Series Review: Black Mirror Season 7

Strong acting and innovative stories explore our difficult relationship with technology

Humanity’s interaction with technology returns as a timely primary theme in the latest season of Black Mirror. Unlike last season’s obsession with cruelty and extreme violence, season 7 of the mind-bending series explores the ways technology shapes our understanding of reality and relationships. The latest advances lure consumers with affordable pricing and irresistible features, but soon we are caught in a cycle of dependence even as the price rises, ads bury the features, and the never-ending contracts trap us in ways that seem impossible to escape. Video games provide a conflicting combination of immersive connection and distinct unreality which leads to moral decisions in a fictional context that may not match real-life choices. The top casting means the concepts are explored with immersive acting, even if the ultimate conclusion doesn’t quite live up to expectations. And, for most of the episodes, the stories are thoughtful and engaging, while raising questions without providing clear answers.

Common People. School teacher Amanda (Rashida Jones) and her construction worker husband, Mike (Chris O’Dowd), are a loving but financially struggling couple. When Amanda suffers a near-lethal seizure, doctors tell a stunned and grief-stricken Mike that she won’t make it. But then he learns about Rivermind, a high-tech system that gives Amanda a chance at life for a seemingly reasonable monthly fee. However, as time moves on, the couple discovers the real price of keeping her alive. The episode is the strongest of the season and offers commentary on the bait-and-switch techniques of online subscription services that lure us in and change the rules as time progresses. But this time, the service is not just television streaming or a music app; it’s the thing keeping Amanda alive. The episode also deals with disturbing obsessions with suffering and humiliation as a form of entertainment and income. Tracee Ellis Ross is excellent as the slick-talking salesperson for Rivermind whose constant doublespeak keeps Amanda and Mike tangled in a web of frustration. The episode is riveting, poignant, and tragic.

Bête Noire. Maria’s life as a food product development specialist changes when an old high school classmate, Verity, appears. Everyone else finds Verity (Rosy McEwen) appealing, except Maria (Siena Kelly), who finds her strange, suspicious and annoying. As Verity insinuates herself deeper into Maria’s life, Maria notices odd occurrences and inexplicable inconsistencies that no one else seems to notice. The episode starts out as an intriguing psychological thriller, with each new mystery building on escalating tension before the story descends into an unexpectedly wild ending.

Hotel Reverie. Superstar actress Brandy Friday (Issa Rae) is tired of the same old film roles and jumps at the chance to be part of struggling film company’s high-tech remake of an old black-and-white classic film. To save money, the film company’s owner hires tech firm ReDream, led by Kimmy (Awkwafina). The tech firm drops Brandy’s consciousness into an AI version of the old film along with the consciousness of the film’s long-deceased star. Of course, with this weirdly complicated set up, things don’t go exactly as planned when Brandy’s AI co-star (Emma Corrin) becomes self-aware and Brandy herself becomes attached to the person inside the character. To make things worse, Brandy’s own life is at risk since she is (unexpectedly?) neurologically linked to the film. This means she has to finish the film to survive. If you think too hard about the scientific logic of this episode, you will turn it off, so it’s best to employ a willing suspension of disbelief to enjoy the quirky love story that unfolds. The episode has similar vibes to an earlier poignant romantic story, San Junipero, but the appeal of this tale lies mostly in the classic, early-twentieth-century film style that it eerily captures while having a contemporary character immersed in it.

Plaything. Doctor Who fans will be excited to see Peter Capaldi onscreen as the mysterious protagonist in Plaything. Cameron (Capaldi) is an eccentric older man whose obsession with a ’90s video game ties him to an unsolved murder from that time. When he is arrested for an unrelated crime, he tells the police detective and police psychologist the story of a video game whose characters are real creatures. Cameron’s protectiveness of the creatures leads to extreme consequences. The episode has a cameo of Will Poulter from the stand alone interactive episode Bandersnatch.

Eulogy. The quiet life of a bitter and isolated man (Paul Giamatti) is interrupted when he is asked to submit memories for an old acquaintance’s funeral. As part of the process, an computer platform connects to his neural system and takes him on an immersive journey through his damaged old photographs. Along the way, we learn the true nature of his relationship with the deceased as the AI guide (Patsy Ferran) prompts him to face some difficult truths about his past. The episode is an intriguing and artistic discourse on affection, pride, and bitterness, and is definitely another standout episode for the season.

USS Callister: Into Infinity. The original story USS Callister gave us a fascinating vision of Star Trek-style fandom inverted into a disturbing exploration of cruelty and toxic anger. In the original episode, a socially awkward genius, Robert Daly (Jessie Plemons), feels unappreciated at his high-tech company. He takes revenge on his colleagues for a range of perceived slights by creating sentient copies of them and torturing them in a Starfleet-inspired, computer-generated world of his creation. But when his latest captive Nannette (Cristin Milioti) arrives, she inspires the enslaved starship crew to fight back. The sequel, USS Callister: Into Infinity, undoes much of the satisfying wrap-up of the original by creating a new problem for the crew: the Callister now can’t survive without game credits (physical currency) to buy fuel, etc. However, the Callister and crew are unregistered players and so can’t earn the credits needed. So they steal currency from other players (avatars of real people), which leads to further conflict in the game and ultimately a violent showdown with the company owners in both the real world and the virtual world. The premise of the sequel is unexpected since none of these obstacles were mentioned in the original story. However, as we saw in Common People, the rules of technology grow harder and more expensive the longer you play. It’s a full-circle moment of irony to wrap up the season.

Season 7 of Black Mirror is significantly more cerebral than the prior one, with thoughtful and timely discussions of AI, technology, and the problematic ways we often treat each other as human beings. While the premise of AI as useful and relatable exists, many episodes lean into cautionary explorations of the roles of technology in our lives. The strong acting and innovative tales give us, as in real life, deep and important questions without clear answers.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights:

• Relatable messaging on our interactions with technology
• Unspectacular endings for some episodes
• Memorable acting delivered by a strong cast

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

Video Game Review: Assassin's Creed Shadows

A fine addition to the Assassin's Creed world, Shadows lets you explore the fascinating world of Sengoku-era Japan

The long-awaited new Assassin's Creed entry, Shadows, takes players to feudal Japan in the 16th century and introduces two main heroes—the formed enslaved Diogo who takes the name Yasuke and becomes a samurai, and Naoe, a young female shinobi (ninja) hell bent on revenge. They team up to tackle a secret band of bad guys, as per Assassin's Creed style, and along the way you learn about this era of Japan and its history, art, and culture.

I was a bit hesitant at first to get excited about this game because I had loved Ghosts of Tsushima so much, a game also set in medieval Japan (though a few centuries earlier). The games have a lot in common, especially their quiet devotion to aspects of Japanese culture but totally different vibes, so I'm glad I got over my hesitancy. 

I mentioned a while ago how much I love Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and it's the video game I've played the most in my adult life. Roaming around Ancient Greece and playing as the formidable Kassandra is one of the highlights of gaming for me, and no other Assassin's Creed has held my attention quite like it.

Shadows comes in at a close second, I think, now that I've dropped 50+ hours into it.

A convoluted tale of revenge

The first main character you meet, Naoe, is a young shinobi who witnesses her father's death at the hands of a masked group of marauders. With his dying breath, he asks her to retrieve the mysterious box that they stole from him. She sets out on a Kill Bill or Arya Stark-worthy quest of vengeance against the group known as the Shinbakufu, masked evildoers that must be revealed and destroyed.

Along the way, she meets and teams up with Yasuke, a former enslaved man who ended up in Japan via the Portuguese (the first group of Europeans to reach Japan). If this sounds familiar, it's because the recent adaptation of Shogun gave modern audiences an extraordinary look into this era when Japanese people were interacting with Portuguese traders.

I won't get into spoilers about the ending of the game, but those familiar with Assassin's Creed games will understand that it all gets a little confusing. At a certain point, you're just doing assassinations and side quests, and it's easy to lose track of the latest target's backstory and motivation and how it relates to the main storyline. Fortunately, for me most of the fun in these games just comes from roaming across the countryside and happening across people, places, and events.

Two main characters with wildly different playing styles

You begin the game playing as Naoe, and she's lithe, fast, and flips around from roof to roof with incredible grace. She stalks the shadows and gets into places quickly and quietly, and when fighting she jumps, rolls, and dodges like the wind.

After a few hours of story play, you get to unlock Yasuke, and the difference hits you like a ton of bricks. Yasuke is sheer power and force, and can literally run through walls. The shoji doors in interior buildings hate to seem him coming, and he's constantly breaking them down like a bull in a china shop.

What he lacks in grace, however, he makes up for in absolutely wild gameplay. Using him, I can regularly fight and beat enemies with a higher rank than mine, something I definitely can't do with the willowy Naoe.

His strength comes at a slightly funny cost though—he struggles climbing up even small walls, and when it comes to the iconic and gorgeous "leap of faith" that AC characters do into haystacks, he more or less falls, and always follows up with a self-deprecating statement like "It is harder than it looks," "Any landing you can walk away from is good enough," and "Next time will be better."

While playing, both characters get to use an assortment of awesome weapons, from samurai swords and daggers to kusarigama (a blade on a chain) and teppo (early guns). Despite how cool they are, I found myself primarily using the sword.

The world is gorgeous, expansive, and full of nature and nuance

Roaming feudal-era Japan is a pleasure for the senses, and the game delivers visually, sonically, and emotionally. The seasons change every so often, and you get rewarded with flowers, red leaves, and even snow-covered roads as you gallop around Kyoto. Much of the game is spent on horseback, and some of the things you encounter will simply take your breath away. You'll pass by a small village and see a man sweeping his stoop and it's like something out of a Kurosawa movie.

There's vendors, food sellers, rogue ronin, and monks inhabiting this world, and it feels very lived in. One of my favorite parts is all the animals you come across. There's the requisite deer and eagles, of course, but feudal Japan is absolutely chock a block with dogs and cats. As a cat person, I stopped (almost) every time to get in a little scritch. Evidence:

Photo of shinobi stopping to pet a calico bobtail cat

Photo of samurai loving on a tabby bobtail cat

You explore and pillage Sengoku castles, climbing up the multiple levels and gaining entry to the upper floors to access coveted legendary loot. One of my favorite parts was discovering that castles used "nightingale floors"—wooden floorboards that chirp/creaked very loudly to alert that an intruder was near.

You also get to explore Shinto temples and shrines, allowing you to pray and pay respects as needed.

Building your hideout is like getting a free Sim City Zen garden for free

When I played Valhalla for a bit, which is set in the Viking era, I didn't quite understand building the village, so I skipped it. (I also didn't really jibe with that game at all, but that's another story.) But in Shadows, I'm completely hooked. Your hideout is a respite from gameplay where you can upgrade weapons, chat with NPC team members, and landscape and build to your heart's content. At different vendors throughout the world and after certain achievements, you gain access to new things to add to your hideout, from types of bamboo to dogs, cats, and even giant sakura trees.

I found myself concerned with roofing choices, shoji wall materials, and whether a mossy boulder placed just so was the right choice. In other words, I loved it. Sometimes, I'd just head to my hideout at night to walk around the property and bask in the fire light while I pet my chow. (I've basically made it into an animal rescue, too, what with the sheer amount of cats and kittens I've amassed.)

Designed for 9th generation consoles, the tech behind it is stellar

In terms of pure visual spectacle, this may be the very best next-gen game I've played so far. While it has the same mechanics as Odyssey, the difference in graphics, gameplay, and functionality is lightyears apart.

The graphics alone are breathtaking, especially when it's raining. Rendering water can be especially challenging, but it looks so good in Shadows that you can even tell when wood is wet—absolutely wild.

My quibbles

I have two primary quibbles. The first is how much the game pushes you to use the existing roads. I get the point—it introduces you to roadside sidequests. But in other AC games, I literally will choose the shortest distance between two points and muscle my way up mountains, across bodies of water, and through dense forests. AC Shadows doesn't really let you do this.

When you can climb no further, especially on mountains, you start sliding down. It's frustrating. Running at an angle may help, but I've basically just stopped trying. And if you try to run your way through dense forest, the foliage doesn't really clear and everything looks like this:

Fortunately, they added a recent update bringing back Follow Road auto-riding, so I'll just set my destination and go wash the dishes or something until I arrive.

My other quibble is with the Objectives screen. Usually in AC games it's a list, but in Shadows it's this weird overlay map thing, and there's no sense of urgency or hierarchy I find. The Shinbakufu is in the middle, and that's the primary goal, but everything else is hard to figure out what's important. It seems players are mixed on this—folks either love it or hate it. I find myself missing a text list, but I am a writer after all, I suppose.

This format also is related to the non-linear gameplay that results in my losing interest occasionally, as it's always: get a target, track them down, kill, repeat.

Overall, I have loved playing Shadows, and intend to keep spending time in feudal Japan long after the main quest has finished (I accidentally lost 20 hours of gameplay, so I have had to rebuild my world a bit). The sneaking and fighting is incredibly fun, and the glimpses I get into this historical period have been informative and meaningful—and I love being able to say that about a game that's primarily just assassinating people.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

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.

Film Review: The Day the Earth Blew Up

An explosion of fun despite WB's efforts to memory-hole it

It's a small miracle that The Day the Earth Blew Up survived Warner Bros. Discovery's ongoing self-destruction in the pursuit of quick profit. A buddy comedy in the classic stooge/straight man format, this movie reignites hope for the continued existence of the Looney Tunes in an increasingly hostile corporate ecosystem. It's a cliché to read every movie as a statement on its own production, but the fact that the plot of this one involves a fearless creative fighting a company's stagnant recycling of the same old flavors under new packaging deserves, in the context of David Zaslav's disastrous tenure at the head of the studio, at least a moment of admiration.

Another of the creative choices that make this movie work so well is that it resists the easy temptation to use the entire Looney Tunes cast. The Roadrunner and Bugs Bunny are arguably more famous, but their presence would have muddled the narrative focus. The versions of Porky and Daffy used here, as adoptive brothers learning to lean on each other's distinctive strengths, is the emotional throughline that sustains the plot from beginning to end, with Porky fulfilling the role of the responsible and reasonable half of the duo and Daffy in the role of, as the kids say these days, a total chaos goblin. These two had appeared together in numerous classic WB shorts, most notably the science fiction parody Duck Dodgers, with the noteworthy reversal that Daffy was the one in charge while Porky was his insecure sidekick. This time, the dynamic between them hinges on the mission to keep their childhood home from being demolished by the city government, a pursuit that gets complicated by Daffy's newfound obsession with alien conspiracy theories and Porky's newfound obsession with the cute and brilliant Petunia, a scientist in search of the perfect bubblegum flavor (and who will taste literally any substance, edible or not, which I'm sure is a subtle joke about the fact that pigs are omnivorous).

Also commendable is the choice to stick to a 2D look that both honors the history of the characters and takes advantage of their expressive flexibility in ways that 3D attempts have failed to. Despite the massive progress made by digital video technology since the days of hand-drawn animation, the fact remains that cartoon faces and bodies can stretch and flatten much more effectively when the eye isn't distracted by the quasi-realism of a 3D shape.

The Day the Earth Blew Up makes extensive use of cartoonish exaggeration to ease the joining of the disparate tones it needs to juggle: it's a delightfully demented comedy full of slapstick zaniness, but also a creepy alien invasion thriller with disturbing body horror, but also a heartfelt personal drama about learning to manage the frictions of a chosen family. That's a huge load of complex emotional content to express via flat images, and the movie excels at the task by drawing from the decades of cinematic artistry that constitute the legacy of WB animation. For a silly story about talking animals who fight a chewing gum invasion with the power of rotten eggs, it can boast some beautiful achievements on the technical side of the moviemaking process.

Despite being produced with the tools and practical advantages of digital animation, the look of the movie maintains the tactile solidity of hand-painted backgrounds. The degree of care on the part of the team of artists is noticeable in both outdoor daylight scenes and indoor dimly lit ones. The deliberate way some shots appeal to the evocative effect of shadows and contours brings to mind better days in WB history, such as the early seasons of Batman: The Animated Series. Whether a plot beat needs to be funny or spooky or sentimental, each decision in the visual style serves to bolster the script's intention.

Not that the writing needed any help. The Day the Earth Blew Up is composed of a cavalcade of great joke after great joke after great joke. The director knows how to sustain an energetic pace without becoming overwhelming or confusing. Even when the screen gets filled with flamethrowers and giant maces and neon-green goo and a small army of wind-up dentures and unadvisable chemical experiments and an infestation of termites and prehensile bubblegum (yes, seriously), following the action feel effortless. It's really tricky to animate nonstop frantic movement while ensuring that the viewer doesn't lose the thread of the action. That's where I can bounce off a production like Star Trek: Lower Decks, and where The Day the Earth Blew Up succeeds while making it look easy.

As a bonus treat, it is thanks to the success of The Day the Earth Blew Up that Coyote vs. Acme has been rescued from oblivion, which in some way turns the act of watching it into a message to Zaslav about how wrong he is to disrespect the Looney Tunes and how necessary these characters still are.

(Also, Daffy is apparently a trans boy, which is not only fully in line with the Looney Tunes' venerable tradition of pushing the boundaries of gender expression, but is also a welcome counterweight to WB's horrendously ill-advised plans concerning a certain wizard school.)

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

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

Book Review: If Stars are Lit, by Sara K. Ellis

 A philosophical meditation on personhood that ends up more enraging than was probably intended

 

It has been a long time since I’ve read a book that engaged me as much as this one, or had me writing so many verbose marginal notes at so many plot elements. This is a book that inspires thoughts. Lots of thinky thoughts – and it’s intended to do that. The thing is, I don’t think it intended to inspire the thinky thoughts that I found myself thinking.

The premise of this book revolves around a creation in artificial intelligence, called a gemel. Gemels are sentient holograms, created off a human prototype, and sharing all memories and personality traits with the prototype up. They are effectively a holographic copy of that prototype as it exists at the moment of their inception. Gemels occupy an odd half-life in the starfaring semi-near future of this book: they are officially recognized as sentient, but they are constrained, legally: their programming forbids them from hurting humans, or through inaction allowing humans to come to harm. It’s all very three-laws-of-robotics­—only don’t say ‘robot’ around a gemel: that’s a sentientist slur. They remain tied to their progenitor’s service, unless explicitly discharged through a complex legal process; and they are switched off when the progenitor dies, unless there is an emancipation clause in the progenitor’s will. (The text describes it as “essentially indentured servitude”, because apparently the word “slavery” was on vacation or something.)

Our main character, Joss, is a hostage negotiator by profession, on her way home from a successful — or so she thought — mission talking down some unhappy asteroid miners from a ledge. Then the ship explodes and everyone dies except for Joss. And a gemel, who is suddenly there. This gemel was created with Joss as the prototype, but takes the form of Joss's ex-wife Alice -- and, don't worry, we'll get there. Over the course of the book, the two work together to figure out who blew up the ship, and why. I don't think it will surprise anyone if I reveal that the real villain turns out to be capitalism we made along the way.

(NB: In what follows, I'm going to be using both AI, an abbreviation for 'artificial intelligence', and also the visually similar name Al, short for 'Alice'. I cannot expand 'Al' to 'Alice', because I need to maintain a distinction between those, too, so to avoid confusion, I've decided to exploit the wonders of formatting. Artificial Intelligence AI will be bolded, while Not-Alice Al will be italicized. I'm terribly sorry for it, but the website's sans-serif font makes it impossible to distinguish them otherwise.)

The broad plot of the book is reasonably well-constructed, with some nice turns of phrase and thoughtful observations. Unfortunately, it was completely poisoned by the whole gemel component of the plot; and that's a big deal, because this component forms the philosophical heart of the book. In this world, gemels are fantastically expensive, and usually represent some rich jerk's way of externalizing of their id. But Joss acquires her gemel through some hand-wavium related to the explosion of the ship. The reason that this gemel, Al, looks like Joss's ex-wife, Alice, is because at the moment of Al's inception, Joss has been working through some Issues about her failed marriage, and Alice is at the forefront of her psyche. So their partnership serves a dual narrative purpose: First, we the readers learn about the minutiae of gemel-lore; while simultaneously, Joss takes the opportunity to work through her Issues by talking to this AI simulation of her ex-wife that shares all of her—Joss’s—memories. Oh, and also fall in love with her.

And this is where I ran into the first incredibly frustrating element of this book, one that pervades the entire narrative. Gemels are sentient, distinct in kind from humans, but nevertheless beings worthy of respect and autonomy. This is a vitally important theme in this book. Yet Al’s role, especially in the first half of the book, is focused on facilitating Joss’s character development. This section alternates between the present, told in present tense, in which Joss and Al work together to solve the ship-blowing-up mystery; and flashbacks to the past, usually (but not consistently, argh) told in past tense. Time switches are triggered by some resonance between something Al has done in the present and some memory of Alice in the past. Structurally, this device aims at elegance, because of the physical similarity between present-Al and past-Alice; but narratively, it undermines the message that gemels deserve autonomy. If gemels are unique, distinct people from their progenitors, then why does this gemel’s sole narrative purpose revolve around Joss’s own navel-gazing and personal growth?

These flashbacks are also related to a second issue that irritates me. See, Al is built from Joss’s psyche. Al has access to all of Joss’s memories, even the ones that she can’t consciously recall herself, like tasting chocolate for the first time as a toddler. (That was a nice moment, actually. Toddler-Joss really, really liked the chocolate.) But, as Al tells her repeatedly, humans curate their memories. What they choose to let fade is as important as what they choose to remember. So anything that Joss wants to recall which has faded from memory represents a journey she must undertake on her own, because relying on a gemel to retrieve the memory for her would cause mental atrophy.

In principle, I can get behind this particular philosophical statement – although I can’t help but think that Ted Chiang’s short story ‘The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling’, offers a more sophisticated discussion about exactly this idea. But it runs awfully close to another narrative trope that I just despise. You know the one I mean? The deeply inefficient one? It's the one that goes, Oh, yes, I am an all-knowing dragon-wizard-sage, and I could have told you the secret to the magic macguffin, but we are in a coming-of-age novel and so you needed to discover it for yourself. What's more, in this particular instance, the specific memory that Joss was trying to recover involved seeing a guy in a bar whose overheard conversation may well have provided vital information about the bombing that killed everyone on the ship and stranded her in space. She’s not trying to short-circuit self-actualization here; there just aren't enough CCTV cameras in the bar.

Finally, there’s a profoundly troubling and creepy issue that seems to lie at the heart of the whole Al-Alice-gemel situation, an issue which I don’t think Sara K. Ellis fully apprehends. And the issue is this: Al is an AI-generated copy of a real person, Alice, but she has all of Joss’s memories and just plain understands Joss better than Alice ever could. Falling in love with Al is presented as a way of respecting the gemel’s autonomy and personhood, because in so falling Joss is recognizing that Al is distinct from Alice. But in this particular case it still seems like a deeply unhealthy way to have another go at a failed marriage. (It also seems to be veering dangerously close to deepfaking real people for porn, which is illegal in the UK, where this book was published, and for which people have already gone to jail.) It reminds me of nothing so much as Sarah Gailey’s brilliant book The Echo Wife, in which a husband steals his ex-wife’s cloning technology to make better versions of her for a marriage do-over. The wife prototype in question is not thrilled to discover what he’s done; and in this book, Alice herself is likewise displeased (although less murderously so). But I don’t get the sense I’m supposed to be sympathetic to Alice here, because in the same conversation she starts saying sentientist things that challenge the autonomy and personhood of gemels, so she’s definitely being positioned as the antagonist. Still. Apologies in advance for linking to the rabbit hole, but strawman really does have a point here.

And — spoiler alert — I’m going to mention something that happens at the end, but it is relevant and puts the infuriating apple on the entire troubling sundae. At the end of the book, it seems that gemel-Al somehow merges with human-Alice, and in the process preserves/rekindles the love between Joss and Al-Alice.

Gemel-Al, who is a distinct and autonomous person, merges with human-Alice.

Human-Alice, who was already not thrilled to have a gemel made in her image without her consent, is now forced to merge her consciousness with a completely separate sentient creature, again without her consent, after which she is going to rekindle a romantic-and-probably-sexual relationship with her ex-wife.

This is very convenient for Joss, to be sure: she gets to keep her new love Al, but now  upgraded with an organic body that can do fun kissing stuff, plus all that useful Joss-internal knowledge that allows Joss to skip working at things like communication and sharing.  After all, Al-Alice already knows it all.

Alice did not consent to this. This is not a happy ending. This is an appalling violation of personhood, which we are being encouraging to accept and respect in the name of love. The more I write about it the more outraged I find myself.

This is the bit where in my review outline I had notes to talk about all the various other infelicities that reveal a very shallow treatment of various elements of science. Probabilities are misused; timescales of AI communications are simultaneously inhumanly fast and also humanly slow; acoustic and articulatory phonetics is invoked in a way that any linguist knows is nonsense; and I'm pretty sure radar can't distinguish between wave and particle forms of energy. Or maybe it can – but that’s not the point here. The point is that there are sufficient problems with the stuff I do know about that I cannot trust that the author knows what she's doing in areas where I'm less sure.

And that trust is important. When I consider that final, unforgivable violation of Alice, I do wonder whether Sara K Ellis truly unaware of the problems here. I could imagine a book in which this is done purposefully. Maybe my fuming outrage is the intended outcome. If so, well played, Sara K Ellis. You got me.

But for that, I'd need to trust Ellis to know what she was doing. And I just don't.

--

Nerd coefficient: 5: problematic, but has redeeming qualities

Highlights:

• Thought-provoking AI-generated holograph clones
• By-now de rigueur indictment of capitalism
• Lesbians on the rocks
• Flashbacks
  

References: 

Chiang, Ted. 'The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling'. [Subterranean Press Magazine 2013].

Ellis, Sara K. If Stars are Lit. [Luna Press 2025].

Gailey, Sarah. The Echo Wife. [Tor Books 2021].

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, and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/ergative-abs.bsky.social

Book Review: Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman

A breathlessly intimate story about the irrationality and grossness of being an embodied person, and how that intersects with transness, love and living through history.

You know how sometimes you put a book down on finishing it and the world looks different, like the flavour of the prose has bled up into your thoughts, your perception, so for a little while you've been translated into its grammar? That is generally my experience of reading the work of Isaac Fellman, and Notes from a Regicide, his newest novel, is no different. But when I try to encapsulate the substance of the story into a blurb, to cup something tangible about it in my hands so I can offer it up to you to share, it slips between my fingers, leaving only fragments. Despite being a book utterly grounded in the flesh and the tangible world, it is itself surprisingly evanescent.

There are two stories, interleaved. The first, of Griffon, who escaped a violent father to live with Etoine and Zaffre, in whose house he felt safe enough to be a boy, finding in them new parents. The second, the story Griffon constructs from Etoine's notes years later, of his and Zaffre's life in distant Stephensport before and during their revolution. Which is ultimately the crux of it, but gives away nothing about why this is either speculative, or so wonderful.

I'll start with the speculative elements first, because they are the easiest to grasp (while being insubstantial). Most of the content and action of the novel is focussed in on relationships and the interactions between characters and each other, or their own self and story. No one in the foreground does anything inherently SFFnal. But as the story progresses, it becomes more and more obvious that all these fairly realist events are taking place in the distant future, in a city that does not currently exist (or if it does, not in any way a recognisable form from Stephensport in the story). We learn more about it, about the buried electors who, revived at intervals, select the city's new leader and namesake. About the gulf of centuries that exist between the story-time and now. About the subtle and less subtle differences between Griffon, Etoine and Zaffre's world and ours. Most of these come in glimpses and references, incongruous moments of a thing where it's not supposed to be. But together they built, quietly, into a picture of a future I am fascinated by and prevented from fully grasping. And its absence is part of its success - the world is the world, for the characters in the story. It is real and normal and graspable, even if Stephensport is a mystery to those outside its boundaries. And so, for those living in a place, the place is not remarkable in its mundane details. Thus, not remarked upon in their notes or diaries. Stephensport is most clearly shown by Griffon, who has never been there, but yearns to understand this understated thing in Etoine's words.

That mystery is never fully resolved. It is not a rich world to be tour-guided around, more a backdrop. But for something that never comes into focus, there are some extremely interesting choices in its construction, especially socially and structurally, nonetheless.

Why it's wonderful is a rather harder matter.

If you like realist writing, or litfic - which I do - there is much to be said for the sort of immersion in a character and a moment of being that Fellman excels at. Griffon and Etoine both write with an obvious, idiosyncratic voice, and become more and more real as their writing continues through the book. But Fellman has a particular knack for catching them in their most human moments, especially Griffon - when he's stuck in a thought or a doubt. There's all the irrationality of the deep interior thoughts that never seep out into the world, the odd comparison, the habits, the weird connections.

But where this really comes to the fore is in the way those fully realised characters interact. Because there are these two interleaved narratives, and we get the narration and interiority of both Etoine and Griffon, we can triangulate around the points of their relationship with each other and Zaffre, and gain a depth of it that could never come from seeing each alone. Etoine in his own words has a different shape when we first meet him through the awestruck gaze of a teenage Griffon. And as the story goes on, the thing we are told at the start - that Griffon loves his found parents - comes closer and closer to the surface, becoming almost painful in its brilliance.

I do not think I have ever read anything that captured the idiosyncracy, the mundanity and the marvel, of love like Notes from a Regicide does. It is a love story, of a child to parents, of a man to his wife, and of a whole family, each for each other and themselves. It captures a love that includes the flaws, the boredom and the habit, the mysteries. And these all make it feel deeper and more richly true by the end.

From the beginning, we know this is a story of grief, written by Griffon after Etoine's death. But the depth of that tragedy only becomes real once we have come round full circle to it again at the end, having experienced life through their own eyes.

That alone would be wonderful enough, but there's far more at play here. I could talk about the way Fellman portrays the revolution, backgrounded and looked at sidelong, until it cannot be ignored, all while Griffon is desperate to know more about it. I could talk about the way both Etoine and Zaffre look at and talk about art. Both could take up whole essays of their own. But the thing I found myself lingering over most, as I was reading, was simply the beauty of Fellman's descriptions, and so it is this I shall focus on instead, having filled five pages of notes with quotes of them.

For example:

I went through his desk when he died and found all of these writings (Zaffre left none behind, or vanishingly few). They are the ingredients for the book I am writing now. He would find that metaphor too homely, but I, unlike my parents, am a cook. They look like ingredients too: notebooks thick with interleaved drawings, wrapped in shiny brown leather like chicken skin; small parcels of old paper tied with string like roasts ready for the oven.

or:

But by the time I met him, he really was cold. The kind of cold that preserves things, like the way you keep your beer in a sealed bottle in the snow or the stream when camping.

I realised, as the story went on, that the descriptions served a purpose beyond themselves - Fellman leaves them long, sprawling, unnecessary, in a way that forces you to slow down. They're a tool to force you to acknowledge certain aspects of the world, often the mundane details that build up a person.

And then of course, it becomes obvious that Fellman is doing this all over the place. The word that most vividly comes to mind when I want to talk about this book is "lingering" - the prose does it everywhere, highlighting and pacing you as you go, like so:

Words have colors and colors have words. At times, when a word has been on my mind too long, they take on shapes and actions. Regicide is a blazing bar of iron whose brassy heat I grip firmly between the teeth, as an obedient dog does a bone. I can't say why, or why I can so clearly imagine the sear of that bar in my mouth, its brief taste of blood - but I do.

And a picture builds up, in all that lingering, of what matters in this world, and to these people.

It's not always beautiful, mind. Some of Fellman's best or most memorable turns of phrase are to the grosser parts of being human.

I was a mass of strong smells tied together in a crude packet of skin.

Some of them feel universal, the sort of thing everyone can relate to, but many are deeply idiosyncratic, tied up in the very specific experiences these characters have, especially with their bodies and change in their bodies. All three of the family are trans, and all three experience and discover it, navigate it, in their own ways, but all wear it in their physicality, and have it read by the other two. Skin and hair, clothing, binders, the way of walking, posture and voices, all are handed out in these lingering moments to the reader, to try to see this family the way each see the others, full of love and the close attention we only give to those closest to us.

One of the things most clearly encapsulated by all of this is the scars they all three live with. Some of this is physical - Etoine walks with a cane and has significant damage to his feet. But much of this is psychological, the ghosts of the lives they've lived and the places and people who have shaped them. Stephensport is most visible in the story not as a place described, but a scar on the person of Etoine and Zaffre, whose experience of the revolution there can never be escaped, only endured.

And that's the crux of what Fellman does well here - a portrait of the fullness of humanity. Which is apt, when a large part of the story webs around a painting made by Etoine, that captured a woman so perfectly it helped him unwittingly kickstart a revolution. With a deliberateness that Etoine lacks, Fellman has done that same act, capturing a perfect slice of a person - or three people - for us to appreciate. Like the portrait, it is necessarily artificial, built of obvious brush strokes and quirks of writing, but they make it all the more impactful. The art of it is the point, the beautiful writing worthy for its own sake, as well as for the whole portrait they leave us with at the end.

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The Math

Highlights:

- gorgeous descriptive prose
- fascinating backdrop
- some of the most vivid portrayal of love I've read in fiction

Nerd Coefficient: 10/10

Reference: Isaac Fellman, Notes from a Regicide [Tor Books, 2025].

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social

Book Review: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones’ latest novel delivers on the promise of the title with a historical, fantastical spray of blood.

Since I heard the concept of this novel last year, it’s been one of my most highly anticipated titles. For regular readers of Nerds, you may have noticed that some books I was excited about didn’t quite land the way I hoped—not so with The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. This fast-paced story within a story of an Indigenous vampire hunting the buffalo hunters was exactly the kind of gory read I wanted in these troubling times. 

The basic idea of the book is mostly summed up in the title: Good Stab accidentally becomes a vampire and decides to hunt down white hunters as they eradicate the buffalo herds for profit. Jones delivers on the plot’s promise of revenge, but the novel isn’t so one-dimensional as that. First, the novel is a frame narrative. Nearly failed academic Etsy Beaucarne thinks she’s struck gold when she is able to transcribe, and hopefully publish, the journal of her distant relative Arthur Beaucarne. In his journal, Beaucarne has recorded the story of a Blackfeet man named Good Stab, where he explains how he became a vampire and hunted down the hunters. This frame narrative sets up not only the extractive nature of higher education when it comes to Indigenous topics but the idea of audience as Good Stab tells his story to a white man in order to achieve his goal. This idea of audience reaches beyond the novel, asking whom are these stories for? 

While Jones has been recognized in and outside of the horror genre as a top-tier writer, this layered frame narrative really demonstrates his control of voice. His ability to shift between Beaucarne’s journal entries and Good Stab’s “oral” story never felt jumbled. Both characters were clearly delineated, their voices unique especially when in contrast to the other. 

This emphasis on voice is particularly important to how Jones takes on the time-honored horror of the vampire. In the novel’s acknowledgements, Jones talks about starting this novel while wrapping up a graduate seminar course on “Writing the Vampire,” which is reflected in the way he picks and chooses what aspects of vampire lore to include, such as the quick healing abilities but not the lack of reflection. Good Stab keeps track of his reflection and the changes made by being a vampire because these new powers and restrictions make him unable to participate in the lifestyle that he sees as making him a Blackfeet. What makes one Indigenous is a throughline in this novel as Good Stab must come to terms with the changes his abilities bring as he is no longer able to go back to his home or his family and friends. 

While this book is deeply character driven via Good Stab’s voice, it is also a violent tale of revenge against the American empire. As Good Stab says: “What I am is the Indian who can’t die. I am the worst dream America ever had.” The novel’s plot begins with a white man found skinned on the prairie. Good Stab comes to the Lutheran pastor Beaucarne to tell his tale as the reader slowly figures out why Beaucarne is his chosen audience. While described on the inside flap as “literary horror,” the more literary aspects of the prose and frame narrative never get in the way of the blood and gore, but rather make the moments of intense violence more poignant or shocking.  

There’s so much more I could write about with this novel—the environmental commentary, the use of oral storytelling, the fun reinterpretation of the vampire—but this novel is my current top read of 2025. I’d rather leave you with a taste in hopes that you pick it up for yourself. Gabino Iglesias was right when he called this novel Jones’ “masterpiece” in his review for NPR. The prose, the characters, the plot, the commentary all come together seamlessly to create a book nearly impossible to put down. Good Stab’s voice will stay with me for a long time, and I know this is only the first of many rereads. 

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Reference: Jones, Stephen Graham. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter [Saga Press, 2025].

POSTED BY: Phoebe Wagner is an author, editor, and academic writing and living at the intersection of speculative fiction and climate change.

On the Ground at AwesomeCon 2025

At the Walter E. Washington Convention Center for DC's ComicCon

Friday, April 4th, 2025

My introduction to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center was coming out of the Mount Vernon Square metro station and seeing doors marked as exit only. I was unsure where to go; however, I did see a large number of people dressed in cosplay so I had figured I was in the right place (on the Metro, I had shared my car with a man dressed as the classic Riddler). Seeing all the nerds in one place gave me hope, and I followed the nerd herd to the main opening of the convention center.

The center is a big, spacious building; the line for convention-goers to enter was winding like a snake through the building. There was a weapons check for cosplayers, which surprised me a bit (I didn’t dress as anyone—I had gotten this assignment from Arturo Serrano only on the Wednesday preceding the convention so I wouldn’t have had the time even if I were inclined to such things). From there, I made my way up the grand staircase of the entire building to the registration hall, where I picked up my badge. It was in this massive exhibit hall, mostly empty—it felt like an aircraft hanger, but all the planes were in the sky, doing who knows what, who knows where.

The registration hall was behind a major open area (called the ‘bridge’ in the official communications as it connected the two major buildings of the convention center) where there was a DJ who played all sorts of music during the event, and where people occasionally danced (although no dance I can do). What was really striking, though, about the bridge was that it was the great public square of the convention, where all the people here bedecked in such exquisite costumes were making their way hither and yon. I remember a guy dressed as the Heavy from Team Fortress 2 who I talked to briefly (I played that game a lot when I was in high school, and I recognized his gun as a Tomislav, which I used when I played Heavy), but I couldn’t work up the nerve to actually ask for his picture. Unfortunately I have no cosplay pictures for you as I am simply too shy to do that with any regularity. But being in that plaza (I can’t really think of a better term) was invigorating, just seeing the hustle and bustle from my kind.

My convention experience was one of panels; the only convention I am a regular at in any meaningful sense is Capclave, which is run by the Washington Science Fiction Association (to whom I pay dues) annually, and which is a very much a speculative literary convention, where there is no cosplay, no actors, no film, only nerds talking about books. As such I didn’t see any of the panels with actors on them, nor play any games. I am here for the books and my writeup, for better or for worse, will reflect that.

My first panel was on history and science in science fiction, with C. K. Westbrook, J. R. Traas, and Avrah C. Baren. This was a fun little panel where the topic was really something of a fig leaf. It wasn’t particularly methodological or rigorous but it allowed the authors to go on about things that interested them, something like a well-written essay collection. I enjoyed it.

My second panel was in the same room, on the Art of Worldbuilding with P. Djèlí Clark (whose work I adore), John Scalzi, R. R. Virdi, Timothy Zahn (whose work I also adore), Fonda Lee, and Seanan McGuire (whose Wayward Children series I adore). They talked about how writers integrate the world into their stories, and how to do that well. The best part, by far, was R. R. Virdi going on a long digression about comparative mythology, which ultimately persuaded me to buy one of his books. We need more interesting tangents about interesting things.

There was a very good panel about black holes, where I learned about all the strange anomalies thereof, and it was staffed by scientists. After that, in the same room, was a panel about investigating a few pages of an old German book from the eighteenth century about South American flora and fauna. It was an interdisciplinary look at this book, from scientific and artistic perspectives.

The final panel I went to that day was entitled Luke Skywalker and the Holy Grail, wherein the two panelists discussed the Arthurian roots of the Star Wars saga. The two of them (whose names I sadly do not remember and are not recorded in the AwesomeCon app) had a presentation that was rather short and the room collectively spent the rest of the time asking about incongruous parallels between the two (they said that the Arthurian equivalent of the Star Wars Holiday Special is The Green Knight and that the Arthurian Gonk Droid is the Holy Hand Grenade).

After that I took the Metro home.

Saturday, April 5th, 2025

I opened my day with the Lightsaber Show put on by the Saber Guild, a DC-area Star Wars reenactment group. The whole thing was essentially a play with a plot concocted to provide an excuse to wave lightsabers around. As such, the plot was a little thin, but it made up for it in both lightsaber-based theatrics and occasional humor (they riffed on the "Come to the Dark Side—We Have Cookies" meme to hysterical effect).

I spent much of the next time in the Dealers' Room, which is a massive exhibition hall in the basement of the convention center which looks like yet another aircraft hangar (is the Air Force planning to use the convention center in the event of civil unrest?). I bought two mock votive candles from Illuminidol, one with Astarion on it and one with Shadow the Hedgehog on it, for my sister and a coworker respectively (my sister was completely baffled by it, which was the intended reaction). There was something about the Dealers' Room that made geekiness feel very material, very plastic, as if it were a thing that you could hold in your hand.

I spent too much money on books in the Dealers' Room, because of course I did (whenever a friend of mine enters my room they are stunned by the number of books in there). I got to talk to Jennifer Povey, whom I have previously met at various iterations of CapClave, and upon hearing that I wrote for Nerds of a Feather, said that she loved our site (hats off to you, my fellow NoaF writers!). I also ran into JC Kang who I had met at DISCON, and whose book Songs of Insurrection is very good, and y’all should read. I also got to see the science demonstration of dry ice, which was spectacular.

There is only one complaint I have about the Dealers' Room and it has nothing to do with the vast majority of the dealers therein. It was due to the fact that AwesomeCon felt it acceptable or appropriate to let the United States Marine Corps have a table, and to advertise said table via the convention app. Those of you who have been reading my work on this blog have seen my opinion on the craven people in the American terror state that are eagerly helping the Israelis reduce Gaza to a wasteland, and no fandom organization should be giving them a platform to launder their reputation and possibly recruit (as luck would have it, a writer I follow posted a piece on the Sunday of the convention about why joining the US military in this moment is a bad idea). We have rightly ostracised the Russian state over Ukraine, and we should ostracize the American terror state over Gaza. Letting genocidaires present at an event like this is monstrous, and a complete abrogation of any ideals of tolerance and acceptance that the organization purports to uphold.

Then there was a panel called “SciFi in Real Space: A Talk with an Astronaut and Space Experts,” notably featuring astronaut Leland Melvin. The title didn’t really describe what actually happened as there was little discussion of fiction, but plenty of discussion of life on the International Space Station, which was worth the time. The astronaut mentioned that he could listen to satellite radio in space; I later asked him if the reception for the radio was better in space by virtue of being closer to the satellites, but unfortunately it is sent to Earth and then beamed back up.

After that, I went to the Latin Dancing for Nerds event run by Stephanie Metzger. This was more familiar to me than to many others because social partner dancing in its various forms is my physical hobby; I’m leaps and bounds better at lindy hop than bachata, the offering at this event, but I can hold my own in bachata (even if experienced bachateros see how bouncy my footwork is and say that I’m obviously a lindy hopper). The whole thing was run very well, although doing any sort of dance on carpet is inevitably problematic (I remember, back at DISCON, noticing that all the rooms called ‘ballrooms’ by the hotel were carpeted over, and it made me very sad for a moment).

Next up was a panel on Beast of the East: Urban Legends, Hauntings, & Filming Locations presented by L. R. Staszak, Matt Lolich, Neil A. Cohen, and Matt Blazi—I knew a good bit of these, such as the Bunnyman and the Mothman, but they were so entertaining in their back-and-forth that the whole thing was fun regardless. It also exposed to me how many filming locations are nearby, and the industry around filming locations as tourist traps.

Then there was a panel on Real Life Superheroes: Nonfiction in Graphic Novels presented by Todd DePastino, Bill Maudlin, Maximilian Uriarte, and Wayne Vansant. I wasn’t expecting this panel to be so military-focused but it was interesting all the same, with talk about theory and various interesting historical stories. I also ran into my good friend Sean C. W. Korsgaard, and we ate at the Ben’s Chili Bowl in the convention center for dinner.

Next up was a panel on Haunted DC, hosted by Scott Larson and Kennedy Simpson. Simpson works for the Congressional Cemetery and told a story that can only be described as stranger than fiction. In 2002, the Cemetery got a call from an unknown person who asked “Do you want William Wirt’s head back?” The call subsequently dropped. The Cemetery is the burial place of Mr. Wirt, the Attorney General under presidents James Monroe and John Quincy Adams and a famed man of letters, and also was the presidential nominee by the Anti-Masonic Party despite the fact that he was a freemason. His head had been stolen from the Cemetery circa 1900 (based on the qualities of the box containing said head) and had ended up in the collection of a skull collector(!!!) in New Jersey who had recently died in 2002; the call was from the executor of his will. After testing that the head was indeed that of Mr. Wirt, it was interred with the rest of him. Simpson said that the working theory among Cemetery staff was that his head was stolen due to his fame as an intellectual meeting the phrenological fad of the turn of the twentieth century, by people who wanted to know what made him tick.

The last of that day was what was billed as a discussion on Moral Ambiguity in Modern Villains but really was one guy talking with the audience on said subject. In fairness, it was an interesting discussion, although it was hobbled by an unwillingness to really get political about it

Sunday, April 6th, 2025

The first panel of the day was one with Zoraida Cordova and Timothy Zahn discussing their work in the new Star Wars expanded universe. It was very interesting popping the hood and seeing what made the two writers tick, having enjoyed both of their works (Zahn follows only Harry Turtledove in being the writer whose works I have read the most of). During the Q&A I hijacked the Star Wars panel to ask if Zahn were planning to do anything with the universe in his Conquerors trilogy, and he said he was working on something which I hope sees the light of day. I later got to talk to him briefly in the dealers’ room and I tried not to fanboy too hard, and inevitably failed.

Then there was the comedy show Multiverse Got Talent! hosted by Steve Katz and with a few other comedians. The jokes were only sometimes nerdy, but were often funny enough that I was entertained. My favorite was Angel Penn, whose shtick is that he is an alternate universe version of Eminem who is Black and an anime fan. It was a very odd combination but it ended up working.

The next panel I went to was called Plot and Pacing, which had Fonda Lee, Seanan McGuire, M. L. Rio, John Scalzi, R. R. Virdi, and P. Djèlí Clark. It started about pacing but went into a wide-ranging discussion of writing processes. The most striking part was when Scalzi said that he did not do drafting, which shocked everyone in the room. He went on to clarify that he does not bother writing second, third, fourth, etc. drafts of his novels, a practice he says is a relic of the age of typewriters when one had to literally retype the entire draft multiple times. With word processors, he tinkers in a single document over an extended period of time, which is a similar amount of revision with less repetition. Once this was explained, the room understood him, and looking back at it, this is how I wrote my academic papers from middle school through my undergraduate degree, so I can’t really fault him for that. It does raise interesting questions about how writing should be taught in a world with ubiquitous word processing software, but I am no pedagogue.

The last event I attended at the convention was a live recording of the Dugongs and Seadragons podcast, which was a rollicking time travel adventure set in Antarctica. I had never attended such an event, nor listened to such a podcast, beforehand, but the experience was engaging with a good dungeon master and an experienced cast.

After that, I went home, found dinner near the metro, and then collapsed for several hours. It messed up my sleep schedule for the ensuing week but it was so much fun it was worth it. I had heard of friends going to AwesomeCon before, being a staple of DC-area geekdom, and this was my first experience. I do not believe it will be the last.

POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.