Eating Muffins

Posted by Sari

Category 16, SF comic: Christin & Mézières: Valerian, Tuhannen planeetan valtakunta (L'Empire des mille planetes)

Besson's Valerian film is apparently loosely based on this particular Valerian and Laureline adventure, though I failed to find anything more than really vague similarities. I have never read any Valerian comics, and I saw the film first so this was an interesting reading experience. The movie was a disjointed but intereresting-looking SF-adventure, the bande dessinée was… okay, I guess? 

The thing is that it was really good example why I and comics have a troubled relationship. Take the beginning of the BD: on first page there are four(?) panels with text on the left side and one picture on the right. I read all the text and forgot to look at pictures. I just don't do well with visual media.

I do have to say the film got Valerian totally wrong.

Category 39, SF book that uses mythologies: Ian Watson: Converts

Ian Watson, the extremely chatty and fun British ex-pat living in Spain was GoH at this years Swecon and thus landed on my reading-list again. I am picking his Converts for this category, because I thougt it would be interesting to have a science fiction novel in this category instead of fantasy about Kirshna and Arjuna or what not.

In converts humans discover a serum that can make them superhuman, give them whatever they secretly most desire: the millionaire sponsor of the research turns into Ariel, a small flying sprite, while one of the people changes into a tree. Fundamentalists find this an abomination and the experiment turns into a debate and a battle between them and the changed. (Which makes for a nice word play in the title of the book)

The idea of transformations comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and the changed are like a new bunch of greek gods among humans, so that is my mythology connection. A bit thin, I admit, but there you go. It is an interesting,cerebral and not very happy novel, where the characters are a bit flat but ideas are good. Defenitely worth reading.

Nordqvist Kenia

Kenia as a bagged black tea from  – as the name suggests Kenya. It seems at the moment to be available only in Nordqvist's assortments. It is black tea in a teabag. Beats Lipton, but is nothing to write home about.

Posted by Sari

And off to the Dog fair we go for another day. Mogens has a day off after being at the show yesterday almost 12 hours but Arda will be in the ring, and I'll be at the breed stand. So, another one book day:

Category 18, AF book with lgbt+ main character: Tim Pratt: The Wrong Stars

Tim Pratt's The Wrong Stars is a really entertaining Science Fiction novel. There are aliens, both the ally and the enemy kind,  post-humans, an AI, a ship's crew bonding with each other, politics, exploration – almost anything really you could ask for a space SF adventure. And also one of my favourite space travel tropes ever: People in so called goldilocks ships have been travelling in suspended animation to far reaches of space but when they wake up they find out FTL has been invented and places they have been travelling to colonize have already been colonized.

Elena, a crew member of Goldilocks ship Anjou is picked up by a salvage vessel White Raven and its motley crew near the outer reaches of the solar system. Soon they are on a rescue mission to save Elena's crew from menacing aliens – with the help of a member of the alien race called The Liars, because they lie all the time. This makes things a bit difficult.

As I said, it is really entertaining space opera. This is a category that a lot of my SF reading would have fitted in, but I thought The Wrong Stars would be great fit because there is a nicely written romance between the main characers, Elena and White Raven's captain Cally, but it is not  be all and end all of the novel, just one aspect.

Lipton Russian Earl Grey

Earl Grey, as we all know, gets its distinctive taste from bergamot oil. Russian Earl Grey is a version, where the citrus flavour is intensified by adding lemon peal, orange peal or lemon grass into the tea. Lipton's version has lemon and cornflower in addition to bergamot. As it is lipton, the black tea itself is pretty bad quality, and the citrus flavours are also quite bland. Not a favourite.

Posted by Sari

Category 15, An SF book with a female main character: Emma Newman Before Mars 

Emma will appear on this list another time, I interviewed her at Åcon, so I have been reading and re-reading her stuff this year. Before Mars is a story of Anna Kubrin, a geologist and an artist dispatched to the permanent base on Mars both to do geology and paint pictures for the millionaire financing the mission. From the beginning Anna feels something is off. She finds  note from herself, and begins to wonder if she has been made to forget something or if she is going mad.

Before Mars is on the same continuum as Planetfall and After Atlas, and it has the same preoccupation with power structures and mental health as the other two novels. It is intense and paranoid and excellent. I especially appreciated the exploration of Anna's relationship with her infant child, the alienation of not feeling what you are told you must believe towards your offspring.

Category 35, Dystopian SF book: Kim Stanley Robinson: New York 2140

I did put this as number one on my Hugo ballot. I have loved almost everything Robinson has ever written, and this, I thought, was excellent look at society, economy and climate change with wonderful re-emagining New York as half-sunken city. In 2140, water levels have risen radically, but despite short periods of turmoil society has not collapsed. Capitalist economy has managed to keep inventing financial instruments which allow it keep reaping the benefits of others labour, and if and when a collapse comes the state will always bail them out. The cycle keeps going.

Robinson has multiple point of view characters from street urchings to hedge fund managers, hackers to broadcasters who all have a connection to the old Met Life building which – so very appropriately – is surrounded by water like rest of the Lower Manhattan, but still functions as an apartment building. There is treasure hunting, huge storm, an ice bear in a dirigible and plot to undermine the financial system of the country.

I hesitate to call this dystopia, though many have said so. The society has not collapsed due changing circumstances, there has been massive loss life, but humanity has kept going – locally and globally – so far. And the book is about revolution, people banding together to build a better future. I found it intriguing and inspiring, and loved, loved, loved the way Robinson depicts New York in this novel.

Pukka peppermint & licorice

So not a tea as such, but peppermint and licorice infusion made out of ethically sourcerd (according to the bag) licorice root and peppermint leaves. It is a funny taste. First you get a hit of the peppermint like with Mahgreb tea, and then you get this really, really sweet licorice after taste. I wasn't sure at first if I liked it but on reflection it works quite well. I might try this chilled in summer.