Re-read: A Deepness in the Sky

 To commemorate the late Vernor Vinge, I decided to read A Fire Upon the Deep to Boen. Not remembering how long a book that was, I placed a hold on A Deepness in the Sky at the library. It arrived long before we were finished with the previous book, so I started reading it since progress was slow on the former.

I keep forgetting how many layers A Deepness in the Sky had. You had the spider-like aliens, which are very different from the earth-inspired spiders in Adrian Tchaikovsky's novels. You had the huge differences between the Qeng Ho and the Emergent cultures, both technologically speaking as well as in attitude, and you had the hero protagonist of this novel, Pham Nuwen, who also featured strongly in A Fire Upon The Deep.

The interaction between all the characters demonstrate depth, development and growth, as does the realization of the spider civilization. What's even more important is that on this reading of the novel, I realized that the eventual victory of the more sympathetic side is never described, only alluded to. Not only that, even the mechanism of that victory is only hinted at. That's because the main point of the book is the development and growth of the main characters.

This is a long book, with a lot going on, and a lot of fantastic ideas that less writers would have developed into individual novels by themselves. Thoroughly enjoyable and worth re-reading. Recommended.

Review: Sofirn BS01 Bike Light

 I'd been looking for a USB-C rechargeable headlight that didn't suck. When Sofirn offered the BS01 Bike Light for $33 shipped, I bought it just in case it was good. The light comes with a garmin-style quarter turn mount that would fit on any handlebar. The light is pretty bright and claims a 3.5H running time in High (350 lumen) and 14 hours on low (130 lumen). Do not believe the marketing in terms of how bright these lights are, as independent testing usually show that all these numbers are highly inflated. In flash mode I have yet to run it down. The light has a high cut-off so it doesn't blind incoming pedestrains/drivers, though there's nothing that indicates it conforms to the StVZO bike light standard. There's a claim of a 2000 lumen turbo mode but that's just marketing and you should ignore it.

The weight of the unit is a disappointingly high 193g, but the unit also acts as a battery bank! I tested it and to my surprise it's not just a battery bank, it's a USB-PD rapid charger bank (according to my Pixel 8 Pro). That dual use means that it justifies my using it on a bike tour.

I've been using this on the tandem in the evenings and night and been satisfied. Recommended.

Review: The Lost Cause

 The Lost Cause is Cory Doctorow's extrapolation into the future of our vastly polarized society: the Magas vs the next generation of climate activists, the NIMBYs vs the builders, the libertarian sea-steaders vs the impoverished refugees. It all takes place in the city of Burbank, where the protagonist, Brooks lives in a Maga-sympathetic grandfather after he was orphaned due to his parents fighting a climate-related crisis in Canada and perishing in that attempt.

After Brooks' grandfather dies of natural causes, he does what every kid his age tries to do, which is to tear it down and build a high density apartment building to help the housing crisis and house refugees. The whole thing then becomes a thinly veiled exposition of the world Doctorow has extrapolated from our own time, with Magas trying every trick in the book to prevent refugees from destroying their perfect suburban Burbank (including injunction against buildings, starting wildfires, etc), and Brooks and his friends trying to outmaneuver them.

It's perfectly good juvenile fiction, and written at a time when California's sky had turned orange and we wondered whether we were too optimistic when we thought we were turning the planet into a hellscape. There's not much character development, and a lot of exposition about how prefab buildings could help solve the housing problems but not much on how society would ever reconcile its differences other than by waiting for the old guys to die out.

Review: The History of Video Games

 The History of Video Games was $0.25 on Kindle format, and at that price I decided to buy it and read it. This is an astonishingly shallow history of the video game industry, covering a lot of material but in very cursory detail. For instance, the list of famous people is really short, and coverage of how the Sony Playstation came to a few paragraphs, much shorter than even the wikipedia article!

There's a list of top ten games for every decade, but the author admits that the selection was pretty subjective.

I suppose this book would be a good starting off point for googling and searching deeper on any topic that interested you, but I'm not sure it's very useful otherwise. For a quarter it's not a bad read, but it felt like a weekend project of a book rather than something someone poured their heart and soul into.

Re-read: The Sword of Destiny

 I read The Sword of Destiny to Boen after reading The Last Wish to him.  Once again, I'm struck by how bad a writer Sapkowski is. His characters never use a sentence to make a point when they can use twenty. Dandelion was super whiny.

The plot and allusions to fairy tales and the references to the Law of Surprise was superlative, however. Sapkowski manages to introduce the concept in a way to make you accept it unquestioningly. This draws you into his fantasy world in ways no mere exposition can. The reference in the title of the book is with his relationship with Ciri, his adopted daughter (who will turn out to be a key MacGuffin in the video game).

Here, Sapowski breaks convention and never tells us what motivates Geralt. Did he want a child surprise in the hopes of continuing the lineage of witchers? Yet he never refers to his experience of becoming a Witcher as being pleasant, nor does he seem to delight in his life. Yet when given the chance to claim his child surprise he denies this destiny, which leads to several horrifying events (which may or may not be linked to Geralt's denial of the claim) and ends up with his being united with Ciri as a result.

We also see the seams in Sapkowski's world building, since despite various claims in The Last Wish that sorceresses cannot be fertile, we discover that Geralt was indeed beget of one. The whole thing is never explained.

I'd say that the only reason to read the books is that it adds depth to the video games, but the truth is this is one place where the video game is actually better than the book (or the Netflix TV show). I'd pass on it unless you became a big fan of the video game.