Writer of fiction, poetry and essays.

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This is a classic novel about an envoy to a planet known as Winter, a world as cold as the name suggests and populated by ambisexual humanoids. Naturally, this results in quite a culture shock for the envoy, Genly Ai, who has to deal with understanding their alien nature as well as the intricate political machinations that take place between the various nations of the planet. His primary guide to understanding this is a politician named Estraven. (Hilariously, auto-correct wants to change this to “estrogen.”)

The first half of the book is lyrical, mystical, and well-nigh incomprehensible, at least to me. I had trouble keeping track of who was who, what was what, and generally following what was going on. Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it. Actually, I enjoyed it quite a lot, in the way one can enjoy a beautiful piece of music.

But then in the second half, things started to coalesce. Estraven, in particular, becomes a phenomenally well-developed character who starts dispensing pearls of wisdom like this:

“To oppose something is to maintain it. They say here ‘all roads lead to Mishnory.’ To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory and walk away from it, you are still on the Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road…

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”

What an absolutely killer insight! It’s the sort of gem that makes me so glad I read the book, and make it a perfect entry for Vintage Science-Fiction Month. This is why we observe it every January; it’s an opportunity to look up classic books like this and find what it was that made the foundational works of the genre so striking to generations of readers.

Estraven and Genly are eventually forced to work together to make a nightmarish 80 day trek across a frozen wasteland. (I highly recommend reading this book on a snowy winter night if possible.)

These scenes, while maybe a little repetitive, were still very effective. The two characters, having nothing else to do, learn a lot about each other and themselves. By the end of the journey, I absolutely loved Estraven, who is really one of the most fully-realized ‘alien’ characters I can recall. Which makes the way the story ends all the more powerful.

The book is remarkable for the way it depicts a truly alien world. I only know of a few modern authors–A.C. Flory and Lorinda Taylor, to name names–who have attempted anything like this. And no wonder, because it’s very hard to do, but done well, it makes for a remarkable, dream-like experience to read. They say the value of reading is that it lets you walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Well, in this case, it’s more like 800 miles in an androgynous alien’s skis. And that, my friends, is what science-fiction is all about.

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Look at that cover! It’s sharp, and scary, and eye-catching. I knew I had to read this the minute I saw it. The title is intriguing too, calling to mind Brutal Doom, the mod that made the infamously gory and violent video game Doom even more gory and violent. I found the whole composition so arresting that I decided to buy it on the spot.

As it turns out, this is a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style of book, and (again evoking Doom, albeit with considerably less gratuitous carnage) it is largely set on an abandoned moon base which has been overrun by creatures known as Saturmeks: alien entities highly reminiscent of Daleks with chainsaws.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself! The protagonist of the book is Hilary Hils, a research assistant to Prof. Vyvian Wylie. Hils is accidentally teleported forward in time to the moon, where a research base has been taken over by the aforementioned Saturmeks.

And that’s where you come in: from there, it’s up to you to decide how Hils will proceed. Will you simply sit quietly and wait for Prof. Wylie to fix the machine and rescue you? Or will you start exploring the moonbase, and even try to stop the hideous aliens? The choice is yours, and which ending you get depends on how many points you have, which are acquired periodically at certain critical moments in the story. As a hint: risk-taking and boldness are rewarded. I mean, who takes part in an adventure story just so they can make the “safe” choice?

It’s a fun and surprisingly gripping experience, and I found myself chuckling as I eagerly hopped from page to page to see what the consequences of my decisions would be. It combines the interactivity of a video game with the added demands on the imagination required for reading. It wouldn’t be a bad choice as a gift for a kid in the 10-12 age range who doesn’t typically enjoy reading the books assigned in school. From what I’ve heard, there are a lot of them these days.

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One of the rules for writers, laid down somewhere in the fragments of an ancient Instagram post by the mad literary agent Abdul Al-Hazred, is that a writer should give their audience what they expect. A steady hand at the tiller and no surprises, that’s what readers want! And if a writer must venture outside their typical comfort zone, at least they should do it under a pseudonym, so people don’t accidentally get exposed to something they didn’t expect.

How powerful is this rule? So powerful that even the richest and perhaps most (in)famous living author conforms to it.

Naturally, because I am a rebel without a clue, I like it when people break this rule. So I was delighted when one of my favorite authors decided to do exactly that in this book.

Travailing Through Time is a very un-Bertoccian book. Usually, his stories are about millennials trying to navigate modernity, usually with a heavy dose of ironic detachment and witty pop-cultural references.

Travailing Through Time is different: it’s about hardworking farmers in colonial New England. Simple, God-fearing people, who have no time to spare for ironic detachment. As for cultural references, well, they basically begin and end with the Bible.

In short, it’s a picture of a people and a place totally different from us and ours. Having established this, Bertocci then proceeds to introduce, in a clever way, a glimpse of a more modern sensibility. Only a hint, nothing more.

Both the drama and the humor of the story come from the obvious questions: what would people of the past make of us? When we look back in history, it’s too easy for the people to appear to us as caricatures. Which of course is also how we would appear to them. It takes work to really know and understand a person, or a people, or a place.

And since the New Year is always a time for reflection, this seems like a good time to ponder the questions raised in Bertocci’s ingenious little story. What do we really know about the past? And what would the past make of us? Leopold von Ranke said “All ages are equidistant from eternity.” We mustn’t think of ourselves as somehow “better” than the people of another time just because we are more recent. It’s 2025, after all.

All these big ideas, Bertocci packs into a witty and entertaining short story. A perfect choice for starting the new year off the right way.

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As usual, I am using the last Friday of the year to do a recap of all the book reviews I wrote in the past twelve months

In January I reviewed Periapsis Christmas Vol. 1, a collection of short sci-fi stories based around the theme of Christmas. Then, for Vintage Science-Fiction Month, I reviewed the classic Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke. Then I took on the cozy mystery Whole Latte Death by Chris J. Pike and M.D. Cooper. Then another vintage sci-fi read was in order, the sweeping and depressing A Canticle for Leibowitz.

For February I reviewed Post-Modern Romance by Nick Ryder, a truly bizarre book. Next up was an Adam Bertocci take on the day of romance, Crappy Valentine’s Day. I followed that up with a review of Wodehouse’s hilarious short story Honeysuckle Cottage and then another of my favorite authors, Zachary Shatzer’s comedy Sorcerers Doomed.

March began with the trippy and weird Roger Zelazny book The Dream Master, followed by the science fantasy The Last Ancestor by Alexander Hellene. This was followed by C. Litka’s tale of tropical seafaring romance, The Prisoner of Cimlye and the humorous short story Ghosted by H.L. Burke.

April started off with The Snow Queen of Somerville High by Adam Bertocci and then Zachary Shatzer’s wonderful allegory Dog Wearing a Bowler Hat. Then I wrapped up the month with another Litka adventure, Passage to Jarpara.

I began May with Junkyard by Lindsey Buroker, followed by Reality Check by Dave McCreery. Then came time for a book by one of our favorites here at Ruined Chapel: Carrie Rubin’s Broken Hope. I finished off the month with Fear Extinction by T.S Becker.

June started with my review of the weird western His Ragged Company by Rance D. Denton, followed by the romance/crime thriller Casino Queen by Cara Bertoia. Then it was time for another medical thriller, this time with a historical twist, in The Third Man, by Geoffrey Cooper. Then I ended Waterloo month with a memoir by one of Napoleon’s soldiers.

July began with a familiar duo: first, Zachary Shatzer’s comedic political thriller Puppet Dance, then Adam Bertocci’s The ‘I Want’ Song. Then I indulged myself just a bit more with another Napoleonic history book.

For August, I reviewed the cryptid horror story The Killer Catfish of Cape Cod by Bill Russo, followed by the sci-fi classic The Joy Makers by James Gunn. Next up was a history of the Library of Congress Card Catalog. I finished up the month with Ex Marks the Spot, mayhap one of Adam Bertocci’s finest books, followed by Carrie Rubin’s Malignant Assumptions.

September began with the supernatural crime thriller The Valley Walker by T.W. Dittmer and the Arthurian-Gothic The Governess of Greenmere by Paul Leone. Then, once Autumn officially began, I reviewed the Autumnal cozy mystery Harvest and Haunt by Eva Belle

October is a month that has this little-known holiday in it. I try to keep this to myself, in my quiet, unassuming way, but it’s called Halloween. So, I reviewed some books that fit the spirit of the month. First up was Knee-Deep in the Dead by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver, a novelization of the video game Doom. Then came The Thing from HR, a brilliant Lovecraftian horror-comedy by Roy M. Griffis. Then, to put Halloween in its proper historical context, I reviewed a vintage Halloween reader, and then, when I couldn’t choose just one Halloween-related thing to review, I picked a whole slew of them.

November began with a book called The Samhain Visitors by Paul Rix, which is not cheating by including a Halloween story in November, no matter what anyone else says. The following week, I reviewed Zachary Shatzer’s collection of short stories, Mayor of Turtle Town. Then, I tackled a work of significant non-fiction, Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, which explains at least half of everything that’s wrong with the modern world. Then, to lighten the mood, I finished the month with Bertocci’s Watching Wonderful.

For December, I reviewed the supernatural post-apocalyptic romance When Her World Went Away by Alexis L. Carroll and the sci-fi political thriller Vote for AIDAN by Tanner Howsden.

I wish you all a very Happy New Year. I’ve got some good books lined up to review for 2025; I think you’re going to enjoy them. 🙂

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Ah, US Presidential elections! An opportunity for citizens to civilly debate their differences and then settle on a candidate who best reflects the values of the nation, all in the spirit of good fellowship and totally without inflaming irreconcilable ideological and cultural divisions.

So, if you’re sad that the fun of a presidential election has just passed, and won’t come round again for another four years, have I got good news for you! The book we are reviewing today is about the 2036 election. The premise: one of the candidates for the Democratic nomination is an MIT-designed Artificial Intelligence named AIDAN.

AIDAN, the creation of one Dr. Isaac Shipley, has already established itself as a competent CEO, now aims to unseat the favorite for the nomination, the temperamental Senator Quinn Albrecht, and position itself as the top challenger to incumbent president Sarah Mincetti.

Naturally, while AIDAN is a bit awkward at first, it quickly gains ground due to the fact that it is a distributed intelligence network that can literally start raising money to address a problem within minutes of being told it exists. Typical politicians’ “I feel your pain”-style bromides can hardly compete with that.

But the world of politics isn’t so straightforward as that. There are all sorts of behind-the-scenes plots, conspiracies, blackmail threats and double-crosses going on that make the campaign far more difficult. And the vulnerabilities of human and machine alike come into play: where exactly is the machine drawing its data from? And as for the human candidates; why are they continuing to fight never-ending political battles when all they really want to do is go home to their loved ones?

The book reminded me of some of the better Hitchcock films, in that it’s a fast-paced thriller, yet also seems to have a certain wink-to-the-audience quality that gives it a lighthearted tone. I mean, virtually every dialogue between the Republican president and her wife is laden with cheesy sexual innuendos. Maybe you disagree, but I can’t help feeling like that’s supposed to be funny.

That said, the book raises some very profound and interesting questions politics and AI, and while this might be controversial, I think it is quite probable that something like this will happen in the future. (“God help us, in the future.”) I doubt they’ll bother to actually give the AI a body, though. The debates will just look like when Watson was on Jeopardy! Why, the very fact this book exists tells you that the idea is in the air. Science fiction is so often the precursor of science fact…

It’s an entertaining, thought-provoking, mildly disturbing, and often campy take on politics. Rather like The McLaughlin Group.

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This is a post-apocalyptic survival story with supernatural romance elements. Neither of these are genres I particularly like, but this book pleasantly surprised me. Part of what makes it work is that not a lot of time is spent on explaining why the apocalypse occurs. One minute everything is fine, then bam! It’s… not fine. Everything is destroyed and monsters are coming out of the Earth to kill everyone.

The story follows a woman named Sairha, and a man named Sven whom she had just met prior to the apocalypse. The couple, as well as Sairha’s friend Cassandra, start out on a trek across the wasteland. Along the way, they meet other survivors, as well as plenty of monsters and other dangers.

It’s pretty much what you would expect from a post-apocalyptic story, but what makes it work is how the monsters are kept out of sight for much of the time. They are most threatening as a lurking menace, hinted at without knowing exactly what they are.

What also makes the story effective is how the tension is built. More than once, the party goes to some sinister location, such as an abandoned store, and, after a nerve-racking buildup, nothing particularly bad happens. This has the effect of ratcheting up the fear so that when something does finally happen, it’s like an explosion of energy. “Hours of boredom punctuated by a few seconds of terror” as the saying goes. Not that the story is boring, of course, but you can see how the endless hiking across a wasteland is going to wear down the characters’ patience.

There are a few decisions the characters make that I questioned, but as I have said before, it wouldn’t be a horror story if everybody made the right choices. All told, if you like dark supernatural fiction with just a bit of romance, this is an excellent choice.

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Haven’t I written about this game enough? I mean, I wrote a post for the 10th anniversary, and it’s not like the game has changed since then. I have. (I’ve become a better writer, for one thing.) And the world certainly has!

But the game is… the game. It’s the same one it always was. So why am I once again writing about it?

Well, part of it is of course the urge to share it with other people. In my opinion, the more people play KotOR II, the better off the world will be. I mean, I even got my mother to play it. My mother is not a gamer, to put it mildly. (But she did work on a science fiction magazine in the 1970s, and was aware of Star Wars before it was cool. She saw this trailer at a convention in 1976.) And she loves this game almost as much as I do.

But there’s more to it than just my desire to indoctrinate as many people as possible into the cult of KotOR II. As the world changes, things in the game take on new relevance. You can’t live through an election year in the U.S. and then play the Onderon section of the game and not notice… things. But this is not, and will not, be a political post. It would be a disservice to the greatness of KotOR II to drag it down into that cesspool.

I also will not bother to compare and contrast it with other installments in the Star Wars universe. Let it suffice to say that I appreciate the irony that KotOR II is both a sequel and a story which, to use the popular phrase, “subverts audience expectations.” These are both things which I typically dislike. It only goes to show that greatness lies not in “what” but rather in “how.” If sequels and subversion strike us as bad, it is because the ones we are familiar with have been badly done.

But the fact is, what makes KotOR II a story people still remember decades after its release lies not in any comparison to either current events or to other works of fiction. No, it’s because of the richness of its characters, the weight of its story, and the stark, haunting world it creates: the war-ravaged republic, shuddering under the weight of its own expansionary ambitions and fractured by wounds still raw from the recent conflicts, now facing a threat from enemies born of past atrocities. Into this swirling maelstrom comes a lone former Jedi, tormented by the demons of uncountable past horrors, and guided by a mysterious old woman…

Enough! I will not bore you to death by saying again all the things I’ve said before. If you are new to this place, or you just can’t get enough of hearing my thoughts on this thing, you can read my retrospective here, or my other retrospective here, or just listen to my thoughts here. Moreover, I encourage you to watch SulMatul’s magisterial analysis here, or Jake Norton’s playthrough here. If you’re in a hurry and want a quick overview, Geetsly’s video here is a good one. For those who prefer to read rather than watch or listen, try Scorchy’s Let’s Play here.

As for me, I’ll raise a glass to my favorite work of fiction; this masterpiece of the art form. I said I’ve changed since I first played this, and here is one of the ways: before, I used to try and explain why I love it, articulate what makes it special. But now I’m content to just enjoy the magic of the story. I hope you do too.

Ruined Chapel‘s regularly scheduled programming will resume next week.

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The setup: it’s Thanksgiving Break, and two students, Claudia and Marnie, are the only ones in the dorm. They decide to watch the traditional TV airing of It’s a Wonderful Life together to pass the time. As they watch the classic film (and the commercials) they do a bit of bonding, as well as reflecting on their own lives.

As is typical of Bertocci, he uses his deft knack for dialogue and his ability to blend cynicism and sincerity, often in the same sentence, to paint a vivid picture of two young women both starting out in life. It’s a very short sketch, but it’s effective all the same.

It’s probably even more effective if you’ve actually seen the movie. But, I confess, I, er, haven’t. I suppose I should fix that one of these days. Especially since the whole point of Bertocci’s story is how the film has the power to bring people together. Which is of course one of the great things about fiction generally, not just that specific movie. Although I suppose sweet, uplifting stories are the best for this sort of thing.

Anyhow, this book is a quick and pleasant way to get into the spirit of post-Thanksgiving. i.e. sitting around having eaten too much and watching whatever is on TV. Which may not sound all that interesting, but in the hands of a true king of the craft like Bertocci, it can be the basis for strong literary fiction.

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I don’t often review non-fiction books, let alone books that touch on that dread menace “current events.” I figure very few people, after a long day at the outrage factory, want to pull up my book review blog and read yet more kvetching about politics.

And don’t worry! This book was published in 1998, so perforce it doesn’t say anything about the 2000 election, 9/11, the Global War on Terror, the 2008 recession, Benghazi, the 2016 election, Covid-19, the invasion of Ukraine, or anything else that we millennials can remember being traumatized by. Gen Xers and older, I can’t vouch for you, but I understand you’re made of sterner stuff than we snowflakes. You drank from garden hoses, after all. As for Gen Z? I’m pretty sure they can’t read, so we’re safe unless one of you makes a TikTok about this. Onward!

So what is this book about? Well, to begin with, it’s about legibility.

A State, defined broadly as an entity which governs some group or territory, needs to know what is contained within that territory. Every sovereign State needs to have its equivalent of a Domesday Book. After all, how can you claim to govern a place if you don’t know what’s in it?

However, any administrator will tell you that it’s much easier to administer something when it is well-defined, clear cut, and uniform. In Scott’s word, legible. So, for instance, when the German Forestry Department was trying to get a handle on their stock of trees in the 1700s, they found it was expedient to chop down all those untidy, irregular bunches of plants that had grown up over the centuries and replace them with nice, regimented, evenly-spaced spruces. Much simpler to know how many trees per acre, right?

Except… it turns out a forest is actually a complex ecosystem, with many different elements that all affect each other. So trying to make it a neatly-organized farm for growing wood destroys the network of organisms which make it a healthy forest. Something the German administrators discovered the hard way.

Scott goes on to demonstrate how this mindset leads to the same mistake in a variety of circumstances; whether it’s planning a forest, a city, a farm, or even a nation. In each case, people whom Scott calls “high modernists” believe they can make a primitive and backward system run along modern, scientific lines; only to find that in fact the organic systems that evolved over generations, while on the surface appearing messy and chaotic, actually run according to a highly-developed order.

As a result, technocratic efforts at reform often don’t go as planned. But this doesn’t stop technocrats from trying! Their faith is the faith of Ulysses Everett McGill. I know I just referenced this scene a few weeks ago, but really, it cannot be quoted too often:

(It’s worth pointing out that the Age of Reason they had in France was shortly followed, not coincidentally, by a period known as “The Reign of Terror.”)

That speech is just too perfect for the mindset Scott describes, right down to the bit about electricity, regarding which Scott observes:

Electricity had for [Lenin] and most other high modernists an almost mythical appeal. That appeal had to do, I think, with the unique qualities of electricity as a form of power. Unlike the mechanisms of steam power, direct waterpower, and the internal combustion engine, electricity was silent, precise, and well-nigh invisible. For Lenin and many others, electricity was magical.

And as he explains, despite their professions of science and rationality, it sometimes seems to be the planners who are the zealous adherents of dogma:

If the proverbial man from Mars were to stumble on the facts here, he could be forgiven if he were confused about exactly who was the empiricist and who was the true believer. Tanzanian peasants had, for example, been readjusting their settlement patterns and  and farming practices in accordance with climate changes, new crops, and new markets with notable success in the two decades before villagization… By contrast, specialists and politicians seemed to be in the unshakable grip of a quasi-religious enthusiasm made even more potent in being backed by the state. 

So, what are all these planners, administrators, designers, technocrats, politicians, and bureaucrats failing to do? While Scott (and I) poke a great deal of fun at them, there can be no doubt they are very smart people, and often well-intentioned. So what are they getting wrong?

Scott’s answer is metis, which is a Greek word that means something like “skill,” “cunning,” or “wisdom,” although according to him, none of these quite perfectly capture the meaning. It is essentially the expert knowledge of a craft which can be gained only through experience, and not easily transferred through words. Scott uses the analogy of riding a bicycle. It’s virtually impossible to learn on the first try only by reading instructions. You just have to practice it.

Complex systems evolve patterns of operation which grow naturally over time, and which are often more efficient than they at first appear. Attempts to modernize or streamline such systems destroy these intricate patterns, leaving a cold, sterile form intended to make its function follow it, in an inversion of Sullivan’s maxim. 

I feel pretty confident that anyone who has ever been involved with some large organization has seen this pattern play out. I myself have, more than a few times. In that sense, nothing in Seeing Like a State is truly a revelation. It’s something everyone has observed at one time or another. But Scott articulates the problem so eloquently that it feels like a breath of fresh air.

Not, of course, that it has done much good. Some of the worst examples of the kind of errors he describes have happened since this book was published. Some of them are ongoing. The financialization and commercialization of the world economy have, if anything, accelerated the destruction of metis, and replaced the organic flourishing of generationally accrued wisdom with bureaucracy, AI, and cryptocurrency. One cannot help but think of Treebeard’s description of Saruman in Lord of the Rings: “He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.”

There are three books I’ve read that I’ve put down, staring into space with slack-jawed amazement, saying to myself, “Whoa, now I understand!” One is The Seasons of a Man’s Life, the second is The Meme Machine, and this is the third. I highly recommend it to anyone who has to deal with complex systems on a daily basis, which is pretty much all of us. Unfortunately.

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Okay, imagine if George Lucas directed a rock-and-roll opera reboot of The Searchers. If that sounds insane, you’re right, but it’s how I’d describe this movie. Of course, Lucas didn’t actually direct this–Walter Hill did–but it shares GL’s fondness for ’50s diners, sports cars, and underworld bars.

The movie begins with rock singer Ellen Aim getting kidnapped by a motorcycle gang, and the strong, silent Tom Cody, her ex-boyfriend, being recruited to rescue her. He’s joined by the streetwise mercenary McCoy and Aim’s manager, an arrogant, snobbish type who acts above it all.

Between them, Cody and McCoy are able to rescue Ellen, but that’s just the start of the drama. Cody has made an enemy of the gang’s leader, Raven, who views to get revenge. Besides that, seeing Ellen again stokes the fires of old emotions, even if Cody’s stoic personality refuses to let him acknowledge them.

It’s not a complicated story. On the contrary, it’s simple, straightforward, and raw. What makes it work well are the aesthetics; a pitch-perfect blend of ’80s punk with ’50s rock-n’-roll. It’s unique, compelling, and effective. Rich, without being overwrought. Bold, without being pretentious.

Amy Madigan almost steals the show as McCoy. The character could so easily be a walking cliché, but Madigan manages to make her feel genuine. She has a very expressive face that communicates toughness but with a hint of deep emotion behind it. And we don’t need to know her whole backstory; the play of feelings in her eyes tells us all we need to know. She’s scrappy and hard-nosed, but in a way that seems earned, and not like she’s just there to be the perfunctory Strong Woman™.

Now, that is not to say this is a great movie. It’s not a great movie, and it wasn’t trying to be. And therein lies its strength: it has no grand ambitions; it’s just trying to tell a good story in an interesting way. A mood piece.

The only major problem I had with this movie was that it uses a common trope that I hate: which is the idea that you punch somebody’s lights out and they will be unconscious for a bit, but otherwise fine. This happens all the time in fiction, and it’s stupid. A fist to the head is not a precision instrument, and it can do serious damage.

But, since the ethos of this film is that of a comic book—back before “comic book movie” became shorthand for a CGI-heavy installment in an interminable franchise of capes and spandex—I guess a bit of unreality is allowable. I dunno.

Apart from that, it’s a pretty enjoyable flick. I’m not sure how I never heard of it until recently. Apparently, it was a box office failure. Which, ironically, is probably a good thing, because if it had been a success, it would have spawned a Tom Cody Cinematic Universe, which would inevitably have become stupid. They actually did make a spiritual sequel, Road to Hell, but despite the fact that I enjoyed Streets of Fire, my interest in seeing it is exactly zero. 🎶 “You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away…”🎶

Like empires, movie franchises are doomed to become victims of their own success sooner or later. Better to make a one-off that fails with the moviegoing public but finds a second life as a cult hit.