Antimatter Blues

In this greatly anticipated sequel to Mickey7 summer has come to the world of Niflheim. Mickey is enjoying what he hopes to be a pleasant change in career paths, while avoiding the potential wrath of colony administrator Hieronymous Marshall who still hates him on general principle. Unfortunately, with the change in season comes unforeseen consequences for the colony. The mysterious aliens the creepers are still skulking about, but there are new and unforeseen threats on the horizon. Mickey may find himself called out of retirement in his job as an Expendable whether he likes it or not. Thus he finds himself with a case of the Antimatter Blues.

Picking up roughly two years after the events of Mickey7, the colonists have managed to get things more or less up and running. However, disaster threatens as their reactor seems to be going haywire. And unfortunately for them, the only source of readily available fuel in the region just happens to be in the hands of the inscrutable aliens. And what do these aliens know about antimatter?

Mickey Barnes is once again our cheerfully irreverent and wisecracking protagonist who is, as per usual, in way over his head. Seeing this world through his eyes is a delight, and he brings a sort of everyman view to the utterly fantastic. Doing his best not to get murdered by a furious Marshall, the local fauna, or even a beat down from his girlfriend Nasha who is, understandably, annoyed by some of his antics. That level of pressure would cause anyone to crack, but not Mickey, whose unenviable immortality allows him to have a sense of detachment from things while also not quite wanting to have to be killed in the line of duty again just yet.

His supporting cast of Berto and Nasha is still excellent. They both offer some witty ripostes to one another, but still act as his friends. Nasha definitely has his back no matter what the circumstances, while Berto can be seen as a little more suspect. His friend, perhaps former lover, Cat, is still around and still looking out for him too.

Niflheim now that it isn't a massive iceball, has more to offer the colonists too. That doesn't make it any less dangerous however! Dangers lurk (literally) just beneath the surface in some places. The creepers are not the only threat, and the colonists are only just realizing that they have explored so little of the planet that it could represent an overall fatal end to their whole endeavor to fling the light of human consciousness further into the void!

I won't spoil anything because this is one book you simply have to read. I'll just say we get lots of action, and plenty of high minded philosophy just like the first novel. I genuinely love how much thought gets put into the situations our characters are in. They assess their options and (rarely) go in shooting as a first resort. Mickey himself thinks on his feet and manages to make the right call, more or less, most of the time.

Amazing sequel to a stellar piece of science fiction. Definitely take the time to read it! I couldn't put it down!

Leviathan Falls

Across four years, and two continents, I've been enthralled by the world(s) of The Expanse series and all the amazing imagery it has thrown at me. From re-reading the series last year, to prepare for the final installment, I've been eagerly waiting for the events of Leviathan Falls to sweep me off my feet. Here now, we come at last to the end of the saga which began with the phenomenal Leviathan Wakes as we set our sights on the end of this series.

SPOILERS FOR ALL BOOKS OF THE EXPANSE FOLLOW.

Picking up roughly a year after the events of Tiamat's Wrath, we find the crew of the Rocinante in something of a stalemate with the now fading Laconian Empire. The Underground is still fighting back, but with the Laconians still being the most powerful military force, they can exert a lot of pressure, though it's unclear how long that will last. However, the events of the time of Laconian dominance have effected them all. The status quo is very much in flux, with a waning empire and dark gods scratching at the walls of reality. 

James Holden is partially traumatized from his time at the hands of his Laconian captors, while his crew now deals with the stresses of a life constantly on the run. Even with 1300 worlds to run to, it is still very difficult to flee a former hegemon. Helping them slightly is their crewmate/hostage Teresa Duarte, the now adrift daughter of the former emperor of humanity. Sent to track her down is Aliana Tanaka of the Laconian Marine Corps, so she can bring back her emperor at all costs.

As the penultimate story in this series, it is very much more of what fun we expected with daring escapades and rigorously plotted space action. There are almost no new locations, with the familiar settings of the slow zone, Laconia, and Sol being the most well charted and important overall. The mysteries of the protomolecule are explored and, in many ways, resolved as the series wraps up and we learn of the aliens who built the ring, and not a little bit about how they died. Turns out it can be a really bad idea to park your empire in an alternate reality.

Once again our shared humanity is one of the main ideas being explored, and on showcase in this work is the power of individuality and the privacy of our own minds. That too does a very fascinating exploration of the concept of a hive mind. It speaks to how the human mind, a singular and individual piece of equipment is something that is not used to being shared with others. We like the privacy of our own heads, and the idea of people being able to ferret out our deepest thoughts and secrets is both terrifying and violating. Humanity did not evolve for those structures! Tanaka's story does an amazing job exploring this, and she might be the best character to explore it through.

As the story continues it wraps up the stories of the crew of the Rocinante mostly to our immediate satisfaction. Holden and Naomi have reunited after a painful separation, but are still deeply in love. Alex is still flying, but realizing that all this rebelling, fighting and running is making him miss out on seeing his family grow up and his ability to connect with them. Amos is, well he's still Amos no matter what.

Outside of that crew we have Elvi and Fayez, last seen in Tiamat's Wrath doing research on the entities that killed the gate builders. They and their very cool ship the Falcon are still trying to understand the creatures that came before them and use that understanding to keep the creatures wanting to wipe humans out away from us, or at the very least find a way to negotiate with them. Their story is very much one of discovery and ethics and I felt it was handled in a very tasteful manner, especially in the time it was written!

Between them all is Teresa Duarte, now effectively an orphaned child. She has been, somewhat, adopted by Amos and is used to being obeyed without question, and so has difficulty fully fitting in with the various crews. She is still a child, a very powerful and well educated child, but a teenager all the same when it comes down to it. Her desires and interactions were rather well explored, but I felt that for all her introduction, she was almost criminally underutilized, and unlike many of the cast, did not receive a proper ending to her story overall.

Our main protagonists do all get very satisfactory wraps on their major arcs otherwise, with some mysteries solved, character traits being brought to their logical ends, and successful evasions of some (but not all) disasters reached. For Holden, I was a little surprised that he did not manage to find a way, with all the research available and the eventual power, to negotiate with the dark gods. However, it is to the credit of the series that the aliens are, well, alien and it keeps them enigmatic and mysterious beyond the broad strokes to the very end. Something that I still very much appreciate. Maybe some won't, but I do think that it is clever how we never get the whole picture.

The ending though, is gut wrenching. I was on the verge of tears as I read some of the final lines, but the epilogue had me laughing out loud for how well some things read. It leaves many questions unanswered, but satisfactorily wraps up the series in a way that will leave readers both intrigued and heart broken. 

For all galaxy hopping saga, that might be all we can ask for. 

Cibola Burn

Since the events of Leviathan Wakes the protomolecule has opened up a thousand new worlds to human exploration. The different powers of the Solar System all have a different idea on how they should be explored. One such world, whose name varies, orbits a star far from Earth. The UN claims to administrate it, but refugees from the upheaval in the Solar System have already established a colony. With a UN chartered company trying to enforce claim over the planet and the OPA having a stake in the outcome, each side calls on the one man who might be able to make the difference and mediate the conflict, James Holden.

This world though hides many secrets. It's an unfamiliar planet whose very nature just might be hostile to human life. The Rocinante once again rides into danger in Cibola Burn.

From wikipedia

In the fourth book of the Expanse we finally ride out of the Solar System proper for some interstellar adventure. An alien sun shines above alien soil as the problems of how we legislate the first true extra-solar colony are ironed out. Who has the rights? The "squatters" who got there first, or the charter that the UN has given some corporation to survey and mine that world's resources? It's actually a rather poignant take on the problems of colonialism, the use of force to achieve ends, and how in the face of the truly alien, humanity would be far better coming together.

However, as is so often the case, petty tribalism, jurisdiction, and plain old fashioned racism make things worse.

On the planet Ilus (or New Terra) there are two distinct factions. The first are the colonists (or squatters) that settled after the events of the war in the Solar system which started over the course of the first book. On an old freighter and desperate for survival, they've pinned everything on running to the new star system to make a new life. Opposing them is a survey team from Royal Charter Energy, originally a purely scientific mission, it is meant to claim the planet under a UN mandate. Things quickly go awry.

Basia Merton is a refugee from Ganymede briefly met in Caliban's War who just wants a new life for his family. He may have to use violence to achieve that end. Elvi Okoye, an exozoological specialist from Earth, here to study a new planet. Finally, an old side character, one Dmitri Havelock, finds himself in his old role providing security, but now he has to choose between the contract and his morality.

Before I had gotten properly into the Expanse, I heard, extremely erroneously, that it was based on the old show Firefly. The series was far too centralized in the politics of oppression, great power problems, and the nefarious actions of corporate entities. There really wasn't anything resembling a space western in the series at all. However, Cibola Burn is arguably one of the best done space westerns ever produced. With numerous allusions to the frontier, the idea of the edge of civilization, and how we bring our society past the "settled" core.

It creates a complex swirl of ideas of ownership, war, tribalism, colonization and "who owns the land" all play a big part in this story. On a world not truly natural, it also explores man against a truly alien frontier. We haven't been exposed to this planet's creatures before. That becomes an increasingly apparent problem for both humans and animals,

As usual, the series explores concepts of identity to a group, race, and morality. It's a fabulous look at what people do on the edge. I found myself sympathizing with both sides of the conflict, even though there's absolute villains on each side. It made for an interesting example of looking at each side and trying to portray the escalations as responses to something another character has to justify for themselves. 

Finally, we get some further insight into the designers of the protomolecule and their ancient civilization. It's far to intriguing to spoil so I sincerely recommend reading it for yourself!

This is an amazing fourth installment in the series, carrying the Rocinante beyond Sol and into a new world. We get a setting we aren't used to in this series and see an entirely alien planet for the first time. There's deepening mystery, high stakes, and as always, well set up surprises that you don't see coming! The Expanse continues to entice and entertain.

Abaddon's Gate

After the events of Leviathan Wakes and Caliban's War the powers of the Solar System, Earth, Mars, and the Outer Planets Alliance are all in an uneasy coexistence as the dangers of the protomolecule appear ever more apparent. A mysterious object has formed around Uranus, and everyone is afraid of potentially waking a sleeping giant. So someone decides to do just that, and now humanity wants to investigate this strange phenomenon in our Solar System.

We're going to explore Abaddon's Gate, but on the other side, will we find heaven, or hell?

From wikimediacommons

The third book in the Expanse series of novels, it follows the crew of the Rocinante and a small cast of new characters as they head out to the void beyond Uranus. James Holden is back, and ever since the events of the last two books, he's just trying to keep his head down and keep his little clan of Naomi, Alex and Amos on the Roci alive. There's one small problem with that though, he's being haunted by a ghost. Torn between madness and curiosity, he's finding it impossible to stay out of the spotlight and more sinisterly, someone might be guiding his actions to get him there.

In this story we're joined by a new cast of minor characters. In one corner you have Earth born member of the OPA, Carlos "Bull" de Baca. A long time subordinate of OPA head honcho Fred Johnson, he's been chosen to help keep a disparate crew of Belters together as they try to show the flag in an upcoming mission on the OPA's new dreadnaught. The only problem is, due to political necessity, he's been placed as third in command. With an egomaniac as a captain, and an XO of uncertain loyalties, he's going to have a hell of a time keeping the ship together, not to mention himself out of trouble.

Then we have Annushka "Anna" Volovodov, a Methodist preacher who along with her wife and child have been doing a tour of duty on Jupiter's icy moon Europa. Always one to do first and ask forgiveness later, her own curiosity is getting the better of her when she agrees to join an interfaith mission accompanying the fleet heading out to possibly one of the greatest missions in human history. As one who identifies as a Methodist myself, I found her character to be one of the most fascinating to read as she not only accurately reflected much of my own relationship with the divine, but was a human, fallible, and great to view the story through.

Finally, we have the mysterious Melba. She's nobody, trying to hide and keep her head down. She has her own mission to the stars. One which might end up getting a lot of people killed.

Like the previous installment, the book focuses less on the aliens we might encounter in the stars, but more on the human reactions to what happens when we face something down we know precious little about. As poor Anna discovers, the Earth, despite being under the ostensible aegis of the UN, is just as factionalized as it was pre-unification. Similarly, Bull struggles with his own erstwhile comrades of the OPA. Factionalism, competing agendas, and just plain old petty grudges bog down as much of the human endeavors as anything the aliens do.

Taking place largely in one location, this novel was also a bit different from the last pair of books which included chases around the Solar system, battles over multiple moons and planetoids, and a lot of what you'd call rock hopping. Here though, it's all set in one main location. It was very easy to follow the trajectory of the action and you don't find yourself consulting a map of the planets for a while. Not that I mind that, but one location can be a nice breather from stellar wide action.

As I mentioned with Anna being a fascinating character to read about, I enjoyed that this book was also looking at what humans could accomplish when they pulled together and didn't try to mess each other up. The humanitarian element was warming, especially in a pretty potent speech Anna gives to try and keep everyone together, decrying racism and the silly ideas that just because someone was born on Mars or in the Belt that they're somehow fundamentally different from people who grew up on Earth. Despite the inhuman ways people can act towards one another, we can still come together.

It's a supremely strong third installment to this series, and well worth picking up.

The Atlanta Incursion

Once again I'm coming back to the works of Matthew Quinn. He's got a new book for us, the second book in his The Long War series (as it is now titled) and a direct sequel to his first full length novel The Thing in the Woods which I reviewed back in 2017. Here now though, we are given the events of The Atlanta Incursion!

As a warning, some minor spoilers will follow from the events of Thing, but nothing that will spoil the whole plot!

From goodreads.com

The story picks up roughly a year after the events of Thing and takes place in the Atlanta metro area in the aftermath of the Great Recession. There's plenty of abandoned areas, decrepid buildings, and gang activity to keep prying eyes away from things you'd rather not see. Unfortunately, that doesn't work out for young Javion, a member of the the Edgewood Jack Boys who, while out on a mission to bruise up a rival gang, finds that his simple turf war has suddenly taken on implications of an interstellar nature.

Meanwhile, young James Daly is doing what most kids his age are doing; managing his school life, studying for tests and attending classes, keeping his long distance relationship going and also staving off nightmares about confronting an eldritch horror in the woods last summer. Just simple freshman school worries. All through this he's trying to manage his friendship with his roomate Eli, and then with his girlfriend Amber, another survivor of those terrible events last May.

There's something strange going on in Atlanta though. Bizarre sightings, drones flying around, and perhaps Extra Terrestrials roaming the streets at night. James himself begins to see this, confused and worried, he thinks maybe he needs more sleep. However, it turns out that the events from last summer might not be as complete as he would like.

James was much how I remember him from the last book, but has had some definite character growth. Quinn also goes to show that he isn't unscathed from the horrible events he witnessed before, with nightmares, and some survivors guilt. I can say he captures this quite well from a narrative standpoint, and uses those feelings in both James and Amber to display character growth, vulnerability, and even some access to their inner badass when the time calls for it. 

Amber is also well handled. I did criticize the last book for this character failing the Bechdel test, and her treatment has improved. She's far more her own person, not only thinking about her attraction to James and has her own inner demons which haunt her in the story. I do think there was better opportunity for her to have another female character to play off on, instead of just one conversation with her roomate. Overall though, her arc and agency in this story is well handled and I applaud Quinn for upping his game with her and her actions in the story. Near the end she does get a pretty amazing scene which alludes to her rural heritage and something about it is just oh so right!

Our two new characters, Javion and Eli, were much more enigmatic. Javion comes across as one hell of a hardass who progressively survives more and more punishment, becoming something of a badass. He was already someone who grew up tough on the streets of impoverished Atlanta, so his growth is handled nicely and does go some way to explaining his resiliency. I think he was deftly handled for a character who could have ended up as something of a stereotype, and in light of events going on which took place just before this story came out, his life experiences (and distrust of Atlanta PD) were both timeless and timely if that makes sense. I am looking forward to seeing more of him in the future. I will admit though that his third act was less impressive than I had hoped for.

The final new character, Eli, was a bit of a mystery to me. It's true he's not entirely new (I made sure of that) but he's name dropped only a few times in Thing so he felt new at least. He's James's roomate, has some trouble accepting the alienation James is experiencing as James (for obvious reasons) can't really talk it out with him. His Jewish background and life is fairly well explored, and his friendship with James is fleshed out more, but beyond that, I didn't really know what to make of him and his character, unlike the first three, feels almost incidental to the story rather than an integral piece of it.

That being said, there were many fun moments in this book. The shoutouts to popular culture, especially from the 80s, 90s and 2000s was fun for someone like me who grew up immersed in a similar nerdy culture. The many references to the X-Files or Men In Black made me grin. That those were something of a running monologue in Javion's head endeared him to me. The sort of low key cultural jabs at city living Eli and the rural Amber were a fun contrast between rural and urban culture (especially one reference to James 'going native' which also cracked me up) and having transitioned from a rural to urban lifestyle myself it was quite relevant. 

I also enjoyed the 'secret war' aspect of the series. It makes sense for an X-Com style organization to be fighting aliens that aren't landing in big motherships. Though a lack of understanding of the alien goals, more speculation about why they did what they did, and a little bit of frustration with a paucity of prisoners did leave me in the dark to what precisely was going on. A small frustration was a moment where an alien speaks stunted English and then later we're informed the aliens never communicate back which felt...odd? I think I might have understood more if we'd seen or heard about the aliens taking other prisoners because it renders Javion's plot more sensible. That aside, it worked nicely for upping the stakes for the next installment, which I always appreciate.

The third act was quite well done, with very competent and exciting action scenes put forward, as I've come to expect from Mr. Quinn, and it had me on the edge of my seat for a bit (I finished the final third of the book in one sitting). I will admit that one aspect of the final fight made me skeptical, without spoilers, I didn't quite see the reason James got pulled into the fight in the way he did. It performed well and James still came off as a greenhorn, but the set up could have used a bit of tweaking in my opinion.

Overall, this book is great in that it manages the transition quite well in an Alien kind of way. By that I mean that where The Thing in the Woods was akin to the film Alien, what we see in The Atlanta Incursion is definitely a sequel in the Aliens vein of story telling. Fun and filled with equal parts dread and action.

A great read, I recommend it!

The Fermi Paradox Problem

Where is all the life out there? Why hasn't it contacted us? That was the basis of the question asked by Enrico Fermi at Los Alamos in 1950, creating the Fermi Paradox. Since then this seeming paradox has confounded scientists, futurists and writers for over seventy years. There have been an exhaustive number of explanations for why that is. Isaac Arthur does many great videos on them. And we have competing ideas about the plausibility of extraterrestrial life.

However, in a controversial take, I'm declaring there is no paradox.

The reason I'm saying so has a relatively simple premise, we simply don't have the means available to us to determine whether life is out there definitively. For reference, we've only been searching the skies for sign of intelligent life for less than a century, and we've been scanning for habitable plants beyond our solar system for far less than half a century. The tools we're using are not yet advanced enough to make a detailed observation of our closest neighboring star, let alone stars beyond that.

Our information is so limited we can't even say for certain what's on the majority of other planets in our solar system. There could be alien ruins on Mars right now and we could just be missing them.

Heck, alien probes could have visited us recently and we would have no idea. They could remain beyond our detection if they so chose, or we simply wouldn't be able to properly identify them. Or they could have visited us one thousand, ten thousand, or ten million years ago and we wouldn't know at all.

From our very Earthbound perspective we have limited data enough on our own solar system, to be then extrapolating from that limited data to try and make sweeping proclamations of the billions of stars in our own local galaxy is the height of folly, or at least an Earth-centric logical fallacy. To assume that our planet, which has had organized civilized life on it for just over 10,000 years, is so interesting or important among many billions of others is almost as silly as the geocentric ideas that the Sun rotated around the Earth. This in turn simply assumes alien life would be rotating around the Earth.

The above is very oversimplified to be sure, but let me address a few other problems with issues of timescale. According to our own understanding of physics, it would take even a civilization with sub-light capabilities (that is, unable to go beyond the speed of light) only a few million years to reliably visit/colonize the entire galaxy. This idea has problems because firstly it assumes civilizations unifying or staying homogeneous enough to carry out such a long term project. Our own science fiction writers and theorists have already posited a few practical problems with humans undergoing such projects (the book Aurora is a great look at that) but we would have no idea of the problems faced by an alien species in undertaking such a project. Secondly there's an implicit statement of intent, which as noted above may not be practical and simply may not exist. Any given alien species might not even see the need to expand beyond its own solar system, or just the next few neighboring solar systems. Even then, as I've said before, space is vast and going beyond a few thousand light years may just exceed the ability or interest of any given species.

Even for the moment accepting that the proposition is true and some species has perhaps colonized the entire galaxy at some point, that possibility isn't even out of the realm of feasibility. It may have happened a billion years ago, but then Earth might have not looked appealing to these alien colonizers. They might not have found any planets in our solar system to be appealing and simply categorized this system and moved on for greener pastures as it were. We quite simply can't say for sure.

Then of course we have the explanation for this 'paradox' that the aliens themselves might be too, well, alien for us to identify. We might be looking for the interplanetary equivalent of the Klingons when our closest intelligent neighbors might look more like the Hanar. We might just be searching for the wrong aliens. Even then, we could be looking for megastructures like the Dyson Sphere, when the aliens themselves might just prefer colonizing their own solar system and building artificial orbital rings around these planets. We can't say for sure.

These of course are just a few points in favor of throwing out the idea of the so-called Fermi Paradox. There are far too many assumptions and potential projections of our own assumed behaviors onto other alien species, which might blind us to very real signs of interstellar life. All these assumptions, and then reasonable objections to the premise, really push the Fermi Paradox from a true paradoxical question about the great silence of the universe, to something more like a trivially interesting thought experiment with no actual bearing on the nature of life among the stars.

It is that latter option which sums up the so-called paradox far better than any of the serious thought given to it by the scientific community, in my own humble opinion.

Caliban's War

As another part of the Great 2020 reread, I come to the second book in The Expanse series, Caliban's War. I originally read this roughly two months after I had read the first book, largely because it had taken me a surprisingly long time to make the time to read it. However, diving in I was not 100% sure what to expect with it, but again found myself pleasantly surprised.

If you miss the symbolism in this title I will be genuinely surprised! As a general warning, there will be major spoilers for Leviathan Wakes below. If you haven't read the first book in this series, drop everything you're doing and go read it!

Picking up 18 months after the events of the original novel, humanity is struggling to cope with the realization they are not alone in the universe after the Eros Incident. Venus is a churning hive of alien activity doing god knows what, while the fragile coalition between the governments of Earth and Mars has shattered from a cold war into a semi warm war which threatens to engulf the Solar System in flames once more.

Enter Gunnery Sergeant Roberta "Bobbie" Draper of the Martian Marine Corps, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force. She and her squad are on patrol on Ganymede, the breadbasket of the Outer Planets and one of the safest moons in the Jovian System. Suddenly the find themselves rushed by their UN counterparts, only to discover both sides are under attack by some kind of horrible monster. Her communications jammed, she has no way to signal the orbiting fleets that there has been no kind of attack and hostilities commence unleashing absolute hell on Ganymede.

Praxidike Meng, a scientist on Ganymede, finds that in the chaos someone has taken his daughter. Desperate to find out what has happened to her as the warfare and collapse of civilized society on his home moon threatens to engulf him, he has no choice but to turn to the one man who may be able to help him, but this man has started wars with his honesty before.

Watching all of this is Deputy Undersecretary of the United Nations Chrisjen Avasarala, a capable take no crap politician in the byzantine factionalism of the United Nations Secretariat which governs Earth and its colonies in the Solar System. As she's watched the familiar pattern of Earth-Mars-Belt relations has crumbled. Now she has to deal with a resurgent OPA, an Earth-Mars Cold War threatening to go hot, and above all, the alien life forms on Venus. In her attempt to keep a lid on things, she finds herself drawn into political schemes beyond her wildest dreams.

Finally, the crew of the rogue gunship Rocinante are back! Their captain, James Holden, has been playing policeman for the OPA for over a year and followed the orders of Frederick Johnson, but he yearns for more work, for something beyond the gun for hire role. He might get his chance as a humanitarian disaster, a missing girl and a mean politician cajole him into another solar mystery.

Aside from the first installment, this book is probably one of my favorites in the whole Expanse series. I have reread it, or even sections of it, three times now. It introduces two of the strongest female characters in the series, and manages to ratchet up the tension just as brilliantly as the first book did as each chapter progresses. From fighting monsters and disbelieving superiors, to watching the slow collapse of the artificial ecosystem that is the moon of Ganymede, we are treated to the horrors of war, human greed, and tribalism.

The novel goes to decent lengths to outline why humanity, poised with the greatest and possibly most existential threat to its existence, would rather fight itself than deal with the problem at hand. Shadowy and short sighted forces would rather re-fight old wars than bring about lasting change in the Solar System. This leads to many bad decisions, and many bad actors trying to profit from human misery on an interplanetary scale.

Despite not being explicitly a war story, it goes to not inconsiderable lengths to look at what war can do to people and communities. The fighting on Ganymede causes widespread destruction and even brings out the worst in many people. For all that, it handles scenes of space combat superbly and displays some of the best short ship to ship battle sequences I've read. The first fights to the later big fleet actions flow beautifully across the pages and I was quite pleased with the way they played out.

Growth in our characters and their interactions are wonderful. The relationship forged between Bobbie and Avasarala, and eventually Bobbie and the crew of the Rocinante are wonderful to watch. I enjoyed their dynamics and the clever plot which got the ball rolling, and the execution of the finale was spectacular.

A well done sequel in a well done science fiction series. Definitely pick it up!

Not Your Average Alien Invasion: Out of the Deeps

We all know the classic tropes for alien invasions. The Martians (or whomever) come down to earth, they begin burning our cities, slaughtering our populations, and generally taking over our land masses. They start to terraform Earth more to their liking, and humans generally must scatter before their superior technology. This is a staple set all the way back in 1898 by H. G. Wells in 1898. So we all know what to expect. Or do we?

The Weekly Word #1

Hello readers! Here I am starting a new segment for the blog which I am calling, the Weekly Word. In order to keep myself motivated to blog and keep writing interesting articles I will be posting a segment which tops off the news for the week, any interesting thoughts I might have, my writing updates, and of course weird web stuff.

To start off the week I thought I might catch up with some news from yesterday. Yesterday was Robert Heinlein's birthday! One of the fathers of modern science fiction Heinlein was one of the great men to start off the science fiction genre and use it as a conduit to explore social norms and societal values. He wrote two of my favorite books, Starship Troopers and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. I've probably read each of those books at least ten times. Short sweet and packed with fascinating details on possible futures and interesting societies. The man was a great writer and visionary who should be remembered for all time in the literary genre.

Tor does a wonderful article in reflection on him.

On another note if you aren't following Tor on Facebook, I suggest you do so soon! They have a wonderful slew of updates on authors and books, and besides that they have countless fun articles for you to sample! I often post them on my page!

In international sector you've probably heard about the coup in Egpyt by now as the rather undemocratic President Morsi has been captured by the military. In a region which could use less unrest it seems that the country is slipping into a low scale civil war of its own.

It leaves a delicate question for modern friends of democracy to answer. If an elected official is up to no good and trying to subvert the democratic process is it right for him to be overthrown in a coup? To be fair to the Egyptian military however, they only acted when overwhelming domestic pressure against Morsi's policies (in the form of protests all around the country) and then exerted their considerable force on the government and seized the President.

The problem of course is that this sets an interesting example, the military has launched a coup (though some would prefer the term revolution) against a man who was elected fairly. However, supporters point out that Morsi (and his backers the Muslim Brotherhood) was the only man who had anything resembling a political party so there was little doubt who would win.

This is all part of the growing pains of what we hope will turn Egypt into a modern democracy. With the military suspension of the Constitution however and an insurgency forming only time will tell what happens. Though the military kept the majority of its promises last time and allowed for elections and didn't interfere with the process, except to preserve their considerable power as a state within a state. How this will play out for the future of democracy in Egypt again, remains up in the air.

On a more cheery and amusing note, today is the 66th anniversary of the Roswell UFO incident in 1947!

So today is the day when aliens potentially visited Earth for the first time. Now I don't actually believe that personally but hey someday I could be proven wrong!

Either way next time you look up to the sky, wave because you never know, little grey men could be watching you!

Hope you enjoyed the first update readers! I'll make sure to keep 'em coming! Until next time!