamity by Constance Fay is a romance, even though it features spaceships and scrappy space adventurers and an interstellar villain volcano lair. 

Then it all made sense.  Loki's Ring didn't grab me because while there's nothing in the least wrong with women's fiction, it's not the kind of story that I generally read, and is not the kind of story that generally grabs me.

I have to admit that I don't really understand how all of this works from a writerly perspective.  I mean,  a space opera (or a mystery) without romantic elements or personal dilemmas or character growth would probably be dull.  So why does a romance (or woman's fiction) leave me cold? What makes a story something that I find compelling?   The stakes can't be purely personal?  Hm....maybe that's it.  While the events in Loki's Ring include dramatic escapes from wrecked spaceships, alien attacks, and at least one big spaceship fight -- that's not what *matters* to the characters. What matters is dealing with their colleague's agoraphobia.  Reconciling with their estranged friend.  Letting down their family.  Bringing themselves to say that they're sorry.  Admitting that they were wrong.  You know, the actually important stuff that everyone has to deal with in life.

Hmmm...learning by reading continues.

Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

Klein was inspired to write this book by the unnerving experience of being repeatedly confused with Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth.  Both women are authors of a certain age who have written "thinky" books, both women are Jewish, both are named Naomi. 

Klein, of course, is best known for her books No Logo and Shock Doctrine. She is also Canadian leftist 'royalty', being the daughter of feminist icon filmmaker Bonnie Sherr Klein, sister of author and former think-tank director Seth Klein, and wife of progressive NDP activist Avi Lewis (who is himself the grandson of former NDP leader David Lewis and son of NDP icon Stephen Lewis). 

Naomi Wolf, on the other hand, has taken a turn since her feminist days.  As a popular meme goes "If your Naomi be Klein, you're doing just fine.  If your Naomi be Wolf... oh buddy. Oof."  Wolf has gone full conspiracy-theorist anti-vax MAGA.

Klein is at no risk of following in Wolf's footsteps, which is one reason why she became somewhat obsessed with the path taken by her shadow-self, her doppelganger.  How had this once feminist become a regular on Steve Bannon's radio program? What prompted Wolf to start ranting about 'freedom' when faced with vaccine requirements?  Why had Wolf transformed from an advisor to the Clinton administration to a MAGA hanger-on? 

I think that Doppelganger is strongest when it addresses this specific issue.  Why did Wolf and a whole swath of others move towards health conspiracy theories?  Q-Anon?  MAGA politics?  

Two factors in particular struck me.  

The first is that at the core of most of these conspiratorial beliefs is a fear rooted in reality.  For example, during the pandemic one of the anti-vax talking points was that the vaccines were a tool of Big Pharma, being rolled out to maximize profits.  Leaving aside their "arguments" about the vaccine's dangers, Big Pharma is in fact fucked.  We need look no further than the contemptible Martin Shkrelli (2015's most punchable man), who raised the price of a critical antiparasitic drug from $13.50 to $750.00 a pill.  And during the pandemic, as Klein points out, we could have cancelled patents on the COVID-19 vaccines and rolled out a global low cost vaccination program to protect lives around the world while simultaneously reducing the virus' ability to mutate. Instead we protected corporate profits. 

Anti-vax anger at Big Pharma is not wrong.  

Similarly,  Wolf amongst others railed against vaccine passport apps as being an intolerably oppressive Big Brother tracking tool designed to first track everyone and then imprison them.  The riposte of the sane was something like "Just wait until they find out about cell phones."  Klein's response: "They know about cell phones."  In other words, smirk all you like but we all carry an unparalleled surveillance device in our pockets.  We're just mostly being surveilled by unchecked corporations who can and do do anything they like with our data.  (The "mostly" is because of course we've all decided to politely ignore Edward Snowden's revelations about the reality of unrestricted government data capture.)

Anti-vax anger at surveillance is not wrong either.

In both of these cases (and in so many more), the problem is not that conspiracy theorists are afraid and angry at things that are happening in society.  The problem is that they direct their fear and anger towards invented targets, twisted mirrors of the real causes, because their invented targets are easier to understand, easy to demonize, and are less threatening to oppose than the real forces that are causing danger or real harm. 

The second point that really struck me about Klein's description of the attraction of the shadow world is that the shadow world of conspiracies is very welcoming.  When Naomi Wolf first wanted to say something on Bannon's program, she was eagerly accepted into the fold.  "Look, this  feminist and former Democrat wants to talk to us about <insert mild conspiracy theory here>."   Wolf was listened to instead of challenged and received lots of validation (and new social media followers), and step by step she went deeper and deeper into MAGA world.  Similarly, Klein notes that callers to Bannon's phone-ins are treated gently, encouraged and supported in whatever they choose to talk about, and generally welcomed with open arms.

Contrast this experience to Wolf being publicly humiliated by an interviewer who discovered errors in her 2019 book Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalisation of Love.  (The errors were profound and real: Klein points out that Wolf has never been a meticulous researcher, but I think her publisher also has a lot to answer for.)  Contrast also the stereotypical world of the left, where the People's Front of Judea will fight to the death the heresies of the Judean People's Front (in preference to effectively opposing the Romans of course).  Or to to take a personal example, look at Doppelganger itself, which has an entire chapter pointing out that Hitler's Germany and its final solution was simply a darker doppleganger of Western societies and their "Indian Reservations" and  their Boer War concentration camps, and their anti-Semitic laws.  (My emotional reaction: in this broken and nasty world we live in, isn't there anything we can celebrate? Not even defeating the actual Nazis?)  Or another personal example:  a statement on the Wild Bird Trust website about the harm done by white environmentalists by creating a bird sanctuary at Maplewood Flats without the knowledge or consent of the Tsleil-Waututh people -- in a world in which it feels miraculous that Maplewood Flats exists as a natural area at all. (It's a near-impossibility to preserve any natural area seen as having "economic value".)

The 'left' is not a welcoming world.  Maybe because reality isn't.  Maybe because we really do share a very dark history, and there is much pain for which real amends have never been made (and probably never can be truly made).  Maybe because we are collectively too often genuinely powerless, and it is the only the battles against the Judean People's Front that seem winnable.

Klein, like any good activist, ends her book with a call to action.  She asks us to work together with real people in the real world, where we can see and feel their totality, and can perhaps learn to work with people we don't 100% agree with.  

But as I finished the book all I could think was how much easier it is to shitpost than it is to understand or act.  And that every one of us is vulnerable to the temptation to seek simple answers to complex problems.  

What makes a book 'cozy'? In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune

 I've been describing my WIP as a "cozy space opera" as I've been pitching it recently.  This is mostly a marketing decision, given the success of Becky Chambers, Victoria Goddard, T.J. Klune, and others.  

But what does it mean for a book to be cozy?  As far as I know, the term is derived from the "cozy mystery" subgenre.  In a cozy mystery, there may not even be a murder (Alexander McCall Smith).  And I don't think I can improve on the description of a cozy mystery I created for that review:  "There are no graphic descriptions or upsetting details,  you probably didn't get to know the person well or at all before they were "struck down", and you get the distinct impression that a murder occurred only to  give the detective an excuse to poke about, ask questions, and solve a puzzle."  The only thing missing is perhaps that cozies are often series, which means that there is a recurring cast of often quirky characters who help or hinder the heroine.  (Because it is generally a heroine, isn't it?)

So what makes for cozy SF?  I think it comes down to a protagonist is who is flawed but fundamentally decent and relatable, a world that is in at least some ways fair (effort is awarded, villains and plotters can be overcome, most folks are decent and trying to do the right thing, competence is important and appreciated) , there is often a "found family"of characters who love and support one another, personal relationships are an important part of the story, and the stories are generally LGBTQ+ friendly.  Of course there is also a happy ending.

Is In the Lives of Puppets cozy?  On the negative side, to quote the book itself: "Most unfortunately, in the lives of puppets there is always a 'but' that spoils everything".  In this case, the 'but' is the setting.  It's a post-apocalyptic world where all humans except our protagonist have been exterminated by robots.  Post-apocalyptic worlds are not particularly cozy.  Another fly in the ointment -- does it have a happy ending?  Without getting into details, the answer is "yes, but" because whatever else happens, our protagonist remains not only the only human, but almost certainly the very last human who will ever exist.  So even though there are triumphs and the protagonist achieves a number of goals, the happy ending is shaded.  As is the happy ending itself, even on the face of it, because the happiness comes with losses too.

On the positive side, the story is fundamentally a retelling of a fairy tale (Pinocchio), there is a quirky cast of characters (including an over-eager vacuum modelled after the author's Roomba), one of the antagonists becomes an ally, and characters choose good over evil.  

Do I recommend the book?  "Yes, but" again. Yes, I'm not sorry I've read this.  Yes I enjoyed it.  Yes I think it was well-done.  Yes, I think it was an overall positive experience, and no, I don't think there are any glaring flaws (even though there was a bit of inconsistency in the characterization of the supporting cast towards the end).  The only "but" is a relatively minor one, really.  "But I'm not going to rush out and read everything else TJ Klune has written."  The "but" to that "but" is that's a pretty high bar for an author new to me to cross.  

And now for a break in the routine....

 By reading some straight SF, not space opera!  Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton takes place in the United States of America in 2065, as a genocidal war breaks out between Humanists and the Federals.  

Humanists are ordinary people who are violently opposed to the existence of cyborgs:  humans with  neurological implants, embedded enhancements to their musculature, live contact with infospace, nanobots running through their bloodstreams to repair physical damage, etc. etc.  The Federals are the same-old, same-old folks who may or may not be enhanced (depending on their personal financial circumstances or their military enlistment status), who live in or run everyday society of 2065.  

Our hero Mal is an independent AI who inadvertently wanders into the conflict between the two types of monkey when he downloads himself into the neurological implant of a recently deceased Federal soldier to see what it's like to live in meatspace -- and gets trapped when his link to infospace goes down.

The cover calls this book "darkly comic", which pretty much covers Mal's adventures incompetently pretending to be human as he first collects a posse of misfits, and then tries to escape with them across Humanist lines back to Federal infospace while Bad Things happen all around.  Well-written, funny, gripping and thought-provoking, even if I refuse to believe that a game of Guess the Cube Root of the Square of the Output of the Random Number Generator would be any more fun than the base game of Guess the Output of the Random Number Generator for a bored AI trapped in the head of a sleeping host human.

What I've been reading: Space Opera Edition II

As I continue to read modern space operas, I'm noticing (perhaps belatedly) some strong general themes:

• Written by women
• Usually include banter/smartasses/clever dialog
• Strong female leads
• Lots of queer characters and queer relationships
• Romance is common, as are found families, scrappy space rebels (think Harrison Ford), and AIs

Now on to more detail about my most two latest reads: Full Speed to a Crash Landing and The Floating Hotel.  Firstly, I'd have to say that these two are among the best of my most recent batch (which includes Calamity, Cascade Failure, Barbary Station, Finder, and Under Fortunate Stars from Space Opera I).  

Neither of these two books has any obvious "writerly" flaw, both were engaging, and neither was too long.  

Quick competent fun = +++

Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis (published 2024)

This one had intrigue, banter/smart ass comments, and a hint of romance (or at least passing lust).  So, in some ways it's a mirror of Calamity by Constance Fey.  But Calamity is a romance and Full Speed is a sexy space heist.  Full Speed is told in the first person, by an unreliable narrator, and is about a galactic salvager/scavenger who is rescued as she's running out of air by an official government salvage crew who's come to investigate the wreck that she's plundering.  

Parallels with my work:  banter, spaceships

The Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis (published 2024)

Can I complain that a book isn't what I expected if it delivers exactly what's on the tin?  I ordered this after reading its Amazon preview pages, and thought that it was going to be about Carl, the abused orphan from a terrible mining planet who is kindly taken in by the staff of a luxury hotel spaceship (the Grand Abeona). Instead, the book is fundamentally about....drumrollllll....the hotel itself.  

Each chapter follows a different character (although Carl, who becomes manager, does get a few), and together the characters' stories tell us about the Galactic Empire that the hotel traverses and gradually, all about the hotel itself.   At the heart of the book is a mystery, which creates an overarching plot that emerges from the individual character's stories.

I thought the book was very well done.  It was engaging, had well-developed and believable characters, and the overall conceit was well-executed in that the many threads came together to build to a "surprising but inevitable" conclusion (which is the goal of a mystery plot!)

This is advertised as a cozy and I can see why:  Carl (and the culture of the ship) is kind, you can describe the collection of characters as a found family, and the premise of a luxury interstellar floating hotel staffed by waifs who love their work is fundamentally sweet.   But there is a dark heart here: an oppressive Galactic Empire with a sadistic agent who uses torture as a tool.  I find it hard to categorize any book that includes torture as cozy, even if the perpetrator eventually faces consequences (albeit for murdering a colleague, not for the torture itself).

Parallels with my work: oppressive Galactic Empire, spaceships, most characters are decent and doing their best