Bury What We Cannot Take by Kirstin Chen

Bury What We Cannot Take by Kirstin Chen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a depressing view of human nature is shown in Bury What We Cannot Take, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Bury What We Cannot Take is set in late 1950s China, under Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party. The Ong family, who were well-to-do business owners in pre-Communist society, find they've waited too long to leave. Split by the closed Chinese border, they try to reunite in Hong Kong, but must find a way to convince the Communist Party to let them go. It does not go smoothly.

I'm no expert on the history involved here, but I know the basics. The China depicted in this novel is extremely harsh, practically unlivable for anyone not connected to the Communist Party. Which from everything I've read seems pretty accurate, though the timing may be slightly off. The book takes place before the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, but there's a lot of elements in the book that seem taken from that era. Chen says in her Acknowledgements section that she's used history where it fits the story, so I suspect she knew exactly what parts may have been out of place but chose to go with the better story. Which I have no problem with, it certainly worked for me.

The back cover of the dust jacket has some quotes that include "beautifully written", "suspenseful", "engrossing historical fiction"...all true. But I think they missed a very important descriptive point, which is that all the main characters are kind of jerks. Well, maybe not San San. But I didn't like any of the others, who professed great love for family and concern for those around them, then failed to act accordingly.

Which is where that "depressing view of human nature" part comes in. The family made some really bad choices, particularly the father and son. Though they may have struggled through some of the consequences, it's clear there's plenty still to process. There's no fairy tale happy ending here, at least in terms of the personal relationships and emotional impact on the entire family.

Jerks or not, I very much enjoyed reading Bury What We Cannot Take and everything is has to say about family, culture, and the human tendency to make terrible choices. I think most anyone would enjoy this one.

Civilization VI

It's been said that conquering the world is addictive. Got my latest fix in a sale recently with Civilization VI. I've played every entry in the Civilization series thus far, and will almost certainly continue to do so.

The game has been out since the end of 2017, so I didn't exactly jump right on the bandwagon. I have no real interest in playing the inevitably buggy and likely unbalanced initial release anyway, so why not wait? Besides, almost every entry in the Civilization series has been improved significantly by its first expansion. So I waited until I saw a good deal on the game with its first expansion (Rise and Fall) before pulling the trigger.

When I first fired up the game, I sat and watched the whole introductory video. The Firaxis folks know how to make a fun little intro, that's for sure. On subsequent game starts, I skipped it...but got weird graphical glitches in the intro screen and menu when I did. Fortunately those went away after loading a game, but still, minor issues like that are kind of silly in a big budget game with more than a year of patches under its belt. Plus it's not possible to skip the (very loud) logo intro screens without messing around with the game files in the install folder. Really, folks, you have to throw your logo in my face and blow out my ears every time I start the game? This is the sort of thing that makes me really happy I didn't pay the full $60 launch retail price.

Anyway, enough of the minor annoyances, on to the world-conquering. I've only played one full game as I write this, on the default settings. (A Culture victory with the Australians, for the record.) I'm sure I haven't seen everything the game has to offer, but I've seen enough of the most significant parts. Players of Civ V will feel mostly at home with Civ VI initially: similar graphical style, same one-unit-per-tile gameplay mechanic, tech tree looks vary familiar. But it doesn't take too long to run into some significant differences, most notably the concept of districts and the Civics tree (like technology, but for cultural/societal advances). And of course there's plenty of new leaders and civilizations to try out.

The district concept is really interesting. In earlier Civ games, when you built a building in your city, you didn't have to think about where to put it on the world map - everything was just packed into your city's space. Civ VI makes you pick out a tile within the city's influence zone for a specialized district, then the buildings related to that specialty end up there. Want research? Build a campus district, and populate it with a library, university, observatory, etc. Building ships? Locate a harbor district and drop in a lighthouse, shipyard, etc. The bigger your city, the more districts you can zone, and some even affect other nearby cities. The terrain around your city really impacts which districts you decide to build, and cities tend to naturally fall into specializations based on the districts they have.

World Wonders use a similar placement method as districts, requiring the player to pick a tile near the city to use for the wonder. Most wonders have restrictions on which tiles are eligible - must be hills, must be near a particular district, and so on. The result is that wonders tend to be spread out around the civilization, not concentrated in one or two giant cities. Bad for those trying a One City Challenge, I suppose, but I think I like the way it gives me more reason to pay more attention to cities beyond the first few.

The other major gameplay change that I really like is the active research model, with Eureka moments (for technology) and Inspirations (for civics). Completing an objective gives you half the research/culture necessary to unlock the technology/civic. Most are things you'd be doing anyway - building farms, founding cities, beating back barbarian hordes - so generally you're not going greatly out of your way to get the boosts. But the fact that those boosts are there is a great incentive to be actively pursing specific goals.

Civ VI seems like a solid entry in the Civilization series. The designers took some risks with new concepts like districts and active research, and on the whole I've been impressed. 4X game fans will definitely want to give Civ VI a try.

Acting with History in Mind

I've mostly stayed out of the furor over the high school kids from Covington Catholic school confronting a Native American protester - most everything I could say has already been said. But this article from The Root deserves to be spread widely, not just as a sarcastic takedown (which it most definitely is) but also for the attention it draws to historical and institutional racism.

Those of us on the privileged side of history need to take every opportunity to remind ourselves that we can't just look at ourselves and our immediate surroundings in isolation. There's a long history behind every interaction we have. Whether you're talking about high-profile confrontations at protest marches, or economic statistics like lower prices for black-owned homes, it's not just about what's happening today, but all the history that led up to this point. And this isn't just about how to respond at protest marches, but should influence all our actions - including the kinds of policies we support and who we vote for.

Full disclosure - I was one of those privileged white boys who had no understanding of how my actions might impact others, back when I was that age. (Case in point.) Experience and interactions with many people of varying races and wealth levels have taught me empathy, and I hope some of the kids from this incident can do the same.

The Orville on Fox

Seth MacFarlane has been involved in a lot of television production in his career, the most well-known being Family Guy. But it looks like what he really wanted to do is captain a starship...thus, The Orville.

If you've ever watched Star Trek, you'll feel right at home with The Orville. The colors are modified, the starship design slightly different, there's a "Planetary Union" instead of "The Federation," the alien races have different names, and so on. But it's basically Star Trek: The Next Generation by another name, plus sitcom humor.

I'll admit, I was skeptical when I first heard about The Orville. I loved Star Trek: The Next Generation as a teenager, and I laugh at Family Guy as much as the next person, but MacFarlane was going to need to do more than just throw around jokes in space to make the show work. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed the result...mostly.

When The Orville is being a spiritual successor to Star Trek, it's really good. Anyone who has watched much Star Trek is going to recognize a lot of the plotlines, some of which feel like they were lifted wholesale from episodes of one or the other of the Star Trek series. Not to mention the characters, who feel like the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew, right down to alien officers and an android. But whether lifting old plots or doing something original, The Orville does space exploration opera well.

Where The Orville falls short, in my opinion, is when it forgets that it's about the future. For instance, the first two episodes of the second season, which as far as I'm concerned could have happened in any generic suburb instead of on a futuristic spaceship. Outside of a few minutes on a shuttle performing a planetary rescue mission, both episodes were all about relationship drama and personal failings. Those things are important, but should be secondary to the futuristic space heroics, not the other way around.

As long as The Orville continues to stick to space exploration and dealing with alien races, I'll keep watching. Hopefully the ratings are such that Fox keeps it around for a while.

Future Man (on Hulu)

Hulu's Future Man is a great example of niche television getting a chance in today's expansive landscape of entertainment production. And I am exactly the target audience.

The plot of Future Man revolves around time travelers going into the past to recruit a video game expert to help them save their future. Which is ridiculous and rapidly becomes more so, jumping around multiple times and places with barely a stop. Not that it really matters, because what Future Man is really about is hilarious pop culture references, insanity that seemed like a good idea at the time, and a whole lot of crude jokes.

I really like the performance by all three of the main actors: Josh Hutcherson, Eliza Coupe, and Derek Wilson. Each really sells the role they're playing, which I think is essential in this kind of comedy. It doesn't work if the characters don't seem truly invested in the events, not to mention often being confused by what's going on. All three of these folks do an outstanding job.

There are a lot of people who shouldn't watch Future Man. Anyone who's been offended by South Park, for instance. Or has issues with jokes about bodily functions. Or isn't steeped in pop culture time travel sci-fi, like Back to the Future and Terminator. Although I guess you could do without that last part, if you don't mind missing a good number of references.

Twenty years ago...maybe even ten...I'm not sure Future Man would have found a home. It's got a narrow target audience and wouldn't make it past the censors for broadcast TV. But these days, with all kinds of cable channels and streaming services producing a ton of content, there's a lot of room for all sorts of ideas. And I'm glad this one got a chance, because it's hilarious.

The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Last Policeman is a commentary on how a lack of hope for the future affects people and, by extension, society. Oh, and it's also a detective story.

It takes only a few pages for The Last Policeman to paint an extremely bleak picture. There's an apparent suicide, taken in stride by almost everyone because it's such a common occurrence. Before long we learn this attitude is due to the end of the world, in the form of a massive object from space on a collision course with Earth. With no future to look forward to, many people have abandoned societal norms and gone on huge benders, or flown off to pursue "someday" dreams, or buried themselves in religion. Or simply decided to end their lives early.

Our hero, Detective Hank Palace, is not one of these people. He's sticking to society's rules, and investigating the case of the suicide. Which he believes could be a murder, and that investigation leads him to all sorts of unexpected people and places.

As a detective story, The Last Policeman hits a lot of the standard plot points. A few physical altercations, pushing a snitch for information, mysterious beautiful girl, stereotypical fellow detectives, uncovering deeper mysteries in the course of the investigation. By itself, it would seem formulaic. But set against the backdrop of the end of the world, the mystery aspect works to keep the story moving and the characters motivated.

This is only the first book in a trilogy, so it's no surprise that The Last Policeman ends with a lot of big questions unanswered. But I think it still works on its own, wrapping up the smaller story of the suicide investigation while setting up for later books to expand on the larger picture. I look forward to reading the next one to continue the story.

We Are Legion - We Are Bob by Dennis E. Taylor

We Are Legion - We Are Bob by Dennis E. Taylor
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

We Are Legion - We Are Bob (hereafter WLWB) tells the story of a self-aware Von Neumann probe, seeded with the personality of one Bob from 21st century Earth. The story tracks Bob (and his copies) from the initial confusion of waking up as a computerized simulation to being launched into space and spreading out into multiple star systems.

There's a definite feel of two different books in WLWB. The first half deals with how the world gets from the present-day to the near future when Bob's probe is being sent to the stars. It's not particularly subtle about the dangers of fanaticism, extremism, and a fragmented society with little or no cooperation. There's a lot about the technology being used to send out the probe, mostly recognizable as near-future extensions of what we can do today. Once Bob launches, though, the book feels very different, becoming pretty much a space opera as the technology becomes wildly advanced, multiple versions of Bob start spreading out through the galaxy, and they start to find extra-terrestrial life and artifacts.

Reading WLWB reminded me a lot of playing a space 4X game. Start small, survive an early skirmish with opposing forces, establish a base, expand your resources, spread out to new systems, more battles, discover other life, even go on a quest (saving humans from Earth). It's not an exact analogy, but it's close enough that it came to mind several times as I read through the book. And like playing such games, reading WLWB requires quite a bit of patience as you keep track of lots of different disconnected happenings across the galaxy.

I found the novel's concept interesting and enjoyed the various takes on Bob's personality, but even I felt things had gotten extremely fragmented toward the end of the book. Shifting back and forth across half a dozen versions of Bob in various star systems made it difficult for me to feel any real investment in any of the various story threads or characters. There's simply too much going on. And it doesn't help that several of those threads are largely left hanging (presumably to be picked up in the next book in the series).

WLWB is a fun read for science fiction fans who want an interesting take on how galactic exploration might begin. If that concept doesn't grab you, though, I wouldn't recommend it. Without that hook to hold your interest, WLWB is likely to just feel too long and scattered to be enjoyable.