wit beyond measure as a dick joke

Granted I just woke up, but this is the greatest thing I've read all day.

wit beyond measure as a dick joke

Granted I just got up, but this is the greatest thing I've read all day.

boosting the signal: NY Comicon

Call for New York Comicon panelists for Art Across Identities: How Others Portray the Other

Call for New York Comicon panelists for Geeks of Color IV: The Force Awakens

can still have a Bond girl!

rec: This Alien Shore

I recently read C. S. Friedman’s This Alien Shore. The main idea is fantastic. Space migration caused mutations to the genome and Earth gave it up as a bad cause. Some humans look nothing like us. The people of one planet still looks human; their mutations were mental. They all have what would be referred to as mental illnesses back on Earth, which is quite homogenized in terms of how your mind can vary from the “norm.” So one character is, I believe, autistic and another has obsessive compulsion disorder; they have different names for the different mentalities and I didn’t know what they all were. They paint or tattoo their faces based on their dominant mode of mentality and have ritualized forms of interaction to counter their dramatically different world-views. It’s fascinating. Friedman has created an awesome universe. Note: this race has found a way to use some of their people to travel through space safely (without causing mutations) and so they dominate space travel.

I believe I also spotted influences of early science fiction authors. The differences between Earth and the outer planets reminded me of E. E. Smith’s Subspace Explorers. The means of space travel reminded me of Cordwainer Smith’s “Game of Rat and Dragon”. Since these are both authors I adored early on, seeing their influence made the book even more fun for me.

The book was fantastic. It seems a bit abridged at the end. After the climax, the denouement should have been longer, but otherwise I adored it.