The Martian Perspective

Friday, February 27, 2015

Religious Hazards

Monday, February 9, 2015

Welcome to an Engaging Superheroine

I greatly enjoyed the first adventures of Gwen Maule, aka The Shrike, in Emmie Mears's The Masked Songbird. I like my heroines strong yet believably human, and that is what Gwen is, with her lousy accounting job she can't afford to quit, her scummy boyfriend she can't quite bring herself to dump, and the parents she hasn't visited in two years because she can't face watching her mother waste away with dementia. I liked the fact that even when she gets superpowers, she still needs other people, like the roommate who sews her costumes and the trainer who teaches her to fight, because having super-strength doesn't mean you know anything about martial arts... a point often overlooked in tales of this sort, along with the possible downsides of superpowers for a woman's body and various gritty physical discomforts that Mears describes vividly.
Now as to my critiques, cards on the table, I am not a supporter of Scottish independence, a crucial plot point in this novel. The reasons for my views aren't important here (and certainly aren't due to any dislike for the glorious land and people of Scotland). I was more than willing to root for a free Alba and to believe the worst of the Unionists for the sake of the story (and after all, the terrorist Orangemen in Northern Ireland certainly showed that supporters of Great Britain aren't necessarily civilized). But the bad guys in this novel behave in a way that isn't just one-dimensionally evil, it's also unbelievably stupid for people whose aim is for Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom. The Shrike deserves fully fleshed-out villains to fight in her next adventure, which I for one am looking forward to.
This review is cross-posted at Goodreads.
Two-and-a-half Phoboses out of three.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

We Apologize For This Apology

Inspired by Brian Williams's online apology for falsely claiming he was in a helicopter that was hit by enemy fire in Iraq, I want to apologize for a mistake I made in recalling the events of 9/11. When I told everybody, like, several million times that "I was in the Twin Towers and I personally carried twelve babies and a pregnant lady to safety," it was a bungled attempt by me to thank our brave First Responders and, by extension, everybody everywhere who has ever done anything heroic, which I have not.

Friday, January 16, 2015

Aw, shucks!

Mary Fan has some mighty kind words to say about the frustrating time I had trying to reinvent the transistor in my bedroom on Mars under conditions of the utmost adversity (I'm talkin' about you, Rachel Zilber aka Ray). To get the full scoop, y'all are going to have to read Brave New Girls, a forthcoming anthology edited by Ms. Fan and Tina Closser, due out in June 2015 (that's in the
α timeline--it'll be June 2172 in the β timeline where Ray and I now live, but I won't confuse y'all any more than I have to.) All proceeds of this fine anthology of stories about girls excelling in science and technology will be donated quarterly to a scholarship fund for girls through the Society of Women Engineers.

Thumper, GIT out of my box of electronic parts! Bad kitty!