One of the hallmark tropes of the Golden Age of Science Fiction is colonies on the moon. You couldn’t swing a cat in a lunar lander without hitting a 1950s moon colony. Artemis reminds me a lot in vibe and atmosphere of these books, like what Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress could have been if we had more accurate knowledge of lunar and astro chemistry and physics in the 1950s. That’s not to say that it’s similar in style or to say it’s better—rather, Andy Weir captures some of the themes and ideas that Golden Age SF explored with these tropes. Artemis examines how the economy of a moon colony might work (or not) and its hypothetical relationship with organizations back on Earth, but with reference to semi-rigorous ideas about available resources and actual challenges of life on the moon.

Let’s start with the elephant. I feel sorry for Weir, because the success of The Martian has heaped impossible expectations upon Artemis. There is just no way it can live up to that first book. Indeed, I’m going to dodge this discussion by declaring Artemis neither better nor worse than The Martian, merely different. I suspect that some people will prefer the former, and some people will prefer the latter. In achieving difference, though, I think Weir has managed the best possible scenario. Nothing is worse than trying to bottle the same lightning with one’s second book.

Both The Martian and Artemis feature extremely competent protagonists who are happy to explain clever science-based gambits to the reader. In some respects, both Mark Watney and Jazz Bashara are fighting for their survival in inimical environments, although one is slightly more isolated than the other. That’s about where the similarities end, however. The Martian is a pure survival thriller, and I’d argue it’s slightly less enjoyable than Artemis simply because the outcome is either “he dies” or “he survives”—it isn’t all that complex. In contrast, Artemis is an intricate economical thriller, and that is much more the science fiction I enjoy. I can totally see how other people would come to the reverse conclusion (but those people are wrong—er, differently minded).

I’m ambivalent about Jazz’s involvement with Trond Landquivst, both her motivations and the nature of her commission. It’s not quite a “thief with a heart of gold” type mission; it is very self-serving and at the very least amoral. But I guess that’s what makes her interesting and gives her a redemptive ark. She’s somewhat like Peter Quill in this regard: she certainly thinks she’s all that, even while she’s flunking EVA mastery tests.

Weir’s characterization and creation of a voice for Jazz are, neither of them, particularly deft. His writing skills haven’t developed markedly from The Martian. But this is even more evident now that he’s writing a non-white, non-male protagonist. Jazz is basically a textbook example of a man trying to write a woman narrator who is confident in her sexuality and her independence, trying to make her a smartass, and failing so hard I, a dude, must cringe.

It’s a shame, because this mars an otherwise interesting plot. In particular, I love how well Weir uses the various minor characters—the way Bob, Dale, and even Kevin all have these roles to play that ultimately intersect with Jazz’s final, self-determined mission. Weir keeps raising the stakes, transforming what is originally a selfish mission by Jazz into something that will determine the future of her entire home. The fact she keeps making spectacular mistakes along the way only makes it more interesting.

I suspect that if you liked The Martian, you will also like Artemis, whether or not you agree with my comparison of the two, above. Artemis has different goals and a very different atmosphere to it, however, and in my opinion that’s all to the good. Aside from the clunky voice of the main character, this novel has a solid plot, an excellent setting, and the kind of science-based storytelling that Weir likes to infuse into his books. I’m quite pleased that he was not a one-hit wonder.

Would watch the movie, like, yesterday. You get on that, movie-producing people.

Shadowshaper is one of those books I loved from page one, and it only got better. Daniel José Older’s command of character, culture, and language results in a breathtaking contemporary urban fantasy. This book reminds me a lot of Charles de Lint’s work. The protagonist is thrust into a world she doesn’t quite understand, one built on myths and legends only half-shared or half-remembered, and she has to focus her natural talents while trying to learn as much as she can along the way. There are antagonists who seek only power (Wick) as well as the formidable natural foes backing these (the Sorrows). And even your family, if they don’t get it, can stand in your way.

Sierra Santiago loves painting murals. But when she notices someone else’s mural changing, and fading, and when her senile grandfather starts apologizing over and over to her, Sierra starts to wonder what’s up. As more and more people from a group photo with her grandfather start to go missing, only for some of their corpses to start chasing her whenever she hits a party, Sierra soon finds herself embroiled in a decades-old story of love, magic, and betrayal. She has to decide if she can trust Robbie, who knows more about shadowshaping than herself, and which of her friends will be ready to stand with her against those who would take and twist shadowshaping for their own ends.

The first half of the novel, despite being exciting, occasionally feels repetitive. I wish we could get into the intricacies of shadowshaping earlier. There’s something to be said for delaying exposition by interrupting your characters with an attack—but it happens once too often. This novel has decidedly leapt the fence and left the “realism” out of magical realism, yet Older eschews much controlled use of magic in favour of magic happening to and around Sierra and her friends. It isn’t until much closer to the end of the book that Sierra, Robbie, et al actually get to use shadowshaping as a means towards their ends. Also, many of the high-energy moments of this book feel very similar. Lots of monsters or pseudo-monsters chasing or terrorizing our protagonists. I would have liked something that feels a little less episodic or padded and little more like it’s building towards a much more dramatic confrontation.

The intensity and energy in Shadowshaper somewhat makes up for this. In Sierra, Older gives us a protagonist who is fallible while remaining confident and witty. I just loved watching Sierra’s interactions with everyone, from Robbie to her friends to her family. She takes no shit, but at the same time, she is able to admit when she is over her head or out of her depth and in need of assistance or allies. In particular, I love how Sierra and her best friend disagree on numerous things (Bennie is very scientifically-minded and sceptical about the spiritual stuff that Sierra picks up on right away), but when the chips are down and it counts the most, Bennie is there for her, no doubt.

Sierra’s relationship with her family is similarly complex. She loves and cares for her grandfather, even though she discovers he was holding out on her. She loves her mom too—but, as with many teenage girls, they are hot and cold as her mom tries to sway Sierra along certain lines for her own good. My favourite interactions, though, are between Sierra and her brother Juan. He shows up unexpectedly and then just doesn’t go away, and he’s a delightful sidekick to balance out the romance of Robbie.

Older’s diverse cast works so well together. The dialogue is crisp—I particularly like how the non-English words aren’t italicized like they’re some kind of exotic spice sprinkled among the sentences. I can’t comment on the verisimilitude of the way Older depicts the experiences of Sierra and her friends and family, but my friend Christina shared her thoughts on that. As a white folk, I just appreciate every YA novel that isn’t “magical white girl/boy is chosen to save their dystopian society from the plague of sameness adults have forced upon us all”. This is a story which, at its roots, is about family and one’s connections to one’s ancestors. The triumph Sierra arrives at isn’t vanquishing the antagonist but learning about and accepting her role in the continuity of this magic and spirituality.

Can I also say, please, that there is something magical about how Sierra sneaks into a university library to do research. Can I please, please, please have more novels where the protagonist goes to a library? Libraries are valuable sources of information, and it’s so refreshing.

I couldn’t resist, guys. I liked Trading in Danger so much that I couldn’t wait any longer, so I got Marque and Reprisal when last I went to the library, and here I am reading it, almost two months to the day since I read the first book. Like I said on Twitter, Elizabeth Moon writes books that are like crack—except better, because it turns out that crack is actually very bad for you. The first book introduced us to Ky Vatta and provided an intense, compelling space opera. Marque and Reprisal follows up by hugely raising the stakes, dashing our hopes, and then twisting the story arc until you’re just as conflicted and exhausted as Ky.

When I say this book raises the stakes, I mean it raises the stakes. Remember that time in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine when the Dominion occupies Betazed, and suddenly this war got real? Same idea here. In the first book, Ky was a screw-up, but she was a Vatta screw-up. She had a vast, well-connected, wealthy family supporting her. Moon jettisons that first thing with an attack on the Vattas that leaves almost everyone dead. Eventually, Ky is aware of three other Vattas who are still alive (two of them with her). Not only does she have to deal with the trauma of losing her father, she also has to get to the bottom of who (or what) is trying to kill the Vatta family, and stop it. Fast.

The first part of the book, with Ky on Belinta and then later at Lastway, drags slightly. Moon really doesn’t want to skip over large periods of time very often, so while the chapters are action-packed and bleed into one another, it also means time passes pretty slowly. It’s like a slightly less strict 24. Once Ky joins up with Stella and Rafe, however, things get really interesting. I don’t mind at all the way Moon works viewpoints other than Ky’s into the novel, because Stella’s scenes with Rafe and Toby help establish all these new characters. And I was surprised by how I didn’t find Rafe too annoying: it helps that Moon lampshades the “bad boy” character so much that it becomes a non-issue (especially, especially at the end there—oh my).

Stella’s addition to the cast deserves some attention. This is the first time we get to see Ky interact with any Vatta for a long time. Previously, too, the other Vattas were all senior to her. Stella is more her contemporary, and with the remaining Vattas presumed dead, they are pretty close to top of the command chain now. (Can we also get a cheer for just how wonderful all the diverse women in this book are? Stella the spy, Ky the captain, Quincy the engineer, Gracie the elder, even Mehar and Beeah. This book is not MilSF, true, but it feels MilSF adjacent, and it just goes to show you don’t need to stuff your cast full of testosterone.) Stella also offers a great contrast to Ky. Both have reputations as a result of their indiscretions and dishonour. Both misunderstand the other, partly because of those reputations, but also because they don’t know each other’s worlds. I love how Ky keeps deliberating over how much to confess to her cousin: how much should she hold back?

Ky’s moral dilemmas that made her so fascinating in the first book are back, and how. She straight up kills a guy in cold blood, and then she’s like, “I’d totally stop and enjoy this killing high I get, except I’m icky and have a mine to disarm.” That’s ultra-badass and, yeah, borderline psychotic (though to be fair, the guy had it coming). I appreciate, though, that Moon moves beyond the simple “I’m weirded out because I like killing people” dilemma. That was great for the first book, when Ky merely had to worry about the survival of her crew. As she shoulders the burden of rebuilding the Vatta trading empire and finding the source of this conspiracy, it’s only natural that she faces more complicated questions. Stella probably summarizes it best when she confronts Ky about the letter of marque and asks whether Ky’s first loyalty will be to Vatta or to Slotter’s Key, conjecturing that a time will come (if it has not already) when those two parties’ interests diverge.

It’s these underlying problems that really make Marque and Reprisal so satisfying. I mean, yes, on one level it’s just an intense SF adventure. There are EMP mines being slingshotted down corridors and out of airlocks, zero-G knife fights, and more mercenary brinkmanship. There are hints of subtle political machinations, the kinds that make me drool. But beneath all that, there are rich canvases of thought and feeling. These characters aren’t one-dimensional; this is not a Saturday morning cartoon. Beyond the sheer physical demands placed on them, I find myself just marvelling at the decisions they get asked to make (often on little sleep) and thinking that I probably couldn’t do what they do.

Finally, Marque and Reprisal kept surprising me. The narrative is so easy to follow, so simply told, Ky’s plans telegraphed completely … but Moon always manages through a spanner into the works somehow. The simple plans get more complex, and suddenly Ky (or someone else) is improvising. So while I predicted many parts of the resolution, I didn’t see all of it coming—but I certainly enjoyed the result! This, to me, is a win: I love it when books have the capacity to surprise me, especially books I think I have all figured out.

Marque and Reprisal is an excellent sequel to Trading in Danger. It basically replicates the elements of the first book that made it so enjoyable. However, it avoids the most common problems of sequels. Moon definitely doesn’t hold back and is not afraid to make permanent changes to her universe. Similarly, she continues to find ways to put her characters into interesting situations that reveal more about them, or motivate them to change. The result is that rare combination of a resoundingly fun adventure with profound moments and deep themes. It’s nothing less than I’d expect from the author of The Speed of Dark. I have a feeling I’ll be devouring the rest of this series in short order.

My reviews of Vatta’s War:
← Trading in Danger | Engaging the Enemy →

Sam Sykes drops us off very much in media res in Tome of the Undergates. Often I love that kind of thing—exposition is for chumps! But as with my experience with An Ember in the Ashes, perhaps trying to read this just after Desert Bus for Hope was a bad idea. Or perhaps it was having an antihero as a protagonist.

This reminds me a great deal of Best Served Cold. I can see the appeal of this book; I can see why people would enjoy it. There are definitely elements to it that I enjoyed a great deal. But the way Sykes handles the ensemble cast, combined with not feeling all that invested in this quest that they're on, means that I ultimately didn’t care much for it.

Would I come back to it in the future? Maybe. At this point, though, I want to be reading books I really want to finish, not books I think I should finish.

Probably a mistake to start this just as Desert Bus for Hope started; I should have known I wouldn’t get any reading done last week.

In any event, I couldn’t get into An Ember in the Ashes. I don’t think it’s a bad book, or even badly written (though I’m not sure its style is for me). I just didn’t connect with either of the protagonists, and the characterization is a little too clear-cut for me. All the Proper Nouns and things like the Martial Empire and Scholar Empire leave a dystopian-YA taste in my mouth. If I were in a different mood I might overlook this to find a better book beneath, but I’m at the point in the year and my reading head-space where I’m not going to spend extra time trying to get myself to like a book.

DNFed for me, but don’t let that bother you.

Who Fears Death reminds me a lot of Dhalgren, another seminal work of post-apocalyptic speculative fiction. Nnedi Okorafor explores the intersections of tradition, sex, and sexuality; of history and intertextuality. The narrative, while slightly more straightforward than Dhalgren, still challenges and requests a certain level of involvement. Although I didn’t enjoy this as much as I wanted to (and probably won’t watch its adaptation), I think I understand why it has captured the imaginations of so many people, and I think I’d enjoy seeing it become a classic.

Onyesonwu, the eponymous narrator, is an Ewu, a child of rape and violence. Suspect as a result of this heritage, she nevertheless becomes the student of her village’s sorcerer, who helps her unlock the powers she will need to take on her Nuru father—also a powerful sorcerer—and quash the Nuru’s final invasion of the East and extermination of the Okeke people. But along the way, Onyesonwu must contend with everything from conflict amongst her friends to her own uncertainty about her role in a vague, intentionally distorted prophecy.

Okorafor links sexuality to her protagonist quite early in the book, with Onyesonwu describing how she undergoes genital mutilation at eleven to make herself “fit in” with the other girls of her village. From there, Onyesonwu feels a bond with the three other girls who undergo the rite at the same time. The connection between sexual pleasure, sexual desire, and the clitoris (or lack thereof) comes up throughout the rest of the book. And this was a little uncomfortable for me. Normally I’m not that sex-repulsed when it comes to reading, but there was something about the constant emphasis on it that made me less than enthusiastic about continuing the book. I don’t think this would be a problem for most readers, but it was definitely a deterrent for me.

Okorafor also challenges a lot of structural misogyny and racism in her world, and that I am much more down for. Onyesonwu is constantly fighting back against stereotypes and expectations imposed upon her as an Ewu woman. Her companions often endure similar treatment. And, of course, the larger story here is about racial and genocidal hatred and actions destroying entire cultures. Who Fears Death is ambitious to the extreme.

This is where I started to run into problems. For reaching so far, Okorafor actually seems to be doing very little with the plot. We start with a kind of bildungsroman set in Onyesonwu’s village and morphing into a quest structure that then meanders semi-aimlessly for about a hundred pages. The actual climactic confrontation between Onyesonwu and her father burns brightly but briefly, and her subsequent death sequence foreshadowed so much near the beginning of the book similarly elapses quickly and disjointedly. For all of the build-up, the book doesn’t deliver much on its promise of a story, preferring instead to take little side quests into minor characters’ lives and concerns.

The thing is, I really like the overall conflict that Okorafor has set up—the one between the Nuru and the Okeke—and the way Onyesonwu has to confront the dangers inherent in how we let things like religious texts (the Great Book) influence our lives and upbringing. There is just so much smart stuff in this book; it’s a very thought-provoking novel—yet even with the short, sometimes one- or two-page chapters, I found myself just … wanting it to be done. That’s never good.

The nice thing about science fiction and fantasy is that you don’t have to like a book much even as you acknowledge its status as a potential classic. I wanted to like Who Fears Death more, because I’d heard so much good about it, but I didn’t. I think, for the right readers, this is going to be a worthwhile and mindblowing experience. For me, though, it was ultimately thin on story, which left it hard for me to want to spend enough time meditating on its substance.

Second review: November 2017

Gosh, has it really been 7 years—nearly 8?—since I read this? Feels like no time at all.

Anyway, after not enjoying Who Fears Death, I was struck with a sudden … craving (?) for this book. Just an urge to re-read it. I can’t explain why. I just knew it would help.

And it definitely did. I have little to add about the book itself in this second review—my first review stands. I’ll say that I picked up on a lot more of the … uh … sexual stuff this time around. 20-year-old Ben was a precious innocent.

Original review: January 2010

I'm starting to get to the age where I'm reading books now and saying, "Why wasn't this published when I was younger?! This is what I've been missing all these years; this fills the gap that, until it was filled, I never knew existed!" Although Bridge of Birds was published before I was born, it still provokes a similar feeling (one of, "Why didn't I know about this when I was younger?").

There's something seductive about fables and fairy tales—the real, often grim fairy tales that lurk in the subconscious of every culture. In showing us "an ancient China that never was," Barry Hughart embraces the atmosphere of a fable and the kernel of darkness it should contain. Reading Bridge of Birds was fulfilling—not only cathartic, but reassuring.

The repetitive structure of the plot (quest, then return to the village, quest, etc.) combines with the rhythmic style of the prose to manipulate one's emotions. Although Bridge of Birds has a happy ending, with the heroes vanquishing the villain and freeing the damsel in distress, there's a sinister sense that they got off easy and that more was at stake than was ever apparent. There are books that have happy endings because they are "feel good" books that put little at stake. Then there are books that have happy endings because they have something to say about happiness. Bridge of Birds is the latter.

But here I am, talking in vague generalities. One reason I'm doing this is that Bridge of Birds, to me, feels like a complete narrative only when considered as a whole … analyzing the individual parts of the story removes them from the context they need to remain vital. As the ending of the story reveals, it's impossible to understand the quest for the Great Root of Power without understanding the Duke of Ch'in and why he must be deposed. But why believe me? Li Kao, although he has a slight flaw in his character, says it best:

This is a fellow who arranged things so that anyone who went after him would have to wander through the landscape of a homicidal fairy tale, which makes no sense if you think of him as a great and powerful ruler, but which makes perfect sense if you think of him as he once was: a cowardly little boy lying in bed at night, staring in terror at every noise and seeing monsters in every shadow. He grew older, but it can scarcely be said that he grew up, because he was so frightened at the thought of death that he was willing to commit any crime, and even to lose his heart if it would keep him from the Great Wheel of Transmigrations.

This is a diagnosis of the Duke of Ch'in that strikes me as accurate, not just of the character but of the evils he represents. Hughart is also a master of foreshadowing in this book, and as the Duke of Ch'in's identity falls into place and we learn how he came to be so powerful, we see just how well Hughart laid out the steps leading up to the climax: the myth of the Princess of Birds and Star Shepherd, the scrutinizing powers of the Old Man of the Mountain, the tales of ginseng.

It's true that there's an inordinate amount of coincidence in the book, so much so that it becomes almost trite. Yet I'm inclined to forgive Hughart; he takes a gamble, and it pays off.

Aside from his above remarks, and his oft-repeated introductory phrase, I most enjoyed Li Kao for his interpretation of why Number Ten Ox and Miser Shen were devoted to Lotus Cloud but he was not. Master Li's "slight flaw" in his character prevented him from attaining the innocence of these other two, and thus prevented him from seeing Lotus Cloud's hidden godly nature. In that sense, I suspect the Duke of Ch'in is guilty of having supernumerary flaws of character. Master Li has lived long and has grown too cynical to stay completely uncorrupted. He has lived well, however, and preserved his sense of adventure and justice. The Duke of Ch'in, on the other hand, has lived too long, and has not lived well. His longevity has made him a more perverted, corrupted, and more cowardly man than he was in his youth. I found the contrast between the Duke and Master Li the most striking; there were many others, such as the brain/brawn pairing of Li and Number Ten Ox, and the transformations of Henpecked Ho and Miser Shen.

For such a short book, there's an awful lot to Bridge of Birds. The book's description doesn't do it justice and in fact doesn't let on to what actually takes place in the story. As such, Bridge of Birds is something of a hidden gem: it is far more fantastical, much more magical, than what one would initially expect. Suspend your scepticism along with your disbelief, and Bridge of Birds will win over your heart (just don't put it in a box in the middle of a city at the bottom of a lake).

You have to watch out for those robots. Never know when they might develop thoughts of their own. Or sexual orientations, kinks, and an understanding of the way humans misunderstand them.

Autonomous plumbs the depths of humanity through split narration. Annalee Newitz follows a very human, and very flawed, anti-patent crusader and a pair of patent-enforcement agents, one of whom is a self-aware robot just starting out. As the two stories unfold, so too does Newitz’s vision of a 22nd-century Earth altered by economic upheavals, global warming and climate change, and AI evolutions. The powerhouse blurb from Neal Stephenson on the front of my edition—“Autonomous is to biotech and AI what Neuromancer was to the internet”—is as intriguing as it is exciting (not to mention the vague but squee-worthy blurb from Gibson himself on the back!). More on that later.

I picked this book up in the hopes it would get me out of a two-book slump, and I wasn’t disappointed. Newitz’s narration is crisp and clear. I love how she paints the picture of a very different society without descending too far into extraneous exposition. The nature of her ideas has a strong Doctorowish quality to them, but she eschews Doctorow’s tendency towards overly-didactic hypothetical conversations (this is not a criticism of Doctorow, mind you, but there is a time and place, Cory). Autonomous is a short book, but it feels like a lot happens and it covers a lot of ground. I love that.

Our initial protagonist is Jack (Judith) Chen. Once an ambitious grad student, she realized in her younger days that her path lay outside academia. After a protest leads to a stint of jail time, Jack disappears, resurfacing as an anti-patent pirate who reverse-engineers drugs so she can sell them to people who can get them in the hands of those who can’t afford the pharma versions. Jack is a high-tech biohacking Robin Hood, in essence, though she is no saint. I quite enjoy how Newitz unfolds Jack’s backstory through flashback throughout the novel, revealing enough to interest us and provide insight into her character without distracting us from the main thrust of Jack’s plot.

Soon we meet the flip side of the coin. Eliasz and Paladin are enforcement agents who have jurisdiction to go after people infringing upon patents (among other things). One is an experienced Polish man and the other is a military-grade robot with a dead person’s brain in her carapace that is basically just for facial recognition processing. As they begin working together, they also develop a close personal relationship. Eliasz expresses an attraction towards Paladin that is mixed up with his misinterpretations of Paladin’s gender. (Paladin nominally uses he for the first part of the book, then switches to she mid-way through, for reasons I’m not going to get into here, which is why I’m using she/her throughout my review.) This allows Newitz to comment on some interesting ideas around sexuality, gender, and embodiment. Although she never goes as deep, perhaps, as I’d enjoy, there are some nuggets in there worth exploring.

These two plots take a long time to dovetail, but the parallelism is entertaining in and of itself. Newitz is exploring issues of identity and autonomy (surprising, I know) from different sides. Jack nominally has so much autonomy, being essentially a free spirit and a free agent, yet she is constrained by resources, by having to keep out of reach of law enforcement, and by the ghosts of her past. Paladin, in her capacity as an IPC agent, has more resources and, essentially, a license to kill, yet she lacks true autonomy—her very memories are accessible to IPC botadmins, stored as they are in the cloud. On a wider level, mostly in the background and occasionally intersecting with the main plot, we glimpse a society that allows human indenture, sells enfranchisement and citizenship packages, and has basically rethought what it means to be a participatory member of our society.

As a result, Autonomous ponders what power we will have and the form our social capital will take if we enter a world where governments are fading-to-nonexistent and corporations vie with economic coalitions for control over the fabric of our society. This is the type of science fiction I love, and I appreciate how Newitz tries to walk the fine line between gushing and speculating and extrapolating like the sci-fi–loving nerd she is and dangling just enough tantalizing ideas in front of the reader to get us gushing and speculating and extrapolating about it. This is the novel’s strength: it offloads much of the cognitive load onto the reader but does so in a way that is neither demanding nor disappointing.

I want to return to that Stephenson blurb. Taken at face-value—which is, I’m sure, how the marketing department would like you to take it—this is quite a coup, this comparison between Autonomous and Neuromancer, arguably one of the touchstones of cyberpunk. Yet let’s step back for a moment and consider another interpretation: Stephenson says this book is “to biotech and AI what Neuromancer was to the internet”. If you’ve read Neuromancer, you know that its depiction of cyberspace is nothing like what we ended up with online. Gibson’s novel was prophetic in some ways, certainly, but it was highly limited to a very 1980s vision of what a networked society could be. The elapsed decades have since demonstrated marked divergence with Gibsonian cyberspace.

And so, Stephenson is doubly correct here. Autonomous, like Neuromancer, presents a breathtaking look at how the relatively new fields of biohacking and autonomous AI might work in the future. At the same time, it is a prophetic look constrained by the current situation of our early twenty-first century. I have no doubt that we’ll look back at Autonomous 30 years from now and see that our society has already diverged a great deal from what Newitz shows us here.

This is not a criticism—it would be odd to ding an author for not being able to predict the future, unless, of course, they are claiming some kind of psychic ability. Rather, it’s a reflection upon and reminder of how our perceptions of science fiction change over time. The people who read Neuromancer when it came out had a very different reaction to me reading it as a 19-year-old in 2009 who pretty much matured on our own version of cyberspace. Similarly, I’d be very interested in what future readers think of Autonomous as technology like 3D-printing, self-driving cars, and organically-grown limb replacements becomes more ubiquitous.

Newitz’s debut novel provides me with a great mixture of story, food for thought, and characters. There are times when I think she could have done more. And I’m ambivalent about Eliasz and Paladin’s ending—part of me thinks it is corny and trite, and the other part thinks it’s kind of sweet, and an innovative twist on an old trope. I’d be interested in hearing others’ thoughts on this. On the whole, though, Autonomous is definitely worth picking up if this is the kind of fiction you’re into.

Yay, Ghüs is back for a bit!

For the third year in a row I bought Saga for my friend for a Christmas gift. As long as they keep releasing one of these volumes every year, I’m golden. Volume 6 jumps ahead four years, so Hazel is in kindergarten, and Alana and Marko are kind-of together again, searching for their daughter. Meanwhile, Prince Robot is enjoying being “off the grid” and away from the court, raising his son in peace—until pretty much everyone crashes his party. Sorry not sorry.

Without a doubt, Hazel’s larger role as a protagonist is this volume’s most notable feature. Now old enough to have some agency over her life, Hazel is starting to grasp the politics of her situation. She and her grandmother, along with one of the women who were trying to kidnap them, are in a detention centre on Landfall. Yes, after all these attempts to keep Hazel out of Landfall’s hands, she ironically ends up right under their noses. No one except Hazel’s grandmother knows her secret—but this changes, and when it does, we’re propelled into another intense and dramatic sequence of the type Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples have become so well-known for. Hazel and her grandmother must trust people who might betray them, before their time runs out.

So far, Hazel is proving a very interesting character. Her perspective is certainly unique. I especially enjoy her interactions with Miss Petrichor, a trans Wreathian character. Petrichor discovers Hazel’s secret but jumps to the conclusion that Hazel is the product of a Landfall man raping a Wreath woman. Here we have someone who is subject to discrimination herself, yet even she displays the bigotry and disgust we’ve come to expect as the reaction to Hazel’s existence. Once again, Vaughan and Staples provide us with interesting, multi-dimensional characters who have both redeeming and unlikeable qualities.

I could do without the two journalist guys who are poking around this story. I get how they fit into the plot, providing the Will with a way back towards Robot and (eventually) Alana and Marko. I guess I’m just impatient and want to see more of Hazel’s story! If she is this cool when she is a little kid, then I’m eager for the volumes that depict her actions as a teenager.

I also have to hand it to Vaughan and Staples for their excellent world-building once again. This is an area in which the graphic nature of Saga offers a leg up over a strictly prose work. Staples can, in a single page, subtly depict the cosmopolitan nature of this galactic society, the way that all these different species can coexist. This serves as a stark contrast to the homophobia and discrimination that some of the characters face. Saga’s is such a colourful, visually interesting world, and Vaughan and Staples manage to hint at a long and complex galactic history without getting bogged down in exposition.

If anything, Volume 6 only disappoints in that it doesn’t deliver a single, intense climactic moment. There are some really good scenes, some very intense scenes, but not one over-arching scene that anchors this volume in my mind. After the deaths and diversions introduced by the previous volume, this seems like a course-correction on the way to whatever goes down in the next one. I guess I’ll find out next Christmas!

My reviews of Saga:
← Volume 5 | Volume 7 →

As our society becomes ever-more data-driven, I am increasingly interested in reading books such as Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception. I want to know how numbers, algorithms, data, and mathematics are being used (or abused) to make decisions, mount arguments, and influence the course of civilization. Sound lofty? Good. Charles Seife’s incisive and interesting writing brings this topic to life. With clear, topical examples, he shows us how misunderstanding or misplaced faith in numbers and measurements can lead to us making decisions on false pretenses.

Seife begins by examining what we mean when we throw around big numbers, such as “sixty-five million years” as the age of a dinosaur fossil. He defines disestimation, a fallacy whereby we assume something is more accurate if it is more precise. Seife wants to establish from the outset that there are limitations to our ability to measure the real world, and that not being aware of these limitations is where a lot of people go wrong, even if they have no intention of misleading or misrepresenting. From there, Proofiness veers more into political territory. With occasional glances at advertising copy, Seife smoothly discusses problems with polling, vote-counting, etc., with examples from such high-profile events as the disputed election of Al Franken in Minnesota or Bush v. Gore in Florida, 2000.

For a popular math book, there isn’t that much actual math in here (which I suspect most readers will consider a good thing). There’s some basic statistics and probability, nothing you haven’t seen before in high school, and then a little more intense discussion relegated to the appendices. Seife’s explanation how an “average” change in something like, say, salaries or taxes, can be very misleading is very appropriate for contemporary readers in an age where American politicians are trying to pass tax reform that only helps the wealthy.

Speaking of relevance, parts of Proofiness do feel a little aged seven years on. Seife pulls from such events as the Vietnam War and OJ Simpson’s murder trial. This is the double-edged sword of trying to teach these concepts with real-world examples. I’d love to see an update to this book where he talks about the more recent presidential elections, or the Brexit referendum, etc. The subject matter here is still so relevant!

As a mathematician, I can’t say I learned a lot from this book; it felt very familiar. But most of Seife’s explanations are lucid and lovely. I appreciate how he points out that both the left and right are guilty of proofiness—this is not a matter of political ideology but of desire for political power through any means necessary. For a lay reader, this book will probably be a welcome primer that doesn’t overstay its welcome but will leave you wanting to learn more.