Science fiction is not as dominant in my votes as I thought it would be, with five novels, two of which were written by George Turner. Only one of the books is non-fiction (The Spike). Most of the books are post-1987. Surprisingly, only one book is written by a female, which is not indicative of my reading in recent decades. This year, I am reading my eighth novel, and five of them have been written by women. My favourite author is Margaret Atwood. I have read ten of her novels. If you are wondering how DBC Pierre got on the list as he was born in Australia, but then grew up in Mexico, and he now lives in Ireland. Radio National said he could receive votes and they included his book Vernon God Little in their list. 

I wanted to read The Slap after reading that it was written with eight distinctive voices. The novel also won a boatload of awards.

It is split into eight sections, with each section written from a different POV. The voices are distinctive in their hopes and concerns, but all of them seemed hopelessly compromised and unhappy, except for the man who did the slapping, who was a deluded materialist and adulterer. The advertising world had told him exactly what he should be, and he was happy getting it.

The most interesting character was Aisha, a beautiful, poised woman whom people envied, but inside she was as insecure and unhappy as the other characters. One reason she wanted to stay with her husband was that they looked so good together.

When I started reading the book, I hoped that the author would not go for the cliché of having the slapper being abused as a child by his parents, but he did. The only other violence in the novel also came from a character who had a dysfunctional family.

As I read the book, I was reminded of the characters in John Updike’s novel Couples, written nearly 50 years ago. It would seem that the middle class has not come very far in nearly half a century.

A good book, but not a great one, as the plot sagged towards the end once the Slap’s consequences had been dealt with. In fact, it is more of a character study than a novel with a tension-filled plot.

[PS] Over the years, I find myself thinking about this novel, and one of the things that really stood out was the fact that all the characters put up a false persona to the world, usually of happiness and control, when in fact they felt neither. It reinforces my thinking that, in reality, we are all guilty of such false personas. (This is also the case in Updike’s Couples, which I have since learnt is one of Tsiolkas’ favourite novels.)

Consequently, I have increased my rating of the novel.

Shroud

Shroud starts when a human exploration, or more appropriately, exploitation, ship discovers a dark moon hidden behind a planet. The moon is pitch black with no starlight illuminating its surface. The atmosphere is thick with gases deadly to humans. They send down probes to investigate the blackness, and nearly all of them are instantly destroyed.

A catastrophic accident occurs on part of the ship, causing some of the crew members to escape in pods designed to explore the dark world. Most of the plot then follows two inhabitants of one of those pods as they traverse the world. And what a weird world it is.

The pods’ searchlights can only illuminate a limited area around them, but what they illuminate is a mass of alien creatures; many resemble moving frames with wormlike creatures inside. The radio sphere is full of electromagnetic signals, like these aliens are using radar and constantly exchanging information with each other.

The creatures take an instant interest in the pod. Its two occupants are the engineer who designed and built the pods, and a liaison officer whose job had been to smooth relations between the various egos and fractious self-preservation desires of the crew. They fear that the alien creatures want to tear open their pod and examine its contents.

Partway through the book, we start getting a view of what is going on in the alien’s mind. A mind that is scattered into segments all over the planet and that struggles to maintain focus on what is going on around it. We slowly learn what its interest is in the pod.

The crew of the ship have been genetically bred in farms, with no concept of family or empathy for others. All they care about is their own survival. They are part of the Concern, whose only concerns are expanding throughout the universe by making a profit. Which I imagine is the path workers for today’s tech giants are on. The crew have no choice but to go along with the Concern’s pursuit of profit if they don’t want to be put back in storage.

Unless I missed it, the liaison officer’s name, gender, and physical appearance are not mentioned when they are introduced. I did not find out what sex they were until about two-thirds of the way into the book. This didn’t affect the plot or message of the book for me. I thought it could be the author playing around with the Shroud metaphor, i.e., shrouding the sex of the liaison officer. More likely it was because they did not discuss their personal lives because they had no time for personal lives.

Many science fiction stories show humanity trying to exploit the resources of an alien world with no regard for its inhabitants. But Shroud is much more than the boring, regimented, populist shit of Avatar. Humans are not out to rape a tropical paradise; they are out to destroy a world and alien species they know nothing about, and can’t communicate with. Shroud introduces a different, amazing alien species that has evolved to live in a freezing, desolate alien environment.

Shroud is a different, wonderfully imagined read. I will be reading more of Tchaikovsky’s novels.

I primarily wanted to discuss writing, books, science fiction, science, the future and technology. Unfortunately, when I spent time writing posts on these subjects, they often garnered no audience. Whether that was because of Facebook’s algorithms, people not having time to read my posts, or lack of interest in what I had to say, I don’t know. This left me deflated. This probably happens to many of my Facebook friends as they shout at the void.

I also spent too much time doomscrolling.

I will miss reading about the writing, lives and concerns of Facebook friends with whom I felt I had developed a genuine online relationship.

ABC Radio National ran a survey in October of the top 100 books of this century, as voted by listeners.  You could vote for up to 10 books.  My votes are shown in the image. Five of them are definitely science fiction (The Dark Forest, Oryx and Crake, The Passage, Terra Nullius and Klara and the Sun), one is apocalyptic fiction (American War), another is speculative fiction (Meanwhile in Dopamine City), one is historical fiction (The True History of the Kelly Gang), while two, for want of a better term, are literay fiction (The Slap and The Corrections).

Three are by Australian authors (Peter Carey, Christos Tsiolkas, and Claire G. Coleman), although the much-travelled DBC Pierre (Mexican/British?) is sometimes claimed as Australian as he was born here. Four authors are American (Cronin, Franzen, Akkad and Ishiguro), one author is Canadian (Atwood), and one is Chinese (Liu).

The Corrections made my list because one of its main characters had dementia, and I was looking after my father with dementia at the time. It had a real emotional impact on me. I live in Kelly country, so I was very interested in Peter Carey’s fictional account of Kelly and his gang in The True History of the Kelly Gang. Nearly every day, I walk past a railway bridge in Wangaratta, where, near it, Carey had the gang crossing the Ovens River on horseback. Terra Nullius has a unique way of telling the story of how badly Indigenous Australians were, and continue to be, treated. The Slap is a fascinating book that goes behind the facade of several characters,  showing their lives are just tenuous fronts. It makes you wonder how much bullshit the people around you are putting on. The Passage turns it back on pretty-boy vampires that are so common these days on television and in books, and displays them as the vicious monsters they would be. Meanwhile in Dopamine City is a hilarious and clever send-up of where our social media-dominated world is heading. Oryx and  Crake is a very interesting take on mad scientists and their attempts to shape the world. It is the first book in a fantastic trilogy. American War is set after a second civil war, where skirmishes still occur, and one of its many factors is showing how a refugee whose relatives died and were persecuted in the war can be transformed into a terrorist.  Its scenario for the civil war is very believable. The Dark Forest is the second book in The Three-Body Problem trilogy and, among other things, investigates why we have not found any civilisations beyond Earth. Klara and the Sun is different science fiction, told from the point of view of an uninformed android trying to make sense of the world.

The top 100 list is here. Two of the books I voted for, The True History of the Kelly Gang and The Slap, made the top 100. I have only read eight of the books on that list. I have no interest in reading many of the others.

Note: The misspelling of Jonathan is the fault of the ABC, which preloaded many books on its voting page.

I have been quiet on this blog because my mum died on the 23rd of December. It was unexpected. A fall, which seemed to do no damage, then a week later she died. With help from my sister, I organised her funeral. I loved my mum.

My eulogy:

Remember to speak up.

Thanks for coming.

My mum enjoyed a long life. A life of supporting her husband in his teaching career, raising a family, being a proud homekeeper and touring Australia and the world. She enjoyed the love of her husband, children, sisters, relatives and a small circle of friends.

Sadly, some of them have passed away, while others were too sick to attend today. But I know some are watching the live stream of this funeral.

Look at audience.

Mum grew up in Bairnsdale with two much younger sisters, Lynn and Cathy, whom she helped to look after. She went to Bairnsdale High School, where her best friend was Norma Alvin. As the Alvin’s were a Salvation Army family, Mum and her sisters joined up.  Mum sang with the Salvos chorus. Her sister Cathy tells me that Mum had a wonderful wobbly voice with a great range. When Norma’s mother died, Dot helped Norma look after her siblings.

Look at audience.

Dot left school around 14 and got a job in a dress shop. From her knitting, wool spinning and sewing throughout her life, it was clear that Mum enjoyed creating and working with clothes. But she didn’t like the way the dresses smelt after being tried on by many customers at the dress shop.

Her sister Cathy remembers Dot making her a lovely pleated skirt and knitting her a fuzzy wuzzy cardigan when she young. Mum even sold her knitting at a local shop in Wangaratta. I still, on very cold days, pull out a jumper she made 30 or so years ago.

Look at audience.

Dot and Norma went to dances. That’s where Mum met Dad. She married Neil in her early twenties. Children came soon after that, and she settled down to be the best mother she could be. Due to Neil’s teacher’s job, my mum lived in many parts of Victoria. Heathcote, Bendigo, Newry, Baxter, Heyfield, Wangaratta, to name a few.

Mum made the best of raising a family in the various education department houses we lived in. One of those houses was condemned while we lived in it. My parents finally purchased their own house in Wangaratta about 40 years ago. No more outside toilets, leaky roofs, sloping floors or long drafty corridors.

Look at audience.

Mum didn’t have a greedy bone in body. She always put others before herself. She just wanted to create a loving home for her family. When I was young and something had gone wrong, she loved to tell me a story about Dad when he was at teacher’s college. He had saved up for months to buy a wireless radio so he could listen to the footy and cricket. One day he came back to his room and found that the cleaner had knocked it off its shelf and broken it. Look at audience. We all have set backs.

Mum was a great traditional cook. She made a delicious lamb roast with spuds peas and gravy, a moist and fruit packed Christmas cake, and a pavlova that beats any others I have eaten.

Look at audience.

Mum was a bibliophile. She loved reading thrillers like Jon Cleary and Jack Higgins. She joined in with my Dad’s book collecting at fetes and second-hand bookstores. She collected Mary Grant Bruce and Enid Blyton books for herself.

Unfortunately, her eyesight weakened with age, so it was just as well she had gotten into listening to book cds. Her love of Bony Detective stories made it easy for me to get part of her Christmas and birthday presents.

Look at audience.

Mum loved musicals throughout her life. Her Aunt Edna used to take mum to pantomimes. Mum would get dressed up with gloves and everything, and then they would have high tea afterwards.

Look at audience.

Later in life, Mum was swept up in Dad’s travel fever. From trips around Australia to New Zealand and then to many other parts of the world, including Europe and North America.

One of Kay’s favourite memories is when Mum, Dad, and her were at Disneyland.  They went on the small world boat ride which travels through different countries while the song It’s a Small World After All is played. Mum loved it. She enjoyed it so much that they had to go back into the line and do the ride again. The following day, once the gates open, mum took off to do the small world ride once again.

Look at audience.

But one could never get past the feeling that Mum was happiest at home. Happy with the routine of cooking, shopping, knitting, reading and watching thrillers while catching up with friends and local shopkeepers.

Mum loved a coffee, frequently walking down the street to her favourite coffee shop where they would often give her free cake. On one of those trips, local independent at the time, Cathy McGowan came in, and mum told her that she voted for her. Cathy then invited her for a coffee. Oh to have heard that conversation.

Later in life, mum enjoyed Kay’s frequent visits to take her shopping and go for a coffee. She also loved talking to her sisters and Geoff every couple of weeks on the phone.

Look at audience.

Mum was always there to support her family. She made you feel like you had done the right thing, even when you may have been in the wrong. Mum tried to see the best in people, except for a few politicians. She just wished people would just get along.

She rarely whinged about life. Even though later in life she had a number of health concerns. All she wanted was for her family to be healthy and happy, as was shown by her signature telephone sign off of (pause) “Look after yourself”.

The story takes place on a mostly unexplored planet. An exploratory team has received permission from an all-powerful corporation to explore a part of the planet. They are warned not to stray from their assigned areas because of perceived dangers, so a reader will immediately think the corporation is trying to hide something on the other parts of the planet.

The small exploratory team is assigned a company-supplied self-aware android SecUnit for security and to probably spy on their activities. The story is told from the point of view of the android, who refers to itself as Murderbot due to its involvement in killing many humans on a previous assignment. The android is supposed to be linked to corporate control so they can get it to do their bidding if needed, including possibly wiping out the exploratory team if they discover something valuable to the corporation. However, Murderbot is a clever android who has managed to hack his system, so the corporation is unaware that it does not have ultimate control over him.

Of course, the exploratory team strays into other areas, and bad things happen. When they can’t contact another exploratory group on another part of the planet, everyone, including the reader, knows that Murderbot will have to save them from whatever happened to the other group. But will the android be able to prevent the corporation from regaining control of its systems or prevent its warlike nature from killing or deserting its team in self-preservation?

All Systems Red is a well-written science fiction adventure novel. As such, it is an entertaining, quick read. But it has little new to say about the relationship between sentient androids and humans. Its theme of keeping an android’s free will in check to use them as killing machines is somewhat overdone in science fiction. For a more nuanced look at sentient androids, I suggest reading novels like Autonomous by Annalee Newitz, Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro or Annie Bot by Sierra Greer.

All Systems Red is a well-written page-turner but lacks inspiring, original and challenging ideas. It did have a bit of a surprise post-denouement, probably so the author could move the story to a completely new setting for the second novella in the series. I did not realise when I shelled out $22 (AUD) on Amazon for the book that it was only a 152-page novella. I doubt whether I will be purchasing the other novellas.

I will have to find new ways of promoting the posts as I have decided to stop using Facebook, which was my primary method of promotion. Although I enjoyed interacting with fellow writers on Facebook and some friends from high school, I wasted a lot of time on it. Facebook was also a source of great anxiety as I waited for responses on blog posts I had promoted on it, which often failed to eventuate. I think I am just interested in subjects and ideas that many of my Facebook friends had little interest in. I also think that I was not taken that seriously by some and treated more of a pretender when it came to writing, which in some ways I am, as I have failed to finish manuscripts. It is time to finish some of the five novels I have in at least first draft form and some of the multiple stories I have lying around.  To do this, I need to spend a lot more time writing.

I hope to join a blogging circle where science fiction, or more broadly, speculative fiction writers interact with their blogs. Or I could try to create such a circle if I can’t find a suitable one. If you know of such a group, please let me know in the comments.

I am also going to get back into critiquing, probably on critters.org.

For the moment,  I will stay on Bluesky, as I don’t spend much time on it. It will be somewhere to visit during my arvo coffee break. I will also continue to review books on Goodreads.

I really want to turn this impostor into a published author (even if it is self-published).

Due to the lack of likes and comments, it would seem either no one is interested in the subjects I blog about, I am a terrible blogger, the only things looking at my posts are bots, or maybe all three reasons. Although I enjoy writing the posts, it seems I would be much better off spending my time working on my novel manuscripts. Please comment or at least like my posts if you consider them worthy so I can believe I have some relevance to the universe. As it is, it seems sensible to stop wasting my time on this blog. I would save money on web hosting and software, too. Maybe my blog was always destined to dance off into oblivion.