The Henchperson's Guide to Unionizing by Marshall J. Moore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was frankly interested in this just for the title and perhaps thought that it might be in line with Starter Villain or many other fairly recent books that dive pretty deep in the lives of side-villainous characters coming into their own, usually turning out to be decent people.

I mean, Unionizing? Hell yeah, get that collective bargaining on against all the super evil people out there. We're definitely not using fantasy as subtext here, no sir!

So imagine my sad face when I read about a cozy fiction with minor stakes as if it's all low-paid jobs for bad bosses, only it's Igor and the Bride of Dracula among other well-worn tropes just feeling ill-used and unappreciated even as they try to develop shy friendships and find a way out of loneliness?

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's low-key and slow paced and cozy and probably up a lot of people's alleys. But for me? Give me Zelazny or Scalzi. The plots are generally a lot more interesting. As are the characters.

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Fold Catastrophes by Peter Watts


Short story collection by one of my favorite authors.


Gut Feelings -- (5*) Laugh-out-loud brilliant. Perfect combination of Google-hate, gut-borne cognition programming, and violence investigation, corporation-style. The way it's set up and executed is pure cotton candy to me.


21 Second God -- (4*) I'm a huge fan of runaway tech and warning stories, but this hits several more sweet spots: technological hive-mind, intelligent catastrophes, and the simple fact that we are all, in the end, a bunch of depressed idiots trying to become something more than depressed idiots. Or, at least, this was my own personal interpretation that's still just one valid one among several in this story. Grief, withering, and possible transcendence are more. :)


Contracting Iris -- (3*) Body snatching via microbes. Pretty decent but ultimately forgettable, having been done before. A lot.


Defective -- (5*) Super nerdy first contact stuff in the same universe as Blindsight and Echopraxia. Black hole goodness, BFG's, sun colonization, and impossible conflict. It's depressing, but damn, it's accurate for all that. Hard SF goodness.


Giants -- (5*) Holy crap that's one hell of an imaginative visual/textual trip. Great characters, too. But it really puts the awe in the some. Don't get much SF like that anymore. Cool stuff. Would make one hell of a movie.


Test 4 Echo -- (4*) It's a clever and short thought experiment illustrating the difference between the survival instinct and how it COULD relate to an AI, and the converse. (What causes the survival instinct? Should we build it in, or is it a consequence of consciousness?) As well as being a cool little story on its own.


ZeroS -- (5*) All kinds of awesome. Not just a zombie-consciousness military story right out of Blindsight, but a killer tribute to David Bowie. And since I've been a huge fan of Bowie, the first thing I thought was that each subsection of this novella was a direct reference to Bowie's songs (and they fit, strangely enough, thematically). And I even played the songs in my head as I read.

It's just that cool.


Critical Mass -- (4*) A VERY Peter Watts kind of story. All subconscious SF, art, internal conflict, and an outright art installation destruction investigation. Wild stuff and very obviously him. :)


The Colonel -- (5*) This has just about everything I love in a story much bigger than itself. A standalone that has massive continuations in the Blindsight universe, a massive thematic continuation of this particular set of stories (hive minds), and a deeply human and visceral gut punch story all on its own. And worse, it makes me want to re-read the entire Firefall series again. With relish.


The Wisdom of Crowds -- (5*) Fantastic what-if exercise. And just as ugly as it would be in reality. So, what if a broad selection of humanity could vote a whole city off the world? What would the wisdom of the crowd vote? Muahahahahahahaha


Game Theory -- (5*) This one is courageous and more than a little disturbing on many levels. Crazy enough to have its MC a damnably guilty priest with Conrad's Syndrome, the entire story is placed in a dying Earth that has given up precisely because science has proven we live in a Simulation, even if it is god-like in scope. But Watts doesn't just give us a great setup. He forces us to really come to terms with what we REALLY believe.

Suffering, indeed.


I'm immensely impressed with all of the stories in this collection. Watts is fantastically motivated to weave and interweave all of these main themes in a hard-hitting tapestry, be it distributed intelligence, subconscious thinking, disassociation, or questioning existential reality. All of this would be brilliant even if it wasn't couched in equally excellent hard-SF that's as nerdy as it is gorgeous, but it is both.

Tons of meat and potatoes and rich, rich gravy.

I just wish so much more SF could be like this. Pushing boundaries, asking real questions, being excellent for excellence-sake.

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Vengeance by RinoZ
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think the series is getting even better. Or perhaps I absolutely love the culmination of a slow-burn setup that knocks it out of the park.

It's probably the latter. Payoff, especially when given this much care, is particularly effective.

It's not just rebellion now. It's not just a far-off quest to remove all the torturous magistrates and evil nobles. The war has begun and it's not just fought by a stream of powerful undead. Woo! Woo!

Very enjoyable. It's headed toward large scale fantasy now and not just a tiny force of powerful undead minions, a scattering of small towns, or the simmering rage of enslaved gold-rankers.

I can't wait to jump into the next.

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Masquerade by RinoZ
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A huge turn from the previous two books, this one focuses on being sneaky and hiding in plain sight while pursuing the dark craft in the big city.

The subtext is delicious, of course, with the ongoing fight against the magistrates and the growing unease against those same magistrates across the realm.

It reminds me of the old joke meme from years ago about Cthulhu and the elections. Why vote for the lesser evil when you could vote for the greater one?

But in this case, truly, it seems like the Old Ones, Vampire Cabals, and the Abyssal legions ARE on the side of the angels here.

Too funny.

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Sacrifice by RinoZ
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Continuing this slow-burn of a necromantic LitRPG is satisfying. It's a straight progression from the previous, diving head-first into moral quandaries and improving skills while trying to limit undeserving casualties.

Deserving being anyone who tries to murder him, of course.

What is somewhat surprising in a good way is this poor kid's parents. I'm usually used to a funny trope with this whole class of literature where we get a slow progression of both power and wisdom and control over one's destiny with a single short, sharp shock of a reveal about the MC having been a massive victim of some kind of massive injustice just dropped in out of nowhere.

This particular series is the exact reverse. The entire setup IS a massive injustice dropped on him from the whole damn world and was none of his making. He's just reacting. But his parents? They love him and did all they could to protect him. Which is usually NOT the case in these kinds of novels. A good childhood, if not a perfect one.

It's actually kinda sweet.

But as is usually the case, no good deed is ever unpunished.

Fun stuff.

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Awakening by RinoZ
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After being amazed with others in this LitRPG vein (Bagwell) and already loving the centipede crap out of RonoZ's FOR THE COLONY series, I was very interested to see how this turned out.

I mean, who doesn't love to level up a necromancy class? Skeleton armies are all the rage these days.

Well, it turns out, I don't have any major bones to pick with this introduction. I'm enjoying it's deadly gaze, but it's NOT nearly as quick to escalate as I might have guessed. Indeed, the slow burn is rather impressive. Mostly a focus on survival and evading detection and wanting to genuinely help people out, as opposed to total edge-lord territory, but above that, the dangers are genuine and oppressive from multiple sources, be it an outsider incursion, the magical elites who care more for their power than the people they're supposed to help, or the fact that this poor isolated kid is almost entirely up shit creek in the worst possible areas.

I have to root for him, no matter what skills he uses. And it doesn't hurt that he has a pretty awesome moral compass.

It's a great setup. A slow burn, but a great setup. I'm going to love diving into it more.

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The Infinite State by Richard Swan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Definitely worth hunting down and reading if:

A: You have a deep and abiding hunger for rich and deep SF with fully-fleshed worldbuilding with a space-opera base but full of political intrigue, colony building against all odds, and even action.

B: Tolerate, or indeed, revel in complexity.

C: Miss vast, impressive scope in SF combined with interesting, excellent characters in unusual circumstances.


I should mention that this kind of SF is becoming quite rare these days. It used to be rather common, and often done with a half-hearted manner. But this one isn't half-hearted. It reminded me quite a bit of Palmer's Too Like the Lightning and Hamilton's far-reaching works.

If that doesn't get you excited, I don't know what will. :)

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