Category: Reading
Avatar Remaindered, 1
Back about three or four years ago, when I began this project … this paying out of my story debt, I must’ve begun with Chapter 2 of Avatar Remaindered. As–lol–I have not found Chapter 1 anywhere in the archives. Diligent searching, I tell you.
I thought I might link to it when I post up Chapter 23 as the avatar needs to be in the district round about now, and Avatar Remaindered was always going to be ‘published’ before the end of Lodestar.
Since a lot of readers have joined in the meantime, I decided instead to enable you all to read … if you’re interested … Sard Yon Kerr’s adventures from start to finish. I’ve gone back to the original and revised it. May follow it up with the chapters in between. Be easier to find consecutive chapters then.
‘The Mercy of Gods’
I’m going to try to talk about this without giving anything away since you too might want to read it. It’s worth it. Science fiction.
It definitely took me reading this tome twice before I could be sure that the title says what it says for a reason. And remember that if you’re a fast reader … like I am … it will probably need twice through before you get both the title and the reason for the incredibly detailed viewpoints. It did me.
Those were the two main things I took away from the second time through. I found the incredible nit-picky detail quite irritating the first time. Usually when I pick up a book for the first time, I consume it for its story. It’s a make or break reading and if it doesn’t come up to my expectations I’ll be leaving it in the laundry.
Lol, “leaving it in the laundry” is a euphemism for getting rid of it. Back in my youth when I lived on the road for three years, books were regularly left in a camp-ground’s laundry for swapping. You’d leave your excess luggage in the form of books and magazines there in exchange for things you hadn’t read yet. No mobile phones in those days. The really good books that I found in that way and that I couldn’t abandon like that, I would post home. Still have a couple that I collected that way.
Here at the retirement village, there’s quite an extensive library of books left by people not wanting to store them in their apartment shelves, I assume. I’ve left a few of my acquisitions there too. I’d say that’s the primary method of acquisition. Detective fiction is the most popular genre here.
The second time reading a book, since I already know the plot and outcome, I can concentrate on the detail. And in The Mercy of Gods there is a lot of talk and thinking by various characters. Some that irritated me first time round became a necessary flow-of-consciousness to enable me to negotiate–along with the character thinking the verbiage–the extremely difficult situations presenting themselves.
Situations that I might have glossed over first time round. [Yeah, I know. Glossing a novel is wasteful on a number of counts. What can I say? Chasing an outcome is my addiction.] The primary situation is a bunch of humans in a very alien situation. I take my hat off to the authors’ world-building and ability to explain what is happening in the extreme environments they’ve invented.
Another really great process … not topic, not event, not character … what’s left? Process? So, another really intricate and interesting process is the way the humans are made to pit themselves against what they think is the target which turns completely on its head. You just will not see that result coming. Even me telling you like this won’t help you, because if you are a normal human being you’ll be reading along waiting for something to happen. It’s dense, opaque and a great read! Go read a book review somewhere if you need spoilers.
My very first five-star read this year!
Fireworks …
As you can see this is an embroidery of fireworks. I had a go at prompting the resident AI but result looked nothing like what I imagined.
Somewhere in the post below I burst out laughing. “Good to meet you, friend. Cleaning out the cat’s litter tray? I did that too sometime that night as I too was ‘resisting the advent of the new year’.”
I didn’t even watch any fireworks this year. Just recalled the most amazing display I … I’m going to have wrote about this on my laptop because apparently on the mobile I’m limited??? To two paragraphs? A busy night maybe. The data centers running hot.
OK, now on my laptop and the day after where I can spread out.
I just recalled the most amazing fireworks I’ve ever experienced. It was the turn of the millennium, back at the moment when 1999 turned int 2000. Everybody was doing something special. I was driving in my little old car hurrying back to town after picking up my young teenager from friends in the country-side. Hurrying to town to pick up my mother and drive to the nearest seaside fiesta and fireworks.
Was never going to make that. A doof (feral music festival) in the district straddling the road network had all the single lane roads gnarled up with parked cars. (In that country side, at that time, all tarred roads were single lane. When you met someone going the opposite way, you both had to drive with your left-side on the grassy road shoulder … in Australia we drive on the left… to pass each other before continuing again in the middle of the road.)
I was having to take byways and dirt tracks, and finally knew I would not make it back to town in time. My teenager was asleep by then probably with a bit of clandestine alcohol in his system. I stopped the car, the uselessness of what I was doing giving way to wanting to see something, anything, celebratory on this momentous night.
Even sitting in the car I was high enough that I could see a long way south along the coast … maybe 30 kilometers and north a similar distance. The dark, moon-glittering ocean worried at the eastern horizon. Across the track, a bunch of ghostly people gathered in the long grass. They stared into the valley at their feet, the deep doof-doof of the bass drum beat reached me easily in the car.
When I joined the locals, and looked down into the valley too, I saw a huge heart pounding down in there, red and swirling pink fog pulsing to the techno drum beat. Then, far down the coast, a rush of fireworks rose and hung like a huge sparkling teardrop forever imprinted onto my mind. Then the town nearer us lit theirs. Another huge tear climbed up the sky and hung there for a long second before dying to embers that fell and died.
Four or five of the small seaside towns lit their fireworks one after the other all the way north. One after the other. As if calculated that way.
I’ve never again seen anything like it.
coffeenovelist.blog/2025/01/01/resisting-the-new-year/
Reading: The Mercy of Gods
Book 1 of The Captive’s War, a series by James S. A. Corey, published by Orbit in 2024
Science fiction through and through, the action begins on Anjiin, an Earth-like planet home to the humans in the story.
It’s a complex set-up saved from immediate confusion by a two page prologue introducing the Carryx, along with—it must be said—a bunch of exotic sounding people and planets that are not mentioned again.
Confusing. And yet, also on the first page, the speaker, the keeper-librarian of the human moiety of the Carryx, using just four words seems to summarize the plot.
But of course these authors (Yes, two authors now not really hiding anymore) using the one nom de plume. They wrote The Expanse an eight volume series that I enjoyed very much and apparently also wrote the screenplay for the TV series, also very good. Knowing their pedigree, I have expectations.
When I heard that they were starting another series, I wondered if they could repeat their success without repeating their worldbuilding? They covered a lot of ground in The Expanse I thought, and it’ll be hard to imagine another whole different universe.
I haven’t read a story for quite a while that takes nearly the whole volume to intro the protagonist. Though a bunch of humans make it in quite early in the piece, which thankfully gave me a few people I could relate to, they are not the primary characters.
Their names are similar but not the same as ‘our’ names. Dafyd is one of the humans. So is Campar. Night Drinkers are one of the alien groups.
There are maybe half a dozen alien tribes to get acquainted with, and they are much more alien than usual. Their various biologies are rendered in detail and I was reminded of their main features often enough that I could learn them.
There are re interpretations to get used to. Librarians are not the librarians we know. A medry … just does not ring a bell. A moiety is a term I last met in anthropology.
There’s much much more. Reading is ongoing.
Cory Doctorow: Proud to be a Blockhead
Under the above title was going to be a link to Doctorow’s post of that name, but I don’t think so. Not yet. The link I pasted turned into a wall of text, virtually unreadable. So, again, this post will be the ‘About Blogging’ … how often already this year have I tagged a post that way?
Because what happens usually when I click on a Share Button, the title of the article/post to be shared and its URL are copied and saved on a virtual clipboard. Then, when I click and copy on a place in my post of my choosing ... usually after I’ve introduced the article/post as I intended to do here … the article/post will paste into the position directly under the title and shove the intro to the bottom, or into a never-never land where it can never again be found. (Yes, that is a hint to myself to save a draft though I’m not sure if that’ll work.)
I can but give it all another go.
Lol, this is a straight-out quote that reverberates in my head … from one of my own fictions, and when I say or think those words, I always feel like I’m hovering over Tardi Mack (trucker and surfer starring in Mongrel [published] and Meld [still being edited]) saying it while he is giving x y or z problem another go.
Intro
I’m proud to be a blockhead the same as Doctorow. Quoting from Doctorow’s article … “the most laughably false statement about writing ever uttered is Samuel Johnson’s notorious “No man but a blockhead ever wrote but for money”: … Yep. I’m definitely a blockhead.
There’s so much in this article that resonates with me, that I relate to, the whole article is rich with quotes about ‘making art’, creative endeavors of all kinds, how badly musicians are paid, and that by Spotify that people tell me I ought to be ashamed of not using them in preference to Apple Music, for example. All of them guilty of the same practices?
Why it’s important to read and read lots, how writing is a way of thinking, a way of working stuff out. While Doctorow is afraid his luck will run out in relation to his writing career, I’m often afraid that the internet will fall over and how easy that will be when it does, with all the links in the chain from me here typing this to you opening WordPress or your mail service, and reading. And there’s much more.
So I thought you might as well read the original … https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/21/blockheads-r-us/
Rita de Heer 