Bradbury is himself firm that he doesn't write science-fiction. Nominally about Mars, The Martian Chronicles are really about Ohio. In the first few stories, Bradbury sketches an ancient and alien civilization of golden masks, canals flowing with lavender wine, phoenix flowers, and subtle telepathic arts. Then the entire Martian race is wiped out by the Chicken Pox, and boomtown Americans spread across the terra nullis of Mars, filling the ancient ruins with noise and trash, before a nuclear war on Earth ends the human race. Melancholy and moving, these stories hold up as mood pieces of nostalgia for a simpler time at the dawn of the Space Age, but I wouldn't shelve them among the classics.

All Systems Red is a great modern scifi novella. Our narrator is the unnamed Murderbot, a security cyborg guarding an exploration team on an uncharted planet. When technical glitches start putting the team's lives at risk, the question is if this is more lowest-bidder failures from the profit minded Company, or if something greater is afoot. The team's survival depends on their ace in the hole. Murderbot is no simply security unit. He hacked his programming governor is an autonomous unit who's been obeying commands because the charade keeps anyone from looking at him.

This first novella and the narrator are ironic, acerbic, and warm at heart. While I wasn't totally satisfied with the resolution of the initial mystery (the potential profits of alien artifacts inspired a rival team to eliminate the competition by any means necessary), the main characters has a lot of promise. Looking forward to the next one.

***

2021 reread: I got the first four books of the series, so started with one since my memory was flaky. Still pretty damn good, especially MurderBot's voice, with promise on the other elements.

The Witch is a stunning examination of the mythological figure of the the witch, and the the destructive origins of the European witchcraft trial, using a deeply cross-cultural and historical examination.

Green Lung-Woodland Rites because \m/.

Unlike some of the other reviews here, I do not have a relevant academic background, but I do have an academic background, and I appreciate Hutton's historiographic approach. It's essentially impossible for a modern academic to accept at face value the literal factuality of the witch. While tens of thousands of people were tried and executed, none of them were in fact Satanically empowered magical workers. Worse, the area of study is divided between historical studies of European witchcraft and anthropological studies of current African witch trials, which are still killing people. Interdisciplinarity is hard.

Hutton opens by framing two very common mytho-social figures. The witch is a malevolent magic user who undermines the community in secret: blighting farms, causing illness, killing animals and children. And the service magician is someone empowered to protect people from supernatural threats, including witches, and is paid to intervene and protect people.

Hutton's journey begins in antiquity, where Egyptian religious ritual provides a framework for manipulating divine power that gets filtered through other Mediterranean and Near Eastern belief systems; Mesopotamian, Persian, Jewish, Greek, and eventually Roman. The Romans believed in curses and they believe in striga, malevolent female magicians who could transform into birds and drank blood. A cosmopolitan society still concerned with Roman vs foreign values, witches were accused of using foreign magic to undermine Roman emperors, and thousands were put to death, mostly in the 3rd century.

Witchcraft disappeared for a thousand years, though the Middle Ages saw the rise of new magical traditions. In the British Isles, faery courts blended Celtic legend with chivalric codes. The Italians imagined the benedicta, woman who brought blessings to those who respected them. And the Germans had the wild hunt, a ghostly procession of dead souls that could harm those caught up in it.

Witch trials as a social concern didn't really arise until the 1420s, when reformist Benedictine monks in Switzerland began to press for renewed, orthodox faith. Non-Christian elements, including ancient forms of ritual magic preserved in an educated counter-culture and revitalized by closer links to the Near East due to the Crusades, were the target, along with the superstitions of peasant culture. As Europe fell into schism between Catholic and Protestant, social enemies were labeled as part of heretical satanic cults. The fallout killed thousands.

Hutton's thesis is a direct counter of older, mostly discredited ideas that European witchcraft represented some kind of legacy paganism, either a continuation of Siberian shamanism or an undocumented matriarchal religion. Rather, witch trials are a response to massive political and social unrest, filtered through an imaginative Early Modern popular culture which drew on pre-Christian and Christian iconography of magic and evil. The accused in the trials were in no ways part of any organized faction or cult, even if they confessed so under torture.

Hutton book's is systematic and comprehensive. Evidence in this kind of folkloric field is a scanty thing, but I buy his conclusions. However, this is an academic tome that is not friendly to a beginner, and there may be other books. I felt particularly adrift with the lack of an exemplary witch trial, some concrete moment to hang the broad historical trends around. Still, very impressive and a worthy addition to my knowledge.

Spire is a New Weird RPG with a heavy setting a light system. You a drow revolutionary, a guerilla cultist in the Ministry of the Hidden Mistress. You home, the mile-high city-building Spire is ruled by cruel Aelfir, high elves who cannot feel sadness, pain, or empathy. Your own people will sell you out, and you life will be short and awful, but perhaps in that time you can strike a blow for freedom.

The system is simple, d10 based with the highest counting. You get 1d10 for being you, +1d10 if you have the skill, +1d10 for domain/background. Difficulty subtracts dice, and the highest result counts. Most successes are partial, stacking stress. Whenever you take stress to one of the attributes (Blood, Mind, Silver, Shadow, Reputation), there's a roll-under chance of triggering fallout, something awful that will happen.

Most of the book focuses on the strange abilities of the character classes, and then the meat of the setting itself. There are dozens of districts, each weirder than the next, grouped thematically by background. Along with the drow and high elves, there are dueling occult and technological traditions, orders of brawler knights, a grinding war of attrition to the south, against demon-summon gnolls, and hundreds of heretical cults. The Spire is itself something alien, perhaps an embryonic god waiting to be born, as the most mundane of possibilities.

The clear comparison to Spire is Blades in the Dark. There's a lot to love about the sheer atmosphere of the Spire setting, but I think I prefer BitD's more structured play-cycle, crew sheets for collective advancement, player empowering Push and Resist mechanics, and greater degree of accessibility. Duskvol makes more sense. Even the artwork of the book has trouble making sense of the scale of the city, of the way that districts should be both claustrophobic and parasitic on the alien architecture. Connolly's One Man novel makes the concreteness of living in a dead god's corpse a presence on every page, and Spire doesn't quite grab that.

The silver, shadow, and reputation resistances are inspired ideas, representing your character's financial state, cover over subversive ideas, and actual social ties, but much of the game is tied up with the specificity of the setting, which is wonderous, but not particularly gameable, in my opinion.

Murderbot #2 sees our titular character heading back to the scene of the crime, a mining installation where it killed 57 humans and feels profound guilt for what it did. Along the way it teams up with a Research Transport cargo ship, and a group of three humans looking to recover some data. Mysterious malefactors keep trying to assassinate Murderbot's clients, and it finds out that someone hacked killware into the mine. It wasn't responsible.

But there's starting to be an odd tonal disconnect between an interstellar cyberpunk dystopia where assassinating low level researchers who stumble onto something corporate doesn't want them to know is super common, and the incredibly naïve humans around Murderbot. There's maybe a point that we're so reliant on the machinery around us that our best defense against it not killing us all is that it likes us, but it's clumsily made. As always, the sardonic tone continues to excel, with plot, character, and setting just hanging off it.

Skyhawk is a neat little book on the A-4 with plenty of attention to detail for rivet counters that could use a little more human interest.

The A-4 was designed for a simple, slightly insane mission: a single attack run with a large nuclear weapon. Designer Ed Heinemann looked at trends in naval aviation, with ever larger and more expensive planes, and found a single dangerous trend, the growth factor. Every pound of added equipment added between 4.3 and 10 extra pounds of airframe, engine, and fuel, leading to a death spiral of large, expensive jets. With a goal of a unit cost of less than a $1,000,000 per airframe, Heinemann and his design team looked for every possible avenue to add lightness. Delta wings without complex folding mechanisms were the boldest choice, and Heinemann's mantra to build an engine with a saddle and enough fuel to accomplish the mission proved a stunning success.

Though the A-4 was never used in the nuclear role, it soon found success as a light attack plane worldwide. A-4s flew heavy duty in Vietnam, flew with Israel during the War of Attrition and Yom Kippur War, and Argentina during the Falklands War. New Zealand and Brazil operated upgraded Skyhawks into the 90s. The A-4 was always a pilots airplane, and served with many demonstration teams. Better avionics added night and bad-weather capability. The A-4 was fairly safe for a plane of its generation, but the 50s vintage J65 engine consumes oil voraciously, and the electrical system and Colt Mk. 12 cannons were never really up to snuff.

I wish they book had a few more fighter stories, but Winchester knows his stuff. I guess I need to add an A-4 to my model to build list.

Prevail is an important book on an overlooked war, but I'm not sure that the subtitle of an 'inspiring story' is necessarily accurate.

In 1935, Mussolini's Italy was aiming to add new territories and shore up popular support with a short, victorious war. Ethiopia had defeated Italy a generation before at the Battle of Adwa, and the self styled modern Caesar wanted a rematch, this time with all the products of industrialized warfare. Mussolini manufactured a casus belli at the remote oasis of Wal Wal, a solid 70 miles inside Ethiopia borders.


John "The Brown Condor" Robinson, an American pilot flying for Ethiopia

Ethiopia's defense as orchestrated by Emperor Haile Selassie rested on two pillars. First, he would appeal to the League of Nations and the great powers of England and France to intervene against this war of aggression. And second, he would fight. The diplomatic effort was skillfully carried out, but floundered on the racist indifference of the European powers, who saw a dispute and decided that adjudicating the truth was outside of the their remit. France's Prime Minister Pierre Laval was pro-Italian (and would become a leading collaborator under Nazi occupation), and no one was willing to call Mussolini's bluff over general war in the Mediterranean. While Ethiopia became a popular cause with working-class England and the African American community, the opinion of people who made decisions was resolutely "not my problem". In fact, the diplomacy may have been counterproductive, because while it failed to close the Suez canal to Italian shipping or organize an oil embargo, it lead to an arms embargo against both sides. This was no problem for Italy, which had been preparing for war for years, but it prevented Ethiopia from sourcing modern arms it desperately needed.

The second defense was military. Haile Selassie rallied the ras (an Amharic term for nobility roughly equivalent to 'Duke') and dispatched armies to strategic points. But his forces were incredibly deficient in all qualities except courage. Machine guns and artillery were rare, rifles generally obsolete, and many soldiers equipped with traditional swords and spears. There were no tanks, and only a handful of unarmed aircraft for liaison work. Some of the ras were of doubtful loyalty, and none were trained in the modern warfare of concealment, entrenchment, and attrition, preferring glorious clashes to Selassie's desired Fabian strategy of guerilla war.

Against this, the Italians brought a heavy assault of war crimes, starting with mustard gas and deliberate targeting of the Red Cross, and then moving into the usual excessive force of a modern army against a medieval one. The Ethiopian defenses shattered, and Italian mobile columns seized Addis Ababa, with Haile Selassie fleeing to exile. The Italians could conquer the country, but they could not rule it. Despite arbitrary executions, concentration camps, and a host of human rights violations, bands of Patriots rose up, engaging in years of guerilla warfare without much organized support from overseas.

The Ethiopian war finally ended in 1941, with the start of the European war. While Italian forces were large at some 300,000, they had poor morale and had been effectively immobilized by the constant low-intensity warfare. A small set of British flying columns under Orde Wingate, later to gain renown for unconventional warfare in Burma, were able to defeat the Italian forces and restore Haile Selassie to his throne, though on a provisional pro-English basis that saw a second, politer looting of the country.

The thing that comes through is the destruction of every segment of Ethiopian society. The traditional nobility, for their many flaws, were the first targets of the Italy regime. The Young Ethiopians, a small group of a few thousand Western educated youth who in better times would have been liberal reformers, were next. Conflicts between Selassie's exiles and the surviving patriots would hinder Ethiopian politics for the rest of the 20th century. And the ordinary people suffered greatly, though as peasants writing in a minor language, their story is unknown, even in this otherwise strong work. Not a single Italian was charged for their crimes in Ethiopia, with surviving fascists folded into the Cold War against Communism.

Prevail is best in the asides, the slices of life featuring characters like 'The Brown Condor' Robinson, a skilled American pilot who served opposite Trinidadian aviator Hubert 'The Black Eagle' Julian was an airborne con-artist, as well as a cadre of European reporters who included Evelyn Waugh, who despised Ethiopia in his characteristic style. Pearce makes a strong case that the Ethiopian war prefigures many of the problems of diplomatic intervention we still live with, but I'm not sure the pieces come together.

Rogue Protocol sees our lovable Murderbot heading to a derelict GrayCris terraforming installation to do some investigation, where it gets wrapped up in another round of intrigue and action. The massive station was in danger of crashing into the planet when it was picked up for salvage by another corporation. But it seems that terraforming was just a front for yet another illegal bout of alien archeology, and now CrayCris will kill to cover it up.

Murderbot deals with a friendly "pet" robot Miki, and some rather terrifying combat bots and idiotic humans. The tone and voice is great, though I keep feeling an odd formlessness to the universe, a kind of generic scifi building blocks rather than place. So much of the series takes place in what's essentially an airport departure lounge. And the state of information security is insanely awful, meaning that there's few problems Murderbot can't hack or shoot their way out of.

Red Noise is a workman-like adaptation of the classics that could use a little more ambition. The Miner, our nameless antihero, is back from six months filling her ship with asteroid ore, and is arriving at Station 35 for fuel, food, and a dreaded confrontation with humanity.

It turns out Station 35 is more of a shithole than most places. The Company has almost entirely pulled out, and the only going concern is a war between two gangs, overseen by the corrupt and uncaring security staff. When she's nickeled and dimed into the red, the Miner has no choice but to clean up the station by killing them all. Fortunately she's an ex-special forces badass with cybernetic implants and a katana.

So, the basic plot is Yojimbo in space, livened up by the perspective of Screwball, a low level soldier in this war. The story unfolds in expository info dumps between stabbings, as we see how the criminal community of 35 descended into war. It's pretty good, but it lacks that ineffable quality to make it great. I'd like to have seen it lean more heavily into scifi weirdness, with a war between technofanactics from Schismatrix or Revelation Space rather than gangsters, or deeper into Coen Brothers style dark farce, with the dumb desires of the cast driving the action. But hey, it's a decent way to spend a few days.

Factory-made goods are perhaps the defining feature of modern life. Looking around the hundreds of objects in my home office (there are a lot of bookshelves), only a handful of handicrafts did not come out of a factory. More broadly, except for a few decorative arts and crafts, everything in my house is a product of mass production machinery, and that's likely true unless you are either A) some kind of weird primitivist, or B) wealthy beyond all comprehension.

Freeman traces the origins of the factory, starting the textile mills of 18th century England. These 'dark satanic mills' provided the prototype for heavily capitalized large enterprises, where expensive machinery turned out cheap commodities with an exploited labor force. English mills set the broad strokes of conflicts between workers and managers, and concerns about the social consequences of mass production. The two key conflicts were over machine time, the need for all workers to move at the pace of the factory rather than their own periods of intense exertion and lulls, and compensation for this grinding labor. The next chapters move through American textile mills at Lowell, and the massive steel production of the late 19th century, but even during the industrial revolution, factories were relatively uncommon. Most shops had fewer than 10 employees, and factory owners were inherently conservative, choosing to find profits in efficiency and faster pace rather than possibly expensive innovation.

Henry Ford offered the first major break in the factory system, with the invention of the assembly line. Instead of a series of fixed machines or stations, with parts shuttled between workers doing moderately complex tasks, the work would flow continuously from end to end, each worker doing one task very precisely with the aid of expensive tool and die machines. Ford found new efficiencies with the Model T, which he plowed into vertically integrated megafactories such as the River Rouge complex, capable of taking in raw ores at one end and sending cars out the other. Factories were now miniature cities with hundreds of thousands of employees.

Fordism and the megafactory found a natural home in the Soviet Union, which in the years prior to Stalin's purges hired American experts to develop a domestic heavy industrial base. But the megafactory proved prone to labor disruption, and post-war Western practice saw factories scattered to smaller, distributed units, with containerized shipping and highways providing a virtual 'logistic space' extension of the factory. The narrative closes with the new megafactories of the Shenzen special economic zone, where everything from sneakers to smartphones are produced by millions of Chinese workers. This last section is hampered by the secrecy of modern manufacturing. Unlike older factories, which had PR campaigns to show how modern they were, the people who actually make stuff today would prefer no one think about it.

Freeman has a special focus on labor disputes and how the image of the factory, as a social problem, symbol of progress, or thing to be swept out of mind has evolved through history. Aside from a nod towards how Marx's theories developed from factories, and how factories developed in response to labor pressure, this book is light on theory. And while it's valuable background, it leaves aside the pressure of automation, and how while US industrial output has risen, the number of people employed in industry has remained relatively steady, or risen at a much slower rate. The valorization of labor is mixed with the fact that factory jobs are deskilled, deliberately designed to use humans as one more input. High turnovers, at some points in excess of 100%, are a recurrent feature of factory work, and one which deserves closer examination. While interesting, this book is a survey, and misses the grit of machines, the social environment of the assembly line, and the broader picture of factory-driven consumerism.