774. Firefox (1983) — Torture Cinema #140
https://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/sand-f-774-firefox/SandF_774_Firefox.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSInept spies, bad pilots, and Russians, oh my! Shaun Duke, Paul Weimer, and Becca Evans join forces to discuss the 1982’s Firefox! Together, they explore the film’s literary roots, why Clint Eastwood talks to chairs, what it really means to be a good pilot (bad movie), the Cold War, and much more! Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy the episode!
773. Joma West (a.k.a. The Fusion Straddler) — Face and Twice Lived
https://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/sand-f-773-joma-west/SandF_773_JomaWest.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSJumping worlds, snarky teens, and human nature, oh my! Shaun Duke and Daniel Haeusser are joined by Joma West to discuss her novels Face and Twice Lived, out now where book objects can be found. Together, they tackle West’s approach to narrative, writing perspectives different from our own, the complexities of parenthood, straddling genres, and much more. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy the episode!
Into the Wardrobe: READY FOR BLASTOFF! (1990) by Rick North
Ready for Blastoff! is the second entry in “The Young Astronauts” series, a collection of six middle-grade books published in 1990–1991 and “presented by Jack Anderson,” a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist and investigative reporter who passed away in 2005. The series is linked to the Young Astronaut Council, Inc., which still exists, providing school enrichment through a “STEM-based space-themed, pre-afterschool television show.” The origin of the Young Astronaut program lies in an oval office meeting between Anderson and then President Reagan in 1984. Anderson noted: “I’ve noticed two things about my grandchildren. They love space. They were excited about space. They hated school.” With a view on declining US student math and science scores, Reagan quickly adapted the idea into a political reality that developed into an international program of conferences, school chapter activities, and this series of stories published by Zebra books. I only found this second volume in the thrift shop, so I haven’t read the first book, but that didn’t really create any difficulty with getting into this one. It begins with a prologue where a UN/NASA international team of seven sixteen-year-old astronauts blasts off from Earth: destination Mars. The prologue introduces each of the team members, their personalities, and the struggles that they have gotten through to reach this momentous occasion. The team consists of Nathan Long (team leader), Karl Muller, Sergei Chuvakin, Alice Thorne, Noemi Velazquez, Genshiro Akamasu, and Lanie Rizzo, who harbors a secret. The prologue also sets up one of the novel’s antagonists, Suki, the leader of another team that will soon follow Long’s team to Mars. The twenty-one short chapters of the novel then flashback in time to show the challenges the team successfully faces leading up to their departure from Earth. These include both physical and mental obstacles, from nausea in zero-G simulations to imposter syndrome. As the characters rise to meet these challenges and trust one another to come together, the story demonstrates to readers qualities of perseverance and teamwork. The diversity of the characters is both a strength and weakness in terms of how well issues are handled, particularly from a present-day perspective. One thing covered well is the issue of socioeconomic privilege, though it’s not of course directly called that in a book from the 1990s. What the novel does less well from a perspective of today is the racial, ethnic, or gender diversity, which definitely comes across as being presented in typical fashion for the era: the diversity is there, but it’s still rather stereotypical and limited. For instance, the Japanese teen loves Godzilla, and the affluent girl loves fashion and shopping. While Nathan Long exists as a typical clean-cut, male leader, he demonstrates support and care, without domineering, bias, or aggressiveness. The name “Rick North” is a house pseudonym used for the Young Astronaut series, and this particular novel is written by John Peel, a prolific author of SF media tie-in franchise novels (from Star Trek to Dr. Who) who might be familiar to many readers out there. In all, Peel does a great job with Ready for Blastoff!, balancing plot and character development well within the book’s short length. He also includes several situations that show the characters using their minds and compassion to overcome mishaps or dangers. Aside from the competitive antagonism the team receives from Suki, most of the story deals with the team members having to deal with training while under the scrutiny of a hostile media writer and her photographer/cameraman. From this one volume of the series, at least, I’m reminded of Mary Robinette Kowal’s recent “Lady Astronaut” series. The two series share a lot in common in terms of themes, albeit Kowal’s for a more adult audience (while still readable by YA). I imagine that the “Young Astronaut” series would have been effective for getting young readers at the time more interested in STEM and space, at least those with nerd proclivities. I’m not sure it would have the same effect on middle grade readers today, though I could see this series being modernized and brought back, for instance through the involvement of an Abigail Harrison (Astronaut Abby) type STEM communication personality.
772. Microbiology with Daniel Haeusser, the Scientist
https://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/sand-f-772-microbiology-with-daniel/SandF_772_MicrobiologyWithDaniel.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSPhages, microbes, and scientific conundrums, oh my! Shaun Duke turns the tables on Daniel Haeusser to ask a metric ton of questions about microbiology. Why? Because Daniel is one of those legit scientists. Join us for a wide ranging and utterly wild conversation about bacteria, viruses, micro-whatsits, and speculative wonders! Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy the episode!
Liberty’s Daughter and Thoughts on Worker Bees
Content Warnings: Plot spoilers (after a further warning) for Liberty’s Daughter by Naomi Kritzer and A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge, and exploitation discussion. Continuing my 2024 Hugo Awards Finalists reading, I gobbled up Liberty’s Daughter by Naomi Kritzer in one sitting. This was my first book in the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book category, so I can’t rank it yet, but I certainly found it age-appropriate, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Some of those thoughts relate to other books, and some relate to current topics. In Liberty’s Daughter, Beck Garrison lives a fairly privileged life on a “seastead” where people have connected floating platforms and actual ships to form a network of communities independent of normal, landlocked countries. All of them are fairly libertarian, and one site recognizes no laws at all. That hasn’t been a problem for Beck before the beginning of this book, because she’s the daughter of an important man. However, when she starts helping a debt slave to track down a missing sister, she stumbles into trouble. With the help of a friend and various other people, she exposes some horrible things that have been happening out of public view. Her moral stands not only have strongly negative personal consequences, at least in the short term, but roil her entire society. I like Beck a lot more than some YA protagonists I’ve encountered. Her father calls her stubborn and selfish, but really, she’s smart, active, persistent, and brave. She’s naive at first, but knows a lot about how her society works, on the surface at least, and how to persuade people to do things and cooperate with each other. She can be too impulsive for her own safety, but partly that’s because she believes in doing what’s right and helping other people. Some people may think that things work out a little too easily for her, but to me, it’s not too surprising that her natural leadership, abilities to figure things out and get things done, and good heart are recognized by others. And anyway, things don’t go her way all the time. Liking Beck is a large part of why I like this book, but I also like how social issues are explored. I’d mentioned a debt slave. Most of the grunt labor in this collective is done by “bond workers” who are sort of a combination of indentured servants and company-store workers, usually going gradually deeper in debt rather than working their way out, and health issues can make that decline a lot sharper and faster. Revelations about what happened to the missing sister, who’s a bond worker herself, lead to some collective actions. MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW! Beck helps to avert a violent reaction from the bosses, but just as things seem to be calming down, a wave of sickness with symptoms of obsessive behavior sweeps over the seastead. Eventually, Beck and her allies discover that the epidemic is an engineered virus that got out of control – a virus that was supposed to turn discontented bond slaves into happy workers. But the so-called “worker-bee” virus works TOO well in this respect, even from the view of the bosses; as it brings unanticipated side effects, the ensuing societal breakdown leads to more illnesses and other problems. This reminded me strongly of the Focused workers in A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge. That’s a really great book where a whole lot is going on, but the relevant bit is that one faction uses a technology-activated virus to attack enemies or turn some of their own people into brilliant super-specialists who only care about their projects, so they can make even more scientific advances (and are thus highly unlikely to examine society and their place in it). Some workers manage to realize this and think past their induced condition, and even to start thinking about rebellion, but usually they get caught and are reset to “happy” worker-bee status by an MRI-like procedure. The streaming series Severance (2022) approaches this from a slightly different angle. I haven’t watched it, since I don’t have Apple TV+, but I understand that workers at a fictional company agree to a procedure that severs their work memories and personal memories, which supposedly helps them concentrate more efficiently at work. Naturally, this leads to exploitation. The show won critical acclaim and a lot of buzz, and a second season is planned. When I was seeing ads for that show, I was reminded of a horrific series of advertisements some years ago where people had TVs/computer monitors instead of heads (like Prince Robot’s people in Saga), so you could see that even when they were off work, going about their daily lives, playing tennis or whatever, they were still thinking about work. This was supposed to show how dedicated the company’s employees were to serving the viewers, the implied customers, but to me and some friends, it exemplified expectations of depersonalization and exploitation of workers. It seems that a growing number of science fiction creatives are thinking about this trend. In the past, fears have been expressed of work-focused robots replacing humans (or human worker classes being bred and later genetically designed, from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to C.J. Cherryh’s Cyteen and beyond); more recently, the trend in fiction has been of taking humans themselves and just cutting out the parts that don’t directly serve capitalism, making individual lives far less rich and rewarding, and damaging the creativity, diverse thinking, and even the problem-solving skills of all humanity. These days, of course, that implied desirability of always concentrating on work is far closer to reality. Even without worker-bee drugs or Focused/Severance-type modifications, increasing numbers of jobs include the expectation that employees will be available 24/7 by text and email, and on-call for just-in-time scheduling even for ordinary, non-emergency shift work. Other societal trends are also keep people’s minds mostly on work and away from volunteerism (numbers are way down) and activism. Whether that’s more or less
Book Review: Lost Ark Dreaming, by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
I had forgotten the publisher’s description of Lost Ark Dreaming, by Suyi Davies Okungbowa, by the time it surfaced atop my to-be-read pile. So I went in cold, and it turned out that the water was fine! This is a gripping novella that starts fast and keeps moving with swift assurance, amid brief interludes and “historical excerpts” that give more context to the action, while deftly building characters whose revealed motivations make even some surprising decisions feel natural. I enjoyed it quite a lot. Suyi Davies Okungbowa is a rising star in speculative fiction, a Nommo Award winner who has appeared twice before on Skiffy and Fanty’s website. Tonya Moore interviewed him about his work in general and specifically his The Nameless Republic trilogy. Paul Weimer’s review of the first two books in that series praised the immersive worldbuilding and said, “the two books really feel like to me a study and critique of decaying imperial power, and what happens when that eroding power slips…” Power is a major focus in this novella, too, although it’s unrelated to his previous books. Tiers of power are given physical reality, as the Uppers, Midders, and Lowers live in their respective floors of offshore towers after the seas rose and drowned Lagos, Nigeria, and surrounding coastal areas. The higher Up that one lives, the more authority, light, fresh air, and space one has; Midders keep things running and try to keep themselves from falling in status; and Lowers work and scramble to survive, down in the dark, dank floors below sea level. This novella starts off feeling like a combination of climate fiction and science fiction, although faith and fantasy elements also make themselves known eventually. Although most of the viewpoint characters (a Midder, an Upper, and a Lower) start out trying to focus on the here-and-now, and submerging past traumas (the Upper has done this so successfully that the reader sees only his ambitions throughout much of the book), events force them to confront their memories and longings for connection with other people, with the environment, and with the Unknown. Lost Ark Dreaming starts with Yekini rushing to get to work, but she hardly has time to start stressing out about the effects of lateness on her career as an analyst in civil service before she’s sent on her first solo field assignment—as a punishment? Unfortunately, it’s a trip to the Undersea levels; more unfortunately, she has to shepherd an Upper official, Ngozi, there, protecting him while trying to make him feel sufficiently deferred to; even more unfortunately, when a Lowers-level head of safety, Tuoyo, leads them to the site of a breach that she’d already patched, Yekini discovers indications of an intruder. Things rapidly spin out of all their control to go from bad to worse. Some readers may be annoyed that the novella is slightly open-ended, with no sure societal resolution to the climactic events of the finale. But the protagonists all make important decisions, including some self-sacrifices aimed at helping their community. To me, this has a hopeful ending, and I can say I am very well satisfied with the book. Along with the strong plot and characterization, the language craft in this book is worth mentioning. The Interludes are poetically dreamy, and some of the “historical excerpts” are intentionally distant and formal, but most of the prose is vivid and active. Descriptions put the reader right there: “The Lowers smelled like a damp cloth that had been locked in a steel box for years… the air weighed a ton, and Yekini’s lungs worked hard to draw it in. Her chest felt waterlogged, like a bad cough brewing.” A lot of the worldbuilding here is concrete, but I also love what the author can do with just one sentence: “Ensconced within the [glass] pendant was a flash of color, the only valuable part of the necklace—a small remnant of an aged, wrinkled orange peel.” That sets the reader imagining what kind of ruined world makes a relic like that so valuable. I love the little details like that. Finally, I’ll also mention that some elements of African culture that are woven throughout Lost Ark Dreaming enhanced my enjoyment of it—I say African rather than Yoruban, although that language is specifically mentioned, because refugees of various backgrounds have made their way to the towers, and some elements of religion, for example, have evolved to fit current circumstances. These elements strongly affect some characters’ motivations and decisions. There are further things I’d like to say about works that this novella is clearly in conversation with, but that would give away major spoilers, so I’ll stop here. Just know that Lost Ark Dreaming has my strong recommendation. Lost Ark Dreaming’s expected release date is May 21, so there’s still a short time to give it some extra love by pre-ordering it. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250890757/lostarkdreaming Content warnings: Blood, past traumas, threatened violence, offscreen mass deaths, bad air and filth, class oppression. Comparisons: Per the publisher’s description, “The brutally engineered class divisions of Snowpiercer meets Rivers Solomon’s The Deep …” Disclaimer: I received a free eARC of this novella for review purposes.
