Samuel Johnston

Xenocide — Read Report

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Xenocide is the third book in the Ender series, after Ender’s Game (link) and Speaker for the Dead (link). I read the book decades ago, and remembered almost nothing about it. I’m now reading it again with my daughter.

The plot is split between two worlds and sets of characters. On the planet Lusitania, the story of Speaker for the Dead continues, with Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, his AI companion Jane, and the Ribeira family that he has now joined through his marriage to their matriarch, Novinha. Soon, Ender’s sister Valentine and her family arrive as well.

The Lusitanians, including the native Pequeninos and imported Buggers, live under the looming threat of an approaching fleet armed with the planet-destroying MD device, as well as the constantly shifting threat of the descolada virus that is integral to the Pequenino life cycle, but eventually deadly to all non-native species. The fleet is held back temporarily by Jane, who disables all their communications at the risk of revealing herself to the universe at large.

On the planet Path, we’re introduced to Han Fei-tzu, an important official, and his genius daughter, Han Qing-jao. They are members of the planet’s high caste, the godspoken, whose intelligence is linked to OCD-like compulsions that the populace believe to be the way the gods speak to mortals.

Fei-tzu is tasked by the congress of the hundred worlds to solve the riddle of the fleet near Lusitania, which seems to have suddenly disappeared. He assigns this important task to his daughter. Soon they are joined by one more character—Si Wang-mu, a servant girl who is not godspoken, but also turns out to be highly intelligent.

** More Planets, More Problems

Ender’s Game was clearly intended as a single novel that stands on its own. Speaker for the Dead was decidedly more complicated, and left a pile of unresolved plot points to pick up in Xenocide.

Despite this “head start,” the first half of Xenocide feels plodding, and it mostly involves setting up a large number of major problems that the characters are going to have to solve, along with a web of reasons why absolutely every character is going to be at odds with every other character.

Conflict can be an engine of story, but Xenocide proves to me that it can go too far. I couldn’t help feeling that the constant animosity between characters was exhausting, and when certain characters finally gave in and decided to work with others near the end of the book, it felt abrupt and somewhat unearned.

** Thinking Fast and Slow

The first half of the book is slow, and it would be easy to blame this entirely on the setup required by the huge cast of characters and the many interconnected conflicts. That is absolutely a factor, and I think this book was trying to do a few too many things at once. However, I think a lot of this is actually just Card being long-winded and having too much editorial clout at this point in his career.

There are pages of internal narration where characters muse on their feelings. These deep thoughts are sometimes interrupted by one or two lines of dialogue, only to immediately drop back into more pages of their thoughts! If there was ever an argument against a third-person omniscient perspective, this is it. A first-person narrator or even a tight third-person would have limited these long and winding detours and perhaps forced Card to show how characters feel more through their actions and words.

By contrast, the latter half of the book ramps into a much faster pace. All of those problems set up in the first half have to get resolved. Unfortunately, this leads to another problem of pacing, where everything feels like it’s happening overly fast. Again it feels like there was simply too much going on, and some plot points inevitably got short shrift.

To me, some of the resolutions felt like an abrupt tonal shift. This is a far-future series with advanced technology, but felt like hard sci-fi grounded in reality. Near the end of Xenocide, ideas are introduced that are decidedly further afield. There is a brand new kind of magical physics. When the whole plot hinges on these ideas, there’s a whiff of deus ex machina—even if they would feel perfectly reasonable in a story that plays a little looser with its sci-fi extrapolations.

It’s been long enough since I read this series that I no longer remember anything about the fourth book, Children of the Mind. Without spoiling Xenocide, I’ll say that the final bit of sci-fi magic also brings a pair of characters more or less back from the dead, further complicating an already over-complicated book, and I suspect they’ll be heavily involved in the conclusion.

This may be the first inkling of Card’s eventual obsession with rehashing his old stories. It would continue with his “Shadow Saga,” where he spends another six books rehashing plots and characters from the Ender books. I see from Wikipedia that there are at least 19 books in this same world.

** New Perspective

When I originally read these books, I was a teen. Those memories are fuzzy now, but as far as I recall, I found them to be a powerful vision of a distant future.

Re-reading now, I think that’s true of Ender’s Game. But Xenocide feels far less grounded and almost metaphorical. The conflicts, from interpersonal to intergalactic, largely boil down to people talking at cross-purposes, unable or unwilling to understand each other’s viewpoint. It’s ultimately a depressing view of the world that suggests real empathy and compromise is almost a super power, and most conflict is inevitable. It’s depressingly resonant here in 2025.

If there is a central theme across Xenocide’s many plotlines, it’s that people and cultures tend to act in ways that make them dangerous to themselves and each other. Humans are easily controlled or manipulated, and often give in to their most base instincts, even when it’s obviously bad for them.

We see evidence of that on the nightly news, but it’s far more depressing to imagine that we’ll still be so barbaric and unenlightened in three thousand years.

** Final Thoughts

In an appropriate twist, Xenocide leaves me conflicted. It does a number of things that irritate me. I’m still of the opinion that Ender’s Game was the best book in the series. But Xenocide incorporates a lot of strange and provocative ideas, and it has made me think. It comes from an era when the genre conventions of sci-fi expected intricate plotting and…less intricate characterization. So the complexities of the plot can perhaps be forgiven, and the characterization, as heavy-handed as it sometimes is, should perhaps be praised.

Once upon a time, I would likely have considered these books among my favorites. I don’t think they still hold that place. They’re by no means bad, but I do think the state of literature has changed significantly in the past 25 years, as have my own personal tastes. I’m enjoying my foray through the series, even if I do have the old man tendency to complain the whole way. And there has to be merit to any book that you find yourself thinking about well after you’re done reading it.

Bad Music — The Story Idea Vault

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

Bad Music

There was a long-running debate among fans of the band Bad Music. Were they the most punk of the “neo-unda” punk bands, or were they marketing geniuses who truly understood how much people wanted something that was impossible to get?

The name of the band was designed to make it difficult for internet searches. Their shows were never announced more than one day in advance. Everyone entering the venue had to go through tech scanners and put their phones and smart glasses into the block of modular mini-lockers that seemed to travel with the band. They wore masks on stage and never revealed their names. And holy hell did they rock.

They had no label, and they claimed that they didn’t release records. Fans competed to post the highest quality bootleg tracks. There were eternal arguments over which songs were legit, and which were made by copycats and fakers.

At the height of their fame, debates raged over whether “unreleased” songs could win a Grammy while Bad Music topped the charts on every streaming platform. Then the band vanished. No more popup shows. No more cryptic announcements on the “cool” niche music sites.

New songs surfaced here and there, but they were widely regarded as fakes. An expose in The Guardian made tenuous connections, claiming to have tracked two of the anonymous band members to a suicide cult, and two more to a plane crash in Brazil.

The songs remained popular in the ensuing decades. The band’s disappearance only fueled their legend. Conspiracy theories abounded, and many fans were convinced that the band was still alive. Lookalike cover groups became popular, with some even insisting that they were the real deal, back from the dead.

Every year or two, someone claimed the band had reappeared for one last secret show in an unexpected place.

And maybe they did…

Artificial Condition (Murderbot Diaries #2) — Read Report

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I purchased this as The Murderbot Diaries Vol. 1 double feature—which contains the first two novellas in the series—so I immediately jumped into this story after completing All Systems Red.

While the first story in a series has to introduce characters, introduce a setting, and set the tone, this is really not very different from the requirements of a stand-alone story. The only additional thing a good series-starter needs is some dangling plot threads that can be used to pull the reader into subsequent entries. As a reader, my question for a series is always, “what’s my reason for reading the next story?”

All Systems Red did this setup well, ending with Murderbot sneaking away from the new friends that had just bought its freedom from the oppressive Company. It knows that its memory was wiped after an incident at a mining colony; an incident where many people died and it was first able to override the governor module that keeps all security bots under strict control. It feels compelled to return and learn the truth about what happened.

The ART of Security Consulting

This second installment begins to set up Murderbot as the travelling tough guy in the mold of classic ronin samurai stories and westerns. Murderbot is Jack Reacher with social anxiety, 50% artificial components, and (ironically) actual emotions.

As far as we can tell, Murderbot seems to be pretty good at its job. It knows how to hack the local security systems to avoid being spotted as it makes its way through space stations. It disguises itself as an augmented human, and tries to secure passage off-the-books by finding automated transports with no human passengers to be suspicious.

Unfortunately, a deep space research vessel that Murderbot uses for transportation turns out to have an advanced artificial brain, and once he’s aboard it immediately clocks him as suspicious and forces him to reveal who he really is. What follows is a strange and decidedly awkward relationship with the ship, who Murderbot eventually dubs ART—Asshole Research Transport.

ART eventually helps Murderbot develop a cover story as a security consultant and even helps modify Murderbot’s body in its emergency surgery bay to help it avoid detection. It also ends up acting much like the classic hacker in the protagonist’s earpiece for the ensuing heist.

Murderbot, seemingly unable to avoid human entanglements, ends up taking a security job for a group of out-of-their-depth researchers trying to get their intellectual property from a shady mining corporation. This serves as cover for Murderbot’s actual goal of finding information about the mining colony massacre.

A Lack of Loose Ends

After two volumes, my impression of the Murderbot Diaries is that it’s more comfort food than high-brow sci-fi pushing the boundaries of the genre. That’s not a critique. Now seems like a time when plenty of readers could use some lighter, comforting stories.

Martha Wells has assembled a number of recognizable tropes and familiar ideas in the story so far. But they’re put together in a way that feels fresh, and mixed in with the mild goofiness of a surprisingly effective security bot who prefers to avoid human contact and binge watch its favorite shows instead.

Unfortunately, I felt that the ending of Artificial Condition didn’t quite measure up to All Systems Red. There was a whiff of deus ex machina in the sudden appearance of a character that happens to neatly resolve the concerns of Murderbot’s scientist clients. Murderbot does eventually find some information about the mining colony massacre and its own origin, but nothing is fully explained, and there are no clues as to where it could learn more. I would have liked one or two obvious threads to draw me into the third novella.

Artificial Condition expands the world, introduces new characters, and lets us get further into the head of Murderbot. It also feels like a comfortable stopping point to me, at least for now. The ending doesn’t compel me to keep reading, and maybe that’s okay. I will probably jump back in when I feel the need for some cozy, lighthearted action-adventure.

For now, this volume goes on the bookshelf, and I’ll pick up something else from my TBR list.

Etchings on a Boulder

It was only a couple weeks ago that I posted a poem while claiming that I don’t write much poetry. And it’s true, honest! But it just so happens that I’ve written another one.

I recently went on vacation with my family to a national park. I really shouldn’t be, but I find myself perpetually shocked by the human propensity to deface the most beautiful places with little bits of graffiti. So here’s a poem about that.

Etchings on a Boulder

We cannot count ourselves enlightened
Until we outgrow this need
To carve our names
In every nook and cranny
Of beautiful wilderness

What vain hope
That initials in the rock
Will obtain immortality
Our frail bodies cannot

Petty little scratches
May outlive us
But they will fade
Wind and rain painting
A clean canvas

What meaning will those letters have?
Only this: 
We were so afraid
Of being forgotten

Sprayed Edges and Books as Artifacts

I like to think I’m not a materialist, but I do have a propensity to buy too many books. This year I’ve been working on buying fewer and reading more. I’ll get through that TBR list some day…or some year. Now, I buy e-books and audio books, but I do have a soft spot in my heart for a real, physical book.

The Cheapening

I grew up in the 80s and 90s, before e-books, when the paperback was truly at the height of its power. In fact, I tended to prefer paperbacks over hardbacks, with their finicky dust covers and heavy bindings.

Paperbacks are a great, cheap form factor. If all you care about is getting those sweet, sweet story-words into your eye-holes, paperbacks are a great option. They are just not a high-quality option. These days, trade paperbacks don’t seem to be much better than mass market paperbacks either. I find that many comic collections and graphic novels are ready to come apart at the binding with minimal provocation.

In general, I think the last four or five decades of physical publishing have been all about trying to shave pennies off the print cost. E-books and print-on-demand upended the publishing game, and the industry feels like it never quite got its feet back under it.

Books as Artifact

There is something to be said for books as a physical artifact. There is a satisfaction to a full bookshelf that simply can’t be replicated by an app or e-reader. Even though I don’t like the experience of holding and reading a hardcover book as much as a light paperback (that I can force into a pocket if need be), I love the look of a shelf full of embossed leatherbound books.

In the drive for cost cutting, the industry has spent less and less effort on the physical beauty of books. It’s not unreasonable, but it is unfortunate. I would love to see publishers experimenting with more ways to differentiate the look of books on the shelf, even if I admittedly don’t want to spend $50 or $100 on some ultra-fancy collector’s edition.

Browsing the bookstore recently, I saw one indicator that someone is thinking along those lines. Many of the books in the special front-of-store featured sections now have sprayed edges.

These special editions tend to be the best-sellers or the big-buck new releases that the publishing oracles have selected for special treatment, but hey, that’s nothing new. Publishers have always consulted the oracles and picked certain books for special treatment.

I’m sure something in the printing tech has changed recently to make this cheaper and more accessible, because there are a ton of these now. And while some people clearly find it off-putting, I personally like it.

Let’s find more reasons to get excited about books! Let’s make them look cool and different. Let’s enjoy them as beautiful artifacts on the shelf, instead of merely that guilty pleasure that I indulge a little too often. Heck, as long as we’re at it, I want to see more embossing and fake gold leaf and variant covers.

What do you think? Do you like fancy books? Are you interested in books as artifacts, or are you all about jamming the story-words in the eye-holes with a complete disregard for their containment vessel? Let me know in the comments.

The Holy App — The Story Idea Vault

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Feel free to use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

The Holy App

Caleb Ortiz-Levin made a career through the boom and bust cycles of Silicon Valley. Increasingly desperate bids to sell cryptocurrency, the metaverse, and everything AI. And what did he have to show for it? Only a few billion dollars.

Everyone was shocked when he stepped away from business.

He climbed remote mountains to study at isolated monasteries. He obtained three theological degrees. He brought his cadre of spiritual advisors to every gold plate charity dinner and political fundraiser. He spent six months not speaking. He interviewed the Pope and the Dalai Lama in the New Yorker.

Caleb wasn’t a fool. He knew how he was viewed: just another rich tech bro going down some obsessive rabbit hole. He didn’t mind. It just meant that he would be on the cutting edge of the next big thing: personalized religion.

People were increasingly desperate for meaning in a meaningless world. Why settle for an ethical system written on stone tablets in the bronze age? Why accept a cosmogony developed by shepherds before the invention of telescopes?

The app was downloaded a hundred million times in the first week. It made it easy to register a new religion, set up a hierarchy, and ordain your own priests. All with AI auto-complete, recorded indelibly on the blockchain. People began to wonder how the old religions survived without push notifications and subscription fees.

The two Churches of Satan, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and Hatsune Miku vied for the most adherents in the weekly rankings. The pope denounced it as a tool of the devil. Oddly, this only caused a spike in downloads. Within a year, all the major religions were on the app too.

When Caleb went on the podcast circuit, he was asked one question more than any other: “What do you believe?”

“Who cares?” he said.

Thoughts on Fiction, Read Aloud

Reading to my Kids

The first time I started regularly reading books aloud in adulthood was shortly after my first son was born. Books for the under-three crowd aren’t exactly high literature, but that’s okay. Babies aren’t discerning consumers, and I wasn’t an amazing narrator.

Still, it was clearly valuable. My oldest could turn the pages and recite his favorite books from memory long before he could actually read any words. All of our children have become voracious readers, and that literacy is an asset in school and life. Plus…you know…it’s fun to read.

My oldest child is now a high schooler, and no longer interested in me reading aloud to him. My youngest is also losing interest, although he still listens occasionally, when we find a book that piques his interest. For now, my middle child is the one who asks me to read to her. She’s a smart middle-schooler, and we mostly read adult sci-fi novels. It’s a gift to be able to share the books that I enjoyed at that age, and revisit them through her eyes.

I know those days are numbered. I suppose I’ll miss it when I no longer have someone asking me to read to them.

Reading fiction aloud for 30-60 minutes most evenings has made me much better at it. I know to shift my tone to better separate external and internal dialogue. I know to adjust my voice to differentiate between two characters in conversation. I know how much space is needed to create a scene break. Sometimes I even know when I’ve gone too far with the bad accents and silly voices.

I’m no professional narrator, but I’ve improved through 15 years of practice.

Audiobooks

I recently made a conscious effort to start “reading” audiobooks. They’re going through something of a renaissance. Enabled by the same streaming and on-demand technology that has upended movies and radio, audiobooks have also helped fill a sizable hole in publisher profits left by the rise of e-books and precipitous decline of physical (and especially hardcover) sales.

Audiobooks also happen to fit well into our current culture, where it often feels hard to sit down and dedicate time to reading, but there are still plenty of opportunities to connect a phone to the car radio during commutes, or put something on the headphones while doing laundry or mowing.

For me, including audiobooks in my reading diet has at least doubled the number of pages I consume. Maybe more. It has given me more opportunities to try new authors without adding to my overfull bookshelves.

I’ve also been slowly noticing the ways that listening to a story alters the way I perceive it. I have a harder time keeping track of different characters and remembering their names. It’s much harder to skip back a chapter and reread something for context.

Stories, Spoken

When humanity was young, storytellers were part historian, part wizard, part priest. Stories were a way for us to make sense of a confusing and malevolent world, to preserve knowledge and wisdom, and to build a shared worldview. For thousands of years, all stories were spoken.

Even in modern times, when the world is more literate than it has ever been before; even as a writer who most values the written word, there is clearly some special power in a story, spoken aloud.

Writing Advice

Some oft-quoted advice for writers suggests the value in reading your work in progress out loud.

“It will help you find the parts of your prose that sound off.”

“It will help you hear the rhythm of your words.”

“It will help you find your characters’ voices.”

“It will help you find your own voice.”

Like most writing advice, I think these pearls of wisdom will work well for some and not for others.

My opinion these days is considerably broader. As a writer, I think there’s value in consuming many kinds of stories in many different forms and formats, just as there’s value in writing drabbles, flash, novellas, novels, and series, composed by pen or typewriter or computer, or even dictation.

I think writing fiction is an activity where generalists and jacks of all trades excel. We open ourselves up to the world and gather as much as we can, so we can sift it for notes of truth to sprinkle on the page.

And I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least dabble in the original medium of stories, the only one that has persisted since before humans were recognizable as human: the spoken word.

Another Song, Another Kiss

Here’s something unusual for the blog: a poem.

I am mainly a fiction writer. I put a considerable amount of effort into it. I worry about the quality, and I’m constantly striving to be better. I don’t often write poetry, and I don’t consider myself a poet. Since I finished school, I don’t think I’ve ever sat down with the intent to write a poem. So when I write poems, it’s usually an accident. Some small phrase or stanza pops into my head, and the rest of the thing follows.

This poem came as a response to some of the pessimism around modern politics and the sky-is-falling, world-is-ending rhetoric. Not political ideology, just a passing feeling. I don’t have the expertise to judge whether it’s any good, but it might as well go out into the world instead of rotting on my hard drive. Enjoy!

Another Song, Another Kiss

They say it’s getting worse.
Look how people talk,
How they behave.

Look at politics.
We live in different worlds.
(Nobody has ever said
Politics is getting better)

And if you don’t believe it's all falling apart,
If you don’t live in fear,
Or you dare to hope,
You’re a fool, or worse: complicit.

But they forgot the feeling:
The first time hearing
Your favorite song,
The first time kissing
Someone you love

The future is not all bad.
There are more good things in store.
Tomorrow has a surprise for you
And you’ll never guess.

All Systems Red (Murderbot Diaries #1) — Read Report

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I suspect, in a vacuum, I would not pick up a book labeled Murderbot Diaries. It sounds like a combination of military SF parody and introspective John Green-esque YA fiction. Having read the first installment, the title comes off as tongue-in-cheek and less abrasively cheesy.

This is one of those cases where “word of mouth” unequivocally led to a sale. The book has been recommended to me by friends, acquaintances, podcasts, and blogs which would usually all have very different tastes. My interest was piqued by broad support across normally unaligned quadrants.

Who is this Killer Robot?

I can see why so many people like Murderbot. He is a protagonist for our times.

In another universe, he might have the makings of a charismatic action hero: a humanoid, partly organic robot with armor; built-in weapons; the ability to repair from near death; and extensive experience in private security.

In the universe of All Systems Red, he just wants to slack off, avoid talking to anyone, and watch his favorite shows.

Many robot narratives are either as emotionless as possible or essentially indistinguishable from a human narrative. Murderbot finds a middle-ground. He has emotions and can certainly get caught up in the moment, but he is also aware that he is more affected by the storylines of his shows than by the actual interactions between himself and the crew who has purchased his company contract for security services.

He needs his space, both physically and emotionally. He’s more comfortable talking to the crew with his opaque helmet on; more comfortable seeing them through the security cameras; and happy to spend his time alone in the tiny security room, or even tinier repair bay.

The company that owns Murderbot and sells his services to the highest bidder is an amoral edifice of shitty space capitalism. They worry about the welfare of the people Murderbot is hired to protect because they will suffer financial penalties for injuries and deaths. They care about Murderbot because he would be expensive to replace.

Murderbot himself has more theoretical autonomy than he should. He has hacked his own modules and only feigns following orders enough to not get caught. He also has actual morals, even if they often butt up against his limited emotional range and social anxiety.

Many readers identify with Murderbot because he reflects marginalized identities. He is aromantic, asexual, and exhibits behaviors and feelings familiar to many neurodivergent people. He is also a small character in a big world. He uses his very limited freedom to seek little comforts that help block out an indifferent and cruel universe, at least for a little while. He cannot possibly imagine leading a rebellion or overthrowing evil, but he appreciates when someone does it on TV.

I suspect many of us feel the same way when we flip on our favorite show these days.

Quick Hits and Remixes

I am a big fan of the return of novellas. When I was young I read huge fantasy tomes and played 100-hour JRPGs. Now that I’m older and cherish my precious free time, I quite like a book or game that I can finish comfortably in a day or two.

Novellas also lend themselves wonderfully to series like this. Much like a weekly TV show, each entry can provide a concise arc while building characterization and setting on top of the previous entries.

I’m also appreciative of the fresh familiarity of Murderbot. It’s hard to point to any particular element of the story that is a purely original take. The action-adventure, the robot learning how to be more human, and the mildly dystopic libertarian space future have all been explored elsewhere. However, Martha Wells puts those puzzle pieces together in a way that feels fun and strangely parallel to our current moment in time.

Voices of the Dead — The Story Idea Vault

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Feel free to use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

Voices of the Dead

The professors were all thrilled when Dr. Landau agreed to join our little jungle expedition. They didn’t want to reveal their findings in writing, but they had to say enough to catch her interest.

I met her at the landing strip, and she wasted no time. As she stepped out of the plane, she asked me, “What’s all this about the parrots?”

“They’re speaking a dead language,” I told her. It sounded silly when I said it. “But the dig sites are all pristine. No potsherds. No hand axes. No bones or remnants of fire pits.”

She soon gave up questioning me, and we hiked to the camp, hardly speaking. We listened to the banter of long-dead voices, croaked from bird to bird in the treetops.

She was quick to confront my superiors.

“What kind of catastrophe can wipe out all traces of a civilization except their language?” she asked the professors. Of course, they had no answer. We had pondered it for twenty sleepless nights.

I once held those withered, bookish men in high esteem, but they were afraid to tell her our final secret. And who am I to judge them? I didn’t tell her either. She had to find out herself, alone in her tent as twilight fell on the misty jungle.

At night, the parrots stop echoing the words of the dead. After the sun goes down, the birds only recount their final, terrified screams.