Echoes of Flavio's Ghost Dreaming

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Difficult, this one. Hardly a novel, with barely a threadbare plot that just keeps going in circles (sorry..). At the same time, it is a lovely, lovely prose poem with at times gripping and touching imagery (mostly that of the planet below). I finished it and left without still really knowing what to make of it. Come for the descriptions, the images. Don't come expecting a conventional novel, plot.



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I probably have written about this before, as I had read it a few years back. This is a collection of short(ish) science fiction stories by Stross, which was chosen for next month's Bibliogoth meeting.

I'm half way through the book, on the third of those stories. I particularly like the first one, in which he kind of (only kind of) riffs something akin to Discworld except much, much darker and in the context of the Cold War -who else by Stross would put Gregor Samsa and Carl Sagan in the same room. Liking the third one, which is an homage to Lovecraft's 'At the Mountains of Madness'. Didn't quite enjoy as much the second one, which might be taken as a riff on 'Sally' by Asimov, except with farms instead of cars.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I don't think I'd read anything by Becky Chambers before. Will have to have a look now. Good old space science-fiction well done. Maybe a certain tendency to go into detailed explanations of things (a bit a la Neal Stephenson perhaps) but I like that. Liked the appendices with more peeks into the book and what makes the author tick.



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I don't think I normally post about things I watch on telly. Which, these days, means really Netflix and Amazon Prime. Mostly because I don't watch much telly in any format. I watch a few minutes of news in the morning until I get depressed of the news and switch it off.

Couple of things I have been watching of late, though:
- Death, Love & Robots: some are very grim but they're short, very well made and make their point in very few brushstrokes. I really like the series.
- Picard: I never saw TNG back there then. I've been catching up on that in bits of late -now barely on Season 2. So a lot of the references and subtext in S1 were a bit lost on me but I enjoyed it nonetheless. And did enjoy S2 in spite of a few inevitable tropes and the ending. Enjoyed it much more than what I've seen so far of TNG.
- Sandman: Saw episode 1, will probably continue. Didn't grab me as hard as I thought it would but I liked it enough that I'll probably persevere with it. I never read the comic or watched previous movie so there is that, I have no preconceptions.
- Rings of Power: I'm not going to bother with this. I love Tolkien but this is ... well, it's not Tolkien, for starters. It didn't stir anything in me other than a 'what? no, really? No.'

Of course my viewing is heavily tilted towards science-fiction and a bit of fantasy. And I prefer science-fiction to fantasy. You won't see me watching period dramas very often (period meaning those late 19th Century things). Not a lot of horror or crime either, real life seems to be a little bit too full of both.

How Long 'til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This was, at least to my liking, excellent. A short but powerful visit into some of Jemisin's worlds. I loved it.



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At this point, President Santiago has died in a convenient accident and the newly appointed President Clark begins to work to please his shadowy associates. Captain Sinclair has mysteriously been put aside and sent away and the Star Killer has been appointed his successor.

In the last few days I've been re-watching Babylon 5. Yes, yes, the graphics scream '1991' but the story and, most of all, the characters, grab you (or at least grabbed me) and are believable and human -including some of those aliens with the rubber masks and the make up- and none of the imperfections of the show matter.

I'm learning that JMS wants to reboot or redo B5. That would be a difficult task. Worked with BSG because the original was almost a joke. It obviously wouldn't be the same cast, nearly thirty years on (many of whom are no longer with us) and maybe not the same characters. We'll see.

B5 is showing on Amazon -apparently you don't need to be on Prime to watch it but you have to endure commercials (ah, it's good to have a mute button).

Not a lot to relate. Not many adventures. Guitar lessons continue on Zoom and, for the two schools I teach at, on Google Meet. I still have fewer pupils than \normal' but, not having a social life in these times, I'm also spending much less so I'm 'nearly' ok, managing to get my head above the water and gasp and take in air once in a while.

I'm still putting pictures of sunsets on Instagram and putting short videos of local concerts done when such things were possible on my other Instagram. Tried a little bit of crowdfunding or sponsorship on Ko-Fi but that didn't work very well, maybe I should have gone the whole hog and started a Patreon page. But I'm not  desperate for money at this point. The worry is the medium future. At this age, I have no idea how long I can keep working as I do but it cannot be counted in decades. Last I looked I couldn't get a pension either as there appeared to be quite a few years in which there hadn't been paid the contributions in full. Must look into that but having to deal with all that sort of thing makes me lose my will to live.

Still going to Bibliogoth; the last couple of books have been interesting. The next one is 'Cold Comfort Farm' by Stella Gibbons and.. alas, I'm finding it a little difficult. It is very much not my sort of thing, which normally isn't a problem, one of the reasons for going to a book club is indeed to get some exposure to diverse literature in genres and styles out of one's comfort (sori) zone. And there isn't anything really wrong with the book but I find it stodgy and difficult to take in. rather than funny as I think it is supposed to be.

And that, and local walks in the neighbourhood but seldom to Hampstead Heath as it gets so busy even in lock-down, is pretty much it. Apart from perhaps watching The Expanse (which still is very good even though I've read the books) and Star Trek Discovery -which is.. it has its good moments and it is refreshing to see a TV show in which some of the main characters are LGBQT/non binary, but now and again bits of the plot make me want to scream. Listening to podcasts on palaeontology and cosmology in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep. Going for my one coffee out of doors at the stand by Kentish Town station. Having pretty much given up on learning to make bread properly, etc. but making beer out of a kit that a friend gave me for Christmas (the beer, a stout called 'dark matter' -cue more cosmological jokes- was amazing).

And so we go in a world with suddenly narrowed horizons, from lockdown to semi-aperture that makes the next lockdown inevitable and so we go, feeling our way in the dark and trying to move forward with our lives.

The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I liked this one even more than the first one. Now I'm half-way through the third instalment. Bit grim at times but a very good story and the characters are credible -if a lot of what they do break a lot of laws of physics! and the geological setting is a bit improbable. But it is a very good story, very well told.



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Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A very good story but perhaps not one that you would want to read during a pandemic... much more science-fiction-y than pretty much anything else by Margaret Atwood I've read (Handmaid's Tale is not really science-fiction, rather politics-fiction). Or, rather, apocalyptic fiction. It is, as one would expect from Atwood, very well threaded and it takes you some weird places. I enjoyed it a lot and will very very likely read the rest of the series.



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I’m reading three books at the moment. Firstly, ‘All Systems Red’ by Martha Wells (I’m blaming Eglé for this :D ) which is the set reading for the next Bibliogoth (yes, it was my nomination, again I blame Eglé for that). It is a lovely book but quite short (and it is my second reading of it), so I’m reading a couple of other things at the same time so that I don’t finish it too early and forget all about it by the time of the Bibliogoth meeting (this has happened before..). So I’m reading something called ‘Starshine’ by G S Jensen. This is a space opera that is almost a compendium of all space sci-fi tropes including alien invasion, galactic porto-empires at war, love interest between enemies, etc. Not enjoying it that much but not bad enough to put it down and forget about it. Also re-reading ‘The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O’ by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland, which combines a ‘Many Worlds’ world, time travel and witchcraft, in the hands of two people that know how to do this sort of thing. Enjoying this one a lot.