Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Nanoreviews: Live Long and Evolve; The Extractionist; The Frame-Up

Live Long and Evolve: What Star Trek Can Teach Us about Evolution, Genetics, and Life on Other Worlds, by Mohammed A. F. Noor


I bought this book through Princeton University Press’s yearly book sale, which makes available an enormous selection of PUP books at, like, silly prices. I think I paid £3 for this one, and it was worth every penny.

This book is about using the science of evolutionary biology to make predictions about—or at the very least guide our search for—life on other planets. This is itself a fasincating question, but what makes this book charming is the way it integrates a deep knowledge of Star Trek lore into the discussion in plausible and entertaining ways. Mohammed A. F. Noor is not some kook arguing that Star Trek was ahead of its time or 'right' (except accidentally); and he’s not some buzzkill doing a take-down of all the things Star Trek got wrong (although he does note them). He’s simply drawing connections between his two passions in life, which are interested in the same thing—life on other planets—from very different angles.

The book is split up into six chapters. In the first, Noor discusses what conditions must be necessary for something recognizable as life to develop on a planet. For example: what is it about carbon, in particular, that makes it such a good building block? Must the life be carbon based, or could some other element serve the same function? This leads naturally into a discussion of the feasibility of species like the Horta (TOS: The Devil in the Dark), which is silicon-based, alongside real-world experiments showing that some bacteria can form molecules with silicon-carbon bonds. Other sections of this chapter discuss the necessity of liquid water, which is a useful solvent for bringing together chemical reagents, but  not necessarily the only one.  Ammonia, for example, might do the job. Noor also considers requirid temperature ranges, which are typically best when they allow water to exist in its liquid form—but if water is not the key solvent, then things might work out differently. Tolerance of extreme temperatuers is also a concern, but not a huge one. On earth alone we have extremophiles—creatures that tolerate or even prefer extreme temperatures, either hot or cold—and such entities appear in numerous Star Trek episodes, from the tardigrade-like animal Ripper in the first season of Discovery, to the silver-blooded inhabitants of the ‘demon planet’ from the Voyager episode Demon. (Althouh Noor does not mention it, I cannot let reference to the silver blood people pass without also reminding readers that they show up in the heartbreakingly excellent episode Course: Oblivion, albeit not in their extremophile forms.)

Other chapters tackle evolution, genetics, and reproduction. Noor fills this last chapter with fascinating examples of Earth species, such as the Amazon molly, which is entirely female, and reproduces by mating with males of other species. Fertilization triggers the process, but the eventual offspring contain no trace of DNA from the other species male fish. Thus the Amazon molly species remains distinct from whatever species the dildo-dad belonged to. 

Of course, when both parties in a cross-species night out are represented in the offspring, we have hybridization. This is a frequent phenomenon in Star Trek, most famously embodied in the TOS character of Spock, a Vulcan-human hybrid, but there are a variety of other hybrid characters that Noor analyses quite thoroughly. My favourite part of this chapter is his discussion of Haldane’s rule, which captures the (Earthbound) phenomenon whereby female hybrids are more likely to survive than male hybrids, and are more likely to prove fertile, contrary to the trend of sterility among hyrids. As a table on pg 128 reveals, of all the hybrids in Star Trek (up through the first couple of seasons of Discovery at least), more are female than male, and of the hybrid characters who are known to have produced offspring, all but one was female. As Noor concludes, ‘If we speculate that this depiction reflects a difference in hybrid fertility, meaning at least some of the hybrid males were sterile, then we may be observing some signal of Haldane’s Rule just lie among species on earth. I do not think that the Star Trek writers did this intentionally, but the coincidence is amusing.’

I myself suspect that this trend actually reflects a tendency of filmmakers to assign parental roles to female characters than to male characters, but I'm happy to take it as evidence of a galactic Haldane rule. Sometimes it's more fun to look for the science, even if incidentally, than to fume at sociocultural trends among filmmaking.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10, very high quality/standout in its category

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The Extractionist, by Kimberly Unger

Eliza McKay works as an extractionist in a futuristic extrapolation of our increasingly plugged in society. Extractionist is one of those jobs that doesn’t yet exist, but becomes necessary in a world where Elon Musk’s Neuralink vision actually works, and not only works, but has become the equivalent of cell phones in today’s culture. Everyone’s got an implant of one version or another, some of them state-of-the art super-fancy versions that are only accesssible if you’ve got military-grade connections, some of them super-cheap retail level chips that are perfectly fine for daily use but not up to more demanding tasks. These implants allow to directly experience cybernetic realities—sort of like the Metaverse, but, y'know, functional. Occasionally, however, people get trapped too deep, and their consciousness must be retrieved and reintegrated with their bodies. This is where Eliza McKay comes in.

So, as plot, she is hired by some secretive black-ops person to extract a member of the team who has gone too deep and knows some crucial information about Stuff. Naturally, the Stuff turns out to be much more large scale and elaborate than Eliza planned for, and heisty cybershenanigans ensue.

I cannot overemphasize the quantity of cyberstuff in this book. Everything is cyber; everything is tech; everything AI (but, y'know, functional). It’s clear that Unger has spent a great deal of time thinking about how this futuristic world will look, how the various technological advances will interface with each other, how the economics of version control and upgrades will affect people’s ability to do certain jobs or interact with different types of equipment. I quite appreciate the way the world she's created echoes the messiness of incompatible operating systems and forced reboots that plague our current digital lives. Just because you’ve got a chip in your brain that's, y'know, functional, doesn’t mean that an inconvenient software update won’t ruin your day.

Unfortunately, for all the thoughtful cyberworldbuilding, the cyberplot and cybercharacters and overall cyberexperience were underwhelming. It’s kind of funny, actually, because when I think about each individual component, I can’t identify any particular flaw beyond a mildly tortured reasoning to justify the circumstances under which extraction is necessary. The characters were fine; their motivations were present; their relationships with each other were developed. The plot proceeded reasonably pacily. I was just deeply bored throughout the entire book. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m not cyber enough to cyberappreciate what Unger is cyberdoing. 

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10, still enjoyable, but the flaws are hard to ignore

The Frame-up, by Gwenda Bond

Dani used to be one of the team—a team of magic-using art thieves, to be precise—but she got snookered into betraying her mother and her team by a persuasive FBI agent, and has been something of a pariah in the magic scene ever since. Mom’s in jail, now, and none of the old team are speaking to her. However, her mother’s former patron finds Dani and commissions her to steal a very big painting, with a very big pay-out, so she has to get her quite reluctant ex-team back together and steal a magical painting, while simultaneously evading that same FBI agent and negotiating her remembered feelings for an old flame on her team, which are interfering somewhat with some nascent feelings developing for the painting’s current owner.

This books is a very straightforward heisty heist, with twists and turns exactly where you expect them to be. There are mommy issues to be worked out, old relationships to smooth over, new partnerships to build with surprisingly understanding and unbothered-by-crime painting-owners, and a very convenient diary explaining that a demon whose power is only kept in check by a magical painting must under no circumstances be allowed to regain possession of the picture.

The book is fine. The wheels work, the twists twist. But I found the romantic subplots rather tedious, largely because I don’t think jealousy is an appealing characteristic in potential love interests. And although I don’t read too many heists, and so am not used to keeping track of so many moving parts, I still think some of those convolutions were a bit unearned. For example, at one point Dani’s mother causes extreme complications for her plans for no other reason than that she thinks Dani’s got it too easy, and needs to learn how to deal with jobs when they’re hard. Which doesn’t follow, since Dani’s mother is invested in this heist as much (or more) than any of them, and certainly more invested in it than she is in Dani’s professional development. But then, since (as I said earlier), the painting’s owner seems to have no interest in actually retaining possession of the painting, and is perfectly willing to hire Dani to manage the security of his art gallery, it is undeniably true that Dani seems to be playing the game on easy. Gwenda Bond had to insert complications somewhere, and I guess she chose Dani's mother to do it.

In sum, this was fine. Perfectly good to occupy you while waiting for your laundry to be done, or to read on the bus while keeping one eye out for your stop. But it’s not a book I’m going to stay up late finishing, no matter how twistily the twists twist.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10, still enjoyable, but the flaws are hard to ignore

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References

Live Long and Evolve: What Star Trek Can Teach Us about Evolution, Genetics, and Life on Other Worlds. Mohammed A. F. Noor. [Princeton University Press, 2018].

The Extractionist. Kimberly Unger. [Tachyon 2022].

The Frame-Up. Gwenda Bond. [Headline, 2024].

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CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative.

Monday, April 29, 2024

Review: Calypso by Oliver K. Langmead

This awe-inspiring and utterly beautiful novel told in verse will make you think, feel, and wonder why there aren't more contemporary authors writing sci-fi that is both full of ideas and jaw-droppingly well written. 


Remember that scene in Contact (1997) when Ellie Arroway, confronted with the vast immensity and beauty of our far-reaching universe, can only utter "...they should have sent a poet"? 

She was right. 

Oliver K. Langmead in Calypso tells a story spanning centuries and light years  entirely in verse  about humanity in space, and all of the triumphs, travails, and emotions generated in the process. 

Having spent the past five years working my way through all of the Hugo Award-winning novels, the most common refrain I and my podcast co-hosts have is "fantastic idea and world-building but absolutely lackluster writing." Calypso is the first work of science fiction in years to make me feel something for all the characters while simultaneously providing a fleshed-out world and mythology full of interesting science fiction ideas.

The story

The Calypso is a generation ship headed across the galaxy to build and colonize a distant planet, and Rochelle, an engineer, agrees to leave her family behind forever to travel through the centuries in cryosleep so she can assist in the momentous task of building a new society. She wakes up and nothing is at it should be, as it appears there's been a revolt at some point during the long time interval between the botanists and engineers.

We learn slowly about the revolt and what caused it  namely the absolutely understandable human impulse to not want to live and procreate entirely within a cramped and lifeless starship while generations down the line get to benefit from the beauty and sustenance of an actual planet.  This is an idea I've thought about every single time I've read a book  or even played a video game like Fallout — that requires multiple generations to put in the work of keeping humanity going while knowing they'll never get to experience the end result. I'm not sure it would ever work, honestly.

We also slowly unravel the true nature of the voyage. Sigmund, the project's brilliant director, wants to give humans a chance at building a society on a new planet completely devoid of human history. In this universe, people have populated other planets in our own neighborhood, and he bemoans that Venus is just another Earth, "the worst of humanity / Slowly being spread across the solar system." He describes in an emotional gut punch the homeless population that lives on Mars, and it's then that you're forced to think, "Damn, maybe we shouldn't be sending humans off Earth after all. But instead, he imagines that:


It would be a truly epic 

experiment

To engineer a new world

and colonise it

With blank humans un-

aware of the heritage.


The words

Despite my time in poetry creative writing classes in college 20 years ago, I've not kept up much with published verse. But this novel is enjoyable regardless of whether one has a background in poetry. It's not stilted or filled with overly cutesy rhymes, despite it's impressively consistent pentameter (10 syllables for each phrase).

These words tell the story succinctly and with incredible turns of imagistic phrasing. Rochelle, when describing a walk in the woods, states "And I crunch across a kingdom / Nothing like my childhood's imaginings." It is a place where "our knuckles and knees were the knots of trees." Despite the fact that the book spends much of its time in a cold and sterile spaceship, there are highly vivid  concentrations of life both within it (in the form of on-board gardens) and on the new planet as it's slowly terraformed into a place suitable for life. 

There's even a section entirely describing the transformation from barren rock all the way to multi-celled life, the imaginative verse roiling and building much like the world does over eons. The verdant descriptions are teeming with life in an almost unsettling way, much like the prose of Jeff VanderMeer in the Southern Reach trilogy. 

Reading Calypso, one also sees the influence of Anne Carson, a famed poet known for her prose novels like Autobiography of Red. Both reveal startlingly human depictions of feelings and relationships set amidst unusual backdrops, whether outer space or a retelling of an ancient myth. 

The effect

Immediately after finishing Calypso, I wanted to restart it. I enjoyed the story and the words throughout the first read, but now having learned the narrative (which honestly I sort of rushed through because of how compulsively readable it is), my desire was to go back and savor the words. I feel the same way about Moby Dick, I just want to get lost in the language time and time again. Highly recommended.


--

The Math


Baseline Score: 9/10


Bonuses: Incredible language, imaginative storytelling, and a very human voice that's rarely polished and focused in sci-fi


Penalties: The format will undoubtedly scare off some potential readers, and the more experimental sections (like when words are arranged in visual depictions across the page) can be hard to follow for even a poetry aficionado.


POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Friday, April 26, 2024

6 Books with Francesco Dimitri

Francesco Dimitri is a prize-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction, a comic book writer and a screenwriter. He published eight books in Italian before switching to English. His first Italian novel was made into a film, and his last was defined as the sort of book from which a genre 'starts again'. His first English novel, The Book of Hidden Things, a critical and commercial success, has been optioned for cinema and TV. After his second, Never the Wind, the Fortean Times called him 'one of the most wondrous writers of our time.'

Today he tells us about his Six Books.

1. What book are you currently reading?

I am reading a few books at once, which these days I find myself doing more and more. One is Anthony Grafton's Magus, a splendid cultural history of the figure of the magician from the Renaissance on. Then I'm almost at the end of Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, an ingenious book on the ways in which indigenous knowledge and a modern understanding of nature could go hand in hand: this kind of thinking is necessary, with an environmental crisis unfolding around us. We have read and written tons of books about saving the world, and it's time to start doing just that. Also, on the novel front, I'm halfway through Jennifer Thorne's Diavola, and I'm having the time of my life with it.




2. What upcoming book are you really excited about?

That must be Paul Tremblay's Horror Movie. It's Paul Tremblay plus horror movies. Come on. You know that feeling that a book was written just for you? There you go.









3. Is there a book you're currently itching to re-read?

I am always itching to re-read old favourites! Re-reading a book is like going back to an earlier stage of your life, and look at it from the point of view of now: it is a form of time-travelling only for readers. The next one is One Hundred Years Of Solitude. That novel is a Tardis: bigger on the inside. It has so much humanity, so much magic, so much humour, so much tragedy—you read it and you're having a parallel life, for a while.







4.  A book that you love and wish that you yourself had written.

Clive Barker's Imajica, hands down. It is large, meandering, sensuous, violent, esoteric, magical, strange, political, queer, ahead of its time. A story of our world, other worlds, magicians, gender, and So. Much. Sex. Barker was doing more than thirty years ago what far too many lesser epigones are trying to do now. And yet his name has been almost forgotten, outside of a small circle of people. I wish folks had better memory. And selfishly, I wish I'll write something as good as Imajica one day.







5. What's one book, which you read as a child or a young adult, that has had a lasting influence on your writing?

The Lord of the Rings; and it's also the book that has a special place in my heart. I read it when I was ten. I had to insist with the bookseller to buy it, and I only managed because my parents helped me out: he thought I was too little to appreciate it. But appreciate it I did, massively. My writing is nothing like Tolkien's, and I'm not especially interested in writing that sort of fantasy. The influence of The Lord of The Rings runs deeper than that. Tolkien showed me the beauty of reality reshaped, and I've been chasing after that beauty forever after.






6. And speaking of that, what's your latest book, and why is it awesome?

The Dark Side Of The Sky. It's a strange, hopefully immersive, book. It is centred on a commune living on a Southern Italian beach. They might or might not be a cult, and they might or might not be humankind's last hope. The book is written like an oral history, told by a few key members of the commune. I have real-world experience researching both cults and magic, and I poured all of it into this book, to make it feel as real as possible—like a true oral history. It's somewhere between horror, magical realism, and thriller. More than a few episodes in the book are quite close to things I have seen and done. Now that I think of it, that probably only goes to show that I did lead an odd life so far.





Thank you, Francesco!


POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin

Thursday, April 25, 2024

Review: Rebel Moon Part 2: Forgettable Boogaloo

In contrast with the ubiquitous fanfare surrounding the launch of Rebel Moon Part 1 last year, its sequel has come and gone almost unnoticed

Last year, Zack Snyder seemed pretty convinced that his space opera riff on Seven Samurai was going to become an instant classic. The intensity of the marketing reflected that expectation: it was made at a volume and intensity to match that of the movie itself. Such high hopes weren't rewarded: Rebel Moon Part 1 turned out to be an unbearable cacophony of hyperviolence in blurry sepia, exactly what could have been predicted of a project where Snyder had free rein to pull his favorite toys out of the box.

What would have been harder to predict was how much room there still remained for Snyder to out-Snyder himself in Rebel Moon Part 2. With even more gratuitous slow motion, misplaced flashbacks, confused politics, impossibly sculpted abs, unintentionally funny battle cries, and suffocating grandiosity, Part 2 dulls the senses via relentless overstimulation. I noticed, to my horror, that I was witnessing gory death after gory death after gory death—and yet I was feeling nothing. Mayhem erupted on my screen with the chaotic viscerality of putting a gremlin in a blender and it left no impression on me. This is the kind of ultra-derivative art that relies on borrowing the prestige of its influences and doesn't bother trying to appeal to the viewer on is own merits.

There was plenty of material in this story with which to make some powerful statement, if only Snyder had wanted to. Taking the plot of Seven Samurai and replacing the wandering bandits with a galactic dictatorship changes completely the dynamics of the conflict. This isn't a mercenary skirmish in a lawless land; it's now a peasant revolt against the official authorities. Is Snyder subtly equating a rigidly hierarchical government composed of space fascists with a loose band of outlaws? I'm kidding. Snyder doesn't do subtle. Rebel Moon doesn't have space fascists because it has something to say about fascism; it has them because it's what Star Wars did and Rebel Moon wants to be one of the cool kids. It doesn't burn entire minutes of runtime in loving close-ups of wheat harvesting because it's interested in the perspective of vulnerable farmers; it does it because it gives Snyder an excuse to point the camera at sweaty muscles. Rebel Moon takes no stance on its own themes. It's content to let you provide the missing message by remembering it from the movies it alludes to.

In terms of characterization, the team of heroes at the center of Rebel Moon don't get more than the quickest coat of paint to technically make them no longer two-dimensional. As if drawing from a D&D campaign, each of these characters' backgrounds can be summarized as "goons raided my village." To make the whole affair even more unimaginative, the two prominent women in the team, Kora and Nemesis, have a dead child in their respective tragic pasts, possibly revealing a limit to Snyder's ability to imagine women's motivations.

The figuratively moustache-twirling admiral who lands on Kora's village to steal the harvest is even less impactful this time. If in the first movie he was a blank slate whose function in the story was to look generically evil and serve as the vicarious target for the audience's frustrations with neofascism, now he's a bland rehash of his one-hit act. Whereas his first death was at least a satisfying punch-the-Nazi (with a laser gun) moment, the sequel's supposedly climactic showdown feels like a tedious formality before his mandatory second offing. A bloody fistfight in the lopsided deck of an exploding spaceship, with heavy machinery and discount lightsabers flying around, sounds like a set piece impossible to make look boring, but you shouldn't underestimate Snyder's talent for filling the screen with flashy blasts that carry no meaning.

The emotional beats that punctuate the third act repeat a few tropes Snyder can't seem to move on from: the last-minute ally who shows up to prevent someone's imminent death, the hero who deals the killing blow at the cost of his own life. Snyder has found his formula and is comfortable recycling it. He's so confident in the awesomeness of Rebel Moon that he ends Part 2 with the promise of a Part 3 that we can already bet will repeat the same filmmaking tics. But enough is enough. There are only so many ways you can make the screen explode while having nothing to say. Maybe Snyder needs to go back to filming established properties, or find collaborators less willing to go along with his obsessions, but this period of unrestrained self-indulgence needs to stop.


Nerd Coefficient: 2/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Review: Spy x Family: Code White

The big-screen version of the popular action-comedy anime is accessible for newcomers, but its lighter tone may disappoint existing fans seeking edgier content

The popular anime and manga Spy x Family has made the transition to the big screen in Spy x Family: Code White. For those who don’t normally watch anime, the Spy x Family TV series is an excellent gateway show due to its intensely likeable and quirky characters and its darkly humorous plot that wraps murder and mayhem into the breezy pastels and cuteness of an adorable fake family. The story takes place in a fictional country with a retro, 1960s Cold War vibe. To prevent another war between the neighboring countries, a cynical super-spy (Agent Twilight) is ordered to spy on an extremely reclusive political party leader. The only way to do this is to enroll a child in the elite private school that the political leader’s children attend.

To create the perfect fake family, the spy takes on the name Loid Forger and adopts young Anya from an orphanage, but is unaware that the child is a telepath. He then meets Yor, a sweet and kind city hall clerk who needs a fake marriage to help with her own job security. Unbeknownst to Loid, his new wife Yor is secretly an assassin. Yor is authentically kind when she isn’t stabbing people to death, and she’s unaware that mild-mannered Loid is a super-spy. Only telepathic Anya knows the truth about her parents’ true identities but, thanks to her obsession with violent crime TV shows, Anya finds Loid’s and Yor’s hidden occupations to be “so cool.” She periodically comments inwardly that “Papa is a liar”  (and notes that he has a pistol with a silencer) and she refers to Yor’s night job as “stabby, stabby, die, die.”

The show is filled with humorous adventures as Anya goes from being a poor, neglected orphan to navigating life at an elite private school filled with spoiled wealthy children. Because Loid and Yor are also both orphans, the show leans into a charming found-family element that is sharply contrasted with significant onscreen violence whenever Loid and Yor confront their enemies. The juxtaposition of cuteness and violence is what sets the story apart, especially with a cast of funny supporting characters, all within a fashionable 1960s décor.

Like many feature films based on ongoing anime, Spy x Family: Code White is a self-contained side story designed to threaten our beloved fake Forger family before returning to the show’s regular storyline. The film does a good job of explaining the overarching premise and the backstories of the lead characters. Viewers who are completely new to the franchise will be able to readily follow the story. Code White is also much less violent onscreen, and thus family-friendlier, than the anime series. On the other hand, fans who enjoy an edgier vibe may find this film a bit too light.

In Code White, Anya has an upcoming school cooking project in which the winner will potentially receive access to the school’s honors program. This will get the family closer to super-spy Loid’s political target at the school. Loid decides to take the family on a vacation to a region known for making the headmaster’s favorite dessert. While en route by train, the always curious Anya accidentally ingests microfilm containing dangerous state secrets that could lead to war. The family’s idyllic vacation and dessert quest is upended when the villains kidnap Anya, forcing Loid and Yor to take extreme measures, using their secret skills, to rescue their daughter.

Other than the brief opening backstory on Yor, the film is mostly bloodless. People are killed mostly offscreen with minimal splatter, and for the most part, villains are pummeled rather than outright killed. However (content warning for violence against children), there’s an overtly stated plan by the villains to kill Anya by cutting her open, and there are major fight scenes involving Yor and a dangerous cyborg assassin, as well as a scene involving Loid and poison gas. But overall, the film is much lighter than the series, and is mostly safe for kids and families. In fact, there is an extended potty humor scene that seems entirely designed for children.

Since it’s a feature film, Code White suffers from the very limited presence of the colorful side characters who make the TV show hilarious, including Yuri, the younger brother whom Yor raised and who worships her with hilarious intensity even as he has his own violent hidden life as a member of the government’s secret police. Also given very limited onscreen time is cynical grade schooler Damian Desmond, the son of Loid’s target political leader. Damian’s and Anya’s sharp-tongued, hate-love relationship is a funny ongoing gag on the show. We also see very little of Franky, Loid’s lovelorn, long-suffering bestie and secret spy equipment supplier. The Forgers’ clairvoyant dog Bond is onscreen often in Code White, but is not as much of an active participant as he is in the show.

But the limited time with side characters allows for more focus on the core Forger family. Cynical Loid continues to grow into the reality of his role as a real father even as he struggles with news that the family mission may be terminated by the agency. Yor experiences surprising angst when she sees Loid (seemingly) in an intimate moment with another woman. Telepath Anya absorbs the competing tension within her parents and struggles to find ways to help.

Newcomers will find Spy x Family: Code White to be enjoyable, accessible, and (mostly) family-friendly. Fans of the show will appreciate time with Loid, Yor, and Anya on the big screen, but may be disappointed by the lighter tone. Still, the film joyfully fills the gap while viewers wait for the regular anime to resume and, if nothing else, it will leave many fans even more eager for the next season to finally begin.


Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Highlights

  • Wild big-screen adventures of the popular anime characters
  • The lighter, family-friendly tone may disappoint older fans
  • Accessible for newcomers and will leave fans ready for the new season

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Review: Fallout

Quite the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. first attempt

The raging dichotomy on the Internet about video games and their film/television series adaptations can be a horrible place to find yourself at two a.m. on a Friday night, but someone’s gotta do it. The thing is, you won’t have too many dissenters when it comes to the recently released Fallout show on Amazon Prime. Sure, you have some folks grumpy about potential retconning to their favorite entry, Fallout: New Vegas (Obsidian), but overall, fans seem pleased. The first two titles in the game series were developed by Black Isle Studios and Interplay Entertainment, and Bethesda Studios continued with Fallout 3 and 4 (with Obsidian on New Vegas). I never played the first two Fallout games, but I can attest to the rest of them having hefty hundred-plus-hour runtimes (if you like to explore like me). This breadth of content left showmakers with tons of potential inspiration. And boy did they use it. For better or worse.

Let’s get it out of the way: Fallout is a great adaptation of the series. Fans should be excited and generally pleased by the attention to detail paid by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, even if not every detail is precise to the world seen in the games. From the choice of soundtrack to costumes and dialogue, everything screams, “I’ve played these games and want to respect the source material.”

There were so many moments throughout the show that made me think, “This is Fallout.” One of my favorites sees a character decapitate another with a ripper (chainsaw sword) to the tune of the Ink Spot’s “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire.” If that isn’t quintessential Fallout, I don't know what is. There were quite a few laugh-out-loud moments that took me by surprise, some at the moment, some after a reflection. Some moments in the show felt like they were left up to the RNG (random number generator) Gods, which was one of the truest reflections of the series. Let me explain. In the games, you’ll frequently come across obstacles in which you can choose an option. Sometimes it’s dialogue, sometimes an action. There’s a percentage of a chance that some of these things will work and quite a bit of a chance that they won’t. While I won’t spoil anything, there were a few moments where I thought something was going to backfire but worked, and something that I thought should work backfired. It pulled me further into the narrative and character predicaments.

The aesthetic of the show is true to its roots, especially the Vaults and its inhabitants. From the Vault-Tec bobbleheads to the political propaganda, from the Nuka-Cola to the Red Rocket gas station, and from the Pip-Boys to the power armor, everything looks fantastic and authentic. Seeing all these things made me want to boot one of the old games back up and return to the wasteland. This applies to the sound effects too. From Codsworth’s line delivery and voiceovers to the sound a stimpak makes, you won’t find yourself wanting for authenticity. Fallout looks and feels just like the games.

Lucy MacLeane, played by Ella Purnell, is your typical do-gooder vault dweller on a mission to save a loved one. She is thrust forth from the safety of Vault 33 and into the dangerous wasteland that was once California. She wears her blue jumper with pride and encounters many obstacles with the naiveté of an ignorant rich person stepping into a slum. The rules are different and she soon learns that, to survive and complete her mission, she has to adapt. Her path repeatedly crosses with two other protagonists throughout her journey, and this is where I had some issues. While the other characters make everything more fun and engaging, their meeting on happenstance is too convenient. One character is in trouble and the other just happens to show up and find them at this particular place in a massive wasteland with no communication beforehand. This happens quite a few times.

There were some slogs in the pacing for me as well. While it seemed true to the games to have nothing going on for a little while, it doesn’t work as well for the show. However, there was a hilarious moment where being bogged down by side quests was referenced. One entire episode (of eight) goes by without showing one of the four major protagonists, which I thought was a poor choice.

One of the four protagonists, Lucy’s brother Norm (Moises Arias), is inside a vault and is trying to discover its secrets. One of the best parts of any Fallout game was discovering what lay inside a vault and what experiment said vault was testing. Watching Norm access terminals and using his intermediate hacking skills was satisfying. It’s unfortunate then that this parallel narrative is left hanging in the balance, despite being one of the most authentic and enjoyable parts of the show. I wanted a more solid conclusion, but they seem to have left it for the next season.

I’ve used the words “authenticity” and “authentic” a few times because I want to reiterate the clear love for the game that I saw throughout much of the show. People in power armor yelling and running for their lives is what I spend half my time in Fallout doing, and they caught that. That armor doesn't make you invincible (but it does help). As a gamer, I loved it.

Then I considered it as a TV viewer. Still good, but there are some awkward dialogue choices that don’t feel natural. The romance doesn't feel great, and some of the things that the characters come across seem even more farfetched than the world would seemingly allow. But then someone gets impaled from a shot to the chest, and the camera pans down to see a baby doll’s leg sticking out. That’s what I’m talking about. That's Fallout.

The dirty word that was once “adaptation” seems to be slipping away into the darkness. With The Super Mario Bros. Movie, The Last of Us, and Castlevania among others, Fallout helps solidify the argument for using video games as a source material. While this initial season leaves a bit to be desired after the climax, it did have me yearning for more. I found that, despite some dragging segments, and that no one was called “smoothskin,” I was happy to watch multiple episodes in a row. When a derivative piece of work rekindles fond memories of your original experience with its source, you’ve done a good job. Now I just have to pretend that the Fallout games don’t exist so I can focus on my backlog.

The Math

Objective Assessment: 7.5/10

Bonus: +1 for authenticity, +1 for gruesome over-the-top violence that the series is known for; +0.5 for the soundtrack.

Penalties: −1 for some pacing issues, −1 for convenient hero happenstance.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Posted by: Joe DelFranco - Fiction writer and lover of most things video games. On most days you can find him writing at his favorite spot in the little state of Rhode Island.

Monday, April 22, 2024

Review: Civil War

An absolutely brutal depiction of photojournalism in the midst of an underexplored conflict


I met up with some friends to see Alex Garland's Civil War in IMAX on the Thursday evening before its wide release in the U.S. As a fan of Annihilation, The Beach, and Ex Machina, I thought I was in for a timely tale of American democracy gone wrong. Seeing Nick Offerman in the previews as a Trumpian presidential figure only piqued my interest even more—as a devout lover of all things dystopian, I was ready.

What I got, however, was not what I expected. This isn't to say that the film is lacking; it's just 100% focusing on things other than the reasons behind our country's fictional split.

It focuses on a team of war correspondents inching their way through to Washington D.C. in what may perhaps? be the closing days of said civil war. We never find out how long the civil war has been going on, nor who are the good guys.

Kirsten Dunst portrays a seasoned war photojournalist who is depressed, burnt out, and a war-battered shell of herself. She's joined by a young aspiring photographer who wants desperately in on this life, despite the absolutely traumatic nature of the job. Also along for the ride is the always excellent Stephen McKinley Henderson, most recently known for his role as House Atreides mentat Thufir Hawat.

They travel hundreds of miles through a ravaged American landscape—something that is in itself shocking as there hasn't been a full-scale war on mainland American soil in scores of years. At each stop they shadow armed combatants and bravely capture gut-wrenching photos of corpses, men writhing in pain, and other hideous atrocities.

The conceit of the film is summed up when Kirsten Dunst is asked a question about how photographers like her can document all this horror without taking sides or asking questions—she responds simply with "We record so other people ask."

By not giving the audience any insight into which is the right side of history (if there even is such a thing, in some conflicts) and following in the literal footsteps of these photographers, the film provides you with the full experience—you're not there to fight; you're there to record what is happening every step of the way.

If you judge the film by that metric, it succeeds. And maybe it would have by any other metric, had the film marketed itself as an Oscar-baity War Journalism Think Piece. But I was expecting a deep dive into cultural differences in America that led to a division and a war, which isn't terribly farfetched as I could rattle off three or four such catalysts right now that the U.S. is currently experiencing. Instead, we find out nothing of any substance. The scene with Jesse Plemons interrogating the journalists as to "What kind of American are you?" is as close to world-building as Alex Garland gets, though throughout the scene we have no idea which side Plemons pledges allegiance to.

I didn't realize until I got to the theatre that Civil War is an A24 production, and then things started to click. My experience with A24 movies is that they're nearly always about the horrors of trauma and what they do to humans. This film is no different, and you're brutally pummeled left and right through its relatively short runtime with ear-splitting assault weapon deaths, unspeakable violence, mass graves of U.S. citizens, and characters having literal (and multiple) on-screen panic attacks.

Among the reviews I've read, there seems to be a split. There are those who feel like I do, that it seemed like the previews made it out to be something else entirely, and that by refusing to take a stance about a political civil war, Garland didn't accomplish anything.

Then there are those who think it genius, and a much-needed depiction of the horrors of war and how no side is ever really right. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, like most things.

I'm glad I saw Civil War, and it definitely made me think—but I'll never watch it again. 

--

The Math


Baseline Score: 7/10


Bonuses: Kirsten Dunst's performance is fantastic; there are moments of cinematic artistry scattered throughout; if you've ever wanted to learn about the cold, hard reality of war photojournalism, you're in for a treat.

Penalties: No real worldbuilding; extremely traumatic and violent; some viewers may feel as if they were bait-and-switched when they learn nearly nothing about the war.


POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Friday, April 19, 2024

Interview: Into the Sauútiverse

The Sauútiverse, a shared science-fantasy world inspired by African folklore (of which the first anthology, Mothersound, is already out) is a fascinating collaborative writing project born from the creative space Syllble. (Full disclosure: I'm currently involved with the development of another Syllble project.) I spoke with Ghanaian author Cheryl Ntumy, one of the founding members of the Sauútiverse, about the conception of this fictional world and the ideas behind it. In befitting Sauúti fashion, the answers came from the writing collective as a whole:

Who came up with the idea for the Sauútiverse?

The universe itself (the name Sauútiverse, the planets, etc.) was created by all the members of the Collective, over the course of several brainstorming sessions. We have prepared insightful FAQs that can answer some of your questions.

Was the project originally conceived within Syllble or brought into it from a previous idea?

The project was conceived when Fabrice Guerrier, founder of Syllble, Wole Talabi and Ainehi Edoro of Brittlepaper first met to discuss the possibilities for an African collaborative writing project. While Wole Talabi spearheaded Sauúti as an African-focused shared world, aligned to the Syllble mandate, Syllble was already hosting other shared world projects. Sauúti sprang out from that source, using a lot of the Syllble base framework even as we adapted and expanded it.

How long did the project take from first idea to first publication? What stages were involved?

We had our first meeting in March 2022, and saw our first published Sauúti story, "The Alphabet of Pinaa: An AI Reinvents Zerself On An Inhabited Moon," set on our invented planet Pinaa, released in July 2023 by Interzone Digital. Mothersound, the first Sauútiverse anthology, edited by Wole Talabi, was published in November 2023.

First we had a lot of brainstorming sessions, not just for the fictional world we were creating but also for the communal ownership model we would use as the Collective. We used the existing Syllble framework for collaborative worldbuilding. We spent a lot of time worldbuilding, then we each developed story pitches and shared them with the group. We started writing our stories and many of us ended up writing more than one because we were so inspired! As we wrote, we also developed a story bible to keep track of the world and to help new contributors easily understand the Sauútiverse.

Next, we invited other writers to contribute to the anthology. They submitted pitches, followed by stories. While the process of refining and editing stories was ongoing, we were also looking for a publisher. We found a home with Android Press. During the whole process, we took the opportunity to promote the project at book festivals and conventions, including the Ake Arts and Book Festival, The Nebula Conference and the Africa Writes literature festival.

What elements about the worldbuilding of Sauúti can be traced to real-life cultures?

Many elements of the Sauútiverse come from real African cultures. We all drew heavily from the cultures that we grew up in, as well as other African cultures. The word Sauúti comes from "sauti", which means "voice" in Swahili. Most of the words and names we use come from real-life languages. We also drew from real-life cultural practices, rituals, beliefs, etc., though we tweaked them to fit in with our inclusive, futuristic vision. The primary resource in the shared world is sound, and there is no written language in the Sauútiverse; that element is representative of the importance of oral history in real African cultures. The Sauútiverse Creation Myth reflects this pan-African inspiration, as indicated in Wole Talabi’s introduction to the Creation Myth “Our Mother, Creator” in Mothersound:

“...we took inspiration from North African communities who center themselves around a matriarch and goddess. From the Ijaw people and their creator goddess Woyengi. From the Egyptian mythological Nut. Nana Buluku of the Fon who gave birth to the moon spirit Mawu, the sun spirit Lisa. From so many more.”

How was the process of recruiting the various writers who contributed to the project?

Wole recruited the rest of us to the Collective. This is the email he sent out, seeking writers: The History of Sauúti.

How are decisions made regarding what locations and events are official in the shared continuity?

We meet fortnightly, and make all decisions as a Collective. Once a location or event appears in a published story, it is considered "official" and key points from it are added to the story bible, where relevant. In terms of events, anything that affects the wider universe needs to be discussed and agreed on by the Collective.

Does anyone supervise that one writer's additions don't contradict another writer's?

We are switched on as a collective. Pitches and reviews are key to helping us avoid contradictions. We submit pitches before writing new stories so that the rest of the Collective can give feedback, take note of any conflicting or contradictory ideas and find ways to resolve any story challenges. We also review the finished stories to check and give feedback as well. It's just also a great way to support each other's work.

Where did the concept for the magic system come from?

Once we settled on the power of sound as the focus of our world, having sound as the basis of the techno-magic system made sense. It happened pretty organically—one idea led to the next. Sound is already linked to the supernatural in terms of spells, chants, prayers, etc., so it felt right.

In a culture organized around the magical study and manipulation of sound waves, what is the social status of people born without the ability to speak and/or hear?

Inclusion is an important part of the world we're creating, and those without certain abilities have the same status as anyone else. We view sound in this world as something rich and complex—it includes all kinds of vibrations and mechanical waves, infrasonic, ultrasonic, all varieties of sound. So people can manipulate sound in more ways than speaking and understand each other without hearing. They can play musical instruments and tools, use signs, use technology, etc. We are open to every interpretation of sound in the Sauútiverse.

We have stories that feature Deaf/deaf/Hard of Hearing (HOH) and non-verbal characters, some of whom are incredibly powerful. Sign language is used widely across the Sauútiverse and has the same status as spoken language (in some cases it's even required or preferred). The story "Lost in the Echoes'' by Xan van Rooyen features a Deaf/non-verbal DJ with extraordinary magic. Xan had a Deaf friend provide a sensitivity read for their story, to make sure the representation was accurate and didn't play into any negative stereotypes.

It’s also important to note that the founding Sauúti Collective includes queer and neurodivergent people and the Sauútiverse is queer-normative, so LGBT+ characters are fully accepted in society (i.e. queerphobia would be the exception and not the norm). Similarly, neurodiversity is represented in Sauútiverse stories.

If it's not top secret, can you mention other authors who will add more material to the Sauútiverse in the near future?

If we tell you, we’ll have to kill you... but I guess we can take the risk with you! I’m co-editing our next anthology, Sauúti Terrors, with members of my Sauúti family Eugen Bacon and Stephen Embleton, and we're stoked to see that contributing members of Mothersound —Tobias Buckell, Somto Ihezue and T. L. Huchu— are interested in sending us stories, and we're starting to receive exciting pitches! We also have newcomers like Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga, Ivor Hartmann, Kofi Nyameye, Nerine Dorman and Tobi Ogundiran on track in this new project. It's an anthology by invitation, and we're also accepting poetry. We're thrilled to confirm that we have signed agreements with five-time Bram Stoker Award winner and recipient of the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award Linda D. Addison, Grand Master Akua Lezli Hope, and other prominent speculative fiction poets, including Miguel Mitchell and Jamal Hodge.

Members of the collective have also written and sold Sauútiverse stories to other venues outside of our own anthologies, so you can look out for them soon.

The plan for the Sauútiverse was always to have it expand beyond the original collective and keep growing—for it to be a sandbox of imagination for Africans and those of the African diaspora to tell new, complex and fascinating stories together and we are so glad that it seems to be right on track.


POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Thursday, April 18, 2024

6 Books with Eliza Chan


Eliza Chan is a Scottish-born speculative fiction author.  Her short fiction has been published in The Dark, Podcastle, Fantasy Magazine and The Best of British Fantasy. Her debut novel Fathomfolk —inspired by mythology, ESEAN cities and diaspora feels— was published by Orbit in February 2024.

Today she tells us about her Six Books:

1. What book are you currently reading?

I'm currently reading Hannah Kaner's Godkiller, an absolutely gripping, explosive epic fantasy that is unlike anything I've read before. It's giving me American Gods meet The Witcher vibes at the moment but I'm early on.

2. What upcoming book are you really excited about?

Suyi Davies Okungbowa's new novella Lost Ark Dreaming is on my radar. It has a similar premise to my book, with post-climate change semi-flooded towers, but Okungbowa's is based in West Africa and has comps to Snowpiercer. It sounds like exactly my jam.

3. Is there a book that you're currently itching to reread?

Having recently watched Dune Part Two, I'm itching to reread the whole Dune series to see if it stands up to the test of time. The desert setting and the science fantasy aspects are still fairly rare even though the genre has developed a lot since then.

4. How about a book you've changed your mind about over time--either positively or negatively?

The Anne McCaffrey Dragonriders of Pern books had a massive impact on me as a teen, with their strong female leads and, more importantly, dragons. The romance in them has not aged well at all, though. There's quite a lot of dubious consent (read that as severe lack of consent) as well as unhealthy power dynamics in the main relationships. I'm not sure I can recommend or reread them in good conscience apart from Dragonsong and Dragonsinger because they thankfully have no romance in them at all.

5. What's one book that has had a lasting impact on your writing style?

Cheating a bit, but it would be Ken Liu's The Paper Menagerie and other stories, short story collection. Liu has a way of taking a concept, a part of history or mythology, and asking a series of questions around it to make the reader think. For example, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary examines our obsession with seeing things before we believe them in this internet age, whilst Good Hunting is about nine-tailed foxes but also colonisation. His writing gave me permission to layer multiple meanings in a narrative, to strive for writing that asks difficult questions, even if there is no easy answer.

6. What's your latest book, and why is it awesome?

My debut adult fantasy novel Fathomfolk is what if the Little Mermaid was a pissed-off immigrant in a semi-flooded East- and Southeast-Asian-inspired cityscape, and it was never about the love of a man; it was for love of her home. It looks at prejudice, discrimination, class and the cost of change, through the lens of a myriad of disparate sea folk including kappas, kelpies, water dragons and mermaids. It's my love letter to multicultural cities and all their problems, but in a fantastical setting. It's out now from Orbit.






Thank you, Eliza!

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Review: Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

A "who is the real monster?" story that dodges the complexity of its own premise


(Note: there is a fairly significant (though not plot-revealing) spoiler in this review - read on at your own risk!)

Opening confession: before reading Someone You Can Build a Nest In, I didn't rate John Wiswell's work very much. Clearly, his writing is doing a lot of things right for a lot of people, since you don't get to be Hugo and Nebula nominated without folks thinking you're great at what you do. But beyond the cute ideas, I don't find a lot in Wiswell stories to sink my teeth into. On a technical level, the prose tends towards the same basic voice regardless of the type of story being told, and on a thematic level, there's a lot of narrative "flattening" to make stories about dark, monstrous themes resolve with a relatively small number of people carving out a safe space and calling it a happy ending. Short fiction might not have much space for complex characters or worldbuilding, but it provides plenty of space for moral complexity, and I find it weird to set up complex premises only to ignore their complexity. Maybe there's something radically cosy in that that I'm just too curmudgeonly to appreciate, or maybe I'm just not picking up on complexity that everyone else sees. Who knows.

Despite not loving the author's prior work and also having a finite amount of precious reading time, I read Someone You Can Build a Nest In for two reasons. First, Hugo and Nebula nominated short fiction authors have a very non-zero chance of landing on a Best Novel ballot, and I like to read things for award purposes. Second, I really wanted this book to give me the experience that it gives people who love Wiswell's writing, because if something different is going to happen for me, it's probably going to happen at a different length, right?

Alas, it didn't happen.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In is the story of Shesheshen, an amorphous shapeshifting monster who eats people and repurposes their organs in order to survive. Shesheshen is content in her isolated, people-eating lifestyle, although she misses her mother - also a people eating shapeshifter, tragically killed by a monster hunter - and reminisces fondly about the father who she and her siblings ate from the inside out after he gestated them, as part of the people eating shapeshifter life cycle. She's also not much of a talker, and the whole book is told in her "voice": which means plenty of simple, unpolished prose. So I guess I'm not having my expectations of the author challenged on that front!

Anyway, when Shesheshen is rudely awoken from hibernation by some monster hunters (led by a posh asshole, so you know you're supposed to root for the people eating monster and not the hunters trying to put an end to all the people eating), it puts her out of her regular people eating schedule and she has no choice but to go into town to find some people to eat immediately (target: another posh and kinda sleazy asshole, also fine to root against). When that doesn't work, she falls off a cliff and is tended to a kind, fat, practical young woman called Homily, who is hunting monsters in the ravine. Shesheshen is delayed from eating Homily for long enough to fall in love with her, Homily is selectively dense enough not to realise the person who survived a fall off a cliff and has no recognisable human organ structures might actually be a monster, and thus begins a beautiful relationship.

Complicating factor number one in Homily and Shesheshen's relationship: for Shesheshen, "falling in love" coincides with getting a strong urge to lay eggs in Homily and have them eat her from the inside out. For me, this aspect of the story actually delivered what I wanted from it to a large extent, albeit without a huge emphasis on the actual wanting to build a nest in her girlfriend bit (you'd have thought... but no). I'd really like to read more stories where "alien" biological urges are things that sentient creatures can exert control and choice over, and while things work out rather conveniently in terms of Shesheshen eradicating those urges, she goes through an interesting process to re-examine what she assumed being in love with someone would look like versus what she actually wants with, and from, Homily. That she has to do this without guidance from a parental figure is both thematically relevant and also kind of interesting, and it makes Shesheshen's convenient discoveries about herself less annoying - maybe she's not the first people eating shapeshifter to do certain things, but she's never had any fellow shapeshifters to learn from. It's heavily implied, though not literally stated, that Homily is asexual ("enby" is a word in people's vocabulary in this queernorm setting, so it's perhaps a bit odd that "ace" isn't, but I digress) so Shesheshen doesn't have any human sexual preferences to figure out how she fits with, aside from an easily discovered mutual enjoyment of cuddling. Good for them, and a win for alien monster protagonist portrayal.

Complicating factor number two is, unfortunately, where things go off the rails. See, Homily isn't just some random monster hunter hunting some random offscreen monster: she's the daughter of the land's war hero leader, and her mother and siblings (one of whom was the posh asshole from earlier! Who already got eaten, oops) are back from the exile which Shesheshen's mother imposed on them by "cursing" the family if they stayed. Homily's family are abusive towards her, and Homily has adapted to this abuse by trying to make herself as "useful" as possible in any given situation, even when it hurts her to do so. Now that Shesheshen has avoided detection as a people eating shapeshifter, she gets roped into the expedition to hunt herself, and to try and help Homily with a toxic family reunion, while also throwing the monster hunting off her own scent.

To fully contextualise why I hated this plot, I have to give that one significant spoiler mentioned above: none of Homily's immediate family survive this book. That means her mother, her adult younger sister Epithet, and her child sister Ode (and her posh asshole brother, but he's gone and we've already mostly forgotten about him, except when Shesheshen uses his teeth to smile at her girlfriend) all meet their ends in ways that are apparently intended to provide context or even catharsis about the familial abuse. This is some morally grey shit right here, especially since one sister was a child eight years younger than Homily while most of her part in the abuse was taking place, and the other is still an actual child. That's not to say that children can't cause real physical and emotional damage to their siblings, even much older ones, but it's surely an open question to what extent the culpability lies with the child and not with the adults who had a duty of care to both siblings? Someone You Can Build A Nest In doesn't seem to care about that question. Instead, we get "straightforward" lessons, in 21st century therapist vocabulary, about how terrible abuse is, and therefore aren't abusers the real monsters here? If the text is nudging us towards answers more sophisticated than "yes", it's laying down clues too subtle for my reading skills, so I'm left assuming that "yes" is the desired answer, and I don't like it.

Ode's death is particularly egregious: having been a bratty bit of comic relief in the narrative, her death is mourned on page by nobody except her mother, whose grief is called out as toxic and wrong. Meanwhile, Homily learns the valuable life lesson that she didn't have to risk her own life trying to save her sister, she's still a good person and nobody should judge her for not trying a bit harder to rescue a child from a grim death. I'm glad we got that lesson sorted out and now you don't have to have any complicated feelings about your role in that situation, Homily! While the other family deaths are treated with a bit more weight, the whole familial comeuppance sits poorly, particularly because it was an authorial choice to make two of Homily's most prominent abusive family members children, set up what should have been a complicated moral situation, and then just... sidestep that complexity, because the story you want to tell is about how abusers are the real monsters, and not the people eating girlfriend. Also relevant: Shesheshen has conveniently gone the whole story without eating anyone who hadn't broken the law or been a posh asshole first, because having to grapple with the ethics of eating people to live is apparently also beyond this story's interests. Textual moral greyness averted again!

So no, I do not get anything cathartic or heartwarming out of Shesheshen and Homily's story. To find those things would require me to narrow down my curiosity and my empathy to the tiny number of characters that the story wants me to believe are worthy of it, and it did not succeed in convincing me of its judgements (was it the people eating? maybe...). In different hands, the messiness inherent in this story could have been kind of amazing. While reading, I drew comparisons to The Book Eaters, which also features obligate people eating and is fully aware of how bleak and antithetical to a heartwarming familial ending that diet is, even as it tries to bring that ending about. I also thought about Light From Uncommon Stars, which portrays an escape from abuse and into the loving orbit of an objectively fucked up person who needs to be convinced not to sacrifice the protagonist to the devil, and which tells that story in a way which acknowledges both the love and the irredeemable mess. But unless I'm missing something huge, that's not the story Wiswell wanted to tell, so I'm left with another question: is there a version of this kind of story, where all we are meant to care about is the comfort of the main characters regardless of what they do to others, that is uncomplicatedly cosy and heartwarming? I don't know, but I'm going to go back to seeking out the messy, fucked up monster stories, and the radical empathy they often demand, rather than putting myself through this sort of book too often.