calypso72 | Reading

Perhaps the most interesting thing that happened today was at the north end of our street – an old conifer fell from our neighbors’ yard and landed largely in the street. It was a great miracle that it fell that way and didn’t crash onto a house or a power line or a car – really, the odds were quite slim that it would land in such a good spot, and it was also at a time of day when they could readily do something about it.

The house is owned by my friends MI and RI, but they’re living with RI’s father a few blocks west of us, and their son H and his wife E live there instead. As I drove past on the way to the store, H was cutting back the tree with a chainsaw and waving at those of us who passed with an embarrassed smile. I stopped on the way home and chatted with H, E, and M, as well as our neighbor KS, who was walking her very large dog Sammy. Then J arrived on his bike and we went through it all again. M pointed out a mark about two-thirds of the way across the street, where the top of the tree had struck when it fell, so I got J to pose for a photo, pointing at the mark.

I have other things to say but am too tired at this point! With luck, tomorrow.

eve_prime

Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right, by Jordan S. Carroll. I learned about this book this past weekend, as it won the Hugo award for 2024’s “Best Related Work.” I hadn’t read much about the worldview of today’s alt-right, and Dr. Carroll is braver than I am – I wouldn’t want to have to follow it closely like he does. That is, I did have a job where I had to read the horrifying writings of past political leaders promoting genocide, but at least they were more or less in the past, and I was already generally familiar with their work. Getting my head around this thinking, though, was bizarre because it was so much focused on individual entitlement. That is, only white people have the capacity to think about the future, and individual white guys can win eternal glory through bold risk-taking and reckless self-sacrifice to realize the wondrous future of the white people. Ick. Anyway, the book was quite interesting although written in a more academic style than strictly necessary (because it deserves a wider readership) – it’s a brief history of this movement and how it relates to science fiction. The alt-right people identify with the heroes of the relatively authoritarian writers (plus those in the novels they’re writing for each other), and also with the tyrannical villains in works intending to support diversity (like Khan in Star Trek, and when they read books satirizing authoritarianism, they treat them as if they were serious and as if any downfall of the satirized tyrants was tragic. I was surprised at the end when the author tells us that “The alt-right collapsed in the aftermath of Charlottesville” – surely that was overly optimistic.

eve_prime

J and I do most of our anime-watching on Saturday nights; it’s the one night he comes over to my house, and we watch most of the Adult Swim lineup on the Cartoon Network. Rather, we watch the episodes from the week before, since he’s trying to stick to the same bedtime every night. We’re currently watching Dragon Ball Daima, Dan da Dan, Blue Exorcist Kyoto Saga, Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, and of course One Piece (we’re nearing the end of the very long Dressrosa arc). I also record Naruto because I like watching it again and again, and I’m currently recording Lazarus too, because as soon as it ended they started showing a subtitled version that I like better.

J was gone this Saturday, which meant I was going to have to make DVR space for all seven episodes. I spent a bunch of time working on that, then after midnight I made my soup and sat down to re-watch some old Bleach TYBW episodes so I would finally get around to deleting them… and I discovered that the DVR hadn’t recorded the first three shows on the schedule. Further investigation revealed that Comcast had decided to add Cartoon Network to its “Sports and Entertainment” package, which meant spending an additional $10 per month! We’re opposed to that on principle. And even if we did that, we would miss all of this week’s episodes! (We can’t watch them on the on-demand because my DVR is outdated.) AARGH.

It turns out that all of those shows except Bleach TYBW are available on Crunchyroll (and except Lazarus, but it's on HBO/Max and I have a subscription for that). We do have a Crunchyroll subscription. So now our plan is to watch these same shows during the week at some point, then on Saturday nights we’ll follow our tradition of going to my house but instead we’ll watch more of Naruto, which we have on DVD (we’re up to episode 148 and have already seen Naruto Shippuden). If we get behind on the other shows, I may have to hook a computer up to my TV so we can do the Crunchyroll thing on Saturday nights instead. Too bad about Bleach. What a pain!

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Circle of Magic: Sandry’s Book, by Tamora Pierce. Circle of Magic #1. For my bedtime cozy rereading, I’ve turned to the Circle of Magic books, which are fun and delightful for all ages. Niko Goldeye travels around his world doing magely things, which at this point involves collecting four children (age 10-ish) who find themselves in trouble with no families to help. Unknown to the four, they also have unusual magical powers – that is, normal magical folk engage in formal study to learn spells that involve divination and such, but these kids have different magics related to daily life and crafts. Sandry, who is much too interested in weaving and needlework for someone of her aristocratic background, has lost her parents to a plague. Daja, a Black girl from a trader family, is the only survivor when her family’s ship sinks; she is drawn to metalwork. Briar, a boy who’s been living rough, has already been branded twice for thievery, but he’s fascinated with plant life. Tris, rejected by her family and every school she’s ever attended, expresses her unhappiness by summoning freakish weather. They all come together to live at the edge of a magical village in the lovely cottage of Rosethorn and Lark. Now they can start building their skills as part of a “found family.”

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Final day of the con. J hadn’t slept well and worked on getting stamps for his “passport” until Keith’s 1:30 pm panel on minds and mind control; then he got up to 34 stamps and the person in charge decided that was close enough to 40. Then he went to a panel about representing non-humans, which included Martha and Mary Robinette Kowal – the latter has a board set up so her cat can press buttons to communicate with her! Then he went to a panel about video game lore, which included Kathleen. After Keith finished attending a panel about traditional vs. indie publishing, J went to dinner with him and Keith’s daughter, who’s about to enter 9th grade and is fairly tall. He then headed toward the airport and flew home.

Meanwhile, I “attended” a very interesting panel with Nisi Shawl, Leigh Bardugo, and three others on using history as an inspiration for one’s fiction-writing. Then I did one about the status of “cislunar” exploration, which means the space between here and the moon. This was finally my chance to see David Brin, and I’m afraid my opinion suffered, as he was pretty confrontational with the other panel experts and seemed rather obnoxiously indifferent to them. My last panel was about “the reading writer.”

So… Worldcon was interesting and fun. It took far more of my time and attention than I expected, which I’d need to know if I attend again. J had fun too, but he appreciated having Keith there to spend time with. I also have a rather huge new reading list – thanks specifically to this event I bought three books, I have four on-hold at the library, and I have at least six books to look for at the public library and one at the university library, and a few I’ll look for in the big used bookstore downtown.

ofearthandstars

This evening I took a few close-up photos of the moss around the yard for the purposes of trying to identify some of the various species. There are only a few that I'm very confident on the identification, and others I think I may have narrowed down to the genus, but that's it.

This will be a picture heavy post! I hope you can appreciate the variation in the photos, which is not readily apparent from landscape photos.

First off, Leuocbryum glaucum, a pincushion moss, easily identified by the means in which colonies clump and grow in rounded mounds like rolling carpets. Glaucum, for their whitish-tipped green leaves, the pale ends of which get more predominant as the moss dries. In our yard, this is predominantly around our shed, cropping up across a rocky clay and granite bed.

( more! )

eve_prime

J started his con day by attending a panel with Keith, on AGI, which included David Brin and a friend of Keith’s as panelists. Then he went to a panel about the literary merits of the Hugo nominees, and the panelists were lamenting the absence of a book called Rakesfell on the ballot. Next he went to David Brin’s reading – Brin ad libbed a bunch from one of his books. Next on his list was a Martha Wells Q&A, and he ended up getting in line twice and asking questions. Then he got into the very long line for the Brandon Sanderson reading – his first reading for Mistborn era 3, for which the first book isn’t even coming out until 2028. That was my first con activity of the day, and it took them a very long time to get the Zoom going, but Brandon worked around that, starting with general comments, then Q&A, and eventually (by the time the stream was working) the reading. So exciting! J got a selfie with Brandon afterwards – Brandon had recognized him the last time they saw each other but didn’t say anything like that today. After that J went to a panel about video games for people who don’t think of themselves as gamers. Becky Chambers was on that panel, and then suddenly he recognized a voice: Kathleen de Vere! We know her well from her Magic the Gathering-themed activities online. (Her husband does a long-running show called Friday Nights, and we’ve seen all the episodes.) He had to leave that early for food, but he saw Kathleen in the hall later and told her we very much enjoyed their most recent season. Then Keith read from his novel, for J, a friend who lives in Portland who surprised him with her presence, and three strangers. (None of these things had been streamed besides the Brandon reading, so I did ordinary household things and took a walk.)

Finally it was time for the Hugo Awards. J stood in a very long line for quite a long time and ended up sitting about halfway back from the stage; I watched on YouTube. There was something like a 15-second delay on YouTube, so he had to be quiet whenever it was an award I cared about, which wasn’t very many. We were thrilled that the book we’d voted for won Best Novel! I then went to his house to hang out with the cats while he attended a couple of bid parties: the Montreal party, then the Czech party, then back to the Montreal party. Montreal won the bid for 2027; 2026 will be in Los Angeles, and then for 2028 the most prominent contender is Brisbane, followed by Dublin for 2029? There’s not a lot of competition, it seems – Tel Aviv had also tried for 2027 but had withdrawn. The Czechs haven’t specified a year, so we don’t know if their bid is serious yet. I wonder whether J will keep going to Worldcon in the future?

ofearthandstars

From this week's

thefridayfive

1. What is your favorite experience in your life so far?

Honestly, I don't know how to begin to answer a question like this - how do you determine a "favorite" of anything? Life changes and ebbs and flows. I'd probably have to put relatively small experiences - like standing at the ocean on the island of Maui, or even just at the edge of the Atlantic in Kure Beach.... or how I feel when I'm hiking and make it the top of the mountains. So I guess the answer is...the experiences of witnessing parts of this world that fill me with awe and a reminder of how small we are in this great expanse of a planet and a universe.

2. What motivates you to keep going every day?

Also tough to answer, because I think the occasional darkness that comes and goes in my life has been more present this year. But I do get up in the mornings and do not lay in bed all day. I guess the possibility of each day, and the animals - they always need to go outside or to be fed, and I feel an obligation to keep them well. For all of my missteps and mistakes, I do believe that I am trying to move through the world as best I can, and that each day has that opportunity to do more.

3. Where do you want to go in life? What do you want to accomplish?

*dark laughter* I once thought that I wanted to change things, for the better, for the environment, for people, for animals. I think now I am going through a crisis of feeling powerless at actually being able to do any of that, through either work or activism. I'm on a lifelong quest to learn, though. And maybe I'll also be brave someday.

4. Is there anything that you regret? Do you try to change it?

Scads and scads of regrets, things that, if I could turn back the clock with the understanding I have now, I would have saved myself and others a lot of pain. I also understand that those things helped make me who I am (for better or for worse). I do still try to change my ways of moving through the world to do the least harm, and the most good - that is why I am still in therapy, to try to tease out the parts of me that are fearful or anxious or stuck, and how to move onwards.

5. What is your most cherished gift you have received? Why do you cherish it so much?

About a year before she passed, my mother crocheted me my own afghan, in my favorite greens. It is the dearest thing I own now. Unfortunately one night after she passed it slipped off the bed and next to the rats' housing, and they happily nested off a corner of it. My now MIL helped me to find someone who could fix it, and they ended up removing about 3-4 inches and then re-stitching what was left (I wish that they had been able to truly repair it with the pattern, but I guess they couldn't find the same yarns). So I am also always a little happy and a little sad when I use it, but on days when I feel like I can't go on, it is the closest thing I have to my mother's arms around me.

eve_prime

Another busy con day! J says he got a slow start then joined Keith at a panel about surveillance, which was interesting. Then we both watched Martha Wells read bits from two upcoming books, Queen Demon and the new Murderbot. He got a pizza for lunch and learned a bit about the psychology of dueling then joined me in watching a panel with several big-name authors (and some relative newcomers) on why they decided to write fantasy. They included Larry Niven, Terry Brooks, Stephen R. Donaldson, and Robin Hobb. Then he joined me in watching a panel that was discussing the philosophy of magical systems, which was pretty cool and would have been absolutely essential if I were a fantasy writer, I think. Then we both watched Martha do a podcast on what it was like to have her work turned into a popular Apple+ show – I think it will be on YouTube! It was extra-special because they began with a surprise for her – a series of recorded greetings from all of the Murderbot actors.

After that, he went out for Thai food to celebrate Keith’s recent birthday, and I watched movie night, which was Dragonheart – it was goofier than I remembered. Then he watched a panel on science and magic, and I watched one on how feminists can respond to the Project 2025 mentality. It included Ada Palmer, of whom I’m a long-time fan, and Annalee Newitz, whose work is quite relevant to mine too, and whom I’d only learned about yesterday. Some bottom line points: Always remember that whatever we do is only a part of the bigger picture; we’re never going to solve a problem for all time. And consider the value of “rhetorical acts of small-scale destruction” – things that are vivid, get attention, and don’t harm anyone, like the early feminists burning their bras or the women of the Igbo conducting “women’s war” to shame obnoxious community members into better behavior. Then we were done for today. Tomorrow will be a tad less full, and I may actually get to do some real-life things besides, for example, buying a few groceries after dark.

Oh, also – one member of the feminist panel urged us to subscribe to a free weekly emailed newsletter on the positive things happening around the world: fixthenews.com. I’ve signed up for that. And yesterday I learned about ground.news, which reports news along with its associated bias.

eve_prime

Let’s see. J started his day with a talk on broadswords, then watched his friend Keith on a panel about space exploration, then spent time in the autograph room while Keith sold two copies of his book. Then he attended a “repopulation” panel, then went to a panel with Keith about Europa.

Meanwhile, I “attended” a talk about pre-industrial militaries that was very, very good – the speakers were well informed and respectful of each other, and they engaged a lot with the audience and suggested interesting-sounding books to read. Next I did a panel on the value of escapism. The moderator-author talked a disproportionate amount of the time, but it was a great panel, talking about the psychological benefits of “cozy” fiction and competence porn, especially focusing on the way one individual can make a difference, however small. J, meanwhile, attended a Martha Wells fan meet-up, although it was frustrating for him that people were so focused on her Murderbot character – he wanted to ask about the Fell in the Raksura books. Then a swordsmith talk? and photographed some academic posters? and did more fake sword-fighting (called “boffers”). I tried to attend a conversation between Nisi Shawl and K. Tempest Bradford, which was entertaining enough, but the Zoom was messed up so that they were just tiny in the corner of the screen. I was thankful that the Zoom closed captioning worked so well.

Then we both attended a geographies panel, in which Martha did talk about the Raksura (but not the Fell), and I learned about other authors I want to learn more about. Then I found one that sounded cool, about psyops, and he attended that one in person, too. The panelists were all older white guys who all looked quite similar. The Zoom failed, but I stayed in the Discord to see if they would answer my question, and from that I learned about a recent book that talks about the real-life career of Cordwainer Smith! I was done at that point, but I’d found a party for J. to attend, hosted by Australians who would like Worldcon to come to Brisbane in 2028, so he went and found the Sheraton hotel and went up to the 26th floor and ate Australian snacks and chatted with a man named Peter about his research on climate change and urban unrest. What full days we had!

eve_prime

Sundiver, by David Brin. Uplift #1. In his thrilling debut novel, Brin sends an exploratory spaceship from Earth to investigate the claim that there are creatures living in the outer layers of the sun! Not only are there memorable and awe-inspiring descriptions of their adventures, but also a variety of intriguing aliens, and even a murder mystery which our human character must solve. The “uplift” of Earth animals to human levels of intelligence is also a theme in the book (and our main guy’s specialty), but it’s not in the foreground – we do meet a chimpanzee scientist and a dolphin who’s learning to talk, as well as an alien from an uplifted species, but it’s not really fundamental to the story. I’m fine with my decision to have started with Uplift #2, but I’m glad I read this one next.

eve_prime

Today we did Worldcon for the first time! In the morning, J drove to the airport, took a plane to Seattle, rode the light rail from the airport to his hotel, checked in, walked to the convention center, and stood in line for his registration badge. Meanwhile, I had a “virtual” membership, but none of the streaming was working until 1:30 pm, when they got the room for the panel of Improbable Research Dramatic Readings online. (I’d participated in an earlier panel on the use of mythology in fiction by chatting in a Discord group, where someone present in the room was kindly summarizing what was going on.) Anyway, the Improbable Research Dramatic Readings was quite entertaining, despite the poor audio – apparently they have some tradition where three people dressed in banana costumes eventually surround the speaker so that they stop? And then one of the speakers today is mostly blind and couldn’t tell? The paper I was most interested in was the “evolution” of the teddy bear, although they were all quite amusing.

They have a half-hour break between sessions, which is helpful for those following along from home, and surely also for those on site, who may want to continue conversations or get a meal. My next session was Fix My Fight Scene, to which I paid only a little attention – I was only there because the streaming was working for that room. Meanwhile, J met up with his friend Keith, who is an author and panelist this year, and they did some fake sword-fighting. At 4:30 pm, I watched Martha Wells (guest of honor!) doing a very interesting Q&A, while J watched John Scalzi doing a reading. Then at 6 pm, I watched a panel on planetary ecologies with dynamic and articulate Becky Chambers, three people I didn’t know, and 87-year-old Larry Niven, until the Zoom crashed (rumor said the center is set up for four streams and they were doing six). J skipped out on the AI panel in favor of one for indie games.

Then we watched the opening ceremony, which was interesting for the first hour or so (when they introduced the various guests of honor, most of whom expressed concern about the many fans who don’t feel comfortable travelling to or within the U.S. this year, and the musician guest of honor who treats his birth-assigned female identity as a changeling brought by the Sidhe until he won his identity back), but then it went on and on past the scheduled time with various honorary awards related to fandom. I’d have been in better humor about it if they had been up front about the time and agenda. Finally, I went for a walk and got the cats inside J’s house, while J returned to his hotel for a meal and early bedtime.

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Moira’s Pen, by Megan Whalen Turner. Queen’s Thief #7. I bought this in 2022 when it came out and hadn’t read it yet. It’s great! The author collected all of the stories found at the ends of the paperback editions of the earlier books and added more stories, art, and interesting anecdotes about the art and about her visits to Greece. We find out what happens to the characters later, too.

eve_prime

I’m pretty sure that I mentioned at the beginning of the month that the silver maple right next to the fence in J’s back yard had lost another trunk; this one had crashed to the west. The three or four other remaining trunks were risking the owner’s house, and there was little hope of stability, so they were going to remove the tree. They didn’t tell us when it would happen, and I suppose that’s just as well, as I would have felt anticipatory sadness – and it was today. J took videos of the crane removing the trunks and lifting them over the house! The remaining stump is more than a yard in diameter.

J’s yard is now shockingly unshaded, and we really need to plant a new tree. We thought about it quite a bit this afternoon. We need something quick-growing, good for providing shade, and suited to our area. The first tree we learned about is a kind of maple that’s a cross between a silver maple and a red maple, and it looks quite pretty… but apparently it needs a lot of pruning to keep it in good form. Maples do seem prone to developing these thick branch/trunks that can be unstable. So then we considered liquidambars – sweet gums – which are also pretty, and we concluded that we might not mind their spiky seed pods… but then we read online that they have shallow root systems, which could be problematic for the neighbors and maybe for us too. We knew we didn’t want a scarlet oak, as the one R planted for me has caused so many problems by not dropping its leaves like it’s supposed to, and J didn’t want an oak in general because he doesn’t want acorns all over his lawn. The little seed “helicopters” that maples leave are so innocuous in comparison. Then I did a search for fast-growing, shade-producing trees suitable for the Pacific Northwest that have deep root systems, and the suggestions included various oaks and maples, some kind of fir, and our native big-leaf maples.

As it happens, big-leaf maples sprout all over the place, and I have a 15’ tall one that lives in the pot that used to be the home of my dawn redwood. We’re thinking we can try to transport it to J’s yard and see about planting it there in the fall. It would be free, and it certainly has a head start over any tree we could buy.

And… we actually experienced an immediate benefit of not having the silver maple, much to my surprise. Without the sky in J’s backyard being quite so full, it was easier to see a good expanse of it when we went out to look for the Perseids. I don’t think any of the meteors we saw would actually have been blocked by the tree though. (We ended up seeing five between us.)

eve_prime

Today was hot! Tomorrow will also be hot, then it will cool off dramatically. I don’t much like to get into the car when it’s hot, but I went out twice – to the UPS Store to ship S’s shoes and socks to him (left behind in the closet), and then downtown to the library and dinner with the guys at the Bier Stein. On my way home from that, my car claimed the temperature dropped from 108° to 104° over the course of 20 minutes, but that was just silly; the official neighborhood temperature was just 99°.

When K&S left on Saturday, it felt like we were now done with visitors until late October and we could just relax. That’s true in a sense, but actually J’s going to Worldcon on Wednesday…

eve_prime

Return of the Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner. Queen’s Thief #6. I’ve only read this once before, and I had it mentally confused with a Penric book and wasn’t sure I’d even read it until I started, when I recognized our narrator. Pheris is the young heir of the scheming Baron Erondites; he’s physically disabled and his nurse has taught him that it’s best to present himself as mentally disabled too, so when he’s brought to the royal court he continues his habit of drooling and acting vacant. Eugenides, of course, sees right through it. Even when I was halfway through the book, though, I still kept expecting to return to the Penric-related plotline and was surprised that it was about war instead, although I recognized everything as I read it. Even though Pheris is appealing and interesting, the necessities of resolving the longer-term storyline made the book less engaging than some of the others.

eve_prime

The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain, by George Lakoff. I started rereading this book months ago, as it’s the book for the FrameLab book club, but I haven’t seen any new assigned readings since March so I went ahead and read the rest. I hope Dr. Lakoff is in good health! In this book he develops his idea that Republican politicians have been doing an excellent job of framing the understanding of politically charge concepts in ways favorable to their policy interests. Democrats and other progressives, on the other hand, have generally stuck with the model of “rational self-interest,” which makes sense when people are worried about the economy and don’t want inflation, etc., but which doesn’t make sense when people also care about their identities and values. He notes that conservative values tend to promote deference toward authority, whereas progressive values are focused on empathy, and that instead of framing their arguments in terms of dollars and cents, progressives should focus on fairness and care. Much of my own research for the past few years is an extension of Lakoff's ideas, so it's been good to refresh my memory.

eve_prime

Thick as Thieves, by Megan Whalen Turner. Queen’s Thief #5. The first four books of the series took place in three lands based on Byzantine Greece: Sounis, Eddis, and Attolia. This one, however, is almost entirely set in the land of their very powerful neighbor, the Medes. The king of Attolia has dispatched one of his most trusted men to bring back Kamet, one of the most powerful men in Mede, who also happens to be the slave of Nahuseresh, a man against whom the Attolian king has a serious grudge. Kamet doesn’t want to go, of course, until he learns that Nahuseresh is dead, and as his slave, Kamet is in for torture and probably death. The story follows the flight of Kamet and the Attolian man across Mede. Until near the end of the book, Kamet refers to this man as “the Attolian,” although as readers we suspect and then are sure that we know exactly who this man is – the fact that Kamet just calls him “the Attolian” is irritating at first and then we take it for granted. The developing relationship between the two of them is a great thing. As always, an excellent, excellent story, this time highlighted not by Greek-style myths but by Gilgamesh-style poetry.

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calypso72

August 2025

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Rapture of the Deep

Truth is Stranger than Fishin'

Reading

Another falling tree

Book completed

Anime annoyance

Book completed

Worldcon, day 5

Moss mysteries.

Worldcon, day 4

Friday Five: So Much Edition

Worldcon, day 3

Worldcon, day 2

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Worldcon, day 1

Book completed

Bye, maple-friend!

Hot times

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August 2025

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