The Jean le Flambeur trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi

Fair warning: if you like to understand all the words and want to have a good idea of what's going on at all times when you read a novel, Hannu Rajaniemi may not be the author for you. But if you can put up with some uncertainty (actually, a ton of it) while the story unfolds, this trilogy has a lot of entertainment to share.

The Quantum Thief, The Fractal Prince, and The Casual Angel follow gentleman thief Jean le Flambeur through various adventures in a far-future solar system with wildly advanced quantum technology. People's minds are regularly electronically uploaded, duplicated, modified, stolen, and enslaved. Bodies can be changed with little more difficulty than changing one's clothes, as long as you can afford it. Various groups live in just about every part of the solar system, from the planets to asteroids to the Oort Cloud to moon-sized spaceships.

The books follow Jean and friends through adventures all over the Solar System, from Mars to Earth to Saturn and many points between. Jean is a self-described master thief, and so it's not surprising that a lot of the story revolves around pilfering stuff from under the noses of its owners. The larger plot involves the fate of society in the entire system, so it isn't just about stealing shiny objects, though there's plenty of that in service of the end goals. And there's no shortage of action along the way, either. Each of the books has multiple passages that read like descriptions of the craziest special effects in sci-fi movie battle scenes, and I mean that as a compliment...it's fun to envision actually seeing all of what Rajaniemi has written.

Through all this, Rajaniemi doesn't do a lot of hand-holding. New terms get thrown at the reader with minimal explanation. There's plenty of weird happenings that don't make sense until much later when the reader has more information. As I said earlier, you have to put up with quite a bit of uncertainty. But I felt that by the end of each book, Rajaniemi had done a reasonable job of clarifying what had happened and why.

As far as the science aspect of sci-fi goes, Rajaniemi has gone far enough out into the future that much of what he describes seems like magic. Clarke's third law applies here: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." There's a good amount of explanation scattered throughout the trilogy, much of it involving quantum effects or nanotech, which to my layperson's mind seems plausible. And Rajaniemi certainly does a fine job with the descriptions, unsurprising since he has a doctorate in physics. But it's so far ahead of anything that exists in today's world that there's really no way to know how feasible any of it is, so it's easiest to just suspend disbelief and accept the premise without worrying about how it works.

My favorite part of the world building isn't the technology anyhow, but rather the social orders. The Oubliette is a whole society built around taking privacy to the extreme. Innumerable mind-copies of a few original Founders created the Sobornost society made up almost entirely of themselves. The few who still live on Earth fight against corruption by rogue "wildcode" technology that tries to corrupt mind and body. And my personal favorite, the zoku collective that gamifies everything, using points and levels and "entanglement" bonding to both keep score and organize their efforts. Given the changes wrought by technology and shifting environments, I thought the social and political structures that Rajaniemi describes are plausible and certainly the ideas are thought-provoking.

If my previous warnings about complexity and uncertainty haven't turned you off already, then you're probably going to enjoy the trilogy. I certainly did.

Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward

Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bob Woodward is a reporter, and Fear reads very much like a very long newspaper story. Lots of quotes from individuals, paraphrasing where necessary, coming from "deep background interviews" or other published works. It's all in service of one thing, trying to make sense of the erratic first year of the Trump White House. (This is in contrast to Fire and Fury, the other major book thus far about the Trump White House, which I felt was much more of an entertainment work.)

There's not much in the way of consistent narrative in Fear, as it reports notable interactions between various actors in mostly chronological order. It jumps back and forth between issues as they were more or less important at the time. This can make it difficult to follow, but is necessary because Woodward is mostly aiming to describe President Trump's interactions with his staff and provide a glimpse into his state of mind, both which changed regularly as events progressed.

Largely this shows a negative picture of Trump, as a man who has little patience for the opinions of others, a very limited attention span, and a habitual liar. But it's not all negative. Woodward also shows the President's real sadness and anger over deaths in the Syrian civil war, for example, and how he did his best to console families of deceased service members. I was impressed with Woodward's work reporting the complexities of the President, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions.

For me, that conclusion is that the Trump White House that Woodward describes largely revolved around people trying to keep their leader from doing real harm to himself or the country. Trump would propose action, like doing a personal interview with Robert Mueller on the Russia investigation or withdrawing from the South Korea-US trade agreement or imposing steel tariffs. Then the staff would frantically try to delay or water down those actions until the President either lost interest (usually) or could be convinced to take another course (rarely). Sometimes the staff was successful, sometimes not.

The book also painted several key White House figures in a different light than I'd seen before. The one that stood out most in my mind was Rob Porter, who resigned in disgrace after being accused of domestic violence. But before that, Porter had been a very important influence on President Trump, often moderating some of the more extreme actions that the President wanted to take. Another is Gary Cohn, a former Wall Street executive who was instrumental in pushing through the Republican tax cuts. The extensive efforts that Cohn went through to fight against Trump's anti-free-trade actions (tariffs, withdrawal from free trade treaties) are described in detail in Fear. I wouldn't say I have a better view of either man, as I still think both did some incredibly harmful things, but at least it's a more complete view of how much worse things could have been without their efforts.

I can't exactly say that I enjoyed Fear, because it's not an easy or uplifting read. But I certainly feel better informed.

My Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper

My Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I know Ellie Kemper from her role as Kimmy in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which is hilarious and touching and ridiculous, often all at once. When I heard that she'd written a book (via an appearance on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me), I wanted to see if the book was as entertaining as her acting. Good news, it absolutely is.

As one would expect, Squirrel Days contains many anecdotes from Ellie's life and career. Unlike many similar books, this one tells you right up front (page 4!) that much of it may be made up. And I think this describes the tone of the book quite well. The author is an entertainer, knows how to amuse an audience, and is going to make that happen without letting small details like complete accuracy get in the way.

Which is not to say that the whole book is nothing but outrageous stories. Most of it is fairly normal life experience, from childhood antics to career decisions to friends and family. Which are generally described not just as what happened, but what Ellie had been thinking and hoping for and often utterly failed to achieve. Usually in extremely amusing fashion.

I'm sure that not everyone will love this book as much as I did, as I think you need the right sense of humor to be as entertained by it as I was. For your sake, I hope you have that, so you can have as much fun reading Squirrel Days as I did.

12 Monkeys (TV)

The Syfy time-traveling show 12 Monkeys wrapped up its four-season run earlier this year, so I decided now was a good time to check it out.

When it begins, 12 Monkeys is about a time traveler trying to stop a massive plague that kills the vast majority of humanity in the mid 21st century, and the 20th century actions that led to it. After about a season and a half, the scope expands to cover larger sections of history and the destruction of all time. It's all a bit over-the-top in terms of dramatics, but I thought it worked well for the most part, keeping the viewer interested as the stakes went higher.

The TV show is loosely based on the 12 Monkeys movie from 1995, but most of that relationship is in the initial setup and character names. Once the series gets going, and particularly after the first season, it bears little resemblance to what was in the movie. Not surprising, since they had a lot more hours to fill.

Time travel is always a difficult beast to pull off, but 12 Monkeys did a fine job of it. The ability to travel was limited by technical issues and potential for paradox, so the viewer could believe the difficulties that the characters were having couldn't simply be solved by going back a little further in time. And the limited information available after the plague made it more believable that it wasn't possible to easily eliminate the source of the problem. Later on, some of those limitations were removed, but by then the problems were greater and the enemy more capable. On the whole, I think 12 Monkeys pulls off the time-travel theme about as well as can be expected.

I enjoyed most of the characters in the show as well, although the leads were far from the best in my opinion. Both James Cole - handsome rogue from the future - and Cassandra Reilly - implausibly beautiful and brilliant doctor - felt too "TV perfect" for me to really have much empathy for them. Sure, they were in some crummy situations, but of course they always found a way out. But several of the supporting cast were great, in part because the characters actually had some believable flaws. By far the best character as far as I'm concerned, both in terms of acting and writing, was Jennifer Goines played by Emily Hampshire. She played the driven-insane-by-warped-time character perfectly, and the writers gave her some of the most hilarious and memorable moments in the series.

One of the most difficult things to do with any multi-season series is a really satisfying ending. On this score, I give 12 Monkeys high marks. The way that they wrapped up the plot was excellent, covering pretty much every major question that had been raised along the way. I'm sure there were a few minor things that didn't fit, but there wasn't anything that bothered me enough to matter. The ending for the characters was a bit too good to be true, but I really wasn't expecting anything else by that point.

All told, I'd recommend 12 Monkeys to science fiction fans. I'm not sure it'll draw in too many who aren't interested in the time travel premise, but it's a solid offering for those who are.

Why I'm Not Following the (American) Football Season

It's September, the time when a whole lot of people pay a lot of attention to what's happening on the gridiron. I've done that myself for many years, but I've decided this year it's time to finally put my time and money where my principles are.

I've got two major problems with the game of American football: the injuries it causes on the field, and the way the organizations treats their players off the field.

Head trauma caused by playing football is not news...it's been reported widely for years. (A quick search will turn up plenty of articles, but here's one for easy reference.) There was even a movie. It's a difficult condition to diagnose. Different people have widely varying reactions to blows to the head. What one person shrugs off might cause serious issues for another. Worse, the effects are often delayed, showing up days, weeks, or even years later. But what is known is this...repeated hits to the head are bad for anyone, and in at least some cases are known to cause serious problems.

At the professional level, the injury potential can be excused to some extent because the players are adults able to make their own decisions. Years ago, the players weren't informed and couldn't make that decision, but these days there's no excuse for any adult playing football to plead ignorance. Adults that want to take a risk for love of the game or for a big paycheck should be allowed to make that choice.

However, the vast majority of football players aren't professionals. They're high school kids and college students, mostly still minors. We restrict young people from doing potentially dangerous things all the time, and playing a game with a high likelihood of causing life-long health issues should be no exception. But we don't discourage it - we actually do the opposite in most communities, treating football games as social events and the players as heroes. I don't want to be part of the problem by participating in the sub-professional football ecosystem, even in a small way as a spectator.

My second concern comes in at the college and professional level. The organizations that run the game (NCAA and NFL) don't treat their players very well, even if you leave aside the injury concerns.

In the NCAA, huge sums of money go to schools and coaches while the players aren't paid. At the top schools, it's possible you could argue that scholarships and benefits make up for that (although I don't think that's nearly enough), but certainly at lower division schools that's not the case. Don't believe me? Ask Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He played basketball rather than football, but the same arguments apply to both. Basketball and football account for the vast majority of the money in college sports. The "amateurism" doctrine in college sports needs to change, and until it does I don't want to spend any more of my time or money in support.

In the NFL, the majority of players don't have guaranteed contracts. If they get injured or just slow down a bit, they can be cut and the team owes them nothing. The average NFL career is less than 4 years, and most players won't make big money in that time. Enough to live on, certainly, but if they get a costly injury...very likely...that money won't last.

There's also been a lot of news in the last few years about NFL players protesting against treatment of people of color at the hands of the police. Some people have said they stopped watching football because those players were disrespectful of the United States. I don't agree with that at all, and fully support the right of the protesters. In fact, one of my reasons for not watching football is the opposite...I think the NFL owners have suppressed those protests. The obvious example is the way that Colin Kaepernick has been unable to find a team, but the NFL has tried to make rules limiting the ability to protest and individual owners have spoken out against it.

For all these reasons, I've decided it's time to make a clean break with football. It's impossible to completely avoid it...it's everywhere on the news and across the Internet...but I won't be spending time watching TV coverage, or spending any money on merchandise or attending games. One person won't make a difference, I know, but it feels like the right thing to do. If enough people eventually make the same decision, change may come.

GR Mini Maker Faire

The Grand Rapids Public Museum hosted the Grand Rapids Mini Maker Faire this weekend. Despite the "mini" description there was plenty to see, with a good-sized list of exhibitors spread out through the museum.

Exhibitors fell into roughly three categories at the faire: community organizations, crafters selling their goods, and food. I was familiar with a lot of the community exhibitors: our local public library system, various and sundry crafting organizations, the Grand Rapids Children's Museum, the Grand Rapids Police department, and so on. The commercial booths were a widely varied bunch - everything from 3D-printed toys to handbags to paintings to dolls. Good variety on the food, too, from a beer booth to bundt cakes to hot sauce to popsicles.

Most of the exhibitors had one kind of hands-on activity or another at their booth. Lots of families present, with kids of all ages trying out everything from build-your-own-floating-robot to woodcarving. Robotics and 3D-printers seemed to be the most common themes - several booths that had one or both. But there were plenty of more traditional exhibitors as well.

There were also a few vehicle displays, including a one-man submersible that looked incredibly cramped but awfully cool nonetheless. The Grand Valley State Solar Garden group was showing one of their vehicles, and one guy had an electric motorcycle. Pretty amazing some of the things that people put together in their hobby time.

The one negative to this year's event was the long line to get in, if you had to buy a ticket. I think they may have had some technical issues that resulted in a long wait for those of us who didn't buy tickets ahead of time. A fairly minor issue, though, and once I got inside it wasn't overly crowded at all. As a museum member I saved about eight bucks on the entry fee, which I immediately spent on beer...wait time forgiven.

If there's a Maker Faire near you, it's well worth taking a few hours to go check it out. Whether you're a crafter yourself or not, it's always interesting to see the huge variety of things that people are doing and making.

Orphan Black

The main thing I learned from watching Orphan Black is that Tatiana Maslany must be a serious workaholic. She deserves that Emmy and the other awards she's garnered from playing half the roles on the show.

Orphan Black is a contemporary science fiction thriller series based on the idea that a shadowy cabal is messing around with the human body. Clones, DNA manipulation, body modifications. Over the five seasons, the characters go from blissfully ignorant to deeply involved, one layer of evil masterminds after another.

This kind of sci-fi thriller isn't a new formula, of course, but it's a solid premise if executed well. Which Orphan Black is, especially in the first 3 seasons. There's plenty of intrigue and mystery with interesting characters. Anyone who's read some sci-fi in this genre won't be too surprised by the larger plot points - there were several "big reveal" points that I saw coming a mile away - but it's still a fun ride getting there. I wasn't as impressed with the last 2 seasons in terms of plot, largely because it's just hard to sustain the suspension of disbelief as the stakes keep going higher. Eventually you become kind of numb to the ever-escalating danger and crazy mad science.

But that's all right, because there are plenty of great characters to follow into those last couple of seasons: several clones, their various friends and family, recurring villains, and new bad guys showing up on a regular basis. It's not always clear which people fall into which category, either, which is great. Keeps things really interesting when you're aren't entirely sure who is on which side. And even among the main characters who are clearly working together, there's plenty of interpersonal tension and drama, largely driven by the fact that just about everyone is flawed in some way.

What makes Orphan Black really unique is how Tatiana Maslany plays all those clone roles. There are four primary recurring characters, and at least five others with lesser roles. Each is a separate character, with their own personalities and appearances (and accents, usually). I thought she did an excellent job of really giving each one a unique feel, so that the viewer really sees them as different people. It's especially impressive when she plays one clone trying to pretend to be a different one, looking uncomfortable and purposely not-quite-perfectly mimicking mannerisms.

I had a great time watching Orphan Black, even when the plot-lines got a bit hard to swallow in the later seasons. Still a great show that I'd recommend to anyone who likes the sci-fi thriller genre.