siderite.dev_rss.xml - sfeed_tests - sfeed tests and RSS and Atom files
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siderite.dev_rss.xml (32216B)
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1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
2 <rss version="2.0">
3 <channel><title>Siderite's Blog</title>
4 <description>I am a .NET C# developer and this is my personal and technical blog.</description>
5 <generator>Miniblog.Core</generator>
6 <link>https://siderite.dev/</link>
7 <item>
8 <title>Primitives, by Erich Krauss</title>
9 <link>https://siderite.dev/blog/primitives-by-erich-krauss/</link>
10 <description><p><img alt="Book cover" src="/Posts/files/Primitives_638481240711399848.jpg" width="300" height="450" style="float: left;" />&nbsp; I did not like this book. The whole idea in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60293362-primitives" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="Thirty years after The Great Fatigue infected the globe&mdash;and the treatment regressed most of the human race to a primitive state&mdash;Seth Keller makes a gruesome discovery in his adoptive father&rsquo;s makeshift lab. This revelation forces him to leave the safety of his desert home and the only other person left in the world&hellip;at least, as far as he knows.">Primitives</a> is that two relatively identical characters, in almost identical situations, somehow get together for a sequel. The rest is so pointless as to be irrelevant.</p>
11 <p>&nbsp; Maybe I am being overly harsh, but consider this: the world has ended, a disease and then a universal antidote that had even worse side effects have seen to that. And so we are somewhere decades into the future, where some kids, raised by educated scientists in what's essentially a zombie world, show us that indeed there is no hope for humanity, because they are entitled, stupid and strong willed to make all the bad decisions they can make. Ugh! Long story short: the world had ended and our only hope are Gen-Zs. We're doomed!</p>
12 <p>&nbsp; <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/36200.Erich_Krauss" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="I couldn't find a web site for him">Erich Krauss</a>' writing style is first person from the viewpoint of the kids, so it's really painful even if it's not technically awful. I almost didn't finish the book, but I chose the pain now rather than the regret that would always follow me around if I didn't find out for sure the book was shit to its very end. And what an end that was... Ugh, part 2.</p>
13 <p>&nbsp; Bottom line: don't read this. It's not good.</p></description>
14 <author>Siderite</author>
15 <category>books</category>
16 <category>picture</category>
17 <category>misc</category>
18 <guid isPermaLink="false">https://siderite.dev/blog/primitives-by-erich-krauss/</guid>
19 <pubDate>Sun, 07 Apr 2024 22:01:11 GMT</pubDate>
20 </item>
21 <item>
22 <title>The Test, by Sylvain Neuvel</title>
23 <link>https://siderite.dev/blog/test-by-sylvain-neuvel/</link>
24 <description><p><img alt="Book cover" src="/Posts/files/TheTest_638476716186770485.jpg" width="300" height="475" style="float: left;" />&nbsp; Wow! This thing hit hard. In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41940388-the-test" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="Britain, the not-too-distant future. Idir is sitting the British Citizenship Test. He wants his family to belong. Twenty-five questions to determine their fate. Twenty-five chances to impress. When the test takes an unexpected and tragic turn, Idir is handed the power of life and death. How do you value a life when all you have is multiple choice?">The Test</a>, <a href="http://neuvel.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title=" a Canadian science fiction writer, known as the author of The Themis Files. He was born in Quebec City and raised in the suburb of L'Ancienne-Lorette">Sylvain Neuvel</a> tells the story of a British citizenship test that a man has to take so that he is not deported with his family back to Iran, where it is not safe for them. The testing goes awry and nasty things happen. But the real important factors are the people involved and how, with often good intentions, they do terrible things.</p>
25 <p>&nbsp; The story is deeply satirical without being amusing. The way form is respected in strict ways that are completely antithetical to the spirit or principle of the thing is especially gruesome. The ending is not even sad, it's devastating.</p>
26 <p>&nbsp; Good stuff! And it's a short story. Read it.&nbsp;</p></description>
27 <author>Siderite</author>
28 <category>books</category>
29 <category>picture</category>
30 <category>misc</category>
31 <guid isPermaLink="false">https://siderite.dev/blog/test-by-sylvain-neuvel/</guid>
32 <pubDate>Tue, 02 Apr 2024 16:20:18 GMT</pubDate>
33 </item>
34 <item>
35 <title>Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures, by Merlin Sheldrake</title>
36 <link>https://siderite.dev/blog/entangled-life-by-merlin-sheldrake/</link>
37 <description><p><img alt="Book cover" src="/Posts/files/EntangledLife_638476707760038762.jpg" width="300" height="446" style="float: left;" />&nbsp; I wanted to start the review with the tired "A love letter to fungi" clich&eacute;, but I stopped because I realized the feeling I get from the book is not love, but awe. <a href="https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist, writer, and speaker with a background in plant sciences, microbiology, ecology, and the history and philosophy of science.">Merlin Sheldrake</a> is indeed enamored with fungi, but <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52668915-entangled-life" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="Merlin Sheldrake explores the spectacular and neglected world of fungi: endlessly surprising organisms that sustain nearly all living systems. They can solve problems without a brain, stretching traditional definitions of &lsquo;intelligence&rsquo;, and can manipulate animal behaviour with devastating precision. ">Entangled Life</a> shines with admiration and the amazement of discovery for this life kingdom. The thesis of the book is that everything alive right now is supported by the fungal network either from below or above.</p>
38 <p>&nbsp; For example modern plants, and especially the ones we use for food, cannot even grow without mycelial networks. They exist in symbiosis by feeding fungi sugars obtained through photosynthesis and receiving from them minerals and other soil resources. It's not just a matter of supplanting resources, though. Fungi form complex networks that collaborate and share resources and information. They are more than alive, they are decision makers, choosing to feed one plant more or less, moving resources from healthy to sick plants, keeping tight and efficient portfolios (heh, folios) of different organisms that help it grow and survive.</p>
39 <p>&nbsp; Is it really symbiosis or is it farming? Who is farming whom, then? And where one individual start and one end if their lives are strongly connected through the Wood Wide Web?</p>
40 <p>&nbsp; Without fungi there would be no soil and perhaps we are unaware of how much of the human pollution is being offset by these master decomposers. Their influence starts from the very base of the food chain and ends with the cultural: without fungi there would be no alcohol, for example, and that seems to have been a very influential substance in our own evolution from monkeys to overthinking apes. That and bread, I guess...</p>
41 <p>&nbsp; The writing style was a bit exuberant and sometimes repetitive, but this book is filled with information and not the one I had expected either. I've read some books about fungi and they all kind of revolved around some very common pieces of knowledge. Entangled Life seems to be complementary to those books, skipping over lazy common information and bringing hands-on and modern research knowledge.</p>
42 <p>&nbsp; What can I say? I loved this book and I recommend it wholeheartedly.</p>
43 <p>&nbsp; P.S. And it's not even that long. From the 800 e-book pages, 300 were end of the book notes, which BTW were very detailed and brought forth a whole new level of data. But if you just want to read a book about how important (and poorly researched) fungi are, you can just read the first 500 pages and be done with it.</p></description>
44 <author>Siderite</author>
45 <category>picture</category>
46 <category>misc</category>
47 <category>books</category>
48 <guid isPermaLink="false">https://siderite.dev/blog/entangled-life-by-merlin-sheldrake/</guid>
49 <pubDate>Tue, 02 Apr 2024 16:06:15 GMT</pubDate>
50 </item>
51 <item>
52 <title>The Genocides , by Thomas M. Disch</title>
53 <link>https://siderite.dev/blog/genocides--by-thomas-m-disch/</link>
54 <description><p><img alt="Book cover" src="/Posts/files/TheGenocides_638470478033002004.jpg" width="300" height="464" style="float: left;" />&nbsp; It took me forever to read this rather short book, because I didn't want to. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/743672" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="In this harrowing novel, the world's cities have been reduced to cinder and ash and alien plants have overtaken the earth. The plants, able to grow the size of maples in only a month and eventually reach six hundred feet, have commandeered the world's soil and are sucking even the Great Lakes dry. In northern Minnesota, Anderson, an aging farmer armed with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other, desperately leads the reduced citizenry of a small town in a daily struggle for meager existence. Throw into this fray Jeremiah Orville, a marauding outsider bent on a bizarre and private revenge, and the fight to live becomes a daunting task.">The Genocides</a> features unlikable characters in a bland setting and written by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_M._Disch" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="was an American science fiction writer and poet. He won the Hugo Award for Best Related Book &ndash; previously called &quot;Best Non-Fiction Book&quot; &ndash; in 1999, and he had two other Hugo nominations and nine Nebula Award nominations to his credit, plus one win of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, a Rhysling Award, and two Seiun Awards, among others.">Thomas M. Disch</a> in a way that feels very religious, without also feeling spiritual. It was written in 1965, but feels older than that: it's unnecessarily dated, it brings nothing new to the table, it lacks any kind of moral or closure. Basically a bunch of rednecks die slowly as the Earth is choked by alien plants. The alien plants were the most interesting bit, but they were not really explored in any detail. I hated this book.</p>
55 <p>&nbsp; In a way, it started really well. You have some spores that apparently arrived from outer space germinating like crazy into plants that choke everything, are not nutritious and adapt to anything people throw at them. The human response is swift: total societal collapse, followed by widespread famine, ecological death and ultimately extinction. And with humanity's whimpery end as the background we... read about a village controlled by a tyrannical religious patriarch as they... can do nothing about anything and die.</p>
56 <p>&nbsp; The main characters are a family of hicks running the village and trying to save its people, a guy from the city bent on slow revenge, a bunch of cardboard people who are mostly represented by a number of how many are left. None of them actually achieve what they set up to do. They all fail miserably, disgustingly and pathetically, kind of like how the author himself died in 2008 when he killed himself. And then the book ends.</p>
57 <p>&nbsp; The writing style was decent, but it was so obvious that everything was connected to some kind of biblical metaphor the author had in mind, even when it was not spelled out. It all felt like the sermon of that one skinny priest that doesn't seem to ever enjoy anything and resents it in other people. I don't know who recommended this book to me, but now I have a desire for slow humiliating revenge against them.</p></description>
58 <author>Siderite</author>
59 <category>picture</category>
60 <category>books</category>
61 <category>misc</category>
62 <guid isPermaLink="false">https://siderite.dev/blog/genocides--by-thomas-m-disch/</guid>
63 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Mar 2024 11:03:23 GMT</pubDate>
64 </item>
65 <item>
66 <title>Jujutsu Kaisen - a derivative mush of all other shōnen out there</title>
67 <link>https://siderite.dev/blog/jujutsu-kaisen-derivative-mush-of-all-other-shonen/</link>
68 <description><p><img alt="All heroes in one image" src="/Posts/files/JujutsuKaisen_638470463381484730.jpg" width="533" height="300" style="float: left;" />&nbsp; I really tried, but it was impossible to enjoy, especially after the second season started. It's like someone took the wrong bits of Naruto, Fullmetal Alchemist and Bleach and mashed them together in this mindless story. I was pushed to it by the very nice writing YouTube channel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG8er-KMQ2s" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="all about being a helpful guide to people who want to write, but don&rsquo;t really know where to begin. ">Savage Books</a>, but in this case they messed up. Or maybe they were talking about season 700, the manga or whatever.</p>
69 <p>&nbsp; So in <a href="https://myanimelist.net/anime/40748/Jujutsu_Kaisen" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Gege Akutami. It has been serialized in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump since March 2018, with its chapters collected in 25 tankōbon volumes as of January 2024. The story follows high school student Yuji Itadori as he joins a secret organization of Jujutsu Sorcerers to eliminate a powerful Curse named Ryomen Sukuna, of whom Yuji becomes the host. Jujutsu Kaisen is a sequel to Akutami's Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School, serialized in Shueisha's Jump Giga from April to July 2017, later collected in a tankōbon volume, retroactively titled as Jujutsu Kaisen 0, in December 2018.">Jujutsu Kaisen</a> there is this kid who is preternaturally strong, but also kind, good looking and loves his grandfather. In hospital, grandpa tries to tell him something ominous about the boy's parents, gets interrupted, then proceeds on spouting some nonsense about helping as many people as you can, even if it's just one, then promptly dies. And then it appears his friends in a spiritualist high school club are about to unleash an ancient curse, so naturally someone from a secret society comes to take care of it, the boy gets in the middle and ends up eating a mummified finger that gives him demonic powers but also a demon inhabitant of his body.</p>
70 <p>&nbsp; All well and good, but then it's just one full season of Japanese Hogwarts, complete with one dimensional quirky characters, dangers that seem to be handled exclusively by untrained kids, manic teachers and disgusting evil villain who attacks randomly and usually pointlessly. The inner demon barely makes any appearance and to be honest, his allies and friends seem a lot more unhinged. I would have maybe watched the mind numbing uplevelling of the main characters some more if they didn't completely change page in season 2.</p>
71 <p>&nbsp; The animation is different, the characters are different and, even if I know the regular ones will return in a few episodes, I couldn't make myself care. I understand that almost everything in Japan has a form and the more derivative and ritualistic something is, the more powerful - hell, it's the same in Western society, we just don't openly admit it, but this was being derivative in all the wrong ways, then changing things in the worst possible direction. And of course, it was terribly boring as well.</p>
72 <p>Bottom line: no more "Sorcery Battle" for me.</p>
73 <p>P.S. Oh, hell, it's even a sequel. Yuck!</p></description>
74 <author>Siderite</author>
75 <category>picture</category>
76 <category>manga</category>
77 <category>misc</category>
78 <guid isPermaLink="false">https://siderite.dev/blog/jujutsu-kaisen-derivative-mush-of-all-other-shonen/</guid>
79 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Mar 2024 10:38:58 GMT</pubDate>
80 </item>
81 <item>
82 <title>Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes, by Nathan H. Lents</title>
83 <link>https://siderite.dev/blog/human-errors-panorama-of-our-glitches-by-nathan-h-lents/</link>
84 <description><p><img alt="Book cover" src="/Posts/files/HumanErrors_638461757619089000.jpg" width="340" height="500" style="float: left;" />&nbsp; I didn't know what to expect from <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36606264-human-errors" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="A biology professor&rsquo;s illuminating tour of the physical imperfections&mdash;from faulty knees to junk DNA&mdash;that make us human.">Human Errors</a>. Pointedly, <a href="https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="an American scientist, author, and university professor. He has been on the faculty of John Jay College since 2006[1] and is currently the director of the Cell and Molecular Biology program and the former head of the honors program and the campus Macaulay Honors College program. Lents is noted for his work in cell biology, genetics, and forensic science, as well as his popular science writing and blogging on the evolution of human biology and behavior">Nathan H. Lents</a> was describing the various biological systems that are not quite efficient in their functionality. But he goes further, explaining the molecular mechanisms that led to these errors, the evolutionary, sexual and societal pressures, all in a clear and understandable way. I've learned a lot from the book and I recommend it warmly.</p>
85 <p>&nbsp; The book is structured into 8 parts: an introduction, six chapters on various themes, then an epilogue describing what the future may hold. The chapters talk about errors in: bones and anatomy, nutrition, genomics, fertility, immunity and the brain. Well researched and informative, one flaw of the book is that sometimes it comes up with very definitive explanations to something or some discussion about how a design should work, only then to add a small paragraph saying that maybe it's not so clear, but it makes the author feel a bit arrogant, like he wanted to shout from the rooftops about some things but he's holding it in.</p>
86 <p>&nbsp; Ironically, this book was published in 2018 and already feels dated, especially the parts that talk about evolution of computer systems. If anything, it made me lose hope on biological solutions to the future. There is no fixing us, we need a complete redesign. The imperfections of living organisms is what gives nature beauty, but it isn't taking it anywhere. The Epilogue also talks about the Fermi paradox, which is, I believe, the perfect ending of this book about the mechanics of evolution.</p>
87 <p>&nbsp; Bottom line: I liked it a lot, it's not hard to read and digest and very informative. Highly recommended.</p></description>
88 <author>Siderite</author>
89 <category>picture</category>
90 <category>misc</category>
91 <category>books</category>
92 <guid isPermaLink="false">https://siderite.dev/blog/human-errors-panorama-of-our-glitches-by-nathan-h-lents/</guid>
93 <pubDate>Sat, 16 Mar 2024 08:49:21 GMT</pubDate>
94 </item>
95 <item>
96 <title>The Dread Hammer (Stories of the Puzzle Lands), by Linda Nagata</title>
97 <link>https://siderite.dev/blog/dread-hammer-stories-of-puzzle-lands-by-linda-naga/</link>
98 <description><p><img alt="Book cover" src="/Posts/files/TheDreadHammer_638456932036420941.jpg" width="300" height="464" style="float: left;" />&nbsp; In 2016 I started reading <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11299996-the-dread-hammer" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="He lurks beside the forest road, a charming, well-armed young murderer named Smoke, not altogether human. She draws near, a contrary shepherdess named Ketty, fleeing an unwanted marriage. Smoke overhears her prayer for help, whispered to the Dread Hammer, and decides to grant it.">The Dread Hammer</a> and almost immediately gave up. It felt like an adolescent female fantasy about a wild man in the woods. In truth, it may be that, but it had more complexity once I ended reading it. The problem, though, was that I felt always out of phase with what was happening in the story.</p>
99 <p>&nbsp; So we meet this girl running from her father and the man she was forced to marry and meeting this man who could turn into smoke and kill anyone who immediately takes a fancy on her and, very seductively and romantically, kidnaps her and makes her his wife. Then there is this whole history of the evil militaristic misogynistic empire at the border of a smaller country, protected by fierce warriors and ancient magic. And then stuff happens, which oscillates between very dark magical blackmail horror and rather silly and random romances and clumsy politics. Honestly, it was like someone was trying to write teen Irish Tarzan, but for children.</p>
100 <p>&nbsp; Somehow, when I was getting chills about the horror of a situation and preparing for the worst, nothing actually happened. When I was chilling and not expecting anything interesting to happen, something did happen. But mostly everything felt random. Add to this that the story doesn't actually end in any way with the book, and I felt little satisfaction reading it and even less getting to a completely bland cliffhanger. Or rather, the end of the first volume of a story.</p>
101 <p>&nbsp; Now I feel like I've DNF'd the book twice, even if I did manage to get to the end and for some lengthy parts of the book I was actually invested in the characters. I liked The Red series by <a href="https://hahvi.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="a Hawaii-based American author of speculative fiction, science fiction, and fantasy novels, novellas, and short stories. Her novella Goddesses was the first online publication to win the Nebula Award. She frequently writes in the Nanopunk genre, which features nanotechnology and the integration of advanced computing with the human brain.">Linda Nagata/Trey Shiels</a>, but I won't continue with this. And why the hell was it called The Dread Hammer? It has absolutely no relevance to the story for now.&nbsp;</p>
102 <p>&nbsp; Bottom line: not a very good book, but it had a lot of potential, which is sad. I will raise my original rating with a star, but I can't recommend it to anyone.</p></description>
103 <author>Siderite</author>
104 <category>picture</category>
105 <category>misc</category>
106 <category>books</category>
107 <guid isPermaLink="false">https://siderite.dev/blog/dread-hammer-stories-of-puzzle-lands-by-linda-naga/</guid>
108 <pubDate>Sun, 10 Mar 2024 18:46:43 GMT</pubDate>
109 </item>
110 <item>
111 <title>Ninja Kamui - an interesting anime that leads nowhere</title>
112 <link>https://siderite.dev/blog/ninja-kamui---interesting-anime-that-leads-nowhere/</link>
113 <description><p><img alt="Poster of an angry man with red eyes and a partial Oni mask" src="/Posts/files/NinjaKamui_638455024803620409.jpg" width="300" height="295" style="float: left;" />&nbsp; The premise of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28480255/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="Former ninja Joe Higan is ambushed by assassins who seek bloody revenge on him and his family for their betrayal, after escaping his clan and fleeing into rural America.">Ninja Kamui</a> is interesting: superhuman ninjas join forces with a Mark Zuckerberg caricature in order to control the world. Yet some people left their shinobi order and decided to lead their own lives and that cannot be tolerated. So high-tech ninjas, a combination of robot and magical fight techniques, are sent to kill these deserters. Inevitably, one gets pissed and decides to kill the assholes. The animation is very good and the initial idea great.</p>
114 <p>&nbsp; But from then it just goes downward: the same boring&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dnen_manga" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="an editorial category of Japanese comics targeting an audience of adolescent boys">Shōnen</a> tropes, the faceless armies of disposable goons and their sadistic freak of a commander that need to die every episode, the dedicated policeman and the sexy hacker sidekicks, the cruel shinobi overlord, the psychopathic but weak man in power. Even the fights are derivative, bringing almost nothing to the table.</p>
115 <p>&nbsp; Worse, this is an original anime production, meaning you can't go online and read the manga and they release one episode per week on HBO. Best wait until its inevitable cancelation and watch it all at once.</p></description>
116 <author>Siderite</author>
117 <category>manga</category>
118 <category>picture</category>
119 <category>misc</category>
120 <guid isPermaLink="false">https://siderite.dev/blog/ninja-kamui---interesting-anime-that-leads-nowhere/</guid>
121 <pubDate>Fri, 08 Mar 2024 13:48:00 GMT</pubDate>
122 </item>
123 <item>
124 <title>Daughter from the Dark, by Marina Dyachenko , Sergey Dyachenko</title>
125 <link>https://siderite.dev/blog/daughter-from-dark-by-marina-dyachenko--sergey-dya/</link>
126 <description><p><img alt="Book cover" src="/Posts/files/DaughterFromTheDark_638453173947030997.jpg" width="265" height="400" style="float: left;" />&nbsp; I've read <a href="/blog/vita-nostra-1-by-marina-dyachenko.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="Female Harry Potter in an evil Russian Hogwarts">Vita Nostra</a>, by <a href="https://dyachenkowriters.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="The Dyachenkos are from Kyiv, Ukraine. For four years, they lived in Russia, then moved to California, United States in 2013. Serhiy Dyachenko died on 5 May 2022 in the United States">the Dyachenkos</a>, and I liked it quite a lot. However, due to the defective pipeline for translating and publishing Russian books, I've never got to read the next volumes in the series. Luckily, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/45730152" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="In this extraordinary stand-alone novel, the authors and translator of Vita Nostra&mdash;a &quot;dark Harry Potter on steroids with a hefty dose of metaphysics&quot; (award-winning author Aliette de Bodard)&mdash;return with a story about creation, music, and companionship filled with their hallmark elements of subtle magic and fantasy.">Daughter from the Dark</a> is a standalone novel, so I went into it with high expectations.</p>
127 <p>&nbsp; And it delivered. It's not as interesting as Vita Nostra, but it follows kind of the same ideas, which I feel are very trendy in Russian culture at the moment: mythological and fantastical characters placed in a modern and very Russian setting. There is this bachelor, he is a DJ, lives the club life, has money, charms girls, etc. Suddenly, he is forced to contend with a young girl who claims to be his daughter. She also appears to be magical.&nbsp;A rather interesting examination of human relationships, a sort of adult coming of age story, with some buddy elements, and an exploration of human society, Russian one in particular, to boot.</p>
128 <p>&nbsp; The book has some issues though, mainly pacing, but also some incidents that just seem to come out of nowhere, disappear and never be mentioned again. Coupled with the eternal confusion of the main character, it gives the story a feeling of a dream, one specific literary technique that I personally despise. It's just a tiny feeling, but it can be grating. Perhaps it's also a artifact of translation, I have no way to tell.</p>
129 <p>&nbsp; Bottom line: a nice simple read that can be easily imagined as a straight to TV Russian low budget film. It's not great, but it can be pleasant. The Russian angle gives it a little freshness from a Western reader's point of view.</p></description>
130 <author>Siderite</author>
131 <category>picture</category>
132 <category>books</category>
133 <category>misc</category>
134 <guid isPermaLink="false">https://siderite.dev/blog/daughter-from-dark-by-marina-dyachenko--sergey-dya/</guid>
135 <pubDate>Wed, 06 Mar 2024 10:23:14 GMT</pubDate>
136 </item>
137 <item>
138 <title>Blind Lake, by Robert Charles Wilson</title>
139 <link>https://siderite.dev/blog/blind-lake-by-robert-charles-wilson/</link>
140 <description><p><img alt="Book cover" src="/Posts/files/BlindLake_638453065770788176.jpg" width="295" height="475" style="float: left;" />&nbsp; <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/116412" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="At Blind Lake, a large federal research installation in northern Minnesota, scientists are using a technology they barely understand to watch everyday life in a city of lobster like aliens upon a distant planet. They can't contact the aliens in any way or understand their language. All they can do is watch.">Blind Lake</a> starts well: a "new astronomy" installation, a small town enclave around a mysterious device that can image the individual lives of alien beings on another planet, is inexplicably quarantined from the outside. No information passes in or out and anyone wanting to leave doesn't get to live.</p>
141 <p>&nbsp; In this situation, people act in different ways, as <a href="https://www.robert-charles-wilson.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title=" an American-Canadian science fiction author specializing in science fiction thrillers">Robert Charles Wilson</a> explores themes of families breaking up and their effect to children, "lockdown romances", but also paranoia, power dynamics, life purpose and other things. However, what is conspicuously missing is anything actually technical. Even the magical installation is just that: magical. One day a space telescope started to send worse and worse signals, so they used self evolving Artificial Intelligence to clean up the signal. And clean it up the little AIs did, even when the telescope stopped sending any signals. No one understands how and they are seemingly content with the situation.</p>
142 <p>&nbsp; The sci-fi elements, even if always present throughout the book, stay in the background.&nbsp;Therefore, the entire story is about people: reporters, scientists, security guards, managers and their families or significant others. The ending isn't helping at all, it's a "whatcha gonna do?" kind of shrug-off.</p>
143 <p>&nbsp; Bottom line: It is a well written book and I read it really fast, but it the end it felt like killing time more than reading a book. Like watching a TV series episode that I quickly forget afterwards. I feel like the author has a lot more to offer and maybe his other books, with juicy titles like <em>Darwinia</em> and <em>The Chronoliths</em>, would be better. I don't know if I will ever have time to read any of them, though.</p></description>
144 <author>Siderite</author>
145 <category>books</category>
146 <category>picture</category>
147 <category>misc</category>
148 <guid isPermaLink="false">https://siderite.dev/blog/blind-lake-by-robert-charles-wilson/</guid>
149 <pubDate>Wed, 06 Mar 2024 07:22:57 GMT</pubDate>
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