Matthew's Journal

This book is subtitled "Feminist bicycle science fiction stories of transgender and nonbinary adventurers", and that's a pretty good summary of the contents. The stories are delightful, and capture some truths about the experience of riding a bike as well as trans & non-binary representation. They're fun stories, but also thought-provoking, and generally at least somewhat optimistic. I enjoyed them a lot.

I've recently been watching Shetland on iPlayer. It's a pretty good crime series set on Shetland. After a bit of a wait, I got Raven Black, the first of the books on which the series is based, from the library.

It's not the first novel to be adapted (they did Red Bones, the third book, first), so it's possible some of the changes relate to events that will happen later in book-canon, but I was quite surprised at how different the book and TV were. The main plot is quite similar (in terms of who killed whom and why), but there are changes even then (Magnus Bain's involvement in historic events, particularly), but there are number of quite significant changes to characters - Tosh doesn't appear at all, and book-Cassie is a young girl still living with her mother, whilst Perez is significantly less sympathetic (in particular around his opinions on Sandy). And the solution in the book seems quite rabbit-from-a-hat, even when I knew who the killer was in advance.

I am undecided if I want to try and read more of the books by Ann Cleeves, but it was certainly interesting to read Raven Black (and unusual for me to be coming to the book-canon second rather than first).

ETA: There's a short film Alison O'Donnell Remembers: Shetland where the actor who plays Tosh talks about how and why the character was developed for the TV adaptation.

Again, in reading order:

美食三品 (Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times), 宝树 / Baoshu. What if you could experience food as another eats it? Quite a nice story, but I found the biology hard to swallow...

The Sound of Children Screaming, Rachael K. Jones. An angry story about gun violence in schools.

The Mausoleum’s Children, Aliette de Bodard. A strange and well-sketched world, with some good twists.

How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub, P. Djèlí Clark. What could possibly go wrong? I'm afraid I found the plot here a bit too obvious.

Better Living Through Algorithms, Naomi Kritzer. I was expecting this to head for one of two obvious cliché endings (and thus to be annoying), but actually it went elsewhere and I thought it was pretty good.

Answerless Journey, Han Song (tr. Alex Woodend). Two people wake up on a spaceship without their memories; an interesting idea, but it needed some answers to actually be engaging.

This is a very strange film (and, I now learn, an adaptation of a 1992 novel, which takes a rather different perspective on some of the key events). There is a surreal steampunk-ish air to the world it is set in, and plenty of echos of Frankenstein, particularly in the idea that one can transplant a brain (and thus a personality) into another body. It's visually and musically striking.

Emma Stone's performance as Bella is the engine around which the film runs, and she is really good. Aside from the cringe moments, there are some laugh-out-loud funny moments; the other thing that stands out is the significant quantity of sex. It feels rather like Bella is discovering about herself and the world by having a lot of sex. And yet we mostly hear men talking about Bella and her behaviour and the sex she's having, and I worry that the liberation Bella finds is in no longer caring that she's being exploited by men. Also, pretty much everyone in the film is more or less terrible.

In order-of-reading:

The Year Without Sunshine, Naomi Kritzer. A story of a neighbourhood coming together to deal with the eponymous calamity; more optimistic than a lot of the things I've read recently, almost too much so.

One Man’s Treasure, Sarah Pinsker. Another story about exploitation; I liked the world-building and the plot.

On the Fox Roads, Nghi Vo. The Fox Roads may appear for you if you really need to run away from something. Here we have people running away from home, and maybe finding new ones.

Ivy, Angelica, Bay, C. L. Polk. Witchcraft, and other ways to protect your neighbourhood. A twisty tale, with plenty of heart. I think my favourite of these.

Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition, Gu Shi (tr. Emily Jin). A slightly confusingly-told story about the societal impact of being able to "cryosleep" for a few decades. I'm not sure the framing story actually helped here, and I found the writing a bit clunky, but there are interesting ideas.

I AM AI, Ai Jiang. Another corporate dystopia; unfortunately, I didn't really find the point of view character particularly compelling, so this fell rather flat for me.

In reading order:

Seeds of Mercury, Wang Jinkang (tr. Alex Woodend). This is a very human tragedy, and pretty depressing. I was struggling to maintain my suspension of disbelief at some of the tech, as well.

The Mimicking of Known Successes, Malka Older. I liked the steampunk setting of this, with humanity exiled to habitats ringing a gas giant. The characters were relatable and well described (though the early switch of narrator was a bit jarring), and the plot was nicely twisty.

Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet, He Xi (tr. Alex Woodend). This was let down for my by a really clunky translation (and poor layout); some interesting ideas, an at times slightly confusing plot (I lost the ordering of events a couple of times), and another rather bleak reflection on humanity.

Mammoths at the Gates, Nghi Vo. Another book in the Singing Hills Cycle, which is a setting I've come to very much enjoy. This is a story about grief, about stories, and about the very different ways people are remembered. It's very moving at times, and also has some lovely funny moments. I realise I've not read When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, and should probably fix that :)

Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher. A telling of Sleeping Beauty that wonders if there was good reason for the sleeper to be enchanted thus. I enjoyed the narrative voice (and unusual choice of narrator), and the sense of the otherness of fairy; and the shape of the story and its twists.

Rose/House, Arkady Martine. A nice mash-up of locked-room, haunted house, and noir, even if a little too self-referential in calling out its own genre clichés. I loved the setting and the growing sense of menace, but what is going to keep it off the top spot for me is the ending, which felt a little too ill-defined. Rather like this week's Dr Who episode, if you're going to build up a great mystery, then just leaving the viewer/reader guessing at the end can feel very unsatisfactory.

Wandering Earth II is on the Hugo shortlist this year. We'd not seen Wandering Earth, so decided to watch that first. Whilst this was probably necessary to get a chunk of what goes on in Wandering Earth II (which is in fact a prequel), I think it did cause us to start Wandering Earth II expecting the worst.

I didn't think much of Wandering Earth - it was visually very impressive, and tugged at the heart-strings, but key aspects of the plot just didn't make sense and were too implausible even for sci-fi.

Without getting into spoilers, the same can be said of the prequel; too much of the plot was based on engineering/science so bad as to disengage my suspension of disbelief. Again, it's visually stunning, and the emotional set-pieces hit home, but the plot just didn't work for me. I found the device of announcing "[time period] to [next crisis/key plot event]" a bit jarring, too. I'm afraid the final plot twist/reveal felt hollow too, although it is presumably the setup for the third film.

I've now read all of these (although I didn't write a review of Some Desperate Glory when I read it some time back), so time to vote.

1. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, Shannon Chakraborty
2. Witch King, Martha Wells
3. Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh
4. Translation State, Ann Leckie
5. The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera
6. Starter Villain, John Scalzi

I'm hoping the voter packet will be out soon, as otherwise tracking down all the short fiction will become tedious...