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A new writing project has started. I have no idea where it will go or what it will turn into. But I have been relistening to Dungeon Crawler Carl and it has made me want to find a story that is about someone who is thrust into the role of space captain. It doesn't have to be litrpg but that seemed the most likely framing for it. And to be clear, I mean someone who isn't familiar with space travel at all.

After looking for a little while, I didn't really find a story that filled this niche. Which means... my brain started creating one. So I've started writing it. I don't envision it as a full novel, maybe a novella, or maybe a series of shorts. We'll see. Who knows. It'll depend on my drive to write it before I get distracted or lose steam.

There is No Antimimetics Division by qntm - 3.5 / 5 Antimemes

There is No Antimimetics Division by qntm

Blurb from its Amazon listing:

An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.

Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information which you wouldn't share with anybody, like passwords, taboos and dirty secrets. Or any piece of information which would be difficult to share even if you tried: complex equations, very boring passages of text, large blocks of random numbers, and dreams...

But anomalous antimemes are another matter entirely. How do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war?

Welcome to the Antimemetics Division.

No, this is not your first day.

Ironically, I can't remember how this book came across my attention. Maybe it was a mention by a BookToker, or maybe another social media post, but the premise grabbed my attention as it is about something which has long fascinated me, playing with memory.

The book is not normally in the realm I would read. It is a bit of a horror novel, with lots of gore and body horror described, but I came to think of the horror aspect of the novel as a bit more art house / new age. The base concept of the novel is so out there and theoretical that it made it easy for me to remove myself from the action and partition it off in my mind - I'm not the one enduring the horror, I'm the observer.

The premise of the novel is hard to summarize, but I think the way I will approach it is this: It is a novel in the vein of the online "SCP" genre. SCP is an a meta genre of fiction writing, where many different individuals contribute to a corpus of sci-fi / horror / supernatural stories with a very dark and, often, experimental tone or styles of writing.

This book is very much all of that. It is weird. It is hard to read sometimes as your brain grapples with shifts in voice or perspective, etc. But it was an interesting ride. Like sitting in a bumper car as it traverses through an art house. You're a passenger with no control of the story, observing what is around you, jarred and bumped and sometimes confused.

As the rating says - largely, I liked it. I have no desire to read it again, even if I would get more out of it with a better understanding for its goings on. Worth noting, it is a quick read. And while I spread it out over a few days, my reader tells me I spent just three hours reading it in total.

This is my first book of 2024. I'm setting a goal of reading 50 books this year, and while I started this one last year, I feel it is fair to count it to this book total as I could have as easily read it all this morning had I decided I wanted to.

Binary Star Sundial

An absolutely fascinating and well executed project to explore the idea of how a sundial would work in a binary star system.

Slingers

This video was originally published 13 years ago on Vimeo as a sizzle reel for a potential tv show. It has lived rent free in my head since then, and it was resurfaced with the passing of Tom Sizemore due to the shared surname with Mike Sizemore, its director.

I love so much about this sizzle, from the tone and setting, to the characters and overall concept.

Africa Risen

A book of short Afro-futurism stories. I bought this on Kindle with some Amazon gift money. Last night I read the first story, "The Blue House" by Dilman Dila which was fantastic if a bit somber and sad.

Looking forward to diving into more of these stories as I have stepped away from Isaacson's "The Code Breaker" which is a big book.

Profile on Octavia Butler

Really enjoyed this piece, and it reminded me I'd been meaning to read Butler's series "Lilith's Brood." Here are a few excerpts I feel worth sharing, and also a few notes I jotted as I read.

When she learned she could make a living doing this, she never let the thought go. Later, she would call it her "positive obsession" and would put it all on the line. Her mother's youngest sister, who was the first in the family to go to college, became a nurse. Despite her family's warnings, she did exactly what she wanted to do. That same aunt would tell Butler, "Negroes can't be writers," and advise her to get a sensible job as a teacher or civil servant. She could have stability and a nice pension, and if she really wanted to, she could write on the side. "My aunt was too late with it, though," Butler said. "She had already taught me the only lesson I was willing to learn from her. I did as she had done and ignored what she said."

Butler would grow up to write and publish a dozen novels and a collection of short stories. She did not believe in talent as much as hard work. She never told an aspiring writer they should give up, rather that they should learn, study, observe, and persist. Persistence was the lesson she received from her mother, her grandmother, and her aunt. In her lifetime, she would become the first published Black female science-fiction writer and be considered one of the forebears of Afrofuturism.

"I never bought into my invisibility or non-existence as a Black person," Butler wrote in a journal entry in 1999. "As a female and as an African-American, I wrote myself into the world. I wrote myself into the present, the future, and the past." For Butler, writing was a way to manifest a person powerful enough to overcome the circumstances of her birth and what she saw as her own personal failings.

Writing a best seller was a constant preoccupation — a way to make life financially sustainable. "I need something that sells itself," she wrote. "Something that screams its significance or its scariness or its timeliness so loudly that it can't be ignored."

Science fiction can be categorized into three types of stories: "What if?," "If only," and "If this goes on." The first Xenogenesis book, Dawn, was born from Butler's horror at the Reagan administration's notion of a "winnable nuclear war" — the worst imaginable scenario of "If this goes on."

This bit resonates with me given how I voraciously skim articles and social media and consume articles and writings online, like this biography on Butler:

When she was looking for ideas, Butler would do what she called "grazing," which in practice meant having any number of books open around the house and perusing whatever might be of interest to her: environmental science, anthropology, microbiology, Black history, political studies.

There is no excerpt of note, but I find it interesting that in one of her books she wrote about a fascist President who had the last name 'Jarret' - only one T, but it still is notable.

"Ministry of the Future" By Kim Stanley Robinson

I'm currently reading this book. I'm almost a quarter of the way through it and it's a tough read. It's gritty and real and at times I'm not clear if the author is speaking to me the reader or if it is in the story, which is - to be blunt - fucking frightening, because of the state of climate change and the danger we are all in.

Highly recommend the book, but buckle up and be ready to look yourself and society in the mirror.

Meet Judy-Lynn del Rey

Patton Oswalt breaks down his Top and Bottom 5 Sci-Fi films

Humorously, the start of this video has a small music clip. And that clip triggers for me because it is also used by a Minecraft YouTuber who I watch. Ah the joys of licensable music.

MMAcevedo (Mnemonic Map/Acevedo)

A short fiction written as if it were a Wikipedia-style entry about the first successful transhumanist upload. It is an excellent read, and I suspect that it provides a good introduction to the concepts of transhumanist fiction. Even though I'm familiar, seeing it written like this definitely brought new ideas and thoughts to mind for me.

I was pointed to this story by 'Crimes against Transhumanity' on Charles Stross' blog. His post is a bit of a thought exercise and examination on the inherent shortfalls of our legal (and general political) system in a transhumanist world.

I understood the philosophy after the first few books, but had never coalesced it into words.

Paramount+'s new Star Trek Series: Strange New Worlds is Really Good

After my general disappointment in Picard I had been waiting to give this show a try, somewhat expecting to hate it. But I don't. I really really like it. Definitely worth the watch for any Star Trek fan.

Do you believe in God? I know it's a personal question. I do. And I think He was pretty awesome to make relativity a thing, don't you? The faster you go, the less time you experience. It's like He's inviting us to explore the universe, you know?

Religion is not a thing I feel particularly strongly for these days, but I really like this passage from Hail Mary. I've been greatly enjoying the book and am within a stone's throw of finishing it.

PS - Glowbug idea, a growing list of 'auto replacements' for known links. For example, I could add 'Hail Mary' and have it be italicized and linked to the book listing online. Will need to think on it, adding it to the coding backlog.

Dune (2021)

I just got home from seeing Dune, and this is my spoiler free review.

TLDR: The movie does a lot to get the book to screen adaptation right, possibly too much. I'm not sure how much people who aren't familiar with the story will enjoy it.

Now my longer thoughts:

First, some very important context: I have read the book probably a dozen times. It was one of the books I'd name as being very formative for me, and has been a mainstay for me as something I regularly would revisit. I have a half-dozen copies of it in various printings. I love the book.

Second, the story itself has its problems as it comes from another era. Sexism, racism, and all sorts of other -isms. Looking at it requires looking through the lens of awareness and time.

Now, I saw the movie in just a regular theater. And, for a solid portion of this movie, I had tears leaking from my eyes at the beauty and story that was on screen in front of me.

There have been a number of previous attempts to tell this story on the big screen. First was the movie that included such names as Patrick Stewart and Sting. Second was the TV miniseries for Syfy.

This one nailed it in so many ways. I don't agree with everything. I don't agree with all of the casting. But... man they got so much right.

That said, to make the movie they did, they had to cut from the story. A lot of what they cut would have made a lot of what they kept make more sense, or in some cases, is completely needed for things to make sense.

For example, there are people in the story called Mentats. You'll know them by a black stripe on their bottom lip. They are essentially human computers. Why are they there? What do they do? You get no context to them in the movie. And there is importance for them to the sides in the story.

The soldiers in the movie all fight with blades, even though you see lasers and projectile weapons? Why? The book gives you a reason, but they skip explaining it in the movie so you are forced to just accept this.

They also barely provide the context that is the intergalactic setting for the defining conflict of the story. You get bits of it, but I am not sure how obvious it is to people who don't have the book in their head to fill in the gaps and it definitely lacks some of the larger context.

Now, I get it. Things had to go otherwise this would be a series of four four-hour epics. But I air these as examples of why I think reading the book before seeing the movie is so beneficial, it lets you appreciate the story at a deeper and more complete level.

The visuals and the way they portrayed the story is largely true to the book. It also hits the tone and epic feel of the story; unfortunately I think that to hit those things, lends to the way that many will find the movie slow and plodding.

I am thrilled to see it getting such good ratings on Rotten Tomatoes; I am just worried we're about to see those ratings dip as others are enticed to see it.

Lastly, I understand why they did it, but it was not advertised that this is not the whole Dune story. It's just "Part 1." No, I don't mean multiple books as the story of Dune. I mean the first book of Frank Herbert's series. My estimate is that they see it being a trilogy, but I have no idea if we'll get more than just this movie.

We'll see.

Origins of James S. A. Corey's Sci-Fi series, "The Expanse"

Fascinating to hear that a post-to-play RPG campaign online defined a lot of the initial plot for the Expanse story.