Hugo 2017 Fancast

I completed my review of the fan-cast nominees a few weeks back.

From my perspective, a good podcast will include the following;  good audio quality, news/information, an entertaining format, and engaging hosts.  With respect to hosts, I appreciate it when hosts know how to share the microphone in a conversation as well as know how to get out of their lane with respect to understanding other perspectives.  An additional consideration for the Hugos is whether or not I would recommend a podcast to someone else even if it might not be in my wheelhouse.  I also evaluated podcasts against my current list of regular podcast subscriptions.

1.  Tea and Jeopardy

I'm a fan.  They are on my list of regularly experience podcasts.  I donate via Patreon.  Emma and Peter Newman provide a great podcast.

For those that haven't listened to their podcast, they combine radio theater with an interview podcast.  Peter Newman portrays Emma's butler, Latimer.  Latimer locates unusual and frequently perilous locations for Emma and her guests to take tea.  Emma hosts her guests in a manner reflective to my American ears as that of a proper British lady.

She and her guests talk about books and writing and publishing and other oddments.  At the end of the show, there is another bit of radio theater as the guests encounter a peril uniquely associated with the locale for the tea lair and/or the guest in question.

It is just simply great fun, wonderfully written (where writing is required), and most informative.  The hiccups are few.

I have a tough time believing that any of the other nominees will be able to knock the Newmans out of first place on my ballot, but we shall see. (Yup!  I was right!)

2.  Coode Street Podcast

I listened to Episodes #286 & #292.

This is a fairly straightforward news and interview format.  The hosts shared the microphone quite well.  When they had guests, they asked relevant questions and then got out of the way to let the guests speak.

Those episodes were good enough for me to consider adding it to my regular list of podcasts.

One aspect of their program that I enjoyed was that it was conducted with a level of maturity.  One episode included Canadian author Jo Walton.  There was a discussion about preferential treatment of authors and their books.

Ms. Walton quite openly acknowledged that publishers, reviewers, and readers choose to focus their attention on a smaller range of the genre.  She indicated that she will frequently discover rare gems from prior years that were ignored when they were first published in favor of other works.

It was a refreshing exchange that acknowledged the reality of publishing and media promotion.  It is quite possible for Author X to write something superior to the work of Authors A, B, and C despite the publishing/media/fandom desire to promote Authors A, B, and C for any of a number of reasons.

3. Rageaholic

For the purposes of consideration for the Hugos, I limited my review to episodes that are limited to SF/F commentary.  The host is clearly pro-Trump.  I elected not to let that bleed over into my review.

I listened to the following episodes.  They covered three video games and one comic series.

• The Rageaholic: Doom
• Razor vs Comics: NIGHTWING Rebirth #1-5
• Battlefield 1 - The Rageaholic
• Mechwarrior 5: For Real, This Time! (A rant)

As with last year, I found the persona being presented to be over-the-top entertainment.  I wouldn't want a strict diet of this stuff, but it is entertaining in manageable doses.

What comes through all of the rapid-fire delivery of invective is a central concern for properties that provide a satisfying experience.  For video games, then need to provide an engaging experience within the respective sub-genres.  The host appears to have enough playing experience within enough titles to be able to offer informed opinions about what works to provide a reasonable gaming experience.

There is also the basic subtext that he believes gaming journalism is placing non-gaming factors ahead of game playability factors when assessing the relative merits of a given title.  Welcome to 2017.

His thoughts on various iterations of Nightwing were also interesting.  I followed that series for a while a decade or so ago.  It was pretty standard fare, so I stopped.  But it looks like there was one period that I might want to go back and review.  Specifically, the Nightwing/Huntress series written by Devin Grayson.

4.  No Award

5. Galactic Suburbia

After attempting to listen to a Galactic Suburbia debacle last year, I wasn't exactly keen on listening to them this year.  I ended up listening to Episode #148 (Ghostbusters Review).

On a positive note, the podcast was less of a hot mess than the episode I sampled last year.  The participants were better able to "share the mic".  A modest negative was that their commentary seemed to lean too frequently on viewing Ghostbusters (2016) via a feminist lens rather than simply relating the story elements that they found engaging.  That is an important perspective.  It isn't the only one worthy of their thoughts.

The moment that drove this podcast below No Award was when they started to suggest that they would consider alternative opinions once they purged stalking and threats of violence from that range of perspectives.  That is (or should be) a no-brainer.  But then they followed it up with a quick assertion that they wouldn't consider other perspectives anyway.

Exclusionary and eliminationist rhetoric isn't deserving of any reward.

I do have to give them credit as one of the co-hosts didn't really enjoy Ghostbusters (2016).  Her reasons dovetailed with others that I have heard/read.

6.  Fan Girl Happy Hour

I listened to Episodes #32 (No Fucks 2016) and #42 (2016 Hugo nominations announcement)

In episode 32, the hosts spent too much time talking about their other blogs/commentary projects.  So they consumed a significant amount of time on one commentary project talking about their other commentary projects.  Once they finally moved beyond talking about their opinions about their other opinions, the podcast became pretty informative and engaging.

Episode #42 was a reaction to the nominations for last year.  It amounted to a half hour's worth of guttural sounds of exasperation and a half hour's worth of "I don't understand".  Both of which are fine reactions, but not necessarily informative nor entertaining.

7.  Ditch Diggers

I listened to episodes #29 and #33.  Two people talking together.  Occasionally informative, but not terribly entertaining.  Presumptuous of the value of their opinions.  And I say that while agreeing with quite a few things that they said about people taking advantage of freelance writers by offering "exposure" or "beer money" in lieu of, you know, paying people based on the value of their work.

In one of the episodes, Mur announced that Netflix had announced that they were developing one of her properties.  She then went on a rant about the TV and film industries "white washing" properties.  A couple of her secondary characters are gay.  Mur was concerned that Netflix might change her work to make it more palatable to a wider audience.

Netflix is the same network that presents Sense8 that includes some pretty graphic scenes between gay and lesbian characters.  While I share the concern about the displacement of authentic/original characters, Nexflix has produced a number of Marvel properties that emphasize the use of characters as originally created.  Netflix isn't exactly a place where "whitewashing" is not a valid concern.

It just came off as a knee-jerk perspective as opposed to a reasonable concern based on the history of the production company.

While that seems like I'm teeing off on Mur, she was really the more engaging of the two hosts.  Her co-host, Matt, was pretty self-absorbed.  I kept picturing being stuck at a party with him and inevitably found that I would be seeking the quickest way out of the conversation as I could reasonably find.

I've listened to other SFF author based podcasts that offer similar advice.  Those authors have a better format, better sense of perspective, demonstrate interest outside of themselves, and generally are more engaging in their presentation.

So What Is Better??

In addition to Tea and Jeopardy, I also nominated Sincast, Sarcastic Voyage, The Post Atomic Horror Podcast, and The Horror Show with Brian Keene.  All of those other four podcasts are (admittedly subjectively) better than those that I put below No Award.  Sincast and PAH utilize a combination of entertainment and information that is comparable with Tea and Jeopardy.  The Horror Show uses a straight news/interview format.  The entire range of regular hosts of The Horror Show are more engaging and entertaining than the shows that I put below No Award.  The Sarcastic Voyage is a straight up bit of radio theater based on fantasy writing.

All of them deserve to have sufficient attention from fandom to be discussed as contenders for the Hugo awards.  They would (or should) easily beat out those that I put below No Award.

AMERICA SENT HER SONS

AMERICA SENT HER SONS.

England is a cup of tea.
France a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short, squat olive tree.
America is her sons.

Brazil is football on the sand
Argentina, Maradona’s hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is her sons.

Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a Kangaroo.
America is her sons.

Japan is a thermal spring/
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh there are many lovely things,
Things of note to make one’s heart sing,
But America loves her sons above all these.

When others needed them,
America sent her sons
To fight, to bleed, to die
To settle the discontent of European kings
And force peace to reign again.

When evil arose most cruelly,
Demanding racial purity,
America sent her sons,
Black brown, white and yellow,
To stand against Siegrunen,
Totenkopfs, Hammers and Sickles.

She watched her sons bleed anew
On foreign sands in faraway lands
Places named Omaha, Utah,
Carentan, Bastogne and Arnhem.
Saipan, Tinian, Dong Ha,
Fallujah, Ramadi, and Helmand.

For the sake of millions they never met
They gave their lives.
Red blood poured out freely
To pay a high price for liberty;
With only fields of white crosses
To mark their passing.

You may criticize America her faults,
Her arrogance, her swagger
Her braggadocious bravado,
Her unrelenting roughshod manners.
But remember this most of all-
In numbers few could ever hope to match,
Time and again,
America will always give her sons,
To pay the butcher’s bill.

by Author and US Marine Corporal
Jonathan LaForce

Posted with permission of the author.

Review: The Emperor's Blades

The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I received a free set of all three volumes of this series from The Grim Tidings Podcast. I'm a huge fan of the podcast.

A brief review....

The world building is fantastic. Three siblings enter a new phase of life when their father, the Emperor, is murdered. One brother has been sent to live with a group of months. He was to learn their ways of meditation and perception about the world. Why? It isn't exactly clear until later on.

His sister has never been eligible to inherit the throne. Yet she was the one who studied everything her father did. Of the three, she is the one that knows the most about how the empire functions.

Their brother was sent off to serve in an elite military unit. Each combat detail flys around strapped to the legs of a giant raptor. (Brian Stavely rescued me from another author that had totally lost me on the concept of people riding below the body of a bird. Congrats, Brian!)

The murder of the Emperor opens up each of them to various elements of a coup intended to seize control of the empire. They are geographically separated, so each begins to do what they can to find the murderer(s) and to rescue the empire from chaos.

This is a fine first book in a series.

Books 2&3 were a little bit of a letdown. They both will get 4 star ratings from me. While both were well written, they just failed to take full advantage of the setup that was done in this book.

View all my reviews

Fun With Numbers - Hugo Version

A discussion over at File 770 has recently included a bit of statistical analysis.  My statistics background is pretty mediocre.  And it has been a while since I've had to actively use any of the four years of calculus that I took in college.

So I cheated and used MSExcel.  The question I raised was how has Hugo attendance changed in relation to the recent Sad Puppies campaigns.

My point is illustrated thusly:

The Orange line includes all paid membership from Worldcon 36 up through and including Worldcon 71.  The Blue line has the same starting point and runs up through Worldcon 75.  A linear regression trend line has been added for both.  I extended the trendlines for illustration purposes.

I think it is clear that the trend through Worldcon 71 was running slightly negative.  It is now running slightly positive.

The raw data comes from JJ's compiliation.

I disagree with nominating works that one has not read/viewed/heard.  So the point is not an endorsement of any of the SP tactics.  The ends do not justify the means.

For anyone interested in the trend line data, this is what was spit out of Excel.

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If we compare a straight linear regression of the data from WC38-71 and from WC38-75, we see a shift from a negative trend denoted by a slope (m) of -11.2 to a positive trend (+44.4)

WC38-71
y = -11.201x + 5875.9   R² = 0.0045
WC38-75
y = 42.426x + 5221.6   R² = 0.0541

Making the same comparison over a longer time frame (WC28-71 and WC28-75) we see a similar upward/positive trend.

WC28-71
y = 70.864x + 3398.5   R² = 0.1989
WC28-75
y = 93.776x + 3044.8   R² = 0.3105

Hugo Awards - Novel - 2017

I concluded my reading of the novel category for this year's Hugo awards some time ago.  I recorded my thoughts about each book as it was read in this space.  Like others, my ballot changed a bit over time.  The following are my thoughts on this year's nominees.

I have tried to provide a longer narrative on each book after concluding my reading, but you may still encounter some very brief comments such as "a good read" that really isn't very descriptive.  I hope you can forgive the artifacts of my initial impressions.

All the Birds in the Sky

This book featured two very different characters who nonetheless found a great deal of common ground.  And then they lost it.

The boy was a technology geek back in school.  He was an outcast from school.

The girl was some sort of witch/magician.  She was once able to perform actual magic.  She was also an outcast.

Despite the obvious differences in their characters, they were completely connected on an emotional level.  Until that fateful day when they opened up enough to one another that they scared each other.  Then they closed down and went their separate ways.

Skip forward a couple decades and they are both coming into their complete capabilities respectively.  He is an inventor, developer, and technologist capable of achieving technological acts of magic.  She is a powerful witch capable of changing the world.

Yet they both retain doubts and fears about their capabilities as well as about those that they follow/work for.  The technologists want to save the world via technology that the world doesn't want them to use.  The witches/wizards want to save the world by shutting down the technology.  The two sides are diametrically opposed and do absolutely nothing to talk with each other about their concerns and aspirations.

As adults, our two protagonists get back together and learn to trust one another.  It isn't easy, but they find a way to value one another.  They learn the hard way the value of truly listening one each other's concerns.

I've been watching the world go pear shaped for a few decades.  The continuing trend is for people to fail to listen to one another.  Far too frequently, we presume the worst intentions and meanings from the words spoken by those with whom we disagree.

This book suggests listening.  I believe that message is worth repeating.  While world-building, character/reader engagement, and plot/storytelling were on par with Obelisk Gate, that central theme pushed this book into first place on my ballot.

The Obelisk Gate

As indicated above, the difference in the quality of writing between Obelisk Gate and All the Birds in the Sky was small.  One might say infinitesimal, in my opinion.

There were some problematic elements of the story.  One of the larger ones was the suspension of markets and trading due to the onset of this "fifth season".  People are trapped underground with limited resources.  The very best method for ensuring the most efficient and just use of those resources is to involve some sort of economic free trade system.  Instead, people are detailed to certain tasks by each villages leaders.

The characters were thoroughly engaging.  The unfolding world of the series continued to be interesting.

I think what got me most was the author's approach to several issues where I was thinking that in one circumstance I agreed, but in a different circumstance, I disagreed.  It was a book that kept me thinking without hammering on a rhetorical bell.

Now if we could just get Ms. Jemisin a history book so she could learn more about the shortfalls of socialism.  Or perhaps a Venezuelan newspaper?


A Closed & Common Orbit

A great read.  A little heavy handed on the virtue signaling.  A bit anti-science when it comes to the probability/utility of requiring more than 2 genders for procreation.  Very engaging characters.  Hard to put down.  The end was emotionally satisfying, but it felt like a forced happy ending.

There were a couple of very interesting topics that were addressed within the book.  In particular, one such topic was the possibility of an alien lifeform that shifts genders throughout its life.  I thought it was handled pretty well.

The flip side of that was the use of non-cis gendered pronouns relative to the child's game that occurs early on in the book.  That entire section seemed to smack of a saccharine "I know this, therefore, I'm a good person" vibe.

What worked better for me was the AI that ended up being stuck in a mechanical/android body and not being able to deal with the odd feeling that it didn't quite fit.  There are many different ways of translating that emotion.  The author left that aspect open enough so that readers could bring themselves into the story.

The short summary;  read it all, largely enjoyed it, just not as good as the other two.

No Award

Ninefox Gambit

The first book I finished was Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee.  My short take is this was a serviceable tale.  Enjoyable but not really work that is at the top of the field.  There was no real opportunity to develop an emotional connection with the main character, Cheris.  I was starting to develop an interest in Jedao by the end of the book.

Thematically, the book seems to embrace the idea that a change in perspective can shift power.  That can be an interesting theme.

In this case, the book uses mathematics as the mechanism for changing the religion that is the basis for power.  Mathematics changes the calendar which in turn changes their religion/social structure/government.  Mathematics in the form of physical geometry is also a tool used for combat.  If you line people up in a certain formation, then the formation has more or less useful weapons and/or defenses.

I had one constant thought while reading this book.  "So if their religion is altered by math, then what happens when they find out that someone forgot to carry the two?"

Mathematics doesn't work that way.  Incorrectly calculating your expected fuel efficiency on a road trip will not change the distance you travel before running out of gas.

The entire math/calendar/socio-political structure element had me thinking about the influence of delusions on characters.  If I wanted to read about how delusional characters impact a fictional world, I would have reached for Michael R. Fletcher's work long before I would have reached for this.

A couple of other features came to mind in the days after I moved on.

Military units were disbanded and "processed" after a successful battle.  My impression was that the processing involved some sort of memory alteration/erasure.  The simple act of disbanding a successful unit is counterproductive if the objective is to allow a unit to progress based on past experiences.  It undermines esprit de corps.

The "processing" was to have included their company commander.  The story included generals that had risen in the ranks.  How can a general develop memories/historical experiences upon which to base future actions if they cannot retain those lessons learned as a small unit commander?

The second feature of the book is that there didn't seem to be any better alternatives to the government/social structure that already existed.  That structure seemed to be very controlling and limiting.

This may well be a good book at the start of a great series.  As a stand alone novel, it just isn't at the top of the field.  I gave it 4 Stars on Goodreads.

Death's End

Did not finish.  As the book starts off at the fall of the Byzantine empire and then jumped to a future China, I wasn't really sure where the story was going.  But I found the characters in Byzantium engaging so that I gave it a good chance after the jump to China.

The primary character after the jump to China was interesting.  I was curious as to what the author had in mind.

Unfortunately, the rest of the characters were cardboard cut-outs.  I made it almost a quarter the way through when the one character I cared about died, the other protagonist did as she was told by the cigar smoking (and one presumes mustache twirling) antagonist executed an attack on an alien species that used an approach first broached by Vernor Vinge over 20 years ago.

And that attack failed to leave the solar system due to a mechanical failure.  So the first section of the book was pointless and there wasn't anything new within the story thus far.

Which is where I checked out.

Too Like The Lightning

Did not finish.  Not worth my time.  I put it down....enthusiastically!  It read like an indoctrination session where "big ideas" were presented without having logically thought them through to their conclusion.  There were far too many anti-science elements.

File770 denizen Standback had a review that I cannot quickly locate in which they pointed out that the use of ubiquitous and high-speed air cars allowed people to form living structures the superseded local national governments.  This was viewed as fostering human progress as the idea of national governments was considered counterproductive from the view point of the book.

Ironically, humanity already has experienced a technology that allowed individuals to extricate themselves from problematic localities, live in one remote location, and work in another.  It is called "the automobile".

In the American experience, people leaving problematic cities to live in suburbia were (and still are) called racists.  They are criticized for removing their talent and expertise from urban areas.  As we all know, what those urban governments really wanted was control of the wealth generated by that talent and expertise.

Why shouldn't we have a similarly negative view of this new group who propose to exempt themselves from the vagaries of their local neighbors?

The book wanders into anti-science territory by establishing a larger society where gender signaling is reduced to near nothing.  While this sentiment will not buy me any new friends, the fact is that gender is not a social/cultural construct.  Society/culture develop gender patterns as a result of biology and genetics.  Humanity has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years.  Our responses (sexual and otherwise) have been refined in that temporal crucible.

Now those social/cultural responses can certainly get weird.  Consider the practice of using bands of steel to elongate someone's neck to make them more "beautiful" - and easier to kill if they piss you off.  How the hell did any segment of human society come up with that arrangement?  So I am decidedly not defending any specific current iteration of society/culture.

I am suggesting that we cannot alter human responses that have been developed over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution over the course of a couple of decades.  Or even over the course of a thousand years or so as is suggested in the book.  That is particularly true when that change would run counter to the postive human responses are responsible for the propagation of our species.

At one point early in the book, a woman commits the rare act of appearing and acting to maximize her feminine qualities to get men to behave in a manner closer to her desires.  Men like women enough to alter their behavior.  Who knew!  The evolutionary process has made this a desirable feature in human interaction, thus our cultures generally reflect that desirability.

In a further run of anti-science in the book, the viability of the "hives" of human society are maintained by evaluating and balancing the "popularity" that is unattributed to any meaningful evaluation of the social/cultural/governmental conditions of each political faction or "hive".  Utter nonsense.

People do not immigrate to the United States (or every other western government) because the US (or those other western nations) is (are) "popular".  They come here because we have established societies that encourage individual economic and expressive freedom.  Those freedoms translate into the ability of the individual to provide for their families to the best of their ability while reasonably unhindered by their neighbors.

Again, Venezuelan references seem to be most apropos.

Now that I've ranted on these plot elements, here is the biggest problem with the book.  It kept interrupting interesting story lines and interesting characters with tedious demi-diatribes against most every positive feature of our modern society; to include the utility of national borders.

In an interesting twist is that I found the author's blog and was immediately interested in one of her more collegiately oriented pieces.  Time permitting, I would be most willing to read more of her academic work.

This book?  Not so much.

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Alternatives?  My enthusiasm for Sebastien de Castell's Greatcoats series is well documented.  The third installment of that series dropped in 2016.  The fourth installment of Emma Newman's A Little Knowledge also dropped last year.  Both were, in my subjective opinion, superior to the books that I put below No Award.

J.R.R. Tolkien Got Many Things Correct, And Many Others Wrong

I originally wrote this back in 2002 on my now defunct Dain Bramage blog that was hosted elsewhere.  I've thought about re-posting it, and a recent discussion over on File770 makes this a good time for re-posting.  Enjoy!

---------------------------

Just this past Christmas, I received a copy of "The Lord of the Rings", "The Silmarillion", and "The Hobbit". J.R.R. Tolkien's series has always held an attraction for me. His writing borders on being magical.

The difference now is that it has been roughly 20 years since I first read his works. With a bit of experience under my belt, the series takes on new meanings. Here are some things that came to mind while reading his books.

J.R.R. Tolkien got so much right.

First of all, I find it ironic that this book should have become first popular in the 60's. One of the major themes of the book is the ability of power to corrupt. Frodo travels far and wide in his quest to dispose of the One Ring. The Ring will grant whoever wears it the power to essentially rule the world.

Frodo has the wisdom to discern between who would do evil with such power and who (he thinks) would do good. This is good for us as he is immediately assailed by those that would do evil (evildoers??) and if he had just turned the durned thing over, we would have a mighty short read indeed.

Consider all who are offered the ring.

Gandolf -- who is essentially immortal, to begin with as well as being a powerful wizard on the side of "good". He rejects the ring several times and comments as well on the burden of temptation.

Elrond -- who likewise recognizes that keeping and not using the Ring simply guarantees that Sauron would win it back someday. He also recognizes that using the Ring would inevitably cause him to either turn to evil or be consumed by the Ring.

Strider/Aragorn -- who in the end is not only proven to be brave and honest but a wise and powerful ruler as well. Strider rejects the Ring as being too great a responsibility for him to bear.

Galadriel -- who is pretty powerful in her own right and is demonstrated to be a very decent person, judges that she lacks the ability to master such power.

Then there is the case of Boromir and his father. Each feels that possession of the ring is within his ability to control. They have a certain unspoken lust for power. Boromir's father, Steward of Gondor in the stead of the missing line of kings, goes so far as to state his opposition to the returning king. He isn't inclined to relinquish power to some unproven upstart. How might things have worked out if HE had obtained the ring?

We also have the case of Sauron and Sarumon. Two who wanted to possess the Ring for their own purposes. One was just plain evil and the other thought his evil was good for other people. Let the world be ordered by the wizards and only good would come of it, or so Saruman thought. Sure, only the "best and the brightest" should have power and they will only do good.

As if those morality plays were not enough, we have the scenes of the hobbits returning to the Shire and finding that someone has claimed that realm for his own. Using big men to rough up any protestors, Lotho has set up whole lists of rules that aren't too be broken. He has set the men to collecting large portions of the local crops to be "shared". Of course, the sharing just means that men in his service have lots to eat while others go hungry.

Lotho also sets about seizing people's property, tearing it down, and essentially "remodeling" the countryside to meet his own needs. The new mill that spews waste into the river is his little piece of handiwork.

Just like any other government, Lotho takes what he desires, sets up poisonous works where he wants and cares little about who gets hurt.

The prosperity of the Shire that came from their previous freedom was destroyed by regulation and taxation. That prosperity was only recovered after Frodo reduced "the Sherriffs to their proper functions and numbers."

As I said at the start, I find it a bit ironic that J.R.R. Tolkien's work became so popular in the 1960's. After all, the politics on college campuses in that era essentially called for greater government intervention into everyone's lives. They were successful Boromirs and we are left with their mess.

J.R.R. Tolkien got so very much right.

He also got so very much wrong.

There is another bit of irony that goes with J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and its popularity in the 1960's. Fans of the book, then as now, point to the simplistic life led by the main characters as being virtuous. They also point out the chapters where a loathsome mill poisons the river as being indicative of economic "progress".

"Simplistic" is an apt word for such thoughts.

"The Lord of the Rings" is filled with metal. Steel swords and armor, iron columns, silver horns and goblets, and of course mithril are present on almost every page.

Metalworking, by its very nature, requires a very hot flame in order to purify, mold, and work the metal. Creating such heat inevitably creates some sort of pollution. Decades ago, Pittsburgh used to be a city of dense smog and smoke from the iron and steel works. Burning coal to refine iron ore cause a lot of pollution. Fortunately, we have better ways of producing steel and iron that are less polluting.

In order to have such a level of metalsmith knowledge in Middle-Earth, there must have been a great many forges. Such operations are by their nature dirty. And because they are labor intensive, they couldn't have been hidden back in the mountains someplace away from the population centers. To the contrary, the forges would have generated population centers.

Another explanation might be a sort of understated racism. The dwarves of Middle-Earth are known for their craftsmanship in metalworking. I guess the mess of metalworking is only acceptable as long as it is kept underground near "those" people. But hey! It is only a book.

Another great anachronism is the sort of idyllic life that everyone leads. Frodo lives the life of a country squire. He does nothing but enjoys life. It is somehow assumed that it is possible to prepare 6 meals a day (hobbit fashion) and then leave enough time for gardening and other interests.

Anyone who has tended a significant garden can tell you that such endeavors consume a great deal of time. When one has no other means of supporting oneself, it consumes all of one's time. There isn't time for 6 meals a day. There is barely enough time for two decent meals and a snack at noon.

Similarly, the elves seem to do nothing. Food appears at the appropriate time and everyone eats their fill. Otherwise, the elves are heard singing in the trees.

These conditions could not exist anywhere in the real world. Only the wealthy and the powerful live such lives of leisure. Everyone else must work to create their leisure.

The only real acknowledgment of reality in the book is when Merry and Pippen end up serving the kings at the feast following the battle outside of Mordor. They stand and serve while others sit and eat.

The creation of wealth requires innovation and technological progress. Only the creation of wealth can end poverty. Attempting to live in a Luddite society only ensures that the poor will continue to remain poor.

On this count, J.R.R. Tolkien got so very much wrong.

Free Books!

The folks over at Free Novel List are running a sweepstake.  The winner gets 7 free books.  You get 7 more free books just for entering.

You also end up subscribing to their newsletter mailing list.  I use a throwaway address for such things.

Author W.J. Lundy has a couple books in the mix.  I thought his first book was a little weak (1 star), but it showed some promise.  His second book was quite a bit better (3 stars).

There are a couple other authors in the mix that are worth considering as well.

Review: Tales of the Forgotten by W.J. Lundy

Tales of the Forgotten by W.J. Lundy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I gave the first WTF novella one star. I had this one at two stars right up to the end.

If you have some military service, then this is a good book to read. You will bring to the book your knowledge and past experiences of small unit interpersonal dynamics. You will being your perspective of being deployed or otherwise kept from your family due to operational commitments. You will understand the many motivations that people have for serving, working together, and striving for excellence.

And it is a good thing that you will bring that personal history to the book because it is pretty much assumed that the reader understands these aspects of military life.

The book suffers from a lack of character development.

The characters are little more than cardboard cutouts. More effort is put into describing weapons and tactics than into developing each character's motivations and thoughts.

It reads quite a bit like a pretty good plot development piece for a movie. I think it might make a pretty good movie.

It just isn't that great of a book.

S/F
Dann
USMC 1984/1992

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Review: Brother Dust: The Resurgence by Steven Beaulieu and Aaron Hall

Brother Dust: The Resurgence by Aaron Hall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Brother Dust by Steven Beaulieu and Aaron Hall

3/5 stars. This was a strong 2.5+ star experience.

Brother Dust is properly classified as "science fantasy". The events in the book take place among a spacefaring society. However, the amount of actual science involved is negligible.

The book details the continuing travels of the Solovat empire. The Solovat home world has become infected with some sort of planet killing virus. This virus consumes a planet's "energy". To save their home planet, the Solovats roam from world to world mining each planet for its "energy".

They drill ever deeper into each planet core gathering planetary energy that is then transmitted to Solovat. Once the core has been breached, the planet dies and any remaining energy is sucked off to the Solovat home world. Also, a fair amount of the advanced Solovat technology also uses this planetary energy.

Brother Dust is born on a world that has been prematurely consumed as it is breaking apart. The native inhabitants of that world seem to reflect the native foliage is a sort of chameleon-like behavior. But as the world is broken, it is mostly just dust.

What follows is a meditation involving several different themes. One theme has to do with the environment. Another prominent theme is the relative merit of empires.

Against those themes unfolds the story of a Brother Dust who transitions from enforcing the Empire against a series of unfortunate civilizations to a Brother Dust that seeks to force the Empire to leave the Dastropian civilization alone. He ends up aligned with a nascent rebellion movement.

Brother Dust is so named because he can stop appearing as a Solovat. Instead, Brother Dust can become "dust" that is nearly impossible to kill and is exceedingly effective as a weapon that shreds the lungs of Solovat soldiers and can open doors by slipping through the slightest of cracks. Brother Dust discovers that there is a cure for his "condition". Having lived for so long as dust, Brother Dust gladly accepts this cure that must be re-administered every few days.

The first roughly half of the book is quite good. It is well paced and well written.

The latter half of the book turns cartoonish with Brother Dust turning into more of comic book superhero. Extensive narrative is used to describe fight scenes with round-house kicks, thrown punches, and foot sweeps. The rebellion decides to avoid using lethal force for some reason. Brother Dust continues to accept his treatments despite the fact that they severely limit his ability to fight. Characters start using persuasion in the middle of gun fights, fist fights, and fighting fights.

I dropped out of the narrative at this point and began looking at flaws in the plot and counting the number of instances of poor grammar. Both were found with little trouble. Some of the worst examples involved characters barely limping out of one scene but being able to beat fresh (and unwounded) opponents in the next scene. It takes longer than an hour or two to recover from significant wounds.

Brother Dust suggests that these authors have much to offer in terms of telling a compelling story. It also suggests that they have much to learn about it as well.

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Review: Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson

Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3/5 stars. I'd call it 3.5 stars. Just a little short of what I'd call a 4-star book.

Darwinia has one foot firmly planted in the early 20th-century western culture and the other foot planted.....somewhere else.

For the first half of the book, we follow various characters as they navigate a world where the better part of Europe and the UK have been replaced by an alternative biome. Geographically the "new" old world is close to the same. Rivers make bends at different places. Bogs and marshes appear in different places. Mountain ranges rise up in a familiar but not quite identical fashion.

There appear to be ancient remains of creatures unlike anything previously seen by humanity.

The world is in shock. British citizens around the world work to return to what was formerly Britain to rebuild what was lost. Citizens from various European nations do the same thing, but with less enthusiasm and effect.

With the loss of Europe, including Russia, America is left as the sole power in the world. The American government has decided that this "new" old world should be open to all for settlement rather than remaining the province for European expatriates to re-settle. A low-level conflict ensues.

Instead of trench warfare on a massive scale, we instead see a low-intensity conflict conducted that mainly involves small-scale raids. History has changed, but it still echoes.

And that is where the foot planted firmly somewhere else comes into play. Just when you think this is another alternate history tale, you discover that it is something else. Something more.

Something that involves conflict on a much grander scale.

I found the concept to be interesting. The characters were engaging and the events kept me coming back. The hook...that conflict on a grander scale...just lost me a bit. After the first half of the book intimating questions about religion and evolution, the shift was not only jarring, it undermined the earlier philosophical debate.

Curiously, this was a finalist for the Hugo award for best novel in 1999. This wouldn't be something that I would select for that level of recognition.

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Review: Servant: The Awakening by L.L. Foster

Servant: The Awakening by L.L. Foster
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

L.L. Foster's Servant: The Awakening is the best book that I did not finish. I'm giving it 3 stars in this review.

The premise is straightforward.

God...or "god"...or "something" periodically compels our heroine, Gaby, to destroy demons. A feeling comes over her that is both painful and undeniable at the same time. The pain remains until the demon is dead. Or sent back to hell. The early part of the book is unclear on the religious connections involved.

At the start of the book, the characters bore more than a modest whiff of cardboard. Gaby is an angry loner. That's all you get; anger and purposeful separation from the rest of humanity. She doesn't understand why she has to kill these demons and she doesn't like the compulsion to kill them either.

Her landlord has poor self-esteem. Mort is just wishy-washy in every aspect of his life and relationship with others.

Then there is the handsome and dashing police Detective Luther. The good detective inspires feelings in Gaby. Feelings that she doesn't want to have. He is a bit of a mystery as he keeps showing up at all the wrong/right times. And Gaby experiences an unexplainable attraction to him that also messes up her demon-killing skills.

All very cardboardery. But then midway through the book, the interaction of the characters, as well as the developing threat of a continuing stream of new demons, starts to make things interesting. I bought this book at a Dollar Store and it could have been easily worth the original cover price in terms of entertainment.

The problem....cancer. The hook in the book is that all of the demons end up possessing cancer patients. The villain, in this case, is using the patients as potential hosts for the demons. Instead of doing his job and curing the patients, he is actively making it worse.

And I couldn't finish the book. I've lost too many people to cancer. Seeing their pain as a pathway to demon possession isn't fun for me. I think the book has some potential as the characters start to unfold. I would be open to reading something else from this author in the future. Just not any more of this.



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Rules For A Successful Life

The following is something I wrote over a decade ago on my old (and now defunct) Dain Bramage blog.  I thought it was worthwhile then.  I think it remains worthwhile.

------------------

I've been mulling this over for some time. One of the things that bothers me is the idea that there are some sort of barriers that keep people from succeeding. Some will suggest that it is impossible to break out of poverty.

Impossible? Not at all.

Hard to do? Yup. It takes hard work and dedication.

But how to do it. That's the question. What follows is my answer to that very question.

• Go to school.
  
• Stay in school.
  
• Don't do drugs (alcohol and tobacco inclusive)
  
• Don't have sex if you can't afford to raise the results. Marriage before having children works best.
  
• Graduate.
  
• Get a job [or better still, start a business]. Any job. Any pay. Work hard. It's called paying your dues.
  
• Get more education. A trade school. The military. College. Something. Something productive that is. It doesn't matter if you have to do it one class at a time. Make education a priority.
  
• Get another job [or start another business]. Work hard. Repeat as necessary. It's called climbing the ladder.
  
• Save. Make it a priority.
  
• Invest. Make it a priority.
  
• Avoid credit cards.
  
• If one is so inclined, get married and if the inclination is incurable, have kids....after making sure that you can afford to raise them. Somewhere between the ages of 28 and 40 is a good spot for most people if the other rules have been followed.
  

You can violate a couple of these rules and things will still turn out OK. Perhaps not as good as they might have otherwise, but OK nonetheless. Follow all the rules and you can't miss.

This is the sort of advice that I wish I'd been given when I was much younger. I've fallen into a couple of those traps and digging out is a bear. Better not to fall into one of them in the first place.

--------------

An afterwords of sorts. Over the intervening years, I have had a chance to interact with more people.  One of the continuing observations that we encounter more frequently is that western society, and the United States in particular, contains certain cultural obstacles that make it harder for some people to succeed.

Well I agree to an extent.  There are cultural obstacles to success.  There are some people that start the race 100 yards behind the starting line.  There are some people that have to run with higher hurdles in their lane.

None of that changes the utility of this advice.  Where it is incumbent upon those that do not face those obstacles to help reduce those cultural barriers, it is equally incumbent upon those that want a successful life to assimilate the habits that create that success in the first place.

Hugo Nominations 2017

For what it is worth, here are my current nominations.  Unless I find something in my "has been read" pile that I missed, I can't see this changing much.  Nominees are not offered in any particular order with respect to how I would vote if my nominees were the only nominees.

Best Novel

A science fiction or fantasy story of forty thousand (40,000) words or more published in 2016.

Title	Author	Publisher/Where Published
The Silent Army	James A. Moore	Angry Robot
A Little Knowledge	Emma Newman	Diversion Books
The City of Mirrors	Justin Cronin	Ballantine Books
Saint's Blood	Sebastein de Castell	Jo Fletcher Books

Best Graphic Story

Any science fiction or fantasy story told in graphic form appearing for the first time in 2016.

Title	Author	Publisher/Where Published
Monstress Vol. 1	Marjorie M. Liu	Image Comics
Outcast Vol. 3 - This Little Light	Kirkman & Azaceta	Image Comics

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

Any theatrical feature or other production, with a complete running time of more than 90 minutes, in any medium of dramatized science fiction, fantasy or related subjects that has been publicly presented for the first time in its present dramatic form during 2016.

Title	Studio/Network/Production Company
The Magicians	SyFy
Stranger Things	Netflix
The Expanse	SyFy
Westworld	HBO

Best Fancast

Any generally available non-professional audio or video periodical devoted to science fiction, fantasy, or related subjects that by the close of 2016 has released four (4) or more episodes, at least one (1) of which appeared in 2016, and that does not qualify as a dramatic presentation.

Title	Web address
SinCast	iTunes
The Sarcastic Voyage Podcast (Contentment Corner)	Website
The Post Atomic Horror Podcast	Website
Tea & Jeopardy	Website
The Grim Tidings Podcast	Website

Best Series

A multi-volume science fiction or fantasy story, unified by elements such as plot, characters, setting, and presentation, which has appeared in at least three (3) volumes consisting of a total of at least 240,000 words by the close of the calendar year 2016, at least one of which was published in 2016. If any series and a subset series thereof both receive sufficient nominations to appear on the final ballot, only the version which received more nominations shall appear. While it isn't a requirement for this category, I do not intend to nominate for a series until it has been completed. Why should a 6-volume series get four opportunities to win this award while a 3-volume series only gets one?

Name of Series	Author	Qualifying Volume	Publisher
Seven Forges	James A. Moore	The Silent Army	Angry Robot
The Passage	Justin Cronin	The City of Mirrors	Ballantine Books

John W. Campbell Award

Award for the best new science fiction writer, sponsored by Dell Magazines (not a Hugo Award). A new writer is one whose first work of science fiction or fantasy appeared in 2015 or 2016 in a professional publication. For Campbell Award purposes, a professional publication is one for which more than a nominal amount was paid, any publication that had an average press run of at least 10,000 copies, or any other criteria that the Award sponsors may designate.

Author	Example
JR Handley	The Legion Awakes/Fortress Beta City/Demons of Kor-Lir

Sensible And Sustainable Weight Control

I have had several people note my weight reduction of the last few years.  They almost uniformly ask how I did it.  But they want something quick and easy.

So here's the quick and easy....or at least as quick and easy as I can make it.

A Note To The Professional Actor, Author, Painter, Musician, Etc.

Dear Professional Entertainer,

Your opinion matters.  Your ability to express that opinion matters.  It is thoroughly unacceptable for critics to suggest that you "shut up and" do whatever it is you do to entertain the world.

Your opinion is not the only one that matters.  The caterer that provides food for your events has an opinion as well.  The person makes sure that electricity makes it to your home has an opinion.  The person building/repairing our nation's highways and byways has an opinion.  The person that monitors inmates at the local jail has an opinion.

And all of those opinions matter as well.

The primary difference is that the caterer, the power company employee, the road construction worker, and the jailer do not enjoy a prominent platform from which to offer their opinion to the world.  Instead, those very same people enable the privilege of your very prominent platform that you  use to present your thoughts on passing events.  They buy your books.  They buy your albums.  They buy tickets to your concerts, movies, and theater performances.  And they help create that platform by being fans that are interested in the life behind the creative efforts that they so frequently enjoy.

So instead of reflexively reaching for snark, instead of using that most over used tool of sarcasm, perhaps it would be better to have a bit of restraint.  Instead of painting people who possess a different opinion with a broad, tar-laden brush, it might be better to exercise a bit more precision.

Instead of denigrating those that create your privileged position while not similarly enjoying a equal opportunity to comment on passing events, perhaps you should demonstrate a modicum of leadership.  Show us how people that disagree can do so with a modicum of civility.

Regards.....

The Indispensable Podcast Listing

I got into listening to podcasts a while back.  Most of those early podcasts were focused on the Fantasy & Science Fiction genre(s).  My early interest was motivated by a couple of different factors.

The first factor is that I love the genre and have hopes (more probably ethereal ravings) of writing in the field some day.  Even if I never get a chance to pursue that interest, it is always interesting to hear about authors, their writing process, and their challenges within the industry.

The other factor at the time was in learning more about the industry due to my interest in the Sad Puppies imbroglio.  I didn't learn as much about that, but it was an early motivating factor.

My podcast list grew from there due to my continuing interest in a few public radio programs.

While I know that the trend is to make everything seem to be larger than life these days, this list really, really isn't indispensable.  It isn't huge.  Or huuuuuuge! in modern presidential parlance, I suppose.

However, it is a great starting point for people that are curious about podcasting.  Take a look, and then give a listen.

I have scored each podcast in three areas; Production Values, Entertainment, and Information.  Production values represent the recording quality, the voice quality of the participants, and the general organization of the podcast.  Entertainment is pretty self-explanatory; how much does the podcast engage me from an entertainment perspective.  Essentially, the giggle factor.  Information is equally self-explanatory; how much new information does the podcast present.

There may be some bleed-through from one category to another.  For example, a regular participant with a less than entertaining voice may drag down both the production values and the entertainment scores.

I don't listen to all of these podcasts every week.  Some are on hiatus.  Some come out on an irregular basis.  A few of the podcasts will provide re-runs to fill in on weeks when they don't have something new.

I have filtered through some podcasts and dropped many that just were not worth the effort.  While there are some overtly political podcasts on the list, I think that most of these programs are worthy of consideration.  For someone new to podcasts, this list is a decent place to start.

A Presidential Molehill - Mountains Need Not Apply

So my social media is being infested with stories about President Obama granting a large number of pardons and clemencies yesterday.  It made me a little curious, so I did a little digging.

First, it is useful to know the difference.  A "pardon" essentially sets aside all of the facts of the case as well as the verdict and punishment.  It is a complete forgiveness that erases the act from the criminal record.  A pardoned person recovers all of their rights and is no longer considered convicted of any crime.

Clemency involves ending or reducing the sentence of a convicted individual.  Their crime remains a matter of public record.  However, their punishment, typically confinement, is reduced or terminated.  This is frequently granted to individuals where the President (or state Governor) feels that the sentence imposed by the court far exceeded what the conditions of the crime merited.

Mr. Obama apparently did set a record for the number of combined pardons/clemencies granted by a President in a single day.  But what is the larger context?  (Special note, the statistics on the site were last updated in October and therefore do not reflect actions since then.)

Mr. Obama has been quite frugal with respect to granting pardons.  Prior to yesterday's actions, he actually had granted the fewest pardons of any President dating back to the 19th century.  Now he is just at the low end of the range.  He has granted a little over 100 full pardons.  As a comparison, Richard Nixon granted 863 full pardons and Dwight Eisenhower granted 1110.

Mr. Obama has been far more generous with granting clemency.  Given how much our legislatures have taken to creating statutory sentencing minimum, it is no surprise to learn that we are giving lengthy prison sentences to people who either cannot afford a good attorney or who simply are not able to assist in other prosecutions.  Essentially, these people cannot get the sort of "deal" that is routinely offered to other defendants.  Also, Mr. Obama has correctly questioned the results of a system that offers disparate punishments for the possession of powdered cocaine and the possession of crack cocaine.  The drug is the same in both cases.

And so he has been far more generous in granting clemency.  Properly so.

There is a bit of hypocrisy here as one might expect.  One of the sentencing modifiers created by the Congress is the presence of a weapon; specifically some sort of gun.  The intent is to give prosecutors the ability to put extra bad people in prison for extra long periods of time based on factors that have little to do with the actual crime that was committed.

For example, the DEA busts into an apartment and arrests everyone on drug charges due to the boxes of criminalized drugs stacked up along the walls.  The find a gun and are able to add more prison time onto the sentence(s).  People who intend to do bad things being kept in prison for a longer period of time is probably better for society.

Unfortunately, such laws get twisted into serving injustice.  For example, someone hides a gun in their girlfriend's apartment.  She smokes some weed from time to time and gets busted.  The cops find the gun and multiply the girlfriend's sentence.  The result is certainly more expensive for society but in a non-trivial number of cases it probably doesn't make society better as a result.

So where is the hypocrisy?  Most of the folks that are appalled at Mr. Obama's use of his clemency powers for cases involving gun possession would probably be apoplectic at the prospect of someone in possession of a couple of ducks/fish/etc. over the legal limit being given an extra long sentence due to the presence of a gun.  Yet that can and does happen just as well.

Correcting prosecutorial indiscretion is an appropriate use of Presidential powers.

In any case, this really isn't that big of a deal.  Mr. Obama has granted far fewer pardons that most Presidents.  When you take it down to a per-year and per-capita consideration, he has been downright stingy in his use of that Presidential prerogative.  He has granted clemency at a much higher rate.  Combining pardons with clemency, he isn't really doing anything that differs from other Presidents.

Christmas 2016 - A Wish List

Due to several requests, I am going to provide a list of books that I would like to receive for Christmas.  Naturally, I do not expect to get them all.  However, I think it would be good if people were to check with one another to ensure that people are not duplicating efforts.

As always, you can check out my open Amazon wish list for other ideas.

On to the books.  This is going to be graphic novel heavy.  I have been reading quite a few of them this year and am enjoying these series immensely.  The print versions are highly preferred.

East of West

• Volume 4
• Volume 5
• Volume 6

Morning Glories

• Volume 2
• Volume 3
• Volume 4
• Volume 5
• Volume 6
• Volume 7
• Volume 8
• Volume 9
• Volume 10

Outcast

• Volume 3 - Own it now.
• Volume 4

Preacher

• Volume 6

The Last Zombie by Brian Keene

• Volume 2
• Volume 3
• Volume 4
• Volume 5

Low

• Volume 1

Update - all links should be good.

A second update.  Erg.  I thought I published this.  But I didn't.  Or something.  In any case, recent acquisitions are not indicated.

The Election 2016

Like most of the rest of the U.S., this election has me shaking my damned head.  This year has been the worst in my lifetime in terms of the dearth of candidate character and substituting personal attacks for rational debate of the issues.

I usually have post-election thoughts that I share every four years.  But I see no need to wait.  I'll share them now and then intend to take the next month off of political/election oriented reading and writing.

Soooooo, here we go.

On Donald Trump:  We may well wake up on November 9th with Mr. Trump as our President-elect.  If so, then he will be my President.  I will support his policies when I can and respectfully oppose them when I cannot.  I will criticize him when he steps outside of the law and/or otherwise fails our Constitution.  But it will be done with respect and without vitriol to the best of my ability.

All elections matter.  If Mr. Trump wins, then he will be my President.

On Hillary Clinton:  We probably will wake up on November 9th with Mrs. Clinton as our President-elect.  If so, then she will be my President.  I will support her policies when I can and respectfully oppose them when I cannot.  I will criticize her when she steps outside of the law and/or otherwise fails our Constitution.  But it will be done with respect and without vitriol to the best of my ability.

All elections matter.  If Mrs. Clinton wins, then she will be my President.

On the GOP:  I'm not looking to change your vote.  However, your candidate is heavily flawed.  He's about as attractive as a bucket of warm moose drool.  If you cannot identify and understand those flaws, then you are part of the problem with American politics these days.

You had other choices.  You had a whole raft of other choices running from John Kasich to Marco Rubio to Carly Fiorina.  Any of them would have left Mrs. Clinton in the dust.  And you opted for a bucket of warm moose drool.

When your candidate loses, don't look at the rest of us.  Take a good long look at yourselves.

On the Democrats:  I'm not looking to change your vote, either.  However, your candidate is heavily flawed.  She's about as attractive as a bucket of warm pig drool.  If you cannot identify and understand those flaws, then you are part of the problem with American politics these days.

You had other choices.  Jim Webb would have been a solid candidate that would have left Mr. Trump in the dust.  You have an entire party of worthwhile candidates.  And you opted for a bucket of warm pig drool.

When your candidate loses, don't look at the rest of us.  Take a good long look at yourselves.

On buckets of drool:  If you are interested in debating the relative merits of moose drool vs. pig drool, then you are also part of the problem with American politics these days.

ETA - well crap.  You always forget a couple things.

On those threatening to leave:  So you have threatened to leave the U.S. if your candidate doesn't win the Presidency.  Samuel Adams covered this quite well.

"...May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."

You haven't got what it takes to be an American.

I enjoy a wealth of acquaintances and friends from across the political spectrum.  We argue.  We fight...rhetorically.  To a person, every single one of them is an American in their heart and in their head.  The(y) love freedom even though we disagree on the best means of pursuing that freedom.

There are millions of people that have immigrated to the U.S. in pursuit of that freedom.  People from Iran and Iraq and other parts of the Middle East that are fed up with living under various flavor of dictatorship; theocratic or otherwise.  Millions more have come from south of our border to escape dictatorships, oligarchies, kleptocracies and other offenses to the cause of individual liberty.

And you know what?  Millions more have the same unquenchable thirst for freedom.  They have in their heads and in their hearts the desire to be left to live their lives in peace and liberty and away from the bullying nose of government.

And if you lack that thirst, then please find the nearest exit.  Leave your citizenship at the door.  You don't have what it takes.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace.  We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.  May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen. - Samuel Adams"

On those threatening to move to Canada:  You have a particularly ignorant and racist position there.

It is ignorant in that Canada has some pretty strict rules for immigration when compared with the U.S.  They want young people with skills and/or education to be in their labor force for a long time.  The old, uneducated, and unskilled need not apply.  The election of either of the major candidates will not qualify you as a political refugee in any place beyond your imagination.

It is racist in that these folks never threaten to move to Mexico.  As most of the "or I'm moving to Canada" folks seem to be quite a bit left of center, I'm also surprised that they don't want to move to the Chavista paradise that is Venezuela.  They have bucket loads of that "democratic socialism" down there.  And yet they almost always offer to move to Canada.....or less often to "Europe".

They never offer to move to a place where they could use their skills and education to improve life for the people in their new country.  Must be too many brown skinned people for their taste.

Review: The Grim Company

The Grim Company by Luke Scull
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

2 stars. Did not finish. Made it about 12% through. Mostly cardboard characters. Lots of telling without much showing. Standard adventure fare without any compelling character or plot lines to hold my attention.

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