What I'm Reading Now

As always, this is what I'm reading NOT for review columns.

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future

KS Robinson writes these massive SF novels that are filled with intricate, splendid, convincing worldbuilding. They don't really tap into the reader's emotions, which is a characteristic of hard science fiction, but they're interesting to read. This one is about climate change. It starts with a really grim chapter about a heat wave in India that kills very nearly everyone in the area, 20 million people, and gets more hopeful (a little more hopeful) after that. It's more or less about what we might do if we want to survive the next century. It's also the most accurate portrayal of how to change the world that I've ever read. Bit by bit, one thing and another, lose lose lose lose lose win.

It's less hopeful than it might be because I'm dubious that we will do any of this stuff. (Robinson makes it clear that we will have to do hundreds of things -- there's no silver bullet.) Instead, we will keep shoveling profit into the maws of billionaires, destroying our ecosystem so a handful of people can make a little more money. 

Fair warning: this one is massive. It took me three days to read it. (Usually I'm a book a day reader, though sometimes two days if the book is particularly long.)

Still, it was an interesting read. I wish I believed in the future Robinson shows us, that's all.

Andrew Joseph White, You Weren't Meant to Be Human

Another good but depressing book. Written by a trans author, this is SF/Horror. A possibly alien intelligence located in a bug/worm swarm recruits people in dire situations, making them members of its swarm and using them to do things. Some of the things are fairly awful. The main plot line concerns a trans man who the swarm causes to become pregnant, despite the fact that pregnancy makes the man suicidal.

It's a very grim book about what happens when people are denied rights or agency, and gives us an engaging look at what it is like to be trans or a woman or poor in our current world. (It's set in the near future, but things have just kept going the way MAGA "Christians" want them to go.) Crane, the trans man, is particularly well done. A horrific read, but worth reading if you can take it.

T. Kingfisher, What Stalks the Deep

The third in her Sworn Soldier trilogy, this one takes the gang to a coal mine in the Appalachian mountains. It's always nice to hang out with Alex Easton and Angus again. This one has a great monster, and also some really claustrophobic stuff that I had to skim through. There's one good dog and one bad, except the bad dog isn't really a dog.

A quick, enjoyable read, except for the bits where they are crawling through the mine that might collapse on them at any moment.