Entries feed for zunger

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-happiness-project/201512/determined-keep-your-2016-new-year-s-resolutions

Most of us have a list of things we’d like to do better — and very often, those things involve habits.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201512/narcissists-think-highly-themselves-mostly

A central aspect of narcissism is grandiosity. That is, narcissists tend to think highly of themselves. They tend to have a positive view of themselves compared to others.

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/17/syfy-childhoods-end-part-3-review/

http://www.tor.com/?p=199899

Here’s the problem: I didn’t really like (nor entirely understand) the ending of Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End when I first read it. So, it’s difficult to parse out my feelings about the third and final part of Syfy’s miniseries. Was it as frustrating to see the human race take a certain evolutionary path? Yes. Was it as emotionally earned? Ehhh.

Spoilers for Childhood’s End Part 3: “The Children.”

We pick up four years after Jennifer’s birth at the end of Part 2: She’s now a precocious child who has somehow managed to hide her creepy, uncanny-valley behavior from her parents—until all around the world, children suddenly start saying “Jennifer” with dead eyes and hands raised toward the sky. Their parents, the ones who enjoyed this post-Overlords golden age, are understandably freaked out. Clearly utopia erased the phrase “sins of the father,” because the parents seem utterly shocked that the Overlords are demanding something of their children in exchange for their carefree lives. Not least Jake and Amy, who immediately start packing and cart Jennifer and Tommy to New Athens, a community meant to emulate pre-Overlords life. And by that, they mean New York City. Seriously—the Greggsons step through “customs,” and there are honking yellow taxi cabs ready to drive them to their new lives. I know NYC is supposed to be the cultural capital of the world—and yes, there’s plenty of art and life in New Athens—but the comparison is rather heavy-handed.

Unfortunately, the sequences in New Athens take up so little of the total story that it almost would have been better to omit them. Not to keep harping on comparisons to the book, but that version of the colony actually sounded like a real social experiment, like a big middle finger to the Overlords and their sanitized utopia. Unlike the miniseries’ kumbaya “we have no immigration policy” promise, the New Athens of the book employs a rigorous battery of psychological tests to ensure that their new citizens will actually fit in and make beneficial contributions to the community. New Athens is intended to be a complete lifestyle change for the Greggsons, not a desperate escape from Jennifer’s Children of the Corn army of tots. Who, by the way, follow her even there.

Speaking of trips, Milo Rodricks has become even more obsessed with seeing the Overlords’ home planet. Maybe it’s because he’s observed how the children are so much fitter and freer than their parents; perhaps he continues to chafe at the Overlords’ benevolent but restrictive control. At any rate, he convinces his scientist girlfriend Rachel to stow him away with a menagerie of animals being sent to the alien world. The adaptation trades having Jan Rodricks hide in an airtight coffin inside a whale skeleton for Milo voluntarily allowing himself to be vacuum-sealed in the hold along with other animals (including, I noticed, a killer whale). It certainly makes for a more terrifying sequence on television, but the endgame is the same: He makes it to the Overlords’ planet, check. Gets to see that yes, it does look a lot like humans’ vision of hell, check. Meets the Overmind and discovers the children’s destiny to be subsumed into it, check.

Then turns back around and goes back to Earth, 80 years later… check. Except that while Milo had figured he’d get to see Rachel again, albeit at the end of her life, and meet his peers’ grandchildren, he hadn’t counted on humanity being nearly extinct by the time he returned.

To be honest, the way the book was laid out actually diverted me from guessing what the Overlords’ final plan for the human race was. When I discovered that the next generation of children after the Overlords’ arrival are telepathic and already drawn to the Overmind, and that they depart Earth while their parents die out within a generation… I was incredibly upset. I think because I always read the book from the perspective of the golden age generation; not that I have kids, but I could understand their frustration and helplessness. For all that the Overlords eliminate war and greed and bring about peace and prosperity, by keeping humans constrained to Earth, they take away their independence and treat them like children. Yet at the same time, the Overlords oversee the birth of a new generation and decide when humans are no longer able to procreate (like in that sad scene of the woman miscarrying her baby), then take those children. It leaves the golden age humans in an odd position; they’ve served their purpose and are “rewarded” with the ability to live out their remaining days, as not quite children and not quite adults.

Or, in the case of New Athens’ mayor Jerry Hallcross, they can trigger atomic bombs and obliterate humans’ attempt at independence. You get the impression that Jake and Amy, after watching Tommy and Jennifer literally slip through their fingers, are oddly relieved just to have one another again. It’s an interesting, ashamed selfishness that I would have liked to see depicted more consistently throughout the miniseries.

Or, in the case of Ricky Stormgren, they can die anyway, right around the same time the children merge with the Overmind. I see where Syfy was going with giving us Ricky and Ellie as an emotional anchor, but their storyline lacked depth. Mostly I felt awful for poor Ellie, eternally second-place to Ricky’s dead wife Annabelle. Yet she soldiers on, trying to woo him to her with silly photos of their present, while he keeps wanting Karellen to beam him up so he can stay stuck in the past in the imagined honeymoon hotel room. (Things started getting really uncomfortable when he was reliving pillow talk and sexytimes in his memory, then realized he was alone.) Credit to Ricky, he eventually realizes that he needs to let go of the past and the what-ifs to embrace his present. Too bad that by the time he tells Karellen to bury the memory room, he’s already close to death from the alien radiation. (Something I just considered—could his continued visits have sped up his deterioration?)

So, Ricky and Ellie spend their final moments staring up at the stars, guessing at what the constellations mean, because that’s as far as humans will ever get. It’s a sobering visual, and the kind of small, rare, key moment this miniseries has brought.

It’s actually too bad that Ricky’s closure was more compelling than Milo’s ultimate fate as Earth’s first interstellar traveler and its last human. (If we don’t count Jennifer, which we can’t, really, she’s not human anymore.) Believe me, I adore time-dilation stories—I’ve written about The Sparrow at length, and I cried unabashedly at Interstellar—but by the end of Milo’s story, I couldn’t sum up enough emotion to really care. It’s certainly an interesting commentary on complacency; Milo could have been content enough on Earth with Rachel and studying the evolved children and their burgeoning powers, but he wanted more. And yes, he sealed his fate more than he ever realized when he got on that Overlord ship.

But by the time he was sitting on a couch in a dystopian-looking city, narrating Earth’s final moments to an Overlord sphere, I felt much like Karellen must have: distantly sad for these characters, but mostly watching to make them feel better. And, sure, we can leave that bit of music just hovering in space over Earth’s smithereens so that travelers can appreciate it, if you really want. Mostly I just want to jet out of this solar system by now.

“The sun must set on every day,” Karellen tells Ricky early on, and so it is with this Syfy miniseries. Thank the Overmind.

Natalie Zutter is ready to watch The Expanse and The Magicians now, and has higher hopes for both. Read more of her work on Twitter and elsewhere.

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/17/announcing-a-new-adam-christopher-novella/

http://www.tor.com/?p=199904

The world of Adam Christopher’s Made to Kill, the first book in the L.A. Trilogy, blends lots of elements we love: wise-cracking robots, Soviet spies and Hollywood scandal, and pure fun pulp. As John Scalzi puts it: “Robot noir in 60s Los Angeles? You had me at ‘Hello’.”

And hardboiled robot detective Raymond Electromatic has a very Tor.com origin story: the idea for the L.A. Trilogy came about when Adam took our Pop Quiz and dreamed up a secret treasure trove of manuscripts by Raymond Chandler featuring a P.I. more metal than man. Adam went on to publish one of these “lost” Chandler stories, Brisk Money, on Tor.com last summer, and Made to Kill followed soon after.

We’re delighted to announce that Tor.com will be publishing an all-new Ray Electromatic novella in ebook, print and audio editions.

Adam said, “I’m delighted to be bringing the The Ray Electromatic Mysteries to Tor.com—the novella is such a classic form, I’m sure Chandler himself would approve!”

Acquiring editor Lee Harris said, “I can’t wait to read this new novella. Brisk Money and Made to Kill are so much fun. I could read as much of this as Adam wants to write!”

Miriam Weinberg is the co-acquiring editor. Standard Hollywood Depravity will be published in the fall of 2016.

http://www.tor.com/sweepstakes/the-drowning-eyes-sweepstakes/

http://www.tor.com/?post_type=sweepstakes&p=199929

We want to send you a galley copy of Emily Foster’s The Drowning Eyes, available January 12th from Tor.com Publishing!

When the Dragon Ships began to tear through the trade lanes and ravage coastal towns, the hopes of the archipelago turned to the Windspeakers on Tash. The solemn weather-shapers with their eyes of stone can steal the breeze from raiders’ sails and save the islands from their wrath. But the Windspeakers’ magic has been stolen, and only their young apprentice Shina can bring their power back and save her people.

Tazir has seen more than her share of storms and pirates in her many years as captain, and she’s not much interested in getting involved in the affairs of Windspeakers and Dragon Ships. Shina’s caught her eye, but that might not be enough to convince the grizzled sailor to risk her ship, her crew, and her neck.

Comment in the post to enter!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase does not improve your chances of winning. Sweepstakes open to legal residents of 50 United States and D.C., and Canada (excluding Quebec). To enter, comment on this post beginning at 12:30 PM Eastern Time (ET) on December 17th. Sweepstakes ends at 12:00 PM ET on December 21st. Void outside the United States and Canada and where prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules here. Sponsor: Tor.com, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/17/a-read-of-ice-and-fire-the-rogue-prince/

http://www.tor.com/?p=199907

Welcome back to A Read of Ice and Fire! Please join me as I read and react, for the very first time, to George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire.

Today’s entry is “The Rogue Prince, or, A King’s Brother: a consideration of the early life, adventures, misdeeds, and marriages of Prince Daemon Targaryen, as set down by Archmaester Gyldayn of the Citadel of Oldtown”, which appears in the anthology Rogues, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.

Previous entries of the Read are located in the Index. The only spoilers in the post itself will be for the actual section covered and for the material covered previous to this post. As for the comments, please note that the Powers That Be have provided you a lovely spoiler thread here on Tor.com. Any spoileriffic discussion should go there, where I won’t see it. Non-spoiler comments go below, in the comments to the post itself.

And now, the post!

 

The Rogue Prince

What Happens

Over the centuries, House Targaryen has produced both great men and monsters. Prince Daemon was both.

After the loss of his son and heir Baelon, Old King Jaehaerys I made Ser Otto Hightower his Hand, and Otto’s daughter Alicent became the ailing king’s constant companion, to where he sometimes mistook her for one of his own daughters. When he died, his grandson Viserys succeeded him. Viserys had only one living child, his daughter Rhaenyra, upon whom he doted. Viserys I’s reign was peaceful and happy, and his daughter was adored by all the kingdom, becoming a dragonrider at the age of seven. The only fly in the ointment was Viserys’s wild younger brother, Daemon.

Daemon had been married young to the Lady of Runestone, but could not stand her, referring to her as “the bronze bitch” and finding any excuse to be gone from Arryn’s Vale. Viserys put him on the small council, but Daemon was bored by governance, and instead was soon put in charge of the ramshackle City Watch, which he reformed and outfitted with their now-iconic gold cloaks. His methods of law enforcement were successful but often excessively brutal, and he gained a notorious reputation as a gambler and lecher in the low neighborhoods of the capital.

Though Viserys refused to acknowledge Daemon as his heir, he was tolerant of his brother’s excesses, and Princess Rhaenyra adored him. Ser Otto Hightower, however, disliked him intensely, and wrote to his brother that Daemon would be “another Maegor the Cruel” if allowed to take the throne. Otto wanted Rhaenyra to succeed her father, but primogeniture precedent indicated that Daemon’s claim exceeded Rhaenyra’s. In the same year that Queen Aemma became pregnant, Ser Criston Cole was appointed to the Kingsguard, and Rhaenyra was smitten with him, and asked that he be made her personal bodyguard. Also at this time Ser Harwin Strong, called “Breakbones” joined the court from his father’s hold at Harrenhal.

Queen Aemma and her child both died at the birthing. When Viserys heard that Daemon had been jesting about it in a brothel that same day, he was livid, and soon after formally declared Rhaenyra his heir. Furious, Daemon left court and went to Dragonstone with his concubine Mysaria. When she became pregnant, Daemon gave her a dragon’s egg, but Viserys commanded that he take it back and go home to his wife. Daemon did so, sending Mysaria back to Lys, but she lost the child during a storm at sea, and Daemon’s heart hardened against Viserys thereafter.

Viserys was urged to remarry, but rejected the idea of wedding Lady Laena Velaryon, who was only twelve, and announced that he would marry Lady Alicent Hightower instead. Lord Corlys Velaryon was displeased at his daughter being scorned by the royal family just as his son and wife had been in earlier years. Lord Corlys skipped the wedding to meet with Prince Daemon instead, and they concocted a scheme to annex the Stepstones from the Triarchy, who had been demanding more and more exorbitant fees for ships to pass them in the Narrow Sea. Viserys supported their efforts from afar, counting it well worth it to keep his brother out of mischief.

Alicent birthed Aegon, Helaena and Aemond in quick succession, but Rhaenyra kept her favored position despite Alicent and her father Otto’s objections. Eventually Viserys stripped Otto of his position as Hand and sent him away to shut him up. Peace was maintained on the surface between the queen’s advocates and the princesses, but some observed that the dragons of each group tended to snap and spit flame at each other. At the infamous tourney where the “greens” and “blacks” earned their names, Daemon appeared, styling himself “King of the Narrow Sea”, but he immediately knelt to his brother, who welcomed him home.

Daemon soon returned to his debauching ways, but also struck up a great friendship with his niece Rhaenyra. There are conflicting accounts as to how he fell out again with the King. Septon Eustace wrote that Daemon had seduced Rhaenyra, and that Viserys sent Daemon away after she begged to marry Daemon despite him already being married. The court fool Mushroom, on the other hand, claims that Daemon gave Rhaenyra extensive “lessons” in the sexual arts in order that she might seduce Ser Criston Cole, but that Cole was horrified by her advances. Whichever is true, Viserys exiled Daemon, and he returned to the Stepstones. Ser Criston Cole became Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

Princess Rhaenyra’s hand in marriage had long been hotly contested. Viserys rejected Alicent’s idea to wed her to Aegon, and instead settled on Laenor Velaryon, despite the open secret that Laenor preferred his “handsome squires” over women. Rhaenyra objected violently until Viserys threatened to remove her from the succession, upon which she agreed to the marriage. However, according to Mushroom, she then made one last attempt to seduce Ser Criston Cole, and when he rejected her again, went to the bed of Ser Harwin Strong instead. True or not, thenceforth Ser Cole was the princess’s most bitter enemy.

Rhaenyra and Laenor’s wedding was attended by both Ser Harwin and Laenor’s favorite Ser Joffrey Lonmouth. At the tourney, Ser Criston Cole made a point of maiming both knights severely, and Ser Joffrey died of his wounds soon after. Laenor returned to Driftmark thereafter and acquired a new favorite (Ser Qarl Correy), only returning sporadically, and Ser Harwin remained at court with the princess. Some doubted that the marriage was ever consummated, though Mushroom claimed that the princess enjoyed watching Laenor and Qarl together, even as he also claimed she left Laenor on those nights to be with Harwin instead.

Rhaenyra soon gave birth to Jacaerys, officially Laenor’s son, though the boy looked nothing like him. Viserys ordered that Jacaerys and Alicent’s youngest son Daeron should share a wet nurse in hopes of fostering a bond between them, but this would prove to be in vain. A year later Daemon’s long-estranged wife died in a fall from her horse; Daemon tried to secure her lands and fortune, but was informed in no uncertain terms that he was not welcome in the Vale. Daemon then went to Driftmark, where he met and supposedly fell in love with Lady Laena Velaryon, now twenty-two years old. He killed her betrothed in a duel, and wed her two weeks later. Laena and Daemon traveled extensively abroad thereafter to avoid Viserys’s wrath.

Rhaenyra meanwhile gave birth to her second son Lucerys, who also looked more like Ser Harwin Strong than his official father. Alicent’s cutting commentary on Rhaenyra’s sons’ lack of resemblance to their father deepened the animosity between the women, and Rhaenyra soon began residing at Dragonstone full time. In Pentos, Laena gave birth to twin daughters, named Baela and Rhaena, and Viserys once again reconciled with Daemon and allowed them back at court. Rhaenyra later had a third son, named after Laenor’s friend Ser Joffrey, who once again looked nothing like a Targaryen. Nevertheless Viserys gave each of her sons dragon eggs, and told Jacaerys that the throne would be his one day. Alicent’s sons resented Rhaenyra’s sons for ousting them from the succession, and their enforced closeness only heightened their enmity.

Rhaenyra and Laena, however, became great friends, and Rhaenyra soon announced her eldest sons’ betrothal to Laena and Daemon’s twin daughters. However, soon after Laena died in childbirth, taking the child with her, and it was said that Rhaenyra was there to comfort Daemon in his grief. Soon after, Laenor Velaryon died, stabbed to death by his own favorite Ser Qarl Correy, who disappeared thereafter. Septon Eustace claims jealousy as the motive, but Mushroom insisted that Prince Daemon had in fact paid Correy to murder Laenor.

After Laenor’s funeral at Driftmark, Prince Aemond, then still dragonless and smarting about it, snuck out to claim Laena’s dragon Vhagar for himself. He succeeded despite Joffrey Velaryon’s attempt to stop him, but afterward all three of Rhaenyra’s sons accosted him, and Lucerys put out Aemond’s eye when he called them “Strongs”. Queen Alicent wanted Lucerys’s eye put out in return, but Viserys only commanded that anyone referring to Rhaenyra’s sons as “Strongs” again would lose their tongues. He took his sons back to King’s Landing, while Rhaenyra and her children remained at Dragonstone. Viserys sent Ser Harwin Strong back to Harrenhal, which according to Mushroom thrilled Prince Daemon, who now had unfettered access to his niece.

After his return to Harrenhal, both Harwin and his father Lyonel died in a fire that many believed was not an accident, though no one could agree on who was behind it; the most disturbing possibility was that it was King Viserys himself. Lyonel had been Viserys’s Hand, so after consideration the king reinstated Ser Otto Hightower to the office. At the same time came the news that Rhaenyra had wedded her uncle Daemon in secret, and soon after she gave birth to a son who actually looked like a Targaryen. She named him Aegon, which Alicent took (rightly) as a slight to her own son Aegon (now the Elder). Rhaenyra had another son by Daemon, named Viserys, the same year Aegon the Elder wedded his sister Helaena, who shortly thereafter had twins named Jaehaerys and Jaehaera, who showed signs of birth defects. Later Helaena had a son, Maelor.

Meanwhile Ser Vaemond Velaryon was contesting Rhaenyra’s sons’ claim to the Velaryon lands and title on the grounds that they were really Strongs, whereupon she had Daemon remove Vaemond’s head and feed him to her dragon. Vaemond’s brothers went to King’s Landing to protest, and Viserys had their tongues removed as he had promised. Viserys wounded himself on the throne, though, and was much weakened. Alicent and Rhaenyra et al affected a reconciliation for his benefit, but things turned sour once the king had left, and the princess and her family left for Dragonstone again. Viserys’s health failed rapidly thereafter, and in the year 129 AC he went to sleep and never awoke.

The tale of Prince Daemon Targaryen’s bold deeds, black crimes, and heroic death in the carnage that followed are well known to all, so we shall end our story here.

After this the storm broke, and the dragons danced and died.

Commentary

Ah, so this is basically a prequel to “The Princess and the Queen” (and just when I thought I was done typing the name “Rhaenyra”, too). I see now why some people were contending that I should read this story first.

But, I did not, and honestly I feel better about following publication order anyway (Rogues was published a year later than Dangerous Women), so it is what it is. And having read TPATQ first certainly made this story easier to follow – if rather lacking in suspense.

What’s interesting to me is that it purports to be a study of Prince Daemon’s life leading up to the Dance of Dragons conflict, but that’s really only true of the first half or so of the story. The second half is much more concerned with the Targaryens overall, and the events leading up to the Dance, and Daemon himself seems to fall into the background of the account, at least in terms of being the focus of most of the events that occur.

Honestly, I’d have to say that my overall impression of this story is that it is a failure.

It would have been fine if this narrative had (a) been incorporated into TPATQ in the first place, or (b) taken a more personal, character POV tack, to contrast with the distanced historical account of TPATQ. But TRP did neither of those things, instead following the exact same format as the earlier story, but with none of TPATQ’s dramatic tension, owing to the fact that the audience already knows exactly where its events will end up leading.

Granted, the effort to introduce tension by presenting conflicting accounts of events was interesting in the abstract, and certainly capable of generating discussion (like, was Mushroom really the only one who dared to tell it like it was, or was he just deeply perverted and creepy in addition to having, apparently, the biggest mouth in Westeros?), but I would have been far more interested in getting Daemon’s actual point of view (or anyone’s point of view, really) than in hearing, yet again, a third-to-fourth-hand account of what Archmaester Gyldayn thinks we ought to know about things.

I dunno, but if I kind of thought this format was cheating a little in TPATQ, I definitely think it’s cheating here. Especially since it didn’t really even seem to stick to its thesis (i.e. an in-depth look at Prince Daemon). I mean, we learn a little bit more about him than what we got from TPATQ, I guess, but nothing that we needed to have an entirely separate story for, in my opinion. I would have wanted an insight into his character, but at such a remove and with so much unreliability in the narrator, that was basically not possible, at least not in my opinion.

Was Daemon both a monster and a great man? I think that he was. But I also think that both assessments hinge much more upon things he did in TPATQ than anything he did here, so again, why have this story at all?

Which isn’t to say there was nothing interesting in the story whatsoever. It’s an interesting moral cross-section, for instance, that Viserys was furious at Daemon for sleeping with Rhaenyra – not because she was his niece, but because he was married to another woman. I mean, I’ve known this about the Targaryens long since, obviously, but it’s still hilarious to me that incest is just fine but OMG adultery is beyond the pale!

(Well, okay, the offense is probably not even so much “adultery” as it is “messing up the lines of succession”, which in a way I can even be sympathetic about. I mean, if you already have to deal with charting sisters marrying brothers and uncles and aunts marrying nieces and nephews on a family tree, coming down on out-of-wedlock bastards is probably just more of an effort to avoid utter genealogical confusion than anything else. Though if you ask me that ship sailed ages ago. I mean, were Daemon’s daughters by Laena still supposed to marry Rhaenyra’s sons by allegedly-Laenor after Daemon and Rhaenyra got married?? Because if so, every genealogist in the Western world just threw down their pens and stormed off for a drink, and they don’t even know why. Good Lord.)

Of course, I have my own moral cross-section to deal with, since in my opinion the only thing wrong with Laenor’s preference for men was that he should have been left free to pursue it, rather than being forced into a marriage with someone whom he could never feel more than platonic affection for (unless you believe Mushroom’s tales of threesomes, of course, but even then his overall preference for his own gender is clear). But obviously that does not correspond with the mores of the time.

Although, it should be noted, the historical account barely even bothers to be euphemistic about Laenor’s sexual orientation, so it seems that in Westeros (at least at the time), homosexual inclinations seemed to be considered more of an embarrassing inconvenience than an insupportable abomination. Which is better than nothing, I suppose.

I also had a moment of wtf-ery when the story contended that Rhaenyra’s sons – who were six, five, and three (!!) respectively – successfully sliced up ten-year-old Aemond. Because seriously, has Martin ever seen a five or six-year-old stood up next to a ten-year-old? I mean, forget about the apparently deeply precocious and robust toddler Joffrey carrying out ambushing schemes and being all “You stay away from her!” when most kids that age can barely string a sentence together or run in a straight line, I’m really not buying that a five and six-year-old would not have gotten the tar beaten out of them by a kid twice their age (and height, and weight, and muscular/coordination development). Yes, they’ve all had arms training, I don’t care, that is completely ridiculous in my book.

But then, it’s been consistently established that Martin really does not have an accurate picture of childhood developmental stages across the board (and at this point I must assume he’s deliberately maintaining that ignorance for continuity reasons), so I guess that’s not all that surprising, but still. Sheesh.

In much more random notes:

(Lady Laena herself seemed untroubled. “Her ladyship shows far more interest in flying than in boys,” her maester observed.)

Hah. Yeah, when I was twelve, dragons would have won over boys by a landslide in holding my interest.

…Actually that might still be true. I mean, I can’t say for sure, obviously, but dragons, y’all. C’mon.

And:

(Amongst those thus enslaved was Lady Johanna Swann, a fifteen-year-old niece of the Lord of Stonehelm. When her infamously niggardly uncle refused to pay the ransom, she was sold to a pillow house, where she rose to become the celebrated courtesan known as the Black Swan, and ruler of Lys in all but name. Alas, her tale, however fascinating, has no bearing upon our present history.)

But let it be noted for the record that I totally want to hear that tale. I probably would have been a lot more interested in that tale than I was in this one.

So, yeah, I was not terribly impressed by this one, y’all. The Maester’s Cliff Notes conceit worked well enough the first time, but I feel like it should have remained a one-trick pony. Which is maybe a bit of a sour note to go on hiatus with, but what can you do.

 

And thus ends, for the nonce, The Read of Ice and Fire!

Which is pretty wacky. I haven’t been at this nearly as long as I have the WOT Reread, but it’s been nearly five years, holy smokes, so it ain’t nothing to sneeze at, either.

A lot of you have been asking what is next for me and the Read, other than the obvious answer of “wait until the next book comes out.” Some people have suggested that I should recap the HBO series, or cover The World of Ice and Fire companion book, or even do a Reread of the Read.

All of which are good ideas (even if the idea of doing a Reread of the entire series kind of makes my head feel like it might explode), but as I said earlier, I think it is a good idea for me to take a break from all things ASOIAF, at least until the head explode-y feelings die down a bit.

So the question of “what next?” will be tabled for the moment. I know, my darlings, but trust me, this is for the best.

I do want to take a moment, though, to say a sincere and heartfelt Thank You to everyone who has come along on this crazy long-ass ride with me. Even when I wasn’t enjoying it, I still got to enjoy that y’all were enjoying me not enjoying it, and that made it… uh, enjoyable, even when it wasn’t.

I swear that sentence made sense in my head.

But nevertheless! My point is, I have enjoyed sharing this experience with you, very much, and I look forward to whatever way we end up continuing to share it in the future. Y’all are all rock stars. Thank you.

---

And Happy Holidays, and Happy 2016! Mwah, my dears, be well. Watch this space, and cheers!

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/17/charlie-jane-anders-all-the-birds-in-the-sky-tedx-talk/

http://www.tor.com/?p=199936

“I am unflinching optimist. I’m also convinced that awful things are going to happen, and everything is going to suck,” author and io9 cofounder Charlie Jane Anders begins her recent TEDx Talk at Harvard College.

In “The Paranoid Optimist,” Anders discusses how both her work and writing seeks to unravel such tangled contradictions: her dueling fears and hopes about the future; the man who can see the future falling in love with the woman who can see multiple futures in her Tor.com story Six Months, Three Days; and the struggle between science and nature in her forthcoming book, All the Birds in the Sky.

But “science versus nature” is actually a false dichotomy, Anders argues. If we’re going to make it through the next hundred years, she says, we’ll have to open our minds to most dichotomies—especially those where both factors pave the way for progress—and use SFF for problem-solving. Watch the entire TEDx Talk:

All the Birds in the Sky is available January 26.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scotusblog/pFXs/~3/q2-M93_keIo/

http://www.scotusblog.com/?p=236147

John Elwood reviews Monday’s relisted cases, with profuse apologies to Louis Armstrong and all readers with even a modicum of taste. Cue music.

I see grants, denials
and relists too.
They’re on the docket
for me and you.
And I think to myself,
what a wonderful Court.

I see a grant for Bryant,
with no relist.
That’s about as rare
as a Steph Curry miss.
And I think to myself
what a wonderful Court.

The joy of the lawyers,
for Birchfield and Bernard.
Is also on the faces
of petitioner in Beylund.
I see Sherriff’s and Gillie’s counsel
saying “how do you do.”
They’re really saying “I’ll beat you.”

I hear Caetano (and Yee) crying,
“will I ever grow?”
Will there be grants for Wearry (and Murr)?
I do not know.
And I think to myself
what a wonderful Court.
Yes I think to myself
what a wonderful Court.

I guess I never realized how short that song was. We still have a lot to cover. Bing, will you tell us about the new relists this week?

I’m dreaming of the new relists,
just like the ones that used to reign.
With False Claims Act bliss
and lawyers wish
to post pro-Israel ads on some train.

I’m dreaming of AT&T v. Heath
with every federal form I write.
If the phone company wins this fight
you’ll have to plead a (specific) false claim to be right.

I’m dreaming of AFDI against the T
That awkward caption kills my mood.
Meanwhile in prison
Ms. Brown won’t listen
to Ben-Levi studying the Talmud.

I’m dreaming of the new relists
With every Relist Watch I write.
May you have paying clients on your hands
and may all your relists become grants.

*****************************************************

Okay, I’m told we can’t get away with just singing to you and have to actually discuss this week’s relists. We’ll be brief and let you get back to plotting your white elephant gift strategy.

The Justices must be aglow with the non-sectarian spirit of the season, because they’ve been handing out gifts left and right. Birchfield v. North Dakota, 14-1468, and its alliterative pals, Bernard v. Minnesota, 14-1470, and Beylund v. Levi, 14-1507, were all granted after one relist and consolidated for argument. This trio with brio will resolve whether states may make it a crime to refuse a warrantless breathalyzer test. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co., 15-290, also was granted following a single relist. That case involves the reviewability of the decision of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that a parcel of land contains “waters of the United States,” making it subject to the Clean Water Act. Unfortunately, the grant in this case means that nerd-heartthrob Kent Recycling Services, LLC v. United States Army Corps of Engineers, 14-493, the rare relisted motion for rehearing, now takes a place at the kids’ (aka holds) table.

The last one-time relist to get a grant was Ross v. Blake, 15-339, which asks whether a prisoner who thought he exhausted his administrative remedies under the Prison Litigation Reform Act can be excused from his obligation to actually do so. Sounds like respondents’ counsel have their work cut out for them. Meanwhile, Sheriff v. Gillie, 15-338, was granted after a whopping two relists. It asks whether outside “special counsel” hired by the state to collect debts are state officers under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and whether it is misleading for them to use attorney general letterhead to convey that they are collecting debts owed to the state on behalf of the state’s AG.

If you needed any further proof that the Justices are just trolling us, you need look no further than United States v. Bryant, 15-420. In a world of Friday grants in relisted cases, this case was the rare Monday grant without a relist, just to screw with all the people who began the week saying (reasonably enough), “no additional grants are expected.” The case asks whether the use of uncounseled misdemeanor convictions in tribal courts count towards a federal crime with a predicate-offense element. This is the second consecutive year that the Court granted a single virgin case during the last conference in December. In this instance, the Solicitor General’s involvement may have reassured the Court that no vehicle issues would pop up, making the quality-check relist unnecessary; last year, the case was just incredibly straightforward.

Our relist champions will be leaving us. White v. Wheeler, 14-1372, won a summary reversal, with the Court giving the Sixth Circuit yet another (unwanted) notch in its belt by holding that a federal court must be deferential and avoid second-guessing a state court regarding the removal of a juror in a capital murder trial. No such luck for petitioner in its companion case, Wheeler v. White, 14-10376, in which a prisoner argued that the Sixth Circuit erred regarding certain evidentiary matters; cert. was denied in that case without comment.

The only other denied relist was the once-relisted City of Los Angeles v. Contreras, 15-58, which asked whether a police officer who used deadly force to prevent a suspect’s escape was entitled to qualified immunity.

Our remaining returning relists will be sticking around for the holidays. Or at least it appears they will: As this is being posted, the Court has not yet updated its online docket, so we are inferring a relist from the absence of further action. Caetano v. Massachusetts, 14-10078, earned its fourth relist. However, the record only arrived on Monday, so does that (presumed) relist even count? The case asks whether the Second Amendment includes stun guns in its definition of “arms.” Taylor v. Yee, 15-169, which aims to get you all your stuff back by challenging the constitutionality of the California Unclaimed Property Law, was also relisted for a fourth time. Wearry v. Cain, 14-10008, a capital case out of Louisiana, is our third fourth relist. It asks (1) whether the Louisiana courts erred in failing to find that the state’s failure to disclose exculpatory evidence violated its obligation under Brady v. Maryland and that this failure prejudiced the defense; and (2) whether the Louisiana courts erred in failing to find that Michael Wearry’s attorney provided ineffective representation at the guilt phase of trial under Strickland v. Washington. Trailing just behind these new leaders is Murr v. Wisconsin, 15-214, which picked up its third relist. This case asks whether two legally distinct but commonly owned contiguous parcels can be combined for regulatory takings analysis under Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City’s “parcel as a whole” concept.

Now let’s move on to our newcomers. If you paid close attention to our special guest Bing, you already know the three cases, although we caution that it’s even harder to discern the status of newcomers from an unchanged docket than it is with cases that have been relisted before. American Freedom Defense Initiative v. Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, 15-141, wins the award for longest caption. It involves an attempt by AFDI to post ads on the advertising space of the Boston area’s transit system. The ads consist of such warm holiday greetings as, “[i]n any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Defeat violent jihad. Support Israel.” (Actually a modification of an Ayn Rand quote.) The MBTA (which is way less pronounceable than AFDI) rejected the ads even though it had previously run pro-Palestinian ads. A district court denied AFDI’s petition for a preliminary injunction, and a divided First Circuit affirmed. The AFDI’s petition asks (1) whether the MBTA created a public forum by accepting ads and thus violated the First Amendment by rejecting AFDI’s ad based on content and (2) whether the MBTA’s rejection was an unconstitutional viewpoint-based restriction of speech.

AT&T, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Heath, 15-363, seeks to be the second False Claims Act case granted this Term. The relator in this case alleged that AT&T failed to offer schools and libraries participating in the federally established E-Rate Program the “lowest corresponding price” for services as required by federal regulations. The complaint claimed that for over a decade, every one of the government forms AT&T and its subsidiaries submitted annually certifying compliance (and every corresponding form recipients of AT&T’s services submitted) was false. AT&T moved to dismiss, arguing that the relator failed to comply with Rule 9(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure by not stating specific facts regarding at least one allegedly false or fraudulent claim submitted to the government. The D.C. Circuit rejected that argument, joining (by petitioner’s count) six other circuits in holding that a complaint that describes a scheme to submit false claims paired with reliable indicia that lead to a strong inference that claims were actually submitted satisfies Rule 9(b). AT&T argues that four other circuits have required pleading details of at least one claim alleged to be false or fraudulent.

The final gift under the relist tree is a handwritten pro se petition, Ben-Levi v. Brown, 14-10186. Israel Ben-Levi (also known to as Danny L. Loren) is incarcerated in the North Carolina prison system – if his petition is any indication, for an aggravated felony involving horrible penmanship. He asked to use a quiet room in which to conduct a “Jewish bible study” with two other inmates. Prison chaplain Betty Brown researched the practices of the Jewish faith and consulted with a rabbi, then denied Ben-Levi’s request on the grounds that, according to the practices of the Jewish faith, study of the Talmud requires a quorum of ten adult Jewish males (a minyan) or a qualified teacher (a rabbi). Ben-Levi sued under Section 1983 and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, alleging a violation of his free-exercise rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The district court denied his claims and the Fourth Circuit affirmed without even asking North Carolina to file a reply. Over the summer, the Justices reviewed Ben-Levi’s petition and, after weeping softly about the calligraphic atrocity it represented, ordered North Carolina to respond. It’s a shame Chaplain Akbar was dismissed from this case early on: He surely would have warned Ms. Brown that the Court would want a second look. (Did you really think we could pass up a Star Wars reference this week?)

That’s all we got. Enjoy your holiday traditions and some well-deserved time off. We will see you in 2016.

Thanks to Stephen Gilstrap for compiling the list and Dmitry Slavin for annoying his neighbors by singing out loud in his office while drafting this update.

_________________________

(relisted after the November 13, November 24, December 4, and December 11 Conferences)

 

(relisted after the November 13, November 24, December 4, and December 11 Conferences)

 

(relisted after the November 13, November 24, December 4, and December 11 Conferences)

 

(relisted after the November 24, December 4, and December 11 Conferences)

 

(relisted after the December 11 Conference)

 

(relisted after the December 11 Conference)

 

(relisted after the December 11 Conference)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/marginalrevolution/feed/~3/gM_B97UTnbs/thursday-assorted-links-40.html

http://marginalrevolution.com/?p=67297

1. Swap your airline seat? (speculative)

2. Economists aren’t even consistent in their monetary policy mistakes.

3. “The author is a first-year in the Columbia/Jewish Theological Seminary joint program with prospective majors in ethnicity and race studies and Jewish history. Originally from China, she grew up between her hometown and boarding schools, and is of mixed Chinese and Jewish heritage.”

4. Tibet’s Potemkin economy.  And what happened this year in the real Washington, D.C., if there is such a thing.

5. Do heads of government age more quickly?

6.  And from another segment of our world, “Hotz plans to best the Mobileye technology with off-the-shelf electronics.”

7. The new NYT column on academic press books, this time on inequality.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dream-factory/201512/mirror-neurons-and-the-multiplicity-dream-figures

Your dreaming mind is responsible for creating and juggling several dream characters at once, attributing distinct feelings, voices, and actions to each. How is this possible?

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/17/words-of-radiance-reread-chapter-64/

http://www.tor.com/?p=199901

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, Shallan played hide-and-seek with the Ghostbloods and a Herald. This week, she hides from Amaram while Kaladin hides from depression. It’s a cheerful sort of chapter.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

 

 

Chapter 64: Treasures

Point of View: Kaladin, Shallan
Setting: Kholin warcamp: prison & monastery
Symbology: Pattern, Ishar, Shalash

 

IN WHICH Kaladin is giving in to depression, as he finds himself slipping into the mode of not eating, not caring, not thinking; desperate, he reaches for Stormlight, praying to not go back into the darkness; the Light resists, but finally comes to him; Sylphrena is worried that he’s becoming darker; he says it’s only the cage; she begins to argue, but then goes off to giggle at a little cremling, while Kaladin thinks how childlike she is. Meanwhile Shallan, trying not to panic as Amaram approaches Talenel’s cell, wraps herself in Stormlight, turns herself black, and hides in the darkest corner; as always, she’s angry at the sight of him, but reason tempers her anger; Amaram speaks to Taln, who merely continues his repetiti0ns; Bordin reiterates his earlier report of a cache of Shardblades, which Amaram assumes to be the Honorblades; he tries to get Taln to speak of them again, but his litany remains the same; Bordin acts nervous, and Amaram finally agrees to leave, to seek out this treasure of Blades; Shallan finally breathes, feeling that she is very much out of her depth, but replaces her Veil illusion and returns to Iyatil; as she prepares to leave, she slips Iyatil the paper transcribing Taln’s ramblings and promises a full report later; Iyatil questions who she really is, but Shallan, though thrilled by the respect shown her, says only that she seeks the truth; later, having sent the promised report, she receives a message from Mraize, informing her of her change of status and welcoming her to the Ghostbloods.

 

Quote of the Week

Shallan breathed out a long, deep breath, slumping down to the floor. “It’s like that sea of spheres.”

“Shallan?” Pattern asked.

“I’ve fallen in,” she said, “and it isn’t that the water is over my head— it’s that the stuff isn’t even water, and I have no idea how to swim in it.”

That is an excellent simile. Oh, what a feeling…

 

Commentary

First, a quick housekeeping note. Since next Thursday is Christmas Eve, there will be no post that day. The following Thursday is New Year’s Eve, but since the post goes up early and the partying won’t start until later (theoretically), I’m shooting to reread Chapter 65 on December 31^st. Send the old year out with a bang, finish strong, all that good stuff.

To the Reread!! Onward, ho! We start off the chapter in an incredibly cheerful mood, as Kaladin ignores his food and thinks about how much he loves being caged, how this is just as much fun as his slave days, and compares it to adventures in mountain-climbing.

Oh, wait. Never mind. Reset.

Yeah… So here’s Kaladin, demonstrating classic signs of depression: lack of appetite, lack of energy, lack of interest. Combined with the recent discussion of whether Kaladin has an over-inflated estimate of his own importance, I’m now beginning to wonder if he’s bipolar; a list of symptoms for the “manic” aspect of bipolar disorder includes “feeling extremely irritable, aggressive, and “wired”; thinking of yourself as overly important, gifted, or special; making poor judgments, such as with money, relationships, or gambling; engaging in risky behavior or taking more risks than you ordinarily would.” That… sounds pretty much like Kaladin during/after the duel. Well, I don’t recall hearing Brandon mention anything beyond seasonal depression, so he’s probably not intentionally written that way. It was just hard to miss the coincidence.

This short scene with Kaladin leaves me with very mixed feelings, though. One, depression is just not fun. At all. No matter what the cause. Two, his desperate reaching for Stormlight, praying to the Almighty that the darkness would not take him again, hoping that his prayer will be heard despite the lack of someone to write and burn the prayer for him—all this makes me so sad for him. Three, I’m creeped out a little by the way the Stormlight resists him, and then gives in. Four, I’m even more weirded out by the way he thinks of it straining against him, trying to escape once he’s got it. Five, his attitude toward Syl is just bizarre, and her behavior reflects that. And he doesn’t even notice that there’s anything wrong with her behavior. I come out of this scene sad and extremely uncomfortable.

Shallan, despite her own desperate situation, is actually a breath of fresh air after that. How much is quick thinking, and how much just a lucky instinct, I don’t know—but she immediately does the only thing likely to work. This just makes me smile: turn everything about yourself black and stand quietly in the darkest corner. No one expects you to be there, so no one notices you. Slick.

In what I’m coming to see as typical Shallan fashion, reason again informs—or at least tempers—emotion: though Amaram is “still a bastard, of course” (which he is!) she recognizes that he was probably just defending himself when “he” killed Helaran. Apparently there is a certain amount of mostly-true information readily available regarding the event; she’s put together enough information to know that when Helaran left Jah Keved—and left his siblings to their father’s mercies—it was to kill Amaram.

Other quick notes on the Talenel scene:

Amaram is immediately convinced that this is indeed one of the Heralds, and his reaction is to say, “Gavilar, we have done it. We have finally done it.” “It” is presumably their goal of bringing the Heralds back, and I have to wonder just what they did to try to reach their goal. I’m almost certain that nothing they did had anything to do with Taln’s return, though Amaram clearly thinks it did. I rather hope we get to see his reaction when he learns that whatever they did was a complete waste, and Taln has only returned because he finally broke under four and a half millennia of torture.

Bordin has planted the rumor about a cache of Shardblades, making sure it went straight to Amaram’s ears. Amaram, for reasons only he knows, leaps to the conclusion that they must be the Honorblades. I wonder if any of them are Honorblades. I have other questions, too: Was there actually more than one Blade in the stash Dalinar planted there? If so, where did they come from? If not, why was Amaram not more perturbed about there only being one, when there were supposed to be a cache? Was one of them the Blade Taln arrived with at the end of TWoK? Or did Taln actually talk about a cache of Blades? So much we don’t know.

Amaram promises Bordin a “reward” for helping him find this cache of supposed Honorblades. Heh. Clearly he doesn’t understand Bordin, or for that matter anything about the loyalty of Team Kholin, at all…

And then Shallan becomes a full-fledged Ghostblood, except that somehow she never gets around to getting that tattoo done.

 

Stormwatch

This is the same day as Chapter 63, one day after Kaladin’s last chapter; it is his 11^th day in prison, counting the day of the duel.

 

Sprenspotting

It’s rather agonizing to watch Syl regress—and it’s really, really annoying that Kaladin doesn’t even register the change.

“I’m worried about you.” Syl’s voice. “You’re growing dark.”

Kaladin opened his eyes and finally found her, sitting between two of the bars as if on a swing.

“I’ll be all right,” Kaladin said, letting Stormlight rise from his lips like smoke. “I just need to get out of this cage.”

“It’s worse than that. It’s the darkness … the darkness …” She looked to the side, then giggled suddenly, streaking off to inspect something on the floor. A little cremling that was creeping along the edge of the room. She stood over it, eyes widening at the stark red and violet color of its shell.

Kaladin smiled. She was still a spren. Childlike. The world was a place of wonder to Syl. What would that be like?

Patronizing git.

I want to get angry and smack Kaladin around a bit… but at the same time, I understand all too well the depression, and the way it can twist your perceptions. It seems to me, though, that the difference between Syl two weeks ago and Syl now should be totally obvious; he’s just too self-absorbed to realize it. (And yes, self-absorption is a notable aspect of depression, so don’t tell me I’m being insensitive.)

I’m wondering, now, though: how much does he realize about his effect on her? IIRC, by now they’ve had enough conversations that he knows her increasing “maturity”—or understanding, anyway—is an artifact of their bond. But does he have any real concept that his mindset can affect that bond, and through it affect her mental state? (Does it even make sense to talk about the mental state of a cognitive phenomenon? Heh.)

Also: is “the darkness… the darkness…” referring to the mental/emotional darkness of his depression, or is there something else here, too?

 

All Creatures Shelled and Feathered

Speaking of Syl and the cremling, is there anything unusual about a little cremling with a shell colored “stark red and violet”?

 

Ars Arcanum

It’s interesting to note that when Kaladin attempts to draw in Stormlight from the lamp, it seems to resist him. I assume that’s a result of the damage his drive for revenge is doing to his bond with Syl… but then why does it suddenly relent? And his reaction… it’s like an addict getting a fix. It’s creepy.

Shallan’s Surgebinding, on the other hand, is totally useful and not at all creepy—unless you think that turning her skin, hair, and clothing all black might have just a little creep factor. Still, it’s useful; she can stand silently in a dark corner and not be seen, plus the Illusion uses up the Stormlight that would normally escape and give her away.

It’s also worth pointing out that she uses Illusion twice in this chapter—to turn black, and to turn back into Veil—and neither time does Taln react like he did previously, when he scared the living daylights out of her. Just guessing, but I suppose that having identified her as “one of Ishar’s Knights,” he has a niche for her, and her Surgebinding is an accepted part of that.

 

Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before?

There’s not a lot new to say about Iyatil-and-Mraize-the-Worldhoppers, but it’s interesting to note her comments on her own and Mraize’s past experience:

“You caught me in stealth spying upon you, and you can lose me in the streets. This is not easily accomplished. Your clever drawings fascinate Mraize, another near-impossible task, considering all that he has seen. Now what you have done today.”

It’s also interesting to note Shallan’s response:

Shallan felt a thrill. Why should she feel so excited to have the respect of these people? They were murderers.

But storms take her, she had earned that respect.

As always, contemplation of the Ghostbloods brings me back around to wondering what their real purpose is and where they originate. Why would they have been working through a relatively obscure rural Veden lord, and what were they going to use him to accomplish? Why were they trying to kill Jasnah? Who are these people?

 

Heraldic Symbolism

Ishar and Shalash stand watch over this chapter, for reasons best known to Team Dragonsteel… but my best guess is that Ishar the Priest, pious and guiding, reflects Kaladin’s desperate prayer against the darkness. Shalash is probably there for her little Lightweaver Shallan, with her several uses of Illusion.

 

Just Sayin’

“Almighty above, ten names, all true.” Well, that sounds pretty emphatic…

 

Once again, there will be no post next week on Christmas Eve. We’ll be back on the last day of the year with another uneasy visit to the Davar estate, and then we can start the new year on a brighter note.

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader. She wishes you all a very merry Christmas full of blessings and fudge. (Umm… those might be the same thing…)

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/17/lets-see-some-magic-syfys-the-magicians/

http://www.tor.com/?p=199869

Lev Grossman’s The Magicians is the first of a trilogy that gets better and better with each book. It’s smart, referential fantasy for and about readers, with a main character who’s as obsessed with a series of books as any of us ever were with Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or Narnia. Syfy’s adaptation of Grossman’s series officially starts with a two-episode premiere on January 25th, but a sneak peek of the first episode aired last night. Streamlined, aged up, and wasting no time getting to the action, The Magicians has a lot of promise.

Spoilers for the first episode (and some discussion of the books) follow.

While I don’t want to focus too much on what’s changed from the book, one structural change is key: Grossman sticks close to Quentin; we’re always in his head, hearing his thoughts (even when we might not want to know), and the show has to open that up. (Sort of like how The Hunger Games films had to get outside Katniss’s head, but here there’s a little less child death.) So we start somewhere else entirely: on a park bench, where a man waits for a woman. She’s late. He’s testy. She’s testier. She drops what looks like a strangely heavy moth into his lap and tells him, “It’s happening.” Something is coming. Some grownups know, and they don’t seem happy.

Quentin Coldwater is currently oblivious to all this, being engaged in getting out of a mental hospital. He checked himself in, and he wants to go home, even if home means hiding behind a red Solo cup at a party where no one appreciates his nerd minutiae. (In the real world, there are always people at parties who care about nerd minutiae, but not here, apparently.) Quentin retreats to his bedroom to comfort-read one of his beloved Fillory books, which neatly comes to life onscreen as he narrates the story of three Chatwin children—twins Martin and Rupert, and their older sister Jane—who went through a clock to a magical land. Fillory glows with warm sunlight; there are clocks in trees, and familiar giant moths settled in clusters on branches.

Fillory, like Narnia, or like a book, always kicks the adventuring children out when the story is done. Quentin just keeps going back to the books, again and again. But now he’s going to grow up, he tells his best friend, Julia (a perfectly prickly Stella Maeve), and sell his prized books on eBay. It’s all very symbolic, Quentin giving up on the stories that sustain him, accepting that in the real world he’s just another ordinary person, one without a heroic narrative or a magical secret.

Except, of course, he isn’t. Sort of.

When Julia walks him to a grad school interview the next day, everything changes, and not because the fellow who was supposed to interview him is dead (later, someone makes a snide crack about diabetics and Oreos that really should’ve been cut from the script). The paramedic who arrives is, oddly, the woman from the first scene, and she gives Quentin an envelope with a mysterious sixth Fillory book that isn’t supposed to exist. His excitement seems out of place to Julia, and they get into the kind of fight you only have with someone who loves you and knows you very well. She’s pissed at him for caring more about the book than the dead guy. He’s pissed she doesn’t still care about Fillory like she used to. She knows he was in the hospital. Again. They’re mean and perfect, and they’d be over it by the next day, if life—in the form of a magical college entrance exam—didn’t interfere.

Quentin is so prepared for this. He’s living a Fillory story, essentially: he stumbles through a tired garden and onto the sunny lawn of Brakebills University, where someone whisks him off to prove that he’s smart and magical, and then he’ll get to have lots of adventures and make new friends. It’s Fillory, except it’s also grad school (upgraded from plain old college in the books), so probably there’ll be a little more homework. But that’s ok. Quentin passes, egged on by Dean Fogg, the man from the first scene.

Julia fails, and is sent home, her memories supposedly wiped, though she’s too clever to let a little thing like a forgetting spell work on her. Quentin asks a few questions, then accepts everything, including Fogg’s suggestion that he hasn’t been depressed; he’s just been alone. Everyone medicates, out there in the real world, he says. “Here, we hope you won’t have to.”

The show is, wisely, vague about whether or not Quentin is actually depressed, and not just another human who wanted his life to be more meaningful than it felt. The hospital and the meds are there to illustrate Quentin’s mental state, and are probably a better tactic for that than, say, a voiceover about his feelings. But to make magic the cure for Quentin’s problems would be too tidy, to say the least. I don’t think it’s meant to be that simple, given that in this fictional world, magic isn’t always helpful and is often fairly deadly. (“Spellwork,” Quentin’s new friend Eliot says, “is not unlikely to murder you, and if so, oh well.”) The connection between unhappiness and magic is present in the books, but here it’s made tangible in a way that I’m not sure works—though I’m reserving judgment on that until we see how it plays out.

Brakebills is Hogwarts and the Ivy League and a glassy modern office building, bound up into a mishmash of clean, bright, airy rooms and cozy wood paneling. Quentin, who doesn’t get to do a lot of magic yet, is rather better at making friends with his fellow magic students than he was in the regular world, but his attempt to kiss up to brilliant, overachieving Alice gets him exactly nowhere—until he wakes up from a dream about Jane Chatwin with a weird symbol burned into his hand. It’s enough to make Alice take him seriously enough to involve him (and, through a bit of handy psychic eavesdropping, his surly roommate Penny and Penny’s girlfriend) in an elaborate summoning spell, the effects of which are not immediately apparent.

But what about Julia? Grossman doesn’t get to her story until book two, The Magician King, and one of the show’s smartest choices is to weave her narrative in with Quentin’s from the get-go. Back in Brooklyn, she’s been researching herself into a stupor, trying to find evidence that magic is real. Her boyfriend calls Quentin in for help, but he’s useless: he’s bought entirely into Brakebills mythology, and is certain the powers that be would know if Julia were really a magician. Her sparking fingers prove nothing. Quentin’s dismissal is extra cruel given that, just a few scenes before, all he wanted was for her to care about magic—real or imaginary—as much as he did.

And poor Julia’s night just gets worse: in the bathroom, her buttons start popping off, and her shirt attacks her. In walks a fellow from the bar who tried to chat her up. He’s smug and creepy and obviously using magic to harass her, and when she goes full-on glow-fingers to break free, he smirks, saying, “I just needed to see if I was right.” So, to recap: Quentin is given a position at a prestigious university with very little fuss or challenge, other than that Fogg yells at him for a minute; Julia is going to have to fight for a drop of power, and endure gendered humiliation to get it.

Not that Quentin’s time at Brakebills is going to be all flying cards and magical things to smoke. When he’s next in class, time stops, everyone freezes in place, and out of a mirror steps … someone. Someone with a lot of moths obscuring his face. Someone who does a little shuffling dance around the classroom before quickly and effortlessly dispatching two full-blown magicians. Someone who stops in front of Quentin, says his full name, and coos, “There you are.”

This is mostly a set-up episode, as premieres tend to be, and it’s a dirty tease, ending at a moment when it seems like no one should get out of that classroom unharmed. (It’s unfortunate that the moth effect goes a little wibbly just when it needs to work the most, when the stranger leans in front of Quentin.) But it’s much more focused than the book, which spends a good long (delightful) while wandering around campus, skipping over big chunks of Quentin’s first year and a half of school, and generally giving him a moment to enjoy himself before things go entirely sideways. The dropped hints and eerie dreams promise that something big and strange is going on without giving too much away; darkness slowly seeps in right from the beginning, even if Quentin is mostly oblivious. If the characters haven’t quite been fully established yet, the groundwork is there, and Julia and Quentin’s friendship, built over years and now deeply strained, is complicated in the right ways. And we don’t have to wait an entire season to see Julia’s witch training! Although as this episode’s underlying theme might be “Be careful what you wish for in your fantastic narrative, as it may come back to bite you in the throat,” I’ll try to keep my expectations in check.

Molly Templeton is sure she’s not good enough at math to get into Brakebills, but that wouldn’t stop her trying. You can find her trying to do spells on Twitter.

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/17/book-reviews-the-thing-itself-by-adam-roberts/

http://www.tor.com/?p=199252

At an Antarctic research station in the 1980s, two men at their end of their respective tethers, alone in this lovely if unlovable land but for one another and a copy of Emmanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, see something that cannot conceivably be:

There was a hint of—I’m going to say, claws, jaws, a clamping something. A maw. Not a tentacle, nothing so defined. Nor was it a darkness. It made a low, thrumming, chiming noise, like a muffled bell sounding underground, ding-ding, ding-ding. But this was not a sound-wave sort of sound. This was not a propagating expanding sphere of agitated air particles. It was a pulse in the mind. It was a shudder of the soul.

Sound familiar? Well, it is—for a fraction of a chapter.

Would you be surprised if I were to tell you that The Thing Itself is not—not even nearly—what it appears to be? If you answered yes to that question, I’d be given to guess you’ve never read an Adam Roberts novel. If you had, you’d know that this is not an author who likes to linger on any one thing for long, so though the first chapter has a handful of callbacks to John Carpenter’s tentacular classic, the second is a short travelogue of sorts set in Germany almost a century earlier.

“Let me pick the threads of this story up again, rearrange the letters into a new form,” the next bit begins—which sentence, I’ll confess, had me panicking preemptively at the prospect of a new narrative in every chapter. But although Roberts does repeatedly rewrite the rules of the tale he’s telling, The Thing Itself is an easier and more coherent read than it appears.

Which isn’t to say it’s simple. If, for instance, you were thinking the presence of Kant’s most extolled treatise in the periphery of The Thing Itself‘s referential first chapter was some sort of literary Easter egg, think again. Rather, Roberts’ novel is a speculative extension of its central tenets:

“As I understand it, Kant had certain theories about the relationship between the human mind and the world around us. Specifically, he thought that space and time, as well as a number of qualities such as cause and effect and so one, were ‘in’ the way our mind structured experience, rather than being actual features of the cosmos. This provided philosophers with pleasant matter to discuss for several centuries. But it was all abstract discussion, because there was no way of testing it objectively. That there was no way of testing it objectively was a central part of the theory. Human consciousness is defined by reality, and reality is defined by human consciousness, both at the same time. Or at least our reality was defined that way. We couldn’t ‘step outside’ our humanity and get, as it were, a third opinion. Until now.”

Why now? Because while we mere mortals mightn’t be able to “step outside” our perception of the universe in terms of space and time, perhaps the kind of AI we’re this close to creating today can; AI like the 438 Petaflop JCO Supercomputer. That’s Peta to you and me, readers, and to The Thing Itself‘s protagonist, Charles Gardner: one of the two scientists the story started with. The other, Roy Curtius, is effectively the narrative’s antagonist.

After attempting to kill his colleague back in the Antarctic, Roy has been bound to Broadmoor, a high-security psychiatric hospital. Charles, on the other hand, still has his sanity, however he too lost more than a few fingers in the aforementioned fracas: he lost his confidence; then his sobriety; then his job; then the closest thing he ever had to a partner. It’s only when he’s called upon by a government-funded group known only as the Institute to assist in exploring the same subject that drove Roy round the proverbial bend—applied Kant, of course—that the downward spiral Charles has been circumnavigating since the incident dead-ends.

The whole thing—the entire experience of those weeks in the Institute—possessed the quality of some strange dream, or fantasy. Maybe I’d had a stroke, in the shower, back in my flat, and this was all some bizarre end-of-life hallucination. Or maybe it was really happening. After decades of misery, it hardly mattered. It was a time of existential plenitude. I can’t put it any better than that.

As it transpires, Charles’ continuing happiness is conditional on a confrontation the Institute insists on, because without Roy’s input, its ambitious initiative is going nowhere.

That’s the thrust of the first third of The Thing Itself, but as I mentioned earlier, every other section steps outside of the core story. Happily, there is a pattern to these chapters. I had an idea what it was early on—that Roberts was treating us to the experiences of the people over the years who have seen behind the veil of space and time—but I was wrong; the explanation at the end of the entire contextualises The Thing Itself‘s handful of interludes in a quite different light.

Frustrating as many might find it, unpicking this particular puzzle was, for me at least, an unfettered pleasure, largely because each interlude essentially stands as a short story in itself—two of which have been published independently in the past—and the author’s faculty for that form is as all-encompassing as his deservedly-vaunted abilities as a novelist.

Like Bête before it, The Thing Itself describes a deep-dive into philosophical thought punctuated by a rush of science-fictional stuff. In addition to an articulation of artificial intelligence approaching Kim Stanley Robinson’s in Aurora, Roberts’ works his way through a swathe of other subjects, such as the existence of extraterrestrials, remote viewing, space exploration, temporal transit, and last but not least, life after death.

It’s that last, in fact—and the existence of the divinity it prefigures—that Roberts is really writing about:

“Twenty-first century atheists peer carefully at the world around them and claim to see no evidence for God, when what they’re really peering at is the architecture of their own perceptions. Spars and ribs and wire-skeletons—there’s no God there. Of course there’s not. But strip away the wire-skeleton, and think of the cosmos without space or time or cause or substance, and ask yourself: is it an inert quantity? If so, how could… how could all this?”

How indeed.

I never imagined I’d find myself so readily recommending a novel “about why you should believe in God,” but by the end of The Thing Itself, Roberts—an atheist, according to the Acknowledgements—has so perfectly framed his case that I—another non-believer, I fear—came away from it with my spiritual convictions variously shaken.

No phrase of the praise I would happily heap upon the remarkable achievement this tremendous text represents could outstrip that there statement, so let’s call it a day, eh? Except to say that though The Thing Itself is many things, all of the things The Thing Itself is are evidence of Adam Roberts’ inimitable brilliance.

The Thing Itself is available now from Orion (ebook only in the US).

Niall Alexander is an extra-curricular English teacher who reads and writes about all things weird and wonderful for The Speculative Scotsman, Strange Horizons, and Tor.com. He lives with about a bazillion books, his better half and a certain sleekit wee beastie in the central belt of bonnie Scotland.

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/17/wizards-and-politics-fantastic-thrillers/

http://www.tor.com/?p=199454

I read a lot of thrillers as a teenager, in part because I liked them, but also simply because they were conveniently littered around my childhood home, at a time when I was burning through three novels a week. Interspersed between things like Dune and Andre Norton’s Blake Walker Crosstime books were Robert Ludlum and Ken Follett, Peter Benchley’s Jaws and that Clive Cussler novel that ends with Britain selling Canada to the U.S.A. And the two countries merging into, I kid you not, “The United States of Canada.”

Ludicrous political turns aside, these books were full of tough guys and not very interesting women, and tended to be powered by communist plots to assassinate this, bomb that, and destabilize the hell out of the next thing. They had lot of gunfire and hijackings and the occasional serial killer or martial arts throwdown. I liked them because they were fast-moving, took me around the world, and occasionally they sprung a genuinely intricate plot twist on me. As a budding writer who also read fantasy, though, I think the conspiracy novel that might have made the biggest impact on me was actually a Janny Wurts book called Sorcerer’s Legacy.

Sorcerer’s Legacy is the story of Elienne. She is newly widowed, her husband having fallen prey to one of those military warlord types who’s always leveling small villages on shows like Xena. She is about to be taken as a spoil of war, and her only real chance of medium-term survival is to avoid infuriating her would-be rapist… an unlikely prospect, as she is incorrigibly mouthy and defiant. But she is also less than one day pregnant, and as a side effect of this peculiar reproductive circumstance, she gets herself scouted by a wizard from another country. He, in classic thriller style, is offering to rescue her… but only if she’ll agree to prevent a bizarre assassination-in-progress. Ielond needs an heir for his crown Prince, you see, but said prince has been magically sterilized, by bad wizards, in a country where heirs to the throne are executed if they’re childless by the time they turn twenty-five.

So! If Elienne can pass as a virgin, marry the prince, and bring her zygote to term, all three of them get to live. Obviously there’s no discussion at this point of happily ever anything. Royal marriages have been built on less.

If this sounds complicated, well, that’s par for the thriller course. Novels whose stories are fuelled by conspiracies are required, by their very nature, to hide a lot of their cards. They focus on the backroom maneuverings of players and factions who don’t want the good guys, whoever they are, to catch them in the act. The hero is always, pretty much, playing catch-up.

Sorcerer’s Legacy doesn’t necessarily hold up well now that I have two more decades of reading under my belt. It has an overblown prose style; Elienne tosses her hair a lot, and that’s when her eyes aren’t busy flashing at anyone who annoys her. But the story stuck with me for a long time, because the plot twists were brutal… and unlike the ones in those guns and bombs books, they were deeply personal. Elienne loses everything and then plunges straight into a royal court whose key players are out to get her. She has to set up house with a shiny new Prince-husband she hasn’t even met, and who might not, for all she knows, deserve to be saved from the government’s axe. And she and Ielond are trying to game the system using her unborn freaking child, of all things!

Jason Bourne may have a touch of amnesia, sure, but at the end of the day he’s still a blond-haired, blue-eyed, multilingual killing machine with a box full of unmarked currency, operating in a world that expects a dude to be able to throw a punch. Elienne is a pregnant widow in a royal court that figures a lady probably shouldn’t be heard unless she’s rockin’ the pianoforte. Who would you rather be if everyone within earshot wants you dead?

Fast forward to the now, and to my Hidden Sea Tales novels, Child of a Hidden Sea and A Daughter of No Nation. The heart of almost every scheme on the world of Stormwrack is either an effort to undermine the 109-year-old peace treaty known as the Cessation of Hostilities, or an attempt to preserve it. Nobody walks up to my main character and says “Hi, I’m trying to start a war—are you the competition?” But whenever Sophie Hansa digs into the latest murder in the Fleet or even seemingly innocent biological questions, like the matter of who planted throttlevine in the swamps of Sylvanna, the brink of war is where they all end up.

I have read a lot of books with conspiracies in them since my teenage years, of course, and the thing I continue to notice now is the ones I like somehow do manage to make the stakes clear and personal, even when the characters are engaged in big scale realpolitik. The gift of that old Jenny Wurts novel, to me, is its sense of intimacy. Maybe the world is hanging in the balance, but what really matters to me, as a reader, is whatever the main character would give their eyes for.

A.M. Dellamonica‘s newest book is called A Daughter of No Nation, and you can read the first chapter here! has a book’s worth of fiction up here on Tor.com, including the time travel horror story “The Color of Paradox.” There’s also “The Ugly Woman of Castello di Putti,” the second of a series of stories called The Gales. Both this story and its predecessor, “Among the Silvering Herd,” are prequels to this newest novel and its predecessor, Child of a Hidden Sea. If sailing ships, pirates, magic and international intrigue aren’t your thing, though, her ‘baby werewolf has two mommies’ story, “The Cage,” made the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2010. Or check out her sexy novelette, “Wild Things,” a tie-in to the world of her award winning novel Indigo Springs and its sequel, Blue Magic.

It's no secret that I love receiving gifts. It doesn’t matter how big or small they are. The fact that you’ve given me one tells me you’ve been thinking of me. I like that. Recently, I’ve received several Harry & David gifts. These are awesome. Small amounts of yummy stuff and fresh fruit! I love it and they make me feel loved.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scotusblog/pFXs/~3/w68bEjevSeg/

http://www.scotusblog.com/?p=236143

Marcia D. Greenberger is co-president of the National Women’s Law Center.

In Zubik v. Burwell, the Court will consider whether the government can, consistent with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), accommodate religiously affiliated non-profit employers objecting to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requirement that their insurance plans cover contraception by requiring that insurance companies provide the coverage directly to the women who would otherwise be left without it.

As part of the ACA’s effort to make important preventive services more available, key preventive services, like contraception, must be covered without cost-sharing – no deductibles or co-pays. The removal of financial barriers is designed to help individuals stay healthy and address problems before they become untreatable. Because existing preventive services requirements did not adequately reflect women’s needs, and women were more likely to go without necessary health care due to cost, the ACA contains a “women’s preventive services” provision requiring the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to determine the key women’s services to be included. HHS relied on the experts to do so. An Institute of Medicine expert panel identified contraception as one of eight key women’s preventive services, and evidence of the resulting tremendous step forward for women’s health is pouring in.

Some employers with religious objections to contraception have used RFRA to challenge the accommodation provided to them as insufficient. RFRA prevents the government from imposing a substantial burden on the exercise of a person’s religious beliefs unless it furthers a compelling interest and uses the least restrictive means for advancing that interest. Seven of eight federal courts of appeals found that the accommodation at issue in this case is consistent with RFRA.

In addition to these lower courts, guidance comes from Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., in which the Court concluded two Terms ago, in a five-to-four decision, that certain closely held for-profit companies could be considered “persons” under RFRA. The Court pointed to the very accommodation provided to the non-profits and now before the Court as demonstrating that less restrictive means were available for their employees to receive contraceptive coverage, and it addressed in some key respects the contours of this accommodation. In fact, in response to the Hobby Lobby decision, the government extended the accommodation to closely held for-profits similar to Hobby Lobby with religious objections..

Under this two-part accommodation, such an employer need only notify either its insurer or HHS of its religious objections to contraception to be relieved of its coverage obligation. Under the second part, the insurance company must provide the ACA-required benefit directly to the women without the participation of the objecting employer.

The non-profits in this case now argue that the notification requirement itself substantially burdens their religious beliefs, that the government’s interests are not compelling, and that alternatives less burdensome to them should be required. The seven courts of appeals holding otherwise largely did so on the grounds that the simple notification required of the objecting employer is not a substantial burden, most thereby having no need to reach the other prongs of the RFRA test. Clearly they are right. The objecting employers erroneously characterize their notification as a trigger for the contraceptive coverage. But as seven courts of appeals held, the opt-out notice by the objecting employer does not trigger contraceptive coverage. It is the law itself that requires this coverage by the insurance companies.

And the challenge to the accommodation must fail under the remaining prongs of the RFRA test as well. Regarding whether the government has a compelling interest in the provision of contraception without cost-sharing, five Justices of the Court have already squarely found that it does. In a concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy stated that “the mandate serves the Government’s compelling interest in providing insurance coverage that is necessary to protect the health of female employees, coverage that is significantly more costly than for a male employee.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the four Justices in the Hobby Lobby dissent, concluded that “the Government has shown that the contraceptive coverage for which the ACA provides furthers compelling interests in public health and women’s well-being. Those interests are concrete, specific, and demonstrated by a wealth of empirical evidence.” Both post-Hobby Lobby courts of appeals that reached the question whether the accommodation furthers a compelling interest agreed. As the D.C. Circuit said, “the accommodation is supported by the government’s compelling interest in providing women full and equal benefits of preventive health coverage, including contraception.”

Indeed, the record is replete with studies showing that contraception is highly effective in treating some health conditions and also reducing unintended pregnancy, which can have severe negative health consequences for both women and children. Studies also show that preventing unintended pregnancy depends on correct and consistent use of contraception, which in turn depends on women having the economic wherewithal to secure medical services to determine and then obtain the method of contraception most appropriate for them. The important impact of the contraceptive coverage requirement has only been underscored by recent developments since the Hobby Lobby decision. It is estimated that fifty-five million women with private insurance coverage are now eligible for contraception without out-of-pocket costs, many women are now using that coverage, and the high out-of-pocket costs of certain contraceptive methods have decreased significantly or been eliminated entirely.

Given this compelling interest, which was even assumed by the other four Justices in the Hobby Lobby majority, the remaining question in this case is whether less burdensome means exist by which the government can effectively advance this compelling interest in providing women with meaningful access to the medically appropriate methods of contraception without out-of-pocket costs.

In their discussion of alternative accommodations under RFRA, both Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in Hobby Lobby and the Kennedy concurrence looked at not only the effect on objecting employers’ religious beliefs, but also the effect on the compelling interest that women receive effective access to medically appropriate contraception. Applying this approach, the Kennedy and Alito opinions addressed two alternative accommodations: the government paying directly for contraception and the accommodation at issue now, which had already been offered to non-profit employers. Kennedy stated that the accommodation “equally furthers” the government’s compelling interest in ensuring women such access. The Alito opinion stated that employees under the accommodation have the same access to contraception as those who work for non-objecting employers. Given the existing accommodation, neither opinion saw a need to create a whole new government program.

The objecting employers in this case are proposing a variety of government programs, including some in which there are government incentives rather than direct government payments. The myriad ideas proposed, often without details, share fatal flaws. They all remove contraception from a woman’s regular insurance system, impose additional logistical burdens, and reinstate the very economic hardships that the contraceptive coverage benefit was designed to remove. The D.C. Circuit, in considering a range of those proposed alternatives, recognized that none would be a less restrictive means, concluding that, “[e]ven assuming that any alternative program had or would develop the capacity to deal with an enormous additional constituency, it would not serve the government’s compelling interest with anywhere near the efficacy of the challenged accommodation and would instead deter women from accessing contraception.”

Two that have been repeatedly mentioned are tax credits and manufacturer incentives. A tax credit would require a woman to pay up front for her contraceptive needs, not only an insurmountable financial barrier for many women without the ability to make that payment, but also of little financial benefit to those in most financial need. For example, an IUD, one of the most effective forms of birth control, can have upfront costs of up to one thousand dollars, nearly a month’s full-time salary for a minimum-wage worker.

And, of course, throughout income levels a net tax benefit is hardly equivalent to the no-cost provision in the current accommodation. Beyond the enhanced and for some crushing financial barriers created by this approach, the additional administrative barriers imposed on women to negotiate the tax system can be daunting.

Regarding the proposal that the government provide incentives for manufacturers of birth control to offer their birth control for “free,” there is no guarantee that any manufacturer would even agree that such “incentives” were sufficient, let alone that manufacturers of all of the methods would participate. Nor did the objecting employers who made this suggestion opine on how such a system could be implemented or how it could work in practice.

In sum, Hobby Lobby itself demonstrates that the challenge to the accommodation is without merit. The Court has already established and accepted the compelling government interest in ensuring women receive contraception. The negative effects of the economic and other barriers to access of the proposed alternatives have been identified, including in detail by some of the lower courts. And the absence of any burden on objecting employers that even approaches being substantial has been recognized by the vast majority of lower courts considering the issue. The overwhelming legal case in support of the accommodation is good news for the lives, health, and futures of women and their families, who will be stronger and more secure because of the important benefit it provides. Women in this country deserve and need real access to contraception, regardless of who their employer may be.

http://practicalfreespirit.com/2015/12/17/3482/

http://practicalfreespirit.com/?p=3482

I usually write a blog post around this time that is about my theme for the year.

I spent some time this morning going through old blog posts and thinking about theme ideas. And, all in all, this has been a really good year for me. REALLY good.

List of possible 2015 themes:

Peaches.

Look, I’m happy!

Cool, I think I’m going to go take care of myself now.

Yeah, I got this.

Thanks for being my friend, you rock!

No thanks.

The important thing is the work.

Milkshakes! Pancakes! Peanut butter pie!

Shake it off.

Hmm, which one of these should I use as the headline of this post? Decisions, decisions.

But in all seriousness, just because I had a positive year doesn’t mean I didn’t still learn a lot. Here are some of the things I learned:

1. Dancing helps with my physical health in the medium term.
2. Also it’s freaking awesome.
3. Also it automatically improves my mood.
4. My apartment is my sanctuary, and as such, it’s worth every cent I pay in rent.
5. Sprained toes take a really long time to heal.
6. Sometimes taking a break from networking can be beneficial to my mental health.
7. Because it’s the actual writing that matters the most.
8. Just because I’m afraid is not a reason not to do a thing. It’s also not a reason to automatically do a thing.
9. I really like my friends. Well, okay, I guess I already knew this, but I get constant reminders.
10. I like to see as many friends as possible at least once a month. By the time I’m going three months without seeing them, I am less happy.
11. Finding meaning in your life is super important.
12. Life after getting an agent is pretty much the same as life before. Except without the endless querying.
13. Sometimes it is really hard to let go.
14. Being gentle with yourself doesn’t mean you automatically stop learning from your mistakes. It more often means you’re not damaging your self-esteem so much in the process.
15. People are different, and they pay different energy costs for different things. And that’s okay.
16. Being indirect often does not pay off. And at least with directness you know you said what you wanted to say.
17. But that doesn’t mean it’s not also important to strive for kindness. You can be direct and kind at the same time.
18. Sometimes you’re not going to say what the other person wants to hear. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say it.
19. We all have quirks and eccentricities. Learning to accept this is important. About yourself too, not just about other people.
20. Some comedy is actually funny. Yes, I know you already knew this. Now I do too!
21. But some comedy is still not that funny at all.
22. The necessity of sometimes having to wait isn’t going to go anywhere.
23. Having a lot of lemonade in my fridge is wonderful.
24. So much that’s going on has very little to do with me. I learn this every year. The trick, then, is to figure out what does have to do with me and focus on that.
25. When you can make the choice to think positively, that’s the right choice to make. When you can’t, allowing that to be okay too can sometimes help you get back to a happier frame of mind more quickly.
26. It’s important to allow other people to make their own mistakes. Even when it’s painful to watch. But if it’s too tiring to watch, it’s okay to take a little break.
27. Differentiating between short-term and long-term problems can save a lot of energy.
28. Mashed potatoes taste better when you add a lot of butter.
29. Everyone has problems. People who understand this tend to be good people to have around.
30. Loving yourself is still one of the most important things you can learn how to do.

What did you learn this year?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Sfsignal/~3/44JAHPfye34/

http://www.sfsignal.com/?p=131046

Richard Ellis Preston, Jr. grew up in the United States and Canada but he prefers to think of himself as British. He attended the University of Waterloo where he earned an Honors B.A. in English with a Minor in Anthropology. He has lived on Prince Edward Island, met the sheep on Hadrian’s Wall, eaten at the first McDonald’s in Moscow, excavated a 400 year old Huron Indian skeleton and attended a sperm whale autopsy. Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders, Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War and Romulus Buckle & the Luminiferous Aether are the first three installments in his new steampunk series, The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin. He currently resides in California. Find out more at hos website and follow him on Twitter as @RichardEPreston

Be sure to enter to win one of three Kindle copies of Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether using the Rafflecopter widget below the post. The giveaway will end on 1/5/16 and the author will choose the winners.

I
AN UNFRIENDLY PORT

Night fell and brought the Founders with it. The small, cramped port of Vera Cruz, a refuge for air pirates, sea scoundrels and plague-victims, was suddenly brought to heel under martial law.

Captain Romulus Buckle hurried through the shadows of the old brothel quarter fronting the quay, his boots thumping on icy boards. He followed close on the heels of his guide, a harsh-eyed woman with a veil across her face. She called herself Ursula but the word crossed her lips with such unfamiliarity Buckle doubted it was her real name. Ursula, or whatever her name was, further obscured her true identity under a rough brown cloak and hood as did Buckle and his two crew members: Lieutenant Sabrina Serafim and Ensign Wellington ‘Welly’ Bratt. The ancient Atlantean girl-automaton named Penny Dreadful, rescued from the melting pot in Spartak, accompanied them, strapped to Welly’s back. The burden wasn’t as tasking on the slender Welly as it first might seem—the robot was lighter than it looked.

Ursula paused at a junction where the boardwalk merged onto a main street. Buckle didn’t like how dark the town was; the few surviving street lamps, their sunken candle flames fluttering in the sea drafts, cast molten pockets of illumination upon a world where everything was worn down: the buildings, boarded-up and teetering ramshackle-wrecks of gray weathered wood, threatened to collapse on cobblestone streets rattled loose by decades of barrels hauled up from the pier.

A rotten fish stench assaulted Buckle’s nostrils—it came from the fishmonger tables—the head-chopping blocks and gutting boards shimmered silver-green in the weak moonlight, encased in a greasy layer of fish scales and blood which decades of buckets of water thrown across the wood failed to completely wash away. The hobnails of Buckle’s boots stuck to the ground—he felt the microcosmic sink of the leather into the filth—and it annoyed him.

Ursula hesitated, glancing back and forth along the street.

Buckle’s spine rose up. “Move!” he hissed. All he needed now was the guide losing her nerve. They couldn’t stay outside for long. The narrow, close-walled avenues of Vera Cruz were under curfew. As their small boat had slipped into the harbor Buckle had pressed his night telescope to his eye and glimpsed knots of heavily armed soldiers clad in steampiper black and Founder’s navy dark blue, brandishing torches in the faces of frightened passers-by, clearing the streets of rabble.

A flash of gold coins on the slum side of the quay wall had bought Buckle the services of Ursula who, sleek and sober and elusive in her motions, seemed perfectly at home in the hardscrabble world of Vera Cruz.

“One moment,” Ursula whispered. “We are almost there.”

Buckle clenched his teeth and glanced up. A yellow-skinned Founders airship floated one thousand feet overhead, boiler pipes issuing streams of black-gray smoke, the moonlight gleaming on brass cannon muzzles poking out of her gunports. Twenty minutes earlier the airship had released a platoon of steampipers, elite Founders soldiers equipped with maneuverable steam-powered flying backpacks. Buckle and his two mates had crouched low in their boat in the middle of the harbor and he had cursed their luck, head down in the vaguely rancid bilge water, listening to the knock of the waves striking the boat with what seemed like the loudness of gongs, feeling exposed and helpless. He had yanked a crumpled tarpaulin over Penny Dreadful to hide her glowing red eyes.

The steampipers had descended into some quarter or other, firing their guns at something in scattershot fashion. It was unlikely the Founders were looking for Buckle and his team specifically; the invasion of Vera Cruz was a logical stepping-stone in the Founder clan’s strategy of outward expansion, a well-placed port on the doorstep of the Pacific which up until this evening had been securely inside the Atlantean sphere of control.

Move, Ursula! Buckle thought, hedging against her back, his right hand clamped around his sword grip. He snorted in a deep breath of air and with it came the stink of mussel soup on the boil. The empty street beckoned, its cobblestones gleaming with black ice—there was a lot of sea ice but very little evidence of snow in Vera Cruz.

“Patience, dear sir, and have faith.” Ursula said. “If you die, I don’t get paid.”

Patience. The word galled Buckle. The search for Atlantis had thus far proved an utter failure.
The Pneumatic Zeppelin had been searching for six days and nights in their attempt to locate the great underwater city, all the time dodging Founders airships in the sea mists. Penny Dreadful’s directions, despite its certainty, had proven circular and quite half-mad. The talking machine, battered and childlike and growing ever more tiresome, was as unreliable as one might have expected, but even Buckle’s own abilities had failed him in the attempt to locate the submerged metropolis.

The search, the time wasted, had been a trying ordeal. Buckle had hardly left the bridge, spending watch after watch at his chair with the ship’s dog, Kellie, curled up at his feet, his hat plugged into the zeppelin’s steam system, its vents pumping warmth down his neck. Buckle’s unrelenting tensions ruined whatever ease he might have mined from such long, empty, eye-glazing hours. The weather over the Big Green Soup had been odd, unpredictable, snowy, both too warm and too foggy, and the density of the rolling fog banks had often forced the airship to halt her search because the lookouts couldn’t see their hands in front of their faces, much less the surface of the ocean seventy-five feet below. Buckle dared not fly lower, for towering icebergs loomed in and out of the mists like the ice-bound peaks of great prehistoric mountains, mountains that would prove deadly in collision.

Long, sleepless hours gave way to a captain’s many worries. Staring into nothingness under the bright but indistinct spheres of the sun and moon crossing above the endless cloud cover, untasked by the familiar duties of the airship, by the regular reports of the fog-blind lookouts, by the turn of the hourglass and the ring of the watch bell, gave way to one’s darkest thoughts. A turn to melancholy was impossible for Buckle to avoid. His desperation at the loss of his sister, Elizabeth, and her captivity at the hands of the Founders, lived in the beatings of his heart. Seeking an alliance with the Atlanteans was a convenient excuse to chase Elizabeth and he knew it: but if Andromeda Pollux’s prophesy was true, that Elizabeth was the key to winning the war, he had no other choice. Granted, Andromeda was the leader of the Alchemist clan and considered by many to be a suspect oracle—she seemed to effortlessly hypnotize Buckle on some level whenever they spoke, her dark eyes hinting at a quantity of Martian blood in her veins. But he trusted her—that was the long and short of it—and Elizabeth had to be recovered at all costs, even if it meant his death and the death of every crew member aboard the Pneumatic Zeppelin.

The fate of the entire Snow World was at stake.

Elizabeth was in Atlantis. Every day Romulus Buckle had grown more certain of this.

And there was Max, his Martian Chief Engineer, who nearly lost her life to a sabertooth beastie as she came to save him on the Tehachapi Mountain. She now lay recovering the Punchbowl infirmary, far, far away, and he fretted for her pain. She had gladly risked her life in his protection. How could he ever repay such loyalty? He missed having her on the bridge, missed her terribly; he needed her there.

Valkyrie Smelt, the blonde Imperial Princess was there, acting in Max’s stead, manning her engineering position nearly twenty-four hours a day. By the third night Buckle had no choice but to order her to retire to her cabin and get some sleep. She was stricken, Buckle knew, by the loss of her brother in the destruction of the Cartouche, but her cool blue eyes never betrayed her emotions. Yet she radiated sadness and Buckle felt it. She was a member of his crew and he wanted to reach out to her, to give her a chance to open up and grieve, but he felt it better not to broach the subject if she did not come to him. There was no bridge to traverse between them.

And then there was the Penny Dreadful. The old automaton had been so sure of itself in the search, so certain that it knew the location of the great but mysterious underwater city of Atlantis. Penny had crouched in the nose dome for days on end, motionless, its red eyes locked on the sea. Sometimes in the long hours it had looked far too human, too much like a forlorn and determined child, and Buckle had caught himself worrying about it on several occasions.

Penny Dreadful’s faulty memory resulted in Buckle’s decision to venture to Vera Cruz, an island port town known to be within the Atlantean sphere of trade and control. In Vera Cruz there would be mercenary submariners, shady customers who knew the way to Atlantis. He just had to find one of them. And match their price.

“Here they come,” Ursula hissed, pressing flat against the wall as she reached back and planted her gloved hand in the center of Buckle’s chest. A group of Founders soldiers, their torches burning far brighter than the scattered streetlamps, passed along the main street.
Buckle held his breath, looking down at an uneven gutter running with filthy, slush-laden water. After the footfalls of the Founders faded away he whispered, “I’d prefer to be moving.”

“Just clearing the blind spots is all, Captain,” Ursula replied without looking back. Buckle could see nothing of Ursula but her hood. Her voice was steady but he wanted to see her face. He wanted to see if there was fear there.

“Are you sure he’ll be there?” Buckle asked.

“If he’s not on a job, he lives at the Sybaris—and I know he’s not on a job,” Ursula said. “Let’s go.” She struck out across the street, the folds of her robe flowing in the sea breeze, and Buckle hurried after her.

II
THE SYBARIS

The dash across the street was quick and quiet and the stealth of it, the tapping of their leather boots on the cobbles and the flutter of their cloaks on their backs like crow’s wings in shadows, made Buckle feel better. Ursula paused against a large building with boarded-up windows; Buckle tucked in beside her with Sabrina at his side and Welly next to her, Penny Dreadful peering from the harness on his back. Penny’s metal face was dark; it had either shut off its glowing red eyes or sealed them somehow.

Buckle smelled the tavern-familiar stink of stale beer and sailor sweat but everything on the street was closed up and dark.

“We are here,” Ursula said, stopping in front of a large oak door.

“We are where?” Sabrina asked. “I don’t see any tavern.”

“Most of our social establishments go to ground when the authorities come, which hardly ever happens except when the Atlanteans send troopers for one reason or another, usually to collect unpaid debts,” Ursula answered. She rapped on the door, sharply, six times, in an odd pattern.

A door slat slid open, striking the end of its slot with a thunk, revealing two mean eyes fringed by red-yellow firelight. “Bugger off,” a muffled voice rasped.

“For the love of the bloody Martian’s knickers, open the door, Grady,” Ursula snapped.

“Why are ye such a bitch, Ursula?” Grady asked.

“I’m not your mother,” Ursula replied. “The Founders are afoot. Open the door!”

The slat clicked shut and the door swung back, flooding the blue-back depths of the street with amber firelight. Grady, a fat fellow with sweaty jowls and a head as bald as a child’s marble, eyed Buckle and his company with suspicion. “Get yer arses in here!”

Buckle turned sideways to squeeze past Grady’s mass. Hit by a wall of sour-smelling heat, he blinked, for though the low-ceilinged inn was poorly lit by candles and a sputtering fireplace it was still considerably brighter than outside. It was something of a feat of crude carpentry that the warping walls were sealed up so tight that not one hint of its internal light leaked out into the street. Grady slammed the door shut and threw the bolt, cutting off whatever fresh sea air followed Buckle and his party in. Buckle’s throat squeezed against the reek of gin, beer and body odor weighing down the overheated atmosphere.

Buckle stayed close to Ursula as she wove through a jumble of empty tables and chairs, the only occupied section of the tavern being the bar where a half-dozen grubby locals peered sideways at them from their stools. Ursula headed into the corner furthest from the door where a honey-colored man in a worn, black peacoat worked on a half-eaten slab of ham and a beer. The man sat at the table liked he owned it, eying them as they approached. Buckle saw the man’s right hand slip under the table to his pistol belt.

Buckle glanced at Sabrina.

“I see it,” Sabrina said, her hand already tucked inside her cloak, resting on the handle of her pistol.

Ursula arrived at the table and threw back her hood, showing a small head with a pale skinned, plain face framed by short-cropped black hair and obsidian earrings. “Captain Felix, I bring you customers,” she said.

“They look desperate,” Felix murmured through a mouthful of ham, casually replacing his right hand on the surface of the table. “I don’t like it when you bring me desperate ones, Ursula.”

“Your customers are always desperate, you mercenary,” Ursula retorted. “Otherwise they would pay two farthings for the ferry.” She turned to Buckle. “I’ll claim my finder’s fee now.”

Buckle drew a fat leather purse from his pocket and dropped it in Ursula’s hand.

Ursula stuffed the purse into her cloak. “I’m not stupid enough to count this here,” she said, firing a glance at the half-turned faces at the bar, “but if you short me, I’ll be back to collect the rest from your bloody corpse, you hear me?”

“Fair enough,” Buckle replied pleasantly.

Ursula glanced at Felix, then hurried away, exiting through a side door.

Buckle turned to find Felix studying him with a pair of big brown eyes that were childlike in comparison to the unshaven roughness of his face. “So you pay, at least the small fees, eh?”

“And the big ones,” Buckle said.

“Unless that was a purse full of slugs,” Felix added as if he might laugh.

“A pleasure to meet you, Felix,” Buckle said. “I am Romulus…”

Felix raised his hand abruptly, palm open, thumb folded over his fork. “No last names. There is no need for last names. Either we enter into a transaction or we do not. And your female companion can release her grip on her pistol as well—that might lighten up the proceedings.”

Sabrina slowly pulled her hand out of her cloak and rested it on her hip.

“What is it you want from me?” Felix asked, lifting his beer glass to his mouth. The mug was fantastic, a large nacreous nautilus shell halved and fitted into a carved wooden base; it looked far too fragile and expensive to survive the tables of the Sybaris and Buckle figured it was Felix’s personal cup.

“Passage to Atlantis,” Buckle said.

The fabulous beer mug paused in midair, the bottom dripping condensation. “Who told you that I could get you to Atlantis?”

“The young lady who just departed with a purse full of my silver,” Buckle replied. “How about we dispense with the dodging, shall we?”

“The Founders have blockaded the port,” Felix said.

“We are aware,” Buckle replied.

Felix took a big swig, replaced the mug on the table and winked. “If getting you to Atlantis was possible, and I ain’t saying it is or that I might have any means or knowledge of the means to get there, it would cost.”

“We can pay,” Buckle replied.

“What’s your clan?” Felix asked.

“Crankshaft,” Buckle answered.

Felix nodded. “Crankers, eh? Crankers are known to have deep pockets. But, if I were able to help you, and that is a big ‘if,’ I’d need to see the coin.”

“Of course,” Buckle said again. “But not here.”

“Of course not here,” Felix replied, jabbing a square of ham into his mouth.

“We’re not here to play games,” Sabrina said.

“Ah, but life is just one big game, isn’t it?” Felix said.

“Can you provide us with passage or not?” Buckle asked.

Felix turned serious. “Very well. Sit down. Let the negotiations begin.”

Buckle took a seat across from Felix, with Sabrina settling in on his left. He glimpsed her face in her hood, her small, strong chin jutting forth. Welly took a seat at the empty table on their immediate right, swinging Penny Dreadful from his back and lowering her to the floor as he did so.

“What the hell is that?” Felix asked, glaring at Penny.

“Our automaton,” Buckle answered.

“It looks like one of the old ones, the ones the Atlanteans made,” Felix grumbled, scraping a bit of fat to the edge of his plate. “They don’t like them. If we make a deal for transit I’d suggest you leave the thing behind.”

Buckle shook his head at a pang of disappointment; he had hoped that the presence of the Atlantean robot would prove an icebreaker with the Atlanteans but apparently not. “The machine stays with us.”

“Dig your own grave, then,” Felix grumbled. He glanced into the shadows and nodded. A woman emerged with a pistol at her side, the trigger cocked. She was squarish and middle-aged, probably of about the same age—thirtyish—as Felix, and of Asian descent. Her demeanor was serious and unpleasant, like a person who never smiled.

“I don’t negotiate with a loaded pistol at my back,” Buckle said.

“We all have our hands close to our pistols,” Felix answered, cutting what was left of his ham into impossibly tiny pieces, the knife blade squeaking on the ceramic platter. It was as if he wanted a reason to keep the sharp blade in his hand. “That’s how business gets done in Vera Cruz. If you don’t like it, you can take your leave.”

“You have a submarine, yes?” Buckle asked.

In went another bite of ham. Felix chewed and swallowed. “Perhaps. But if I did I would not be happy about taking on questionable cargoes when the current environment is as unfriendly as it is.”

“We have no cargo,” Buckle said. “All we seek is passage to Atlantis.”

“Oh, is that all?” Felix said with a false smile; several of his teeth were missing. “That takes a heap of silver on the barrelhead.”

Romulus dropped his heavy leather coin purse on the table.

Felix stopped chewing. His eyes flicked to the Asian woman and back to Buckle. He started chewing again. “The Crankshafts always have money. Few things are certain in life. But the Crankshafts always have money.”

“Good merchants,” Buckle said.

“Good pirates,” Felix countered.

“Former pirates,” Buckle said.

Felix nodded, then pointed his chin at the coin purse. “What’s in there?”

“Two thousand in silver,” Buckle replied.

“A lot of velvet,” Felix said, his brown eyes narrowing. “But it ain’t enough. You may have noticed that the Founders have seized the town. Just getting you out of port will be worth every halfpenny of that two thousand, if we even survive it, that is.”

Buckle tossed another leather purse onto the table. “A thousand more in gold. That includes return fare.”

Felix rested his hands on the table, his grease-streaked fork and knife gleaming in the firelight. “You want me to being you back to Vera Cruz now that it is crawling with Founders?”

“No. Another location. Not far off.”

Felix laid his knife and fork on the edges of his plate and nodded at the Asian woman. Buckle heard a click as she uncocked her pistol hammer. “This is Kishi,” Felix said. “My partner.”

Buckle turned and nodded at Kishi. She gave him a smile so big and mean it surprised him.

“We need to go and we need to go now,” Buckle said.

Felix stood up, drained his nautilus mug and stuffed it into his coat pocket. “Very well. Three tickets to the bottom of the sea it is, then.”

III
THE SEAGREEN BARREL COMPANY

With the Founders patrols everywhere, the journey back to the Vera Cruz wharf was quick, a hurried, snaking rush along gray-iced alleyways so narrow they were barely wider than Buckle’s shoulders. Occasionally he stepped over blanket-covered bodies, lumpy leper-shadows underfoot, beggars alive or dead it was impossible to tell but in a sorry state most certainly, lying as they were on stones dense with frozen mold, garbage and corruption.

They were losing the darkness; dawn approached rapidly—the Snow World dawn—the tumultuous pink glow of the eastern sky where the overcast heavens both muted and amplified the light. The Pneumatic Zeppelin was out there, keeping inside the sea mists two miles to the north, stationed for the rendezvous. Buckle’s brother by adoption, Ivan Gorky, was in command of the airship, assisted by the Imperial princess Valkyrie Smelt. Valkyrie was acting as chief engineering officer in the absence of Max.

Part of Buckle recoiled at the idea of a foreign clan officer on his bridge, but Valkyrie was first rate: her bravery under fire as they boarded the Bellerophon had won over much of the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s crew, her cool exterior notwithstanding.

At the southeastern end of the docks they passed through a long row of large, decrepit buildings, several of which had burned down to blackened posts a long time ago, and arrived at the reinforced door of a large, ramshackle warehouse. Felix drew a set of skeleton keys and began opening three massive padlocks. A sign creaked overhead, the dawn sea breeze rocking it on its rusty hooks: flaking gold lettering read THE SEAGREEN BARREL COMPANY and painted over that in thick strokes of red paint was the word ‘CONDEMNED.’

The padlocks clanked open and Buckle found himself descending a rickety stairwell into a large space reeking of tar, salt and rotting wood. Sunlight shot down through a broken skylight and gaps in the warping roof boards, riddling stacks of cobwebbed wooden barrels with gray shafts of light. Oily black harbor water gurgled in a forty-foot rectangular hole cut in the warehouse floor, lapping up against the teardrop-shaped conning tower of a small submarine.

Two chairs with high wooden backs and red velvet cushions, expensive and most certainly stolen, sat beside the submarine. The first chair contained an old man with a liver-spotted face and stubbly white beard, his body little more than bony protrusions under his denim coveralls. In the second chair lounged a young woman in a blue and white striped sailor’s blouse. They were both smoking pipes, and the curls of smoke formed lazy wreaths in the air above the chairs. They jumped to their feet when they saw Felix, their heads spinning the tobacco smoke in little tornadoes.

“Rachel! Husk! We are away!” Felix shouted. “With all speed!”

“Aye, Captain!” Rachel replied, knocking the contents of her pipe into the water before hopping onto the conning tower ladder. The old man, Husk, clamped his pipe between his teeth and began untying the submarine’s mooring lines from their cleats.

“I present to you the Dart,” Felix said without ceremony. “She’s a true submarine, small and fast. She’ll outrun the Founders tubs if necessary but stealth is her finest quality.”

“She looks leaky to me,” Sabrina said.

“And what does a sky dog know of sea boats, I ask?” Kishi growled.

Buckle appraised the iron hull plates and rivets of the steam-powered Dart, being most impressed by her two big copper screws surrounded with what looked to be a half dozen smaller propellers. She looked to be about fifty feet long. The crew likely totaled little more than a half dozen. “I like the cut of her,” he said.

Kishi smiled at him and this smile didn’t look mean.

Buckle followed Felix up the Dart’s conning tower ladder to the small bridge. The main hatch was open and they clambered down another ladder into the dark interior of the boat. The stink of boil and stale seawater hit Buckle as his boots landed on the metal deck of the control room. He stepped aside as Sabrina descended behind him, followed by Welly wedging his way down with Penny strapped to his back.

His nostrils full of the stink of leaking bioluminescent boil and stale seawater, Buckle shivered at the idea of being submerged—even though the submarine was only halfway down. Dark seawater lapped at the bottoms of two large, oval window ports at the front of the cabin and Buckle felt as if he were looking out the eyes of a great sea beast. Instruments of copper, brass and glass packed the control surfaces; Buckle recognized many of the gauges and dials—compass, chadburn, pitch pendulum, drift indicators, pressure tank indicators and on and on—the control of a submarine were in many ways similar to those of a zeppelin.

Kishi came down the ladder, closing the hatch and winding the wheel lock shut above her.

“Vessel ready for departure, Captain,” a voice rang down the chattertube.

“Lines are away,” Kishi announced.

“Dampers are open and boilers are being stoked, Captain,” Rachel announced from her post immediately to the port side of the helm wheel. “Minimum propulsion available in one minute.

“In one minute we take her down to ten,” Felix said.

Rachel watched the red liquid in her pressure gauges rise, then turned her head to stare at Sabrina.

“See something you like?” Sabrina asked.

Stone-faced, Rachel held her stare. She was pretty in the way a lioness was pretty, with a high forehead and the face that might belong to a noble. She looked to be a well-cooked mix of races, with wide-set eyes, a thick orb of densely curled reddish-brown hair and medium-brown skin. “And what trouble is this?” she asked Felix.

“Well paying trouble,” Felix replied.

“We have negotiated a passage to Atlantis,” Sabrina said.

“They won’t let you in with that thing,” Rachel said, flicking her eyes to Penny Dreadful as it dangled from Welly’s back.

“You have to forgive Rachel here,” Felix said with a smile. “She only makes friends with money and wealthy widowers.”

“It’s a pleasure, Rachel,” Buckle said with a nod.

Rachel turned back to her dials. “Engines are ready, Captain.”

“Take her down,” Felix ordered.

Kishi and Rachel spun hand wheels and the hissing sound of escaping air filled the cabin. The Dart sank into the water which surged and bubbled up and over the glass portholes until the warehouse interior lifted away and all Buckle could see in the darkness was the shadowy outlines of the warehouse pier supports.

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Buckle’s stomach felt queasy. It was his first time in a submarine and he liked it.

The post Read an Exclusive Excerpt of ROMULUS BUCKLE AND THE LUMINIFEROUS AETHER by Richard Ellis Preston, Jr. (+ Giveaway) appeared first on SF Signal
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http://marginalrevolution.com/?p=67299

Good job, people.  Just to recap what has been my perspective, here is from my September post, The Paradox of No Market Response:

…the good news scenario is if the Fed’s decision doesn’t matter much for the markets.  Woe unto you if your economy is so fragile that a quarter point or so in the short rate, mixed in with some cheap talk, were to matter so much.

So if at first prices were to stay steady, following any Fed decision, then equities should jump in price.  That is the “no news is good news” theory, so to speak.  It’s a better state of the world if it is common knowledge that the Fed’s actions don’t matter so much in a particular setting.

Equity markets did in fact rise across most of the world, after a slight period of no reaction.  And I wrote:

If I were at the Fed, I would consider a “dare” quarter point increase just to show the world that zero short rates are not considered necessary for prosperity and stability.  Arguably that could lower the risk premium and boost confidence by signaling some private information from the Fed.

Someone at Bloomberg — I can no longer remember who — wrote at the time that this was the worst possible argument they ever had heard in favor of what the Fed was thinking of doing and subsequently did.  Was it?  Other commentators today have called this a “risk rally,” namely that fear of a prior risk seems to have diminished.

And to recap some broader points:

1. In most periods of crisis, central bankers are too reluctant to use expansionary monetary policy soon enough or strong enough.

2. However true that may be, it doesn’t describe our current situation.

3. Beware of models which rely too heavily on the Phillips curve, and two-factor “inflation rate vs. unemployment” considerations, especially in “long run” situations.  I don’t see that any of the commentators working in this tradition had good predictions this time around.

4. The successful “lift off” still probably won’t matter very much, but better a success than not.  Don’t think that America’s major economic problems somehow have gone away.

http://feeds.nature.com/~r/news/rss/most_recent/~3/7HazZfG66Us/528452a

From Pluto to viral structures, this year produced an array of dazzling pictures.

Nature 528 452 doi: 10.1038/528452a