The occasional scrivener

A collection of newer SF stories set in a “retro-future” Venus - one where our neighbor planet isn’t a poisonous hellscape but where authors can indulge in imagining it before the Venera probes told us the sad truth.

A lot of stories riff off the Venera angle and include a sizable Soviet/Russian population on their version of the Morning Star.

A great book about the tragic and bloody end of World War 2. Hastings excels at switching from grand strategy to the viewpoints of individuals, soldiers, civilians, prisoners.

Way less dense than I remember his history of the battle of Crete. Maybe he’s become more fluent, or simply slid into the comfortable narrative style of retelling the “Greatest Generation’s” big battles. This is an ok story. The suffering of French civilians in Normandy is highlighted, which usually doesn’t happen.

Ebook maps suck.

Yet another US Marine Pacific War memoir. While Manchester has a great command of language, the combination with a travelogue doesn’t really work. I still think Sledge’s work is the best I’ve read in this genre so far.

An informative and entertaining account of British conflict with Vichy France. Has a good overview of the history of that shameful part of French history.

An uneasy melange of Solaris and Herbert’s Destination: Void universe. Not my favorite Nagata novel.

The first book in the sequence, and the better one, in my opinion. The action is more focussed, the characters introduced, and the Big Bad threat better developed.

Apparently the second in a series, which explains the rather abrupt mis-en-scene. I guess is this a YA novel, but I wonder how many in the target audience are up to snuff with interwar British public school slang.

It’s well creepy, though. Newman has come quite a way since I read Anno Dracula back in the day, and I haven’t really read much of his stuff after that. The setting is between the wars, and some people are Unusuals - they can do magic, basically. In a all-girls boarding school, something returns after a disastrous trip to London…

I believe this is Nagata’s debut novel, from 1995, and it holds up well. It’s deep into mid-90s SF tropes and the characterizations may be a bit stereotypical, but the scenes are well described and the action is snappy.

(wow, that title…)

Two works of SF set on our satellite:

Luna - a series by IanMcDonald

New Moon 🌒 Wolf Moon 🌒 Moon Rising

The series comes to a satisfying, if slightly rushed, conclusion. The fact that maybe 80% of the female character’s names start with A doesn’t really help, nor does the sudden introduction of a fourth major faction (the University on Farside) feel very organic.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

I think the influence from this book on McDonald’s work is pretty obvious. Both feature a Luna that’s used for extracting resources for Earth[1], both feature a future libertarian[2] society, and both feature the move towards independence.

Of course, Luna is written 40 years after The Moon… , and instead the Moon’s inhabitants being convicts from an authoritarian Earth, the ones in Luna are the ultimate gig workers. They take out loans to finance the trip, and pay for the “4 basics” - air, water, carbon and data. Don’t have enough to cover those? You will die and your mass reclaimed.

I find Heinlein’s view of women retrograde and borderline misogynistic. He gets points for imagining a future melange of languages, the libertarian quasi-utopian is as (im)plausible as McDonald’s, and the depiction of “Adam Selene”, the friendly AI that helps with the independence is well written.

One big difference is that in RHA’s work, libertarianism is an utopia, in Luna it’s a nightmare.

[1] Although Charles Stross has tweeted that the helium economy in Luna makes no scientific sense, the idea that it would be economical to grow wheat on the Moon and send the produce to Earth, as in TMiaHM is even dumber.

[2] in the “original” there are no laws, only contracts sense.