Pelican Tracks -- Entry 8

As much as I never want to see Nortrig again, I can't say as it hasn't been very, very good to us. Despite the fact that Nortrig rubles aren't the most stable of currencies, we've got an entire cargo hold full of the them. The conversion fees won't even make a dent. In short -- we're disgustingly rich.

( War profiteering for fun and profit...eering )

The big question is what to do with all this cash. When Sanna was threatening to leave, she mentioned going off and becoming a farmer. It's not a career I can see her excelling in and the crop she knows best, she's likely to smoke through before she can sell it. It did give me an idea though. With this cash we can set up a station like Second Sunrise and grow all the black weed we want in international airspace. Then we just use the Pelican to make deliveries. Needs a bit more fleshing out but I think it's got a lot of possibilities.

* * *

So this was the closer for our first game. We might come back to the Pelican and her crew in the future, but we've reached a good stopping point so we'll switch over to something else. I will be taking over the GM reins and running a few sessions of Apocalypse World (which I've been dying to do for some time). Hopefully I won't kill everyone first session.

later
Tom

Two for Reviewing

Hi,

So this might be a case of too much hype. I've finished up two books I was really excited to get my hands on and they wound up...not bad, but not as good as I wanted.

First up Echopraxia by Peter Watts. This is a follow up to his amazing book Blindsight which left me in existential dread. Echopraxia is a sort of sequel in that it covers events happening back on Earth after the events in Blindsight. No one from the first book is in this one, although there are some links.

In brief, Daniel Bruks, field biologist, gets swept up in a three-way fight between a vampire, a hive mind and regular humans who want them both gone. He and a ragtag crew fly off into space to check out a powersat where the alien from Blindsight might possibly have shown up.

As always, Mr. Watts has a lot of fun ideas and the writing ticks like a Swiss watch. It wasn't quite as original as Blindsight but that's to be expected. My basic gripe comes in two parts. First, the book postulates that humans will create intelligences that aren't necessarily self-conscious but which are much smarter than humans. The problem is that this leads to parts of the book where the super-intelligences demonstrate an unbelievable level of planning (like...Batman levels of planning) where it's not clear they'd have the time or tools to execute on their plan as well as a stupefying awareness and control over mental states (their own and others). This is offset by a few instances of them getting completely blind-sided. Now, it's been established that wheels within wheels doesn't even begin to cover their level of planning so perhaps their failures are part of a master plan. So this leads to the second gripe where the ending is a bit ambiguous. Remember how it starts with a three-way fight? In the end, it quite appears as though someone wins and again, it doesn't seem like the other super-intelligences involved would've let that outcome happen.

I dunno. I'm still glad I read it but I think there might need to be a third book to tie everything together. There's a fun "here's the science I worked from" section in the back that's a lot of fun as well.

Next up is City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett. This was build as a sort of fantasy spy thriller and it sort of was, but it also had a few issues.

The world-building is top-notch though. The Continent was home to six gods. They produced a society built on divine miracles and sent their followers out to conquer the world. One of the island kingdoms they conquer is Saypur. They enslave the natives and treat them like dirt until one of them discovers how to kill a god. The Saypur return to the continent, kill all the gods (causing the Continent to implode as the magic supporting a first world lifestyle goes away), and then occupy the place, forbidding any study or mention of the divine.

Now, in Bulikov, former Seat of the World, a Saypur professor of history is murdered. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs sends their best agent, Shara Thivani and her "secretary" Sigurd to look into the matter. The can of worms is duly opened and things quickly get messy.

So, let me start off by saying this book passes the McArthur Genius Bechdel Test in spades. The Saypur are basically presented as Southern Indian and the local military governor is a woman so you regularly have two women of color talking about how to save the world (and when they do talk about men, it's almost never in a romantic context). Everyone pretty much gets treated as a complete person. As I say the world-building is top notch and the plot moves along briskly with a good mix of conversation, detail and action.

The bad part is that while I didn't suss out "whodunnit", I did easily latch onto the major clues and big reveals got telegraphed way too early. I was hoping for a bit more Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy kind of tradecraft and didn't really get that. It was more an action adventure mystery kind of thing. Oddly, I think if you like The Dresden Files you might also really enjoy this.

Again, the book wasn't terrible by any means, but it wasn't quite "fantasy spy games" I was expecting.

later
Tom