First lines of Zadie Smith's "Fences: A Brexit Diary"

 "Back in the old neighborhood in northwest London after a long absence, I went past the local primary school and noticed a change."

- Zadie Smith, from "Fences: A Brexit Diary" from her Feel Free: Essays collection.

Smith's analysis of Brexit, combined with astute and relevant antidotes from her life and those around her, all combined with her usual powerful writing, is one of the best things that I've read in some time. I highly recommend it. One thought-provoking sentence:

"While we loudly and rightly condemn the misguided racial attitudes that led to millions asking "them" to leave "us," to get out of our jobs and public housing and hospitals and schools and country, we might also take a look at the last thirty years and ask ourselves what kind of attitudes have allowed a different class of people to discreetly maneuver, behind the scenes, to ensure that "them" and "us" never actually meet anywhere but in symbol. ... In this atmosphere of hypocrisy and deceit, should the working-class poor have shown themselves to be the "better man" when all around them is corruption and venality? When everyone's building a fence, isn't it a true fool who lives out in the open?" 

Powerful stuff, and relevant not only to her native England but what's occurring in the US as well.

First Lines of Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose"

 "Now I believe they will leave me alone. Obviously Rodman came up hoping to find evidence of my incompetence--though how an incompetent could have got this place renovated, moved his library up, and got himself transported to it without arousing the suspicion of his watchful children, ought to be a hard one for Rodman to answer. I take some pride in the way I managed all that. And he went away this afternoon without a scrap of what he would call data."

- Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

My second attempt at this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, thanks to Sam buying me a copy. This time, the beauty of Stegner's message of the struggle to grow and survive sunk in; I don't think I was mature enough to hear it the first time.  In addition, his prose is just beautiful. The chapters are all well structured, the dialogue is on point, and I enjoyed reading the whole thing. The themes were moving as well; hard work does not always pay off in happiness or prosperity, and it's this dramatization in the light of the myths of American exceptionalism and moving West to build yourself up that provides a lot of the novel's power.

Bonus Link: a bio of Stegner from LGM. I'm not as harsh on the final chapter of this novel as Loomis, but it certainly was discordant from the rest of the novel - and the reactionary politics are jarring. It's an odd decision but the entire novel is still worth reading.

Review of "The Best American SciFi and Fantasy 2022"

The "Best Science Fiction and Fantasy" anthologies are always a good source of interesting tales. All of the stories in the 2022 version (edited by Rebecca Roanhorse) are high-quality - there wasn't one story that didn't seem like it was best in class. But like any collection of stories from multiple authors, some worked for me, and some didn't. Here are the ones that I can't stop thinking about:

1. Meg Elison, The Pizza Boy. Pizza delivery... in space! A blue-collar captain struggles to make and deliver pizzas in a future of bureaucracy and scarcity. When will he find enough mushrooms? Unexpected twist at the end.

2. Aimee Ogden. The Cold Calculations. A response to Tom Godwin's famous The Cold Equations, but 100% angrier and with an ingenious - but seriously ugly - solution to the problem.

3. Nalo Hopkinson, Broad Dutty Water: a Sunken Story. Wonderfully inventive story of a woman whose collection of impromptu bio-implants take her to a place she never expected. An unpredictable tale that's also memorable for its post-glacier melt setting.

4. Sam J. Miller. Let All the Children Boogie. Two misfit teens explore alternative music and gender identity while trying to decipher the messages from a mysterious voice that interrupts their favorite radio station. Sympathetic and moving.

5. Kelly Link. Skindler's Veil. A long story about a college kid who ends up house sitting for Death. Or some form of demi-god. Doesn't matter: I classic dose of that wonderful Link magic. Looking forward to digging into her latest collection White Cat, Black Dog.

6. Peng Shepherd. The Future Library. An imaging of what would happen if the real Future Library fell prey to climate change politics. A sad, moving fantasy.

7. Catherynne M. Valente. L'Esprit de L'Escalier. What if Orpheus had succeeded in bringing Eurydice back from the underworld? Valente's irreverent take imagines the scene as a failed marriage between an egomanic and a zombie. Extremely entertaining.

8. Rich Larson. Tripping Though Time. A waiter serves drinks to time-traveling tourists who gawk at famous historical natural disasters. The class consciousness in this one reminded me of Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's Friday Black collection.

9. Maria Dong. The Frankly Impossible Weight of Han. Stick with this one through the overtly meta comments as the structure of the tale reveals itself. Wonderfully moving mix of scifi, folklore, and religion.

The 8-hour Workday

 "The 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount fo work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actually work done in eight hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work. 

We've been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convienience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lifes so that we continue wanting things we don't have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing."

- David Cain, from "Your Lifestyle Has Already been Designed"

First Lines of Richard Butner's "The Adventurists"

 "On the ferry to the island, I saw a man dressed as a jester. His image flased into view in my side mirror as I sat there half-dozing behind the steering wheel. It was midday as we chugged along across the sound, and the sun glared off of the smattering of pickups and SUVs and vans on the deck. For a second, I thought I had dreamed him."

Richard Butner, The Adventurists

 

First Lines of Chris Voss "Never Spilt the Difference"

 "I was intimidated.

I'd spent more than two decades in the FBI, including 15 years negotiating hostage situations from New York to the Philippines and the Middle East, and I was on top of my game. At any given time, there are ten thousand FBI agents in the Bureau, but only one lead international kidnapping negotiator. That was me.

But I'd never experienced a hostage situation so tense, so personal."

- Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference

Essential reading for anyone who needs to negotiate anything. I think about this book all of the time.

The first lines of Becky Chambers "A Psalm for the Wild Built"

"If you ask six different monks the question of which godly domain robot consciousness belongs to, you'll get seven different answers."

- Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild Built

A quirky tale by the author of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Entertaining but felt lightweight, despite the interesting world building (the details about the different gods, history and evolution of robotics and their withdrawal from humanity). I wasn't sure why it left me cold, but after reading Clark Seanor's essay about Chambers at Strange Horizons ("Recycled Air: Wayfarers and the Tyranny of the Everyday") I think that there's very little danger in the book. I never really felt like the characters were in any real danger - either physical or psychological. Perhaps this is because I knew this was the first book in a series, but without that edge it was hard for me to really invest in the plot.