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Entry tags:
OTW, fiction
From the most recent OTW news: Have you ever fancied coding for the OTW or wondered what it is we do? AD&T member Jenny will be hosting a public chat on coding, introducing Ruby on Rails and the setup for our coders. All are welcome! The chat will be held on Saturday, 27 August at 04:00 UTC (what time is it in my timezone?) in OTW's public chatroom on Campfire.
Very helpful advice on how to get around the 1000-works limit on searches on AO3 before the planned fix takes effect. I’m not sure I’ll ever have the impetus, much less the free time, to join an ongoing fandom and scour through thousands of stories the way I did when I found the XF in 1996, but it’s nice to think I could.
Ayize Jama-Everett, The Liminal People: Free LibraryThing Early Reviewer copy, with a bunch of typos and a missing page. Still, this is an engaging sff quasi-noir. The protagonist, an African-American expatriate living in Africa and using his superpower (manipulating the human body for healing or destruction) as part of a gang, gets a call from the only woman he ever loved, bringing him back to London where her daughter is missing. Superpower battles with plenty of gore and harm to kids (and animals) ensue. The worldbuilding with the powers is open-ended and might be frustrating for those looking for a coherent framework, but I liked the way that raw power and training/creativity each counted for a lot. As with the next book, human variation is baked in: at one point the protagonist comments that returning to London is a surprise because his London was so multicultural and he’s seeing all these white people around.
Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker: Post-apocalyptic (economic and environmental collapse) YA—near the devastated remnants of New New Orleans, Nailer ekes out a living as a ship breaker, stripping wrecks of their contents and trying to stay on the crew so that he doesn’t have to sell his organs, get beaten up by his drug-addicted father, or just die. He has adventures! They are exciting! There are genetically altered human-dog hybrids with programmed loyalties (and maybe not so perfect programming) and huge ships with monofilament sails. There are white characters, but they’re noted as such (people of color are the default, Indian subcontinent and China are where the rich folks are). The ending is maybe just a bit upbeat for the world Bacigalupi’s created, but that’s YA, and it’s somewhat open-ended.
Very helpful advice on how to get around the 1000-works limit on searches on AO3 before the planned fix takes effect. I’m not sure I’ll ever have the impetus, much less the free time, to join an ongoing fandom and scour through thousands of stories the way I did when I found the XF in 1996, but it’s nice to think I could.
Ayize Jama-Everett, The Liminal People: Free LibraryThing Early Reviewer copy, with a bunch of typos and a missing page. Still, this is an engaging sff quasi-noir. The protagonist, an African-American expatriate living in Africa and using his superpower (manipulating the human body for healing or destruction) as part of a gang, gets a call from the only woman he ever loved, bringing him back to London where her daughter is missing. Superpower battles with plenty of gore and harm to kids (and animals) ensue. The worldbuilding with the powers is open-ended and might be frustrating for those looking for a coherent framework, but I liked the way that raw power and training/creativity each counted for a lot. As with the next book, human variation is baked in: at one point the protagonist comments that returning to London is a surprise because his London was so multicultural and he’s seeing all these white people around.
Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker: Post-apocalyptic (economic and environmental collapse) YA—near the devastated remnants of New New Orleans, Nailer ekes out a living as a ship breaker, stripping wrecks of their contents and trying to stay on the crew so that he doesn’t have to sell his organs, get beaten up by his drug-addicted father, or just die. He has adventures! They are exciting! There are genetically altered human-dog hybrids with programmed loyalties (and maybe not so perfect programming) and huge ships with monofilament sails. There are white characters, but they’re noted as such (people of color are the default, Indian subcontinent and China are where the rich folks are). The ending is maybe just a bit upbeat for the world Bacigalupi’s created, but that’s YA, and it’s somewhat open-ended.