Books Read July 2020

[justanorthernlight]

How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems by Randall Munroe (aka the xkcd guy)

I really needed a laugh and xkcd never fails to deliver. This book includes instructions on How to Dig a Hole (feat. roasting The Curse of Oak Island), a futile attempt to baffle Col. Chris Hadfield with absurd flying/landing scenarios, How to Catch a Drone (feat. Serena Williams & robot ethics), and the coolest theoretical selfie you could possibly take. 9/10 because it also triggered the occasional bout of extreme anxiety about climate change.

Wild Seed by Octavia Butler 

In 1690 Africa a 4000-year-old immortal who kills to survive and has been using controlled breeding to try to create another creature like himself meets a 300-year-old healer and shapeshifter- the closest to an equal he's ever met. What follows is 150 years of an abusive relationship between the only two immortals in the world.

Even when it's uncomfortable, Butler's work is always gripping and totally engrossing. She does tend to stick close to certain themes (commune-style living, kidnapping/mind controlling people into said commune, control over one's own body at the cellular level, controlled breeding to genetically engineer a new species, etc), and I don't always agree with her take/execution of it, but it's usually hard to put down her novels.

Current events have been reminding me a lot of Butler's Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Talents duology.

Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler

In the present-ish day (I assume the present when it was written 1977-ish) Doro's controlled breeding project comes to fruition in a young woman named Mary, who takes his unstable, dangerous offspring and binds them together into a network of telepaths who start taking over a huge section of Los Angeles.

This was Butler's second novel ever, the Patternist series was written extremely out of order:

4/5.) Patternmaster (1976)
2.) Mind of My Mind (1977)
*4.) Survivor (1978, *never reprinted because Butler disliked it so much)
1.) Wild Seed (1980)
3.) Clay's Ark (1984).

It shows a bit as an early work, it's not as well-developed as other works, Anyanwu/Emma is barely involved after being the protagonist of Wild Seed, and it's never explained why Mary dislikes her so much, but it's still an interesting and enjoyable read.

Star Wars: Thrawn: Alliances by Timothy Zahn

Thrawn is a bigger Mary Sue than Mara Jade ever was, you can't change my mind.

Thrawn is brilliant. His mind his orderly and logical, and his emotion are oddly muted, making him rational and not driven by emotion. He's a Sherlock Holmes level of observationist, but unlike book!Sherlock Holmes he never gets led down the wrong path by any of those observations. He comes up with flawless plans, and no extraneous elements or unforeseen circumstances mess those plans up. Whenever any else tries to make a plan, or alter one of Thrawn's plans in the slightest, it leads to disaster. Thrawn is a great leader, the best leader. No other commanders a visiting stormtrooper has encountered have engendered the same degree of loyalty Thrawn does, and with that loyalty comes efficiency and competence the rest of the Empire could learn from. Thrawn is also no longer a ruthless villain, but a noble, byronic anti-hero working for the Empire for the sake of the Greater Good, namely some vague threat lurking in the Unknown Regions. Thrawn rescues kidnapped kids, goes out of his way to avoid civilian casualties, and saves loth-cats stuck in trees. He also just straight-up takes stuff out of Padme's hands in the middle of battle without getting decked for some reason.

Look, I liked the original Thrawn Trilogy! I liked most of Timothy Zahn's Legends novels. There were definitely some that were stronger than others, but overall I liked them. The only two I haven't read are  Survivor's Quest and the back half of Vision of the Future. I thought he was very good at writing complicated multi-layer plots with various factions in uneasy alliances, and I thought he was good at balancing ensemble casts in a way that gave each character their time to shine.

If I had to pick Zahn's weaknesses I would say visual description and an over-reliance on cultural stereotypes (this was a major flaw of the old Expanded Universe as a whole- for example: Han is Corellian, Han believes in luck and doesn't want to hear C-3PO tell him the odds in the middle of a dangerous maneuver, ergo all Corellians have a near-religious fanaticism for luck and a cultural hatred for odds. Thrawn's deducing-tactics-via-art is this trend on steroids, but that's beside the point.)

This book didn't play to any of Zahn's strengths. Structurally, it's two and a half different timelines, and that doesn't leave enough space to develop the various sets of bad guys at all. During the Clone Wars Padme travels to Black Spire Outpost on the world of Batuu on the edge of the Unknown Regions and vanishes. Several weeks later Anakin goes after her and meets Thrawn, who is on Batuu for mysterious purposes, but proposes to help Anakin find her. In the narrative present (Some time during the Rebels cartoon series), Vader and Thrawn are sent back to Batuu by the Emperor to investigate a disturbance in the Force.

It's told mostly in reverse order (Vader and Thrawn see something that reminds them of their past meeting and we switch timelines, Anakin finds a clue to Padme's actions and we switch to Padme's timeline, etc, until Anakin and Padme catch up around 2/3rds of the way through). The novel is only around 340 pgs long in hardcover. (Thrawn was 430, of the Legends paperbacks I have Specter of the Past was the shortest at 386, the rest were around 400-450 except for Vision of the Future, which is almost 700), It's so comparatively short and running two separate plotlines that neither was adequately fleshed out. The antagonists were extremely thinly drawn and the mystery was constantly dragged out by Thrawn having a theory but refusing to share with the audience.

There's not a whole lot of emotional stakes either. In the past timeline Anakin is worried about Padme, but we all know she's fine, and I cannot come up with a single thing I cared about during the present timeline. At least in Thrawn had Eli's struggles with the Imperial hierarchy and Pryce's revenge quest. Here there's just nothing.

Zahn spends so much time caught up in creative tactical minutia, but at the same time that minutia isn't particularly consistent. Even in the past timeline Anakin's degree of control with force telekinesis is whatever suits the plot. He can't reach a dowel/pin holding his cell door shut because it's not in visual line of sight, but he can manipulate a piece of rope around the head of said pin, as well as rag soaked in oil to lubricate it, even though it's still outside of his line of sight. He can't convincingly puppet a corpse to make it look alive, but Vader can convincingly puppet his armor in battle (once again out of his line of sight). 

I've run out of coherent things to say about it (if any of this was coherent in the first place), it was such a frustrating slog to read. At least it's off my TBR shelf.