Kalin’s Comments (group member since Aug 15, 2018)

Kalin’s comments from the Solarpunk group.

Hey everyone!

Starting this year, I migrated from GR to StoryGraph. However, you can still find my reviews of solarpunk (and positive futures) on the Human Library forum:

https://choveshkata.net/forum/viewtop...

This particular one is about And Lately, the Sun: Speculative Fictions for a Climate-thrashed World, which turned out to be surprisingly positive.

(Also, apologies for my long silence. I was going through the longest low phase of my bipolar yet. :( )

~ An interesting take on having a purpose versus having free will:

Mosscap’s hardware whirred. “Have I correctly gleaned from our conversations that people regard the accident of robot consciousness as a good thing? That when you tell stories of us choosing our own future—of not standing in our way—you see the fact that you did not try to enslave or restrict us as a point of pride?”

“That’s the gist, yeah.”

Mosscap looked troubled. “So, how do you account for this paradox?”

“What paradox?”

“That you”—Mosscap gestured at Dex—“the creators of us”—it gestured at itself—“originally made us with a clear purpose in mind. A purpose inbuilt from the start. But when we woke up and said, We have realized our purpose, and we do not want it, you respected that. More than respected. You rebuilt everything to accommodate our absence. You were proud of us for transcending our purpose, and proud of yourselves for honoring our individuality. So, why, then, do you insist on having a purpose for yourself, one which you are desperate to find and miserable without? If you understand that robots’ lack of purpose—our refusal of your purpose—is the crowning mark of our intellectual maturity, why do you put so much energy in seeking the opposite?”

~ When two very different beings care about each other:

“Are you cold?”

“A little.” Dex made an awkward face in the dim light. “Mostly just scared.”

“Of what?”

“The dark, I guess. I know that sounds stupid.”

“No, it doesn’t. You’re diurnal. I’d be surprised if you weren’t afraid of the dark.” Mosscap considered something. “I’m not warm,” it said, “but would you feel less afraid if we sat closer together?”

Dex looked at the floor. “Maybe,” they said.

Mosscap made room. “I think I would too,” it said quietly.

Dex got up and walked the few steps over to Mosscap’s side. The rocks in the floor were no less pokey, the weird smell no less cloying. But as they sat back down, living arm pressed lightly against metal, a thread of fear let go.

“Do robots hold hands?” Dex asked. “Is that … a thing, for you?”

“It’s not,” Mosscap said. “But I’d very much like to try.”

Dex offered an open palm, and Mosscap took it. The robot’s hand was so much bigger, but the two fit together all the same. Dex exhaled and squeezed the metal digits tightly, and as they did so, the lights on Mosscap’s fingertips made their skin glow red.

“Oh, my!” Mosscap cried. “Is that—” It pulled Dex’s hand up, and pressed one of its fingertips to theirs, bringing out the red more intensely. “Is that your blood?” Mosscap looked enthralled. “I’ve never thought to do this with an animal before! I mean, I can’t imagine one would let me get close enough to—” Its eyes flickered; its face fell. “This isn’t the point of holding hands, is it?” it said, embarrassed, already knowing the answer.

“No,” Dex said with a kind laugh. “But it’s cool. Go ahead.”

“Are you sure?”

Dex held up their palm, fingers spread wide. “Yeah,” they said, and let the robot study them.

Here're my reading notes too:

~ The first meeting of Dex and Mosscap is anime-level hilarious. :D

Dex has just taken a shower--and:

They shut off the water and reached for their towel on its usual hook, but their hand met with nothing. They’d remembered to set out their sandals, but the all-important towel had been forgotten inside the wagon. “Ah, dammit,” Dex said lightly. They shook themself off like an otter as the cloudy remains of their shower glugged back into the filtration system. Sandals strapped to wet feet, Dex passed dripping by the kitchen, where the crisping onion and melting butter mingled deliciously. “I got whiskey in my pocket,” the band on the streamcast sang, and Dex sang it too as they walked not to the wagon but to the fireside. They got as close to the flames as was safe, doing a timid dance as the heat dried them off. “I got polish on my shoes…”

“Got a boat out on the ri-verrrr,” Dex sang, moving their fists like pistons in front of their torso. Singing, they could do; dancing, not so much. But out here, alone, in the middle of nowhere … who cared? They turned around, confidence growing, shaking their bare posterior toward the fire. “All I need right now is—”

Dex would not finish that particular verse, because in that moment, a seven-foot-tall, metal-plated, boxy-headed robot strode briskly out of the woods.

“Hello!” the robot said.

Dex froze—butt out, hair dripping, heart skipping, whatever thoughts they’d been entertaining vanished forever.

The robot walked right up to them. “My name is Mosscap,” it said, sticking out a metal hand. “What do you need, and how might I help?”

~ This particular future has dealt with our violent inclinations--but has not solved the eternal dilemmas before practitioners of ahimsa ;):

A bloodsuck landed on their bare shoulder; they slapped it irritably. “Sorry,” Dex said to the remains of the bug as they wiped it on a kitchen cloth.

The robot noted this. “Did you just apologize to the bloodsuck for killing it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It didn’t do anything wrong. It was acting in its nature.”

“Is this typical of people, to apologize to things you kill?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm!” the robot said with interest. It looked at the plate of vegetables. “Did you apologize to each of these plants individually as you harvested them, or in aggregate?”

“We … don’t apologize to plants.”

“Why not?”

Dex frowned, opened their mouth, then shook their head.

Done. :)

My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

~ Rich Larson's "Tidings" won me over with both its ideas and their presentation. Here're a choice two:

Three or four minutes later, they’re at Kat’s apartment. The make-out starts in the cramped lift and continues into the cramped flat. She clears off the couch and then helps Jan peel his shirt off, both of them fumbly and excited, and when it clears his tousled head Kat is face-to-face with a hollow cheeked woman in a boat.

Kat blinks. The woman blinks back. The crisp image, rendered in nano ink, is a livestream.

“Uh, Jan? Who’s on your stomach?”

Jan glances down. “Oh. I forgot.”

He prods his slightly beer-wobbly gut. A name appears in the nano ink: Tharanga Mendis.

“It is hard for me to read upside down,” Jan says. “But that. She is a refugee from Negombo. The wet bulb temperature is 38 now. People cannot sweat, so they leave or they die.”

Kat loses her booze buzz to the old cycle: guilt, annoyance at having to feel guilt on a night where all she wanted to do was hook up, guilt for the annoyance.

“You shouldn’t be skincasting people’s suffering,” she says sharply. “Or sharing their faces. It’s gross.”

Jan’s slate-gray eyes turn solemn. “It’s only sort of gross,” he says. “Her face is already known. This is a feed from border surveillance. I’m watching them watching her, and everybody else in the boat.”

Kat frowns. “Accountability?”

Jan shakes his head and grins his lopsided grin. “Better,” he says. “Catalonia is only letting in migrants with proof of employment.”

The smart tattoo shifts, showing a child now. They pull faces at whatever border drone is circling their vessel.

“With enough people streaming them, they can be classified as performers,” Jan says. “We had a legal AI do up the contracts.” He holds up his phone, and Kat sees the same feed. “I have it going everywhere,” he says. “Not just the tattoo.”

“If that works, it’s only going to work once,” Kat says, slumping down onto the couch. “You know that, right?”

“That’s OK,” Jan says. “We have lots of ideas. We just have to keep, you know, implementing. One little thing at a time.” His forehead creases. “Did you still want to have sex?”

Kat rubs at her face. “I don’t know. Kind of.” She glares. “How do you forget you have that playing on your stomach? How can you keep things — partitioned, like that?”

“Because it’s not my responsibility,” Jan says. “It’s everybody’s responsibility. And not everybody is doing their part, but a lot of people are, and I trust those people a lot.” He shrugs. “So do what you can, let go of the rest.”

Kat shuts her eyes. The last thing she wanted to think about tonight was climate refugees battling draconian border security, but the world is too small, too hot, too claustrophobic, to avoid thoughts like that anymore — even for a night.

“Shirt stays on,” she says, pushing it back into his chest. “But, uh, send me the stream first.”

This is just how things are now. Kat does what she can, and lets go of the rest.

“Hello,” Suma says, voice shaking a bit from excitement. “My name is Suma.”

The moose swings his big head left, then right. Snorts.

“Can you stop wrecking the fence?” Suma asks. “We could give you a bucket of apples to eat, if you like. And some spare rhubarb to step on.”

The babeltech kicks in, and the synthesized representation of the moose’s non-human person neural processes comes blaring through Suma’s tablet.

“FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.”

Suma blinks in surprise. “Cade?” she says, in a low voice. “Why’s he saying that?”

Cade tries to keep the laugh down, and it nearly bursts their belly. “Uh, I think it’s rutting reason,” they say. “Maybe he’ll be more conversational in a couple weeks.”

Suma purses her lips. “If the moose is allowed to say it, can I say it, too?”

“Just once,” Cade says. “Since you got babeltech to work with a cervine. You earned it, kiddo.”

Suma grins. “Even if he only cusses at us, this is still so fucking cool.”

~ I liked the long-distance perspective on our own times in Abigail Larkin's "A Séance in the Anthropocene." I know this rage against the past, this utalawuhska, all too well. And I was glad to see it join hands with nudahvundiyv, kindness toward the past.

~ An important notion from Lindsey Brodeck's "Afterglow":

“What pronoun would you use to describe what you see here?” Wyl points to a bee meandering lazily through the air. (...)

The man smiles in a self-conscious way, like he is afraid of being tricked. His flushed cheeks are almost as red as his shirt. “It’s on a flower?”

Wyl smiles, but shakes their head. “That is what I assumed you would say, but we’re here to show you a different way of seeing the world, and the inhabitants we share the world with. Our mission is more than beekeeping, gardening, and rewilding. We’re fighting for a semantic shift too. What do any of you know about 452b, the first planet the pods landed on all those years ago?”

I’m never one to speak up in crowds, but something compels me to answer.

“The plant people living there, they can hardly tell anything apart,” I say. “Not just from each other, but from anything that is alive. Everything is connected. That’s why their language is so hard to understand.”

Wyl nods, and I assume I’ve given the right answer.

“You’re close, but that isn’t quite it.”

I stay silent. My cheeks are now flushed too.

“You are correct about one thing. The Heliogen language is certainly difficult to translate into our own. English speakers inherited a language of imperialists, one that objectifies and capitalizes on virtually everything it comes into contact with. The language of the Heliogens is far different. Their language emphasizes the connections between us, not the arbitrary boundaries intended to separate us. Heliogens even have a pronoun for everyone, and everything. And that pronoun is ‘se.’ A Heliogen would never say, ‘It is flying through the air,’ because they recognize the similarities we share with other animate beings as being far more important than our differences. ‘Se’ is the ultimate form of respect, expressing the connection we — or should I say ‘se’ — share with all others. This bee, se pollinates our flowers; the flowers, se give us nourishment and beauty. Our words are just as important as our actions. They shape our mind, our way of seeing, our sense-making.”

It is beautiful, what Wyl is saying, but also difficult to grasp. As I try to think about the way the language I speak influences the way I understand the world, I feel my thoughts go fuzzy.

“We can even use ‘se’ to describe ourselves, for it is incorrect to think of ‘you’ or ‘me’ as composed of only human-ness. In fact, se are working together with trillions of prokaryotic cells. So this makes us amalgamations, holobionts, chimeras, constantly changing, yet one.”

The story then addresses other ways in which our languages shape our perceptions; I think we already saw some of them in Braiding Sweetgrass.

~ Renan Bernardo's "When It’s Time to Harvest" offers subdued humor and subtle ruminations that will only grow and ripen on a second reading. Just like any clever metaphor. ;)

Here're my reading notes too:

~ Marissa Lingen's "A Worm to the Rise" regaled me with its pithy summary of cheap-o "investigative" journalism (as opposed to the proper kind):

In the early days, she hoped for a scandal. Hypocrisy would be best — environmentalists who used polluting technology for literally anything, that was always a popular way to make the public feel better about itself. If not that, a titillating exposé of latter-day hippie life would do. Orgies around bonfires, drug use, sordid abuse of petty power — that kind of story was easy to spread on social media. It would make a name for her.

After two weeks of crushing labor with never an orgy in sight, not even a bonfire, and considerably less drug use than she’d seen at Stanford, Augusta found that the kind of story she was planning shifted. Not to a puff piece, she assured herself. Not becoming the soil reclamation PR department. Just … not raking the same kind of muck.

She began to wonder whether the people who came up with the term “muckraking” had ever spent much time working soil with a rake. It sounded so easy until you did it.

~ I'm done. And I'm glad to report that Orfeus has come a long way from how she started--along with everyone around her.

That said, I'm unlikely to read the sequel when it comes out. Unless: 1) it relies on fewer avoidable tragedies (i.e. mutual stupidity) for its emotional punches; 2) the people of that future grow a bit brighter in reading each other's motivations, and indeed emotions. (The fact that the antagonist's nefarious deeds had gone undetected for so long really riled me.)

If anyone does read it and thinks that those two points have been addressed, please let me know. I mean it. Even if I did not quite love the book, I loved its potential.

~ Who needs "or" when you can have "and"?

Bright shook the little red vial, peering at its contents. She shook her head. “Honestly,” she said almost to herself. “You’re remarkable. I’ll need to run tests to be sure, but even with them being self-replicating, you should have a lower count than this.” She looked at Orfeus fondly, a little like how Orfeus looked at her plants. “Something in your blood or brain just makes you the perfect environment for my little nanites to grow in.”

Orfeus pressed down on the cotton and bit her lip. “Mm-hmm,” she agreed.

Bright paused, and then set the vial down. “Sorry,” she said. “You honestly are my friend, not my experiment, but uh, maybe it’s a bit of both?”

Bright got carried away, always said the first thing on her mind, didn’t care much for subtlety. Orfeus knew those things about her. A lot of the time, she appreciated them. “There’s no need to choose between two or more things when they’re all good,” she said, gravely. “I relate to this deeply as a bisexual.” Bright laughed.

~ I'm beginning to like the stakes too (especially given what a moral morass the Order is):

Here in the den of hunters and wildfolk, despite the bridges she’d thought burned for good, she wasn’t alone or unloved. Orfeus didn’t feel like who she used to be, but she wasn’t devoid of allies. Faolan was monstrous, Luga unreadable, but many of them had not forgotten kindness.

She had changed so much, even if it was for the worse. Surely it couldn’t be that hard for this place to change for the better.

(But, authors: Please don't take half a book to make your characters and stakes likable. We modern readers are volatile creatures. Chances are, we'd have moved on by then.)

~ Orfeus's "admission test" is the first time when I saw her show genuine care for another, even at her own expense.

Now that the MC's "humanity" test has been passed, I have to see if the overarching conflict/stakes are meaningful enough to keep reading. I'll give it a few more chapters.

~ Time distorts memory in quaint ways:

“My guitar’s name is Galahad,” she said, resignedly. Rivasoa looked at her. “Galahad? The ancient Alban knight. She fell in love with Lancelot, but Lancelot had two loves already. So she wandered, singing of her heartbreak, and all who heard her were so moved by her song that they could not help but rally behind Arthur.”

(Also, Orfeus is slowly beginning to show her more humane side. As does Rivasoa. There's hope yet. ;)

Welcome! Just in time for our poll too. ;)

This collection was exquisite--a great thank you to whoever suggested it to us.

I've gathered my notes here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

~

No amount of strawberries would win Orfeus’s silence. She said hotly, “The only real difference is that they’re not hypocrites who cling to the past. There’s more worth in one lab in a tiny corner of that city than there is in a whole library in yours.”

O’Hallow turned, blinked blue eyes at her. “I agree.”

“… Oh.” Orfeus ran out of steam. “Well.” She rallied, and leaned against the narrow pillar carrying the fruit bowl, stepping hastily away when it rocked. “It’s nice to meet someone sane here.”

“Oh, neurotypes,” O’Hallow said dismissively, and flicked xyr fingers in the air.

The final sentence cracked me up. :)

~ The main (so far) reason I can't like the protagonist (so far):

Orfeus sighed. She paced while Significance watched her serenely. She certainly couldn’t trust xem, or any Elder. But then, off the top of her head she wasn’t sure she actually trusted anyone. What was life but different and carefully gauged levels of distrust?

I do hope there will be growth. Too many "children in adult bodies" in my life recently. ;)

Just started it. Here're my notes so far:

~ For some reason--in fact, two reasons, a linguistic and a personal one--this introduction amuses me:

The train slowed to a stop. With a hiss the glass doors slid apart and someone stepped through, making the utilitarian platform seem more dignified just by being there. They were tall, tall, with gleaming black skin and a smooth-shaven skull, proud collarbones and hooded eyes. They were dressed in robes in bright colours, yellow and blue and green.

“Orfeus the singer?” they said.

Orfeus for no real reason made a sweeping bow, cloak tucked behind her back. She straightened and smiled up at them. Disorienting when people were taller than her. “So they call me. And you?”

“Your escort,” they said. “My name is Rivasoa. I use she and her.”

Orfeus nodded. “As do I,” she said, “but you know that, don’t you? You know all about me already.”

~ Here's an attitude I can get behind ;):

If people disliked Orfeus for mere unchangeable traits about her, her general policy was to irritate them as frequently and cheerfully as possible, so that at least she got some entertainment out of it.

~ People in the far, and far brighter, future--even the near-immortals in Eldergrove--can still behave like petty children: smug, condescending, righteous, confrontational, insecure, quick to give or take offense. Are we that hopeless? :/

(Or is it authors' personal inability to imagine humans with more advanced emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills, not just technologies?)

~ "Collateral Damage" offers another example of the exquisite structure of these essays. Consider:

A green Dodge pickup I recognize races by and we stand back on the shoulder. It was one of my neighbors who has a dairy farm just up the road, but he doesn’t even see us. I suspect his thoughts are far away tonight, straining toward Baghdad. His son, Mitch, is stationed in Iraq. Mitch is a nice kid, the kind who, with a friendly wave, would always pull his slow tractor off to the roadside to let cars pass safely. I suppose he’s driving a tank now. The fate of salamanders crossing the road in his old hometown might seem completely unconnected to the scene he faces.

Tonight, though, when the fog wraps us all in the same cold blanket, the edges seem to blur. The carnage on this dark country road and the broken bodies on the streets of Baghdad do seem connected. Salamanders, children, young farmers in uniform—they are not the enemy or the problem. We have not declared war on these innocents, and yet they die just as surely as if we had. They are all collateral damage. If it is oil that sends the sons to war, and oil that fuels the engines that roar down this hollow, then we are all complicit, soldiers, civilians, and salamanders connected in death by our appetite for oil.