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MLK Day no school
Jan. 15th, 2024 11:00 pmSuper quiet day.
I had a delightful phone conversation with A.
I walked with M.
I binged Murderbot Diaries (not all of them — but I did get through the first 4). It is, as everyone says, super. The handling of gender is really interesting; the author is very skilled and very good at subverting expectations. I often really dislike first person narratives because they feel false and then of course the first person narration is often “cleverly” untrustworthy. Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun was particularly infuriating, because there was literally no way to make the story make sense, other than, ha ha I’m an author and you thought this was a story but guess what it’s just fiction it doesn’t have to make sense which, true, and also, fuck you.
Martha Wells doesn’t do _any_ of that. Further, the four stories work pretty well individually and also form a cohesive whole. While the surface level construction of the story is much simpler than, say, Becky Chambers Wayfarers’ quartet, like Chambers, Wells’ has embedded a really amazing critique of corporate structure, slavery-by-any-other-name, and the dark-side-of-human-community tendency to have difficult doing anything other than Othering or forcing everyone into the same value system as their own.
Again, like Chambers, these are dark, dark tales. Every time it looks like someone is going to accomplish something and make it a little better, sorta, somehow, for a while, it is shortly exposed as being a cog in yet a larger wheel of Awful in a grand machine of Horror. Chambers and Wells both retain a degree of optimism and they have a ferocious commitment to the development of the individual and the individual’s ability to connect with others. I’m debating about whether I’m going to recommend these to A.; I _have_ recommended them to my walking partner, and I wasn’t the first person to do so. Her aunt recommended them as well.
Great stuff. Apparently there is a TV series on Apple whatsis in the offing with Skarsgard. Obviously, I am sad they didn’t pick a woman actor, but in the universe of male appearing possibilities, Skarsgard is a plausible choice. He’ll get the uncanny valley right, for sure.
So far, I’ve been reading the Murderbot stuff on kindle unlimited; I will have to pay for at least one later book, which is fine, and I may wind up going back and buying all of them and the audiobooks, if A. likes them especially.
I had a delightful phone conversation with A.
I walked with M.
I binged Murderbot Diaries (not all of them — but I did get through the first 4). It is, as everyone says, super. The handling of gender is really interesting; the author is very skilled and very good at subverting expectations. I often really dislike first person narratives because they feel false and then of course the first person narration is often “cleverly” untrustworthy. Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun was particularly infuriating, because there was literally no way to make the story make sense, other than, ha ha I’m an author and you thought this was a story but guess what it’s just fiction it doesn’t have to make sense which, true, and also, fuck you.
Martha Wells doesn’t do _any_ of that. Further, the four stories work pretty well individually and also form a cohesive whole. While the surface level construction of the story is much simpler than, say, Becky Chambers Wayfarers’ quartet, like Chambers, Wells’ has embedded a really amazing critique of corporate structure, slavery-by-any-other-name, and the dark-side-of-human-community tendency to have difficult doing anything other than Othering or forcing everyone into the same value system as their own.
Again, like Chambers, these are dark, dark tales. Every time it looks like someone is going to accomplish something and make it a little better, sorta, somehow, for a while, it is shortly exposed as being a cog in yet a larger wheel of Awful in a grand machine of Horror. Chambers and Wells both retain a degree of optimism and they have a ferocious commitment to the development of the individual and the individual’s ability to connect with others. I’m debating about whether I’m going to recommend these to A.; I _have_ recommended them to my walking partner, and I wasn’t the first person to do so. Her aunt recommended them as well.
Great stuff. Apparently there is a TV series on Apple whatsis in the offing with Skarsgard. Obviously, I am sad they didn’t pick a woman actor, but in the universe of male appearing possibilities, Skarsgard is a plausible choice. He’ll get the uncanny valley right, for sure.
So far, I’ve been reading the Murderbot stuff on kindle unlimited; I will have to pay for at least one later book, which is fine, and I may wind up going back and buying all of them and the audiobooks, if A. likes them especially.