rhorsman @rhorsman@octodon.social

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet absolutely has its flaws (it's painfully obvious it's structured as episodes of a TV series for one thing), but it was fun. This second one is just kind of limp.

Halfway through the second Becky Chambers book, the last of the Hugo novel nominees that I haven't read yet. It's a big drop in quality from her first one, I'm afraid. The Jane/Pepper half of the book is the best part, but even that feels padded out. Would've worked better as a 20-30 page flashback in a different book, or as a standalone novelette maybe. The Lovelace half of the book is just dull: "What does it mean to be sentient?" stuff that we've seen a million times, with no new insights.

Nothing dates sci fi faster than scenes depicting "fun nightlife". It's almost always current ideas of the glamorous life with a shitty "but in the future" paint job. The Stork Club BUT ON MARS! Go-Go dancers in cages BUT IN ZERO G! A warehouse rave BUT WITH ALIEN DRUGS! So tedious.

Oops: turns out Hugo voting ends on the 15th, not the 31st. Good thing I'm way ahead of schedule for finishing the novels. Prolly not going to finish all of the short form stuff in time though.

Looks like I am compelled to finish The Obelisk Gate tonight, on account of it being incredibly good and unputdownable.

Finished the third Liu Cixin book yesterday. I'm glad I took the ride, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone else. The series goes in a lot of interesting directions, but 1400 pages is a long time to spend with a stylist that dry. But now I get to go back to N.K. Jemisin, so things should get a lot more lively.

good lord: these SpaceX scale models are priced so only Elon himself can buy them:

https://www.spacemodel.com/next-generation-launch-vehicles

Forgot to close the loop: I ended up really liking Walkaway. Made me wanna go learn how to make stuff.

Just had an idea for a Marx Brothers RPG, and can't decide if it's a great idea or the worst idea.

Most of the time I have no real idea who I am and most of the time that's okay. The 10% of the time when it isn't okay is a bitch though.

The full DOOM Starks album is never never ever ever coming out, isn't it?

The second Liu Cixin book has a scene where one of the characters visits Bin Laden and they talk about Asimov. And it's okay, but a little dull. Kind of the whole Three Body series in a nutshell: big crazy ideas, okay execution, a little dull.

Walkaway gets better, but I still prefer Doctorow the activist to Doctorow the writer by a wiiiiiiiiiiide margin.

Trying to read Cory Doctorow's new book, and it is breathtakingly annoying that one of the main characters has a comma in the middle of their name. I keep reading it as an actual comma and it's fucked up the flow of multiple sentences for me. That's either on purpose and vile, or proof that his editor no longer gets to say no to anything.

There was a lot I didn't like about All the Birds in the Sky, mainly stylistic choices. But I'm glad I read it, and probably wouldn't have if it wasn't nominated for the Hugo. Reading all the nominees is shaping up to be a good project. It's been ages since I've read this much fiction.

Someone in our office is wearing enough cologne that they left a followable scent trail going down a hallway. For the first time in my life I know what a bloodhound feels like.

Reading Ninefox Gambit. Can't tell if it's doing something really interesting and subversive with the tropes of military sci-fi, or if the genre has been innovating in the last 20 odd years while I haven't been reading it.

I can't decide if I lost my spark and became boring at some point, or just stopped pretending to be interesting and became more authentic. #conundrum