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I can remember being about 16 and lying on my bed listening to Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, imagining landing on Mars. This high-definition Mars footage on fullscreen, laptop extra-close to my face, Fantasia on the headphones in a dark room, was not quite the Omnimax Mars tour of my dreams, but was pretty good as an at-home experience if you need some Space Feelings. (The wind-sculpted sand! I did a little reading about grain sizes and it sounds like it would be very fine sand by earth standards, maybe even silty-floury feeling?) There is less video runtime than Fantasia - I just replayed it but the youtubist also has additional Mars videos, one could probably make a playlist.
Mar. 11th, 2022
We stayed at the playground so long after school today that I had time to finish two different books. I mean, I was at about 80% in both of them, I didn't read all of both in one sitting, but yay spring weather and no painfully-cold hands!
Sisters of the Forsaken Stars, Lina Rather, novella, sequel to Sisters of the Vast Black. One of my most-anticipated books of 2022. I didn't love it quite as much as the first one, but it's a good followup. Rather is great at specifically Catholic details and developments (this one gets into relics and reliquaries!), and the material/physical aspects of worldbuilding (really outstanding sense of place/environment in terms of things like the colors of different kinds of lighting and the sounds and textures of the living ships). Time and distance felt fuzzier, sometimes to the point of confusing me - I didn't feel like I had a great handle on the timeline, or how long it took to get between places, or for a message to travel. I don't mind some handwaving in the interest of not thinking too hard about physics (I mean, I also enjoy rigorous orbital mechanics or unforgiving subluminal travel times... it's all good) but I want to have a sense of how much time is passing for the characters. Is it weeks to the next resupply or are they in a fast-moving chase scene, or is it determined entirely by Doylist factors, which breaks my immersion a bit. Lots of sci-fi is bad about this - Star Wars is terrible about this, I say as someone who has spent maybe too long thinking about how long they were on the Naboo Royal Starship in Phantom Menace - but I think it could have been a little stronger if this aspect felt a little more solid. Still definitely recommended if you are interested in space nuns and I will for sure want to read her next book.
A Delicate Deception, Cat Sebastian. Slightly funny story about this book - I joined a library queue of like five people waiting for zero copies of the ebook, with no particular expectation that it would ever go anywhere... I assume the library system had had a copy that expired, and didn't want to immediately renew the license. Well, it sat there for a couple of years, and then I guess someone finally decided that there were enough of us in the queue that they could justify another go on the license, or that their wait-time stats would slightly improve if they flushed us out of there, or something, so, yay, book! Anyways, this is a romance between a man and a woman, but they're both bi, so I don't want to describe this as "het romance" like I normally would about a book with an m/f couple. My reading-list note for this book says "everyone is queer and has anxiety disorder", what could be more relevant to my interests, and in fact the theme is more or less a celebration of the liberatory power of queerness to let people shape their own lives outside of the limiting roles of heteronormativity, in this case (spoilers) a HEA found in a long-term romantic and sexual relationship without cohabitation or marriage. (And the secondary couple are a gay duke and an ace woman who *are* getting married, for purposes of companionship and family, furthering the theme of people figuring out for themselves what will work for them.) Anyways, good stuff if you like Regencies, I thought they had a very sweet initial relationship arc and an only somewhat stupid misunderstanding. (Also, ok, I'm always looking for Sekrit Fandoms in published stuff... is there any chance that disabled-duke-Lex, the ex of the very large and strong Sidney, is Smallville Lex, making Sidney Clark (except scowly), and Amelia... Lois?? (I never actually watched Smallville, but I read a bunch of fic back when it was the flavor of the month, and have reread astolat's "Moving On" a whooole bunch of times.))
Sisters of the Forsaken Stars, Lina Rather, novella, sequel to Sisters of the Vast Black. One of my most-anticipated books of 2022. I didn't love it quite as much as the first one, but it's a good followup. Rather is great at specifically Catholic details and developments (this one gets into relics and reliquaries!), and the material/physical aspects of worldbuilding (really outstanding sense of place/environment in terms of things like the colors of different kinds of lighting and the sounds and textures of the living ships). Time and distance felt fuzzier, sometimes to the point of confusing me - I didn't feel like I had a great handle on the timeline, or how long it took to get between places, or for a message to travel. I don't mind some handwaving in the interest of not thinking too hard about physics (I mean, I also enjoy rigorous orbital mechanics or unforgiving subluminal travel times... it's all good) but I want to have a sense of how much time is passing for the characters. Is it weeks to the next resupply or are they in a fast-moving chase scene, or is it determined entirely by Doylist factors, which breaks my immersion a bit. Lots of sci-fi is bad about this - Star Wars is terrible about this, I say as someone who has spent maybe too long thinking about how long they were on the Naboo Royal Starship in Phantom Menace - but I think it could have been a little stronger if this aspect felt a little more solid. Still definitely recommended if you are interested in space nuns and I will for sure want to read her next book.
A Delicate Deception, Cat Sebastian. Slightly funny story about this book - I joined a library queue of like five people waiting for zero copies of the ebook, with no particular expectation that it would ever go anywhere... I assume the library system had had a copy that expired, and didn't want to immediately renew the license. Well, it sat there for a couple of years, and then I guess someone finally decided that there were enough of us in the queue that they could justify another go on the license, or that their wait-time stats would slightly improve if they flushed us out of there, or something, so, yay, book! Anyways, this is a romance between a man and a woman, but they're both bi, so I don't want to describe this as "het romance" like I normally would about a book with an m/f couple. My reading-list note for this book says "everyone is queer and has anxiety disorder", what could be more relevant to my interests, and in fact the theme is more or less a celebration of the liberatory power of queerness to let people shape their own lives outside of the limiting roles of heteronormativity, in this case (spoilers) a HEA found in a long-term romantic and sexual relationship without cohabitation or marriage. (And the secondary couple are a gay duke and an ace woman who *are* getting married, for purposes of companionship and family, furthering the theme of people figuring out for themselves what will work for them.) Anyways, good stuff if you like Regencies, I thought they had a very sweet initial relationship arc and an only somewhat stupid misunderstanding. (Also, ok, I'm always looking for Sekrit Fandoms in published stuff... is there any chance that disabled-duke-Lex, the ex of the very large and strong Sidney, is Smallville Lex, making Sidney Clark (except scowly), and Amelia... Lois?? (I never actually watched Smallville, but I read a bunch of fic back when it was the flavor of the month, and have reread astolat's "Moving On" a whooole bunch of times.))