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Hominids, by Robert Sawyer

A Neanderthal from an alternate universe where Homo Sapiens went extinct and Neanderthals lived into the present day is sucked into our world due to an experiment gone wrong. The book follows his interactions with humans in one storyline, and the repercussions in Neanderthal World in another.

I picked up this book because I like Neanderthals and alternate dimensions that aren't about relatively recent history (ie, not about "What if Nazis won WWII?"). The parts of the book that are actually about Neanderthal World are really fun. It's a genuinely different society, where men and women live separately for the most part, surveillance by implanted computers prevents most crime, mammoths and other large mammals did not go extinct, there are back scratching posts in homes, they wear special eating gloves rather than using utensils or eating barehanded, etc. This was all great.

The problem with this book was everything not directly about Neanderthal society. Bizarrely, this included almost the entire plotline on Neanderthal World, which consisted of a murder investigation and trial of the missing Neanderthal's male partner (what we would call his husband or lover), which was mostly tedious and ensured that we see very little of Neanderthal society. The Neanderthal interactions on our world were fun, but the non-Neanderthal parts were painful. There is a very graphic, on-page stranger rape of the main female character, solely so she can realize that Neanderthal dude is not like human men. There's two sequels, which I will not read.

It got some pretty entertaining reviews:

"☆☆☆☆☆1 out of 5 stars.
No. JUST NO.
I am sorry, but the premise of inherently and innately peaceful cultures with more advanced technology than conflict-driven cultures is patently absurd. Read Alistair Reynolds' Century Rain for an examination of how technological advancement depends on strife: necessity is the mother of invention, and the greatest necessity of all is fighting for survival. I will not be lectured for my male homosapien hubris by a creature that would never have gotten past the late neolithic in technology."

Hominids won a Hugo! Here are the other nominees.

1st place: Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer (Canadian)
2nd place: Kiln People by David Brin (American)
3rd place: Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick (American)
4th place: The Scar by China Miéville (British)
5th place: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (American)

Amazingly, I have read or attempted to read all of them. My ratings:

1st place: Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick (American)
2nd place: The Scar by China Miéville (British).
3rd place: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (American)
4th place: Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer (Canadian)
5th place: Kiln People by David Brin (American)

If I'd voted, it would be very close between Bones of the Earth and The Scar, both of which I loved. I made a valiant attempt at The Years of Rice and Salt. Like all of KSR's books, I'm sure it's quite good but not for me. I know I read Kiln People but recall literally nothing about it, so I'll give Hominids a place above it for having some nice Neanderthal stuff.

The actual ballot is a complete embarrassment.

WorldCon has Loaded (ISH)

They seem to have fixed the technical issues (*knocks on wood, scratches a stay, turns around three times*) and I have gone to several panels! Both a virtual one of Nigerian authors and a filmed one of an in-person panel.

ETA: Both 10:30 panels I want to see either not streaming or not with sound.

(no subject)

Last week I was on vacation at Beth's family cottage, which normally would mean that I'd be reading a battered paperback. HOWEVER instead I was racing to finish Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets due to the unfortunate fact of it being triply overdue at the library.

A useful and worthwhile book; a compelling and depressing book; not, perhaps, an ideal vacation book, but so it goes. The book is composed of oral histories conducted by Alexievich in the years between 1991 and 2012 with various inhabitants of the Former Soviet Union. Alexievich is particularly interested in suicides, and several of the interviews/chapters circulate around people who knew or were close to people who took their own lives after the fall of communism; several others focus on people who were living in areas of the former Soviet Union where the end of the USSR led immediately to ethnic or nationalistic violence.

Many of the oral histories follow a pattern that goes

a. [recounting of an absolutely horrific personal-infrastructural tragedy or example of human cruelty that happened under Stalin]
b. but at least we had ideals
c. And Now We Have This Fucking Capitalism Instead And It's Not A Good Trade

and many others go

a. under socialism in [location] they said we were all brothers and I believed it
b. and suddenly overnight that changed and I will be forever haunted by the things I've seen since

Alexievich recounts the oral histories more or less as if they're dramatic/poetic monologues -- usually monologues of despair -- removing herself and the circumstances under which they were conducted almost entirely, except for a very occasional and startling interjection to make a point. (One oral history, of the horrific-things-happened-but-we-believed variety, is intermittently interrupted by anekdoty from the interviewee's son; Alexievich comments that no matter what she asked him, he only ever responded with a joke.) Some sections are compendiums of conversation gathered in a location, at a party or in a marketplace, sliding past each other montage-style. As a literary conceit, it's very effective, but I found myself wishing sometimes that it was a little less literary. It's rare that I read a nonfiction book and want the author to be putting more of themself into the narrative, rather than less, but I wanted to know what questions she was asking. That said, for various reasons, I'm considering buying a copy.

Current Mood: relieved
Current Location: Spare Room

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Chooks Safe!

When I went out this morning, the red chook was there! :D :D :D She's fine, despite all the feathers everywhere!

I didn't see the black chook all day, which was worrying, but when I went to put them to bed...

Three chooks in a coop!

No idea where she was hiding, but she's safe and that's the important thing. :D

Other than that, Sibling did come over and did a couple of things. Pointed out a few bits where I need to keep touching things up on the skirting boards, but they're definitely close to done (yay!). Won't be back until next week, so got quite a while to go out there and give various bits extra coats (there are a few bits where I had to sand back, and while MOST of the board is fine...). So I'm feeling somewhat better about that.

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My battleship works: Hermitcraft & Hades II

battleshipex had author reveals. I wrote six works for team Grape: 4x Hermitcraft and 2x Hades II (under an extra spoiler cut jic. I can hardly wait for the full release of the game.) The Hermitcraft works are all rather short, mostly written rather quickly to target specific tags we needed right then, while the two Hades II fics are longer.

Overall I'm quite happy with what I wrote! Significantly more than last year for Battleship, too. By the end I was quite stressed and tired (it certainly didn't help that it was shortly after MCYT Battleship. Next year MCYT Battleship will be earlier, fortunately.)

Thieves' Bonds, Hermitcraft
1k, Grian & Cub (/Scar), fantasy AU heist
Summary: Grian and Cub are forced to work together to steal a dragon's hoard.
Notes: Inspired by the tags "dragons," "heist," and "soulbonds." Pre-Convexian in my head. It was more beautiful in my head but still, not bad.

Reckless Charge, Hermitcraft
0.5k, Tango/Etho, SF AU
Summary: Tango crashes his spaceship into Etho's greenhouse.
Notes: For the tags "spaceship," "genius," "meet-cute," and "battlesheep." I really like how this one came out.

pesky bird, dreaming, Hermitcraft
0.3k, Grian, inspired by this is about a stuffed bird
Summary: Some days it squeezed the toy over and over.
Pesky bird. Pesky bird. Pesky bird.
Notes: Like last year, a "birdification" tag hit featuring Grian. Short ficlet set after one of my favorite Hermitcraft fics, I think it came out well.

moving in, Hermitcraft
0.6k, Scar/Cub/Grian, sugar baby/fantasy AU
Summary: Scar and Cub share a mental connection. Grian doesn't mind.
Notes: Written very quickly to finish off "sugar baby AU," "mental link," and "moving in together." Silly fluff.

Hades II spoilers (barely any, mostly character appearances, but still)

A Concoction of a Certain Potency, Hades II
2.2k, Melinoe/Medea, pre-canon, dubcon, explicit
Summary: Melinoë is wearing a very short dress. Medea decides to teach her a lesson in self-control.
Notes: It is a very short dress! I really wanted to write Hades II for magic/sorcery/necromancy/mentor-mentee dynamic et al, and then somehow I got inspired and wrote my first smut fic in almost ten years. Obviously I'm a novice, but overall I like this, and I really like the scenario.

What Would Change This Time, Hades II
3.2k, Melinoe & al, time travel
Summary: „Well. Far be it from me to save you from making your own foolish mistakes," Hecate said finally.
After her ritual to travel back in time didn't take her far enough to prevent Chronos' conquest, Melinoë continues the fight.
Notes: I originally was inspired by some tags on the first board ("time travel," obviously, but also "katabasis", "secret identity" etc.), but I didn't finish this fic until the third one because I got a bit stuck after the first chapter. Writing time travel for an unfinished canon is tricky. But then I got the idea to have her meet

spoiler

Patroclus

and I loved that so much that I had to finish writing it.

I've decided not to do

ficinabox this year, which on the one hand is sad because the different formats etc. are very cool, but the main creation period is in the busiest time of the year for me (work and studying) and it would be very unwise.

Maybe I'll try to reach my very vague goal of writing at least one fic for every season of the Life series this year: I'm missing Last Life, Wild Life, and Past Life (and Real and Simple Life.) Definitely doable. Or some rare Hermitcraft pairings I would like to see more of. I'll see what inspires me, no pressure.

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prompt: #455 - claim

[Prompt 455 - Claim] - FFXII - Proof

Title: Proof
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Rating: PG for conflict
Notes: Spoilers through the Dreadnought Leviathan. The Lady Amalia faces off with Judge Magister Ghis.

( Proof )

Current Mood: tired

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dreamwidth: community thursday

Community Thursday

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Fic: She's sweet like a lemon (Show By Rock!!)

Title: She's sweet like a lemon
Content Type: Fanfiction
Creator:

thepasteldyke
Fandom (if any): Show By Rock!!
Characters/Relationship: Gyaraco/Shimmakk/Leppanyo/Gilili
Rating: G
Length: 760 words
Content notes: Set fairly early relationship, Gilili doesn't actually show up but is referred to a lot. Using the prompt 'weather'.
Creator notes: Also for

femslashfete . Hope that's okay, I saw no mention either or in the FAQ.
Summary: They're supposed to pick lemons for one of Gilili's new inventions. Gyaraco however, gets them a bit sidetracked.

AO3 | DW | website

A MYSTERY!

In Women of Futures Past, Rusch quotes Willis:

"The field didn't just have women writers--it had really good women writers. These were wonderful stories, and I don't believe they were overlooked at the time, because when I read them, they were all in Year's Best collections."

Rusch speculates that Willis is referencing Merril's Best S-F. However, Rusch says she only did a spot check. I reread the whole of Merril's Best S-F in 2023. Her anthologies were mostly stories by men.

OK, so maybe it was one of the other Best SF series around back then? But I checked Bleiler and Dikty, Harrison & Aldiss, and Wollheim & Carr and it's not them.

Was there another 1950s-1960s Best SF series?

Or was Willis thinking of a magazine-specific annual like Analog 1?

Not literally Analog 1, obs. But something like it from another magazine.

My guess, having checked the early years, is Willis was reading The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction. Specifically, Boucher's run.

(Guess two would have been something edited by Goldsmith but she does not appear to have edited anthologies)

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Manners makyth monarkz

I was madly irked yesterday to come across this in a report in The Times on classism at Oxbridge (surprise surprise NOT, surely, that is where one would expect to find it in its native haunts?):

'being offered “lessons in manners” after picking up the wrong spoon at a formal college dinner.'

a) I do not think deployment of cutlery comes under the heading of 'manners', unless, as in, was it The Lion in Winter or some forgotten Arthurian epic, somebody takes these here newfangled forks to be instruments of assassination. Or maybe starts flicking soup across the table with improvised spoon trebuchets. Providing that we're at the Norbert Elias Civilising Process stage of using cutlery rather than our fingers, anyway.

Wot do they even teach them at Oxbridge these days, eh?

b) Okay, people do weaponise manners, but essentially, manners are supposed to be about making people feel comfortable and at ease, and if you're picking on somebody for not knowing some niche culturally-specific rule relating to spoons, that is Bad Manners and RUDE.

Cite here to Cardinal Newman on The Gentleman:

The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast — all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at his ease and at home.

And a story that I was told in childhood about Queen Victoria, which when I look it up, has also been ascribed to QEII and now to His current Maj, about seeing a guest, unacquainted with fingerbowls, drink from theirs, and doing the same, so as not to show them up.

So I am pretty sure this is Totally Apocryphal, or else it was actually done by somebody who Was Not Queen V or even royal, but it is a story about Proper Behaviour.

GB Stern - not sure whether this is in her 'rag-bag chronicles' or one of the novels or maybe even both - mentions Mittel-European landowner lady who, when dining her tenants, deliberately spills glass of wine on the tablecloth herself, right at the beginning of the meal, to set them at ease.

rescission

rescission (ri-SIZH-uhn) - n., the act of rescinding, the act of removing, taking away, or taking back; (law) the termination of a contract.

There's a lot of Latin in legalese, and this is one of them: this one dates from the early 1600s, from Middle French rescision, from Late Latin rescissio (interesting stem change there), from Latin rescindō, cut back, from re-, back + scindō, cut.

---L.

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Thursday books

I read a bunch while I was in Montreal, then got home and couldn't find my notes on what I'd read, so this is sketchier than it should have been.

The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett: this is both a fantasy and a mystery novel, and I think worked well as both. The world-building is interesting and unusual, with hints of a lot more than the narrator has reason to mention in telling this story. The mystery is twisty and full of questions about people's motivations. Definitely recommended. Based on some discussion on Discord, I'm glad to know there's a sequel, but not racing to read it.

Jellyfish Have No Ears, by Adèle Rosenfeld, is a novel told by a woman who has been hard of hearing since childhood, and is now losing the remains of her hearing, and trying to decide whether to get a cochlear implant. At least two of the characters are figments of the narrator's imagination. Interesting, but it felt like the story stopped too soon. I think I grabbed this for the "book in translation" square on my Boston library summer reading bingo card.

The Adventure of the Demonic Ox, by Lois McMaster Bujold: a new Penric and Desdemona fantasy novella. I liked it, but there's enough ongoing plot arc that I wouldn't start here.

The World Walk, by Tom Turcich: Memoir, by someone who decided at 17 that he wanted to walk around the world, and starts on the journey after finishing college. He has the advantage of a supportive family, and he also mentions some of the ways that the trip is easier for him because he's American. The travelogue is mostly about people, even when he's also talking about the sky from the Atacama Desert, or the interesting foods he eats while traveling. His planned route isn't literally around the world on foot, but he meant to walk on all seven continents. Instead, the section on Asia and Australia is foreshadowed by the celebration of New Year's Day 2020. Overall, an upbeat book. despite that, health issues, and encounters with hostile police and other officials.

So You Want to Be a Wizard, by Diane Duane: reread of a young adult fantasy novel. picked up from Emmet's bookshelf after I ran out of things I wanted to read on my kindle. I enjoyed rereading it.

I'm now partway through John Wiswell's Wearing the Lion, a retelling of the Heracles legend, because I had it on my kindle (shared by

cattitude) and needed something for the flight home from Montreal on Tuesday. The characterization is oddly flat, for a first-person narrative.

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2025 TAG COLLECTION POST

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!thursday recs,
bts

Community Recs Post!

Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool podfics/fancrafts/fanvids/fics/fanart/other kinds of fanworks have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here.

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review

The Adventure of the Demonic Ox (Penric & Desdemona, volume 14) by Lois McMaster Bujold

What could possibly go wrong while transporting a possessed ox?

The Adventure of the Demonic Ox (Penric & Desdemona, volume 14) by Lois McMaster Bujold

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movies

MCU meme

Because why not.

When I drop a fandom, it's over baby. It's stone cold dead. (Not always true but for the purpose of this post let's generalise.) I did enjoy Thunderbolts this year though.

I saw most of these early and at the cinema because I love going to the movies. Less so, these days. But yeah I used to be at the cinema once every few weeks.

( there are how many phases? )

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topic: previews

Alien: Earth Trailer

Alien: Earth premiered this week and I've seen nothing but rave reviews. It's on FX/Hulu/Disney+ (Canada, US, UK).

Watch on YouTube

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Watch my brother's film!

I posted about watching my brother's first feature-length film Hungry Ghost Diner (2023) under access lock, but then found out it's available in the US/UK on Apple TV and Prime Video. I feel like my DW network has quite the concentration of people interested in c-ent, so thought I'd post publicly to draw some attention to it!

Hungry Ghost Diner is a supernatural family drama/comedy about a food truck operator, Bonnie, who has a difficult relationship with her dad, and has to balik kampung/go back to small-town Perak, where her dad runs a kopitiam/coffeehouse, when her uncle dies. Her dad is closing down the coffeehouse; it's Hungry Ghost Month and there are lots of ghosts about, and family issues that need resolution ... It's unusual among the c-ent you might have watched before in that it's Malaysian, so features multiple languages -- I think Cantonese gets the most screen-time, but Mandarin, Hakka, Hokkien, English and Malay are also spoken.

I am obviously not remotely objective, but having just finished watching it yesterday, I thought it was good and if anything I felt one might enjoy it even more if one was not related to the director lolol. It got a positive critical reception in Malaysia when it came out a couple of years ago and has won awards at film festivals, and you can see why. It's beautifully shot, quirkily scored, and very Malaysian -- the charm of the accumulated details of (Chinese) small-town Malaysia is impossible to resist if you have any connection to such places, and probably still hard to resist if you don't know Malaysia personally. I thought the cast all delivered strong performances. I was particularly taken with the lead's sweet maternal uncle (played by an actor who sadly died suddenly not too long after the film was released). The lead was impressive, too: she played the main character with directness and sincerity.

And the film's such a heartfelt homage to Malaysian Chinese culture, from the beverages ads in Bonnie's dad's kopitiam to the Potehi glove puppet performances (I found these very interesting, I'd never seen them before). I think it's a film that would interest anyone who follows me on DW, or has read my books, or is generally interested in world cinema!

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Book Review: The Hidden Life of Trees

I read Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World (translated from German by Jane Billinghurst) as a sort of follow-up to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Although they are coming at the question from different angles, both books make the same point that plants are, like, alive??

On the one hand, this is something that I think most people vaguely know. But it’s still startling to discover the plants communicate with each other through their root systems, and can send sugars through those roots so effectively that other trees can keep a tree trunk alive for centuries after its crown has died.

But this only occurs in trees in naturally occurring forests. When humans dig trees up to transport them and plant them where we want them, we sever the root tips, and trees never recover the ability to interface with other roots - even if there are other trees available to commune with, which there often aren’t if a tree is planted, for instance, alongside a street.

This helps explain why trees along streets and trees in tree plantations tend to be, in tree terms, quite short-lived. Also, Wohlleben points out, the qualities that humans consider “good” in trees are usually not the qualities that are actually good for trees. For instance, humans like to see trees growing fast, and sometimes point at the quick rate of growth in spruce plantations as proof that these plantations are actually good for trees.

But in fact fast growth is dangerous for a tree, as it creates structural weaknesses that will often kill a tree when it’s around a hundred years old. For human foresters, this is fine, as that’s about as long as we let plantation trees grow anyway, but from a tree’s perspective, 100 years is not a long time at all.

In Wohlleben’s view, humans struggle to understand trees because their perspective is so alien to ours. They’re stationary. Their senses and methods of communication are so different from ours that we struggle to believe trees have senses at all. (“In Wohlleben’s analysis, it’s almost as if trees have feelings and character,” says the incredulous author of this Guardian article, apparently unable to grasp that Wohlleben is arguing that trees DO have feelings, no “almost” about it.)

And, as Upton Sinclair pointed out, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” The modern industrial lifestyle depends on seeing not just trees but the entirety of the natural world as raw materials we can dispose of as we will. Now, of course we’re capable of accepting that trees have feelings and then blithely refusing to change our behavior on account of that fact: after all, we do this with other humans all the time. But why bother embracing extra cognitive dissonance? It’s just easier all around if we continue to see trees as technically animate but more or less inert objects.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Biri Biri Be-lie-ving

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Wild stuff has been happening in the toku Ao3 tags

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