2021 books: 9-14

[the_siobhan]

    

Embassytown by China Miéville These aren't the humanoids with bumpy foreheads of Star Trek universe, they are genuinely alien with incomprehensible psychology and toxic-to-human environments. One of the things I really liked about this world-building is that although there is faster-than-light travel, there is no communication that is faster than faster-than-light travel. Civilizations may have mind-blowing tech, but they use the equivalent of hand-carried messages to talk to each other. The story takes place on a remote planet where the non-locals have to live in a small area with curated air and when shit goes south there is no calling for help before the next transport comes in. China's world-building is amazing, but it's also bleak and in some of early books I found the fate of the characters nasty to be point of being gratuitous. He's very much developed that into a precision instrument by Embassytown - there is still plenty of nastiness to go around but it all feels entirely appropriate to the story.

    

Illusive by Emily Lloyd-Jones A global pandemic sweeps the globe. There is no cure, but a small lab finds a vaccine which is approved for use with only minimal testing. Side-effects appear in a small number of the vaccinated, side-effects that cause psychic powers such as levitation, illusion, mind-reading. The US government responds by instituting mandatory blood testing, and anybody who has the antibodies is monitored for abilities. All citizens must wear dog tags that record their identity and test results and are required to produce those tags on demand. Those who test positive get to choose between working for the government or life in prison. This book was published in 2014. I gotta tell you it reads very differently in 2021. Quite apart from the premise, I started off not liking the writing very much. As I got further into it, I realized that the things I don't like about her writing, are the things I don't like about my writing, so that's probably why they were bugging me so much. Her characters are tropey as hell, but they're fun tropes and I ended up really enjoying the story. It would also make an absolute brilliant TV series, so you know, if know anybody.

    

Adventures of a Dwergish Girl by Daniel Pinkwater Humble Bundle was offering a bundle of SF and Fantasy titles in exchange for a donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, so I threw in for some ebooks. I picked out Dwergish Girl at random and it turns out to be a kid's book - I'd say probably pre-teen. It was OK, but not really my thing. I'm sure I would have appreciated it if I had kids because it was a cute story. As it was, I lost interest about half-way in.

    

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi I picked this up because a friend highly recommended it. Did I say Miéville is grim? Because holy shit. This story takes place in Thailand after the collapse of fossil fuels - an event referred to as "The Contraction" because easy world-wide trade went right out the fucking window. The ocean is held back by dikes and coal-driven pumps, and what little trade remains is by dirigible. "Calorie" companies have stepped into the niche left by petrochemical companies and Monsanto's greatest dreams have come true - genetically modified diseases and pests have utterly ravaged the planet and only the sterile patented strains of grains can be trusted to be... mostly safe, at least until the next disease mutation comes along and poisons everybody. And what do people do when the planet is a hellhole and survival is by the skin of one's fingers? Do they plot and scheme for personal gain and power? Absolutely they fucking do. The characters are complex, the story is multi-layered and the world sucked me right in. But holy shit is it dark.

I also wondered at several points why he never even addressed the possibility of other kinds of energy sources - coal and methane are mentioned, but most things are powered directly by animal or human labour. Given that they seem to be able to resource materials from other countries for working on genetic modification of crops, why not material for solar panels? Or hell, hydro power in monsoon season?

I also probably shouldn't have read a book that constantly talks about the relentless heat in the middle of July. But that's on me.


    

Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites by Joy Demorra This was a bit of a palate cleanser after The Windup Girl. This book is the first in a series. I bought it because I follow the author on Tumblr, she's the exact combination of funny, nice, and takes-no-shit that I find really appealing in a human. She writes well, so I expected I would like this book, but what I didn't expect is that I would like it so much. It's essentially a romance set in a fantasy world where werewolves, vampires and fae exist. But the story is set in a background of politics and class conflict and racial tension and power struggles that really intrigued me and I'm really interested to see what she does with it. It's also super queer.

    

The Minority Report by Philip K Dick Somebody left this one in a giveaway box, so I picked it up. It's a collection of Dick's short stories, including We Can Remember It For You Wholesale which was turned into the film Total Recall. I haven't seen either movie but the stories make me curious to check them out. Although I can't imagine there are nearly enough car chases in either for a Tom Cruise vehicle.