Reviews – Words Deferred

Trouble! at Coal Creek — Read Report

Trouble! At Coal Creek is a historical fiction graphic novel that tells the story of the 1891 “Coal Creek War” through the eyes of a mining family. It follows in the tradition of books like Maus and They Called Us Enemy.

At this point, I would almost classify this style of book as its own sub-genre, fairly distinct from both mainstream graphic novels and traditional historical fiction, with its own style and tropes. Weirdly, after decades of comics being snubbed by the mainstream as childish, the books that managed to cross over have lent a patina of prestige to this particular combination of format and subject matter.

Trouble! was published with grants from no less than three art and education foundations and funds. The author, Austin Saurbrei’s bio describes him as a community organizer with strong union ties. My own political leanings are pretty pro-labor, but I think it’s fair to say that the book is happy to take sides and isn’t trying for a neutral viewpoint. On the other hand, the maltreatment of coal miners in the 1800s was so incredibly nasty that I hope most people with modern sensibilities would find it hard to side with the coal barons.

The story is told by an unnamed narrator whose parents emigrated from Wales to eastern Tennessee, hoping to use Pa’s experience as a miner to build a better life. Ma, Pa, narrator and Sis are sucked into the biscuits cycle of work and debt that mining towns and “the company store” have become synonymous with.

When Ma and a third child die in childbirth, Pa gives up hope of a better life, spending his paltry pocket money and free hours drinking. Sis escapes via marriage into another mining family. The narrator—forbidden from the mines by Pa—gets a job at a local general store. The store happens to be run by a local member of the Knights of Labor, one of the earliest precursors to modern labor unions in America.

The rest of the book chronicles the escalating dispute between coal miners and mine owners. A labor strike is countered by bringing in (largely black, questionably prosecuted) prisoner labor. Miners riot and force out prison labor, only for the Tennessee government to bring it back it through new laws and militia protection. The conflict is shown through the narrator’s family as he and his sister fight for the miners, while their father, oddly, stays loyal to the company.

The book ends on a positive note, the rebellious miners using dynamite to crack open the stockade and free the prisoner-laborers. But the page-long afterword makes it ring hollow, describing how the fights of 1891-1892 weren’t enough to stop convict labor, which continued in some form for another 75 years.

The black and white art is often moody, alternating white and black framing. Recreations of maps, telegrams, posters and newspapers are interspersed with the illustrations to lend verisimilitude. However, despite the often violent subject matter, the book shies away from grit and gore. I suspect it was kept in the PG range to make it an easier sell for classrooms and school libraries.

There is little dialogue in the book. Most of the story is told through voice-over narration, even when the narrator is in the illustrated scene. This, along with the minimal characterization (none of the family have names), gives the story a little too much distance from the fictional characters.

They are there to add some pathos and personal stakes to the historical story. However, that distance makes it hard to be too invested in their plight. Since the rebellion is largely successful in the time period covered, it never really feels like they are in life-threatening danger.

Still, the book is a very easy way into an interesting period of American history; events that I didn’t know in detail, and I expect most Americans aren’t familiar with. The topic is especially salient now, when wealth disparities and the rights of labor are once again a major issue in our politics.

Then again, maybe that could be said for every decade between the Coal Creek War and today.

Hogbook and Lazer Eyes — Read Report

(affiliate link)

I recently went to the DMV near my house, which happens to be in the same government center as a big library. My government-mandated waiting room time was relatively quick, so I walked across the building to browse.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to the library, so I decided to wade into the comics section and see what was on offer. I’m still surprised by the sheer variety in graphic formats these days. There are now shelves and shelves of non-superhero comics. (Not that I’m opposed to superhero comics, but it’s nice to have variety.)

I decided to pick out a few things I might normally skip over, and the first of these was Hogbook and Lazer Eyes by Maria Bamford and Scott Marvel Cassidy.

I recognized Bamford as a stand-up comedian, but I don’t really know her work or Cassidy, her husband. The book bills itself as the story of their relationship, as seen through they eyes of their pet pugs.

Their connection via online dating app and subsequent relationship are the topic of the first third of the book. After that, it’s…stuff that happens to them. Their habit of adopting elderly pugs results in at least half a dozen being introduced through the story.

The story is autobiographical, but unfocused. It doesn’t center on a particular aspect of their lives; just a series of largely unrelated vignettes. It reads a bit like the authors were asked to summarize their lives in a set number of pages.

Most of the problem for me was the narration. The dogs aren’t really given distinct personalities, so it’s hard to say if they’re narrating or not. The narration is largely clinical: what happened and when.

For example, when the pair briefly break up and get back together, the entire explanation reads: “Maria and Scott reunite with help from Sheryl Hirsham, the excellent therapist with silver hair. Communications and emotions resume. Dogs, cats, and other creatures are on board.” It’s accompanied by an abstract illustration of a space council of dogs.

It sounds like there might be an interesting story in there somewhere. I have to assume it was a rougher patch than this glib paragraph suggests, but there’s no detail to be found. Two pages later, they’re engaged.

Perhaps Maria and Scott were uncomfortable airing their dirty laundry in comic form. That’s totally understandable. I certainly would be. But if that’s the case, I would have advised them not to try to write and publish a comic about their relationship.

The art is a ink-heavy, realistic style with muted colors—a bit like early DC Vertigo, minus the horror sensibilities. Half of it is pugs, very faithfully rendered in all their puggish glory. The humans all have a melancholy, slightly pained look to them, regardless of what’s happening in the story.

I’m not sure what to make of this book. I expected comedy, and there was surprisingly little. I expected relationship drama, and there was surprisingly little. The amount of pug content was high, as advertised. If you love pugs or Maria Bamford, you may get more out of this book than I did.

Global Frequency — Read Report

(Global Frequency Deluxe Edition at DC.com)

The version from my local library is the Deluxe Edition, containing all 12 original issues from the 2002-2004 run. As an early 2000s title, I’d say this is on the tail end of non-superhero books working their way into mainstream culture. So there is no spandex and no superpowers (at least by that parlance), but Global Frequency does dabble in super-villain sci-fi and supernatural stuff on roughly the believability level of The X-Files.

The Global Frequency is a semi-secret, global and unaffiliated spy organization, 1001 specialized experts recruited by a woman who calls herself Miranda Zero. They live in a heightened version of the real world at the turn of the millennium, and they find solutions for crises big and small.

Each issue is a self-contained story, “monster of the week” style. There is no broader arc or big bad pulling all the strings, and no significant final wrap-up for the series. Miranda Zero and her central radio operator Aleph are the only recurring characters. Everyone else is a day player, and therefore sometimes expendable.

Each issue sets up a high stakes problem with many lives on the line, then places Global Frequency members with interesting skills nearby to solve that problem. Sometimes “interesting skills” means hacking into anything and everything. Sometimes it just means a lot of punching and shooting. Sometimes it’s being a super-detective or having a bionic arm or being a magician or building your own civilian space agency.

Some of the impending catastrophes are varied, like a memetic alien mind virus or an apparent angelic visitation that drives a whole town insane. Unfortunately, about half of them boil down to a big bomb. And by big, I mean at least three separate instances of nuclear weapons, and one orbital railgun that would only be similar in effect to an atomic bomb.

2000s Edgy

The series is very of-its-time, on the bleeding edge of what was cool in 2002: parkour and UAVs and satellite imagery. The Matrix was only a couple years earlier, and the Internet still felt new. I don’t begrudge the high tech that seems mundane from a 2020s perspective, or the hackers that get into any computer in five seconds flat. Some of the early web slang, spoken aloud by serious characters, is a little harder to forgive.

The biggest problem, however, is classic Warren Ellis: the series seems to want to play with the literary big boys, but it comes off as adolescent a little too often. It’s William Gibson by way of Hot Topic.

Oh, there are cultists with a bomb and hostages? And the bomb is connected to their heart rate monitors? And they took a slow-acting poison? It’s a delicate situation. Better send in a pair of action heroes to shoot them all, and shoot the remote before the leader can push the button. Good thing the heart monitor bit was a bluff.

Then, of course, the action heroes who have been at each others’ throats the whole time can immediately go offscreen to get it on. Its violent and sexy and there are naughty words, and that makes it adult.

I don’t mind these kinds of shenanigans. They’re why people still love over-the-top 90s action flicks. Heck, Netflix is still making a few of those movies per year, with big actors and eye-watering budgets. It works when the story doesn’t take itself too seriously. But Global Frequency sometimes feels like it’s trying a little too hard to be cool.

Missed Opportunities

That said, the series could have really benefitted from another 12 issues, and I would have been happy to read them. The run is short and it sticks to the anthology- style disconnected stories a little too much for my tastes. There are two things that more issues could have given breathing room for: a multi-issue arc, and an opportunity for failure.

The Global Frequency is a sort of an organizational Mary Sue. Their funding and equipment is never really explained. All their members are experts in their field, and everyone is fully aligned with the mission, whatever that might be. There are no moles and no traitors, despite their many enemies. In a spy series!

I would love to have gotten a little more background, and that could have very easily played into some kind of SPECTRE counter-spy organization or villain with a bone to pick. It would also have allowed for the Global Frequency to fail. Because they never really do. Individual members may die in the line of duty, but they always save the day.

Art and Extras

The art is solid and varied. Each issue has a different artist, so there’s always something new to look at. The angles, panels, and framing are occasionally unexpected, but there’s nothing especially crazy or unusual going on for this era of DC. There were a few places where the action was muddied, mostly in a specific issue that is almost entirely taken up by a big one-on-one brawl.

The book ends with two Deluxe Edition extra features: the original proposal for the series as submitted to DC, and a script for one issue. These are interesting for those who want to work in comics, and those who just like to see how the sausage gets made.

The Truth—Read Report

Book | Ebook | Audiobook (affiliate links)

There aren’t many authors who put out 40 books in the same world. It requires not only an audience that maintains interest in that world, but also an author who is both prolific and continues to find that world worth writing about.

Discworld is an interesting case because it is a comedic fantasy world, which allows it to be big and complicated and strange, but also do some occasional hand-waving when Pratchett wants to do things without the sort of rigorous justifications that a more “serious” world might need to appease its audience.

Of the 41 Discworld novels, I’ve read roughly half, and I haven’t gone in any particular order. However, there are still some clear trends in the topics and characters Pratchett chooses to focus on over the years. There are seasons of Discworld.

The Witches and Wizards show up frequently early on, and topics are fairly typical for fantasy: magic and royal lineages and the occasional dragon or world-threatening calamity. The season of Death and his family goes deep into folklore and myths, the nature of what people believe in and how that shapes the world.

It’s pretty clear that at a certain point Pratchett lands in the city of Ankh Morpork, a fantasy London analogue, and decides to spend most of his time there. There is still room here for Wizards at the Unseen University and twisted plots—usually involving the perspicacious Lord Vetinari, the Patrician who rules the city. These also frequently involve the steadily growing cast of the City Watch and their leader, Sam Vimes.

However, the stories set in the city soon start to feel more modern. This world is undergoing something of an industrial revolution, and the cultural revolutions that come along with it. The Watch becomes less medieval guards and more a police force, while reckoning with multiculturalism through the lens of dwarfs and werewolves. The semaphore “clacks” tower network jumps from telegraph to pseudo-internet in the span of a single book. Photography and rock music come to Ankh Morpork.

Through these real-world-adjacent changes to Discworld and Ankh Morpork, Pratchett finds back doors for critique and commentary that feel applicable to the everyday mundane world without ever coming across as overly political or preachy.

The new technology at the heart of The Truth is movable type and the printing press. In classic Discworld historical compression, the idea of the newspaper and the investigative journalist follow mere hours behind. The reporter is William de Word, who accidentally falls into the job when his monthly paid newsletter for royals quickly morphs into a daily broadsheet read across the city. William is the youngest son of a nobleman with very particular ideas about how society should be structured. William disagrees and has chosen estrangement and a life of poverty rather than compromising his principles.

The city’s ruler, Lord Vetinari, is accused of attempted murder under strange circumstances that look suspiciously like a frame-up. Unlike a typical fantasy tyrant, this is actually a problem for him in the semi-democratic system of modern Ankh Morpork. The mysterious cabal behind the plot want Vetinari out because he’s allowing the modernization of the city. Technological and cultural. These shadowy plotters want a return to traditional values. They want less immigration. They couch it in polite language. They stink of old money. It’s all very familiar.

The printing press itself is the work of a group of dwarven immigrants. The paper soon employs a troll for security and a vampire as their photographer. William has the luxury of slumming it, choosing a pauper’s life with the knowledge that there are mansions and titles waiting, should he have need. But his friends and coworkers are legitimately poor, and members of groups that many in the city look down upon. The stakes are real for them.

While the big bad lurks in the shadows, ground-level villain duty falls to a pair of thugs, Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip, who collectively call themselves The New Firm. One of Pratchett’s under-appreciated skills is crafting exceptional villains, and these two are no exception.

Mr. Tulip is the muscle-bound brute. He wants to have a drug problem, but doesn’t know anything about drugs, so he spends the book snorting all sorts of innocuous white powders. What he does know about is fine art, and he waxes loquacious about paintings, sculptures, and candelabras.

Mr. Pin is the brains of the operation, cold and calculating and quick with a knife. He’s haunted by demons that progressively strip him of his sanity as events unfold.

The Truth is not my favorite Discworld book, but it’s a solid entry in the series. As usual, there were several places where I was delighted by Pratchett’s use of language. Comedy writing is rarely taken seriously, and Pratchett’s pure writing chops deserve more praise than they get.

If the book has a weakness, it’s that it underuses its recurring characters. Were used to seeing Vetinari and Sam Vimes chewing up the scenery when they’re on-stage. Here, they sit in the background, prevented from doing anything interesting because this is William’s story. I would have loved for each of them to have more clear and interesting roadblocks to justify the space William is given to swoop in and save the day.

William himself has a nice arc as the unassuming lesser son of a noble family who hates all his relatives and wants to make his own way in the world. The interesting twist is that he ends up embracing the noble haughtiness that his birthright, but deploying it for the good of the city, his friends, and his fledgling newspaper.

If you’re just starting on Discworld, this wouldn’t be my recommended entry point, but if you enjoy Pratchett and his fantasy-comedy shenanigans, The Truth will give you everything you’re looking for.

Year Walk — Games for People Who Prefer to Read

In the old days, man tried to catch a glimpse of the future in the strangest of ways.

they locked themselves in dark rooms

not partaking of food and drink

At the stroke of midnight

they ventured out into the night

through the dark woods

when strange creatures roamed

To see if they would be healthy

To see if they would be happy

To see if they would live

To see if they would be loved

After playing and thoroughly enjoying Device 6, I went into the back catalog for the game’s developer, Simogo. It’s a strange history, including a simple puzzle game (SPL-T), a rhythm game (Beat Sneak Bandit), a physics game (Kosmo Spin), and a strange side-scrolling driving game where you move the ground instead of the car (Bumpy Road). It’s clear that Simogo was innovating in a variety of ways, and not willing to stick to one genre.

However, Device 6 hit my brain just right because of the combination of interesting mobile-tailored interactions and interwoven story, and the old Simogo games fitting that mold seem to be Year Walk—released before—and The Sailor’s Dream—released after. I decided to try Year Walk first.

Cabin in the Woods

The game opens with the strange and cryptic description of Year Walking (an actual form of ancient Swedish divination: årsgång). However, you start by walking the woods during daylight, in deep winter.

Navigation is confusing at first. Scroll left and right with a finger. Swipe up or down where arrows appear at the edges of the screen to zoom into or out of the landscape. The world is a multi-layered paper cutout, and zooming takes you from one layer to another, while walking left and right show off the depth as the layers parallax.

Faint film grain adds a cinematic quality. The music is quiet, sometimes almost non-existent. As you move, boots crunch in the snow.

Eventually, by learning the controls and exploring, you find your way to a windmill. The miller’s daughter is there. You clearly love her, but does she love you? Either way, she’s betrothed to another. So you leave, returning to your cabin, vowing to year walk to see whether you will be with her in the future.

Moderate Dread, Mild Irritation

Year Walk is an atmospheric horror game with almost no dialogue. You walk the woods at night, coming across phantasmagorical visions and obscure creatures from Swedish myth. There is a little blood and a few jump scares.

For the bulk of the game, the story must be inferred from vague hints. This is a puzzle game, and the puzzles are challenging and obtuse. No real hints are given in the iOS version, although apparently the Steam version and Simogo’s game collection for console has a hint system. However, there are a couple puzzles here that rely on mobile functionality which had to be reworked for other platforms.

I wouldn’t consider myself a puzzle master, but I do alright. For Year Walk, I had to use a guide to finish. The puzzles require some significant leaps of logic and aren’t nearly as clearly demarcated as in Device 6. One puzzle I missed completely because the interface made it unclear that the scene could be interacted with.

The Companion

The game points you subtly to the Year Walk “companion app,” and gives you a number. This is a completely separate, free app in the store, which describes some of the mythology that the game was based on. It’s written from the perspective of a researcher, and using the code grants you access to his secret personal journal.

This was where the game became more interesting to me—after it was ostensibly over. The journal, hidden inside this separate app, has the same ARG feel that Device 6 dipped its toes into.

Journal entries and blurry photographs document the life of a scholar researching the practice of year walking, trying to find old records or elderly people who may be familiar with the nearly forgotten folk ritual. His research leads him to a small town where the last recorded year walk may have occurred. It is somehow intertwined with a strange murder, for which the walker was convicted and executed.

The scholar’s own writing becomes more erratic and unhinged as he continues to unravel new threads. He finds a wooden box in the woods, locked by a mechanism with strange symbols. And here is likely where most players suddenly remember that this box appeared near the start of Year Walk, a puzzle that was never solved over the course of the game.

The scholar decides he can stop the murder that occurred decades previous. He can use the box to send a message through time. If only he can open it.

If you can decipher the code from his journal, you can restart the game, find the box, and open it to discover the message the scholar sent. This reveals a different, but no less bloody ending to the story.

A Sign of Things to Come

I found Year Walk to be slightly less polished and more frustrating than Device 6, but this final sequence went a long way toward improving my opinion of it. I can see the creative impulses and connective tissue between these two games. Year Walk…walked…so Device 6 could run.

I can’t say I would recommend Year Walk unequivocally. If you enjoy strange horror, challenging puzzles with no hand-holding, obscure Swedish folklore, or experimental games, it might be worth a few bucks and a look in.

How to Play

Year Walk is $6 on iOS and Android. It’s also available in a modified format on Steam for PC, and oddly enough, in yet another differently modified form for the Wii U. It is included along with many other games in the recently released Simogo Legacy Collection.

Device 6 — Games for People Who Prefer to Read

Device 6 is a 2013 iOS release from Simogo, ostensibly a puzzle game, although “game” is a bit of a misnomer here. It could be called a visual novel or piece of interactive fiction. It is mainly text, enhanced by sound, music, images and formatting.

Mobile Game (Derogatory)

If you own a smart phone in 2026, there’s a good chance you’ve been exposed to the horrors of modern mobile games. The most popular games are boldly billed as “free to play,” but are typically riddled with ads or paid loot boxes, with micro-transaction systems and dark patterns designed with scientific precision to promote addiction and spending.

Companies like Zynga, King and Tencent spent more than a decade systematically enshittifying these ecosystems, and Apple and Google have largely turned a blind eye to it while taking a 30% cut of the revenues enabled by these practices.

Device 6 hails from a simpler time. Five years after the release of the original iPhone, ubiquitous touchscreens were still exciting technology. Most of us remembered the pain of texting on a 10-digit keypad. Mobile games were slowly expanding beyond Snake and Breakout clones.

The Nintendo Wii had introduced motion controls to the public at large, and Microsoft’s Kinect brought computer vision. Now we all had multi-functional supercomputers in our pockets, and touch interfaces that could morph to any shape. In certain circles, there was a feeling that mobile was the new frontier for experimental game design.

Device 6 feels a little like an artifact from an alternate universe, one where mobile games didn’t drown in an ocean of slop; one where the user is made to feel something more than the desire to play one more indistinguishable level or tap their credit card.

If I sound bitter, it’s only because I think we were cheated out of a more interesting, vibrant future. Device 6 is a game that manages to feel fresh and innovative despite being 13 years old.

Text as Physical Space

Device 6 starts with a face scan. (Fake, of course. phones didn’t have face recognition back then.) A scan line buzzes across the screen once, twice, and then you’re in, given a generic-sounding user name.

The intro credits sequence that follows provides cinematic weight. It’s James Bond by way of Archer, stylized 2D animation of a delivery truck moving toward its destination backed by a light bebop soundtrack.

Then:

The black-and-white picture of a radio within the arrow is layered with film grain and parallaxed as you scroll, giving it a sense of depth, like a a storybook with cutout windows that peer into the another world. The sound of the radio accompanies the picture, but it becomes muffled as you scroll, because the text takes you out of the room, into a hallway.

The text gives you only a phone-sized page or two of description, bristling with side-thoughts in italics and more windows into the world before bringing you to a stairway where the text itself

steps

down,

taking you

through

the house, the shape and formatting of the text bringing you into a physical space.

Then it tips onto its side, inviting you to rotate your device to read the long, narrow lines that take you down a hallway, expanding to fill the screen again only when you reach another room.

Device 6 presents as a multimedia House of Leaves: a trapped, semi-amnesiac character moving through a mysterious, empty island mansion as the text and pictures move across and around the page.

Reaching Through the Window

Device 6 is split into six chapters, each with a handful of puzzles that need to be solved to progress. These puzzles use text, audio, and visual components scattered across the chapter. Some of those storybook windows are interactive: locks, computer terminals, keypads and other machinery that can be pushed, poked, or manipulated.

Early chapters have fewer, more self-contained interactions and puzzles. Later ones tend to build on each other, requiring a cascade of solving one puzzle to solve another to solve another. Backtracking is at first helpful, and eventually mandatory, to find the necessary clues. This is where the format shines, because the layout of the story makes scouring the text feel like searching a physical space.

I found paper and pencil to be helpful in the last two chapters, but veteran puzzlers with good memory could probably make do without.

A Layered Labyrinth

There is layer of meta-narrative in Device 6 that is easy to ignore at first. The story and the puzzles are designed to immerse you in the viewpoint of Anna, the protagonist. You quickly forget about the face scan at the beginning.

In between chapters, the game asks a few survey questions, then awards points to the player. Never mind the strangeness of some of those questions. Never mind that nice round 100 points you seem to get no matter what answers you choose.

Each chapter features a diagram somewhere alongside the text; schematics for a series of numbered devices that work in tandem and directly affect the human brain.

Even the seemingly random elements that flash across the screen during the credits sequence have meaning, much more apparent upon finishing the story and going back for a second viewing.

These extra layers aren’t required to follow Anna’s story or solve the puzzles, but they provide connective tissue and help to interpret the otherwise ambiguous ending. They add a pinch of ARG flavor by making the reader feel like a character in the story.

Where to Play

Device 6 is $3.99 and should take about 1-3 hours depending on how quickly you solve the puzzles.

It is available on iOS, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, and Windows. Do yourself a favor and play it on a device you can rotate and manipulate with your hands to get the full experience.

A City on Mars — Read Report

Book | E-book | Audiobook (affiliate links)

A City on Mars is the perfect kind of pop-science non-fiction for science fiction writers. It’s no surprise they got blurbs from the likes of Mary Robbinette Kowal and Andy Weir. It’s easy reading, comedic without being too jokey, and well-illustrated (Zach is author of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal). It delves into a subject that’s core to science fiction, one we’re all familiar with, and makes it feel new and interesting.

This is a book about space colonization, but with a few unexpected twists. “Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through?” asks the subtitle. Those might seem like silly questions when so much engineering and money have gone into space exploration over the last 75 years. And yet, the authors make a fairly convincing case that in some really important ways, we’ve only scratched the surface.

The Weinersmiths note that we seem to be at the beginning of a new age of space exploration. Unlike the Apollo era, there are more countries in the space game. There are private companies managing flights. And there is an awful lot of supposedly serious talk about space colonization, or at least space capitalism.

A City on Mars explores space colonization on multiple axes: not only engineering and tech, but biology, law, economics, and politics.

The Technology of Colonization

We have rockets. We have space stations. Space suits and space toilets. All sorts of advanced space technology. Hundreds of people have been to space, including Katy Perry. How hard could it be?

Of course, simply going into space is fraught with danger and wildly expensive, and this is easy to forget after watching a blockbuster movie or two. Living in space (or on other planets) is more expensive, harder, and more dangerous than living at the bottom of the sea or Antarctica. Orders of magnitude worse. And yet, those harshest of terrestrial environments often seem more fraught in our imaginations than the cold, airless, heavily irradiated void of space.

We have surprisingly little understanding of living in space—really living for years, or lifetimes—not just visiting and doing a little science. Practically everyone in space has been a well-trained, psychologically stable adult, in the prime of life and in incredible physical shape. The longest contiguous period ever spent in space is 437 days. Nobody has built anything approaching a self-sustaining environment in space. Nobody (that we know of) has ever conceived, been pregnant, or given birth in space. No children have grown up, way up there.

Despite all these unknowns, all these open questions and possible things that could go wrong, there are plenty of high-profile calls for “space colonization.” We could solve Earth’s population crisis. We could make trillions of dollars mining asteroids. We could make humanity a multi-planetary species, robust against catastrophe.

Don’t get me wrong, there have long been space nerds with dreams like this. I’m one of them, and so are the Weinersmiths. But now, space nerdery has been infected by the same Silicon Valley ethos that captured tech, finance, a lot of government, and seems to be rapidly becoming the villain of modern life. Its core tenet says that if we understand computer programming we can understand and solve any problems, probably very easily. It’s good to remember that is often not the case.

A City on Mars is in many ways a litany of all the problems that need to be solved to make space colonization a reality. It’s a long list, but also an interesting one.

More than Tech

The intersection of tech and law is rarely something that catches the zeitgeist. Where Silicon Valley interacts with the law, it often seems to be working under the famous adage of “move fast and break things.” And by pretty much any measure, it turns out that space colonization would be breaking our current space laws.

International space law is unsurprisingly limited. A handful of documents from 50+ years ago comprise all of it. That hasn’t been much of an issue while you can count all the space-faring governments on one accident-prone sawmill worker’s hand. It might become more of a problem when a dozen space programs and an equal number of private corporations are racing into space. Especially if they’re led by libertarian billionaires with certain ideas about manifest destiny.

The Weinersmiths look at the existing laws, where they are likely to be inadequate, and some international frameworks that might make good templates for new laws, including those that govern the deep sea and Antarctica.

They also look at the economic drivers for space exploration and colonization, or the lack thereof. Even with drastic improvements to the tech, the likelihood of making money in space seems slim. It’s so hard and expensive and slow to do anything in space that the payoffs would have to be outright astronomical to develop any kind of self-sustaining industry.

Space Livin’ Ain’t Easy

If there’s a broad takeaway from A City on Mars, it’s that space colonization is still a lot harder than it’s often assumed to be, and that it would be a good idea to take it slow and act thoughtfully rather than jumping in with half a plan and dealing with the consequences. It’s not a sexy position for a book aimed at space nerds to take, and the Weinersmiths are keenly aware of this.

They make their case well, and it’s hard to argue against it. This doesn’t mean space colonization is doomed, but it does probably mean that it’s a very long-term project, and one whose parameters may not jive with a lot of the current discourse. It means there are a lot of problems still to solve, and that throwing money at them won’t be enough.

Science has proven pretty good at solving some of these problems, given enough public support. That’s half the battle. The other half is purely social: can we work together and get along, as individuals and nations? The technology may be the easier lift.

Pessimism for Writers?

So why would a book that catalogues all the barriers to space colonization be good for science fiction writers? Simple: we need tension and conflict in our stories.

Practically every page of A City on Mars is a story waiting to happen. Every challenge, every difficulty or unsolved problem is just another seed for an interesting new plot.

Sci-fi can get bogged down in the land of technobabble solutions to technobabble problems. It’s not always satisfying when your dilithium crystals break and you solve it by reversing the polarity on the tractor beam to push your ship out of the neutral zone. A City on Mars offers a wealth of potentially fun challenges for characters to overcome: problems of technology and biology, but also of politics, law, and economics. If you want to write about near-future space colonization, it’s a fantastic place to start.

Ted Lasso and Using Tropes Effectively

I’ve been rewatching Ted Lasso recently, and while there are many things to appreciate about the writing on that show, I found myself impressed by the tropes. Rebecca is the tough female boss, Higgins is her bumbling sidekick. Jamie is the fantastic young athlete who only cares about himself, and Roy is the old curmudgeon, past his prime. Many of the characters are shown in the first episodes as decidedly one-dimensional.

Normally, “trope” is a dirty word among writers—synonymous with laziness and lack of creativity. Tropes are things we’ve seen before; things we’ve seen so many times, in fact, that they are familiar and often boring.

But that familiarity can be an asset when used carefully. A trope can be a shorthand. It doesn’t have to be explained, because the audience already knows. A show with a big cast like Lasso needs these shorthands to introduce so many characters so quickly without confusing the audience. The show manages to get a ton of story across in the first few episodes, when it also has to build a world for these characters to live in.

But a show full of tropes will bore a smart audience quickly, so Lasso pulls off a second trick. The trope isn’t the end state, it’s the opening move. Each trope is quickly deflated by a scene or two where the character shows a surprising attribute—something that directly contradicts what the audience is expecting from that trope. Suddenly, those characters feel considerably more like real people.

These rounded characters also play directly into one of the core themes that makes Lasso such a heartwarming show. The audience finds that they’ve pre-judged these characters, but everyone has a reason for their weaknesses. They’re good reasons, and easy to sympathize with.

The characters are cold to protect themselves, they’re angry because they’ve been hurt. They are never excused their bad behavior, but they are forgiven for it, because they’re human.

So don’t discount tropes. They can be extremely effective when used carefully.

The Fall of Hyperion — Read Report

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The Fall of Hyperion is the second book in the Hyperion Cantos. It is the sequel to Hyperion, and although the two Endemion books pick up a related story in the future of the same universe, the two Hyperion books really form a complete pair.

They are an interesting duo of books to compare. Hyperion has only a few long chapters, each a self-contained story. As the first half of a series, it makes little attempt to resolve loose ends. The Fall of Hyperion has a very large number of short chapters and has many mysteries to wrap up and plot points to resolve.

Severn, Gladstone, and the Pilgrims

Hyperion followed the stories of the seven Shrike Pilgrims, who make their way to the so-called Time Tombs, finding themselves alone in a dire situation as the galaxy sits on the brink of war. The Ousters, humans who long ago committed to life in wandering deep space colonies, face off against the Hegemony, a culture stradles hundreds of planets with instant-travel “farcaster” portals and a central government.

The Fall of Hyperion introduces the character of Joseph Severn, who takes his name from a friend of the ancient poet, John Keats. Severn is a “cybrid”—a hybrid of human biology and an AI personality, with the artificial memories of John Keats embedded in his mind. As if that weren’t enough, Severn is in some ways the twin of Johnny, the dead cybrid lover of one of the Shrike Pilgrims.

Severn is hired by Hegemony CEO Meina Gladstone, ostensibly to draw her portraiture in what is expected to become a defining moment of the Hegemony’s history. For most of the book, chapters alternate between Severn and the Shrike Pilgrims. The Pilgrims work to discover the mysteries of the Time Tombs and how they relate to the Shrike, a four-armed, semi-mythic, razor-covered metallic monstrosity that seems inextricably linked to the tombs and a far-future war where humankind fights for its existence.

It eventually becomes apparent that the chapters alternate because Severn has the unique ability to “see” the pilgrims’ activities in real time through his dreams, and it is because of this that Gladstone wants to keep him close.

The Hegemony’s war with the Ousters heats up and threatens to spill out of the Hyperion system, into the web of farcaster-linked worlds. But the pilgrims and Severn soon learn that the Ousters may not be the biggest threat. The Core of hyper-intelligent AIs, inventors of the farcasters and aloof patrons of the Hegemony, are revealed to be split into three competing factions. At least one of these is Hell-bent on creating a machine god and wiping out humanity.

The Challenges of Mythic Sci-Fi

The greatest strength of Hyperion becomes the main weakness of The Fall of Hyperion. The first book manages to build an epic space-opera universe and populates it with characters and stories pulled from other genres. The overall effect of the Pilgrims’ quest and their adventures is a mythical-feeling quest in a far-future setting.

Hyperion gets away with this partly because it only dips its toes into galactic politics and space wars and AI metaverses. But the sequel has to gather the loose ends into a somewhat logical and satisfying conclusion. As a result, it digs deeper into many of the sci-fi elements and strips away some of the hand-wavy magic of the universe by explaining how it all works. Of course, the AIs and quantum physics of eight centuries in the future are still magic, just with a technobabble vocabulary.

I do appreciate that the resolution really resolves the story (even if it does leave one very specific opening for the sequels). The two books make a satisfying series. But the second book feels more like “standard” space opera and doesn’t quite achieve the same highs of the first book.

That said, my favorite chapter across both books comes from The Fall of Hyperion, and follows Meina Gladstone as she traverses many worlds by farcaster on the eve of war. Rarely does sci-fi achieve such a sense long history in its setting or capture so well the feeling of insignificance in the face of a vast universe.

Is Dan Simmons Problematic?

Coincidentally, as I was re-reading these books, Dan Simmons passed away. I clicked through a few articles and quickly learned that he is widely considered problematic. I hadn’t come across much in these books that raised my hackles, so I ventured down the Internet rabbit hole to see what random strangers found objectionable.

The answer was mostly in his other books. It turns out historical and alt-history fiction is a more fertile ground for outright racist tropes. However, I did find some specific complaints with the Hyperion books, and I thought they offered interesting insights into modern readers.

Firstly, some people are just excited to pile on. Hating things online has long been a popular pastime, and hating on awful people has the added bonus of letting the hater feel superior and righteous.

A notable number of criticisms come from “readers” who pretty clearly haven’t read the material. They complain about unreasonable interpretations of the material, or complain about something insignificant when there are clearly better examples for their argument elsewhere in the books. At best, these are readers who quit after the first few chapters.

One critic took offense at the use of the r-slur by one of the characters, in reference to a tribe of people with a parasite that revives them whenever they die, but degrades their mental faculties each time. This is an interesting case, because the first book was published in 1989.

For younger readers unfamiliar with the history, I suspect it comes across as weirdly blatant use of a nasty slur. These readers seem unaware of the shifting moral terrain of scientific terms around mental disabilities over the course of the 20th century. I think it’s fair to assume that this particular usage of the r-word was considered relatively innocuous in ’89. The modern, offensive, and derogatory usage of the word (and pushback against it) came mostly in the following two or three decades. Similarly, the word “oriental” is used once or twice. That might have been a bit dated in ’89, but I don’t think it would have seemed nearly as off-color as it does today.

These books are “only” 40 years old, but that is enough time for the language and the culture to change. I may be the old man yelling at clouds, but this shallow maligning of the author’s intent and tone strikes me as willful disinterest in any non-negative interpretation.

That said, there are parts of these particular stories that don’t hold up well to modern sensibilities. Simmons indulges in a few Star Wars-style monolithic planets, including a Catholic planet, a Jewish planet, and an Islamic planet. None of these are explored in great detail, but the Islamic planet is suggested to be a place where holy war and fanatic religious hatred are normalized.

There’s also no question that the book embodies a full-on male gaze. It definitely doesn’t pass the Bechdel test. On a list of important characters, the top fifteen contains—at most—three women. Only two of them meaningfully impact the plot. And yet there are a number of sex scenes focusing almost exclusively on female anatomy.

Of course, sex in sci-fi is hardly a big deal, especially in a world where romantasy is a wildly popular genre. I’d also argue that the most gratuitous examples in these two books come from the story of the meathead action hero, whose focus on sex and violence make some sense for his character.

I don’t defend Simmons’s character. It certainly sounds like some of the books I haven’t read contain more racist and questionable material. For what it’s worth, the first two Hyperion books mostly avoid it.

Hummingbird Salamander — Read Report

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Jeff VanderMeer has hovered at the top of my favorite authors list since I read Borne and Dead Astronauts. The Area X trilogy only cemented that position. I had understandably high hopes for his latest book, Hummingbird Salamander.

Hummingbird Salamander stays close to the modern day in a way that will feel familiar to William Gibson fans. There are science fiction elements, but they are very restrained compared to VanderMeer’s previous work.

Borne was almost Joycean in a way that made it a challenging read. Hummingbird Salamander is much more straightforward, even if VanderMeer can’t stop himself from adding literary flourishes. It comes across as more of a suspense/thriller story than anything he has written in recent years.

Eco-Terrorism and Generational Trauma

It’s not particularly hard to pick out the bigger themes running through VanderMeer’s work. Ecology is the most obvious. His stories explore the ways humans interact with the world around them, and how social and technological factors intertwine with the natural world. Area X seems to exist in a relatively near future where climate change continues apace and a mysterious section of coastline is hidden behind government claims of a localized ecological catastrophe. The Borne stories describe a far-flung future city where most of what survives is the result of extreme genetic manipulation.

In Hummingbird Salamander, humankind’s fraught relationship with nature is again front and center. The story begins with a note that leads the protagonist, Jane, to a storage unit. The note contains the words “Hummingbird” and “Salamander,” with some mysterious dots in between. The storage unit contains an actual, taxidermied hummingbird of a variety that turns out to be extinct. These clues lead Jane into a deadly mystery that involves poaching and the illegal wildlife trade, as well as eco-terrorism and organized crime.

Jane lives in an America that is on the brink. Extreme weather is normalized. Ecological collapse is commonplace. Pandemics are perpetually imminent. It turns out that society fails in more of a whimper than a bang, and most things in life are getting slowly, steadily worse. But people still have jobs, family, and lives. Jane has all of these things. She’s a private security analyst, a mother, and a wife. She stands out as an unusually tall, strong woman who has excelled at weight lifting and body building, but has an otherwise normal, middle-class existence.

Another common theme among VanderMeer books is generational trauma, and in some ways this is just ecology at an individual level. A family is an environment, and as our current world is shaped by the mistakes made by our forefathers and ancestors, our personal hangups and dysfunctions are shaped by those who raised us, and those who raised them.

Jane’s dysfunctions are revealed slowly in fragments and flashbacks, only becoming fully apparent in the final third of the book. In many ways, this is the story of everything she does wrong, and why.

Where it All Breaks Down

Hummingbird Salamander is a well-written book. It has rich and detailed characters, an interesting setting, and touches on timely topics. And after some consideration, I have to admit that it is the most unenjoyable VanderMeer book I have read. This book and I have irreconcilable differences, and they are, unfortunately, at the very heart of the story.

From the first chapters, Jane is obsessed with the hummingbird and the mystery it represents. And sure, there is a reason for why the two words on the note would be important to her. But even with all the answers that are eventually revealed, I can’t help but feel that her obsession is unreasonable.

I might be able to overlook that questionable motivation if I had some sympathy for Jane. But in spite of her horrible upbringing, I find it hard to root for her. There are a handful of moments in the book where Jane shows affection for her teenage daughter and long-suffering husband, but these seem like afterthoughts. These people are hindrances, distractions from her obsessive pursuit of the central mystery. When it becomes apparent that unraveling the mystery might be dangerous, she barely spares a thought about how that could impact her “loved” ones.

In the end, she makes choices that destroy her family and ruin their lives, but she can barely muster a moment of self-reflection or regret. Her coworkers are caught up in the maelstrom. Strangers are hurt and killed because of her. She simply doesn’t care. She gets tougher and meaner as the book goes on, but she was cold and indifferent to begin with.

I will admit, as a husband and father of a teenage daughter I may be especially well-positioned to dislike Jane and her choices. Other readers with different backgrounds might have an easier time identifying with her and sympathizing. I enjoy flawed characters. I just need them to have enough redeeming qualities to get me on their side.

All Cloud, no Silver Lining

I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d say VanderMeer’s work shows a positive attitude or hope for the future, but the pessimism has never been as apparent as it is here. A straightforward reading suggests that we might have to hit rock-bottom (as individuals and as a species) before things will get better. And even then, they might not.

Jeff’s other work balances that dark and dismal worldview with genuine strangeness and wonder. There’s a reason he was one of the leading voices of the New Weird/Slipstream movement. His worlds are shadowy and unfamiliar, but also unexpectedly delightful. Nobody loves a tidal pool the way this man loves a tidal pool. He describes coastlines like French poets describe their lovers. Hell, in Borne, the post-apocalyptic city is effectively ruled by a kaiju-sized, magically levitating super-bear, and the scariest villain is a regular-sized (but very menacing) duck.

There’s almost none of that here. The drones have gotten a little fancier and the world’s gone to shit. No impossible sci-fi. No crazy weirdness. Just a mysterious note in a grim world that eventually leads to violence and heartbreak.

The Missed Twist

I don’t want to be too down on this book, and I’ve already gotten more negative than I really like. The fact is, I plowed through it, and I did want to know the answer to the mystery. I wanted to know how it all turned out. But the entire time I was reading, I kept waiting for the twist that would help me finally understand Jane and why she was doing all this.

That twist never came.