Author Archives: Bevin

About Bevin

Requiring tambourines at all attempts at enlightenment since 1997.

The Engines of God (Series) – Jack McDevitt

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Book One, Ingredients list:

1. FTL drives
2. Decently easy interstellar travel
3. Single, hard-minded, I-do-my-job-because-I-have-nothing-else-and-anyway-I-love-to-do-it Star Pilot (named Priscilla “Hutch” Hutchins) with incredible skill that remains mostly undiscovered and under-utilized doing transport jobs for rich companies
4. Massive planet that is empty and thought to be better utilized as a replacement Earth (once it’s terraformed, that is)
5. Archeologists who insist that there is more to be learned from the ancients who once lived there
6. Money-makers and politicos who could give a fuck about archeologists or their work

But WILL IT BLEND?!

I suppose so. I mean, this book doesn’t really leave much to guess. Group 1 wants Group 2 to leave the goddam planet, Group 2 doesn’t want to. Group 2 convinces our plucky heroine to stick around and fly their butts out at the last minute. Ancient shit is found, planet is destroyed, and they wander around the galaxy following clues to see where their heart-I mean-information takes them.

Best quote from the book:

Janet listened skeptically at first, and then with mounting enthusiasm.

Book Two. Shit gets REAL.

In this stunning piece of literature, our plucky heroine (hereafter referred to as: Plucky McPluckersons) is minding her own goddam business when some stupid high-minded scientists start wetting their pants over the destruction of yet another planet. Sure, THIS time it’s due to another fucking planet smashing its shit up, but what does she care? Being the only nearby pilot with any skill, she gets wrapped into a scheme to go and “learn” about the lost civilizations of the planet anyway. Problems abound, including (but not limited to) their landers being destroyed, people being destroyed, and large fucking insects trying to kill them while they march to find a lander left by a previous expedition. Mostly it goes like this:

Tromp tromp tromp SMASH tromp SMASH SMASH tromp tromp OOH GUYS A LANDER FROM LAST TIME REMEMBER? tromp SMASHITY SMASH OOH WE MADE IT. WELL, SOME OF US AT LEAST. WHY AM I TALKING IN CAPS?

Best quote from the book:

Hutch drew him away and turned him over to the Asian.

Book Three, Synopsis:

Plucky McPluckersons was minding her own business when a group of crackpots with a “theory” hire her to be their pilot as they look for satellites around planets or signals from satellites around planets or some shit. At any rate the satellites end up forming a trail to somewhere. Zooming around space at the whim of crackpots-that-also-happen-to-be-right-a-lot-of-the-time seems to be a hobby of hers.

(Note that, from now on, Plucky McPluckersons’ character is essentially a bureaucratic paper-pusher who still manages to get roped into these off-world missions.)

Best quote from the book:

Nick made a face, signaling that he didn’t like zero gee, that his organs had begun to move around.

Book Four. It’s time to save the WORLD.

Some cloud shit brought up in Book One rears its ugly head when it’s discovered that the clouds not only move toward civilized planets, but they also FUCK THEIR SHIT UP. Naturally, humans won’t abide by this wonton destruction. Just kidding! Humans don’t care even when they realize that a shit-cloud is coming for THEM, and will be here in… 900 YEARS. Way to plan ahead humans. Go you.

Turns out that Plucky McPluckersons gets to test out any shit-cloud-removal theories on a nearby civilization about to be destroyed. Yay Science!

Best quote from the book, a tie between:

More applause.

and

On the surface of the threatened world, seas had become rough, in anticipation of the onslaught.

Book Five. (Psst! Not much happens.)

Okay sure so some lights start blinking and they wander off to follow them. Sure they start to see these now-called “raiders” adjusting the trajectory of nearby objects to impact with planets at a later date. And sure they get attacked at various points by the raiders themselves. So what? The record player that is the brain of most characters in this book is playing one, solitary loop over and over: OMG MY SPACEFLIGHT PROGRAM IS UNDERFUNDED. WE NEEDZ MORE MONIEZ. AND MAYBE THIS WEIRD SHIT WILL GET PEOPLE TO PAY.

Best quote from the book:

Everett was standing in his dark blue uniform, looking a bit older than the last time she’d seen him.

Book Six, aka: “Oops! We forgot to end Book Four!”

The shit-clouds are back ladies. And they’re closer than ever to swarming your little speck of a planet and… well… okay so it has only been a few years. But at least now spaceflight is all but extinct save for a few private organizations. And BY GUM are they some organizations! I mean, even Plucky McPluckersons is a fundraiser for one of them now! And now they have new technology to wander into the core of their galaxy! To finally stop the shit-clouds from shitting all over things!

It all gets kind of funky at the end but I can’t tell you or it’d spoil it. I don’t mean that it will spoil a good ending, but it’s the only one this book has got.

Best quote from the book:

Like any good high school teacher, she was pure showbiz.

Series end. And so my time thinking about it.

CONCLUSION: Whip out the big red SELL stamp and get crazy. (When the shit-clouds come your crap will be useless anyway.)

Reviewer’s Note: This book is suspenseful enough that you might, potentially, forget to evacuate your bladder and end up exploding in such a violent way that it’s felt by your ancestors. If you were a hamster. So adjust to scale accordingly.

Avalanche Soldier – Susan R. Matthews

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ELITE. PARAMILITARY. FORCE. PROTECTION. RELIGION. SHRINES. MOUNTAINS.

What do these words say to you? What images to they conjure, what pictures do they paint? If it’s a fun romp through the perspective of an elite fighting force as they try to protect shrines and people from themselves while in mountainous terrain–you’d be wrong.

If it’s a serious look into the quagmire that is the human psyche when forced to choose between loyalty to your country and loyalty to your people and your god–you’d be wrong again.

Wow you’re not very good at this are you?

In fact, this book takes all of that and says, “Fuck everyone else’s idea of science fiction. Screw deeper meaning. I’m going to be the first book to show these Science Fiction sheep what it’s REALLY all about!”

Here’s how the book progresses:

1. Salli, a member of an elite paramilitary force entrusted with the task of protecting their religious shrines, is the best on her team. She knows it because she keeps complaining that although she’s The Best her mentor keeps making her work harder than everyone else.
2. Salli’s brother runs away after the accidental death of a tourist. He is now a deserter, presumably taken by the other religious faction on the planet. (oh noes)
3. SHE MUST FIND HIM AND TELL HIM THAT HE WON’T LIKELY BE PROSECUTED. PROBABLY. I MEAN, SHE KNOWS HE’S INNOCENT.
4. Oh, right. To find him she has to become a deserter herself. Woe is she!
5. She finds him after being caught by his ragtag group while she thought she was hidden. So much for her Elite Skillz™.
6. They convince her to go on some religious walk and she meets the messiah. Who makes her go all squishy inside.
7. She’s in love! (with the messiah. But then again who isn’t?)
8. I stop reading, as I’ve lost the desire to work for good and have gone off to further my newest hobby: kitten-smashing.

The End.

CONCLUSION: SELL

Best quote from the book:

And Meeka had embraced their thought; or at least they had embraced Meeka, and he seemed to feel that their view of the world and his accorded miraculously well with one another.

Darwin’s Blade – Dan Simmons

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Cue music… Check.

Cue lights… Check.

Cue middle-aged discouraged, depressed and despondent man who lost his wife and child years ago to a preventable accident and hasn’t been able to get over the incident since… Check.

Cue loving couple who has taken previously mentioned middle-aged man under their wing who use snark and love to keep him from committing suicide because they LOVE HIM ON THE INSIDE… Check.

Now that the setting is in place, we can glean a bit about where the book is going. Character one (Darwin) has a story arc we can probably guess. Man who has spent decades futilely chasing the demons of his dead family has the free time to be the top accident investigator in the state. Man uncovers a conspiracy to defraud insurance companies that at the same time injure and sometimes kill the underprivileged poor. Man uses his bad-ass skills that he’s acquired through constant anger and mourning (and being a former Marine in Vietnam) to SOLVE THE FUCKING PROBLEM.

Oh, and in the end he finds a girl. Someone who has not lost her love of life, who is dedicated to her job, is strong, independent, kicks-ass, and happens to be a bigwig in the FBI.

So who wins in the end?

1) JUSTICE
2) HOT GIRLS WHO WORK FOR THE FBI
3) INSURANCE COMPANIES WHO NO LONGER HAVE TO PAY BOGUS CLAIMS TO CRIME GANGS THAT HIRE ILLEGALS TO GET INTO DANGEROUS AND SOMETIMES FATAL CAR ACCIDENTS
4) ILLEGALS (Oops, wait–They’re still poor and illegal)

CONCLUSION: SELL

Best quote from the book:

Darwin winced slightly at the use of the noun task as a verb.

Reviewer’s Note: This review makes no comment on the brilliant writing that is contained within any of Dan Simmons’ other books. Hyperion kicks this book’s ass and hands it back on a self-forged, gilded, shimmering plate of luminescent gold. Encrusted with rare gems. Stored in a sleeve of baby koala skin. Looked after by fair maidens.

Aftermath – LeVar Burton

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LeVar has a fondness for Science Fiction, and why shouldn’t he? He spent so much time on the set of Star Trek that he must have some interest. But what kind of influence does that have on a person?

Not a science-y one, if this book is to be taken to heart.

Setting: Post-Racial-War in America, circa 2009-2019
Most-Uttered Sentence: “Fuck I’m hungry and cold and where the hell are my GODDAM PANTS?!”
Most Pressing Problem Aside From Lack-Of-Pants: All public and private nation-wide infrastructure has collapsed.

So we have a scientist. She has invented a magical (I mean, scientific!) box that, when hooked up to a brain, spurs that brain into overdrive utilizing all the “unused” 90%. What does this do? Well it cures cancer of course! And any other ailment you might be experiencing. Presumably you are just under-utilizing your own biological resources and she has managed to harness them.

This box is delightfully small and has been developed over a number of years by: ( ) team of scientists, ( ) pharmaceutical company, (x) herself

Yup, she has managed to invent this box on her own working for a small research institute. Her goal? To find some investors in the medical community to help her get this device into the hands of anyone in the world that’s sick or dying. How noble!

But, being that this is Science Fiction, where do you see this going? If you guessed, “Oh I’ll just invite a few powerful big-wigs to my private lab and show them how awesome it is and promise that they’ll even get one of their own if they just invest a little money and then I can sell it cheaply to everyone in the wooooorld…” you guessed right.

Refreshingly real don’t you think?

I mean, someone who has spent that many years working in the field of Science™ would surely know what the reaction might be when inviting a number of rich and powerful people to your secluded office and telling them of your secret invention.

After all, some of them even seemed interested in her device! (did I mention that it cured cancer?)

The book, past that, is mostly the story of a few characters on personal journeys that end up converging to solve one riddle and save our Intrepid Science Practitioner. Their stories, while interesting in themselves, don’t come together in way that really pushes the meaning behind the book home.

One more thing: Our lovely Intrepid & Stouthearted Science Practitioner has omitted from her written research some curious side-effects from her human studies on the device, namely the fact that a small percentage of people (read: one) BECOME TELEPATHIC. Naturally, she decided to try the device on herself to see if the TELEPATHY was a side effect on her as well. Which it was. How else do you think our Motley Character Posse got together in the end to save the day?

TELEPATHY WINS. EVERY TIME.

CONCLUSION: SELL

Best quote from the book, as thought by a 10 yr old:

Amy saw that someone had stuck a white cross in the ground in front of the tank, a memorial to the insanity of war.

Recording the dream I had before I awoke

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Start

We were in the country (probably still northwest, since there were lots of trees and cleared land mixed together), but very few roads. I and two others were living together or at least were hanging out a lot together for the time being, and there were three(?) little kids with us. Annie the dog was there, along with a rabbit like Scarlet. They were the smallest of the animals (the rest were all dogs) so I took it upon myself to really make sure they were okay and always checked on where they were. I told one of the little kids to watch over them. The point was that there was a killer elephant on the loose and could actually move at a great clip, and we needed to get to a safe area. But we don’t know where it is at any one moment so it’s quite scary moving ourselves out to the car, especially with SO many animals. We eventually decide to go for it, me holding Annie and the rabbit and the other two women herding the other animals. I’m the last one to the car and I’m frantically picking up the animals and shoving them into the backseat of the car because at this point we need to just GET MOVING and it really doesn’t matter if they’re a little squished. One of the larger wiry dogs is being a pain trying to get back out of the car, so I have to shut the door and try to get back into the back seat only after someone else in the car has restrained them (a hard task). Finally I open the back right door and shove myself in, only barely able to close it. Dogs are piled on the laps of my comrades all the way up to my head. We speed away and head into town(?). On the way we’re on a 4-lane grassy-median-separated highway with fields on the left, and a stand of trees/forest on the right. Between the forest line and the road is some more grass (all of the grass in this dream is tan like it is in the summer), and on that grass is a makeshift dirt road just a result of people driving on it often. Going the opposite direction from us is what looks just like a military vehicle with a big reservoir on the back (similar to those milk trucks, only this is dark green/black). Chasing it is a giant elephant bigger than the truck. There are three men in the truck, and as we drive by we see the elephant catch up to it and smash its trunk into the passenger side. Screams emit from the men inside and the truck crashes. By then we’ve gone out of sight, speeding off into town. At this point I remember seeing an arial view of the town. Buildings were normal, but the center square had a circular road that ran the perimeter which our car was now on, going towards the right and around. I don’t know why I not only had a sudden arial image of the square, let alone why it was a real-time image that included the speck that was our car. Surrounding the very center of the square were four enormous statues, each one person-shaped but each still very different. From the arial view still we curve around at the top of the square and turn to drive into the center. Suddenly we’re in the waiting room of what seems to have been a former veterinary office-turned elephant attack shelter. The waiting room is one long rectangular room going East/West, and along the north and east sides there were hospital/bare looking chairs. We plunk down ourselves and all of our animals in that corner, and I put Annie and the rabbit on the corner coffee table and instruct one of the kids to look after them. Myself and another woman with us wander over to the center of the north wall, because that’s where the open double-size no-door doorway is into the rest of the complex. We meet a woman in a lab coat and explain our situation; she looks harried. We have to beg a bit for whatever reason but she finally relents and we go back to get our animals and the kids. We grab them all and start following her into the back of the complex wondering what the hell we’re going to do about this terrorizing elephant that has the ability to kill anyone it sees.

End

only 154

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That’s how many posts I have on this damn blog. Not many.

BTW, I’ve seen the light when it comes to typography and using one space after a period instead of two. I know, it’s taken me long enough. Bah.

Currently working on my website design, but as always I’m getting sidetracked by different designs rolling around in my head and various Reader posts to catch up on. I think that it’s imperative to have multiple projects for me to work on though, because I can easily get distracted and discouraged. If I have something else in Photoshop that is also in progress I can quickly jump to that instead and feel more accomplished overall, even if I just get a few things done. Progress!

Last week was 90s music week, but this week I’m scrambling a bit for good tunes to listen to. I have lots of good music but now that I’m in my old iTunes library none of it is speaking to me.

On another note I’ve been blowing off friends lately which is a little odd. Not sure why I’m not getting back to them, but I really just don’t want to deal with it so I ignore it.

That’s about all I have as an update for today. Split pea soup for dinner tonight.

new WP interface

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So the new WordPress interface… impressive!

I’ve been working on my website design lately, so naturally I started thinking more and more about the blog I’ve been neglectful to maintain, and what that will look like after the transition.

The good news is that I can probably create the whole of my website through WordPress (this is one powerful bugger), but the bad news is that I will have to create the whole of the website through WordPress. Ugh. This of course means that I need to figure out how my mockup is going to work out in WordPress and decide whether any of my elements are even feasible.

Yay for having a techie programmer partner!

Besides all that, the interface for WordPress in general looks so much nicer with a lot less clutter, so I think I’ll be more apt to update this thing. I’m working on a coordinating Twitter theme, so I can just link to my feed right from my site, and it will all match and look mostly seemless.

Lots of random things have happened, lots of random things to talk about, so here we go with a few of them.

Josh and I received a beautiful sewing machine from his mom, and a just as beautiful french oven from my mom for Christmas. Pretty exciting stuff, although finances so far prevent us from doing too much with either.

Okay so this afternoon is an ADD afternoon. I’m ending this, but I’ll wander back here soon for another phase of blogging.

Testing

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This is a test post from my iPhone while Josh fixes the bit that he broke on my website. Ha.

(clever subject here)

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Been awhile.  Working on various things.  Knitting is a little lackluster lately, due to major things that need re-doing.

It’s hard to talk about all the things going on because I haven’t kept the blog updated.  A lot of it will seem out of the blue.I’m thinking of making this blog private and just for me.  I find that I don’t write in it because of how I feel those words will be taken, or how much or little I’d like others to know.  Odd that I care more about that these days.

In any case, I want to update the blog (maybe I should start calling it a journal?), I just that more often than not the things I want to talk about are personal.

I think I might move the majority of the content on this blog to a more private location and attempt to maintain this blog in the current location as a “cool stuff I find that you might be interested in or thoughts I’m having about the world around me” type of thing.

We’ll see.  In the meantime keep an eye on my Twitter feed, since I’ve been using that a helluva lot more lately. 

Today should be interesting.

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I got a call late last night from my mother.  Apparently the woman who sold us the window blinds didn’t bother to call me after calling her to set up a date for installation.  So my mom did, and didn’t tell me about it.  Well, until last night anyway.

So they’re set to come some time between 2:30-3:30pm today, which pisses me off as an arrival time because at this late notice it’s harder for Josh to leave work early.  Plus it means that a lot of the furniture moving needed to happen last night at like 11:30pm because I can’t lift it without Josh.

And now of course it’s today and I have a lot of cleaning and moving to do to get the place organized so that they have room to move around.  We didn’t even get to moving the bed last night (we’re not sure where to move it), and I’m just supposed to hope that they come late enough that Josh is already home, or I’m supposed to call him when they get here and stall that window installation.In other news, I baked some real goodies last night.  I started this cinnamon bun bread recipe, which is essentially a cinnamon roll in 8×8 pan form.  I had all the baking done about half an hour after Josh got home, but you actually have to let the thing rest for 30mins before making/applying the frosting so I ended up putting that off until we were actually going to eat it.

See, I had this grand scheme that I’d have that done to snack on after Josh got home and then I’d start on dinner.  While it was resting I started on dinner and promptly had to forget about it until afterwards because making dinner was so hectic.  We had spinach/cheese lasagna.  Mmm!

That kind of got complicated quick.  I had to pre-cook the noodles, make a bechamel sauce, chop up all kinds of things and use the food processor to mix another sauce, blanch and chop the spinach… lots of things to do!  It was totally fun though, and in the end it was very delicious.  Totally worth the effort, and I think I’ll definitely make it again.  I’m always a fan of food that I can make that tastes like you went out to eat to get it.

Granted, we had dinner a -tad- later than we would have preferred (7:30pm) but otherwise the evening was peachy.  I ended up making that glaze/frosting for the cinnamon pan of doom and we had that for dessert.  This morning Josh and I had another piece since anything with cinnamon is automatically okay as a breakfast food.

Today I make: more iced tea.  I drank most of it yesterday.