And now for something distinctly different, to mangle the Monty Python quote... How to Astronaut (An Insider's Guide to Leaving Planet Earth) is a non-fiction book. Yes, I occasionally read these, too! The author, Terry Virts, is a former jet pilot, test pilot, Space Shuttle pilot, and ISS Commander, who retired from his Astronaut career at NASA in 2016.
Like many former astronauts he has capitalised on his experiences by publishing books – in his case this is (so far) a coffee table book with spaceflight and Earth view pictures, a luxury replica of the Apollo 11 flight plan, and now this book, which circles around memories and lessons learned as part of his career in aeronautics and astronautics.
The book consists of an Introduction, 51 chapters split into 6 sections, an Afterword (written a bit later than the rest – it deals with Coronavirus, and the respective virtues of isolating in space vs on Earth), and Acknowledgments, Index, Credits.
The sections for the main part, the 'meat' of the book, are roughly grouped chronologically – Training, Launch, Orbit, Spacewalking, Deep Space (a bit of a more theoretical departure there), and Re-Entry. It covers all the usual topics, of course, including a fairly detailed description of the always-present topic of going to the toiled in space (no, it's done quite tastefully, no need to worry).
Elana Gomel came to my attention first with her magnificent story Going East in Rachel Swirsky & Sean Wallace 's collection People Of The Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy.
She has since published 3 novels, a collection, and loads of short fiction - expect a few pointers to short stories to come your way here, or maybe even a full review as and when I get to do one!
Here's Where the Streets Have No Name - a story, based on a quite standard trope, but with a rather unusual, claustrophobic treatment as we follow the crew of a commercial start-up desperately trying to make contact with the inhabitants of Gliese 512, who have roundly ignored their presence so far. But, as you could have guessed, there is more to this than meets the eye (and remote drones deployed), of course.
Read it all at the link below - the image on the right is by the digital artist Alex Andreev, and is not connected to the story except in my head. Go check out his site, I think his work rather impressive!
I don’t think I really need to introduce Cory Doctorow - ? Canadian blogger living in London, SF writer, BoingBoing co-editor, and one of Forbes’ Top 25 Influencers on the Internet - ? Ring a bell - ? Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is, at least for me, reading into Cory’s back-catalogue, as I only really became aware of him in 2008 when Little Brother (the book he published after the one at hand) went supernova. This book here is less social criticism, and more magic realism. With some added geekery, of course.
But let’s start at the beginning - the book begins with Alan (or Adam. Or Andy. Or…), through whose eyes the story is told, doing up a new place on Wales Av, Toronto, in a very OCD way, and then moving into it. We watch him meet his neighbours, the siblings Natalie and Link, and the couple Krishna and “Mimi” (we never learn her real name). Mimi has wings, which Krishna regularly cuts off so she can pass as human. Alan himself is not really human. Not human. His father is a mountain, and his mother a washing machine (no, not kidding). We learn he has several brothers - first there is Billy (or Bob, Brad, Benny…), who can see into the future. Then Charlie (Clem, Carlos, Cory…), who is an island. Doug (Dan, David, Dearbone… I’m sure you get the picture. The names are used interchangeably, only the first letter matters). D is the family black sheep, and has been killed by his brothers once before. And then there are E, F, and G, who fit into each other like a Matryoshka Doll, and can only eat in that configuration (talk about interdependency!).
You see, this is about a dysfunctional family, really. And, as you can gather from above, too, not a very ‘normal’ or human-normal family, either. The story really kicks into gear when E&F come to A because G is gone (he wanted to talk to their father the mountain, and never returned), and they will die without him. And the suspicion is that D has killed him, in retribution to his own killing, years ago. The brothers, we learn, have generally an exceedingly violent relationship and way of dealing with each other.
Now this book is a bit of a departure. Not only because it's my first 'proper' run-in with Solarpunk - the aesthetics are familiar, but I had not engaged with the mindset, or the fiction before. But also because of fact that, in a collection containing predominantly stories by established, published authors I fail to recognise most names – fascinating, as Spock would have put it!
But it's even more of a departure given the sequence I read this in, coming straight of the dark tail end of Peter Watt's blogging ('Peter Watts is an Angry Sentient Tumour'. Recommended, if pessimistic about the times we live in) and straight into stories which, by definition, are positive in outlook, optimistic to some extent, based in cooperation, and sometimes plucky to the point of reminisce of some of Eric Frank Russell's stories. A disorienting and jarring change, trust me.
Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters is the 2nd book in a series by World Weaver Press; the first one is called Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers (also edited by Sarena Ulibarri) – not sure if there are more of these in planning, or which settings or seasons they would cover! But I'm planning to seek out the Summers book now, and might well be interested in more, should my reading time allow...
But back to the Book at hand – it kicks off with an Introduction by the editor, introducing us to the general idea of Solarpunk as well as the criteria for the selection of stories - climate change, unpredictable weather, greenhouses, alternative living arrangements, cooperation et al. But it also talks us through some of the stories, and the mindsets and tropes visible. This might be about living in areas where humans could not before Global Warming, or about more extreme weather patters. It could be about abolishing Winter entirely, or about going back to the good old days of having 'proper' winters (don't get me started...). Or, in some stand-out cases, about having glasshouses where winter is preserved (now, how's that for a reversal), or about embracing winter on an artificial ice sheet created for a year-end party at the North Pole, some kind of icy Burning Man (great story that, too!).
The approaches of the stories vary greatly, from re-purposing and survival in a post-apocalyptic world all the way to large scale geo-engineering. And whilst the quality is consistently high I found that some concepts and the storytelling weaving around them were, in my opinion, heads and shoulders above some more pedestrian efforts (it's a collection, after all. And your opinions and tasted might well be entirely different to mine!). Every story has a short biography of the author at the end, giving some more detail and background; I felt that, whilst interesting in themselves as I was not familiar with the authors, that these didn't really add anything to my understanding or enjoyment of the stories themselves.
It's been quiet here, I know. The tumbleweed has come, and buggered off again.
Me, I had COVID in early spring. Not too bad, as illnesses go, in my case. But it knocked me sideways, in some way. Between long COVID, work stress (I work in healthcare), and the general political clusterfuck on both sides of the Atlantic I have been left in a state, where I have not read a book, never mind written about one, in 9 months now.
I have, fresh of the press, Neal Asher's Lockdown Tales sitting in front of me. Maybe some topical short stories from a writer I really enjoy will help me get back in the saddle? Here's to hope...
Meanwhile, I'd like to point you to two efforts that came out of the COVID disruption and lockdowns, both entitled Decameron, for reasons all too transparent.
First out of the gate, simply because I host it, is this collection by friends, acquaintances, and others struggling to make sense of this new world order: Decameron: Storytelling in the Time of the Pandemic
And secondly, in a much bigger, much more professional, and in large part financially driven (half/half to the authors and a charitable organisation) way, the Jo Walton-curated New Decameron (you need to be a Patron to read most of it. Best spent 1$ of your life I reckon).
Some books you pick by their cover, and some for their author, or their topic. This one, even if I wouldn't automatically reach for it anyway due to it being by Peter Watts, I would have picked up for its eyebrow-raising title... which, apparently, is a pull quote by Annalee Newitz about the author. And no, I have so far failed to establish the circumstances or context for it. Hints on a postcard appreciated.
Peter Watts is an award-winning Canadian hard SF author and “reformed marine biologist” (his own words), with 5 published Novels (one of them published in two volumes for ‘commercial considerations’) and 2 collections of short stories (including 'Ten Monkeys Ten Minutes' - IMHO the greatest book title ever) to his name. Plus, now this, of course. He has been labelled a “sociological futurist Lovecraft” in a discussion on Charlie Stross’ blog, just to throw in another cracking quote; and is the go-to author for a number of people when their outlook on life, our society, and our future becomes a little too positive. Yes, you can surely call him a realist, but I can assure you he doesn't sugarcoat his predictions or pull his punches; he has not been called a “science fiction writer and worst-case scenarist” for nothing!
Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor, the book at hand, is essentially non-fiction; it is sourced form 'The Crawl' as he calls his blog on rifters.com ('No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons') from where he and the editor culled 80k words from the 660k of available ramblings; plus from his regular column in the Polish magazine Nowa Fantastika – more on his popularity in these parts of the world below. The blog posts in the book are dated, which is helpful if you want an idea of when things were written in terms of global events, or if you want to go and track them down on his blog. They are not arranged chronologically, and neither are they ordered entirely by topic; I have summarily failed to determine what the logic is in the arrangement.
“In love with the moment. Scared shitless of the future”
The book is subtitled as 'revenge fantasies and essays', and claims to contain 'over 50 collected essays' (err, there's 51, plus a 'From The Author' chapter. Hello marketing, good to see you're keeping up!). I have no intention to review every individual entry, so I'll list some highlights of what you'll read and learn about below, so you can confirm for yourself that this really is a book for you!
It's been quiet here, I know. The tumbleweed has come, and buggered off again.
