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Grading v. Yuletide ... choose wisely
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Terrifying description of the ideal charter school day, from its proponents.
Megan Abbott, Dare Me: Addy, the lieutenant of the meanest cheerleader, meets the new coach and is drawn to her, but her best friend/worst enemy Beth isn’t going to let her go that easily, and Coach has secrets. The trick of this book, I think, is in the contrast between the lyrical writing—somewhere between teenage-overwrought and poetry—and the soapy plot. Abbott conveys both the confusion and the felt invincibility of a certain kind of American girl, the self-conscious appeal and the underlying miseries. Cheerleading does make them strong, but maybe not in the right ways.
Rob Reid, Year Zero: Reasonably well-done satire of modern copyright law: aliens come to Earth because they’ve been convinced they need to pay for Earth’s amazing music as broadcast to them for decades, except that a large and powerful faction wants to vaporize Earth instead of paying up, as those appear to be the only options. Discussing our lovely “statutory damages” of $150,000 per song (it’s actually “up to” that, and Reid has made a few other legal tweaks for artistic purposes), and how that’s supposed to be an approximation of harm, Reid’s hapless copyright lawyer protagonist says “Well, maybe they’re rounding up slightly,” and his alien interlocutor asks, “Rounding up? To what? To the nearest three-twentieths of a million dollars?” Which is a good point. The satire was marred by anti-union and pro-Tea Party caricatures; there is an unpretty political point to positing that government employees are inherently incompetent slackers eating up the entire GDP that is different from satirizing reality TV by showing the alien (per)version thereof. Still, I had to enjoy the ridiculousness that made a nautical-themed pashmina afghan part of the plot.
Connie Willis, All About Emily: Novella about a lioness of the theatre and the ingenue she encounters who just happens to be a robot who might take her job. Variations on a theme of All About Eve, but feel-goody in a way that left me feeling slightly greasy, maybe because it seemed to skip past real questions about disemployment in favor of suggesting that humanity lies in treating robots who look like us (only hotter) well instead of badly.
Paolo Bacigalupi, Pump Six: Short stories about the horrible bioengineered future, many of them set in Southeast Asia. The ones where chemical contamination has made most children damaged mentally and physically and necessitated high-tech means of reproduction for those who can afford it seem to be set in the US, along with a story about water theft from the West for the benefit of wealthy California. The strong do as they will; the weak do as they must.
Charles Stross, The Fuller Memorandum: Bob Howard, secret agent who works in a British bureaucracy fighting to protect humanity from the horrors that sleep beyond spacetime, has a problem. Several problems. His wife’s traumatized from her own duties at the agency; his superior (who turns out to be rather more than a mere sorceror) is missing, and he’s under investigation for screwing up a routine spell dispersal that turns out to have been rather more than that. And then the cultists show up. If you like toying with the Cthulhu mythos via MI5, these are enjoyable books; this one has a nice nod to The Prisoner along the way.
Charles Stross, The Apocalypse Codex: This time Bob Howard is detailed to assist two nongovernmental operatives investigating a potential incursion into the highest levels of government. The incursion is an extreme variant of Christianity intent on awakening the sleeping Jesus/Guardian of the Gates, which is a bad idea if you like humanity sane and/or still around. Howard goes to the US, which lets Stross get in various digs on our religiosity, our terrible broadband, etc.—like Cory Doctorow by way of Lovecraft, though I like Stross better than Doctorow. Howard is also leveling up in power, which may prove interesting.
Terrifying description of the ideal charter school day, from its proponents.
Megan Abbott, Dare Me: Addy, the lieutenant of the meanest cheerleader, meets the new coach and is drawn to her, but her best friend/worst enemy Beth isn’t going to let her go that easily, and Coach has secrets. The trick of this book, I think, is in the contrast between the lyrical writing—somewhere between teenage-overwrought and poetry—and the soapy plot. Abbott conveys both the confusion and the felt invincibility of a certain kind of American girl, the self-conscious appeal and the underlying miseries. Cheerleading does make them strong, but maybe not in the right ways.
Rob Reid, Year Zero: Reasonably well-done satire of modern copyright law: aliens come to Earth because they’ve been convinced they need to pay for Earth’s amazing music as broadcast to them for decades, except that a large and powerful faction wants to vaporize Earth instead of paying up, as those appear to be the only options. Discussing our lovely “statutory damages” of $150,000 per song (it’s actually “up to” that, and Reid has made a few other legal tweaks for artistic purposes), and how that’s supposed to be an approximation of harm, Reid’s hapless copyright lawyer protagonist says “Well, maybe they’re rounding up slightly,” and his alien interlocutor asks, “Rounding up? To what? To the nearest three-twentieths of a million dollars?” Which is a good point. The satire was marred by anti-union and pro-Tea Party caricatures; there is an unpretty political point to positing that government employees are inherently incompetent slackers eating up the entire GDP that is different from satirizing reality TV by showing the alien (per)version thereof. Still, I had to enjoy the ridiculousness that made a nautical-themed pashmina afghan part of the plot.
Connie Willis, All About Emily: Novella about a lioness of the theatre and the ingenue she encounters who just happens to be a robot who might take her job. Variations on a theme of All About Eve, but feel-goody in a way that left me feeling slightly greasy, maybe because it seemed to skip past real questions about disemployment in favor of suggesting that humanity lies in treating robots who look like us (only hotter) well instead of badly.
Paolo Bacigalupi, Pump Six: Short stories about the horrible bioengineered future, many of them set in Southeast Asia. The ones where chemical contamination has made most children damaged mentally and physically and necessitated high-tech means of reproduction for those who can afford it seem to be set in the US, along with a story about water theft from the West for the benefit of wealthy California. The strong do as they will; the weak do as they must.
Charles Stross, The Fuller Memorandum: Bob Howard, secret agent who works in a British bureaucracy fighting to protect humanity from the horrors that sleep beyond spacetime, has a problem. Several problems. His wife’s traumatized from her own duties at the agency; his superior (who turns out to be rather more than a mere sorceror) is missing, and he’s under investigation for screwing up a routine spell dispersal that turns out to have been rather more than that. And then the cultists show up. If you like toying with the Cthulhu mythos via MI5, these are enjoyable books; this one has a nice nod to The Prisoner along the way.
Charles Stross, The Apocalypse Codex: This time Bob Howard is detailed to assist two nongovernmental operatives investigating a potential incursion into the highest levels of government. The incursion is an extreme variant of Christianity intent on awakening the sleeping Jesus/Guardian of the Gates, which is a bad idea if you like humanity sane and/or still around. Howard goes to the US, which lets Stross get in various digs on our religiosity, our terrible broadband, etc.—like Cory Doctorow by way of Lovecraft, though I like Stross better than Doctorow. Howard is also leveling up in power, which may prove interesting.
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