The Mote in God's Eye

 

The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Don't ask me why it took so long for me to get to this "classic" scifi novel. Yes, this was a hole in my reading list for far too long, but then again I took forever to get to Moby Dick and enjoyed the heck out of that one. I had read Niven and Pournelle's Inferno early on and wasn't terribly impressed. I also read Niven's Ringworld many years ago and found it to be . . . well, a three star book. My track record with these authors wasn't great, so I was rather reluctant to read this, but after a friend gifted me a copy at the end of a game of Traveller, I decided I'd give it a try.

Those who have played Traveller (which I've called The simplest RPG system out of this world) will immediately see the influence this work had on Marc Miller and colleagues in designing the game. A hereditary nobility trying to hold together disparate stellar systems, jump drive technology that makes it quicker to send a physical letter via snail mail on a mail carrier than to use electronic communication over distance, the absolute centrality of military life and, particularly, naval military life, to the workings of the empire, etc., etc., etc., will immediately jump out to those who play the game. For those who don't, there is still much to like here. It has its shortcomings - definitely a book "of its time," some people will balk at the characterization of women (or the one woman in the story) and the seemingly paranoid mentality of the military (which, if you've ever lived on a secure military installation, you know why that paranoia exists, whether it meets with your personal preferences or not). But despite these . . . I'll call them "smudges" on the narrative, Niven and Pournelle create a varied cast of characters whose reactions to "first contact" with an alien race are nudged and shifted by their positions vis-a-vis both the aliens and each other.

The "Moties," the alien race encountered here, are, honestly, only a little alien in their thinking. Their appearance, with multiple arms and a seemingly simple mammalian (simian?) physiology, makes them a little odd, but nothing truly outre. They aren't ordinary, to be sure, but they might just as well have been neurodivergent humans dressed up in fury bodies with asymmetrical arms. Still, they contrasted enough with the mindset of military-minded humans (and scientifically-minded humans, especially those with a strong stroke of idealism) that their interactions became more and more interesting the more the humans and aliens lied to each other, discovered undesirable things about each other, and then discovered that the other had lied to them. There are, of course, political implications on both sides, especially seeing that Motie evolutionary specialization was even more rigid than human societal castes. And this is one thing I liked a lot about the novel: it's not clean. It's dirty. It's confused. It deals in half-truths, deception, and groups that are internally riven with division because of their respective lines of demarcation, as well as being at odds with each other, sometimes for reasons that neither of them understand.

Do things "work out"? Sort of. And it's in that "sort of" that I found the most meaningful grist for rumination. Who exactly are "we" and what does "we" mean, anyway? Who am I in the midst of "we" and what happens when another "we" comes crashing into our universe (quite literally) unannounced? It's not as deeply existential as, say, Haldeman's Forever War, for instance, but it does cause one to at least give a sideways glance to the "big questions" and does so in an entertaining level, though you will have to work for your entertainment a little. I don't mind. I like books that demand something from the reader.

For example, this book has an incredibly long denouement. But it is absolutely worth the wait for Chapter 57: All the Skills of Treason. That is some masterful writing and one of the more clever resolutions I've seen in a science fiction novel. Well-played, Niven and Pournelle, well-played.

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Rogue's Gallery Garycon 2026

 Well, now that Gamehole 2026 is right around the corner, I probably ought to post my Garycon 2026 Rogue's Gallery. I played a lot of great characters this last time around. My game count was:

Traveller - 2

Call of Cthulhu - 2

Empire of the Petal Throne - 1

Riverbank - 1 

Shadowdark - 1

DCC - 1

War of the Ring - 1

And not a bad game among any of them. Except War of the Ring, the miniatures game, where I got my butt kicked. But that was just me. Oh, and there was one person at that table who was behaving like a jerk. Even the game master and the people on his team apologized to me for his behavior. He never did. Whatevs, angry nerd.

Here's the TLDR version in two pictures:

Let's go second pic first: War of the Ring miniatures game. This was bad guy vs bad guy, goblins on goblins, warg riders on giant spiders, all the kinky stuff. Besides Wanker McJerkface (pretty sure that was his name) I had a great time getting my butt kicked. For the record, in the photo above, I'm the wargs, the other team is the giant spider. I was able to wax that spider, but lost the battle overall. Took too much time to "form up". Lesson learned.

Okay, so on to the characters, in no particular order:

Geran - 2nd level magic user, Empire of the Petal Throne.

Ksenia Krishko, M.S., Associate Astronomer - Traveller. This was a "hard scifi" Traveller game I really liked. Little action, but lots of problem-solving, which I love in my RPGs.

Romi Cohn - Call of Cthulhu. Funny, I don't remember much about this adventure, which is very odd because it was run by You Too Can Cthulhu, who usually run the most memorable of adventures. I lost sanity and burned a LOT of luck, which means my rolls sucked, which is probably why my brain won't recall the game very well.

Ivan Ragsnub - Half-orc ranger, Shadowdark. My first time playing Shadowdark. Reminded me a lot of old skool AD&D/2e. Shot a lot of arrows at undead. I liked it. 

Dick K. Philip - Scoundrel, Wiener Guy, DCC. Very cool murder mystery as a DCC game. All taking place in a large mansion. I really liked this game. Playing a sneaky thug helped, for sure. 

Eight Forenti-Massbach - Combat Bot, Rhees Gholnik - Gunner, and Captain Screel - Uplifted Dolphin (in an aqua tank on the bridge). Yes, that's three characters, one game. I loved this one. Essentially we went pirate hunting for a group that had taken a drug-production facility hostage. Gholnik and Screel were on the ship, where we started, in spaaaaaaaace . . . I really enjoyed playing Captain Screel (complete with dolphin squeaks and squeals). Going planetside, I played Eight Forenti-Massbach. Now, I don't play fighter types like this very often at all. But this guy was almost a literal tank. It felt good to lay waste to bad guys, especially when I did it in front of a group of terrified hostages, spraying enemy blood all over the walls . . . and the hostages. I didn't say I was tidy. After that charnel house, we got back on ship, where I reverted back to Gholnik and Screel. Seriously, this game was an absolute blast. I wanted to get into part 2 for Gameholecon, but it conflicts with my You Too Can Cthulhu Black Letter game, so choices had to be made.

Now, on to my two favorite characters in my Garycon 2026 Rogue's Gallery:

Arzach. Yes, THAT Arzach. I played in a Call of Cthulhu game based on one of my all-time favorite movies and magazines, Heavy Metal (or Metal Hurlant). Arzach is the creation of comic genius Moebius. No, he didn't appear directly in the movie, but he appeared many, many times in the pages of the magazine. Other characterd included Den, Barbarella, and Stern. It was a great romp through several universes/realities, all in the chase of the Locnar and accompanied by a great soundtrack that was, at times, too loud for us to talk, but I didn't even care. And why was this done in Call of Cthulhu? Go watch the movie. And pay attention. Say some names from the movie backwards and you'll figure it out.

My favorite: Mr. Edmund St Andrews, a Bachelor Fox, aesthetically-inclined, for Riverbank RPG. I was excited to try this game out before I ever played. It's a "cozy" RPG with little violence, but all kinds of complications one must negotiate, many of them based on the maze that was Edwardian English society. I fell in love with the game and I fell in love with Mr. Edmund St Andrews. After playing the game, I immediately bought it. I've only done this once before (with Vaesen). And I am registered to play it again at Gameholecon. I want to really learn this game, because I want to run it. I don't want to go into all the mechanics, but suffice it to say that no game will ever repeat itself, even if played with the exact same characters in exactly the same setting. There is a winsomeness to the system itself, which appeals to me a great deal. And being able to play an intelligent, socially-saavy, nature loving, race-car driving Fox who loves poetry - how do you top that? I very much look forward to the next time I play Riverbank. I strongly recommend it if you want a breath of fresh air, an escape from dungeon dust, decaying bodies, and terror. I can breathe playing this game. You can, too. 

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A Forest with its Mouth Open Wide & Other Stories

 

A Forest with its Mouth Open Wide & Other Stories by Adam S. Cantwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Full disclosure: Adam Cantwell and I are what was historically-termed "pen pals". Or at least we've written a few letters to each other. If you can't handle the fact that this review is likely biased by our correspondence, then maybe you should just bugger off. I like Adam. And I like his writing. There, I said it.

In my miserable berth I grew deathly ill. The cold and torpor drew what was left of me to my low-lying parts; here my pain and ennui sloshed and settled and was distilled. The whispering proximity of the lethal sea called these dregs down ever further, and day after day my spirit seeped through tar and pitch and blackly down.

My liquid remains decanted through desert voids of seawater. It was an alien medium, primal, its essence was not the tang that clings to the red flesh of salmon or the morning chill borne on the fog but the dead-cold and salt of bones and freezing stars. My nothing-substance popped and dispersed, particles radiant from the dumb core, shreds of lost desire given over to huge black currents.

This quote, from the opening story "Orphans on Granite Tides" should give you a notion of the solace and comfort you'll find within the pages of A Forest with its Mouth Open Wide & Other Stories, i.e., none. I've earlier reviewed this story (I have the original publication from Les Editions de L'Oubli (aka Mount Abraxas Press), though this is the revised text as it originally appeared in Bastards of the Absolute , which I have not read. I don't know what the exact revisions are, but this version seems a hint darker than the Mount Abraxas version. Maybe I'll ask him in my next letter. I seem to owe him one, especially since his last mailing was a short stack of vinyl records from his musical projects Spaceboy and Villains.

The second story, "Black Chroma," is set in what seems to be a post-apocalypse, though it may be the structure of the narrator's mind that is collapsing (this may be the case with many of the narrators in this volume), rather than civilization. Paranoia and agoraphobia combine to expose (him?) to the bright pinpoint lights of the cosmos, a nakedness only occulted by self-burial.

Profoundly existential, yet hopelessly defiant (I am reminded of one of my favorite poems, William Ernest Henley's Invictus ), "The Chamber in the Universe" examines monuments, devotion, power, hope, and death. The temple representing as empty vessel exposing the hollowness of existence, while being the instrument by which the common-builder nudges the cosmos, even a particle's-width; one of the most human of desires: to matter, even when nothing matters. To make one's mark forever in the void.

"The European Monster Part Two" is dark and obtuse, much like the philosophy of Emil Cioran, the inferred inspiration for the story (first published in a volume of stories dedicated to the Romanian philosopher). Here the narrator finds himself in a labyrinthine situation, becoming a part of a (political? criminal?) machine at the heart of which is the titular monster, perhaps a modern Minotaur.

"Torso in Shadow" puts the baffled and baffling narrator in the subways beneath NYC, which may or may not be disintegrating above. Surely it is convulsing, socially or physically. Amidst these convulsions, in the underground, the narrator meets a woman. Perhaps this is Adam and Eve witnessing the birthing pains of a new world. Difficult to tell. But the attempt must be made. An ouroboros of a story, eating itself.

Originally written for a tribute anthology to Borges, "The Bow, the Arm, the Arrow" echoes the Argentine writer's sometimes-journalistic style, but with a tonal nod to Millhauser, as well. The story reminds me of a long-form vlog I recently watched about the composer Penderecki (a favorite of mine), but with the narrator experimenting with literature, rather than music. Sometimes experiments go wrong.

The titular story in the volume actually appeared alongside one of my own stories in the Mount Abraxas anthology Frostsigils , an homage to Paysage d'Hiver. As one would expect, it is dark, downright Gothic, and one can feel the cold sink into one's bones while reading. It's all about atmosphere, and it delivers that in shadowed robes with the deep moaning toll of an immense black iron bell.

With "Vod the Wrecker," I again find myself as "TOC mates" with Adam in the Raphus Press anthology Ghost Trains. But where I treated the train in question as a haunting presence, here, Vod is the brooding master, a near-god, over the twisted metal entrails of what was once the most powerful force in America. Vod destroys, remakes, and rides the bones of the ur-train like a pyrrhic steed, into oblivion.


In the amber-filtered urine-gray aged-out green glass of insulators, crystallizing dumbly over centuries, he saw an enviable solitude and immobility. The enamel of insignia and livery, some burned to peacock craquelure; the bent-blue of sulking steel glazed over with a million dullnesses of black and charcoal.

Transformation of the individual and of the world are the subject of "The Oligomancer". Here a migrant child of an itinerant oil-platform worker watches the world turn inside out from a privileged (so to speak) observation point on the derelict platform. A slowly unfolding apocalypse gives indicators from the horizon about the collapse of the outside world, which can't help but affect his own inner world. Again, the line between psychic and physical reality is not only blurred, it is completely shattered.

And, finally, "The Hag, the Cutthroat, the Amputee" is the musing of a being who, like Charon of Greek myth, ferries the dead across to their final destination, particularly those whose demise is caused by war. He(?) is very adamant to note that he is not Charon, and his thoughts regarding the dead make it clear that he does not share the detached observations of his more famous counterpart.

Those are the stories and my skewed observations of them. You want objectivity? Good luck finding it in this universe. But I will end by deferring to one of the great nihilists of our age, Thomas Ligotti, who stated, quite correctly:

The stories of Adam Cantwell's . . . could be fairly equated with the works of Kafka or Borges if their prose were not so luxuriant and surprising at every turn.

I have nothing more to add.


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The Silver Surfer: Parable

 

The Silver Surfer #1 "Parable" Part 1 of 2 by Stan Lee and Moebius by Stan Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

[This review is for both volumes of the mini-series combined]

I've been a Silver Surfer stan (pun intended) since the early '70s when I first encountered the character on the news-stan(d) - okay, I'll stop.

I had spotted "Parable" when it was first published, but I was out of high school and trying to be "cool" by ignoring comics at the time. What an idiot I was. A few years later, I realized the error of my ways and got back into comics but had lost track of this mini-series until a few years ago. I'm not quite sure how that happened. Moebius is one of my favorite artists and The Silver Surfer is one of my favorite Marvel characters.

In this treatment, the art, as one would expect, is absolutely amazing. Moebius' Galactus, sans-crackle, would still warm Jack Kirby's heart, I would think. I wonder if anyone interviewed him about this miniseries before he passed away? One is quite curious what his thoughts would be. And Moebius' style lends itself to the sleek action sequences one would expect in such a tale.

But the action only catches the eye. It's the philosophy and psychology underneath it all that holds the reader's attention. The writing is not perfect, by any means - at times it sounds like it's trying too hard to be "wise" and "insightful," which lends a sort of hokeyness to some of the dialogue, sometimes to the point where it is downright painful. But if one can look beyond the treacle, there are some solid pearls of wisdom and insights into human psychology that would explain the current socio-political mess we are in. This miniseries was so prescient it could have been written today, this very hour, without skipping a beat. And I fear that it will always be applicable, no matter what happens in the political landscape. It is a parable that sees beyond its years, a sort of cosmic-action scripture, if you will. It is so accurate that it's scary. I'm afraid that Norrin Radd's near-nihilism is very, very close to a bigger truth, and we can't handle that truth.

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Protection & Property: Apotropaic Markings on Rural Andorran Buildings

 

Protection & Property: Apotropaic Markings on Rural Andorran Buildings by Martin Locker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Why, you might ask, would I read this book; a dry, academic monograph about carved markings on doors in rural Andorra? Well, because, reasons:

1. I love Martin Locker's fiction and I admire his brain, so I thought, why not?
2. My adopted ancestry (my father was adopted by a Basque immigrant married to a Swedish immigrant) is from the Pyrenees Mountains, straight west of Andorra.
3. I minored in historical archaeology as an undergrad, so I have some intellectual interest in the field. I *almost* went to graduate school for historical archaeology, but instead opted for African history.
4. I love supporting small presses.
5. Martin is a penpal of mine. So, forget about objectivity - alright, I'll try my best.

As one would expect with an archaeological monograph, this is not edge-of-the-seat reading. However, as a writer, it did spur some ideas that I've noted and will likely use or integrate into my fiction, as occasion arises. But outside of its utility, it's the principal of the thing that drives me.

I just recently celebrated a birthday. I am no longer young, though I don't really feel all that old, either. I suppose over five and a half decades treading on this planet qualifies one for "middle" age, maybe a shade over that. I am, however, "old skool". Yes, I can do technology - I use it all the time in my work, even including using AI to do some of the dirty work for me (crunching numbers, creating graphs, and collating results, for example - I'm a procurement manager for the North American division of a very large German company, if you must know). But in my personal life, on my own time, I have made a concerted effort to digitally minimize, simplify, and go analog whenever possible.

Part of that is nostalgia, I admit. I was a child of the '80s, so the internet and smart phones came about when I was an adult. Now, pardon me for sounding like an old man when I say I miss the simplicity of those days. "Things" were slower and less complex (whatever you think about the Large Hadron Collider shutdown. Less convenient, for sure, but us Gen-Xr's kind of pride ourselves on having done hard things and suffering some character-building cuts and bruises along the way.

What does this have to do with Locker's book? One thing: This book is a record of the last gasps of a dying life, that of rural peoples living in the mountains carving pentagrams and crosses, stars and flowers, into their doors and nailing Izard feet and eagle skulls to their entrances in order to avoid curses, witches, and otherwordly entities. Call it folk magic or superstition or what have you, there's something totally metal about having a pentagram carved in your door with an eagle skull nailed underneath it, I don't care how old you are!

So, after a long cataloging of some frankly boring stuff, the concluding chapter lays it all out: this is a record of a world that will quickly be lost as people replace old doors (some possibly dating back centuries) with new, modern doors. It's a snapshot of cultural time. And the older I get, the more valuable I find these things.

Indulge me and let me share an example. Back in the '80s, of course we had video game arcades. Yes, some of us had an Atari 2600 at home (who can forget Pitfall?), but for most, going to the arcade was the place to not only play a wide variety of games, but to meet friends and . . . deal drugs?

Yep. A lot of them. Dime bag for a roll of quarters, and everyone knew about it. You could tell who had something to sell because they were walking around with pockets absolutely full of rolls of quarters, I kid you not. There was an entire underground economy. Yeah, that dude doing edibles while playing on his Switch - his grandfather was doing that a loooong time ago. And when I tell people who didn't live in the 80s about that, they are, to a man (or woman), surprised. Those of us who hung out at the arcades and were a part of that economy? We know how it worked. And it worked. There was a brisk trade that kept both video arcades and dope dealers working. A closed-loop economy right under everyone's noses. I wish someone would do their PhD thesis in sociology and economics on the subject. Fascinating stuff and I saw it with my own two eyes. Heck, I was a participant. I do find it funny that the beginning of the War on Drugs (thanks, Nancy Reagan) and the end of the video arcade (deferring to home consoles) coincided so strongly. Correlation isn't causation, I get that, but what a strange tangling of timelines.

Fifty years from now, no one is going to know this fact, this thing that was such a part of many teenager's lives in the early- to mid-80s. Worth knowing? Maybe not. But that piece of cultural history will be lost in obscurity, overshadowed by the Cold War, Reaganomics, New Wave Music, Cabbage Patch Kids, and Princess Di.

At least Locker gives us something worthy of deeper study. This is the handbook for this historic-archaeological micro-niche. And that's something worth preserving.

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Edifice: A Graphic Novel

 

Edifice: A Graphic Novel by Andrzej Klimowski
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was drawn in by a blurb written by the Quay Brothers. While they are my favorite movie directors of all time, they . . . might not be the greatest of graphic novel aficionados. Yes, I'm well aware of their background in graphic design, and I am rather fond of their Black Drawings. But with this blurb on Klimowski's book, I think they might have jumped on the hyperbole train.

I liked Edifice but did not love it. I appreciate the attempts to impart meaning or to deconstruct meaning through a series of darkly surreal, if fairly plain, charcoal sketches interspersed with some limited dialogue. Perhaps if I took phenobarbitol and listened to Penderecki and Ligeti while I read, I might have been in a more receptive mindset. But without sensory enhancement (or suppression), I see mostly a neat little graphic novel with rather ordinary (I'm talking execution here, not subject matter) charcoal drawings and the occasional clever twist of perspective and/or chronology. In other words, it's no Cinema Panopticon, Quay praise aside.

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The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality

 

The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality by William Egginton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Anti-nomy: 1. a contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable; a paradox. 2. William Egginton's favorite word.

A work on logical brilliance requires a text that is logically brilliant. While most would agree that Jorge Luis Borges, Werner Heisenberg, and Immanuel Kant were among the most beautiful minds the human race has expressed, putting their works to the general public in a clear manner is a fool's quest. Or, at least I'm too foolish to try such a feat.

Egginton does. And while he excels in examining the biography of each of these thinkers, the explication of their insights becomes long-winded to the point of confusion. There is a reason the words "clear and concise" often appear together. Meandering about in such already-troubled waters as quantum physics, late-stage philosophy, and high-concept literature only causes paths to cross so many times that the reader can become lost. They recognize the path's they've already crossed, but approaching them from so many different angles in rapid succession is dizzying (for us dumb people).

Perhaps this is why I appreciate works such as Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid or Hierarchy Theory: A Vision, Vocabulary, and Epistemology so much. They are as long as they need to be. No longer. And while I admittedly do not fully grasp those works, I could always sense the thrust of their arguments - their beginning, progression, and goals - even if I didn't fully grasp the final product. There is a certain . . . pardon the pun . . rigor in these works that I found, not absent, but muddied in this book.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy reading the work. On the contrary, I greatly enjoyed the biographical sections on each of these men, in particular. I've always loved Borges' fiction, for example, but knowing what I know now (from reading this book) about his biography, I think I've found a kindred soul in many ways. I won't go into details because I don't want to impugn anyone I might inadvertently "expose" (past or present). Let's just say that when you're in a foxhole "together," you become friends fast, and Borges feels like a friend now.

The sections on Heisenberg and the Nazi question are also insightful about the human desire to live and survive under a regime that is so far out of the norm of human decency; the ways that one "makes do" and subverts such regimes by subversion and careful deflection. While never excusing facism or its adherents, Egginton provides a nuanced analysis of Heisenberg's choices as a scientist and a human vis-a-vis the Nazi regime.

And Kant is presented as a man on borrowed time performing a philosophical race against the clock before death inevitably takes him. While somewhat speculative, the author does an admirable job of getting inside the philosopher's head and heart, turning one man's quest for the ultimate answers to being into a bit of a thriller.

In essence, though, the thesis of the book can be boiled down to Heisenber's quote: "We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning". This is repeated in many ways throughout the book, but the essence remains the same. We are only as smart and observant as our observational tools. We do not see reality, we see our sight of reality. I am reminded of the argument that in order to prove there is or is not a God, one must see everything, but one must do it all at once, in all times and all places, in order to prove, once and for all, that there is or is not a God. In other words, one must become God to prove or disprove God.

And that, my friends, is an antinomy.


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