Reading ‘Weaponized’

Reading Weaponized by Neal asher (2023) was a marathon.

There are a couple of Asher’s novels I’ve enjoyed, The Skinner and The Voyage of the Sable Keech, for example, the first two instalments of the Spatterjay trilogy, published in the early 2000s.

I found those inventive and engrossing. I still think with fondness about the living ship. The Polity novels that intervene between those and Weaponized are set in a human universe ruled by AIs.

In Weaponized a bunch of human characters from the polity intend to colonize an outer planet. They’re all in their second or third century and are bored. They intend to go back to basics somewhere new.

Ursula Ossect Treloon is their leader. The plot is a relentless competition for superiority between the human would-be settlers, and the native wildlife.

Neither of them wins when both appear to be taken over by superior Jain technology, from yet another universe. The end is is circular, a mystery, when a fragment of Ursula is saved by the Polity mole.

Most of the story is the ‘science’ describing the adaptations that need to be made to continue the struggle to survive an ever evolving enemy.

And this is an evolution happening at a daily at most week’s pace. The actual plot was told with a series of one liners buried in the almost baroquely detailed descriptions of the technology. Non-stop action as the back cover promises.

By about a third of the way through, I was wishing for a bit of ordinary narrative, describing the settlers ordinary time. But if anything proceedings notched up, there was never any relief.

‘I don’t speak binary…’

One of my favorite lines in The Mandalorian, which I’ve been watching one last time before I cancel my subscrition with Disney+. Cross my fingers that I can achieve that this time.

That punch line only seems paradoxical. In a scene with the maximum amount of technology being used, Din Djindarin tells his droid don’t complain to me I don’t speak binary.

Binary? A language made up of noughts and ones? On and off? Speaking it would be quite a feat. I think it’s hilarious, that idea. Always laugh when I hear it.

Originally, I signed up to rewatch the Star Wars timeline right through. That was last year sometime. Tried to cancel my subscription then, but Disney is one of those ‘sticky’ businesses. It’s hard to get loose once you signed up.

So, OK, I’ve gotten involved in a few other shows. The Bear was good. I rewatched Avatar, then tried to get into part two.

The minute one of the baddies said that they had to leave Earth because it had died, I was over it. I switched it off.

Turns out I can watch any amount of pretend fisticuffs and sword play but keep your so-called fictional future-telling off my Earth. The present day real life predatorial delays are bad enough.

A vague shot of the mythosaur .. he’s an archetype of course. I’d love to see a bit more of him if Disney+ ever does a third series.

Flowers

This excellent gerbera… in the wilderness that was the original village here.

When I take a photo from my balcony there is always first the roof over the BBQ area that I aim to miss, then the old olive green grey roofs of the single storey cottages that made up the old village, Carinya.

While only a few people still live there and itis generally a ghost town, the name is still often used, and a number of activities are run in Carinya’s community complex.

I haven’t explored over there yet although the Librarian at Parkland (the new community complex) said to me that if I liked old books, there are hundreds at Carinya. Kind of a red rag to an old reader, if you know what I mean.

About The Lodestar Timeline

The Star Wars chronology has been my go-to viewing for the past few weeks. The Mandalorian has just said auf wiedersein to his small charge and will be at a loose end.

The Mandalorian series got me thinking about novels, such as The Crystal Planet by Vonda McIntyre, set in the Starwars universe.

[All Star Wars related media produced pre 2014 are now referred to as Legends, while for post 2014 material and the original series, Disney+ claims the ‘Canon’ label.]

While they all have only a tenuous position on the original timeline, TV series and books have expanded the Star Wars universe.

The original timeline of the Lodestar universe has always involved timetravel. Not sideways to expand the size of the universe yet, to give more options where to set stories, as in the Star Wars universe.

The Lodestar universe began in the future … I even set a date for its beginning when I was still new at the business of writing a universe. But it turns out that in a story that involves a time travelling, forward falling, octohedrenal spaceship such as the Lodestar, there is no beginning or end.

Because that’s what happened …

A storm lurking above an anonymous suburban scene … a harbinger of climate change … one of the drivers of eco fiction … image from Alex Steffen’s Substack The Snap Forward

More About the Lodestar Series: Kestrel out of Jenk-Father next?

The earliest version of the series had the whole of each character’s POV chapters following on from one another. Ahni I, then Kestrel II then Srese III, then Sard IV.

Then, because Ahni’s chapters and Kestrel’s chapters often trod the same ground at the approximately the same time, I started a melded version. I seem to recall deciding that introducing Kestrel at the beginning of Ahni’s trials would prevent reader-resistance against their romantic liaison … him being born an ‘enemy’, after all.

Numbering of chapters might seem confused, though the sequence of posting should make perfect sense. Let me know if I make a mistake?

1.-tribute-gathering Download

Installment 2

Dryad after the Clear-felling, mixed media by Rita de Heer

This gig … of dumping 20 years worth of my work online … is turning out to be harder than I thought it could be. I had real trouble today just going to a File, saving it as a pdf, then inserting it here. This morning I first trapped myself thinking up a good title for this project. “A Broken Universe” sums it up quite nicely, I decided, since I could never get the timeline to gel.

I spent a couple of hours chasing through my Documents File for the long version of the Half Shaman in Space for Installment 3. As if it matters whether I post long or short, or anything in the order of the events, or anything.

But it does. There seem to be a few readers out there. Installment One did quite well.

Could only find a very short version. And I edited a couple of Files. And I did Delete a few odds and ends. Not a wasted day. Finally found what I was looking for in the Trash. Did retrieve it.

But anyway … installment two of the whole story is Half Shaman. One of the two published volumes, as it happens. Go to this Page for the details. https://wordpress.com/page/ritadeheer385131918.blog/1007

Media: ‘Lost in Space’

https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80104198

I just finished watching Lost in Space, the 2018-2021 version, three seasons over about 2 weeks, and thoroughly enjoyed the series. One reason is that I manage suspense and stress by previewing story-lines. Spoilers are an unimportant concept for me, these days.

Since suffering the recent trauma of cancer, I’ve been unable to watch any really suspenseful fiction due, I think, to the ongoing uncertainties of real life. Will I die if/when I catch Covid? Will the cancer come back? Will we all go to perdition due to climate change? Will we frizzle up in a nuclear disaster?

While the Robinson family are portrayed as nothing less than super at their various jobs, they are also good people even when quarreling. That feels over the top, a bit. Then I remember series like this are not made for cynical old crones like me and I think, Just enjoy it.

When Maureen and John, the parents, become aware of their children’s emotional problems launch right into the right kind of positive affirmations the kids need to overcome their doubts. The realism is in the long time that it takes Maureen, for example, to discover her daughter Penny’s insecurities.

All these familial resonances happen at the same time that life-threatening decisions, intricate repairs, instant inventions, and numerous other events are having to be dealt with. Despite their rate of failure, they’re confident they’ll come through the next impossibly impossible technical problem. They always do because the show is so squeakily wholesome, death does not feature front and center.

The only person, other than robots, that I recall dying was on the screen for less than ten seconds before he was blown out of an airlock. And get this, the person who organized that, agreed to her just desserts. More than that I will not say, in case you do care about spoilers. The robots, where they did survive, were transformed from bad into good.

The ‘science’ was interesting and was made to seem logical. The actors were very convincing even when they obviously had to interact with a green-screen dummy representing Robot or Scarecrow or SAR.

Don, a space mechanic whose best friend was Debbie, his pet chicken, was a welcome contrast to the perfection of the three genius children, their genius mother and their ex-Navy SEAL hero father.

Dr Smith, while also extremely smart, was the frustrating antithesis to them all. Many were the times that she plain outwitted them. An extremely able antagonist, where the bizarre planets and even the robots were cast as forces of nature.

A clever enjoyable series.