David > Recent Status Updates

The Drummers' disturbing ceremony calls to mind a similar (though less incendiary) scene in Oryx and Crake, complete with technicolor "glow sticks", lol.

So far so good, this is classic, heady Stephenson, and I'm loving it: steeped with visceral metaphor and mathy similes, a future extrapolated (sometimes farcically) to 11, and moderately paced before the spine crease, with different character groups set up to converge at some point and all tied to the titular primer, which is not so much a Macguffin as a mirror darkly.

OMG Hackworth's imagined ingredients for the bottle of McWhorter's Original Condiment.

I love how, in all earnestness and reverence, Judge Fang refers to KFC as The House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel. Because of the Colonel's Confucian goatee.

Lol, I just love Neal's math-inflected prose. If you're going to skewer your target with 3 figurative spears, might as well make 'em orthogonal and go for the nerd cred: "Spear number three; now Hackworth's pounding heart sat at the origin of a bloody coordinate system plotted by Lieutenant Chang, conveniently pinned and exposed for thorough examination."

To my dear imaginary followers: may your holiday gifts be wrapped in freshly compiled "thick, glossy mediatronic paper bearing animated Christmas scenes: Santa sliding down the chimney, the ballistic reindeer, the three Zoroastrian sovereigns dismounting from their dromedaries in front of the stable."

Didn't get in as much Thanksgiving reading as I wanted, lol.

What a word: gallimaufry!!

Starts off almost exactly like Snow Crash with a visceral first page, and I'm all in.

Heck yeah, JollyBaby!!

Lol, "blorp".

“This is the part that’s my job.” Heck yeah!!

OMG this construct. "Aylen did not make it clear that she didn’t like the fact that I was invited. It would have been easier if she had, because then I would have known where I stood, and if I should be an asshole or not."

Murderbot:scifi::DS9:TNG --> 'Pin-Lee had promised, “Don’t worry, I’ll preserve your right to wander off like an asshole anytime you like.”) (I said, “It takes one to know one.”) (Mensah said, “People, please. I’m scheduled to mediate arguments between teenagers on my next commcall home and I need all my patience for that.”)'

Did I mention this is daaaark? The way the story is told thru both pictures and two narrators/storylines is fantastic.

Chap 7 is just as good. Wells is a master of combat scenes, and what she does with Murderbot here, splitting software from hardware, is just brilliant.

Dammmn, chapter 6 was intense. Murderbot's 1st person POV really narrows the depth of field here. Wells is a master.

Lol: "Her brow was furrowed. 'Did you tell them I sent you?'
'No, I impersonated my client. My imaginary client. That I impersonated.' I was caught in a loop for a second there."

ROFL: "Gurathin turned to me. 'If they do, you can take her away from them, no matter how many guards?' I was beginning to think Gurathin’s asshole expression was some congenital condition he had no control over. I said, 'The more guards the better.' He lifted his brows. 'Are you going to kill them?' Scratch that, Gurathin’s asshole expression is due to him being an asshole."

"Pin-Lee groaned and rubbed her face. 'I'm almost glad you’re here.'" Lol, I love how rough-edged the gang's interactions are.

Lol, I live for Murderbot's "oh shit" moments.

Here we go!!! "I was getting an idea. It was probably a bad idea. (When most of your training in tactical thinking comes from adventure shows, that does tend to happen.)"

Murderbot is slaying me with stacked parentheticals: "(You should never refer to the clients as targets; you don’t want to get confused at the wrong moment.) (That’s a joke.)"

There's a soundtrack! https://spotify.link/RcMwQscPEXb

I am absolutely riveted by this road trip and mesmerized by the hulking rust heaps of Stålenhag's roadside war machines. And yet, this isn't an apocalypse; life, society, culture lives on after the war, albeit much changed. Dystopia? Definitely.