Marie > Recent Status Updates

Not even halfway and we've had a climactic battle?
This book is frenetic, and extremely British.

How is there still more book? Who is left to kill?

Beyond he Aquila Rift - some interesting stuff, not much plot, tho. Best parts are descriptions of setting

Good Hunting - Ken Liu takes Chinese folklore into the Steampunk. Cool.

The Dump - solid, very voice-y

Shape-Shifters - cliche, cliche, cliche, with war.

Sonnie's Edge - not bad, very "Battle Angel"
Three Robots Experience Objects Left Behind by Humanity - silly but enertaining. Low-hanging fruit, really
The Witness - nothing but twist?
Suits - UGH. Cliche-ridden and sexist. I kept waiting for a twist, but there is none.
Sucker of Souls - pretty default Dracula thing with no plot
When the Yogurt Took Over - another silly thing by Scalzi? Is this how they keep me?

We end with "Bicentennial Man" which I just NOW realize Asimov wrote in time for the US Bicentennial. Clever boy.

All the beats of the story are exactly as I remember them from back when I was absolutely in love with it as a teeny bopper, but now Andrew feels a lot less likable -still got misty on the last scene, which is some of Asimov's best writing.

"Custer's Last Jump" by Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop

...extremely dryly written, in imagined encyclopedia entries. Full of stereotypes, and I was disappointed it didn't quite commit to changing the outcomes of history. I like to think if Crazy Horse had a biplane, we'd have actual native territories out west now.

"Meathouse Man" by George R. R. Martin
Best writing so far! Actually engaging, but also rather soft-core porn... ah, George, we knew ye. Found the story somewhat alarming. It's either straight up misogyny or critiquing it?
Ah, George.

Jack Williamson "The Highest Dive"
Very golden age - here's a weird physics situation and let's bend a plot around it.

"infinite summer" by Christopher Priest
Best scene description so far. Was beginning to think 1970s writers couldn't evoke scenes at all. Time travel, plot is mostly implied?

"The Eyeflash Miracles" by Gene Wolfe - somewhat lyrical but definitely a throwback. Feels like it could have been written in the 30s.

On a novella - about a blind boy in what might be the future but what really feels like the 1930s, complete with Wizard of Oz references.

I am not okay. This author knows just how to make you care so much and then destroy what you care about.

And I just realized that "Final Girl" was exactly what I first thought it was.

This book is TERRIFYING.

"The Psychologist Who Refused to Do Awful Things to Rats" was disappointing. James Tiptree Jr. is usually brilliant, but this felt unstructured and one-note? The ending threw me.

"The Death of Princes" by Fritz Leiber is truly bad, it feels like listening to a boring drunk guy try to tell a story he keeps forgetting the start of. I can only deduce that it made it into the collection on the strength of Leiber's other work, and all the recent science fiction novels and authors he name-drops.

Harlan Ellison's "Seeing" is a noir pastiche with a hooker with a heart of gold who possesses magical eyes. An elderly oligarch woman steals the eyes and goes mad from being able to truly see while the now-blind prostitute ends the story with beatific serenity.

Second story - "The Phantom of Kansas" by John Varley - a women is resurrected as a clone after being murdered three times. She investigates her own murder and finds the killer is another clone of herself. They talk it out and reconcile.

First story - "I See You" - Damon Knight - follows the implications of an impossible technology - a telescope that sees back in time - has a scene in Cleveland!

I am loving this so much. Hernández does a brilliant job drawing people as unique individuals you recognize immediately, even as they age. I wish more comic artists did.

my Gort am I loving this. It keeps getting funnier.

OK! 20% in and something happened that I care about. Now committing to go at least halfway.

The first two chapters are solid info-dump.
Only the rep of the author is getting me to give it a third chance and keep reading. Hope a story starts soon?

SHOESHINE BOY DO NOT!

... ugh he did...

I thought it could NOT get more satyrical and bleak, and then they got to the library!

AT, mate, you are one stone cold Brit.

My poor babies are in danger!!!! I mean, the protagonists. How will this end??

edge of seat time, very irritated at all the life-things that take me away from reading

This dude. Thinks he's funny but mostly seems to be shouting "you darn kids"

Not, as I had hoped, about masculinity and art.

Some of this guy's arguments have glaring holes in them, though I'm trying to forgive him because he was struggling against a fallacy, too.

Still, it's becoming a hate-read.

She keeps knocking it out of the park. "Far and Deep" was... deep!