Now in the process of mopping up leftover 2021 posts. Don’t know why I didn’t hit publish on this back in October. At least I was smart enough to not bake the month into the post title.
- Grendel Omnibus, Volume 3, Matt Wagner, et. al.
- All Systems Red, Martha Wells
- Futebol, Alex Bellos
- Getting to Yes, Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton
- Remote Control, Nnedi Okorafor
Just a solid month of October. 2021 completed total bumps to 33. Could actually make a stretch goal of 50 this year. More after the break.
Grendel Omnibus, Volume 3 contains Matt Wagner’s The Devil and God arc. This is one of the most impactful creative pieces encountered in my entire life. It’s stuck with me since high school. Just a beautiful and beautifully executed work. Only disappointment is that the original, amazing, single issue covers couldn’t be included. Meanwhile, I basically grew out of comics after those issues were published, so the Orion’s Reign / Grendel Kahn saga was new to me. The last couple of episodes were … interesting. Wagner has such a fabulous ear and eye for the contradictions, hypocrisies, and venalities of power.
All Systems Red is the first in a much heralded series of novellas and one novel. The key draw is getting into the head of a non-human intelligence. Intriguing but not earth shattering for me at the end of the day.
Futebol was a well done collection of newspaper or magazine feature length articles regarding the entanglement of Brazil’s history, culture, and football. As a collection there didn’t seem to be much of an organizing principle like a cast of characters or a window in time. This is my first read of material covering Brazil so I don’t want to take it as gospel. But boy, do those Brazilians seem crazy about football.
Getting to Yes, from the well respected Harvard Negotiation Project, provides a nice framework for conducting negotiations successfully, presumably. Need to put into application myself for confirmation.n The top level nugget is to focus on interests as opposed to positions, where interests abstractly means needs, desires, concerns, and fears. Focusing on interests may lead to discovering that there might not actually be conflicting goals and/or open up the process to creative solutions.
Remote Control is a beatiful novella of africanfuturism. The story of a little girl turned death dealer by alien(?) technology and forced to wander the continent, at many points my heart was racing awaiting what would happen next. And there were a few achingly sad moments. I can praise it as having many sentences I wish I had written.
I’m now realizing that I’m searching for a new (to me), speculative fiction author that can move the needle in terms of plot, character development, dialogue, and writing style. My next William Gibson or Ken Liu. Novellas and short story collections are a good way to go about it.