完成した作品 (Finished Work)
Cyber Mage, Saad Z. Hossain. Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2089 is no place for the weak. Hossain spins an excellent, riveting tale of what happens when an uber-geek and his unlikely allies get crosswise with malevolent djinn and their human lackeys. It suffers from patches of slowness in places, but overall is a very pleasing expedition into an unlikely future world which is both familiar and very, very strange.
Smirk index: All clear: 2 points (Perfectly cromulent words.)
Immersion factor: Shallow water: 1 pt.
Writing quality: High: 2 points.
Interest/innovation: Above-average: 1.5 points.
Character/plot development: Above-average: 1.5 points.
Total: 8/10
The Kill Chain: How Emerging Technologies Threaten America's Military Dominance, Christian Brose. Brose is a former aide to the late Sen. John McCain and a Hill staffer. Kill Chain paints a strong, vivid picture of a US national security establishment suffering profound organizational and strategic malaise in the face of dizzying technological change and new “peer competitors.” Brose knows his stuff, but the book’s major weak point is his difficulty deciding if he wants to focus on the technical-tactical, operational, industrial policy or strategic levels. Trying to hit them all weakens the impact. Paired this with Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat for compelling but profoundly downbeat look at what could happen without serious change. If we’re lucky, this will be a seminal book. If not, prophet without honor territory looms.
Non-fiction. Clearly written, convincing, interesting and innovative point of view.
Total: 8/10
Strange Defeat, Marc Bloch. Bloch was a French historian and army reservist who fought in both world wars. This book, written between the fall of France and Bloch’s execution for Resistance activities, is a sweeping analysis of why and how the French army and state collapsed so quickly in 1940. Convincing and literate case study in systemic organizational failure on a catastrophic scale. Read as an adjunct to The Kill Chain, this is a cautionary tale for the contemporary US. Worth (and will get) a longer, stand-alone treatment.
Non-fiction. Somewhat dated writing style and lots of “inside baseball”, helped by a good translation. Fascinating point of view.
Total: 7.5/10
Making Wolf, Tade Thompson. Last of the Thompson reads I started in December. This was outstanding, and will go into a longer piece just on his work. It continues the Thomson trend of writing about identity, in this case through the adventures of an African immigrant security guard who leaves the UK for a short visit home, with a profound outcome.
Smirk index: All clear — 2 points (Zero smirks.)
Immersion factor: Full body — 2 points.
Writing quality: Above-average — 1.5 points.
Interest/innovation: Above-average — 1.5 points.
Character/plot development: Above-average — 1.5 points.
Total: 8.5/10
Two Truths And A Lie, Sarah Pinsker. “Everything was true, or true enough.” Stella has a problem with telling the truth. She meets her match in the host of an unsettling TV show which she was in the audience for as a kid--or was she? In the end, her plastic sense of self and lack of an anchor for her life help her slip into someone else’s story. Unsettling little novelette which won multiple awards.
Smirk factor: All clear -- 2pts
Immersion factor: Shallow -- 1pt
Writing quality: High -- 2pts
Character/plot development: Average: -- 1 pt
Innovative/interesting: Above Average -- 1.5pts
Total: 7.5/10
The Apex Book of World SF: Vol. 4, Mahvesh Murad and Lavie Tidhar, eds. This is from a well-established series and offers a wide array of carefully curated stories. Highlights for me included Isabel Yap’s haunting Japanese-influenced A Cup of Salt Tears, Julie Novakova’s beautiful tale of exploration The Symphony of Ice and Dust, and Samuel Marolla’s bizarre tale of horror, Black Tea. I was also, as ever, excited to see something from Saad Hussein! Very little didn’t resonate with me in some way in this collection. Worth trying to sample a broad, diverse perspective on SF.
Smirk factor: Almost all-clear -- 1.5pts (Generally polished.)
Immersion factor: Waist-deep -- 1.5 pts (YMMV with this many stories)
Writing quality: High 2 pts (Nothing stood out as not belonging)
Character/plot development: Above average -- 1.5 pts.
Innovative/interesting: Above average -- 1.5 pts
Total: 8/10
And…
John Scalzi’s Interdependency Trilogy, reviewed separately. And a series of five P. K. Lentz works—read in the service of inquiry.
品質管理の失敗 (Failed Quality Control)
A History of What Comes Next, Sylvain Neuvel. Downgraded from the suspended pile in last month’s review. To recap:
“I don’t quite know what to make of this. A mysterious woman is helping Werner von Braun escape from the collapsing Nazi regime--and running from an inexorable dark force which threatens to take her life, as it has for generations before her. I’m debating whether the sense that this is dragging is just because it’s starting up and Neuvel is peeling the onion on a larger plot, or if it’s just not my thing. (22%)”
The answer, apparently, is that it’s just not my thing.
Smirk index: All clear: 2 points (Zero smirks. Also, has a PhD but doesn’t write like it--fortunately.)
Immersion factor: Bone dry: 0 points.
Writing quality and interest/innovation: Average: 1 x 2 = 2 points.
Character/plot development: Above-average: 1.5 points.
Total: 5.5/10
(Also see the stand-alone review of Ghost Galaxy Omnibus.)
作業進行中 (Work In Process)
Vicarious, Rhett C. Bruno. This is a tough book to pin down. I like the general idea: an indolent, self-involved twit obsessed with reality TV star gets kicked out of perfect-yet-dystopian future world but carries on undaunted with his obsession. It’s proven tough to actually sit down and read the thing, though, for reasons that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s not bad. But apparently doesn’t have that essential “hook” that would make finishing it easier. Currently stalled at 53%.
The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State, Deirdre Nansen McCloskey and Alberto Mignardi. “Two libertarians walk into a state-run bar...” A reaction to the recent up welling of left- and right-wing interest in industrial policy, specifically Mariana Mazzucato’s The Entrepreneurial State. The substance of the book is fine (to be fair, partly because it preaches to the choir of my prior assumptions.) While it’s persuasive and informative it’s just not very much fun to actually, you know, read. Pondering de-funding this initiative after 48%.
Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey. This novella was a Hugo and Locus award nominee, and came via a Tor free book offer. It’s a reinvention of the western genre, in a setting “full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.” (Thank you, Goodreads.) The writing is good and the story interesting; I’m finding the tone a bit biting and negative. We’ll see. 19%.