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Backwash by Frederick Nebel

Originally published May 1932 in Black Mask; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

PG

(D, L, V)

Drug Use (??) {Character is an alcoholic; other characters alcohol and tobacco}

Coarse Language (PG) {Not much}

Violence (PG) {Again not much}

Representations

Gender:

I think there is exactly one woman in the story. She is important, but not active.

Sex:

Sexuality of hetero sorts is a driver of the plot, displayer implicitly.

Race & Ethnicity:

Far as I could tell, everyone is white USAian. One character by name and description might have been of southern European origin.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

One character is an alcoholic, does that count?

Awards

None found

Notes

Liked this one too, although it seemed a bit odd the supposed main detective of the series played so little of a role. Actually I don't think the crime was even solved, although it worked out. Don't think that was the main concern here. This one reminded me strongly of the Harvey Dent plot-line from The Dark Knight.

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Mistral by Raoul Whitfield

Originally published December 15, 1931 in Adventure; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

PG

(L, D, V)

Coarse Language (PG)

Drug Use (PG) {Tobacco, alcohol}

Violence (PG) {Only one incident toward the end, dramatic and tense but not graphic}

Representations

Gender:

Male protagonist, male characters.

Sex:

Not noted.

Race & Ethnicity:

Mostly (presumed-)white European, some US. According to the story intro, the writer has a Spanish-Filipino detective but I don't think he's the lead here, and if the lead's ethnicity were indicated I missed it.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

One character has a scar. That seems to be all.

Awards

Not found.

Notes

I liked this one. Not sure what to say about it, I suppose I found the detective character intriguing and am curious to read more of him, except I think he was a one-off. I rather felt the growing empathy and guilt wert the other guy.

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Round Trip by W. R. Burnett

Originally published 1929 in Harper's; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

PG

(D, L)

Drug Use (PG) {Tobacco and alcohol}

Coarse Language (PG) {Not strong, I suppose not too frequent for so short a story}

Representations

Gender:

Tight third-person on male protagonist, only men have speaking parts.

Sex:

Vaguely heterosexual, in the sense that dancing with girls happens.

Race & Ethnicity:

Italian Mafiosi vs Irish cops.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

The protagonist catches a random cold. That is all, I think.

Awards

Found no sign of any. Don't expect to find any before the second half of the century.

Notes

This was very short. Kind of darkly amusing with the contextually innocent Mafioso being turned around by the police.

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A few weeks ago I finished reading Don't Let Her See Me Cry: A Mother's Story, an autobiography by a Victorian woman of the sort that ends "and then I wrote this book".

Anyway, I found it interestingly jarring the way she used 'straight' to mean 'person who is not a drug-user', rather the use I am accustomed to of 'person who is heterosexual'. Not new to me as such, but definitely not what I am used to. It was weird to see sentences like "As I drove away I couldn't believe that a 'straight' person seemed to be attracted to me!" Referring of course to her first relationship with another woman after being released from prison.

What was a new word to me was 'wangle', which I had initially taken to be a mispelling of 'wrangle', but apparently is actually a word.

So there you go.

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The Scorched Face by Dashiell Hammett

Originally published May 1925 in Black Mask; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

MA15+

(V, S, L, D)

Violence (MA15+) {Mostly obscured, too frequent and in some places I think too nasty to get away with M)

Sexual References (M) {Sexual activity implied}

Coarse Language (PG) {Mild, infrequent, only in instances of strong emotion}

Drug References (PG) {Qualifications for this don't change between PG and MA}

Representations

Gender:

Narration is first-person from a male perspective. Other characters almost exclusively male, except interviewees.

Sex:

Sexuality is hetero male oriented, any implication of sexual interaction between women in context of male-centred group sex. Said orgies being depicted as sufficiently shameful to ruin the participants' lives.

Race & Ethnicity:

West-coast US, almost entirely white. Some characters referred to by ethnicities of European origin, e.g. Italian. Small number of black characters appear in servant / bodyguard role, referred to alternately as 'black' or 'Negroes'.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

None noticed.

Awards

Unknown, presumed none.

Notes

I started reading this story on a short break during my one of my shifts. Even reading just a few pages I was impressed by Hammett's technique. Feels like I could learn a lot about brevity in mystery construction. Very taught, effectively written. Can see why he would have been such an influential figure.

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Volume 1, Mission 1: The Initiation of a Legend by Rikdo Koshi

Originally published 1997 by Shonengahosha Co.. Ltd, Tokyo; this edition July 2003, September 2003 printing

Publisher: Viz

M

(V, S, L)

Violence (M) {Mainly off-screen, for comedic purposes}

Sexual References (PG)

Language (PG)

Representations

Gender:

Female protagonist, not particularly tightly bound camera. Mostly male extras, all others with speaking parts are men.

Sex:

One panel indicates Excel's past jobs have included sex work. Elsewise, she has an apparently romantic obsession with Lord Il Palazzo, to the point of talking to his photo when she is home as if they live together. No other indications of romance or sexuality.

Race & Ethnicity:

All characters presumed Japanese

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

None, unless one counts Excel's tendency to rewrite her memory so that she was the victim of conspiratorial violence rather than fatally incompetent at work.

Awards

None found.

Tropes

Evil Overlord

Bishōnen

Take Over the City

Villain Protagonist

Genki Girl

Companion Cube

Passed Over Promotion

Punch Clock Villain

Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?

Conspiracy Theorist

Notes

Running late due to belatedly realising I had an assignment due this morning. That was unfortunate.

And here we have our emergency back-up story, Excel Saga. We would have run into this problem earlier if I'd been on time with the previous two ratings, as I've caught up on my reading with these. I did actually finish reading one book since The Saints of the Sword, but as that was an autobiography I don't feel right rating it (if I did, it would probably be R18+ or RC due to descriptions of drug use). Anyway, Excel Saga. I bought the first volume of this series early in the millennium or possibly at the beginning of the previous one, after watching the anime series based on it. Because graphic works are relatively quick to read, and I've been trying to get myself to read through and decide if I want to keep collecting the series, it seemed an excellent choice of back-up for when my regular reading patterns leave me unsupplied with a story to rate.

Very short, though. Not much happens in the first story. Mainly we meet the dangerously incompetent protagonist Excel and the mysterious, sadistic would-be conqueror Il Palazzo she has pledged herself to. And the pit he drops her into, repeatedly. Minor appearance by Watanabe (unnamed) at the end, and single-panel cameo by dog / future emergency food supply Menchi / Mince (also unnamed). Plot mainly consists in this case of illustrative distractibility and incompetence on the part of our protagonist for humour.

There you go.

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Thought briefly today about conducting my life as if I have only a short time left to live. But, I decided that for me this is incompatible with living as if I might have a longer term future. What I'd do for one would sabotage the other, and if I'm to gamble on one I'd rather aim for the more desirable possibility.

I don't know what I would do, anyway. I take the goal as to finish without regrets ([1]). I have always thought that if I discovered I had some short time left in which to live I would use it to write as much as I could, to leave as much story behind as I were able to. That has been my standing plan.

These days I would not be able to carry it out. I have shed my stories and I have vastly less to write now than I did ten years ago. The same ideas still around if I want to call them up, more or less, but they have ceased to be compelling. Even though I have no literary aspirations I would want what I write to be executed well and these days I find neither spark of that nor urge to place it. Most - not all - of what I have of recent is porn, and while I don't mind that being my legacy, I do not think I would feel a need to fill my final days with its feverish typing. Perhaps I no longer think myself so significant the world must not be denied my work to marvel at.

Let's not be morbid. I think these days my effort would be spent on the presence of my loved ones. There is no accomplishment to be had. How would I decide which tale most urgent to tell, or which books are too important to miss out on? Nothing else, just company.

I am apart from them now because I believe we have a long future, not a brief one, by human scales, and because I believe by doing so I will be better equiped to contribute to our long-term financial security and comfort in life (and not least to minimise my avenues for self-hatred in a life shared). This is not compatible with the alternative, so I am hoping we do not get unlucky.

[1] Do I say minimal regrets? Do I say regret is bound into making decisions, choosing one thing and not another? Maybe, but right now the ones I remember with weight seem like if I'd done different there'd be nothing to regret. Mostly I am regretting the paths which have left me more damaged or less functional in this society. Delayed functionality, at best. And at the time, I did not understand.

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Filter: moody

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Haven't been posting much, again. Which happens. For example, I did not mention being nearly involved in a driving accident a few weeks ago.

I was driving to class when I noticed a car swinging into the lane just ahead of me. I had to brake abruptly not to run into them. It took a few moments to realise a banging sound I had heard just previously must have been another car hitting that one and knocking it into my path. The car which nearly hit me recovered and I saw them shortly pull over behind another car which had one corner at the back smashed up. I think there must have been at least three vehicles involved.

It left me shaken much of the rest of the drive. The incident impressed on me that many accidents must be little like those which make the news, that the cars were still driveable and intact apart from dents and body damage so far as I could see (I saw damage only on one) and that there was some measure of recovery available.

Not that this encourages me to be careless about the possibility of being in a collision. But at least those people seem to have escaped only expensively. That was on my first time driving that route too; I am glad it has been a one-off incident so far, and not something to expect on a regular commute.

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The Saints of the Sword by John Marco (Tyrants and Kings #3)

Originally published 2001; this edition 2002

Publisher: Gollancz

MA15+

(H, S, L, V)

Supernatural Themes

Sexual References {G}

Coarse Language

Violence {MA 15+}

Drug References {PG}

Representations

Gender:

A few POVs, all men. A bisexual character from the first book is described increasingly androgynously as the series continues. A trans person is described in historical context as having been driven to mass murder by her dysphoria.

Sex:

Continues to be only one character who is not heterosexual. I continue to wonder who he actually has sex with, if no other men are shown as being interested.

Race & Ethnicity:

Most characters white. One character is biracial.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

text

Tropes:

War is Hell

Colonel Kilgore

Category Traitor

The Dragon (somewhat of a Smug Snake this time)

Hurting Hero (Healing Hero, at last)

The Empire (Industrial Roman flavour)

The Dark Side Will Make You Forget (actually listed on the site)

Utopia Justifies the Means (likewise mentioned above)

Super Serum

Psycho Serum (multi-function serum!)

Conflicting Loyalty (back to the original person, plus some new folk)

Past Victim Showcase (different victim, different target, same guy behind the package)

Fantasy Counterpart Culture

Crystal Dragon Jesus (where the crystal dragon is Yahweh?)

Mighty Whitey

Fire Breathing Weapon

The Extremist Was Right

Obligatory War Crime Scene (have some more)

Older Thank They Look

The Chessmaster

Insane Admiral

General Ripper

Heel Realisation

Heel Face Turn

Redemption Quest

0% Approval Rating

Revenge Before Reason

Bring Help Back

Kick the Dog

Puberty Superpower

Healing Hands

Telepathy

Lethal Harmless Powers

Heroic Bastard

Earn Your Happy Ending

Awards

None of note.

I overlooked one from last week, too: Restrained Revenge.

This book I ordered when I started The Jackal of Nar, way back in February. And I finally, finally get my happy ending here. George Lucas has been known to say that Star Wars is really the story of Darth Vader's fall and redemption, but I think the Tyrants and Kings trilogy tells a similar story much better. The Emperor's sinister and feared Dragon, who abruptly murders various people in his displeasure, commits heinous acts and sinks to the depths of depravity in pursuit of revenge on the young hero who foiled his master's plans. (said young man having also turned down an offer of We Can Rule Together) But, spurred by the example of his defeated rival and the arguments of others around him, including pawns in his revenge scheme, he turns away from the dark side, fighting his addiction in resolute determination to become a better person and rule what is now his empire for peace and the betterment of the empire itself. But everyone thinks he is still a monster.

I suppose everyone else would have to decide for themselves whether the terrible things he has done are forgivable (and they made me weep, although others have their atrocities too), but I at least feel I got my happy ending. After three volumes of wartime brutality, more than 2300 pages of interpersonal conflict, scheming, rivalry and revenge, the (surviving, recurring) characters finally put aside their differences to work together. Maybe it wasn't quite the friendship ending I was hoping for, but we are invited to consider the beginning of a better, more peaceful era for this world.

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The Grand Design by John Marco (Tyrants and Kings #2)

Originally published 2000; this edition 2001

Publisher: Gollancz

R18+

(V, H, S, L, D, N)

Violence {R 18+; genocide, chemical warfare, torture}

Supernatural themes and references {no weight}

A Sex Scene {M}

Coarse Language {M}

Drug Use {PG}

Nudity {G}

Representations

Gender:

A broader scattering of POVs, at least one female. There is a conversation between two women, but it features a couple of men prominently.

Sex:

Sex is relegated to off-screen, or referenced as having happened in the past. One antagonist is described several times as bisexual (although not by that word). Antagonists of a different faction hold religious objections to homosexual acts (described incongruously as 'sodomy'), while the aforementioned character's friends maintain that sexual orientation is irrelevant to them. Otherwise this is a rather straight world.

Race & Ethnicity:

More prominent presence of people from Liss, considered ethnically related to those of Triin (that so far as I know fictitious race from the first book), but less overall presence of either than the first book, except one continuing major character. Most characters white, some of fictitious possibly-white ethnicity. One relatively minor character is bi-racial.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

One character has had their physical development stopped at childhood due to medical experimentation. One character is repeatedly described as 'a midget'.

Tropes:

War is Hell

Colonel Kilgore

Category Traitor

The Dragon

Hurting Hero

The Empire (Industrial Roman flavour)

Complete Monster

The Dark Side Will Make You Forget (actually listed on the site)

Utopia Justifies the Means (likewise mentioned above)

Super Serum

Psycho Serum (multi-function serum!)

Dead Little Sister 

Conflicting Loyalty (different person, much more tragic)

Revenge by Proxy (that's two wives now, and someone else's fiancée.)

Past Victim Showcase (different victim, different target, same guy behind the package)

Finger in the Mail

Fantasy Counterpart Culture

Crystal Dragon Jesus (where the crystal dragon is Yahweh?)

Mighty Whitey

You Kill It, You Bought It (this time, an army of ravens)

Fire Breathing Weapon

Hollywood Acid (as artillery)

Deadly Gas (It's your old friend, deadly neurotoxin. If I were you, I would take a deep breath. And hold it.) (although the gas actually has nastier effects like bleeding diathesis)

Tears of Blood

Hopeless Suitor

Incompatible Orientation

The Extremist Was Right

Obligatory War Crime Scene (new ones!)

Duel to the Death

Older Thank They Look

Brainwashed

The Chessmaster

Insane Admiral

General Ripper

High Priest

Knight Templar

Sibling Triangle

Family Relationship Switcheroo

Batman Gambit

Heel Realisation

Not What I Signed On For

Redemption Quest

You're Insane!

Torture Technician

Cold-Blooded Torture

I have Your Wife

Revenge Before Reason

Kick the Dog

Pet the Dog

Morality Pet

Before I Change My Mind

Awards

None of note.

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On the way home from work I somehow had an idea for a role-playing campaign. The concept is rather simple: the villain has stolen the abstraction of narrative imperative and is using this to reshape global civilisation to her vision with the force of historical inevitability. The task faced by the player characters is to succeed in sufficiently extravagant and difficult endeavours that they convince the setting it is actually they who are its primary heroes and narrative drivers, this being the only way to wrest control of narrative imperative from the villain.

The idea is that in aggregate the population must bow to statistics and cannot escape the forces the villain wields, but individuals could be outliers. (at which point we stop pretending to make mathematical sense, but that's okay because we're using a setting where narrative is a force of nature)

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Just started watching a video of someone playing Doom and had to stop because in the first 20 seconds the player made two 360 degree clockwise rotations while looking around. Problem is first that ey completed the rotation, but moreso that ey made the second rotation and I know ey're not going to reverse that because why would ey? No need to, right? But it is making me twitchy and panicky.

Doesn't usually get me so bad. Hope I can go back and finish watching the video.

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The Jackal of Nar by John Marco (Tyrants and Kings #1)

Originally published 1999; this edition 2000

Publisher: Millennium / Victor Gollancz

R18+

(V, L, N, H, S, D)

Strong Violence {R 18+ violence / R 18+ sexual violence; attempted rape, preludes to battlefield gang rape, graphic and messy battlefield violence, chemical warfare, attempted genocide}

Coarse Language {MA15+}

Nudity {G}

Supernatural themes and references {no weight}

Sexual References {PG}

Drug Use {PG}

Representations

Gender:

Primarily male characters. Multiple perspectives, a couple of them female. Many characters display various forms of sexism, including in some cases a belief in women as property by divine decree, including some but definitely not all of the women in the story. Even the male character who is consciously anti-sexist and pro women's rights is frequently paternal and essentialist, to the frustration of the women he is trying to help or live with. There is one conversation between women that I recall without men present, primarily focusing on tension around whether sexist cultural norms are good for women or not (i.e. for Bechdel purposes I am counting it as probably 'about men').

Sex:

Sex acts take place off-screen, the nearest exceptions are characters attempting to rape each other, but this is not depicted on-screen either. One antagonist is mentioned as bisexual in passing. Some villainous characters suggest in mockery a non-villainous character may be into boys for refusing to participate in rape. Rape is used as a weapon of war and terror.

Race & Ethnicity:

The looked-down-upon superstitious foreigners are notably white. Had been taking as implicit the inhabitants of the 'civilised' conquering empire are people of colour since they remain mostly undescribed and white skin used in descriptive contrast, but it becomes increasingly implicit these people are white in the real-world 'pink' sense, and those other actually white in a way humans tend not to be. They also seemed to be coded according to the Indian subcontinent in a few ways, while the empire is coded mainly as industrial Roman. Many of the imperial characters display racism toward them, and while the ethnicity and the slurs are invented, I still found it upsetting in places. Likewise as for gender above, if we consider the Triin as people of colour (white), I don't think we witness a conversation that isn't about a white guy or nation, so this is Johnson fail too.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

One character is impaired due to having been tortured in the past. One character suffers a debilitating illness and believes this due to divine judgement. Several characters are trying to cheat old age and death. Several characters are injured and recover during the story; I found it difficult to judge how long this took.

Tropes:

War is Hell

Colonel Kilgore

Arranged Marriage

Love Across Battlelines

Category Traitor

Entitled to Have You

The Dragon

Refusal of the Call

Hurting Hero

The Empire (Industrial Roman flavour)

Complete Monster

The Dark Side Will Make You Forget (actually listed on the site)

Utopia Justifies the Means (likewise mentioned above)

Super Serum

Stuffed into the Fridge

Dead Little Sister 

The Scream

Conflicting Loyalty

Revenge by Proxy

Past Victim Showcase

Fantasy Counterpart Culture

Crystal Dragon Jesus (where the crystal dragon is Yahweh?)

Mighty Whitey

You Kill It, You Bought It

Fire Breathing Weapon

Enemy Mine

Hollywood Acid (as artillery)

Death of the Hypotenuse

The Extremist Was Right

Obligatory War Crime Scene (several)

Duel to the Death

Heroic Sacrifice

Awards

None of note.

This was a difficult novel to read, mainly for how much focus was given to the War is Hell aspects. Many gruesome injuries and deaths, plenty of fantasy racism being thrown about, friendships torn apart and people ending up on opposite sides through the cruelty of happenstance. I felt in places that the story was much about the atrocities caused by those who commit war for personal or political gain, or who enjoy it too much. Several times while reading I wanted to weep for the horror and pointless misery of it all.

This is a fantasy setting where the empire is enjoying an industrial revolution of sorts, a combination I almost never see. The imperial capital has smokestacks and skyscrapers, its troops use trench warfare where appropriate and use flame cannons as defensive emplacements. The empire also uses tanks armed with either flame cannons (they seem to be something different from flame throwers, although fueled with kerosene) and acid launchers and its ruling elite have chemically extended lifespans, administered intravenously. And it can be breathtakingly cruel in ways that make me twitch to think about weeks later.

I quite liked that even though there is magic in this story, at the beginning it is sensible for characters not to believe it exists. Also that although most characters are religious to varying degrees of devoutness or particulars of belief others are atheistic or agnostic without being forced by the setting into Flat Earth Atheism to do so. Paraphrased: "Yep, that's magic. But I don't see any compelling evidence that it is divine magic".

On the other hand, the main character too often comes across as a petulant, sulky brat for someone who is a prince (later king) and who successfully held his troops together over two years of a losing war. It is jarring for what I'd expect from someone of his backstory, and especially irritating later on when he essentially refuses to eat the food of the culture hosting him for a while (It is Indian food, more or less, and he spends a couple of weeks subsisting on naan and water). Too many people telling too many other people to grow up and face the situation at hand.

By the end of the book I was definitely looking forward to reading something up-beat and happy. But, it's the first book of a roughly 2300-page trilogy, so no dice.

I don't remember precisely the circumstances in which I bought the book. It would have been around 2000 and, like with Alastair Reynolds and science fiction, I wanted to get in on a new fantasy author at the start of their career. Sadly Marco seems to have made almost no impression on the reading public and I've yet to encounter anyone who has heard of him. I read The Jackal of Nar at the time, and a few years later I bought the sequel, as well as the first book of the next series he wrote. But that was when I was in my non-reading period and I did not touch either of them until this year.

(the trope list is an experiment. we'll see how it goes, or whether I can keep it up each week.)

I feel a need, even though the racism in this story regarded fictitious ethnic groups, it still bothered me a lot because it felt realistically applied. Also that the cultures in this setting are variously sexist, and even the overtly anti-sexist, anti-racist protagonist from the 'least oppressive culture' manages to have an annoying white knight complex and turn up his nose at the weird foreigners when actually among them. I think that's intentional realism, else he'd be incongruously perfect, but it still isn't the most fun to see in a character.

Okay, I be done now.

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The Hard Way by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #10)

Originally published 2006 by Bantam Press; this edition 2007

Publisher: Bantam Books

MA15+

(V, D, S, L)

Strong Violence {MA}

Drug Use {PG; Caffeine}

Sexual References {M}

Coarse Language {PG}

Representations

Gender:

Acknowledges the existence of trans people, manages not to be awful in doing so.

Sex:

Default heterosexuality.

Race & Ethnicity:

At least one character is black, at least one is hispanic. One minor character is Russian. One minor character is Chinese and subverts the characters' racial assumptions (pleasant divergence from where the scene looked to be going).

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

One character needs a carer as a result of torture and mutilation. One character is repeatedly referred to as 'almost insane' in his need for control and authority.

Awards

Nominee: Gumshoe Award, Thriller - 2007

I continue to enjoy these books, although after this one I've run out of readily available volumes to read. Yet again, I had a strong feel for the shape of the mystery and which people were involved in what sort of way, but I did not realise how far it went in that direction. I tend to get a bit... frustrated? when characters do not follow what seem to me like obvious lines of investigation and inquiry. On the other hand, I tend to overlook the clues the characters actually do pick up on, or do not draw the same conclusions from them.

At some point I got it into my head that these books are supposedly popular with women. That feels like it makes sense. Reacher comes across as very 'safe' - I don't see this character ever committing sexual assault or otherwise being threatening, and for all that each book features a love interest of the week, it at least is made clear this is casual flings, not a "love 'em and leave 'em" sort of situation, and the character is a lot more pro-woman than I'd expected. Let's just say, if someone I knew wanted to hang out or have a fling with a protagonist, I'd far rather they went with Jack Reacher than James Bond.

These books also had me thinking about satisfaction in fiction and what is right in real life. In all three, Reacher kills the villain(s) rather than arrest them or turn them in to lawful authorities. In most cases this was at least partly premeditated on his part. And this is satisfying, because we in the audience no without doubt these people are guilty, repeat murderers of innocent people. They are confronted in the act of trying to murder and / or torture more people; sometimes they confess too. So that's okay. We can rest assured the bad guys have been stopped, no question about it. But in real life we are not privy to this, especially not to the inner life of murderers as they murder, and we cannot rest on the assurance the right thing was done when someone else puts them down. We need due process because we cannot rely on heroes not to make critical mistakes.

So, this sort of ending I find quite fine and satisfying for fiction, but not at all what I'd want to see in the real world.

This book was my mother's, again, but no one else had yet read it. Actually, I did some poking around my own books and I am pretty sure this is the most recently published book I've ever read. The previous record-holder was probably Midnight Tides or Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It's weird realising I've not read any book from the past six years. Wonder when this record will be beat. Oldest I've read probably The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, which was written during the Baroque period of European Art Music, or the bits of Plato included in Classical Literary Criticism if you want to count those.

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Without Fail by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #6)

Originally published 2002 by Bantam Press; this edition 2003, date printing

Publisher: Bantam Books

MA15+

(V, S, L, D)

Violence {MA}

Sexual References {MA}

Coarse Language {M}

Drug Use {PG: Caffeine, Alcohol}

Representations

Gender:

Third-person following male protagonist, there is at least one scene where two women talk about their lives in his presence. Treatment of gender interpreted as intended-egalitarian.

Sex:

Some speculation a character may be homosexual, not borne out. Some speculation some characters may be in a polyamorous relationship, not resolved. Major characters heterosexual as far as shown. Liberace used as a comparison standard of lesser killitivity.

Race & Ethnicity:

Some relatively minor characters (cleaners) are hispanic. Some acknowledgement that it makes sense for them to be wary around hostile white folk. A minor character is Russian.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Nothing I noticed.

Awards

Shortlisted: CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, 2002

Nominee: Barry Award, 2003

Nominee: Dilys Award, 2003

Thanks to that Steel Dagger shortlisting I found the name of another author for my reading tour which had been eluding me - Jeffrey Deaver. This book was another one from my mother's bookshelves. I hope she will get round to reading those someday, I think she will enjoy them. But her to-read collection is of similar size to mine, and she is reading about as quickly as I was until the middle of last year. So it may take a long time.

Anyway, I especially liked that in this one Reacher works with a compatriot from his army days, Frances Neagley (for some reason memory kept giving her name as Anna Navarre). I think I have a bit too much distance to be witing about this one now.

It put me in mind a bit of The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb, although perhaps not for the right reasons. Mostly I remember being ahead of the characters in many ways, mentally urging them to follow leads or pursue directions which later proved important, although ultimately it is maybe impossible to solve the book as a mystery ahead of the characters - the antagonists are not even introduced to be suspects until the final act, although I suppose someone sharper than I could discover a lot about them up to that point.

There is an especially telegraphed security hole toward the end which of course pays off, and I found the result wrenching. That part went a long way to the final rating this story received.

There's another Jack Reacher novel for next week, probably the last for a long time due to my systems, so I will try and remember to write something of the musings the series has prompted in me so far for then. I hope I will get to see Neagley again in further instalments of the series, and I hope she won't suffer from character decay.

I don't think I outright said I enjoyed this novel yet, but I did. It was a fun thriller, and I don't ask for more than that from thrillers.

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Sagittarius Whorl by Julian May (Rampart Worlds #3)

Originally published 2001; this edition 2001

Publisher: Voyager

MA15+

(V, S, L, D, N)

Strong violence {MA15+}

Sexual references {M}

Coarse language {M}

Drug use {PG; alcohol, caffeine and medical only}

Nudity {G}

Representations

Gender:

The same first-person narrator again, so once again Bechdel fail. Seemed like fewer women as characters this time, the ones who were present were mostly less impressive. Also annoying gender stereotyping about, e.g., women and shopping.

Sex:

Another trip through hetero-land, where women have a sixth sense about what each other's been up to with men, and sex is conveyed with innuendo but not depicted on-screen. The protagonist is very concerned with his manhood.

Race & Ethnicity:

The characters of colour from the previous volumes have been almost entirely removed from the story now. There is a black woman in law enforcement who has a bit part at the end, described as 'Amazonian'; pretty sure she is the only black women in the entire series.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

One character is physically transformed during the novel and repelled by the effect. Others find it sexy. Illness is used as a weapon, and one character largely does not participate in the novel due to undergoing rejuvenation. 'Crazy' and similar are used as strongly pejorative terms.

Awards

None of note.

I ordered this book online after finishing the previous two in the series, since there was a lot promised on the first page of the first book which had not yet transpired, the second ended on a blatant cliffhanger, and I had been enjoying the series so far for a bit of undemanding space adventure. After finishing, the more I thought about it the more disappointed I was.

The actual climax of the story comes about two thirds of the way through, after which the story keeps promising tension but doesn't deliver - no challenges last longer than it takes to describe them, and most are speculated rather than eventuating. One villain ends up suffering a karmic death via Chekhov's wolverine, which was annoying.

The books kept promising an upcoming large conflict and social upheaval, which ultimately was relegated to the epilogue. The cast got less ensemble throughout the series, to the extent that by this book only one of them appeared, and then mainly to excuse emself from having any role. The hero is less and less challenged by anything as the story goes on, for no good reason, and most of the rest of the cast is relegated to engaging in idiot plot so he can do things they were in a position to and promised to do books ago.

It's a shame this book was so disappointing because it definitely did not have to be. At least the xenophilia of some of the women in the story was fun.

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The Visitor by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #4)

Originally published 2000 by Bantam Press; this edition 2001

Publisher: Bantam Books

MA15+

(V, S, L, D, N)

Violence

Sexual References

Frequent Coarse Language

Drug Use

Nudity

Representations

Gender:

Tight third-person coupled to the male protagonist, occasional anonymised interludes featuring antagonist-candidates. The novel makes a point of establishing the protagonist's feminist credentials by primarily believing women who filed sexual harassment complaints in the US army.

Sex:

Only heterosexual sexuality represented. Sexual tension and attraction is a strong thread.

Race & Ethnicity:

All characters white US citizens that I was aware of, except a couple of incidental characters each of Syrian and Chinese origin.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

One character is described as having a physical disability. Several characters among the killer's prospective victims are represented as having been traumatised by sexual harassment and rape.

Awards

Barry Award: Nominee

Borrowed this book from my mother's collection, I believe I am its first reader. This along with the previous two novels I read would be the one that started me on my current spy / mystery fiction kick. I quite enjoyed it, despite The Visitor also featuring snippet perspectives from the killer being hunted.

On the one hand, it is a bit frustrating to be several hundred pages ahead of the protagonist on matters like the means of murder (point of order: in real life it wouldn't work, but as a fictional trope, very recognisable), but I suppose I must also give credit to Lee Child for playing fair enough with the facts and what we are shown for this to be doable. I could say it is just because the whole thing smelled a lot like The Poet by Michael Connelly, down to (effectively) the same person being the killer, but I've read two more Jack Reacher novels since then and in all three my gut feelings have been substantially correct tens to hundreds of pages ahead of the characters.

It weirds me out. I've read plenty of mysteries in the past and almost never do I know what's going on before the detective lays it out. I suppose it comes of these leaning more into the realm of thrillers than mysteries?

I don't actually count this against the book, in the sense that I still enjoyed it a great deal, and was quite happy to read all the others in the series that I had to hand.

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I've also been posting at Google+ and Diaspora* for a while now. Mostly crossposts of the same stuff as here, but perhaps people would rather use those other sites, or get an invitation to Diaspora, where the main obstacle to being a more exciting site is a lack of users in its alpha state. Which is easy to fix if people want to try a more user- and privacy-centric social networking site than Facebook or Google+.

Blah! I flee now! *vanishes into the distance*

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Nevermind that previous stuff, I've taken it into my head to try a couple more reading projects (current one is 'read books I've bought but haven't read, interspersed with other unread-by-me books in the house and rereads', if we want to dignify that as a project. 'tis really more an artefact of compulsive systematising that enables me to be less paralysed by indecision.).

Since starting work at the library I've been tempted to do something foolish like 'make a goal of reading all the books on the Premier's Reading Challenge (PRC) list'. I feel I can justify that as a sort of professional development activity, familiarise myself somewhat with what's what in children's and youth literature these days. The trouble has been where I would fit this reading in, since it is a huge list - I would take the current year's list and go through that, however many actual years it takes - and I don't want to cut time out from reading other things. It felt a bit more doable when the other idea crept into my head, however.

The other idea is, since I've been having a craving for crime / mystery / spy / thriller fiction of recent, why not take a reading tour of the genre? I've been trying to compile a list of notable authors and would greatly appreciate any recommendations - or just single book recommendations, if someone wrote only a small number worth reading. I tried putting out a call on Twitter previously but didn't get any response. Hopefully people here will know some good ones? Otherwise I'll just have to get by on personal experience and names with big advertising budgets.

When I think about it, I would tend to say science fiction, fantasy, and mystery are the three main genres I read. But I've read hardly any mystery in a long time because the first two get much higher priority from me, especially for purchasing, and I've ironically not used a library for enjoyment in many years.

At the moment my reading pattern is alternating something in my to-read pile with something else from around the house, and I am thinking to make that into a rotation, with a book from the mystery reading tour and one or a small number from the Premier's Reading Challenge added to that. I probably won't do ratings for many of the PRC books, because many especially early on are picture books or 10-minute reads and the prospect is exhausting. Might do a few words about what I thought of them?

Anyway, the point amidst all that rambling, so far as audience participation goes, is a request for author or book recommendations. I've got a couple of other reading projects in mind that I might ask recommendations for later, too, but I'd rather give these a try first. See how it goes.

Edit: Thought I should include the list so far. Those with an asterisk are authors I've read something by already.

Raymond Chandler

Agatha Christie*

P. D. James

Ruth Rendell

Dorothy L. Sayers

Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe)

Dashiell Hammett

Bill Pronzini (Nameless)*

Patricia Cornwell

Sue Grafton

Michael Connelly*

Ross Macdonald

John Le Carre

Elizabeth Peters

John Creasey?

Ian Fleming*

Len Deighton

John Dickson Carr

Edith Pargeter (AKA Ellis Peters - Cadfael)

G. K. Chesterton

Jeffery Deaver

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*

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Feeling quite stressed of late because I am trying to go back to university and finish that astronomy degree I failed and dropped out of barely short of graduating.

I've been trying to get myself back up to speed by doing exercises from my old textbooks on a supposedly regular basis for over a year now, particularly mathematics since that is what brought me low last time, and having a hard time of it. That's a hard time in the regularity and in the successful accomplishment thereof. The last one I spent a couple of weeks asking advice and looking up online educational resources to discover where I went wrong, only to finally discover I had it correct to begin with. That's partly heartening in reassuring me I have some competence, but also frustrates me with all the time wasted.

Problem is - I may have mentioned this before - the university I had been studying at no longer offers astronomy or just about any 'hard' science courses, so I've had to apply at another one. I did that some months ago and got accepted, and also paid for a transcript for the old course and made my application for credit for prior studies, so hopefully I won't have to do the whole thing over.

That came back in the affirmative too, and now on Friday I have my actual enrolment session, where I put in the units I want to study and hope they are accepted, and that I am awarded any actual exemptions. All I got so far are credit points for potential exemptions, and I have to present unit outlines for my old classes and find out if I get to not have to repeat that part. Stressful. Will probably have to get in touch when I can this week and get some clarifications on details like, do I put down units I hope to get exempted from on my plan of study and hope to get out of them, or do I assume that and change things if I don't get them?

Especially worrying because I still have that job and want to keep it while studying, so I'm aiming to do this course part-time if I can. I didn't look for work when I was studying previously because I didn't believe I was capable of studying and working successfully simultaneously.

Also stressful because I want to move to the USA to be with my loved ones, and I'm worried that putting another 3-6 before that to get some letters after my name is a terrible decision. I'm not sure I ought to get those exemptions anyway, because it has been so long I hardly remember any of what I studied.

My plan, such as it is, is to accumulate workplace experience while here - I'd hoped to get a job right out of my library technician course in mid-2009 and have built up enough experience to be moving overseas nowabouts with some hope of being employable over there - get this degree, move overseas and potentially bolt a library Masters degree on top of it after moving. It's all very optimistic.

Well, a bit of further optimism occurred to me today. Am wanting to mainly computing units for electives, so started wondering if maybe I can do the core units, the physics and astronomy parts and their pre-requisites first, then switch to distance education and do the electives I need to graduate remotely, after moving. It may not be possible, but it could make things less stressful if it is.

Let's see if I am panicking more or less a week from now.

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Orion Arm by Julian May

Originally published 1999; this edition 2000

Publisher: Voyager

M

(V, S, L, D)

Violence

Sexual References

Coarse Language

Drug Use

Representations

Gender:

As with the first novel in this series, first-person narration by the male protagonist. There are also anonymised interludes from the perspective of a male antagonist. Essentially identical to Perseus Spur.

Sex:

First appearance of non-vanilla, non-heterosexual is as degrading exploitation of prisoners for gratification of the privileged classes and each other. There are some incidental trans characters portrayed as grotesque and potentially victims of coercion. One character on the side of the heroes mentions in a throwaway line having previously been in a relationship with another woman. All other depictions of non-normative sexuality are as perversion or punishment.

Race & Ethnicity:

The characters of colour from the previous book return in reduced roles. One new character is from Eastern Europe.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

The characters must deal with aliens of diminutive stature relative to humans, and spend time on one of their vessels. Coercive body modification including transgenderism used as threat, punishment and symbol of moral corruption.

Awards

None of note.

At least the worst of what is mentioned above had a relatively small presence in the story.

In a series like this it is normal, I believe, for the cast to expand and fill out over successive volumes. Here the focus contracts around the narrator / protagonist more tightly, meaning we see less of the characters I liked from the first volume and the new characters have reduced presence compared to last time.

I also dislike in mysteries getting anonymised snippets from the or a villain's perspective. The additional context gets in the way of my desire for 'pure' detection, where we have only information and perspectives available to the protagonists and they must work out what is happening, how and why, without our knowing for sure. In this case, because the last book left us with a strongly favoured suspect for a traitor, the anonymised perspective here made it pretty immediately clear to me which other person it actually was and spoiling what may have been meant to be a twist toward the end of the novel. I probably would have been surprised otherwise (because I'd not noticed a significant clue in the first book).

This would have been a satisfying end to the story except that all the outcomes promised on the first page of the first book had not yet happened, so I ordered a cheap copy of the final volume. This copy, along with the first volume, was picked up from a discount bin at a newsagent most of a decade ago.

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Perseus Spur by Julian May

Originally published 1998; this edition 1999

Publisher: Voyager

M

(V, S, L, D)

Violence

Sexual References / Mild Sex Scenes

Coarse Language

Drug Use (Medical, Augmentative, Social Drinking)

Representations

Gender:

1st-person narration by a male character, most of the other characters are also men. The only conversations we become aware of that took place between women also concerned a man. Gender roles are superficially egalitarian.

Sex:

Story is infused with presumed heterosexuality. One character is asked if she might be in a relationship with another woman, but denies this and later engages in a heterosexual relationship.

Race & Ethnicity:

Most characters are white, those with known origins being from North America. One minor character is black, one major character is Mexican - there is Spanish sprinkled in the story from both him and the protagonist - one major character is from off-world by way of the Caribbean.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

One character spends much of the novel in recovery from serious injuries.

Awards

None of note

Trying to work on being more clear with some of these details, such as how much items contribute to the final age-rating and for what. Probably won't come through with that for a while, as these are backlog from the weeks I was AFK (which I shouuuld get round to saying something about too, when I find the time). Also noting where I got them from.

This book and the next one, by the way, I bought cheap at a newsagent years ago because I'd seen them round lots and got curious. Hadn't read them until now 'cause of the half decade I spent not reading fiction. Liked them a lot despite the book making my editing fingers twitchy to fix it at first. Very trashy, straightforwardly fun space opera.

The narrator has a tendency to infodump, and recap excessively, and there aren't counterbalancing positive qualities unless you want to read a lighthearted thriller set in space, which I did. Made a nice change in tone from what I'd been reading the previous couple of months.

What else? The book features single-biome planets, but at least they are more interestingly described than e.g. "desert world". Also liked that the future depicted is a corporate colonialist dystopia, that the main character is a beneficiary of this system and committed to its abolition. Although he still definitely slips up. I find the biological liberties harder to go along with than the physics ones, but still managed for the sake of the story.

This all sounds a lot more negative than I feel, I think. It's fun! But probably only fun for people who enjoy the genre? Or maybe just me; it's hard to get copies of these now and they used to be everywhere for several years.

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Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott

Originally published 1868; this edition 1991

Publisher: Exart Pty Ltd

G

(L, D)

Minor Coarse Language

Minor Drug Use

Representations

Gender:

Almost all the characters are female, leading to thorough Bechdel-passing. Notions of ideal womanhood are strongly tied to self-denial and sacrifice for others, and duty. Jo struck me as rather delightfully genderqueer (at least), and very disappointed to see her praised for gradually losing this aspect of herself.

Sex:

Implicitly heterosexual only.

Race & Ethnicity:

When I read the book I had a strong suspicion their maid is black, but I did not notice any direct indication or acknowledgement of race or ethnicity, apart from some US-English rivalry in which the English characters unsurprisingly came off worse.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

One character suffers a serious illness during the course of the story.

I was rather puzzled when I finished reading this (on New Year's Eve, at Sydney Harbour waiting for the fireworks), because much of what I had picked up about the book from popular culture did not seem to be present. A possible reason presented itself when I tried to add the book to my library on LibraryThing - despite claiming on the cover to be 'complete and unabridged', the copy I read was missing the sequel volume Good Wives, which seems to be pretty consistently packaged together as part of the same novel, to which further volumes are considered sequels. So, it could be that much of what I thought would happen actually takes place in that volume.

While I often enjoyed the characters and their interactions, and especially Jo, I don't think I'd like to read any further of this. The moral thread of the story was a bit too dissonant for me to want more.

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Dragon's Treasure by Elizabeth A. Lynn

Originally published 2003; this edition 2004

Publisher: Tor

MA15+

(V, S, L, D, N)

Some strong violence

Sexual references / A sex scene

Coarse language

Mild drug use

Some nudity

Representations

Gender:

Easy Bechdel pass. Although only one of the major viewpoint characters is a woman, her scenes frequently feature conversation with other women about matters of daily life. Sexism is primarily displayed by characters we are not intended to sympathise with.

Sex:

One of the main characters is bisexual, carries on a relationship with a man and a woman in parallel, and expresses an intention not to choose between lovers.

Race & Ethnicity:

The kingdom represented in this novel contains a variety of ethnic groups, some with tension between them. A month after reading I don't recall any specific racial representation, which suggests everyone may have been white. A major region within the story felt coded Italian to me.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

One character is mute and communicates by signing. Some other characters suffer PTSD and / or continuing effects of injuries sustained in the previous novel (which I have not read). One character loses an arm and gets on with eir life.

Awards

19th place: Locus Poll Award, Best Fantasy Novel 2005

I don't think there was anything epic going on in this book, and I quite liked that. Much of this novel featured the characters going about their daily lives with sides of intrigue and relatively ordinary personal drama. It made a nice change from just about everything else I read, a pleasant surprise. There was no incest in this book, maybe in the next one, if ever that is published?

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Edit: I've been informed the specific incident in the link is an urban legend: http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp - I really should have checked the date, as is good practice in general. However, that article served only as my prompt; the conditions and treatment of unemployed people I wrote about is true and drawn from my personal experience. Original post continues unaltered.

According to an article in the (UK) Telegraph, a woman in Germany faces the loss of her unemployment payments for refusing work at a brothel.

The problem here is the way we as a society construct unemployment, not that this time it is a brothel. That just serves as a newsworthy example and perhaps misdirection because of the disgust and contempt we tend to direct at sex work culturally.

Because we insist on treating the unemployed as suspect, as lazy losers and scammers, and because it looks good for organisational numbers to get as much throughput as possible, we require anyone receiving assistance to accept any job offer they are physically capable of performing. So you end up with situations like this, where a person is threatened with being cut off unless they accept a job they personally find repugnant (or soul-killing, or etc.).

Having a quota of documented job applications to meet, and rules like this, meant that when I was actively searching I had to restrict the applications which I thought might get a response to only the positions I felt I wouldn't be trying to then get out of a few weeks later, and then make the rest of the numbers with applications I thought looked plausible but which would not be interested in me as a candidate.

Rules like this led to me saying yes to a lot of offers from the agency I was assigned to, despite believing I would be a bad fit for the job in question, because I was worried my income could be cut off if I refused. This led to me having a whole week of training and a job interview for an area - sales - which I have actually worked in before and found to be a field which- well. I am certainly capable of attempting to sell things to people but I've never actually managed it, and since that earlier position was commission-based I had quit without ever being paid. So I spent the whole time being trained for this interview and actually having the interview afraid that I was going to get pushed into a job I hate and would be no good at simply to get an organisation another "successful job placement" check-mark, while also believing that if I appeared to do anything less than my best to get that job, I could be reported and penalised.

Well, I got lucky that time, and they didn't want anyone from that group that had been coached for the job on offer. But, my point is, the problem here is not that in this specific case it is a brothel this woman could be punished for not working in. The problem is how we treat unemployed job-seekers.

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Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe

Originally published 1981; this edition 2000, 2004 printing

Publisher: Gollancz

MA15+

(V, S, N, D, H)

Violence

Sex scenes (including off-screen sexual violence)

Nudity

Drug Use

Supernatural themes

Representations

Gender:

Once again, first-person male protagonist. Little or no interaction between female characters, very few female characters. Very gender-essentialist depiction.

Sex:

The narrator is homophobic and sexist, with no indication these values aren't shared by the world at large.

Race & Ethnicity:

There may have been some racial variety, but the only indications I received for specific characters is that they are white; whiteness as a sign of aristocracy. Similarly, the most ethnic divisions presented took the form of social castes. Some other species present which may or may not be human-derived, some brief presence of alien non-humans.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

The highest aristocratic caste are distinguished by their great height, and the narrator often claims to possess an absolute or perhaps merely eidetic memory. One character is a cyborg.

Awards

Winner: SF Chronicle Award, novel

Nominee: Ditmar Award, best long fiction

Nominee: Hugo Award, best novel

1st Place: Locus Poll Award, best fantasy novel

Nominee: Mythopoeic Fantasy Award

Winner: Nebula Award, novel

Nominee: World Fantasy Award, best novel

I nearly quit this book at the point where the protagonist became a rapist, especially as the atmosphere of homophobia and essentialist sexism in the text were already suffocating. But I wasn't certain he did what I thought he did, as the actual rape happened off-screen, so after a while I picked it up again to continue, hoping to be proved wrong. Also I still tend to be a bit bloody-minded about finishing the books I start. Since the only other story I've read by Wolfe (The Ziggurat, from Year's Best SF) was also mired in sexism, I'm now dreading any further of his stories. Shall see how that goes.

Presumably I am not literate or perceptive enough for this sort of thing anyway, since while I noticed plenty of symbolism, allusion, etc. going on, all the parts I 'got' seemed either shallow or hollow, and the plot ordinary. Well, at some point I shall read the other two books in this quartet and find out, but so far it looks that either I am inadequate to appreciate this work, or his reputation is overstated.

Might not be another of these ratings for a while - despite repeatedly forgetting to write these up and post them, I've now caught up with where I am in my fiction reading since I started. The last two books I read were non-fiction - The Rough Guide to The Beatles and Classical Literary Criticism - so I won't be rating those. May have to do a detour sometime and build up a different sort of backlog.

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Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. As usual I'm not doing myself doing anything for it such as attending a vigil. That doesn't mean it isn't an important day to have, nor that somehow the often-vicious murder of people for being who they are doesn't matter.

It is entirely possible that the reason I'm not doing more is that I don't feel vulnerable. Being a white, middle class person who is not a sex worker, I'm not as much at risk of my name appearing on next year's list of the dead as far too many others are.

As much as trans people are subject to violent revulsion in our society, too many of the dead were women of colour, and / or were sex workers for that not to play a significant factor in who is murdered. There doesn't seem much point having the Day of Remembrace without acknowledging this unless we aren't interested in improving the situation; there'd be no such bias in the dead if women of colour weren't already so marginalised in general.

Many others die from the consequences of two prevailing myths: a) that sex worker lives are worthless and b) that all trans women are sex workers. Even if you don't support the rights and freedom of sex workers for their own sake - and you should - the ways we degrade and disrespect people in that field as a society makes easier the mistreatment and murder of anyone who can be lumped in with them.

I suppose that isn't a very effective argument. I doubt there are many who hate sex workers who don't also hate trans people, so they'd be unlikely to support the one in order to incidentally benefit the other. Very disheartening when "Don't perpetuate the conditions which enable the murder of others for their job or identity" is such a difficult proposition to get people accepting.

I am fumbling with this. What am I trying to say? People die because being cis is regarded as the only legitimate, non-shameful way to exist. People die because because white people are treated as more human and deserving than any one else. People die because sex workers are degraded, criminalised and silenced.

If we keep denying each other, there will continue to be a Day of Remembrance.

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Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe

Originally published 1980; this edition 2000

Publisher: Gollancz

MA15+

(V, S, N)

Strong Violence

Frequent Sexual References

Some Nudity

Representations

Gender:

First-person narration by a male character, providing no room for any female perspective.

Sex:

The narrator is homophobic and sexist, with no indication these values aren't shared by the world at large.

Race & Ethnicity:

There may have been some racial variety, but the only indications I received for specific characters is that they are white; whiteness as a sign of aristocracy. Similarly, the most ethnic divisions presented took the form of social castes.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Primarily manifest in the effects of torturers practising their craft. At one point the narrator does suggest he is insane. The highest aristocratic caste are distinguished by their great height, and the narrator often claims to possess an absolute or perhaps merely eidetic memory.

Awards

Winner: British Science Fiction Award, SF Novel

3rd: John W. Campbell Award

2nd: Locus Poll Award, Best Fantasy Novel

Winner: World Fantasy Award, Best Novel

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I've been wanting to do NaNoWriMo this year, but I've also been trying to be all responsible and productive, which makes it harder to justify long stretches of time writing each day. Or 'writing', as is more often the case. The plan I've settled on is to put some time toward studying each day, and if after taking care of that and any other urgent, important business there is still time, then I should write. No particular story in mind this year, once again I am aiming to work scattershot on a variety of small ones. My real goal is to get back into a regular writing habit.

The study is especially important, as I got a letter back unexpectedly quickly offering me a place in the course I applied to. Much of yesterday was used up accepting the offer and reading over documents I am required to read. So today will be putting in mandatory application for optional government loan on an already-subsidised course of study. I've been quite worried that I won't be sufficiently prepared this time round either, so I am making extra effort to reacquaint myself with physics and mathematics between now and then.

I aim to be more organised, capable and diligent than I was a decade ago, and actually get this done. Really, I am in a very fortunate position to have the opportunity.

In other news, I was bored at work last week and started taking down notes on scrap paper for some personal projects. One side was for a library classification system I'd like to develop:

Top-level categories - three? Roughly Knowledge, Action, and Creation. Knowledge, straightforwardly(?) about 'things' in the world, containing e.g. Computing, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Language, Mathematics, Sociology, Technology, History, Law, Chemistry, Politics, Biology, Physics.

'Creation' covers creative works + their criticism and interpretation, etc. Includes drama, music, poetry, prose fiction, essays, comedy.

'Action' covers activities which are primarily something done, such as play or entertainment, rather than descriptions or theories about the world or acts of imaginative creation, though subsets may include both or either. Includes sports, athletics, motor racing, performing arts, board games, computer games, role-playing games, card games, and other formal or informal competitions at which generally the only thing at stake is itself (or the contents of wagers).

Design principle: 'unboxed'. To avoid the DDC pitfall of cramming less (designer perspective) central material into the margins as new is discovered or deemed sufficiently important. Each level should in principle be open-ended, so that new sub/categories can be added and occupy the same amount of notational space as previous categories. May be best to use letters since those are not decimalised and can be wrapped around e.g. 'A', 'AA', 'AAA', etc. However with proper hierarchy markers numbers may not be a problem, and thus become desirable as less in need of translation.

Interdisciplinary work + 3 spatial dimensions precludes perfect cataloguing and shelving.

The other is part of a series of exercises in mapping for the game Doom. I'm not sure what the long-term benefit would be, since it is not as if I have grand future plans those are merely a skill-development prelude to, but it is something I would like to do. The first of those exercises is making replacements for each map in the original game, within vanilla (i.e. unmodified) limits and taking inspiration from the original map name and some other elements. That is, to practice by making my own take on the originally released game. So, I wrote down some notes for my level ideas, which have been rattling around for a few months now. I really ought to either succeed at getting an editor to work on Ubuntu or getting access to a Windows machine.

E1M1 (The Hangar): Former humans + imps only, no keys, no shotgun. Ideal design: two large, open, cratey rooms (the hangars), 'bridge' crosses a chasm and reverse direction through area overlooked by starting zone, proceeds straight to exit. Secret area: after bridge, lowered wall ambush leading to a 'shooting gallery' running parallel to the main path for several rooms - player should be able to ambush some monsters within the gallery and in the regular run. Possibly a further secret to a last stand room. Open + airy feel.

E1M2 (Nuclear Plant): Early encounter in one direction with locked doors, no key on map. Former humans, imps, demons, secret shotgun. Early, easy key (make it hard to miss). Rad-suit in small switch-opened compartment (can we do overlooking glass window from control room?). To access second half of map player must proceed through reactor area. Bounded by airlock (used timed door if possible to force it remaining closed a while after passing through), player must seal their entrance to open an access tunnel, and fight through that to the exit-airlock. Entire space between airlocks is radiation zone. Enclosed feeling, tight corridors. Map is relatively small, to be revisited later.

E1M3 (Toxin Refinery): Lots of perilous catwalks around toxic sludge, barrel areas, active machinery if possible. Teleporter ambushes in awkward environments to fight from.

As you can see, I don't have so many specifics in mind for E1M3 as yet. The major concept I have in mind is to feature damaging 'nukage' floors a lot more than the official level, where they show up only occasionally, and try to a) make the playing area more interesting and difficult with environmental hazards and b) make the map look a bit more like that stuff is actually processed there. Since this is the map with the exit to the secret level, I need to come up with a somewhat interesting puzzle to unlock that too. I like the idea, too, of introducing the first teleporter ambushes of the episode make what seemed a safe, easy path suddenly cramped and dangerous, with the player at risk of falling into the toxic liquid (not far) below if overzealous in evasion. This would also be the first level that outright gives the player a shotgun, as well as featuring shotgunners / sergeants as enemies.

A concept I would like to use in general is what I call 'last stand' areas, where most new weapons and notable supply caches are found in areas decorated to indicate your fellow space marines died with or wielding them. Or else are traps.

E1M9 (Military Base): Almost exclusively zombie / possessed enemies. I want to feature tight, oppressive spaces with lots of line triggers revealing enemies and being sniped at from cubby-holes. Possibly some more open corridors too. Given the previous map, player should probably enter from something like the sewer. Chaingun or multiple chainguns present only in secrets. At the end of the map, the player should be ambushed by a swarm of imps and demons, the only non-humans on the map.

Ideas for further on are vaguer. Since I think I am probably not so great skillwise, am planning to balance maps so that I find them hard on the middle difficulty and shape the other difficulties around that. Shall see if these ideas get anywhere.

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Memory by Linda Nagata

Originally published 2003; this edition 2011

Book View Café

PG

(V, S)

Some Violence

A Sex Scene

Representations

Gender:

The first-person protagonist is female. Probably Bechdel fail however, as although there are women talking to each other, making plans and discussing world-shaking events, those are largely centred on the male antagonist.

Sex:

Heterosexuality appears to be universal, and I suspect in this setting it mayn't be possible to engage in queer fluid-bonding sex and live.

Race & Ethnicity:

I think the majority of characters in the book are POC, so this is probably the first book I've rated that passes the Johnson Test. Sad, isn't it? And as much a reflection on me as the authors.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Not much to say here, although the characters seem to have potential to be extremely long-lived.

Awards

18th Place: Locus Poll Award, Best SF Novel

Nominee: John W. Campbell Award

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Among Beatles albums I:

1) Consider Sgt. Pepper overrated

2) Talk up Revolver whenever I listen to it or think of it

3) In practice I seem to consider the two albums about equally good in practice

So, that's odd, especially they seem to be two of the three which get almost automatic consideration for the top spot in "greatest albums of all time" lists. I think I feel like Sgt. Pepper gets a lot more cultural reference than Revolver, is more a subject of default acclaim. So I get inclined to say it is not as great as people say, even though I find it pretty wonderful.

Standing behind that response, yes. Overrated, but seriously awesome.

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The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Originally published 1974; this edition 1999, 2004 printing

Publisher: Gollancz

MA15+

(L, S, N, V, D)

Frequent Coarse Language

Frequent Sexual References

Nudity

Violence

Drug Use

Representations

Gender:

First-person male protagonist, so no Bechdel pass. Female characters make up a substantial minority.

Sex:

Initially, heterosexuality is default. As the story progresses changes in society mean that for much of the novel, the protagonist as heterosexual is a member of a very small, oppressed minority. His being more homophobic than he thinks he is comes up several times.

Race & Ethnicity:

The story projects a racial homogenising of humanity over the next several centuries. Initial characters presumably drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds; the protagonist's being white is confirmed later in the story. Other than that, I don't recall race playing a role.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

The harshness of health-care rationing in a war economy is made a point of. Because of technological advances in prosthetics, characters disabled by war are not permitted to remain so.

Awards

Winner: Ditmar Award, Best International Long Fiction

Winner: Hugo Award, Best Novel

1st Place: Locus Poll Award, Best SF Novel (1976)

Winner: Nebula Award, Novel

Nominee: Prometheus Award, Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Libertarian SF Novel (this, I don't get - it didn't seem particularly pro- or anti-libertarian to me, although it was definitely anti-war)

Suspect this doesn't come across as well laid out like this as I thought of it on reading. Doesn't help that I finished this up several weeks after finishing reading it. Like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (which was the smoothest read I've had in a long time!), I read this over about a day. Probably mainly because I didn't have a car and had to take several lengthy bus rides to conduct my business. The sexual politics in the book I expect come off ominously, but my impression is they were meant as a statement about human nature and tendencies to marginalise anyone we are able to, and probably to try and evoke some empathy in heterosexual readers for the position queer folk are put into (although the worst the protagonist faces personally is insubordination and slurs).

I wasn't surprised by the resolution of the war, but it did leave me feeling appropriately hollow and bitter. Um, but I don't do reviews, and I certainly shouldn't be in the business of justifying books I read. I liked it, and I think at worst I'd say it was progressive for its time. Or maybe that it couldn't convince me to suspend disbelief on a few important points, so I had to go along with them for the sake of the story instead. Ah well.

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Applied to university, to hopefully this time finish my degree. Now waiting on whether they will accept me. Nervous (but there will likely be no word for a couple of months).

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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Originally published 1865 & 1871; this edition 1993

Publisher: Modern Publishing Group

G

Drug References

Violent References

Representations

Gender:

Passes Bechdel Test, despite most characters being male

Sex:

No sexual content, but a presumption of heterosexuality where any reference is made

Race & Ethnicity:

A couple of references to people who are not white English, in stereotyped ways

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Physical difference is a matter of interest to many characters, but perhaps not in the way this category is intended - mainly a matter of surreality.

Also this story - it actually is an omnibus of the both novels, despite the title - gave me my newest favourite threat: "I'll shake you into a kitten!"

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Hey, I haven't updated in a while. Probably because I have been mainly indulging in passive entertainment or talking to people instead of being alone. Instead of making a rambling huge narrative update, let's make a rambling update of bits and pieces I'd been meaning to post at some point.

One time, setting up the toy library, I found the plush Elmo doll had been put into the basketball hoop of a toddler playset, so that it looked like he had been crucified.

Am still in a bit of disbelief that people would actually want to employ me and pay me for doing stuff. Also intermittently freaking out that I am vastly less competent than I would think and that they secretly want to get rid of me at the earliest opportunity. Which is silly, because they have no obligation to keep me employed from one shift to the next, and if they wanted rid of me all they'd need do is not give me any more hours. But I still get scared.

Had some harassment at work based on gender presentation - a couple of kids kept asking if I were a boy or a girl while I was checking books out to them, not taking my shrugs or claim that it doesn't matter as sufficient answer. At least the adults with them tried to convince them they were being rude, although I don't think they succeeded. Annoyed with myself for not being more annoyed at them, but I suppose that's how first times go when they can also be taken as even a teensy bit of validation.

On a better slant, at one point a patron was sent upstairs to be assisted by me with a service that is only available up there. She had been told my legal name and then was surprised, saying she had been expecting a woman-type person. So, yay minimal name-adjustment?

Car is repaired. That is very good news, as buses were finicky and expensive. I was trying to catch one from work to the station during my exile and, as I was approaching the bus stop, it flew past me six minutes early and empty, leaving me too surprised to react. When you are public transport of the bus or train sort, getting ahead of schedule is not actually a virtue.

Anything else? Mm, let's finish this here. I can ramble some customer service grumping another time. =^_^=

Ciaomiao, yup.

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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Originally published 2004; this edition 2005

Publisher: Bloomsbury

M

(H, L, D, V, Dis)

Strong Supernatural Themes

Minor Coarse Language

Mild Drug Use

Violence

Disturbing Themes - Not Otherwise Specified

Representations

Gender:

The majority of characters are male. Only rarely is there a female perspective.

Sex:

Scarcely alluded to, although there is a presumption of heterosexuality.

Race & Ethnicity:

One character is black English by way of Jamaica, the rest are white English (or non-human white). Various non-English or non-white characters appear briefly, with little detail, as background or asides.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

A character dies of mysterious illness, but otherwise sickness has less presence than might be expected from early 19th century England. Madness is a strong, recurring theme from a magical perspective. Some presence of soldiers disabled or maimed by war.

Awards

Nominee: British Science Fiction Award, Novel

Nominee: International Horror Guild Award, Best First Novel

Winner: World Fantasy Award, Best Novel

Winner: Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature

Winner: Hugo Award, Best Novel

10th Place: Locus Poll Award, Best Fantasy Novel

1st Place: Locus Poll Award, Best First Novel

Nominee: Nebula Award, Best Novel

Forgot to post this for a couple of weeks, oops. Definitely enjoyed the reading of it. Toward the end I felt that, while To Reign in Hell is a tragedy and The Dark Room is a thriller, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is a storm. Am not surprised it received so much acclaim.

(but I don't do reviews. let's just say it was a slow start, but a very worthwhile start. and the back cover summary bore very little resemblance to the story at any point, when I bothered to look at that. there was plenty that was haunting and unsettling, but by the end I was left with a wistful smile. something I really needed from a story by then.)

Am also experimenting with broadening the classifiable elements as well, since I think this novel had some... impactful content that isn't covered under the Australian rating scheme. Am already adding my own eccentric flourishes with the supernatural content / themes (although that is something I have seen used on film and television) and counting alcohol and tobacco as drugs for rating purposes. Although at least on this occasion it doesn't carry the final rating on its own, as the Battle of Waterloo was plenty serious on its own. Oh, whatever. I suppose broadcasters tend to use something like "Horror elements" for stuff like that, but I neither want to nor feel it would be particularly fitting.

End post now, before flailing.

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This morning I dreamed I was in a hell. No recently traditional imagery, just an ashy grey wasteland that was a constant energy drain. One had to be continually alert for ways to recover or preserve one's energy or else lose it all, cease to be.

Some unidentified, nonspecific loved ones were there also, and I made friends too with some decent-interesting folks there, but most others were focused on preserving themselves in nasty, violent or otherwise unsavoury ways. At one point in the dream I tricked most of them into killing each other. No details on the how or any of that were present, just it happened.

Of course more people kept arriving so that did not fix anything. I heard my cat meowing desperately complaining like she does, went to investigate the sound. At the border of this hell I found her protesting as she does when she is not let through a door, and then she jumped up in with me. Very silly kitty, you don't just jump into hells without knowing what you are doing, even if you are a cat and hate not being in places in a catlike way.

But that is about where things ended, and she didn't turn out to be actually outside my bedroom door yowling to get in, although maybe she had been a few minutes before? Anyway I got up and pulled what was left of a wooden coathanger out of a dog's mouth and scolded her for trying to eat it and that was that.

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The Dark Room by Minette Walters

Originally published 1995; this edition 1996

Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd

M

(V, L, S, D)

Violence

Coarse Language

Sexual References

Mild Drug Use

Representations

Gender:

Primary character is female, most other characters are male. Don't think this passes the Bechdel Test; although there are conversations between the lead and her step-mother, the lead's father features strongly.

Sex:

Characters have a variety of attitudes toward sexuality, ranging from strongly sex-negative to strongly sex-positive. One character is gay and falls into the flamboyant stereotype, but does not fall victim to any adverse tropes (e.g. Bury Your Gays). If any other character is not heterosexual, I did not notice it evidenced by the text.

Race & Ethnicity:

Two minor characters are black English and subjected to the racism of a third character. Also true of a back-story character. Apart from this race plays no noticed role and other characters are presumed white.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

The lead character has amnesia. The villain of the story is described as mentally ill.

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I probably shouldn't keep updating about every day at work. In fact, let's get out while the getting is good. Suffice to say, from my perspective it continues to go well. The people are helpful and understanding, and I continue to learn. Also of the cliffhanger I left last time on the matter of pay, it turns out I had originally misunderstood what I was being offered, and my pay was not in error. Downside: no paid leave for me. Hope they will be understand if I request unpaid leave, and that I will still have a job afterward.

Today I got to have another reading session with pazi_ashfeather and lost_angelwings, which between one thing and another has been sorely missed for the past month or two. I read Chapter 2 of The Vile Village, Book the Seventh of A Series of Unfortunate Events, Pazi brought us two chapters from the end of Singularity Sky (AKA Festival of Fools) by Charlie Stross and Ami took us deeper into the unravelling universe with I, Q. (actual order may differ).

I, Q made a very welcome change from the emotionally wrenching nature of the other two. When I finish reading A Series of Unfortunate Events I look forward to reading a happier story. Sometimes I worry that too many of the stories which excite my attention are bleak heartbreakers and while I certainly like plenty which fit that description I'd rather break them up with fun adventures wherein everyone lives happily ever after and / or rides off into the sunset. More on that in the future probably.

To Reign in Hell and Festival of Fools have had me thinking about sorts of stories lately. Not universally applicable sorts of stories, but a minor sort of classification one can do with some. That is, there are some stories where I am with the protagonists, cheering or urging them on. Others I end up exhorting the characters to turn back, to step away from some course which whether through prior reading, in-story knowledge or the shape of the story itself I know can only end in disaster. Very easy for me to sympathise with people wedded to such doomed courses, even when I am otherwise in opposition to them. Consequently very emotional to read (or have them read to me). It was a struggle not to cry through much of the middle of To Reign in Hell (I was on a train and didn't want to attract attention) and I'd definitely call the story a tragedy (It doesn't have to end this way! Talk! You can solve this). Singularity Sky may not be but I have definitely been aching for many of the characters who took step after step, unwittingly - but obviously to the reader - winding themselves tighter to their own destruction or possibly worse.

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To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust

Originally published 1984; this edition date unknown, prob. 2000

Publisher: Orb

M

(H, D, V, S)

Supernatural Themes

Minor Drug Use

Violence

Sexual References

Representations

Gender:

Gender, or at least sex is presented as at least somewhat volitional for angels and a recent invention. However, the majority of angels present as male because Lilith, the inventor of sex, presents as female. Which suggests a certain innate desirability of femininity that crosses lines of identity.

Sex:

As gender

Race & Ethnicity:

The angels present themselves with a variety of ethnic markers (not described with reference to nations or geographical regions).

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

The angels present themselves with a variety of humanoid and non-humanoid forms. Non-humanoid forms seem mostly to have been assumed as a matter of necessity for survival. Numerous angels have suffered some form of impairment or diminishment as of the beginning of the story due to what can euphemistically be described as a harsh natural environment. When they have the freedom to do so, many angels seem to enjoy self-modification for convenience or aesthetic pleasure.

(as a note, found it difficult to decide between assigning an M or PG because there isn't much on-screen to 'earn' the higher rating, and what is there perhaps is mitigated by the angels not bleeding and dying in the same way as humans are accustomed to, making the effect perhaps more stylised and less visceral. finally went with the higher rating because of a couple of specific scenes and the intense emotional tone of the story.)

(as a further note, been wondering how coniferous_you would find the story given the divergence of its portrayal from Paradise Lost, particularly of Abdiel)

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Well, well. The order I put in last week for the Fantasy Masterworks edition of The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison bounced back at me, seems they didn't have it in stock after all. So I got a copy off Gutenberg instead because I didn't feel like hunting down another copy, if there is another copy being offered somewhere. Perhaps someday I will get all completionist and search again, or something else might happen.

Meanwhile I finished reading The Dark Room by Minette Walters (postponed this for many years because somehow I got it into me that it was a horror novel, which it isn't even slightly; rather enjoyed actually) and started on Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Only 64 pages in so far and it is reading a bit as if the only magician in England were Bernard Black. "Who are all these people? What do they want with me? But why do they have to come to me? I know I invited them! Go away!" So far my one complaint is that I get distracted wondering if each new character will turn out to be the first appearance of Jonathan Strange, which is not really a complaint as such.

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This is intriguing news.

Am amused by the number of people in comments pointing out Kepler has a selection bias toward detecting multi-planet systems in which the orbital plane is relatively 'flat' compared to our solar system. It certainly does, since the closer planets are to orbiting in the same plane, the better the chance that if one is seen to transit from our perspective, others in the same system will too.

But, the team was expecting to find only a couple of systems where planetary orbits were so closely aligned. So far, they've exceeded that expectation by a factor of 50. That's significant! More than 100 systems with multiple planets observed to transit, when only two or three were expected. Means something new-to-us is going on, because we're seeing a lot more than we expected to even _with_ Kepler's bias toward detecting them.

It is certainly intriguing that these flatter systems have found-planets all sub-Neptune in size. Of course, Kepler wouldn't have detected our Jupiter or Saturn yet, so it may be a bit premature to conclude it's due to a lack of giant planets shaking the systems up. I do wonder if it is true.

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I managed to survive my first day at work, yes I did. There is not much to say, it was a nice, quiet sort of day. Just what you'd want for bringing a new person into the workplace.

There wasn't anything I've not done before, but it has been a couple of years since I have performed work-like activities in a library, so I definitely appreciated the training on local specifics and procedures.

My next quest is to get the job placement support system off my back. Presumably by convincing them I am doing fine. Hopefully that will continue. There will be several more mostly-training sessions in which I struggle to remember everyone's names before they trust me to be working under less direction, am expecting.

Alright, alright, seems like things are going well. Going to try and keep that up.

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Got my first shift tomorrow, so I am very nervous. Probably will keep being so nervous until after I am done, and perhaps a while beyond that too. Because I have never had paid employment before and I am scared scared scared of messing it up somehow.

Of course so many others manage it, so presumably this is something doable. Not much to do about it. I expect I'll calm down after experiencing that... well, after I hopefully manage to not make a mess of everything. Ya, really don't know what to say here - am not aiming for any particular response - just expressing, I suppose, that I am starting my first actual paid job tomorrow and that I am very nervous about this. This tends to happen before any big new or significant thing in my life (e.g. commencement of study, exams, learning to use a cash register, other things I am forgetting the specifics of?). So I am not nervous about being nervous, if that makes sense. I don't feel like that will be a problem in itself, except that such feelings of strong tension are unpleasant in themselves, and perhaps that others might... mark me down? so to speak, if they read it in my body language.

At my last student placement, doing similar work to what I expect to do in this position, I found the work intense and stressful, but I felt good about it. So I believe from experience I can handle this. Might just end up giggling, decompressing all the way back home after.

Alright, done. Need to sleep tonight, get up early and be prepared beforehand. Probably it will go fine. If it does not, then things will proceed as they do.

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The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Originally published 1973; this edition 2007

Publisher: Harcourt

PG (L, V, D, H, S)

Some Coarse Language

Violence

Minor Drug Use

Supernatural Elements

Sexual References

Representations

Gender:

Bechdel fail. I think there is only one conversation between two women in the novel and it is a) about a man and b) didn't happen (Buttercup does talk to her mother at one point, but her father is in the conversation too. Also, it's about a man). Kind of unsurprising given the plot.

Sex:

So far as I am aware, everyone whose sexuality we have information about appears to be heterosexual

Race & Ethnicity:

Every character is some variety of white European or USAian except Fezzik, who is Turkish.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Three villains in the story are, respectively, hunchbacked, six-fingered, and an albino. The author-character's (fictitious, according to Wikipedia) son is fat as a child, and subject to much scorn by the author-character on this matter. One hero character has gigantism.

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Town:
 
Marash stows her trusty mace in her home, along with the amulet of charisma. She sells off the Ring of the Dog and that potion of boldness she expects never to use, buys herself a shield and some leather armour, and sells off the lesser boots of free action. There, better.
 
She heads off to the general store, fills her quiver with arrows, buys some Recall scrolls, and sits down to study her prayers before heading back down.
 
Level 11: "This place looks uninteresting"
 
Marash is quickly set on by a gang of rogues. She prays to be protected from evil and kills thirteen of them before one escapes with some of her money.
 
After a while running around, Marash concludes her feeling about the level was right. She finds the stairs leading down and reads a scroll called 'fertum anus'. It unexcitingly detects traps, so she shrugs and heads down.
 
Level 12: "You are unsure about this place"
 
But surely better than the last one! She calls up her detections and becomes aware of a dark elven mage, a baby red dragon and ten manes. Mostly new creatures, always worrying. On consideration, she decides to wait and recover her magical power.

 
Nothing happens, so she heads off in search of the dark elven mage, grabbing a cap along the way. A hippogriff gets in the way, giving her trouble fighting it off. Especially after the elf cast a poisonous cloud onto her and ran off.
 
By the time she gets the hippogriff away, she has realised there might be something special about the cap she found, so it gets swapped out. She drops the one she was wearing; it got damaged by a trap 50 feet above anyway.
 
That hat is a very cute hat! Definitely worth wearing, and not just for the way it improves her looks. Although she isn't quite sure yet what else it does...

 
Marash wanders the dungeon, wondering if there is anything else nice here. What she finds is the yeek Orfax, Son of Boldor, and his escort. Dozens of yeeks fall to her ball and chain, but little sign of their local lord presents itself, just an embarrassment of riches in loot.

She finds a magical sword and decides to test it out, though it does not sit well in her hands. The Ring of the Dog laying around goes on too, just to know it better in case she wants to sell it.
 
The sword she discovers is slightly better than the ball and chain she wields, but to use it feels too wrong. There was a magical spear on the floor, so that gets tested as well. While roaming in search of something to spear, she discovers a chest on the floor. Opening it poisons her, but brings reward in copper coins and sapphires.
 
More wandering in search of something to stick a spear into. The place seems strangely empty, until she meets a kobold and feels herself buffeted by something invisible. A quick prayer to sense the invisible reveals some Air Spirits around, soon defeated once sighted.
 
The kobold drops a ring. A cursed ring of searching, only discovered after it is worn and stuck. A reason to curse oneself for taking the risk.
 
She retrieves her staff of curing and trudges off to face the yeek, plotting to abandon items she no longer finds needful.
 
As soon as she finds him she protects herself from evil. When he is closer she tries to bless herself, but is too confused by his spell.
 
Ack! By the time she is no longer confused he has blinked away again, beyond her reach unless she is willing to cut through the manes she detected earlier.
 
She marches south, restoring her protection from evil once the first manes is in sight. Three manes down and a baby white dragon filters in with a ranger. Drain Life deals with the dragon. She tries out firing arrows at the rangers until they approach. She almost doesn't notice when they are all dead, sets wearily to sorting through everything the rangers dropped.
 
None of it turned out special. She marched on, only to find Orfax coming for her, along with a baby red dragon. She retreats back up the corridor, fighting reinforcements as she went. The dragon's fire breath destroyed some of her precious items and marked it as a priority target. But, she could not see a path to destroy it quickly without using up her ability to do so when she created the opportunity. Desperate for time, she turned to tools she should have been using more, her staves of confuse and slow monsters. They affect all but Orfax and buy time.
 
Something unseen starting touching her and draining her dexterity. Fortunately she couldn't get any clumsier, but still she ended up praying for vision to see the moaning spirit in the walls, and to knock it away.
 
Orfax teleports her into the big room, where a green jelly comes in to cause trouble too. It won't confuse and it won't allow its life to be drained. The dragon wanders away a bit, but Orfax summons a griffon to aid him, a nasty looking creature.
 
Orfax blinks awway, then returns and heals himself, then heals more, and suddenly it looks like maybe fleeing is a good idea. But, surprisingly the rod of drain life kills him outright now finally charged. The griffon remains.
 
Marash prays for Cure Light Wounds and Chants to boost herself for fighting the griffon. More novice rangers approach, and now she is in the dangerous open.
 
The griffon is taking damage too slowly. She uses her staves, The griffon resists being confused but succumbs to slowing. It is still too dangerous, Marash too wounded. She drinks a potion of Cure Serious Wounds, then a second when she is in dire need again. Finally the griffon flees. She turns her attention to the rangers, making one flee her might and killing another.
 
She pursues and kills the fleeing ranger before it gets far, then uses the rod of drain life to dispose of the baby red dragon. The griffon returns to be killed too. Though the green jelly remains, Marash feels safer to check her prizes again.
 
The shortbow Orfax dropped turns out to be much better than the one she'd be carrying, now discarded. A shortsword dropped by a ranger is magical too.
 
While searching for something to test it on Marash encounters an amber amulet, which reminds her she ought to pray for the cursed ring to leave her. She throws it away, along with the Ring of the Dog she'd foolishly been wearing through the fight.
 
She finds a bloodshot icky thing to test her sword on, only to discover it is worthless and get her boots of free action damaged in the process. She kills the icky thing with arrows, then hits the master yeek behind it to death and feels a bit better.
 
She goes back and tries on the amber amulet she found, discovering it to teleport her randomly. In disgust, she throws it away and returns to resisting acid.
 
Wondering if she should abandon this level of Angband, Marash comes across a nest of paladins and cave spiders. A salamander too. She backs away to a nice, narrow corridor and emboldens herself. The paladins try to make her afraid, but she cleanses herself of the emotion.
 
As she sets to mopping up the last paladins, the cave spiders begin waking. The spiders seem reluctant to pursue her, so she recklessly explores north. A kobold archer emerges before her. She detects evil in the form of a tengu, a baby gold dragon, fourteen snagas and seven cave orcs. Clearly, she should head back to the spiders.
 
Those spiders were easy enough to charge and lay into. Her light is fading when she kills the kobold archer and heads north again. The tengu approaches. Marash tries to protect herself from evil, but fails in her prayer. The tengu yanks her into the room with all the snagas.
 
Immediately Marash fires off her rods of light, wiping out a line of snagas south of her. She prays for light and they cringe.

 
The tengu yanks her beside the baby dragon, to take the full force of its attacks. Before she can destroy it, the tengu yanks her back out into the corridor. This time her prayer for protection from evil is successful, and the tengu's attacks slide off her.
 
The tengu flees. Marash kills a snaga in the doorway, giving her a clear shot at the dragon. Her first attempt fails, but so does much of the dragon's reply thanks to her protection. Her rod kills the dragon on the second attempt; immediately the tengu jerks her away and flees again.
 
Marash steps back into the room and calls on light again. She grows reckless, overconfident with her success, and begins simply hitting whatever is nearby as the tengu bounces her around the room. After a while, her light goes out, and she is sent into cave orc territory.
 
A long, confusing while later, everything Marash knows of is dead. She is rewarded with the prayer of Earthquake and a gold-plated rod of door and stair detection.
 
She is out of light and she has been nearly everywhere. Marash returns to town.
 
Rod of door/stair detection sold. Scrolls of mapping and detection stashed at home, to see if she misses them. Oil purchased to fuel lantern. Both scrolls of Recall available in town bought. Return.

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I've had more time in which I could post, recently, but I have not been using it to do so. Don't know why, maybe I just don't feel like it. Maybe I am not thinking as much these days. Maybe I am simply out of the habit.

So, here's the news. Still not had a call back from that job telling me when they want me to come in and actually start. I have this place to myself for the weekend, so I am spending it sick. Yesterday I finally finished another editing pass on my so-called novel and sent it off to a few people for review and feedback. Hopefully I can be done with it soon.

Anything else? I've managed to trick myself into reading again, which is fun. Currently am reading To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust, which I had meant to read Paradise Lost beforehand, but forgot to finish doing that.

I think that's about it. Been very much wanting a stable schedule again, one I can build a routine around. Since I am (hopefully, unless something has gone / goes terribly wrong and it all comes crashing down around me) a casual employee, this doesn't seem likely for the next year or two. I don't like that, but it's important too. (I want to build a routine because I believe that will make it easier for me to work on personal projects consistently, and thereby make steady progress on them. but there is no guarantee of that of course, and I might well continue being frustratedly erratic even given an ideal opportunity)

Alright, done now. Take care all. <3

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A fun paper I came across a while ago - The Steppenwolf: A Proposal for a Habitable Planet in Interstellar Space. The question at hand is, what are the optimal conditions for a planet ejected from its star system to retain liquid water?

Unfortunately it has been a few months since I read through the paper itself, so I've forgotten a lot, and I'm not willing to do it again just now. However, the results are surprisingly optimistic. A terrestrial planet with an Earthlike composition would be able to retain liquid water under a layer of insulating ice for significant periods if its mass were approximately 3.5 times that of Earth. And since more massive planets could potentially retain a higher mass of volatiles I wouldn't be surprised if isolated planets below that threshold retained liquid water too.

Meanwhile, this sentence - "If a rogue planet had about ten times higher water mass fraction or a thick cryo-atmospheric layer, it would need to be only ~0.3 times the mass of Earth to maintain a liquid ocean." - seems a bit more theoretical, since I am not sure are likely to encounter planets of such low mass with such large amounts of the appropriate materials. Unless I un-forget about the possibility of predominantly icy planets.

The whole paper is fascinating and worth a read. It's just a shame it is so difficult to detect these planets if they are out there. I am not sure we ever will without some form of interstellar travel (if nothing else, even slow automated exploration would give our descendants more vantage points from which to potentially observe one). Or we could get lucky and find one in the neighbourhood. Not betting on that.

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Old news again! Evidence for Rain on Titan. I find it rather wonderful to think that all this time Titan has had seasonal rains and we didn't know. When I was in high school, rain on Titan. When Pluto was discovered, unobserved rain on Titan.

Back in 1655 when Titan was first discovered, quite possibly there was a downpour of methane happening that Huygens couldn't see. Amazing. Wonderful.

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Back in June I got linked to a BBC article, about an autistic boy who died after getting hold of medication from an online pharmacy, and whose parents are now waging a campaign to protect others.

Except, that's not what happened. The photo included in the article is misleading - this was not a school-aged boy, this was an adult, 26 years old. And this does not appear to have been any sort of accident. He had attempted suicide several times before using pills from other sources before finally succeeding. If restrictions had been in place such that he could not order this online, what then? I expect he would have tried some other means to end his life.

Blaming online pharmacies because a suicidal person made use of one to end eir own life seems more an act of desperation than a useful response. While I believe people do and ought to have the right to end their own lives, it would be a far better response to campaign for better mental health services and support rather than pursuing doctors in other countries for not breaking local laws.

I'm also worried the repeated mention of the deceased as being autistic, along with the photo used for the article. It seems an attempt to infantilise him, as if by being autistic he is not capable of making his own decisions. It seems like an attempt to portray this as a tragic accident, rather than a deliberate act.

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