Review: Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2011

Editor:	Gordon van Gelder
Issue:	Volume 120, No. 5 & 6
ISSN:	1095-8258
Pages:	258

The editorial in this issue is about the investigation into the troubling death of long-time contributor F. Gwynplain MacIntyre (which was not his real name). It's disturbing, but to me it underscores one of the things that I love about the Internet: people for whom life isn't working very well can still find an outlet, make friendships, and control how they choose to present themselves to the world on-line. That's something quite valuable, and part of why the pushes for "real names" always gives me pause. Somewhat thematically related, this issue also features a non-fiction essay by Maria E. Alonzo about her investigation of Jesse Francis McComas, her great-uncle but better known to the SF community as one of the founding editors of F&SF and co-editor of the famous classic anthology Adventures in Time and Space. This is mostly a curiosity, but it's fun to read about the sense of triumph in tracking down lost family history. This issue also features a Chris Moriarty book review column, always a plus, as well as a few positive reviews of obscure superhero movies by Kathi Maio (plus the required grumbling about a more mainstream film). "The Final Verse" by Chet Williamson: This is more of a horror story than I would normally like, but I got pulled into the investigation of an old bluegrass song and the guesswork and footwork required to track down where it came from. Williamson does a good job with the tone and first-person narration, and the degree to which the protagonist cares about the song to the exclusion of the horrific happenings of the story blunts the horror. Not quite my thing, but I thought it was well-done and played well with the possible meanings of song lyrics. (6) "Stock Photos" by Robert Reed: This is well-written, like nearly all Reed stories, but it lacked enough clues for the reader for me. It's a very short story about a man who's out mowing his lawn when approached by two strangers who apparently want to take photographs of him for stock image collections. Then things get rather weird, but without any explanation, and the ending lost me completely. Frustrating. (It is partially explained by the later "The Road Ahead" story in this same issue.) (4) "The Black Mountain" by Albert E. Cowdrey: From one of F&SF's most reliable story-tellers to another, and this is a more typical story. Cowdrey offers an abandoned and very strange cathedral for an obscure religion, a conflict over a development project, and some rather creepy results, all told in Cowdrey's entertaining fashion. Some places you just don't mess with. (6) "Agent of Change" by Steven Popkes: Told Dos-Passos-style with news excerpts, web sites, and the transcript of an emergency committee, this story shows the discovery of Godzilla, or something akin to Godzilla, in the Pacific, where it's destroying whaling vessels. I do like this style of storytelling, and here it mixes well with humor and a bit of parody as Popkes shows how each different news outlet puts its own recognizable spin on the story. The story isn't particularly memorable, and it doesn't end so much as just stop, but it was fun. (7) "Fine Green Dust" by Don Webb: This story is dedicated to Neal Barrett, which will give SFF short story readers a warning of weirdness to come. In a near future where global warming as continued to make summers even more miserable, the protagonist happens across a naked woman painted green. The green turns out to be a sun block that claims to assist humans in metamorphosis into animals. Most of the story is the protagonist trying to decide what to think of that, interspersed with staring at his neighbor's naked daughter. It's mildly amusing if you don't think about it too much and don't mind the rather prominent male gaze. (5) "Rampion" by Alexandra Duncan: The novella of the story, this is set in Muslim Spain some time during the long fights between Muslims and Christians in the north. It's told as two parallel stories: one telling the protagonist's first meeting with his love, and the second following him as a blind man, some time later, deciding whether, and how, to re-engage with the world. The style feels like fantasy, but there's very little overt fantasy here, and the story could be read as historical adventure. It's good adventure, though; conventional in construction, but with some romance and some drama and a good ending. (7) "Signs of Life" by Carter Scholz: This is to science fiction what "Rampion" is to fantasy: not really SF in the classic sense, but fiction about the process of science. The protagonist works on gene sequencing and is mildly obsessed with a visualization of junk DNA in an attempt to find patterns in it. Like a lot of fiction about science, it's primarily concerned with office politics, grant funding, and an awful boss. There is a faint touch of the supernatural, but that strand of the story doesn't amount to much. There's a happy ending of sorts, but the story left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and I'd completely forgotten it by the time I sat down to write this review. (4) "Starship Dazzle" by Scott Bradfield: I've never seen much in Bradfield's ongoing series of stories about Dazzle, the talking dog. In this one, he's sent via rocket on a one-way trip into outer space and ends up making a bizarre sort of first contact. Like the other Dazzle stories, it's full of attempts at humor that don't really work for me, even though you'd think I'd be sympathetic to the mocking of our commercialization of everything. The ending is just silly, and not in a good way. (3) "The Old Terrologist's Tale" by S.L. Gilbow: I love the setup for this story. It's set in some sort of far future in which terraforming has become routine, and a group of people are telling each other stories over drinks. The first-person protagonist is a terrologist, someone who designs planets (and the technology is available to do this almost from scratch). The conversation is taking a turn towards the humiliating, with a politician belittling the work of terrologists, when an old terrologist who has been listening quietly starts telling a story about designing worlds, both mundane and dangerously beautiful. Gilbow does a great job here capturing blithe self-importance, the habit of belittling other people's technical work, and revenge via storytelling with a nasty barb. This was my favorite story of the issue. (7) "Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer" by Ken Liu: This is a rather odd but quite touching story about mothers, daughters, nature, connection, and uploading. It's set after a singularity, in a time when all humans are uploaded into computers and exploring higher dimensions, digital natives in a much deeper sense than is meant today. But Rene 's mother is an Ancient, from before the singularity and still three-dimensional, and she wants to spend some time with her daughter. That leads to a memorable moment of connection, without pulling Rene entirely out of her father's world. Well done. (7) "The Road Ahead" by Robert Reed: Two Reed stories in one issue! And this one is a sequel to "Stock Photos" from earlier, since apparently I wasn't the only one who found it hopelessly confusing. It provides some backstory and makes a bit more sense of the first story, and that also makes it a more interesting story in its own right. The stock photo concept wasn't entirely a lie, as I had thought it was after the first story. There is analysis, anticipation, and trends behind who the pair take pictures of. But this story explores some internal tension, some conflict between them and some knowledge that the woman has that the man doesn't. And in the process it makes everything creepier, but also more interesting, and provides a hint at a really dark way of viewing the news media. I would say that this salvages "Stock Photos," except that I don't think "Stock Photos" is necessary now that one can read this story. (7) "Music Makers" by Kate Wilhelm: This is another story about investigation of the history of music, mingled with the supernatural, but unlike the story that opened this issue, it's not horror. Rather, it's a gentle and sweet fantasy about the power of music and benevolent ghosts and a community coming together. It's a positive and happy note on which to end the issue. (6) Rating: 6 out of 10

Today is Ada Lovelace Day:

"Ada Lovelace Day is about sharing stories of women - whether engineers, scientist, technologists or mathematicians - who have inspired you to become who you are today. The aim is to create new role models for girls and women in these male-dominated fields by raising the profile of other women in STEM". source

To celebrate, we asked to some of the "women behind Debian" to share their stories with us. Enjoy! Ana Guerrero Lopez (ana) Who are you? I'm a 30-something years old geek. I'm from Andalusia, Spain but live in France. What do you do in Debian? I work mostly on my packages, in sponsoring new people's packages and in this very blog you're reading now. I also maintain an unofficial Google+ page about Debian. At $PAID job, I work in an internal Debian distribution so from time to time, I get the opportunity to contribute back some of the stuff we do there. How and why did you start contributing to Debian? I started using Debian around 2003 switching from Mandrake. I was a happy Debian user when the Debian Women project started in the summer 2004. When I saw the project announced, I asked myself why I wasn't contributing to Debian and the rest is history... in a couple of weeks it'll be my 7 years DD-versary! If for some reason you want a longer reply to this question, read here. Beatrice Who are you? I am a PhD student with a degree in Biology. I am a computer fan since my first C64 and I am a self-taught computer geek wanna-be. And I am a bug fan - not software bugs, real bugs :) What do you do in Debian? I work on translations - doing the translation work itself, but also reviewing other translators' work and helping in coordinating the translation effort. How and why did you start contributing to Debian? I started using Linux because I liked the idea of an open source operative system based on collaboration and I began reviewing open source software translations. Since my first Linux system was Debian Potato and I sticked to Debian ever since, it only seemed natural to focus my translation work on Debian. Christine Caulfield Who are you? My name is Christine Caulfield. My day job is principal software engineer at Red Hat working on the cluster infrastructure components corosync & pacemaker. Outside computing I'm a musician and sound engineer. I play violin with lots of technology attached, and love avant garde music. What do you do in Debian? I'm not that active on Debian any more due to pressure of time, and maturity of the packages I work on. I currently maintain the, little-used, DECnet userspace packages and the, even less used I suspect, mopd bootloader. I used to maintain lvm2 for a while but dropped that a few years ago. How and why did you start contributing to Debian? My initial reasons for joining Debian were slightly selfish, to find a home for the DECnet project that I was heavily involved in at the time. I was a keep Debian user and people wanted a distribution where the software was easy to set up. DECnet is quite complicated for users to configure, being a totally independant networking stack to IP and so OS support is needed. Debian seemed like the logical place to make this happen. As mentioned above I got quite involved for a time and maintained other packages too. I picked up lvm2 because I was on the lvm2 dev team at work in Red Hat and as it was a new package at that time I seemed a logical choice. Elena Grandi (valhalla) Who are you? I'm a 30-something years old geek and Free Software enthusiast from Italy. What do you do in Debian? I'm currently maintaining a few packages (2 python modules and a python program) as a sponsored uploader; I'm also slowly looking around for other things to do (by preference technical, but not limited to packaging), with the aim to spend more time contributing to Debian. How and why did you start contributing to Debian? For a while I had being distro-hopping between "fun" distributions (the ones that break now and then) on the desktop while using Debian stable on the home server and in chroots. I was already doing marginal contributions to those distributions, where finding stuff that was missing was easy, but my perception as a stable user was that Debian was already working fine and probably didn't really need any help. Then I started to socialize on IRC with some DDs and DMs, and realized that my perception was superficial and that in reality there were dark holes in the depths of the archive where Evil festered and prospered and... ok, sorry, I got carried away :) Anyway, since I was actually using Debian more and more I decided to start contributing: I read documentation, I attended the useful IRC sessions on #debian-women and decided that it was probably best not to add new stuff, but look for things that I used and that needed help. Then nothing happened for a while, because finding stuff that doesn't work is hard (at least on my mostly textual systems). Then one day I was trying to write a python script that needed to verify gpg signed messages; it had to run on my Debian server, so I was trying to use python-pyme and its documentation was painful to use, while I remembered an earlier attempt using python-gnupg that was much more pythonic, but not available in Debian. In a fit of anger I decided to forgo all of my good intentions and actually add a new package: I checked the sources for problems, packaged, sent it to mentors@d-o, got reviews, fixed problems, resent and finally got sponsored and well, everything started. Francesca Ciceri (madamezou) Who are you? I'm Francesca, a 30-something Italian graduated in Social Sciences. What do you do in Debian? I'm a (non uploading) Debian Developer since 2011 and have been DPN editor, press officer, webmaster for www.debian.org and translator for the Italian l10n team. Recently, due to time constraints, I had to reduce my involvement and now only work on two things: writing/editing articles for bits.debian.org together with Ana Guerrero, and creating subtitles for the DebConf talks, in the DebConf Subs team. How and why did you start contributing to Debian? Basically thanks to the sudden abundance of free time - due to an health problem - and the desire to give something back to this wonderful operating system. After that, I found out that Debian is not only a great OS but also a very special community. Today, some of my dearest friends are people I met through Debian. :) Laura Arjona Who are you? I live in Madrid (Spain), and work as IT Assistant in the Technical University of Madrid (UPM). I'm married and I have a 4-years-old son. What do you do in Debian? In 2012 I started to clean spam and to translate Debian web pages into Spanish. I also follow the work of the web and publicity team, I hope I'll get more involved there too. And of course, I'm in Debian Women :) How and why did you start contributing to Debian? I'm using Debian at work since 2007 (servers), and in my desktops since 2010. I like very much that it is a community distro and I wanted to participate. I was already doing translations in other (small) free software projects, so I began here too. The Debian-Women list, the planet, and people in identi.ca helped me to learn a lot and feel part of the community even when I was not contributing yet. M nica Ram rez Arceda (monica) Who are you? My name is M nica Ram rez Arceda and I am an enthusiast of free software and sharing knowledge cultures: for me it's a kind of philosophy of life. I studied Maths a long time ago but ended up working as a developer for some years. Now I'm working as an IT teacher. What do you do in Debian? Debian is a huge project, so you can help in various scopes. Mainly, I work on packaging, fixing wnpp bug inconsistencies in BTS and helping in spam cleaning of the mailing lists. But I also enjoy doing some non-technical work from time to time: the project I am just now involved is organizing, with the rest of Debian Catalan community, a local team to propose Barcelona as the venue for a minidebconf where all the speakers will be women. How and why did you start contributing to Debian? In 2000 I discovered Free Software world and I fell deeply in love with its philosophy. Since then, I've been trying to do my best in different activities, like spreading the word, giving free courses, helping collectives and friends in technical stuff (from installing Debian to developing some helping apps for them)... but two years ago I was looking forward to join a free software project and I decided to try Debian, since it has been my first and only distro in my day-to-day life for about ten years. So, I wanted to give back Debian all what it had offered to me, but.... I thought I couldn't (hey, Debian is for real hackers, not for you little ant!), but I started to adopt some orphaned packages, do some QA uploads, fix some RC bugs, talk with some Debian Developers that helped me and encouraged me more than I expected, I traveled to my first Debconf... And one thing takes you to the other, and on March 2012 I became a DD. Now, I'm glad to see that everything that frightened me is not so scary :-)

Review: Grimspace, by Ann Aguirre

Series:	Sirantha Jax #1
Publisher:	Ace
Copyright:	March 2008
ISBN:	0-441-01599-9
Format:	Mass market
Pages:	312

Sirantha Jax is a jumper: a person with the rare genetic ability to jump spaceships through the shortcut dimension of grimspace. It's a science fiction idea with a long pedigree. It creates a separate in-group for the characters to belong to, a society with its own rules, and sets up tension with the rest of the institutions of the world. In Aguirre's version, jumpers can provide the transition but direction in grimspace has to be done by a pilot, and the jumper and the pilot develop a deep psychic bond. Jax had been jumping with her husband piloting, but on their last trip their ship crashed, killing everyone on board except her. As Grimspace opens, Jax is in a treatment facility that's much more like a prison. In theory, they're trying to figure out whether she's still able to (and safe to allow to) jump. In practice, something quite a bit more sinister is going on, a fact that the reader senses early but only learns more about after Jax is helped to escape. Scarred, deeply depressed, and nearly suicidal, she's pulled into the subversive plans of a small ship of renegades who are trying to break open the Corp monopoly on grimspace travel and their tight hold over every jumper. But she's not sure whether she trusts them, or whether she cares enough about their crusade to truly join in. Grimspace follows well-trod SF paths of special cadres of pilots and navigators, lawless corners of space with local warlords, and rebellion against smothering centralization, but its first-person protagonist and point of view have more in common with urban fantasy. It's written in first-person and, at times, nearly stream of consciousness from Jax's perspective, and Jax displays plenty of profanity, acidic commentary, and emotional angst. If her special ability were shapeshifting or magic instead of jumping spaceships, one could easily see her as the typical burned-out urban fantasy detective. I liked that. It's a fun point of view when it's written well, and it felt fresh when applied to a science fiction background instead of the more typical fantasy. That said, Grimspace has a rather rough start. Jax isn't sure what's going on at first and also isn't sure she cares, and I thought that carried over to the reader's experience. The first section of the book is rough and jagged, with staccato bursts of character introduction, world-building that doesn't quite cohere, and an extended stop on a very odd outback planet that felt to me like a repurposed stage from a western. Part of the early problem is that Jax and the reader are being intentionally kept in the dark about the real goal of this group, but part of the problem is also that none of the characters start off as very likable. That includes Jax, who is a complete mess and who is both scared and despairing to the point of being almost nihilistic. The world-building unfortunately does not carry the reader through that part of the story, and at about eighty pages in I wasn't sure I was going to like this book. It does, however, get much better. For one, Jax calms down and starts making emotional connections with the rest of the crew, and that lets her demonstrate skills as a fearless problem solver. For another, while the goal of the group of people she's fallen in with isn't exactly deep, it does make sense and it does slowly become a cause the reader (and Jax) can believe in. The frenetic pace of introduction and discovery also slows down, the cast stabilizes, and the surroundings get a bit less weird (and a bit more conventional for a science fiction novel). I didn't care for the alien baby subplot I rarely do but the rest of the story slowly pulled me in. One thing Aguirre did extremely well was surprise me. There are several points later in the book where Jax gets put in a fairly typical high-stress position and does something very atypical in reaction to it, twisting the story into a shape quite a bit unlike what I had been expecting. That made Jax feel like a true free agent, establishing her independence and her desire to control her own life, and that appealed to me. Aguirre also palms one card exceptionally well, setting up an ending that I thought was the best set of scenes in the whole book, and that had me thoroughly engrossed. One can see the bones of the urban fantasy heroine inside Jax's character, but they're fresh and interesting in an SF world, and they work better than I would have expected. There is a romance, in fitting with the urban fantasy inspiration, and it didn't quite work for me, but Aguirre also builds in a reason why it might not make sense and makes it spiky and fragile without being too cliched. By the end of the book, I was, if not entirely persuaded, at least willing to go along for the ride. And that's the best summary of Grimspace, I think. Parts of it don't make a great deal of sense, and parts of it are quite choppy. But I liked Jax once she starts getting a handle on her trauma, the other characters grew on me, and the plot surprised me in some interesting ways. It's not the smoothest or most polished SF novel I've read, but it has a lot of energy and an unusual genre mix. I think I'll stick along for the ride. Followed by Wanderlust. Rating: 7 out of 10

Despite the fact that I've had very little time to either read or write reviews, I haven't stopped buying a few books here and there. And, of course, Powell's Indiespensable keeps coming. Matt Bell In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods (mainstream)
Steven Brust Orca (sff)
Steven Brust Dragon (sff)
John W. Campbell Collected Editorials from Analog (non-fiction)
Jane Fletcher The Walls of Westernfort (sff)
Mira Grant How Green This Land, How Blu This Sea (sff)
Tate Hallaway Tall, Dark, & Dead (sff)
Diana Wynne Jones Howl's Moving Castle (sff)
Rebecca Lee Bobcat and Other Stories (mainstream)
Victor Lombardi Why We Fail (non-fiction)
George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois (ed.) Songs of Love and Death (sff anthology)
Seanan McGuire In Sea-Salt Tears (sff)
Seanan McGuire Late Eclipses (sff)
Justina Robson Selling Out (sff)
John Scalzi Muse of Fire (sff)
Mark Slouka Brewster (mainstream)
Tor.com (ed.) The Stories (sff anthology)
Carrie Vaughn Kitty and the Midnight Hour (sff) This is a wide variety of random stuff, including some stuff that was free (the Tor.com anthology, which is every piece of short fiction they've published and is about 4000 pages, the Campbell editorials from the Internet Archive) and a lot of stuff that was on sale. As well as another two shipments of Indiespensible. The Brust books I've already read and are already in the family, but I hooked a friend of mine on the Vlad Taltos series, and those were the only two that I both didn't have and that weren't available on Kindle. So I picked them up while he was visiting so that he could read the whole series.

Review: Throne of the Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed

Series:	Crescent Moon Kingdoms #1
Publisher:	DAW
Copyright:	January 2013
ISBN:	0-7564-0778-8
Format:	Mass market
Pages:	367

Doctor Adoulla Makhslood is the last ghul hunter in Dhamsawaat. He's an old man, and tired, and increasingly uncertain whether he wants to continue putting his life in danger to fight one more fight. But there are no replacements; his young and idealistic dervish apprentice, despite obvious skill, is too inexperienced and uninterested in the knowledge and investigation that makes Adoulla so good at what he does. So, when a young boy shows up on his doorstep, a survivor of a vicious ghul attack, he goes hunting once again. And both finds something much darker and stronger than he expected and meets an unexpected ally: a shape-shifting girl who is herself a survivor of something far worse than ghuls. Throne of the Crescent Moon is a first-novel fantasy that has made quite a splash, including a Hugo nomination (although I thought a win was unlikely, and I was right). One of the more interesting comments I've read about it was the observation by Jo Walton that if it had come out in 1980, it would have been an amazing, unusually wonderful, non-normative book. That it isn't is evidence of the changes in fantasy since then. The field has grown. As you might guess from the publisher's insistence on comparing it with The Arabian Nights, and from the names mentioned above, this book is set in an unspecified Middle Eastern culture and draws heavily from its mythology. It does not contain any western characters; the entire story is native to its region. The same is true of the mythology, which gave it a refreshing originality for me. And while I'm not the best one to judge, the presentation of that setting seemed free of the tint of the exotic. People live here, there are factions and multiple cultures, and the supernatural is a backdrop to most of the city. This would be very unusual decades ago. It's a bit less unusual now, and the story itself is a familiar ensemble fantasy, if refreshingly free of extended map exploration journeys. Ahmed brings together five characters with very different backgrounds and throws their varying talents at a problem. A few of those elements are a bit too familiar: female sexuality as a threat to male power is a world-building element that I could do without, for example. I also found the villain completely inadequate in its unidimensional evil (reinforced with a few more torture scenes than I needed to read), and even the attempted complication felt too predictable to me. Except for one touch of perspective, I'd call Throne of the Crescent Moon a competent, enjoyable, but somewhat forgettable fantasy novel, albeit one that's refreshingly concerned with a city instead of countrysides and travel. That touch is in the age of several of the protagonists. We get sections following several of the main characters in tight third person, but Adoulla is the first protagonist and the focus of much of the book. And Adoulla is neither young nor inexperienced, and is not going through the typical fantasy bildungsroman. He's old, experienced, a bit set in his ways, cranky, cantankerous, and deeply in love with his city. In tone, this shifts the story towards Star Wars as seen through the eyes of Obi-Wan Kenobi instead of Luke Skywalker. And that change I really liked, and would be happy to see become more common in fantasy. There was a bit of a downside for me in three of the five main characters being older. At times, Throne of the Crescent Moon has an elegiac tone, a feeling of life, power, and time slipping away and cultures and ways of life being lost. That's not my favorite thematic element. I tend to find it more depressing than I really want in my reading. But, here, the mature perspective more than makes up for some occasional negativity. I particularly liked how the older characters treated the likely budding young romance, which would have been the center of many books in this genre, with bemused detachment and playful encouragement without giving it more significance than it deserves. There's another romance that ends up being more significant, and which needs the weight of time and well-lived lives to become so. I don't think this book deserves a Hugo, but it is an enjoyable fantasy with some interesting characters and a refreshing perspective and setting. The villain really isn't adequate to the story, there's a bit too much torture for my liking, and I could have done without a few of the tropes, but it's a solid entry in its genre and a pleasant few hours of reading. And despite being advertised as the first of a series, it comes to a satisfying conclusion. Rating: 7 out of 10

Review: An Artificial Night, by Seanan McGuire

Series:	October Daye #3
Publisher:	DAW
Copyright:	September 2010
ISBN:	1-101-44276-X
Format:	Kindle
Pages:	368

This is the third book of the October Daye series, following A Local Habitation. It could be read out of order, as each chapter of Toby's story so far is somewhat standalone, but I wouldn't recommend it. You'd miss the character development and the background behind several friendships. As with the previous book review, a caveat: I am reviewing this book four months after finishing it, rather than the normal couple of weeks, so apologies in advance for any thinness or inaccuracies. The first sign that something is about to go seriously wrong in Toby's life this time is a visitor. She says her name is May Daye, and apparently she's Toby's Fetch: a duplicate in nearly every respect except personality, manifested to guide someone to their death. Their imminent death. The second sign is that her best friend's children are kidnapped. The children who treat her like an aunt. And the cause of that kidnapping is far, far beyond the level of power that Toby could be expected to deal with. I have profound mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, McGuire further expands Toby's web of connections and shows us more of Toby's friends and their background, and that's becoming my favorite part of this series. She introduces May, who I think is a great character: at first apparently much different than Toby, but with a similarity beneath surface impressions that one notices more over time. And I thought the climax of the story, once we finally got there, was very moving and well-done. Also, I just love the way that McGuire uses children's rhymes and doggerel throughout this series as a magical element, and that's particularly well-handled here. Due to the nature of the antagonist, McGuire has a good excuse to bring that front and center, and the process of familiar rhymes expanding into deep magical rules was a fun intellectual experience. Best of all, the Luidaeg plays a significant role in the story again. The Luidaeg is, hands down, my favorite character in McGuire's constructed universe, and she becomes even more so over the course of this story. Her complex relationship with Toby is clearly blossoming into a friendship that's surprising both of them deeply, but a friendship that has to play by an odd set of rules (like so much else in Toby's life). I loved her here. Seeing someone that difficult and abrupt show unexpected emotional depths is one of the story elements I enjoy the most. The problem, though, is that quite a lot of An Artificial Night is very, very dark. And by that, I don't mean that there is a lot of tension, or that Toby is struggling against monsterous things, although both of those statements are also true. Rather, Toby is not only out of her league but ends up in some viciously nasty situations, and they persist for rather more of this book than I would have preferred. Putting one's protagonist through hell has a long tradition in urban fantasy, but I found the level of sheer helplessness that Toby struggled through to be a bit more than I wanted to read about. It was too reminiscent of events from Toby's background (as discussed in Rosemary and Rue) that I still don't like to think about. There is, of course, an eventual payoff, as dark as the interim events seem. One knows that, given the genre and given that this is an ongoing series, and even just given the nature of stories. But as much as I like the growing cast of this series, and adored the scenes with the Luidaeg, I found parts of this journey to be deeply disturbing, and not in an enjoyable dramatic tension sort of way. I don't mind protagonists being seriously hurt (although it's not my favorite plot), or even some amount of despair, but this went beyond that. I think McGuire was going for a story about sacrifice and self-definition, about trying even when one can't possibly win, and I can appreciate the narrative arc. But parts of the book were simply awful to read for me. I'm therefore not quite sure what to say in terms of a recommendation. I'm still reading the series, and will definitely read the next book. I think my reaction is somewhat idiosyncratic; the events here will probably not bother others as much as they bothered me. And I can't disagree with their dramatic effectiveness, or with the way that McGuire builds conflict out of the rules of fairy and is building Toby into a stronger and more capable person than she ever thought she could be. But there were still spots where I wished I were reading a different book. Hopefully the next book in the series will be that book I wanted to read. Followed by Late Eclipses. Rating: 6 out of 10

RichiH used flint and steel to light the bonfire. We carefully fed it up from those sparks to a blaze. Put on the biggest logs we could find to make it last. Now I'm sitting on the hill above it watching folks gathered around. A poem is being read, in Hindi, then translated for us to English. Others have shared songs and poems in a dozen languages, both classics and their own. Out below the darkness of the lake. This is Debian at 20. At the start of this DebConf, I gave a talk on "Debian Cosmology. In that (and a later "dh_busfactor" talk) I shared my hopes and my fears. I was conflicted about giving the this talk, worked on it for weeks, felt it might not work, or be depressing. I've had nothing but good comments about it. 20 years is ages in internet time and technical projects ossify over time. The last session I was in this afternoon was a presentation of a new tool, which I hope & feel has the potential to fundamentally change an important and suboptimal part of Debian. Then I walked outside to a rainbow over crystal clear Swiss alps on the horizon. How encouraging, and what a nice story that will be around some future campfire.

Debian France and Debian Swiss associations are now selling products at Debconf. We are now selling

Buff		23 CHF / 18 euros
Black polo		31 CHF / 25 euros
Rugby polo		50 CHF / 40 euros
Mousepad		13 CHF / 10 euros

We have also some new hoodies.
They come in 4 colors: black, white, grey and dark blue.
With or without zip: Without zip: 44 CHF / 35 euros
With zip: 50 CHF / 40 euros With also have hats: Price: 10 CHF / 9 euros We have also the Debian umbrellas and knifes.
Photo credit Kibi For those who are at Debconf, they are for sell at the Debconf front desk from 4 to 6 and will be probably available for sell on enventelibre after the event.

Review: And Playing the Role of Herself, by K.E. Lane

Publisher:	Regal Crest
Copyright:	2006
Printing:	June 2010
ISBN:	1-932300-72-4
Format:	Kindle
Pages:	336

Caidence Harris is an actress who has finally gotten her big shot: a starring role in the hit police drama 9th Precinct. She plays half of a police partnership; the other half is played by her best friend, the considerably more famous Liz Stokley. She's quite happy with her life and her work, and only tentatively pondering what to do about coming out (at least to herself) as a lesbian. But matters get considerably more complicated when she starts falling for Robyn Ward, a star in a parallel legal drama. And the very high-profile girlfriend of one of the best male tennis players in the world. Yes, another lesbian romance. This one has won several awards, including the highest recommendation from my friend who's been prefiltering the genre for me and pointing out only the best stories. And despite being set firmly among the rich and famous and involving TV dramas with the serial numbers filed off, he was right. This is a thoroughly enjoyable story. One of its strongest parts is how Lane develops the romance between Caidence and Robyn. There is a bit of the inevitable physical chemistry so common in romances (I still don't believe kisses work that way), and a few descriptions of physical beauty (after all, there's a built-in excuse for everyone to be TV-star beautiful). But Lane avoids putting either at the center of the relationship. Instead, this is a romance built on trust, tentative at first and then growing but rocky. That speaks to me a lot more than all the descriptions of physical chemistry. For example, we don't see Caidence and Robyn meet for the first time in the novel, as is usually the case. They've been around each other before, with Caidence acting rather tongue-tied and a bit star-struck and Robyn thinking she's rather silly. The story begins when, for whatever reason, Caidence finally manages to relax and become genuine, and then both of them become closer as they find themselves lowering barriers around each other that they normally don't lower. Lane does an excellent job using a few key facial expressions as symbols and hallmarks of that, letting the reader follow the way that trust builds through the story. The other great element of this book is Caidence's friend Liz. She could have been a stereotype of a movie star: drop-dead gorgeous, a new boyfriend each week, but not particularly intelligent. That's how she comes off at first. But as the story progresses, Lane shows more and more of their friendship, and the reader gets to see just how much Liz's first impression is a combination of an act and her unapologetic tendency to do what she wants. Underneath, she's a strong female character and an excellent, if meddling friend; by the end of the book, she was in the running for my favorite character. This is characterization of a quality that I rarely see in any genre of novel. Given that it's a romance that I enjoyed, you can correctly expect there not to be a lot of obnoxious communication breakdowns or chapters full of the main characters refusing to communicate with each other. There are, of course, a wide variety of barriers in the way of a relationship for the main characters, not the least of which being that neither of them was looking for something serious. But while they both do occasionally thoughtless or hurtful things, it's always clear just why they were thoughtless, or where their buttons were accidentally pressed, and few of the character actions are outright stupid. And, delightfully, Lane structures the story so that there are multiple, incremental payoffs. One can not only enjoy the characters getting together in the end, as they always do in this genre, but a lot of important and meaningful steps along the way. Lane does a great job putting the reader in Caidence's head, helped by first-person narration, so that one can feel just how much some moments mean to her emotionally. Add in several other fleshed-out and interesting supporting characters, some incredible architecture that was fun to imagine, and rather more in the way of plot twists and dramatic moments than I usually expect in a romance (and although the book worried me once, none of them go to the dark places that would have been less fun), and one gets a novel that kept me engrossed from start to finish. I'm tempted to read it again, and that's rare for me for a romance novel. If you're in the mood for a heart-warming story about intelligent people learning how to be together, I highly recommend this book. It's a great book to read as a stress relief when you want a story that you know will turn out "right." Rating: 9 out of 10

Review: Dark Lies the Island, by Kevin Barry

Publisher:	Greywolf
Copyright:	2012
Printing:	2013
ISBN:	1-55597-651-4
Format:	ARC
Pages:	185

This is a literary short story collection by a mainstream Irish writer, rather far from my normal fare. It was the second book in a shipment of Powell's Indiespensable, which is generally (when there is one) a proof or Advanced Reading Copy of something relatively obscure. I'm not really the target audience, not being much of a short story aficionado, but the whole point of doing this Indiespensable experiment is to stretch my reading range. First off, as I would generally expect by mainstream fiction, the quality of the writing is excellent. One thing I particularly like about Barry is that he's refreshingly and unhesitatingly profane. His characters curse like I expect people to curse, some of them at the drop of a hat, and for me it gives a feel of solid realism to his dialogue. He's also very good with eye dialect, giving the impression of accents without making the text hard to read. Some of these stories I liked a great deal, rather more than I had expected. But if there was a general undermining flaw for me, it was that I prefer stories that go somewhere, that have a plot or lead up to a definite point. Some of Barry's do, but a lot of them seem more vignettes or just scenes, sketches of characters, that drift off without resolution. I can admire those as writing exercises, but for me they don't fill the desire I have when I sit down with a story. I'm not sure how useful these reviews will be, given that I don't have a lot of mainstream fiction background to compare them with, but here are some reactions, for whatever they're worth. "Across the Rooftops": This is one of those sketches, but it's one of the best of them. It's a single moment on the rooftops, an attempt to capture the moment of possibility around the first romantic overture. It's sadly quite conventional in gender roles (nervous man initiating, woman as relationship gatekeeper), but apart from that it's very well-written. This kind of thing is normally not to my taste, but Barry does such a great job capturing the sense of uncertainty and the sharp focus on detail that I couldn't help but like it. (7) "Wifey Redux": This is by far my favorite story of this book. I think it's both hilarious and brilliant, right from the starting line.

This is the story of a happy marriage but before you throw up and turn the page let me say that it will end with my face pressed hard into the cold metal of the Volvo's bonnet, my hands cuffed behind my back, and my rights droned into my ear this will occur in the car park of a big-box retail unit on the Naas Road in Dublin.

It's the story of a marriage and how it changes over time, but also the story of being a father and his baffled, flailing reactions to his daughter's sexual explorations. But that's not what makes the story. What makes the story is what leads up to the arrest at the end, which had me laughing out-loud in delight. Barry is great at writing a sort of devilish humor; I wish more of the collection was like this. (9) "Fjord of Killary": This is another one of the ones I enjoyed. It's about an author who buys a hotel (with a bar) on the fjord of Killary thinking that the local culture and contact along with the wild beauty would inspire his poetry. At the start of the story, he's thoroughly sick of both the climate and the people, and the collision between his idyllic dreams and the reality, as well as his acerbic first-person complaints, is quite entertaining. A huge storm and resulting flood provides the conflict and impetus for change, and a few moments of humor in the understated local reactions. I thought the closing epiphany was a bit too obvious and expected, and the ending didn't quite work for me, but it has some good moments. (7) "A Cruelty": Here's where the collection started losing me. This is still well-written and closely observed, but in the case of this story, I wish it weren't, since I found it extremely uncomfortable. The viewpoint character is vulnerable to an encounter of unalloyed nastiness. I'm sure that's the point, but, similar to how I avoid horror, it's the sort of story I'd rather not read. (3) "Beer Trip to Llandudno": This was my second-favorite story of the collection. It's about a group of men who take periodic beer-tasting trips and rate beers. They're just normal men, from a variety of backgrounds and professions, and I thought Barry did a great job capturing the sort of camaraderie that comes from long association with a hobby. That includes, here, the awkward limits on what one talks about and the tendency to use the hobby as a shield from anything that drifts into less certain territory. I thought the story suffered somewhat from not having much of a plot or conclusion, but that's also necessary from the setup. This group of people isn't actually going to solve problems, but will be there for each other in their own way. (8) "Ernestine and Kit": Another very dark story, although that's not quite as obvious at the start. As with "A Cruelty," it's well-written but disturbing and lacks any sort of positive resolution. Here, I think Barry went a bit far into portraying people who are a large part of the popular imagination but who are exceptionally rare in reality. It's the kind of story that, at least for me, plays badly with my brain's threat analysis: too memorable for the level of actual risk, and feeling like it was playing a bit too much with popular boogeymen. (4) "The Mainland Campaign": This one was just too subtle for me. Some of the summaries for this book hint at a meaning for the story that I didn't pick up at all on my first reading. On re-reading, I suspect that analysis is right, but even re-reading the story with that interpretation in mind (this is the sort of story where I'm not sure the average American would pick it up on first reading, but others might), I still don't understand exactly what happened. I think some mainstream writing, and some short stories, tends to err on the side of subtle. (4) "Wistful England": Another one that's way over on the sketch of a moment side of stories. Unlike "Across the Rooftops," it failed to make any impression on me whatsoever; I had to skim it just now to remind myself of any details at all, and by the time I edited this review for posting, I'd forgotten it again. I think it was aiming at capturing a mood, but the mopey viewpoint character didn't mean anything to me. (3) "Doctor Sot": This is another odd one, and I'm not quite sure what I think of it. Either it's another character sketch without much of a plot, or the plot was too subtle. The protagonist is a rather unlikable drunk who doubles as a small town's incompetent doctor. The story involves his encounter with a local sort of hippie encampment, which is moderately interesting even though I couldn't stand the man. Then it leads to an encounter that clearly meant something, but which was entirely lost on me. (4) "The Girls and the Dogs": And from an absence of plot back to the deeply disturbing. This story is about a moderately unlikable drug dealer who gets refuge from an extremely unlikable crazy person in a weird relationship with a woman and her sister. (As is sadly typical, polyamory only makes an appearance when the author wants to paint a scenario that's utterly fucked up and psychotic.) There's a pseudo-fantasy element here in that the characters talk about spells, but I think the only spell involved is authorial fiat to create a deeply broken and sick game that plays into a host of negative stereotypes. Despite myself, I did get drawn into the suspense of the story (Barry's undoubtedly a good writer), but it left me feeling dirty on several levels. (4) "White Hitachi": Finally, another story that I liked, although not as good as the ones earlier in the collection. This one follows a con man and two-bit thief as he gets his brother out of lockup and tries to resolve, or at least stay ahead of, various problems in his life. Again, no real ending, but I thought Barry did a good job at taking a snapshot of a life from a perspective that I don't read much in literature (along with all the sexism and racism that comes along with it). It sort of drifts off rather than ends (although the last sentence is a great bit of characterization), but I found it oddly enjoyable. (6) "Dark Lies the Island": I'm not sure what to make of this. It's another character sketch, a moment of deep psychological significance for a character, floating somewhat alone but described in detail. But the character is a girl struggling with cutting, from a male author whose other stories did not fill me with confidence in his handling of female characters. Barry makes this psychologically believable, but I'm a little nervous about trusting his portrayal of that mindset. It's also, again, just a bit too subtle; I had a hard time getting an emotional feel for how the events of the story connect. (5) "Berlin Arkonaplatz My Lesbian Summer": The final story of the collection is fairly typical of the problem I had with most of it. It seems reasonably well-written, I had a hard time connecting with the protagonist or understanding his motivations. It looks at a slice of life with which I have no familiarity at all (and is interesting for that reason), but I don't quite trust the story enough to submerge in it. Barry seems to write a lot of protagonists who seem aimless, befuddled, or just largely out of control, and I like a bit more agency in the primary character. Silvija is an interesting character, even shown from another's perspective, but the story is almost purely observational: showing her without comment, without obvious motive, and mostly without plot. It's strangely compelling, but not quite compelling enough that I'd actually seek it out. Which, really, is the whole book in a nutshell. (6) Rating: 6 out of 10

Review: River of Stars, by Guy Gavriel Kay

Publisher:	Roc
Copyright:	April 2013
ISBN:	0-451-46497-4
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	639

In Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay applied his style of slightly fantastic alternate history to Tang Dynasty China and wrote possibly the best book of his career. In River of Stars, he takes the unusual step of revisiting one of his historical worlds, something I don't think he's done explicitly apart from the Sarantime Mosaic duology. River of Stars is set in the same land of Kitai, Kay's alternate China, four centuries later. It's a stand-alone novel, not a sequel, but the effects of the events of the earlier book are deeply felt on the structure of society. Under Heaven was one of my favorite books of all time, so you can imagine how eagerly I've been awaiting this book ever since it was announced. It starts, once again, in the distant regions of Kitai, this time with a boy. Ren Daiyan is the second son of a minor clerk in a backwater town with a very atypical dream for someone of his social rank: to win back the lost provinces of Kitai from the Xiaolu and restore the glory of the empire as the center of the world. One sees little hope for this dream in a world where no one with any choice in the matter would let their sons join the discredited and suspected army. And, as River of Stars opens, it's become much less likely since the town's only teacher has closed his school and left. As with Under Heaven, the unfolding of Daiyan's life is full of surprises, all of which should be enjoyed in the flow of the story. Here, I think the cover flap even gives away too much information, despite only mentioning events at the start of the book, since the incident that it recounts has much more impact without being spoiled. I recommend avoiding any plot summary and just reading, and therefore will avoid giving any more details. River of Stars, in another echo of its predecessor novel, has a second, female protagonist. Lin Shan is the daughter of a scholar on the edges of imperial court life, a man who has quietly but persistently refused to educate her differently than he would have educated a son. This matters in the time of this novel. Kitai has turned more conservative, turned away from the roles of women in public life seen (in their limited ways) in Under Heaven, and has pressed women into new roles of formal modesty. Shan has been set up for a difficult life. But she's also brilliant, careful, and canny, making use of opportunties, and manages to make several extraordinary friends within the power structures of the court. It's impossible not to compare this novel to Under Heaven, but that's an unfair standard to which to hold any novel. So I will say up front that, at least for me, River of Stars does not capture quite the same magic. Shen Tai was a brilliant protagonist, and his unwanted journey into the circles of power was the perfect palette on which to mix personal integrity with sweeping politics. It used history as a backdrop for a novel that was always grounded in Shen Tai's modest ambitions and quiet integrity. Neither Daiyan nor Shen are that character, nor is River of Stars that book. This novel is far more political from the start, concerned directly with issues of governance, court intrigue, and military maneuvers. Even with Shen to ground the story, the personal is the political and the events of history have been moved to center stage. I've seen Kay approach a history both ways, and I prefer when he uses history as backdrop rather than focus. I find it easier to identify and celebrate with the protagonists when their journies are less caught up in grand events. When, as here, the personal becomes the political, it creates a darker tone. The stakes are higher, and there is little separable individual triumph to blunt the tragic moments. That said, Kay remains at the height of his form. Once again, this novel contains some of the best conversations I have ever read. I'm not sure what Kay is doing that other novelists aren't. It may be that he is discarding some realism in favor of presenting the purified essence of sharp and dangerous exchanges (more on that in a bit). But there are several conversations here that read like the distilled essence of a high-stakes, insightful exchange between fearsomely intelligent adversaries: steeped in strategy, carefully managed for effect, and full of thrilling rhetorical tightropes. There are also moments that literally sent shivers up my spine: moments when the story changes, and lives change, in ways that I was not expecting at all. The story is beautifully stage-managed, imbuing every moment with a feeling of a broader resonance. I do have to warn, as with all Kay but particularly recent writing, that this is done openly and explicitly via an omniscient and very obvious narrative voice. Kay writes in the style of high fantasy in which the narrator is nearly a character in the story, one who foreshadows events and shares observations directly with the reader. Some people dislike that style inherently, and if so, Kay may not be for you. I love it when it's done well, and I don't think anyone does it better than Kay. I feel like I'm in the hands of a master storyteller who is carefully crafting the story to preserve surprise and suspense and who knows exactly where he wants the story to go. That's fitting, since one of the major themes of this book is stories and legends, and how they are shaped by events but then come to shape events in turn. River of Stars is partly about the construction of stories in the way that Under Heaven was partly about poetry. Some of the characters try to control the setting and subject matter, some use stories as a way to focus their personal motivation, and some use them to define their lives. But stories also shape politics because they can define popular reaction and the limits of the possible. This theme is subtle through much of the book, but the more I thought about it the more I noticed it woven through the story. Unfortunately, and very unusually for one of Kay's novels, the journey was intense but the destination was mildly unsatisfying. I don't want to give away any detail of the plot, so this is necessarily vague, but while I intellectually appreciate the themes that I think Kay was exploring, I think River of Stars lacks the powerful catharsis that I normally get from his novels. This for me returns to the focus on the politics over the personal (which is in some ways another of the themes of the novel). The catharsis in a novel for me begins and ends with the characters, and these characters didn't have quite enough independence from the broader sweep of events. Another theme of the novel is the degree to which every character is operating within tight constraints. This also showed up in Under Heaven, but Under Heaven was full of characters who subverted and manipulated those constraints. In River of Stars, they are more often suffocating. Shen is my favorite character, and I think the strongest character in the novel, because she manages to work around the most constraints and has the most personal story. But the roles into which she's forced remain smothering and push her out of the center of the action. Her life is full of lovely details (I particularly liked her domestic situation, which shows a family model that I think was far more common in reality than it has been in fiction and one that I would like to see portrayed far more often), but she simply doesn't have realistic room, within the society portrayed here, to maneuver to the catharsis I was looking for. One other, minor note: as in Tigana, but more blatantly, unusual sexual desires make an appearance linked with the closest thing this story has to a villain. (In this case, femdom BDSM, although shown so glancingly that I suspect some readers will not pick up on what's being described.) It was neither unrealistic nor out of character, but there is a moment of nastiness that caught me by surprise and bothered me. I hope eventually to see alternative sexuality show up in a Kay novel without the negative linkages. It's not quite characterization by stereotype (I think Kay was going for a deeper point about the constrained roles available to women), but it's close enough to not work for me. I'm spending a lot of words on what didn't quite work for me, but that's because it's complex to explain, not because this is a bad story. Rather the opposite: it's an excellent novel that I didn't enjoy quite as much as its predecessor for reasons that are very individual to me. It's quite likely that those with different narrative preferences or different tolerances for certain emotional tones in novels will have a far different reaction. The quality of the writing is quite high, provided that you don't mind Kay's intrusive narrator, and several moments in this novel made me catch my breath in wonder. If you like Kay, read this; it's very much worth your time. If you're new to Kay, I would start with Under Heaven, which is near the top of my list of novels to recommend to anyone. Then read this, since seeing how the world develops and how the events of the previous novel change and shape subsequent politics is fascinating. It's not quite at the same level, but it's very much worth reading on its own terms. Rating: 9 out of 10

One of the benefits of working from home is that I have a great view of Kansas from my desk. While I work, I have seen sunrises, snowfall, birds, rain, ice, and all sorts of wildlife. I heard this verse of Home on the Range the other day, which reminded me of this:

How often at night when the heavens are bright
With the light from the glittering stars
Have I stood here amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of ours.

One time, I asked Jacob if I should wake him up at night to see the stars. He said an excited yes! So when it was dark outside, I woke him up, carried him outside, and held him while he looked up. He said a long, breathy Wooooow! Then he went back to bed, curled up with his butterfly, and fell asleep smiling. Every so often, we repeat this little routine. There are many opportunities in life to just stand somewhere and be amazed. You don t have to be in Kansas. Children know this. The rest of us just have to notice.

UPower for regular users Major desktop environments usually provide a user-friendly menu to suspend your computer. Internally, if seems to use something called UPower, which uses something called PolicyKit, which in turn may or may not use another piece called ConsoleKit (do not ask me what all these pieces are and how they relate to each other, I do not know and I do not want to know). For the regular user, the result is the following: when they click on that button, it suspends their computer.UPower for command line users However, if you are using a more unusual desktop environment, for instance a simple, light window manager, you will not have such a button. And no, UPower does not provide a simple command line tool to suspend your computer (they probably consider that command line is out of fashion ). Well, in case you need it, here is a way to suspend your computer from a command line or whatever: just alias it or bind it to a key shortcut. It uses some dark DBus magic:

$ dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest='org.freedesktop.UPower' \
    /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Suspend

If you prefer to hibernate your computer, that is, to suspend it, not to RAM but to disk:

$ dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest='org.freedesktop.UPower' \
    /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Hibernate

As you can see, for some reason it requires some duplication of information: the name org.freedesktop.UPower appears three times in that command line: in the destination , object path and interface member , whatever that could mean. Again, do not ask me why, I know nothing about that and I do not want to. Notes

1. Actually, UPower does provide a command line tool called upower, but the only thing it does (monitoring power sources) is not really useful for that matter.

Review: Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2011

Editor:	Sheila Williams
Issue:	Volume 35, No. 6
ISSN:	1065-2698
Pages:	112

Sheila Williams's editorial is about a new ebook-only anthology of Asimov's stories, with some discussion of electronic sales. This sort of business editorial is what she's best at writing, although in this case I'm far enough in my reading that I'm reading it through a bit of a time machine. Silverberg's essay is about popular bubbles and is mildly interesting, although I've read quite a lot about this at greater length. I think he misses the plot at the end, though, where he brings in the 2008 collapse and works on focusing the blame on speculators rather than those selling the fraudulent investments. James Patrick Kelly has a surprisingly graceful introduction to fanfic that does a better job at conveying the underlying enthusiasm than most mainstream coverage. The review column this month is Peter Heck's workman-like survey of recently released books of interest. "The Cold Step Beyond" by Ian R. MacLeod: Most of MacLeod's writing I've read has focused on lush world-building, usually with a mix of magic and industrial revolution. This felt like a departure: a character study of a heavily-modified warrior and monster hunter against a clearly science-fictional background. The protagonist has no memory of her past beyond her training in a religious institution, and is as much machine as woman. She is on one of her first missions to hunt dangerous monsters. But she's given almost no direction, and rather than encountering a monster, she encounters a feral woman with an ancient ray gun. MacLeod has a very SFnal twist waiting in the wings, but what I liked best were the character dynamics and the interplay of duty and self-determination. (8) "All the News That's Fit" by Carol Emshwiller: This story follows Emshwiller's normal pattern of telling the story of an outsider and representative of outsider culture trying to understand a society, but her protagonist here is both more alone and more proactive than her average protagonist. She lives in a distant mountain village only rarely visited by a traveling reporter who brings news from outside. When he doesn't come, she goes out looking for him, at first to rescue him if he ran into trouble and later to find the news herself. Much of the story has the reader worrying nervously for her as she observes the large city while clearly having no idea how to live there. The ending provides an interesting and (at least for me) unexpected twist on the rural person coming to the big city, but it was marred by a level of anger from the protagonist that I never thought was well-motivated. (6) "Walking Stick Fires" by Alan DeNiro: There is a science fiction subgenre that, for lack of a better term, I'll call post-apocalyptic surrealism. This is an entry in that strange subgenre, featuring two alien bikers having mostly unmotivated adventures with strange objects and even stranger creatures on an Earth that's apparently been invaded and mostly devastated by multiple parties. Like a lot of post-apocalyptic surrealism, it never makes much sense. It reminded me of Rucker but with a bit more characterization and less hand-waving math. (4) "Apocalypse Daily" by Felicity Shoulders: I really liked the premise for this story. The protagonist is a concept designer for a social-oriented MMORPG, but one where only scores and resources carry over rather than the whole world. The goal of the game is survival: the world ends regularly, globally or locally, in a huge variety of ways, and one scores points and earns resources for further iterations by finding ways to survive that catastrophe. The game is structured to encourage cooperation, at least at first. But Katrina gets into a mildly paranoid workplace conflict with someone else on her team, leading to some significant changes in the underlying expectations of the game. Unfortunately, while the background and idea are quite solid, the direction the story goes is predictable pessimism, the conclusion doesn't say much that I found interesting, and I ended up detesting the protagonist. I would have preferred a more unique psychological twist. (6) "The Fighter" by Colin P. Davies: This is a rather short story, essentially an idea study in the context of a police stop of a futuristic entertainment fighter. This is another one of those depressing takes on a common SF trope. I didn't entirely follow the world-building, but it was all dark and pointless enough that I didn't really want to dig further. (4) "Kiss Me Twice" by Mary Robinette Kowal: I've read a few police procedurals featuring AIs before, but this is by far the best one I've read. Huang is a detective, and like all the detectives he makes extensive use of the police department AI. Unlike most of the detectives, though, he treats her as a full partner and close to human, and she reciprocates with a Mae West persona and a closer relationship with him than most of the department. They're in the middle of investigating a murder when there is a raid on the police department and the AI herself is stolen. The rest of the story entangles their investigation with the theft of the AI. The police AI is, of course, restored from backup, but that's the first time that's ever happened to her, and she's shaken by it, and more disturbed by the knowledge that there are two copies of her running. The mystery angle of the story is reasonably satisfying, but the AI characterization and Huang's careful feeling-out of their relationship and appropriate behavior on his part is the best part of the story. This is a great story: long, satisfying, and thoroughly excellent. I'd happily read more fiction in this universe. (8) Rating: 7 out of 10

...at least, if you are into fan fictions and Harry Potter. I love fan fictions, and I'll shamelessly admit that I like Harry Potter too, but I usually avoid crossovers. That is because however interesting and exciting is - in theory - to have your favourite characters from different fandoms together, it often ends bad. So, it's a public duty of every fanfic reader to recommend good crossovers, if they stumble upon them. Here are some I found recently (all the quotes are from the stories' summaries).

• Not Quite A Maia (Harry Potter x Lord of the Rings)

  "Middle Earth has a problem: Gandalf the Grey is AWOL in Time & Space after destroying the Balrog of Khazad-d m. But who will take his place in the Quest to defeat the Dark Lord Sauron? Not who you think..."

  This is a very well written fic, and one of the best HP/LOTR crossover I've ever read. Bonus points for not featuring main characters of HP-verse (someone else will have to save the day in Middle Earth, not the usual Golden Trio). And if there are some minor glitches in the plot (especially in the last chapters), the author has undoubtedly a knack for hilarious situations. If you can read through Augusta's chapters without laughing out loud you are not human. Really.
• Evil Be Thou My Good (Harry Potter x Hellraiser)

  "Nine years ago Vernon Dursley brought home a certain puzzle box. His nephew managed to open it, changing his destiny. Now, in the midst of Voldemort's second rise, Harry Potter has decided to recreate the Lament Configuration... and open it... again."

  Even if I am a notorious addicted to horror and b-movies (and more so to horror b-movies) I've never seen Hellraiser. But you don't have to, to enjoy this story. It's well written, it explains the backstory for the Hellraiser universe (or at least what you need to know about it) and features a refreshing Dark!Harry. The only thing I didn't like is a slightly OOC (Out Of Character) Voldemort, who's described in canon as intelligent and cunning and here seems to me a bit gullible. But apart from that, the story is worth a read.
• That Which Holds The Image (Harry Potter x Doctor Who).

  "Harry Potter faces a boggart that doesn't turn into a Dementor or even Voldermort, but into a horror from his childhood. Now the boggart isn't even a boggart anymore. There's no imitation. That which holds the image of an Angel, becomes itself an Angel."

  I have a soft spot for the Weeping Angels. They are pure evil genius. If you don't know what I'm talking about stop reading now and go watch Doctor Who episode 3x10 "Blink". It's really a masterpiece. So Weeping Angels in Potterverse would be awesome even if the plot of this story weren't as good as actually is. The only thing to make it better would be to have 10th Doctor instead of 11th. But then, you can't have everything, I guess.

If you read any of these and want to talk about it or if you have more crossovers to recommend, drop me a mail. For more fan fiction recommendations, I suggest you to check this detailed index on tvtropes.org.

Review: The Hare with Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal

Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright:	2010
ISBN:	0-374-10597-9
Format:	Kindle
Pages:	351

A netsuke ( ) is a miniature sculpture, often made from ivory or boxwood, generally rounded and no larger than a matchbox. They were a part of Japanese clothing starting from the 17th century: traditional garments had no pockets, but people needed a way to carry small objects around with them, so they wore pouches or small boxes attached to a cord. The cord could then be passed under the sash of the garment and be held in place there by a netsuke attached to the end of the cord, since the netsuke was too large to slip under the sash. The hare with amber eyes is one of 264 netsuke. It, and all the rest, belonged to Edmund de Waal's uncle Iggie. They sat in a vitrine in his home in Japan, where de Waal went for a two-year scholarship and was working on a book on japonisme: the passionate and creative Western misunderstanding of Japan. When Iggie later died in 1991, de Waal inherited the collection. This book is his attempt to tell their history. The Hare with Amber Eyes falls into the genre of family memoir or biography, but it's one told from an unusual angle. Edmund de Waal is a potter by profession: an artist who creates physical objects that then pass from his studio out into the world. The physicality of the netsuke their occupation of time and space and their passsage through the world fascinates him, and he tries to express that fascination to the reader and uses it as a focal point for the memoir. He tells, here, the story of his own family, but he does so via the netsuke, following them from their purchase in Paris in 1871 through one branch of the family and then another until they reach Iggie and, finally, him. Along the way, he tries to put them into context. At first, the context is primarily artistic, and the early parts of this book are something of a tour of late 19th century artistic culture in Paris. But, as the story continues, the connection becomes more emotional and the context becomes more complicated. Anyone who is a fan of the TV program Antiques Roadshow or any similar effort to trace the history of specific objects will see the immediate appeal in this presentation. Antiques are fascinating in their mute path through lives and history; attempting to reconstruct the rooms they've sat in and the conversations they've witnessed is something I've always found intriguing. But it's also very difficult to do. Most of our objects, and most owners of objects, simply don't have that sort of documentation. I was wondering, at the start of this book, how de Waal was going to manage to construct his history. The answer is that his family is, or at least was, famous enough to have letters, papers, and history in libraries throughout Europe. That's what makes the parts of the book before Iggie's living memory possible. It's a bit disappointing, if unsurprising; de Waal doesn't have any special technique to find hidden history, and most objects could never have this sort of history written about them. The first owner of the netsuke in his family is Charles Ephrussi, a critic, historian, and art historian who was a patron of the Impressionists and who was important enough in Parisian art culture that he is the inspiration of a character in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. This means that quite a lot of this book is about people who moved through social circles and lived in ways that I find quite foreign, which made it hard to invest too much in the first part of the book. The Ephrussi family was originally from Odessa and made a fortune as grain merchants some time prior to the start of the history, and by the time de Waal opens their story, they have vast inherited wealth. There is no sign in the book that Charles needs to work in any way. The first part of the book paints a picture of the culture of art patronage partly via descriptions of Charles's rooms and personal collection, to which the netsuke were added during the surge in interest in Japanese art in Europe produced by the opening of Japan during the Meiji period. It's interesting, but for me in a distant and intellectual way. (People with a deeper interest in Impressionist art or other late 19th century art may have a different reaction.) De Waal writes at length at the start of this book about avoiding sentimentality and trying to take an honest and immersive look at the history of the netsuke. The emotional intensity that he brings to this goal seemed a bit odd, since little in the early part of the book seems to tempt towards sentimentality. But then the Dreyfus Affair enters Charles's story, followed by his gift of the vitrine and the netsuke to a cousin in Austria as a marriage gift, and I started to realize the implications of following a possession of a prominent Jewish family in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. This is the sort of non-fiction book that you can spoil, so I won't give a detailed description of the rest of the book. But there is a specific event in the history of the netsuke that de Waal tells that would be the story most people would start with, and I now understand the sentimentality that de Waal was trying to avoid. It's a great story, but one of the things I like about this book is that de Waal puts it into a broader context and complicates the story. He includes the long periods of time when the netsuke were mostly ignored, he ties them into the history of western obsession with (and exploitation of) Japanese art, and he shows how the sturdy nature of the netsuke, meant for physical handling rather than display, led to them creating the emotional connection that made them important to the family. It's a book that deals with anti-Semitism with accuracy and specifics without being either lurid or overwhelming. It's a book that traces a line through one of the most overwritten and well-trod areas of history and manages to stay on its own path. It's a book that made me angry, and made me cry, and then made me step back and think about those emotions in a broader context and think about the benefits of leaving those emotions behind. I've never read a book quite like this before. It's slow in places (particularly if one is not very interested in art history), utterly compelling in others, and carefully avoids any simple themes or grand stories. It's entangled with some of the darkest events of recent history, but de Waal stays tightly focused on the family through the lens of the netsuke, which is valuable for keeping the story from drifting into well-worn and less unique material. I was not as completely taken by this book as the review that got me to buy it (it's an excellent review, better than this one). But I'm glad that I read it, and I feel like I now know more about the world. Rating: 7 out of 10

Garmin Montana notes Sometimes, I get waaay too excited about gadgets, and I have to share it. So, sorry, here it goes For some reason that is not very important, I was looking for a better solution for GPSes with maps. Side-note: if you ask why Android is not good enough , here's the story: last year, knowing that Google Maps supports caching (finally), I upgraded Maps, preloaded London, and went on a trip. Only to exit the Victoria underground station and to stare ~20 minutes in light rain at my phone, wondering why it doesn't get a fix. I gave up in the end, and used the cached maps for getting around. Later I learned the reason: Maps was not broken, but without data, Android can't get a lock easily; and more-over, the recent Maps update without GPS active even once afterwards, to do whatever it needed, meant I couldn't get a lock until back in Switzerland. Or, alternatively: while on a trip to Japan, it turns out that Google Maps caching is not supported there, probably because of rights over mapping data. So I had location, but only temporary cached maps (from the wifi in the hotels). Due to this kind of problems makes I consider Android maps a toy, so I wanted a GPS device with proper maps (on the device, not in the cloud), and with good GPS capabilities (no fancy A-GPS or anything, just plain good standalone GPS). Having had good experiences with the sport line of Garmin (but which doesn't have maps, so it's out of the question), I looked at Garmin. Many people complained about some things (same all over the place):

• newer devices less tested, software with lots of bugs
• dumbing down of devices, ultra-simplification of the UI

The latter is something that jumped at me from many of the blogs/fora that I read; I like customisable power tools , not one-button mice. The other thing that I didn't really like was that most devices are very focused on a niche: the n vi line on automotive, the Zumo line on motorbikes, and the hand-held lines with some blurring of hiking/geocaching/etc. So no one-size fits all device Features! Customisation! That is, until I found out the Montana series. My my, I was blown. Both by the price (I couldn't believe how expensive it was, without maps!) and by the features. As it turns out, the Montana has different profiles , and it can act:

• as a hand-held device for hiking/geocaching (yay!)
• as a bicycle-mounted device for biking through the woods (yay!)
• as a motorcycle-mounted device (hmmm )
• as a car-mounted device, for automotive use, including guidance, both TTS and non-TTS voices, lane assist, speed limits, etc.

That is for flexibility. As for performance/features:

• it has a Transflective liquid crystal display screen, so it works best (as opposed to worst) in bright sun, and of course also works in the dark, via its back light
• the touchscreen is resistive, so glove-friendly: tested it with my regular gloves on and with my biking gloves (which are very clumsy), and it works like a charm
• it is water-proof (IPX7); that means I can keep it in the open in the rain, and not worry about dropping it in the snow
• it has both a (replaceable) LiIon battery (many hours of runtime, > 10) and support for powering via 3 AA batteries (> 20 hours), which coupled with some Eneloops is awesome
• GPS sync is awesome; from hard poweroff, it syncs in ~3 seconds I would say (exited building, powered on, was already synced by the time I entered the satellite menu); even in-house, it gets around 2 satellites, and sometimes manages to get a lock

Now for the downsides. Being a multi-functional device, it's not as good as a dedicated one:

• for handheld use, it's a bit heavy; I personally don't mind, but it's something that has to be said: ~300 g
• for motorcycle use, it's worse than the Zumo: no bluetooth compatibility, so you can't have it talk to you in the helmet; but I don't have a motorcycle, so
• for automotive use, it lacks many things compared to a top-of-the-live n vi: no voice recognition, no junction view, no birds-eye view, etc.; but I don't have a car, so

But the small (for me) draw-backs aside, it's definitely not a dumbed-down device. It's the first device that I have which I feel it a bit too customisable . From completely changeable menus, to profiles that remember their maps selection, to many dashboards, to almost-programmable shortcuts (e.g. a shortcut to change profile, set destination to a given way point, reset the trip log, and turn track logging on) a bit overwhelming at first. Add the 3-axis compass, barometric altimeter, ANT+ support and you get a very powerful device. Software As to the software, yes it has some bugs - mainly that the device crashes sometimes (abruptly) if you play too much with the routes (didn't happen to me yet on the road , only when testing it at home). On the PC-side, Garmin's BaseCamp is nice, but doesn't hold a candle to Google Maps, for example, in terms of UI; I don't mean shininess, but simply how well the UI works. The most annoying thing is how it doesn't scale detail appropriately with the zoom level. But it works, and I can plan hikes offline, and upload both tracks and routes to it (this is important: it seems other recent Garmins can't replay tracks, only routes). And I can load many maps, and toggle them at will, etc. The many maps feature is not to be overlooked. I could have, for example, standard Garmin maps loaded, but just in case they're insuficiently detailed or out of date (hey, Navteq is slow ), I can also have Open Street Maps from two days ago. The routing is then done on the currently active maps, so you are not restricted to a single mapping provider. And of course you can also have custom POIs (Point of interest) on it. Bycicle use The bicycle mount is solid enough, so that on a rough roads it's held firmly. From my ~20 minute test this morning, a few things to note:

• it wanted me to take bigger paths, rather than the trails I like to take; probably I haven't customised it well enough yet
• recalculating a route (when it realises you insist on taking another path than it planned) is very fast
• whenever you approach a change-of-direction, it beeps (see below) and turns on the back light (temporarily), so visibility is improved
• you can actually use the touchscreen with winter gloves (of course, when stopped or at very very low speed)

Voice output By default, the unit can only beep, but if coupled via a 3.5" jack to headphones or via the automotive mount, it can properly speak; quality varies with voice, and whether it is TTS or not. I managed to find one voice (non-TTS) that sounds really well, but of course with less information, and one TTS voice that sounds OK-ish but gives full info. By full info , I mean the following: the behaviour of the various TTS voices is not consistent. For example, on a simulated route, various voices were saying the following:

• non-TTS: keep ahead (voice A), or keep-ahead, then keep right (voice B)
• voice C, TTS: in 94 kilometers, exit right
• voice D, TTS: in 94 kilometers, take exit 14 on the right
• voice E, TTS: in 94 kilometers, take exit 14 on the right in the direction Landquart, then keep right

I don't know why these differences, or if they are consistent across routes. But I'll keep with voice E for now Summary So, sorry again for sounding like an ad (I don't have any relation with Garmin the company), but I find this device awesome - powerful, rugged, and working (so far) very well. I'm glad that there still exist companies who don't believe they know better than their customers, and instead offer you with a tool that you can make it work just like you want. Or almost Garmin's tag line: Big and Tough Goes anywhere, everywhere . I tend to agree

Technology Technology is... weird. I am in a cabbin in the middle of Lapland an hour away from the next city to speak of. GPS

N 66 15.958
E 24 59.981

look it up. We haven't had power for the last 60 minutes, the electrical heaters are out and we are trying to keep the main room warm with a wood stove while the wood-burning sauna above is ready to receive us the minute I hI push this post. The cabbin has become noticiably colder already, supply of logs small enough to actually burn is limited, we don't have an axe, but we have a car so we can leave if need be. The next house is about six kilometers away, no idea if they have power or not; the woods are dark all round other than for snowshine. Yet, I am sitting here, LED lamp lighting the room, GPS telling me what location to write into this post, laptop running on battery, cell phone with EGPRS supplying me with bugstats plus picture (even though I had to do most of it by hand as LWP::Simple barfs on the timeout) and allowing me to push to ikiwiki. As I said, technology is... weird. Bugology The UDD bugs interface currently knows about the following release critical bugs:

• In Total: 786
  • Affecting wheezy: 194 That's the number we need to get down to zero before the release. They can be split in two big categories:
    • Affecting wheezy and unstable: 128 Those need someone to find a fix, or to finish the work to upload a fix to unstable:
      • 34 bugs are tagged 'patch'. Please help by reviewing the patches, and (if you are a DD) by uploading them.
      • 12 bugs are marked as done, but still affect unstable. This can happen due to missing builds on some architectures, for example. Help investigate!
      • 90 bugs are neither tagged patch, nor marked done. Help make a first step towards resolution!
    • Affecting wheezy only: 66 Those are already fixed in unstable, but the fix still needs to migrate to wheezy. You can help by submitting unblock requests for fixed packages, by investigating why packages do not migrate, or by reviewing submitted unblock requests.
      • 40 bugs are in packages that are unblocked by the release team.
      • 26 bugs are in packages that are not unblocked.

How do we compare to the Squeeze release cycle?

Week	Squeeze	Wheezy	Diff
43	284 (213+71)	468 (332+136)	+184 (+119/+65)
44	261 (201+60)	408 (265+143)	+147 (+64/+83)
45	261 (205+56)	425 (291+134)	+164 (+86/+78)
46	271 (200+71)	401 (258+143)	+130 (+58/+72)
47	283 (209+74)	366 (221+145)	+83 (+12/+71)
48	256 (177+79)	378 (230+148)	+122 (+53/+69)
49	256 (180+76)	360 (216+155)	+104 (+36/+79)
50	204 (148+56)	339 (195+144)	+135 (+47/+90)
51	178 (124+54)	323 (190+133)	+145 (+66/+79)
52	115 (78+37)	289 (190+99)	+174 (+112/+62)
1	93 (60+33)	287 (171+116)	+194 (+111/+83)
2	82 (46+36)	271 (162+109)	+189 (+116/+73)
3	25 (15+10)	249 (165+84)	+224 (+150/+74)
4	14 (8+6)	244 (176+68)	+230 (+168/+62)
5	2 (0+2)	224 (132+92)	+222 (+132/+90)
6	release!	212 (129+83)	+212 (+129/+83)
7	release+1	194 (128+66)	+194 (+128/+66)

Graphical overview of bug stats thanks to azhag: