Russ Allbery: Review: Ode to the Half-Broken
Review: Ode to the Half-Broken, by Suzanne Palmer
Ode to the Half-Broken is a standalone post-apocalyptic (sort of)
science fiction novel.
As this novel opens, the unnamed first-person protagonist is waking up in
a bathtub in an abandoned building. They are covered in electromagnets and
missing one leg.
Waking up involved a secure reboot from a protected core kernel, so it is
immediately obvious that the protagonist is a robot. That also explains
the electromagnets, which interfere with their ability to control their
body. Or they would, if the protagonist didn't have long-dormant combat
routines available to deploy EM shielding and free themselves from the
bathtub. There are no immediate answers to why someone embedded a virus in
the data attached to a scientific paper on ants, an act so precisely
targeted that it had to be personal. Or what happened to their leg.
| Publisher: | DAW |
| Copyright: | May 2026 |
| ISBN: | 0-7564-2013-X |
| Format: | Kindle |
| Pages: | 441 |
"There are a number of electromagnets in the next room," I say. I point. "Behind that wall with all the holes in it." "Those are big holes. And fresh, too," the dog says. "I wonder what made them." "Electromagnets experiencing sudden velocity." The dog gives another of its short barks, and I am more convinced now it is laughing, though I was not attempting to be funny.Ode to the Half-Broken has a classic science fiction beginning: in medias res in a future science fiction version of Earth where nothing is immediately explained, leaving the reader to work out the date and the setting. Helping us out is the protagonist, who is neither chatty nor very sociable with other characters but keeps up an analytical monologue about the world as they narrate events. We are some decades into a grim future. The United States has largely collapsed. Large parts of New York City are dangerous to humans due to disease and radiation. Neither of those hazards bother the large number of sentient robots; their scarcity, and therefore economy, is instead based on power. Robots that control solar power stations act as low-level mob bosses, trading power for information or labor. Our protagonist doesn't want to care about any of this. They retreated from the world long ago for a solitary life in the former New York Botanical Gardens studying ants. But they need a new leg and the best robot repair person nearby is a human woman outside of the city, so they reluctantly head in that direction, accompanied somewhat surprisingly by a cyborg dog. The typical science fiction apocalypse is caused by something specific. Classically, that event is a nuclear war, but writers found various alternatives before, during, and after the Cold War era: alien invasions, meteor showers, plagues, sea level rise, and peak oil and general environmental collapse, among many others. Less common is a post-apocalyptic novel where the collapse comes from multiple overlapping crises and accumulating failures, from a general failure to meet what Adam Tooze and others call polycrisis. The first time I encountered that style of post-apocalyptic story was in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. It was one of the choices that made (and still makes) that book feel so chillingly realistic. The world background in Ode to the Half-Broken is shaped by that sort of polycrisis collapse. There is no one reason why New York City is a dangerous, irradiated ruin and society has collapsed into isolated and sometimes warring factions. It is not runaway artificial intelligence, or at least not directly; sentient robots were a late-stage innovation of the collapsing US civilization and a tool and accelerator of its many wars, but they were not the cause and may be a critical ingredient in building some functional replacement. Instead, society fell apart because we failed to address any of the growing problems and then turned on each other in the resulting ruins. The reader gets an idiosyncratic view of that collapse in flashback chapters intermixed with the main narrative of the initially unnamed robot protagonist, flashbacks told from the perspective of the man who invented the key component for robot sentience. As you would expect, those two narratives are linked. The reader will not discover how they are linked until late in the story. This book could have been extremely depressing. It is not, which says a great deal about Palmer's skill in telling it. The clinical distance of the protagonist in the early chapters helps considerably: They have rejected involvement in this world and therefore can describe it in detached, factual terms, aided by the tendency of most robots in this story to be slightly more precise, logical, and verbose than the human characters. But as the protagonist's clinical distance fades, as it must to allow the story's emotional stakes to rise, Palmer fills this book with moments of beauty and hope. A former nuclear submarine that has become the mind of a subway car is a key early ally. A collective has turned the Hudson Bridge into a thriving if chaotic community. Self-regulating enclaves of humans and robots are working together to try to build a livable world. Robots oversee pollinator swarms that are attempting to restore plant life, for no reason other than that they like order and stability and see this as a way of restoring both. This is a grim, post-apocalyptic world that does not dwell on either the grimness or the apocalypse. It is instead full of small moments of hope, collaboration, and personal connection. This is a story with villains, danger, pain, and risk. Despite the similar keywords and cover aesthetics, it bears little resemblance to Becky Chambers's philosophical Monk and Robot series. It is not, in any definition of the term, cozy; it's a post-apocalyptic adventure story about a robot and a dog making their way through a ruined civilization and fighting people who are trying to build something even worse on the rubble. But it's also charming and oddly happy. There are strong found-family vibes in the way that a party coalesces around the protagonist and eventually gives them a name, there is the quiet happiness of seeing a grumpy misanthrope slowly come out of their protective shell, and the rail mechs are an absolute delight. Like a lot of stories of happy small-group anarchism, I didn't entirely believe the politics and have some qualms about the realism of the ending, although perhaps I should strive to be as optimistic as Palmer writes. The somewhat dry and fussily precise first-person narration will also not be to everyone's taste; it worked for me by the end of the book, but it took a bit of reading to get used to it. But those quibbles aside, this was quietly lovely. It's a satisfying science fiction adventure story in a world with disturbing parallels to the one we're living in, but which uses those parallels to focus on small-scale collective efforts to build something better. And all the small details of the world-building are delightful: the different tiers of robots and their odd behaviors, the machine sense of purpose, even the mix of suspicion and generosity. The plot has large-scale implications, but it was the human-level details that charmed me. I still want another Fergus novel, but this was a highly successful foray outside of that series. Palmer has won two Hugos for her novellas, so I can't really say she's overlooked, but her novels aren't getting anywhere near the attention they deserve. Highly recommended. There is plenty of world-building room here for a sequel, but Ode to the Half-Broken reaches a satisfying standalone conclusion. So far as I know, no sequel is currently planned. Rating: 8 out of 10
I was reading 
TGV train I rode from Luxembourg to Paris
Pasta I had in Paris
A cycling track in Paris
Luxembourg Museum
A shot of the park near to the Luxembourg Museum
Pantheon, one of the attractions of Paris.
Photo with Joenio and Mari
Notre Dame, another tourist attraction of Paris.
My photo with Eiffel Tower in the background
Items at a bakery in Paris. Items from left to right are: Chocolate Twist, Sugar briochette, Pain au Chocolat, Croissant with almonds, Croissant, Croissant with chocolate hazlenut filling.
The Paris subway
Inside a Paris subway
A random building and road in Paris
A shot near Seine river
A view of Seine river
In today s digital landscape, social media is more than just a communication tool it is the primary medium for global discourse. Heads of state, corporate leaders and cultural influencers now broadcast their statements directly to the world, shaping public opinion in real time. However, the dominance of a few centralized platforms X/Twitter, Facebook and YouTube raises critical concerns about control, censorship and the monopolization of information. Those who control these networks effectively wield significant power over public discourse.
In response, a new wave of distributed social media platforms has emerged, each built on different decentralized protocols designed to provide greater autonomy, censorship resistance and user control. While 
Mastodon was created in 2016 by 
Interestingly, 
After circling a bit to find somewhere suitable (there appear to be construction
works in the park!) I set up my gear in 2C with frost on the ground, called CQ,
spotted and got nothing on either the end fed half wave or the cheap vertical.
As it was too late for 20m, I tried 40 and a bit of 80 using the inbuilt tuner,
but wasn t heard by stations I called or when calling independently.
I packed everything up and lora-doofered my way home, mildly deflated.
After a mild struggle on 2m, I set up the end fed the first hill and got to
work from the old hill fort:
The end fed worked flawlessly. Exactly as promised, switching between 7MHz, 14MHz, 21MHz
and 28MHz without a tuner was perfect, I chased hills on all the bands, and had a
great time. Apart from 40m, where there was absolutely no space due to a
contest. That wasn t such a fun time!
My fingers were bitterly cold, so on went the big gloves for the descent and I
felt like I was warm by the time I made it back to the car.
It worked so well, in fact, I took the 1/4 wave cheap vertical out my bag and
decided to brave it on the next activation.
To get some height for the feedpoint, I wrapped the coax around my winder a
couple of turns and trapped it with the elastic while draping the coax over the
trig. This bought me some more height and I felt clever because of it. Maybe a
pole would be easier?
From here, I worked inter-G on 40m and had a wee pile up, eventually working 15
or so European stations on 20m. Pleased with that!
I had been considering a third hill, but home was the call in the failing light.
Back to the car I walked to find my key didn t have any battery, so out came the
Audi App and I used the Internet of Things to unlock my car. The modern world is
bizarre.
I set up at the cairn and picked up 30 contacts overall, split between 40m and
20m, with some inter-g on 40 and a couple of continental surprises. 20 had
longer skip today, so I saw Spain, Finland, Slovenia, Poland.
On teardown, I managed to snap the top segment of my brand new mast with my
cold, clumsy fingers, but thankfully sotabeams stock replacements. More money at
the problem, again.
Back to the car, no app needed, and homeward bound as the light faded.
At the end of the weekend, I find myself finally over 100 activator points and
over 400 chaser points. Somehow I ve collected more points this year already
than last year, the winter bonuses really do stack up!
This weekend I discovered it s possible to have height maps for nice 3d
maps and contours marked on the map - you just need to download some
additions for the maps. This is a really nice feature, it makes maps more
pretty and more useful when you re in the middle of nowhere.
In order to prepare for the Akademy I started some days before to give my Librem 5 ( an Open Hardware Phone) another try and ended up with a non starting Plasma 6.
Actually this issue was known already, but hasn't been addressed.
In the end I reached the Akademy with my Librem 5 having phosh installed (which is Gnome based), in order to have something working.
I met Bushan and Bart who took care and the issue was fixed two days later I could finally install Plasma 6 on it.
The last time I tested my Librem 5 with Plasma 5 it felt sluggish and not well working.
But this time I was impressed how well the system reacts.
Sure there are some things here and there, but in the bigger picture it is quite useable.
One annoying issue is that the camera is only working with one app and the other issue is the battery capacity, you have to charge it once a day.
Because of missing a QR reader that can use the camera, getting data to the phone was quite challenging.
Unfortunately the conference Wifi separated the devices and I couldn't use KDE Connect to transfer data.
In the end the only way to import data was taking five photos from the QR Code to import my D-Ticket to Itinerary.
With a device with Plasma Mobile, it directly was used for a experiment: How well does Dolphin works on a Plasma Mobile device.
Together with Felix Ernst we tried it out and were quite impressed, that Dolphin does work very well on Plasma Mobile, after some simple modifications on the UI.
That resulted in a patch to add a mobile UI for Dolphin 
In order to not have a hard cut from Akademy to normal life, I had a lunch with Carlos, to discuss KDE Neon and how we can improve the interaction with Debian.
In the future this should have less friction and make both communities work together more smoothly.
Additionally as I used to develop on KDEPIM with the help of Docker images based on Neon I ask for a meta kf6 dev meta package.
That should help to get rid of most hand written lists of dev packages in the Docker file in order to make it more simple for new contributors to start hacking on KDEPIM.
The rest of the day I finally found time to do the normal tourist stuff: Going to the Wine bridge and having a walk to the castle of W rzburg.
Unfortunately you hear a lot of car noises up there, but I could finally relaxe in a Japanese designed garden.
Finally at Saturday I started my trip back.
The trains towards Eberswalde are broken and I needed to find alternative routing.
I got a little bit nervous, as it was the first time I travelled with my Librem 5 and Itinerary only and needed to reach the next train in less than two mins.
With the indoor maps provided, I could prepare my run through the train station so I reached successfully my next train.
By the way, also if you only only use KDE software, I would recommend everyone to join Akademy ;)
The Debian Project Developers will shortly vote for a new Debian Project Leader
known as the DPL.
The Project Leader is the official representative of The Debian Project tasked with
managing the overall project, its vision, direction, and finances.
The DPL is also responsible for the selection of Delegates, defining areas of
responsibility within the project, the coordination of Developers, and making
decisions required for the project.
Our outgoing and present DPL Jonathan Carter served 4 terms, from 2020
through 2024. Jonathan shared his last 
Dormitory room in Zostel Ernakulam, Kochi.
Beds in Zostel Ernakulam, Kochi.
Onam sadya menu from Brindhavan restaurant.
Sadya lined up for serving
Sadya thali served on banana leaf.
We were treated with such views during the Wayanad trip.
A road in Rippon.
Entry to Kanthanpara Falls.
Kanthanpara Falls.
A view of Zostel Wayanad.
A map of Wayanad showing tourist places.
A view from inside the Zostel Wayanad property.
Terrain during trekking towards the Chembra peak.
Heart-shaped lake at the Chembra peak.
Me at the heart-shaped lake.
Views from the top of the Chembra peak.
View of another peak from the heart-shaped lake.
We took a couple of days of for a family vacation / road trip through
the hills of Central Mexico. The overall trip does not look like
anything out of the ordinary
