forestofglory

I was going to post this as part of a Media Round Up, but it just keep getting longer and longer so I decided to make it post on it's own.

My (mostly) doungha group watch recently started a new show and while we were figuring out what to watch I asked for recs. This was one of the shows that was recced that we didn't end up watching this time. But it sounded really good so I decided to watch it anyway. I’ve been having trouble focusing on 45 minute episodes so it was nice to have something with 15-20 min episodes. Even so it took me three weeks to watch all 12 episodes.

White Cat Legend is a historical dounghua set in Tang Luoyang. It features a cat demon who becomes a magistrate and various people who work for him. I enjoy the cityscapes and the small scale mysteries so much. The festival scenes are also amazing! There are some good fight scenes too. I didn't fully understand the larger plot though

This is full of what I'm coming to recognize as typical c-ent racism against central Asian people. A bunch of bad guys are coded as central Asian, and the non Han dude who is part of the main team is exoticized, as is the central Asian woman general.

Also I don't feel like I fully understand what is going on with Wu Zetian in this but I'm uncomfortable with how child-like she is here. The show clearly takes a negative view of her, as scheming despot, so its confusing that she’s shown as not understanding what’s going on.

This also ends in a terrible spot! A cliffhanger and so many things unexplained! I hope they get another season.

Overall this was fun and very pretty, but had a lot of flaws. I’m glad I watched it because the depictions of Luoyang were great and I enjoyed the characters and their relationships.


(CW gore, cartoon violence, off screen cruel and unusual punishment, war flashbacks)

Bogi Takács is writer whose work I’ve been following for many years. E also runs an excellent twitter account highlights marginalized writers and recommends lots of short SFF. So I was very excited to read The Trans Space Octopus Congregation eir first collection of short stories, which I received as an ARC.

This collection allowed me to revisit some of my favorite of Takács stories and to read many wonderful stories I hadn’t read before. Reading a bunch of stories by an author really lets you see the larger themes in their work. In this case I was aware of Takács ecological themes but I hadn’t realised how important a theme memory is in eir work before. Bodily transformation is another theme that comes up again and again. I also enjoyed how many characters in these stories are non-binary and/or Jewish.

The beginning of this collection contains content notes for each story, something I really appreciated and hope to see more often in collections and anthologies generally.

This collection contains some stories I have read and recommended many times: “Forestspirt, Forestspirt” which I adore for its descriptions of forest among other things, and “Three Partitions” which has cool ecological worldbuild and observant Jews living on a new planet. “This Secular Technology” was my favorite new to me story, I enjoyed how it dealt with themes of memory -- but they were all worth reading!

This collection is a great way to experience the breath of Takács’ work. E touches on so many themes such as systems, transformation, and memory that I enjoy and having it all in one place really made me apreache eir writing. This would be a great way for a new reader to discover Takács’ work, and was a great way for me to appreciate eir stories even more.

I just finished reading Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation ed. Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland. This the 1st explicitly solarpunk work I've tried. Solarpunk seems like it would be my thing hopeful stories with a ecological and social justice focus. However I was disappointed. I felt this volume had less ecology and less hope than I wanted and expected.

I don't know maybe the editors just have different idea about what hopeful means or we live deeply cynical culture and any story where humanity survives on a future earth is now considered hopeful. But I found these stories really really bleak. In basically all of them the Earth is in tatters. There was one I range quit because of in seemed to be endorsing cruelty to children on the theory in would make them people who lived within their ecological means. These futures didn't feel better than the present.

I also wanted more ecology, and more complex look at human nature relationships. I've learned to question the idea of wilderness and thus the idea that human nature interactions have to be about humans destroying nature but most the stories in this book don't question those ideas. I would have also loved to see some manged or created ecosystems but there was very little of that.

I did quite like "The Desert, Blooming" by Lev Mirov and I enjoyed all the art and most of the poetry and the fact that the book included both.

Overall the book was not what I was expecting and I found it a major let down. Since this was the first time I've read anything solarpunk I don't know if this typical of the genre, but I'm going to be much more wary of anything labeled solarpunk going forward.

Main post is here

Reviews:

1980/79 Novel: The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke I didn't think I'd like this at all, but actually I rather enjoyed it. It is an engineering story about building a space elevator. The book has a list of references in the back, it is hardcore like that. (Thus I learned that Clarke didn't originate the idea of the space elevator.) Anyways there isn't much character conflict at all. There is a conflict with some monks that seems like maybe it could be epic, but then it just goes away.

Clarke is also a bit dim about religion. Most humans aren't going to give up religion because an alien prob comes along and says that religion is illogical, and that most aliens don't have any. It's just not what people are like. Oh well, this is not a book about people at all really.

(See also Jo Walton's Review which says more and is generally cleverer then mine.)

2007 Novelette: "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang This story has several stories within it and lots of time travel. I thought it was interesting and bit sad, but also exoticizing.

Milestones:
I've now read all the novels and all the works from the 00s.

Other:
The Hugo nominations have been announced!

Stories that have been nominated for both the Nebula and the Hugo are:
Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
“The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window” by Rachel Swirsky
The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang
“The Sultan of the Clouds” by Geoffrey A. Landis
“That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made” by Eric James Stone
“The Jaguar House, in Shadow” by Aliette de Bodard
“Plus or Minus” by James Patrick Kelly
“Ponies” by Kij Johnson

So this book is about spinning, weaving and women's lives in pre-historic up to early-classical Europe. It is very readable but I found myself wish for just a bit more detail on a lot of things. The author uses traditional ages: stone age, bronze age, Iron age -- which I think are problematic because they imply tech advance is linear. Barber uses a wide variety of methods, including linguistic reconstruction; the study of physical objects such as: a artifacts used to make fabric, actual bits of a fabric and string that have been preserved, depictions of clothing and depictions of making fabric; and the study of written works including Mesopotamian letters for weaver wives to their trader husbands. There is lot of good stuff here. Over all a very pleasant read.


[*] The full title is: Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It is the kind of that is easy to read for a little bit and then put down (which what I did) but everytime I picked it up I found out something new and interesting.

The book's thesis is that changes in Jewish eating laws have reflexed and often reinforced changes in how Jews have seen themselves in relation to non-Jews and other groups of Jews. Kraemer draws many symbolic parallels between dietary changes and a social changes.

One tantalizing idea that wasn't followed up as much as I'd have liked was interaction between gender and Kosher laws. Kraemer mentions that women generally had less access to religious training (in many times and places they couldn't read Hebrew for example) and that this might have caused women to be extra strict about the laws, but this point isn't dwelt on for long. I think that since women did most of the cooking that their views on keeping kosher deserve more pages.

I liked this book for combining subjects that interest me, for being well written and very readable, for being full of interesting facts. I enjoyed how the book used many sources including archeology, written Jewish law and other historical sources. I thought the book did a good job at painting an engaging picture of a very small part of Jewish history.

This book is really hard to explain, it is about ecological modeling, and how science and knowledge making are embedded in society, and the best ways to approach understanding complexity. I found it to be a really good and interesting book. I personally enjoy looking at complex situations and issues and trying to tease out connections, and have some experience with ecological modeling, so I am part of Unruly Complexity's target audience.

The the first section of the books discuses ecological models -- in this case models of how ecological complexity interacts with stability of communities. Taylor criticizes existing takes on this problem for not thinking about how complexity arises. The next section talks about ecological modelers and their social context. It discuses how what counts as knowledge is constructed, and how scientist values interact with their work. The third and final section is the hardest to sum up. The section is titled Engaging Reflectively and talks about how scientists can be more aware of their social setting ect, and thus do a better job.

One of the major themes of the book is that complexity is hard to study, and that modeling complexity as a contained system has many problems. However if you want to study ecology or society, and/or the interactions between the two the you will be stuck with unruly complexity. While I think the book offers some ways to look at this complexity I wish it provided more tools.

I really liked how this book looked at complexity and how it is studied. The book gave me a lot to think about.

Main post is here

Reviews for this month:

1987/86 Short Story: "Tangents" by Greg Bear This story was rather bland. I didn't find it very interesting, and don't really have much to say about it.

1980/79 Novelette: "Sandkings" by George R. R. Martin Well written, fairly creepy with interesting critters.

2010 Novel: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi I have mixed feeling as about this book. On the one hand the science is extremely implausible, and most of the viewpoint characters are rather unlikeable. Still I found it compelling reading -- I wanted to know what happened next.

I found this book very readable. Indeed I read it in about a week, which is fast for such a dense book.

The book covers American eating habits form 1880 to 1930 (with the last chapter giving a whirlwind tour of 1930 to about the 1980's). The book there for covers some of the same ground as Perfection Salad but is not spefically focused on women's roles. There is in stead more of focus on class and income and how these effected diet.

One thing that struck me was how terrible everyone's diet was in the 1880's; no on of any class ate very many veggies. I guess I've been reading too much Michael Pollan and other activist types who go on about the virtues of traditional foodways. This book is stark reminder that some old fashioned foodways where not really that good. (And of course they where less likely to be good if you where poor.

Over all Levenstein argues that economics probably had the biggest role in changing food habits, followed but advertising and education (including school lunch). However the book isn't really making a sweeping argument, more pulling together a lot of information in a informative and entertaining way.

Main post is here

Stories read this month:
1973/72 Novelette: "Goat Song" by Poul Anderson This is a SF retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice. I thought it did a very good job with the mythical correspondences.

1982/81 Novella: "The Saturn Game" by Poul Anderson This story is awfully negative about roleplaying, but it does have an awesome setting.

1995/94 Novella: "Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge" by Mike Resnick [*] This story is very bleak, yet I found myself drawn in. The concept of the story, of an archeological dig on Earth long after the fall of humanity was neat too. The team is able to look back on human history through a series of artifacts. Social Justice Stuff: I'm not a fan of call humanity Man and referring to us with a masculine pronoun. There are a fair number of Black people in this story, but they are generally portrayed as primitive and/or corrupt.

Milestones:
I've now read all the stories through 1978. My library has a gap at 1979 though, so I'll have to track those stories down else where.

I've now read all the Poul Anderson stories on the list.

[*]Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge by Mike Resnick is available free online.