Private Mars Rocket II

Ghost Bog by Steven Kuehn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I'm not sure how, but I found Steven Kuehn's first novel and enjoyed it enough to look for the second in the series. Well, it's finally out and I just finished reading it. It's an enjoyable cozy mystery.

The main character and narrator, Jake Caine, is an archeologist who works in Wisconsin, and in Ghost Bog he is excavating a very early Paleoindian site. He's on a clock as the site is to be developed as part of a state park. Then his team starts discovering human remains. Alas, one of those remains is not a Paleoindian but rather somebody buried with a modern wristwatch.

Caine and his team, including his new girlfriend, a deputy sheriff from a nearby county, find themselves investigating. I think Kuehn's police procedure is a bit off and we get a lot of archeology before the mystery starts, but overall I found it an enjoyable and standalone book. I hope there's a Book 3 in the works.



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I have always wanted to visit Alaska, and the best way (for me) to do so was a cruise. Well, an option came up for me to do so and I booked it. September 4 - 11 I'll be cruising from Seattle to Alaska and back.

The next Worldcon, LAcon V, is August 27-31, 2026 - basically the week before my cruise. I usually attend (and wouldn't mind revisiting LA, a city I last was in ~30 years ago) but given how close the dates are and the expense of both events, I'm taking a raincheck on LA. I've bought a supporting membership so I'll be voting, but that's it.

I have a science fiction novel, working title Gunmaker, coming out in summer of 2026. So, I'm looking for a suitable convention at which to debut said novel.

I have recently received my schedule for Windycon 51, to be held November 7-9 at the DoubleTree hotel in Oak Brook, Il.

Friday, November 7

Between Two Worlds: Biracial Representation in Sci-Fi & Fantasy
3:00 PM - Butterfield
MODERATOR

Representation matters — and that includes characters who live at the intersection of cultures, species, and worlds. Join us for an open, engaging discussion on biracial characters in science fiction and fantasy, exploring the gap between how these characters are portrayed in fiction versus real life. How do biracial experiences translate to the page or screen? Are the stories we love reflecting the complexity of identity, or are they simplifying, stereotyping, or overlooking it?

We’ll discuss biracial portrayal in sci-fi, the characters who stand out, the ones we wish existed, and how creators can craft authentic, nuanced biracial narratives within established fandoms and universes. From Vulcan-human hybrids to modern-day mythic heroes, this panel celebrates the richness of characters who belong to more than one world, and the importance of seeing our diverse realities reflected in the stories we love.

Saturday, November 8

Windycon Writers Workshop Section 1
9 a.m. – 11:00 a.m., Butterfield Room
(pre-registered attendees only, listed here for my convenience)


OSHA Violations in Sci-Fi: A Safety Inspector’s Worst Nightmare
1:00 PM Hunt

From unshielded warp cores to catwalks with zero railings, science fiction is a galaxy full of workplace hazards! Join our panel of fans and armchair safety inspectors as we take a hilarious look at the most egregious OSHA violations across sci-fi and fantasy — from Star Wars and Alien to The Expanse and beyond. Who’s responsible for all those bottomless pits? How many stormtroopers have fallen off ledges that clearly needed guardrails? Suit up, grab your hard hat, and prepare for a dangerously fun discussion about the least-safe universes in pop culture.

Space Station X: A lesbian comedy horror in space by A.Z. Rozkillis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I am a Kickstarter backer of this publisher, and this book was one of my rewards. The author, A. Z. Rozkillis, says in her bio that she "builds spaceships in her day job" and this novel feels like it. Our narrator, Jaz, is one of two crewmembers on an interstellar space station / pit stop. She's a hermit and is there because it's as far away from humanity as she can get. She's got a routine which works for her to minimize contact with the rest of the station's rotating cast of residents.

This being a horror novel, things happen which upset that routine, including a bit of unexpected romance with Saunders, the station's sole security officer. the book is billed as a "lesbian horror comedy." There are some humorous moments in there, more of the wisecracks you'd get in an action movie as opposed to LOL moments, but the horror is definitely there. I found it highly engaging.



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Saved here so I can find them:

A) A novel idea - solve homelessness by just giving them money. The idea, based on experiment, is that a smallish payment at the right time can stop the train of disasters that lead to people becoming homeless.

B) Yet another showman in an Administration full of them: Greg Bovino Emerges as Trump’s Man For Conjuring Up a Blue-City Insurrection

C) Sometimes, good (or at least not-bad) things can come out of a pile of shit - Has Trump Brought Peace to Gaza?. Money quotes:

I finally got around to watching (most of) the movie Inglourious Basterds. Afterwards, I was struck by something. All creative artists need an editor, including (especially) Quentin Tarantino.

I'm sure that somewhere somebody is successfully creating art that they don't like, but 99.999% of artists create (write, paint, direct movies) art that they like. We spend entirely too much time making and remaking the art to do stuff we don't like.

The problem arises when one goes to submit that art to the world. It's very easy to get so engrossed in what YOU like that you forget what other people would like. In the specific case of Inglourious Basterds, several scenes, such as the one in the bar, went way too long. A proper editor would have cut the hell out of it.

There's a term in writing criticism for this - Squid in the mouth. This is "The failure of an writer to realize that his/her own weird assumptions and personal in-jokes are simply not shared by the world-at-large. Instead of applauding the wit or insight of the writer's remarks, the world-at-large will stare in vague shock and alarm at such a writer, as if he or she had a live squid in the mouth."

One of Rotary's signature projects is the eradication of polio via vaccination. Herewith, how the vaccines were made: The Polio Vaccine Was a Miracle—and We Must Not Forget It.

Posting this here so I can find it later: Free Speech Culture is Killing Free Speech.

A few highlights from the original post:

1) The First Speaker Problem: “Free speech culture” suffers from what I call the First Speaker Problem: it picks a speaker, treats that person’s speech as the speech that should concern us, and then applies a set of cultural norms and questions only to the responses to that speech.

2) The Interests of Dissenters: The flip side of irrationally preferring the First Speaker is irrationally diminishing the speech interests of dissenters.

3) Preferring The Powerful To The Powerless: The multi-millionaire pundit with a column and podcast and network who comes to a university and says some students don’t belong there is the free speech hero; the students in question who protest the pundit and say he or she shouldn’t be there are villains.

4) Moral Sociopathy: In short, “free speech culture” is bad and unserious to the extent it tells us that speech is morally neutral and that we should not make value judgments against it, and that there is no moral component to promoting it. ... Giving [speaker X] a platform to be a bigot is morally distinguishable from saying they should be free to be a bigot.

I don't approve of people being shot over what they say. It's morally wrong and as a practical matter ineffective at best, destructive of society at worst.

Having said that, the best defense I can offer for Kirk's speech is a lackluster "he had a right to say it." His opinions were directly hurtful to other people, such as his last rant on transexuals. Many (see my previous sentence) were flat lies. Some of them (such as his flip-flop on immigration) appeared to be sops to popularity, not principled decisions.

I find it irritating that I'm supposed to mourn Charlie Kirk yet not talk about the thousands of kids shot in our schools and churches. To use Kirk's own words, these deaths are "the price we must pay for the 2nd Amendment." I would point out, as have others, that the idea of citizens grabbing their guns and rising up against oppression means everybody gets to decide on their own when to do that and who's the oppressor.

I've been told that Kirk's death will be used as an excuse by MAGA for some kind of crackdown. But they have shown no problem acting on made-up bullshit - I remember the "illegal immigrants are eating cats and dogs" circus of a few months ago. So, I suspect nobody in MAGA needs to wait for mere reality to react to something.

In short, this, the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, is just another day that ends in -y.

It Was Her House First by Cherie Priest

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I've been a fan of Cherie for a long time, and this book does not disappoint. It's a well-written thriller with compelling characters and a strong sense of place.



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