#Scifi is my bread and butter

[warpolomewdarkmatter]

i think that if Lightyear (2022) didn't have the meat-bread-meat sandwich scene i would like the movie way more. the sandwitch gag was just so flabbergasting and honestly gross (so unhygienic!!!) that it yanked me out of the "being immersed in a story with my disbelief suspended" into "Who In Their Right Mind Wrote This Into The Movie Script. Am I, The Viewer, Supposed To Think This Is Funny?" soooo fast (and it was already losing me with all the new watery characters and the lackluster zurg plotline). there's a cool scifi story happening before & after that scene and Those events are always shown as something natural, i guess (within the setting they make total sense, i mean), and i always trust the main character to know what to do and Belong in the story. but the sandwiches were weird and alien even to him and even moreso weird and alien to me by extension... and that feeling of weirdness contributed to nothing re: mood of the moment/overarching plot/character development and it wasnt even FUNNY. if the creators wanted to include the sandwich so bad they needed to have zurg eat it to show what a deranged freak he is.

[hobohobgoblim]

So I've had a couple of disappointments in the last two weeks. Didn't get the job I was really excited for. Looks like the apartment I applied for went to someone else. Money is getting tight.

So I decided to list some of the odder things that give me a measure of joy or contentment and this is what I came up with:

Mugs with no handles

Sleeping in tents when it's rainy

Dangly earrings

Wearing a shawl

Writing in a quiet café

Whittling sticks

Beach combing

Shallow bowls instead of plates

Really gnarly crooked trees

Green apples with bleu cheese

Cinnamon in my coffee

Whiskey in my tea

Woodsmoke

Sloped ceilings

Old windows

Late night walks

Raw red onion

Smoked fish

Chickpeas in any form

The act of making soup from scratch

Green sofas

Tapestries

Drawing plans for inventions I'll never make

Cleaning house with punk blaring and a cold beer in hand

Picking berries and mushrooms

Using ungodly amounts of fresh herbs

Sanding and polishing

A pile of pillows in a corner to curl up in

90's SciFi shows on dvd

Dancing and singing outside

Lanterns

Bread butter and a glass of milk

Beaded curtains

Heavy wool dresses

Colored glass

Music in a language I don't speak or understand playing low in the background

So I'll try to be happy with that.

[quidfree]

weighing up the merits of getting into dune at some point

draws:

it could fill some of the succession-shaped hole re: morally compromised people doing terrible schemes in cycles they are doomed to repeat. also buying into their own mythos and flopping

as a rule i like big swing scifi critiques of imperialism that in themselves have complicated relationships with the subject matter

the lore seems insane and very funny

lot of weirdo characters with narrative tension to other weirdo characters (my bread and butter). like wdym bald austin butler and t chalamet should have been betrothed in a parallel verse but instead duel to the death. etc

the movies are visually decadent

drawbacks:

i fear i will feel compelled to read the books and i simply do not have the time for that

it’s been too long since ive engaged with big current trending fandom i dont know if i can do it

[codylabs]

now presenting in no particular order

Science Fiction stories that have affected my own work very greatly

1. Star Wars

I mean, this is an obvious one. Much of America grew up on these six, because everybody's dad loved them, to the point where meeting somebody who's "never seen star wars" is an oddity, and, well, neither me or my dad are exceptions. They're good movies, with good lore, good plots, strong characters, writing and dialogue that's all across the spectrum, and exceptional action scenes. What's there more to say?

They're very much your "bread and butter" scifi, in the sense that it sets its stories within a world of cool-looking spaceships, quirky robots and wacky aliens, but doesn't examine or elaborate on much of it, but rather treats it all as a given, as a backdrop for the human stories. (Contrast against, say, Star Trek, which makes the scifi concepts themselves its focusing interest.) As a result, there's nothing terribly revolutionary to be found in Star Wars. I can't and won't call it generic, of course, because although it very much is a 'generic scifi world', many of the tropes we associate with 'generic scifi worlds' were codified here, and there's a lot going on behind the scenes, both on the political side, in the extended universe, and in ol' Georgie's brain.

And to call them creatively bankrupt would be a big enough lie to warrant legal repercussions, since there are a LOT of cool scifi ideas here, even if they aren't necessarily the story's focus. Repulsorlifts, Coruscant (I spelled that right first try), Podracing, the Sarlaac pit, Droidekas, the Death Star, cloud city, the VERY sufficient excuses for using swords in scifi, the list goes on.

In terms of how the franchise affected my work, I really couldn't give an estimate. I love space, and spaceships, and space battles, and have them often enough. Many of my stories focus on the human aspects, I seek out excuses for melee fights, I like generic goodguy-y heroes and I like strong personalities, but whether any of that comes from Star Wars or is a part of me, I couldn't say. Maybe there's no difference. I saw them as a youngling, so very long ago.

2. Republic Commando

Now I read these when I wasn't quite so young. These are good books, and they are very much Star Wars disillusioned. This is Star Wars separated from the main cast and the main plot or the black-and-white morality of simple stories. This is a squad of elite child soldiers suffering through the trenches of a war, getting hurt, going rogue, falling in love, shooting people in the head, while the adpoted father who trainedraised them tries to arrange an escape for his boys to a new home far away, until it all comes crashing down when you the reader knew it would but nobody in galaxy did, in Order 66. And then the series keeps going. It should have gone on longer but the Clone Wars TV show changed canon so much that the author quit. But you can tell it's still Star Wars because they mention Kenobi like twice and there is one (1) scene with Darth Vader.

In terms of scifi they're just Star Wars again, speeders and space battles and laser guns and stuff. Stories unconcerned with the concepts and the worldbuilding. But I think it goes a step beyond what the movies did, by abandoning any semblance of big-picture-ness or any of the large-scale plot, and focusing only on bit characters, while the larger story from the movies continues elsewhere. The series is ALL OCs. There is nobody here who would warrant a mention in any of the movies, and nobody here who influences galactic history. They influence each other. They love each other, hate each other. They feel real. The war feels real. And I think that's beautiful.

I think that smallness and ruggedness is what lasted into my work. I've never worldbuild-ed the names or histories of wars into my works, but I've liked writing about career soldiers struggling with peace. I've never made diagrams or specs for the weapons that they use, but I've written about the heat of a shell just ejected from a launcher. I've never written strategies for fleet movements, but I've written about spacers scrambling past a closing pressure door as the air leaks out of their room. And I've written about lesser species caught in the crossfire, I've written about jungles and dirty streets, and much of it ties back to this, I think.

3. Starship Troopers

This may very well be the first 'adult' book I ever read, and you should read it too. It was written in the 50s. It's about people in power armor who get dropped out of a spaceship. It's about a man rising through the ranks, learning the meaning of responsibility and leadership. It's about war, how 2 tons of flying robosuit can't save you but your friends and a timely dropship can. It's about duty, mankind become a warrior race to defend themselves in a savage galaxy. It's about honor and discipline. This story invented the concept of power armor, coined the term 'starship', inspired a dozen franchises. It forces the characters and the reader to think about the nature of war, the necessity of sacrifice and duty, the price of security, the nature of freedom, the shortcomings of democracy.

You should read it. It's peak scifi. It's exciting. It's thought-provoking. It's imaginative. It's incredibly, noxiously fascist. It's so so good. You should read it.

I've always loved power armor and jet packs and alien bugs, my stories have them all, and it's this book's fault. Certainly a lot of my really early work was based on it, but I never outgrew a good bug or a good robosuit.

I have never seen the movies, but there was a 1999 TV show that had the Worst CGI ever, and my brothers and I used to love it. However, no adaptation of this book has ever gotten the power armor right except the 1988 anime.

4. Blame!

Too many millennia ago to count, the automated construction drones stopped listening to orders to stop. The Earth, the moon, every piece of matter in the solar system and who knows how far beyond, have been disassembled, all proceeds going to grow the City. The City is all. The City has no end. The characters do not know the meaning of 'land'. The security system of the godlike internet is spawning exterminator drones to destroy all humans who lack the net terminal gene. Clutish transhumans who thrive in the chaos have made it their duty to render the gene extinct. The only hope of stopping the City's growth and shutting down the security system is to issue the internet an order, which requires a human with the gene. The gene may be extinct. Our main character, an immortal cyborg who has been climbing stares for hundreds of panels and thousands of years, is still searching. He has a really cool gun. His girlfriend is an 8ft tall hacker girl who does not have a cool gun and dies like 5 times. His arch-nemiss has a cool gun too. There are... Monsters.

I didn't read this comic until much later in my life, but the setting and the art and the ultra-high-concept action affected me deeply and greatly. If I could, in my entire life, write a single story even 20% as cool, as wonderfully illustrated, as packed with thought and concepts and sheer unbridled IMAGINATION as this one, I would die of pride. This comic is an endlessly-inspiring emblem of what scifi storytelling can be, an ideal I've been striving for since I first read it. If you ever see a massive maze-like spaceship in my works, any abandoned megastructure, any messily-detailed cyborg torso, any unreasonably-powerful weapon, and most of all any BIG OL' HONKIN GANGLE OF PIPES, (and I guaratee if you follow me you WILL see such things) know that it came from this comic.

5. Flatland

Okay, so this one is the reason I actually started this list. Apparently something in the Book of Bill that just came out was based pretty heavily on it, so now a bunch of people are rediscovering it and referencing it in the year of our Lord 2024. But that led to me rewatching the 2007 film, and realizing some of my work has taken from it pretty heavily.

The idea of the book (and its various adaptations) is that there's this oppressive, closed-minded society of 2-dimensional beings living on flatland. One day a circle comes to visit from spaceland, and shows our square protaganist all the wonders of a higher world beyond the one he can see. At its heart, the story is (A) about the dangers of closed-mindedness against possible higher truths, (B) an exploration into how 2-dimensional creatures would function and how higher-dimensional beings might interact or fail to interact with those of lower dimensionality (C) honestly not really scifi at all but I left it on this list because I've used some of its concepts here and there in my universe, and I find it all so very fascinating. If you see any of my characters navigating a 5-dimensional hyperspace or see any creatures evolved to inhabit the surface of a neutron star, know that the unlikely father of such ideas was this story from 1884.

6. Metroid

Well duh. Many of my followers probably know me as The Metroid Guy. Heck I know me as the Metroid guy.

I am the Metroid guy.

Metroid is about this lady in a suit of tank armor wandering around on lonely alien planets filled with monsters. She's a genetically-altered cyborg who was raised by an ancient society of aliens. The environments in Metroid are sometimes harsh, sometimes serene, sometimes ugly, sometimes beautiful, sometimes all at once. The music is captivating. In the first-person games you can see the rain making drips on your visor. When you stop moving she rests her hand on her gun as if relaxing. Nothing in the scary universe scares her, thus, neither does it scare you the player. The games do an excellent job of immersing the players in a faraway land.

I adore this series not for the scifi concepts (as many of them are either half-thought-out nonsense, made purely to look pretty, or derived straight from whatever videogamey gimmick the developers thought would be easy to implement) but for the feelings of confidence, wonder, exploration, and lonely peace. I have several future projects inspired by these parts of Metroid, and they are very dear to me.

In my studied opinion, if Samus was the protaganist of Blame, we would see a marked increase in the number of audience members dying from Peak Fiction.

7. Alien

Long-headed monkey made of pipes is having a Grand Olde Time on this rusty spaceship, what an insane concept 10/10 I wish I was made of pipes.

My dad told me the plot of this movie when i was like 8 and traumatized me, as he should. If in my stories you ever see any rusty spaceships, folks made of pipes, or involuntary pregnancies in the wrong part of the torso, blame my dad.

[chaoxfix]

whats your favorite trope to READ?

OUGH... thats a good one. damn...

i think i read a lot of the same things i like to write -- a lot of what i write is meant to fill a need i had to read about something but didn't see any fics about. and most of what i want more of is, in this order:

deep nameless bonds that don't fit neatly into a specific box. like sonic and tails, are they friends or siblings or guardian and ward or mentor and student ... or for sonally, are they divorced or are they rivals or are they soulmates or are they in love at all. or for catradora are they childhood friends or lovers or enemies or rivals. (all of the above <3333 otp of all time. i cant even write anything about them because their story is already perfect.) or for timkon, are they best friends or are they in love or are they rivals or are they codependent. anyways you get what i mean. i want to have to grapple with the very idea of how characters feel about the other. i want them to not know either. (other all time ships i will out myself by saying: makoharu, zelink, dickkory, and many of my own lesbian otp creations)

worldbuilding/theories. i LOVE seeing explanations, even little ones, in fics. i just like seeing extrapolation from canon elements and saying 'hey wouldnt it be neat if X was because of Y' or 'i think that there should be a history of why X is like this' and just trying to make sense of something. part of why the sonic series is like catnip to me is because theres SO MUCH LORE but so little explanation. almost none of it was probably meant to be anything but thats why its soooo satisfying to try and piece together a story despite that. i was like this with zelda back in the day too. the timeline was my bread and butter and i wanted sooo badly for it to make sense so i loved seeing people try to make it work. also... as an occasional treat, 'wouldn't it be fucked up if-?' type stuff. but only if there's some canon grounding or worldbuilding to set it up. (i.e., in my fics, 'wouldnt it be fucked up if the reason eggman only took 6 months after capturing sonic to take over the world, was because sonic powered his weapons? he certainly has the energy for it')

existential horror but in a character development way. i go NUTS for time loops or reality shifting. i have such strong feelings about reboots and rewrites that acknowledge theyre rewriting something; theres just something about the existential horror of having the world shift and only you remember it and it's your responsibility to let it live on through you, or your responsibility to fix time itself. the archie genesis wave fucks me up every time, same with dc rebooting and having superboy be one of the lone survivors of the spacetime rewrite. ......but in more smallscale ways, time loops, characters who haunt the narrative, 'you came back wrong', that kind of thing. i dont believe in ghosts but i believe in hauntings, if that makes sense. i believe anything can be haunted if there's something that shouldn't have been lost, and someone who refuses to let it go -- and that can have a powerful impact on scifi stories where reality itself functions a bit like magic.

i think i got a bit off the rails... this was fun! thank you for asking!!

EDIT: hi i realize upon re-reading your ask. ... that you said tropes and not, uh. just what do i like to read. in that case.....,,,,,,, fake dating, emotional hurt/comfort, and younger sibling complexes. ^^;;;;; jakdjkfsdjk i cant delete the previous answer though its too much to let go of

[particlewaveform]

hello, I've seen you Star Trek posting a lot and I've gotten curious.

Hypothetically speaking someone wants to watch it where does one start?? What do you suggest?

o hi there!!! so technically you can start whenever you want - some series reference previous series a bit more than others but if youre sticking with 80s-2000s trek it doesnt make a big difference (new trek such as discovery, strange new worlds, lower decks..... its a whole other ball game you really need context)

so now its rly all about the vibes you want!!

2009 movies: a LOT of new trek enjoyers got into the series through these ones - theres only 3 movies and their pacing is p much like most modern media so theyre easy to consume. more actiony than the rest of star trek. they are gonna have people like kirk and spock and bones etc

ToS (the original series): the OG! what started it all! this is the technical START of the series but its got really slow pacing so it might be harder to get through. this is THEE epitomy of submarine warfare but we love it. makes up for it by silly 60s shoestring budget, sass, COLOUR, and the most iconic charas in star trek (kirk, spock, bones, uhura, scotty - its a great time!)

TNG (the next generation): another really good place to start the series (this was my start as a kiddo) essentially this is the trek most people think of and sets the vibe. good pacing, consistent story, more modern graphics, and provides most of the worldbuilding for the whole series. the vibe here is mostly diplomacy > action but dw we still got silly scifi happenings. this will have picard, riker, worf, data, etc

ds9 (deep space 9): tumblr's darling child. the MOST gay and chaotic out of any of the treks - its insane how good (and bad) it can get. this has some carryover from tng but doesnt effect the story at large. a drawback for most people is its based on one spacestation so theres little to no exploring which is the bread and butter of star trek - it makes up for it by delving deeply into the alien races that live nearby instead of having them The Alien of the Week and never talking about it again. big themes of Imperialism/resistance/spirituality which is just Chefs Kiss. has characters like sisko, julien, garak, dax, kira, obrien, quark/odo, worf again

Voy (voyager): ever wonder what these ships are like in a crisis situation? ever think "wow star treks idealism would be hard to hold up without support and safety?" WELCOME TO STAR TREK: SURVIVOR. ship gets stranded hundreds of years from home and has to make the long journey back with little resources, allies, and a stedily degrading ship and crew. VOY weirdly has a bad rep but its v good and i just chalk that up to weird nerd sexism about the first female captain (Janeway my beloved). ofc it has its ups and downs like EVERY star trek series. crew becomes very much like a found family and theres tons of exploring since everything is new and exciting! has people like Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, Seven of Nine

ENT (enterprise): we've had a LOT of starships called Enterprise but this is the first! this predates the federation which is the defining theme of star trek in general. it heavily leans into a low tech astronaut feeling instead of scifi science magic. got canceled when it was just getting good and i really think its worth a watch. has people like Archer, T'pol, hoshi, Shran

TLDR

tos: Classique 60s hijinks

tng: diplomats in space but cool

ds9: chaotic gays in space

voy: oh god everything wants to eat us

ent: ASTRONAUTS SPACE IS COOL!!!!!

star trek itself is really a love letter to life, humanity, and the possibilities of space - i grew up watching it and its really been one of the most impactful medias of my life. if you do try it i hope you enjoy it and have fun!

[justsomeguycore]

things i’m gonna miss when society collapses: television procedurals. sushi/seafood. avocados. romantic paranormal scifi television dramas. gluten free bread. indoor plumbing. target. sitcoms. garbage pickup. heating. tumblr. messenger. spotify. microwaves. string lights. thc gummies. trader joe’s mini milk chocolate peanut butter cups. deodorant/antiperspirant. coffee. taking pics with my phone.

might think of more later but that’s my first pass.

[tough-as-adamantine]

Tag People You’d like to get to know better!

Tagged by @xanican-exile

favorite color(s): Red+Black (edgy, sure, but it’s just cool when it’s done right, ok?), Black+Green (xenomorph style stuff), or Red/Blue+Gold

favorite flavor(s): Love food in general, but I would say seafood, alfredo pasta, or brisket

favorite genre(s): Fantasy and Scifi 100%. Fantasy is my bread and butter for roleplay and RPGs, scifi is perfect for games, and even split for books, movies, and series

favorite music: I have such an eclectic taste for music is hard to pin down a single type, but in general it’s rock in a wide variety of forms. Few favorites for reference, in no particular order: Eva Under Fire, Rev Theory, Within Temptation, Meg Myers, Papa Roach, Halestorm, Disturbed, and a lot more.

favorite series: For TV, Babylon 5, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, and Firefly. For books, the Looking Glass series by John Ringo, and the Dahakverse/Mutineer’s Moon Series by David Weber. 

last series: Been watching a lot of Law & Order and NCIS in the background, but the last series I actually sat down and watched was Love, Death, & Robots. Hit or miss, but when the episodes are good, they are really good.

last movie: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Was good, not amazing, but the effects were great, story and characters were predictable but fun and good enough, and the references to the Forgotten Realms world were really cool. A- overall, but SS+ tier for a D&D movie lol.

currently reading: Tumblr, mostly.

currently watching: Pirated Warhammer+ content because I love 40k but I ain’t giving GW a dime lol. 

currently working on: A new mini-setting for my next D&D campaign. (It’s a region I’m creating for the adventure, but I’m just going to shove it into Faerune someplace. Easier that way.) 

tagging: @pinklocksoflove​ @deimorous-detective​ @violentemperor​ @royleteas​ @the-expatriate​ (If yall want!)

[anniesocsandgeneralstore]

9, 10, 14 and 19

kee 💕💕💕 ty

9. Which character(s) do you find most difficult to write?

in general? very outgoing characters lol cause i am absolutely not. i've got major social anxiety and am super introverted, so i have a hard time writing people who are just the exact opposite of that (here's lookin at you original recipe ronnie bradshaw, why did i make you like this?).

10. What's your favorite genre to write for?

anything with a little magic. where a whole new world gets to be built. not even just fantasy, but scifi as well.

14. What's your favorite fandom to write for?

I don't think I've ever written multiple of anything for a fandom (as in like, not a continuation of a plot/oc but a completely new thing) lol but star wars is always fun. cause you get to just take a thing and really expand on it and make it your own. cause star wars can be anything. with other fandoms like marvel there is a lot of history and rules i feel like i have to follow. but star wars isn't like that and that's just a fun sandbox to explore.

19. Do you prefer canon-compliant, AUs, or something in between?

Something in between I guess? My bread and butter has always been taking the canon and mooshing it in my fist like playdough and shoving my own oc into the narrative. Expanding on moments we don't get to see. Trying to write it as if that is actually how the piece of media exists. The AU Hoard is honestly completely new to me and not something I've ever explored before. But I am having fun lol

send in a fanfic writers ask!

[depengu]

93 - 87 - 62 - 51 - 49!!! (⁠✿⁠^⁠‿⁠^⁠)

49. Pancakes or waffles?

Definitely waflles

51. Sci-Fi or fantasy?

Scifi, fantasy has cool stuff but i do like my shooty shoot guns

62. Peanut butter or jelly?

Peanut butter

87. Whole wheat or white?

I should be eating wheat but i eat alot of white bread but i do like wheat

93. Picnic or nice restaurant?

Picnic cause i can choose what i bring rather than having to decide at the place to eat cause i have to look through the entire menu like twice to chose

Thhhhankyou for the askk,hope you have been having a wonderful weekend!!!

[zogingu]

Somerville Review

A cinematic puzzle game in a similar vein to Playdead's INSIDE and Little Nightmares, having gathered a mote of clout by having former Playdead founder Dino Patti. Unfortunately, his credentials don't seem to have helped much, because even discounting the awkward technical execution of Somerville, the game's creative concepts and art direction don't offer much, even compared to the more amateur entries into the genre.

⬇⬇ Full game spoilers below ⬇⬇

Visuals

The fidelity of Somerville's visuals is quite impressive, and in the game's few cinematics the filmic framing, animated backgrounds and special effects come together to form some pretty impressive sights. HOWEVER the visual design of the game is often either boring or the tackiest flavour of scifi.

Environments

The bread and butter of cinematic-type games are the scenes, the sets, the environments. The best examples are not only well rendered, but tell a story, or elucidate some novel concept or theme. Somerville's environments are mostly very basic, and even worse is that they are often just tedious to get through. A summary of the game's scenes (Spoilers):

The family's house has lots of little details and some novel interactive bits that create a unique feeling of presence. Opening drawers, unplugging wires and other small details do a lot to heighten your awareness of the space and make it feel rich and interesting.

The countryside quickly felt repetitive. Samey fields and woods that take a long time to move through. Empty video-game-level feeling space.

The music festival was probably the most novel location. The wind effects were fun, and the different "rooms" were varied and mostly didn't overstay their welcome.

The mine was by far the worst. Extremely repetitive. Felt like a level in a game, as opposed to a plausible real world location. No build-up to anything. No novel ideas or even a hint of storytelling.

The town had very nice set decoration, but the interactivity is heavily lacking. You lift the same shelf out of the way three times. I see why people bemoan The Last of Us' ladders now.

Underwater base/alien area is where the tacky sci-fi stuff gets turned all the way up. The base's exterior is cool, and the reactor sequence is mysterious, but switching from a man stumbling through a conflict zone to an Aperture Science lab experiment felt like it broke the tone.

Alien Stuff

Across the game are alien "growths", which are manipulated in many of the game's puzzles, melting and hardening them to achieve various effects.

While their technical quality is impressive, I think they're conceptually boring—They don't have any kind of novel adaptation to the Earth environments and visually are just geometric noise. It's a really squandered storytelling opportunity, especially compared to other alien-invasion literature.

In War of the Worlds, the red weed is overriding the Earth biome with alien ecology. In Half-life, giant conduits tear through human architecture to connect monstrous industrial machines. In Alien, the xenomorph hives are an ironic repurposing of the tunneling structures humans inhabit.

The growth in Somerville is the closest thing the game has to a visual motif but it doesn't do much more than tell us "aliens are here" and provide a kind of cool looking visual effect when it's dissolved or solidified.

Badass Military BS

Power armour ninjas... so cool and Badass... wow look at the undulating geometric pattern their armor is made out of... soo cool

Science fiction is an important topic to me. One of my recent favourites is the show Obsolete, which provides a socially-conscious and material lens on the silly concept of mecha, creating a story which approaches war, technology, industry and the humanities with nuance. Every fictional and real-world technology and social system is measured and contextualised. The role of the story's technological concepts isn't superficial—every piece fits together and enriches the other.

Somerville is a story set in modern society, driven by the struggles of everyday people. There are power-armoured dudes doing impossible acrobatics and rapid-firing laser rifles at geometric alien lions. Not only does the fictional technology LOOK bland, but the meaning and contextualisation of its concepts are pathetically shallow.

I know this is a really subjective mode of criticism; preferring stories that are lensed on particular subjects does not invalidate others, and it's not necessary for a story to be intricately laden with subtext to impactful or even just entertaining. But I am VERY TIRED of science fiction that pivots around slick, shiny "badass" WEAPONRY and WARFARE. At the very least, they could have semiotically rich designs, but instead it's just geometry. Bleh.

Visual Telegraphing

The hitmarker is the posterchild of overbearing telegraphing in games. It's wormed its way even into low-stakes single player shooters, where, in the AAA space, graphics technology has developed to offer incredible, high-fidelity depictions of violence that tell the story of injury and evisceration through stunningly detailed models and animations, only to suck all focus away from those incredible depictions to prioritize immediate feedback from the system. Hit. Armor hit. Kill. Damage numbers.

The absence of such overlays is one of the keys to a good cinematic game. Their systems are constrained to only work in ways that can be represented without interrupting or obstructing their immersive world. The drawback is that doing this successfully puts a lot of constraints on the both the audiovisual and the ludic elements of the game. But, when done well, the result is a fantastic, compelling harmony between the aesthetic experience of a cinematic story and the dexterous-cognitive challenge of playing a game.

Somerville doesn't achieve this harmony. You may be inclined to explore the large, open outdoor scenes, but doing so will poison the game's attempt at expressing cinematic pacing. Big yellow post-it notes on interactive objects make it so your controller isn't an interface with an immersive world of diegetic objects; it makes it so you're pushing buttons on your controller to push buttons in the game.

[theunderneath67]

~II~

Night, welcome art thou to my minde distrest,

Darke, heauy, sad, yet not more sad then I:

Neuer could’st thou find fitter company

For thine owne humour, then I thus opprest.

If thou beest darke, my wrongs still vnredrest

Saw neuer light, nor smallest blisse can spye:

If heauy ioy from me too fast doth hie,

And care out-goes my hope of quiet rest.

Then now in friendship ioyne with haplesse me,

Who am as sad and darke as thou canst be,

Hating all pleasure or delight of lyfe,

Silence, and griefe, with thee I best doe loue.

And from you three I know I can not moue,

Then let vs liue companions without strife.

-Lady Mary Wroth, Sonnet 37(2)

Dani Hillsbrough, the real world human behind the Elizabeth Forrester avatar, suddenly found herself back in the warm, expansive, antiquated and comfortably familiar library that served as the main menu and entry/exit point for users of the SimuLife console. Shelves, overflowing with books of popular and obscure titles by renowned and unknown authors filled the library reached colossally high to a ceiling out of view and impossibly wide to an unseen horizon. Avatars of other players and fill-in background characters dressed in the various costumes of eras near and far, fact and fiction mixed with the avatars of staff, easily marked with the familiar blue/grey cardigan adorned with the NetNeurality (the mother company of the SimuLife console) logo and assorted non-player characters to form a bustling community of citizens in this ersatz commonwealth that was the SimuLife populace.

A young woman, in her NetNeurality branded sweater, approached Dani, “Welcome back. I’m Annie, an assistant here at the library.  I hope you enjoyed your time at Castle Tarleton. It’s always one of our more popular communities. Would you like to start a new adventure in Reinvent:Yourself!, start a new replay in Destination:Anywhere, continue a previous adventure or sign off?”

“Sign off,” Dani replied simply.

“Very good, “said Annie, “This way.”

With a wave of Annie’s hand, a door opened streaming a ray of intensely bright light from floor to ceiling, again impossibly high to see to the top. Dani stepped through. That same familiar melody she heard as Elizabeth was turning played in her ear. The words, “REMOVE HEADSET”, flashed red slowly in front of her eyes and a small timer counted down from five to zero underneath. At zero, the melody stopped and the screen on her visor went dark.

Dani removed her SimuLife headset and sat for a moment, reminiscing her time in the world of the NetNeurality servers. While the characters that she used more frequently within the confines of Reinvent:Yourself!, itself, were more a means to an end, Dani found that she looked forward to playing Elizabeth more than any other. It was without question her favorite avatar in SimuLife. Elizabeth Forrester, the demure, naïve yet wanton medieval vampires-in-training, was, surely, not one of her more profitable characters in the world of virtual courtesans and, definitely, not quite as adventurous as some of the more wild experiences she had on the NetNeurality servers. Elizabeth, however, brought out the vulnerable, playful side in Dani’s personality that she was never seemingly able to naturally break out enough in ‘the real world”.

The bread and butter for Dani, financially anyway, were the straightforward sex kittens like Oola, the amazonian princess who relished public humiliation and haughtiness and then publicly and privately humiliated and totured countless alpha male businessmen on Catalonia, the SciFi adventure set on the titular far away fictional planet, or Tiffany, the unattainable cheerleader that gave sneaky blowjobs in the back of math class in exchange for an “A” to the creepy older guys. They weren’t interesting characters. They were simple cardboard cutout caricatures. They didn’t have depth or a sense beyond what they were, online hookers. Elizabeth Forrester, on the other hand, was a pleasant change of pace. Elizabeth had… depth. She had a soul.

So, for as much as she loved Elizabeth, Elizabeth was a rare treat. Elizabeth couldn’t offer the pragmatic, economic success that those other one-dimensional characters could. Those quick regular sessions provided the extras that her day job couldn’t. They provided the upgraded apartment. They provided the upscale lingerie and undergarments. They provided the lunches and the vacations and the trips home to check on the family. Her day job covered rent, and utilities and car payments, etc.; but, the extras came from the likes of the dominant princess and the naughty cheerleader.

Shaking her fully awake and aware, an alarm sounded 7AM from across the room. With a heavy sigh, Dani said out loud to no one in particular, “Welp, guess it’s time to pay the bills.”

Rising up from her console integrated SimuLife bench, Dani crossed her room, shut off the alarm, and began the morning ritual in getting ready for her day. Though she lamented having to set aside Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s next adventure, she knew it would have to wait until notification arrived in her Bitcoin account that payment had been received from her mysterious client. Real life had called and her employer had a strict logging in policy. NetNeurality, with whom she was not just an avid customer but also a long time employee, had just promoted her as the newest member of their systems testing team. She was acutely aware of her need to “go the extra mile” in terms of following the rules and setting a high standard. Besides, today was the day they let her start her own test cases and she had some clever ideas for Destination: Anywhere testing and wanted to spend her Friday having them solidly put together and approved before running them on Monday.

Dani was excited about this new position. It was, coincidentally, within a few days of a sidetracked conversation with the man she knew as The Shadow that had started with setting up this morning’s meeting and ended up diverting into commiserating about unfulfilling and underwhelming career tracks and the lack of opportunity for improvement that Dani had noticed the posting for a new tester in NetNeurality’s job listings. She hurriedly and eagerly updated her resume and applied that same day. It had taken an excruciating few weeks of no real response beyond the form letter acknowledging receipt of her application before she got a call from an assistant she knew in passing requesting a scheduled interview. She quickly scheduled the interview and waiting for what seemed way too long before the day arrived. She worried and fretted the entire time. She worried about her appearance and she worried about her experience. She fretted about her knowledge and she over thought questions to non-existent anticipated questions. She changed her interview outfit at least four times. At the end of the day, though, she needn’t have worried. She passed that interview and the subsequent follow-up meetings with ease. The charisma that made her online avocation so successful worked face-to-face as well. Charming and self-assured, she was offered the position, and the healthy raise that came with it, formally at the end of her last interview. The onboarding process that started her time on the team had been a tedious and overly complicated two week course in non-disclosure agreements, training manuals, mandatory online job training and hypothetical processes that seemed unlikely to ever happen. While understandably necessary, these activities were boring and seemed exceedingly gratuitous and lengthy. More importantly they added a healthy dose of confusion that did nothing to boost her confidence. She had begun to worry she wasn’t up to the task after the training. It wasn’t until she began to learn one-on-one from a senior co-worker that the previously daunting and overwhelming duties in Dani’s future had been given a renewed sense of clarity. After regaining her spirit, she began playing in disposable training environments. She, in no time was building test cases and scenarios all under the watchful eye of her soon-to-be peers.

Today, though, it was time to get down to business. She was on her own and she wanted to look good and feel good even if she was working from her home and only visible on video meetings. Stripping casually as she made her way back across the master bedroom and into the adjoining bathroom, she stopped to give final approval to the outfit she had picked out the night previous. She began humming that tune that had been stuck in her head since hearing it while lying in Elizabeth Forrester’s bed. It was easily recognizable as a melody, though something about it was off, thus leaving the name of it frustratingly just out of reach.

Entering the spacious shower, Dani turned the tap nearly fully toward the “hot” side. The water quickly reached a balmy appeasing temperature and Dani slipped in to let the warm steady stream flow over her. As the comfort of the water baptized her figure in soothing pacification, Dani ran her hands along her ample, voluptuous curves. She roamed that familiar path of her body replaying this morning’s encounter in her head. Starting with her full, substantial breasts that still stood relatively firm over her figure. Steam rose to envelope her fullness and she moved her hands further down to her soft round alabaster belly and moved further to her plentiful and much appreciated, even if silently, thighs, hips, and backside

Sudden thoughts of her mother’s words intruded the pleasant re-run of Elizabeth’s earlier adventure. ”You know, Dani you’ll never be a small girl, but you would be so beautiful, if you would… just have some discipline and lose the weight, “her mother used to say, “You’ve got such a pretty face that could have your pick of any boy in town to take care of you.”

The thought of any of the local hicks ‘taking care of her” repulsed her. Dani was not interested in some unsophisticated redneck taking care of her, especially given the candidates in her tiny rural town. She had bigger dreams than the boys of Fort Scott, Kansas. Fetching a beer and a sandwich while her ”man” talked the woes of  Jayhawk football on the porch to his equally as backwards friends held absolutely no appeal to her. She intended to make her own way. She wanted the pick of any man… in the world... on her terms. They were going to come to her, not the other way around.  She wasn’t potentially beautiful with some work and a diet; she was beautiful of her regard no matter what her mother said. More importantly she offered the strong intelligent mind that could had keep her strong in the face of the constant belittling. The words stung, sure, but she had heard them so many times as to be meaningless.

Shrugging to herself at her mother’s unkindness, Dani moved her cleaning down to her legs. The stocky full calves were still attractive and caught many an eye when the seam of a sexy set of nylons peeked from under a knee length dress. She ran across the slightest feeling of stubble. Time for a shave, she thought. Sitting on seat cushion that padded the molded shower ledge, Dani reached for the small-ish tin of Faena Tallow Shave Soap and the H.L. Thater shave brush sitting on the shower shelf. Dipping the badger bristled brush into the soap, she lathered up a goodly amount of cream and applied a fine layer of the cream, from ankle to knee, front to back to her right leg. Setting the tin and the brush back on the shelf she picked up a small teak box setting next to them on the shelf. Opening the box, she pulled the gleaming black and gold Kal Captain straight razor and folded it open. The sharpened blade shone under the fluorescent lights. The straight razor shave was a luxury and a ritual that Dani afforded herself as a concession to her own private vanity. It was something she learned in a previous relationship that ran white hot with elements of dom/sub play, but had burned out quickly. It was the one thing she kept from that time. Nevermore to return to the world of harsh chemical depilatories, plastic disposable blades or the electric monstrosities of shavers that didn’t seem to work anyway.

Humming the recurring tune that was perplexingly affixed to her subconscious, Dani took the keen edge to a practiced angle and slowly drew it up from the curve that was her ankle, across the breath of her shin to the dimpled knee, halfway up. She rinsed the excess cream from the razor and the front of her leg and inspected her work. Satisfied with the results, she repeated the process, on the sides and her firm round calves. With the same experienced rhythm, she disposed of any lingering leg hair there. After ensuring her right leg was entirely smooth, she moved to the left leg and restarted the very same process there with the same expert precision.

When the lower legs were completed, she applied a generous layer of foam to her inner thigh and ever so carefully ran ever so gently against the bikini line. Once again, feeling for any excess stubble she ran her fingers over the sensitive inner folds of her thigh and with a knowing smile, felt nothing extraneous.       

At once she felt a sting, Shit, she thought, I guess I did nick myself. Reaching back down, she found blood in, coincidentally, the same place as Elizabeth’s wound. This time, though, the blood flowed much more liberally. What are the chances of that? Hell I didn’t think I even got in that far with the blade, she wondered. She exited the shower to examine the cut. The blood streamed in a meandering rivulet down the inside of her thigh.

Covering the laceration with a dab of bacitracin and a small “dot” adhesive bandage, Dani continued her morning routine. After applying some scented oil to her freshly shaven legs and washed body, she styled her hair in a retro swept up style and applied some minimal accentuating makeup. Finally Dani slipped a delicate black lace demi cup bra around her ample bosom and a pair of black lace thigh high lace stockings that were attached to a satin garter belt she had picked up during a mall shopping splurge at Torrid the weekend previous. While pulling the entire under ensemble together with a pair of satin French cut bikini panties, she felt the Band-Aid already beginning to fail. She pulled it off to take a second look at the gash. It was larger and deeper than she initially had thought with blood pooling in the tender folds of skin. Upon inspecting further, the blood ran freely in a thin but widening stream down her thigh. She reapplied the antibiotic ointment and applied, this time, a somewhat larger dressing.

Picking out her work attire she went with a simple white collared blouse and grey sweater combination from Nordstrom Rack and slate gray skirt from Lane Bryant that betrayed the wicked temptation underneath. “Gotta stay business appropriate to the normies, “she said aloud, “They will never know what’s underneath.”

Slipping into a pair of shiny black leather heels, Dani headed to the kitchen for a French press of her favorite whole bean espresso roast coffee and one of the raspberry scones Mrs. Cannivale had made for her last evening. Noticing her supply of beans was low, she made a note to head down to the local coffee house for a fresh supply and to check with Mrs. Cannivale for anything she might need from the grocery that was on the way.

With a warm mug and pastry in hand, she went to her work desk in the converted office she had made of the second bedroom and logged in to the NetNeurality corporate servers with ten minutes to spare.

[ironandglass]

If you're watching Moonhaven please be my friend and discuss this weirdass, amazing, refreshingly original, scifi, cult show with me because I am obsessed. I have a lot of feelings. If there is a Discord someone pls invite me. If there's not let's make one.

I need this in my life.

Where y'all at? 💖

[lo-sulci]

love how the main time i feel comfortable socializing is when im talking about some interest im into/passionate about or listening to someone else do the same. i surely do not need to read into this or consider its implications any

[apollonianism]

2022 Book List

This is everything I’ve read to date (April 2022) in order that I read them:

A Desolation Called Peace, Arkady Martine - Book 2, fucking loved it. Both of Martine’s books are very dense, heaps of worldbuilding, everything I want in a sci-fi. Explores themes of cultural colonisation and identity. One of my all time favourite authors and books.

This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - A short epistolary novella between two opposing robots/AI in a time war and how they fall in love. A very easy read, enemies to lovers, excellent prose.

Empire of Light, Alex Harrow - Don’t get me started on how much I dislike this book. I forced myself to finish it which may have made me hate it even more. The characters, plot, and pacing are all plain bad.

Neophek Gloss, Essa Hansen - Reading this after Empire of Light may have made me enjoy it more, but a good solid sci-fi. According to notes after I finished it: In-depth worldbuilding, excellent characterisation, plotted well. Predictable, but very solid storyline. May or may not read book 2.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers - A beautiful cosy read in which nothing much happens (as per all Chambers books). A non-binary monastic searching for the meaning of life in a post-utopia world.

Activation Degradation, Marina J Lostetter - This book killed me, I fucking keysmashed in my notes while reading. Notes at time of reading: So this book is compared to Murderbots. This is not correct. Yes, the main character is a robot. They should not be compared. They are different stories. I love both of them. Ahem. I LOVED THIS BOOK. The characters were all really well-developed. FOUND FAMILY. There were so many good twists. This is everything I want in a scifi book. The only negative is that it is a standalone and I desire MORE.

Autonomous, Annalee Newitz - This story is so very good. As can be inferred from the title, it’s all about free will - sentient robots are indentured to pay off their manufacture (which never really ends, yay capitalism!) and so humans can now be indentured too (all capitalism leads to slavery!). And also IP law overload! The issue with the idea of drug patents. The world-building was phenomenal, the characters were all great, both the drug pirate and the two cops were morally grey. A brilliant standalone book, but I'd also love more just to see more of the world

The First Sister, Linden A Lewis - I didn’t really enjoy this book as I was reading, I had trouble connecting with the characters. The writing was on point, but I just didn't really care about them. Possibly because both POV characters lacked agency and were just trying to survive circumstances. It's only after the twists at the end that I decided the book was OK. Not going to continue the series.

Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells - All of these books are fucking A. Everybody loves murderbot. These are really easy to devour and enjoy reading while also exploring some pretty heavy trauma.

Hench, Natalie Zina Walschotts - Ok, so I love villains. I am on team villain, I am this book's target audience. Hench lady (Anna Tromedlov, who works with spreadsheets, has very  little involvement in villainy) is catastrophically injured by a hero and decides to get vengeance by tallying up all the injuries and damage heroes cause. The characters are this book's strong point, my only downside is that I didn’t feel that the character went through any growth or arc in this book. I’ll be interested to see if there’s a sequel.

The Girl with All the Gifts, MR Carey - I am not usually a horror fan, but this book blew me away. It explored some great themes and the perspectives were great. Highly recommended.

A closed and common orbit, Beck Chambers - I will read everything Chambers writes. Nothing much happens, just a slow character exploration. Robots/AI are my bread and butter. This was better than A long way to a small angry planet.

Ancillary Justice/Mercy/Sword, Ann Leckie - These are my favourite books, this is my favourite author. This was a re-read, so I don’t have any notes on my experiences as I read these books, but they are my all time favourites. I love the world-building, the POV character, the ethical questions and themes.

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 21 of 26

Title: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Wayfarers #4) (2021)

Author: Becky Chambers

Genre/Tags: Science Fiction, Third-Person, Female Protagonists

Rating: 9/10

Date Began: 8/15/2021

Date Finished: 8/22/2021

Gora is an unremarkable planet. It has no natural life and few resources to speak of. In fact, its only use is its proximity to more interesting places. Over the years, it’s become a waystation, notable only as a temporary stop for travelers as they wait for their spot in the wormhole queue. 

The Five-Hop One-Stop is a small, family-owned rest stop on Gora. Three travelers— a marginalized nomad, a military contractor, and an exiled artist-- lay over at the Five-Hop awaiting the next stage of their journeys. But everything goes horribly wrong when repair work on an orbital satellite causes a cascade event, destroying the planet’s communications. Now stranded on Gora with debris raining down from the sky, the travelers and hosts must live with each other while cut off from the rest of the galaxy. As they learn more about one another, each is forced to confront their personal struggles… and challenge their perspective on life.

Speaker had a word for how she felt right then: errekere. A moment of vulnerable understanding between strangers. It did not translate into Klip, but it was a feeling she knew well from gatherings among her people. There was no need being expressed here, no barter or haggling or problems that required the assistance of a Speaker, but errekere was what she felt all the same. She’d never felt it with an alien before. She embraced the new experience.

Content warnings and spoilers below the cut.  

Content warnings for the book: Non-graphic sexual content, child endangerment, ableism (if you squint; it’s not malicious), references to warfare, discussions of intergenerational trauma re: colonization (not the scifi kind), prejudice and xenophobia, recreational drug use. 

I’ve had a mixed experience with Wayfarers, which is unusual for me. I can’t remember the last series I read that fluctuated so much in terms of personal enjoyment and (in my opinion) quality. People as a whole seem to enjoy this series more than me, hence the multitude of awards and glowing reviews. I liked book two, A Closed and Common Orbit, because of the focused narrative and dedicated development of two lead characters. But the first and third books suffered from an overly large cast and reliance on generic archetypes. When a series is built on character development and plot is a secondary concern at best, those characters have to be outstanding. And to me, they usually weren’t.

But in this fourth and final book, I felt that Chambers finally hit her stride. On a surface level, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within has striking similarity to book three, Record of a Spaceborn Few. Both are virtually plotless novels which do deep dives into a cast of characters. What sets The Galaxy apart is its execution. All three leads have unique and compelling personal conflicts. An underutilized strength of the series is its creative aliens; something Chambers takes advantage of here with a fully alien cast. Finally, this book hinges upon interaction between the three leads, something sorely missing from the previous book. 

In these reviews I often seem critical of ensemble casts. But when done well, I actually prefer them to singular narratives. The main hurdle is having consistently interesting characters across the board. When there’s one or two characters I prefer over the others, I usually struggle with the novel. There’s an inherent sense of disappointment when leaving a favored character’s POV. For me this affects my overall enjoyment of the story. But when I like all of the characters or they all have something interesting going on, ensemble casts are great. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is successful in this regard because I thoroughly enjoyed all three perspective characters. In no particular order…

Speaker is an Akarak, a birdlike scavenger species introduced as sympathetic antagonists in the first book. Going in, we know their home planet was colonized by the Harmagians, which has caused irreparable harm to their culture. Robbed of their homeworld and forced into the margins of GC society, the Akarak are nomadic, and many of them rely on banditry in order to survive. We have seen very little of them besides that. The Galaxy expands their lore a lot; their short lifespans, their incompatible biology with other sapients, and the resulting generational trauma from centuries of colonial exploitation. Speaker’s arc in particular is about dealing with the prejudice she encounters daily, adjusting to acceptance after being othered for so long, seeing things from a new perspective, and persistent worry for her twin sister Tracker, who she’s been separated from due to the events on Gora. 

The Aeluon Pei is actually a recurring character; she’s Ashby’s love interest from the first book. Here we get a more intimate view of her as a person. In particular, she struggles with living a double life. She works a prestigious yet dangerous job among her people, running cargo into critical warzones. But her affair with Ashby (a Human) is a huge cultural taboo among the Aeluons. If her colleagues discovered her romantic relationship, her life as a cargo runner would be over. The double life is wearing on her, because she loves both aspects of her life, but knows that it can’t go on like this forever. To make matters worse, she goes into “shimmer”, a once-in-a-lifetime fertility period, during the events on Gora. This adds a layer to her struggle; does she do her duty to her species and produce a child, or does she pursue what she really wants? 

Finally, there’s Roveg, a Quelin. Like the Akarak, Quelin haven’t received a whole lot of development in the series. In the first book, they’re portrayed as a xenophobic insectoid race, and their role is unambiguously antagonistic. Roveg is the polar opposite of that. He’s something of a renaissance man; an appreciator of fine art and dining, who designs artistic sims by profession. He delights in meeting aliens, befriending them, and learning everything there is to know about them. His arc centers around his exile from Quelin society and all the hidden pains associated with that. Chief among these is a mysterious meeting he has to make— which the Gora disaster obviously complicates. 

Complementing the three leads are the Five-Hop’s hosts; a Laru mother and child named Ouloo and Tupo. Similar to the Akarak and Quelin, we haven’t seen many of the Laru (who I always picture as fuzzy dog-giraffe hybrids). Ouloo struggles to be a kind and accommodating host in the wake of disaster. She’s also forced to confront her own prejudices, especially regarding Speaker, the first Akarak she’s ever met. The two initially have a lot of tension, but grow to be great friends over the course of the novel. Her child Tupo is a nonbinary character using xe/xyr pronouns throughout the novel. Xe’s basically a Laru teenager, and super endearing. I love xyr natural curiosity and naiveté. Definitely the “heart” of the group. 

Interaction between these characters is the bread and butter of this novel. There’s very little action; instead it focuses on their differing perspectives and life experiences. It’s a gradual build as the characters grow more familiar with one another. The epilogue is brilliant, because we see the long-term effect of these characters meeting. Despite interpersonal conflict in the story, Speaker inspires Pei to make a specific decision. From this decision, Pei realizes she can help Roveg with his meeting. As a result of this, Roveg is inspired to help Speaker based on one of their earlier conversations. His help fundamentally alters Speaker’s perspective on life— and there’s an implication it will reach beyond that, to the Akarak as a whole. It’s a cascade effect, but rather than the disastrous version that happened on Gora, it’s a positive social change for the leads. That’s the kind of literary parallel that really fires me up. 

I do have a few criticisms of this novel, minor and otherwise. The first is, I wish the tension between Speaker and Pei was more strongly built throughout. While I’m glad the novel isn’t all sunshine and rainbows when it comes to the character interactions, their conflict goes from an idea in the back of one’s mind to an explosive event. This is something of a nitpick because it’s otherwise well executed. I especially like that despite their interpersonal problems, they work together in the climactic events of the novel without sacrificing their respective principles. 

My other criticism is a series-wide observation. Wayfarers is optimistic to a fault. As such, it’s pretty rare that we see true evil or even bad behavior in this series. On one hand, it’s nice to read something where the characters are people who want the best for everyone. But there’s a lot of dissonance here, because there are MASSIVE social problems with the GC at large. For example, we see the effects of xenophobia, war, slavery, and colonialism, but the ones who perpetuate these issues are faceless. If Chambers wants to portray good characters, that’s fine, but it strikes me as odd to build complex social issues into your society, yet exclusively portray groups of morally good people. Why would a society full of such nice, helpful groups also marginalize the Akarak, or create an entire caste of slave clones to sort through their junk? This approach comes off as a desire for nuance without committing to it. 

This trend continues through the final book. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is clearly a COVID-19 response novel (“we’re all in this together”!)— but everyone is blameless, and the government response is reasonable and timely. That’s just not how it worked in real life. So many people were (and still are!) selfish in response to COVID, often outright endangering others. Practically every government botched their response for the sake of money, leading to mass death worldwide. If Wayfarers has similar social issues to the real world, why would the response to a disaster be any different? It’s an ongoing contradiction; the Wayfarers society is simultaneously utopian and flawed, and it’s hard for me to suspend my disbelief. 

As an individual novel, though, I really enjoyed The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. Like all the other books in the Wayfarers series, it’s a standalone and can be read on its own. My experience with this series has been up and down; I recommend the second and fourth books, but I’d skip one and three if I ever do a reread. There are things to like about Wayfarers in terms of worldbuilding and the creative ideas behind all the different aliens. Characterization is hit or miss, but the hits are great, and this book in particular knocked it out of the park. Chambers’ prose improves a lot over the series, and it’s nice to see how she develops as a writer. As I’ve mentioned, Wayfarers has gotten lots of positive feedback, so it’s possible you will enjoy it more than I did. But I’m looking forward to reading something new.