Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 405

I’m sick and tired of this no-carb diet

And anyway, I had a potluck to attend. I wanted to make Maggie Stiefvater’s November Cakes, trying out my idea about using more orange extract, but I didn’t have any cream with which to make the caramel glaze, so instead I made these brownies.

Of course there is nothing unusual about cheesecake-layered brownies, but this particular recipe is very good and very reliable, and I invite you all to try them next time you have a party to attend.

Filling:

8 oz cream cheese, softened

1/3 C sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 egg

4 Tbsp flour

Brownies:

2 1/2 oz unsweetened chocolate

1/2 C. (1 stick) butter

3/4 C flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 C sugar

Beat together filling ingredients and set aside.

Melt chocolate and butter in microwave, stir until smooth, set aside.

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt.

Beat eggs, vanilla, and sugar until smooth. Beat in chocolate mixture. Beat in flour mixture, on low speed. Spread slightly less than half the batter in a greased 8 x 8 pan. Spread filling over bottom layer of brownies. Dollop rest of brownie batter over filling and spread out until it more or less covers the filling. You do not have to achieve perfect coverage when doing this.

Bake at 350 degrees (340 degrees for a glass pan) for 40-45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out with moist crumbs clinging to it. Cool the brownies in the pan. Cool completely before slicing, if you have sufficient self control. I have to say that slicing off a little taste before the brownies are completely cool doesn’t seem to have any negative effects on the brownies, but they are easiest to slice if chilled. Because of the cheesecake layer, they should be chilled to store, if they last that long.

Recent Reading: Blackout by Myra Grant

Okay, so. Finally read BLACKOUT, which as you know is up for the Hugo this year.

Is it good? Yep. As you’d expect if you’ve read the first two books in the trilogy, it’s quite an adventure. Not the high-octane thrill-ride of the first two books, imo, but exciting.

Does Grant pull off the — and here comes a spoiler, if you haven’t read the second book, so look away –

Does Grant pull off the magic clone? For me, not really. She waves her hands and declares that magic science makes it possible to grow a magic clone to adulthood near-instantly and magically install into its brain the memories of the original, and I’m sure a nod to magic science is fine for a lot of readers, but for me it is a tooth-grinding suspension-of-disbelief disaster.

Which I strongly suspected it would be. So I was prepared. So I enjoyed the new Georgia anyway. I liked her sections of the narrative the best, in fact, even if I didn’t believe in her. Can she get out of the evil CDC’s hands before they kill her? Can she persuade her team she’s the real thing, against all their genuine memories of her being dead? Very tense moments in there.

So getting Georgia back and reuniting her and Shaun (in a rather hard-to-believe coincidence of intersecting plotlines, but whatever) — well, I like happy endings, so okay.

BLACKOUT had plenty of other good stuff in it, too: all those tense family dynamics and all those interesting questions about identity and what it takes to make a clone a real person. And about what it takes to be a sane person, and the strange shapes insanity can take. Plus the random betrayals from unexpected directions, and trustworthy allies found in equally unexpected places.

And the writing is still excellent — though switching first-person narratives back and forth between Georgia and Shaun felt awkward to me; once they got together, I kept losing track of who was speaking. Then I’d have to stop and think and figure it out, which was annoying. That wasn’t an issue in the first two books, of course, and it’s probably one reason that, to me, the plotting didn’t seem nearly as tight in this book as it did in the earlier books.

Anyway — to sum up, I totally agree with the perceptive commenter (Maureen E) who noted in a previous post that FEED would have been an utterly brilliant standalone novel and it’s a pity Grant didn’t leave it to stand alone. Yes. Even though I genuinely enjoyed the other two, I hereby declare that the first book is actually lessened by the existence of the other two.

How about the rest of you? If you’ve read the book: agree or disagree?

Everybody’s familiar with Dr Horrible, right?

Because in that case you really must go check out this link.

Because, if you can believe it? Rico Simpkins at Worlds Without Ends blog actually used the lyrics in Dr Horrible’s Sing Along to teach poetry. Isn’t that a hilarious idea?

Simpkins says, “I spend a lot time teaching Shakespeare, Shelly, Keats, Frost and pretty much any other English language poet to my students. I have pretty high standards for them, and lyric poetry can be pretty intimidating. Consequently, I have tried to dispel the notion that poetry is hard to read or that the literary figures I teach them to identify can only exist in elite centuries-old verse. In fact, I maintain that every trope and scheme tested in an AP English exam can be found in contemporary entertainment ranging from Top 40 music to popular musicals.”

And then, as I say, he analyzes the lyrics of “Hail to the King” and “Now Your World is Mine” and so forth. Very entertaining. You should click over if you have a moment — unless you haven’t seen Dr. Horrible yet. In that case, perhaps you should plan to do that first.

Really nice top ten writing tips –

From Margaret Atwood.

My favorite is number seven: “You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality.”

Enjoy!

Also a similar list from Jonathan Fransen. This time my favorite is number ten: “You have to love before you can be relentless.” That one stopped me and made me think.

Recent reading: a potpourri

So am I the only person in creation to hate Cronin’s THE PASSAGE? Because it was a DNF for me.

It’s true I don’t-finish a much higher proportion of books than used to be the case. I decided, you know, life is short and the TBR pile is long and why waste my time reading a book I don’t like? But I sure didn’t expect THE PASSAGE to be one of the books I didn’t like, after The Book Smugglers gave it a, get this, nine. A nine. I expected to love this book.

But, no.

I mean, we open with this young mother who is basically forced into prostitution to support her child, Amy. Although I was definitely wondering, why is she unable to get welfare? You’d think this was set in the 1850s when poor women really could be forced into prostitution, not in the modern day where there is, you know, a safety net. Is it possible for a woman to really not realize she would totally be eligible for all kinds of services? So right there I had questions about how Cronin set this up. But they were short lived questions, because — here comes a spoiler — the young mother, who is quite a sympathetic protagonist, leaves her little girl with nuns and vanishes. We never see her again.

So then this fascinating nun from Africa, Sister Lacey, takes over Amy’s care and becomes the story’s protagonist. I was definitely pulled into caring about Sister Lacey. Too bad because — spoiler alert — she is very quickly killed helping to rescue Amy from a rather typical Evil Federal Agency. The Feds accidentally-but-so-predictably set loose a vampire apocalypse, thus leading to the end of the world.

So Amy now depends on the Good Federal Agent, Agent Wolgast. Who is an interesting new protagonist, only he — is this getting repetitive? — he dies, leaving Amy alone in a world that has basically come to an end.

Fast forward 100 years and . . . never mind, I no longer care. After losing three protagonists in a row, I no longer trust Cronin to give me a character I can care about and to leave that character alive for more than 50 pages. I’m done.

So after THE PASSAGE was a bust, I thought, fine, try something completely different. So I picked up a Tamora Pierce novel I found at a library sale last year: THE WILL OF THE EMPRESS. Unfortunately, I’m a little old for Tamora Pierce, whom I suspect is an author that appeals more if you first started reading her books when you were fourteen. Even more unfortunately, this book turns out to follow not just one prior series, but two.

This novel had four main characters, but I just didn’t find any of them very interesting. That might have been different if I’d read the prequels. As it is — they all just annoyed me. All these unnecessary misunderstandings, and the plot looked like it was going to unroll in an extremely predictable way, and I just found myself unwilling to go on with the story to see if I was right about how all the plot elements would fit together. So . . . my second DNF in two days, which may be a record for me.

The third try was the charm, thankfully, because I really enjoyed the murder mystery I tried next: SLOW DOLLOR by Margaret Maron. My mother, who reads a lot of mysteries, didn’t much care for this one, so my expectations weren’t high. It was nice to be surprised in a good way.

SLOW DOLLAR is by no means the first in the series, but unlike the Pierce novel, it’s easy to get into without having read the others. Well, I guess that’s typical for a murder mystery series, maybe more so than for a fantasy series. But it was a welcome difference.

Anyway, I liked Maron’s protagonist, Judge Deborah Knott. You know what I thought was especially entertaining? The way Judge Knott tried such boring, ordinary, everyday kinds of cases. DUIs and vandalism and other petty crimes. No sensational murder trials, nothing like that. I liked this ordinary-life feel to the book. Not that the book devotes much time to the minutiae of all these trials but we definitely get a feel for Judge Knott’s ordinary courtroom life, and her ordinary life outside the courtroom, too. I think I’m starting to really notice stories about protagonists who aren’t lost princesses or the subjects of prophecies or the heirs to immense fortunes or anything, but rather just ordinary people. I mean, how many stories like that do you see? It seems like not very many. I enjoyed that aspect of Bujold’s Sharing Knife series, too.

I liked the carnival element in Maron’s mystery, and I really liked the complicated family relationships that wrapped around the whole plot from top to bottom, and I liked how the author worked things out in a positive way, getting Andrew to acknowledge his (adult) illegitimate daughter after all, and having Andrew’s current wife be instrumental in making the daughter feel like maybe she could be part of the family. I loved Deborah’s father — what a guy.

I liked the sort of hidden romance between Dwight and Deborah — I mean, actually hidden from Deborah herself, in a way, even though she is one of the people involved in the romance. That was definitely different. I loved how Maron showed us just enough of Dwight’s pov so that we — the readers — understand the relationship better than Deborah herself does. This is all SO different from the super-hot paranormal romances and angsty teen romances that are so very very common these days. Plus, I’m definitely rooting for Dwight. I think I’ll get the next book along in the series just to see how this plot element develops — and after seeing how Maron sets things up so that they work out, I think I trust her to develop this relationship in a way I’ll enjoy.

So . . . what all have you all been surprised by lately, either liking a book less than you expected, or more?

Recent Reading: DEEP DOWN by Deb Coates

Okay! Anybody think the first book, WIDE OPEN, was a tad predictable? I did. It didn’t bother me, because I was reading for the characters and dialogue and setting, all of which were so good that I didn’t care that it was super-obvious that Martin was the bad guy.

But in DEEP DOWN? We still have the characters and dialogue and setting, but the story is also less predictable. I did guess what was special about Lily and Beth, but not much more than that. Several details took me totally by surprise!

In DEEP DOWN, we have two subplots that sort of look like they’re separate, but they actually tie together as the story progresses. We get the thing with the black dogs, that are not, of course, dogs at all — they’re harbingers of death, and they talk. At least the one that hangs out with Hallie talks. Still not clear why this particular black dog is hanging out with Hallie; I think we have a lead in to the third book, here. Which is fine. I like the black dogs and look forward to seeing them again.

So, anyway, the thing with the black dogs and reapers and a personified Death — I always do enjoy a personified Death — and the thing with the spooky bad guy, Travis Hollowell. Who is indeed pretty spooky. And, as I say, turns out to be involved with all those black dogs and reapers and everything, and in fact it all even ties together with the magic we saw from the first book.

One thing I really like about this story: the way there is ALL THIS weird spooky stuff going on, so that every time you turn around you bump into somebody else who can foretell the future (sometimes) or talk to dead people (if they’re in the right mood). Usually these are not comfortable gifts; they are small and not very helpful and sometimes actually pretty dangerous, but they do turn up. And yet you can totally believe that most people don’t notice the weird supernatural stuff that goes on behind the scenes, because Deb Coates is really good at showing how ordinary people just don’t want to notice or acknowledge the weird stuff.

Another thing I really like: You may remember I mentioned before how very, very gifted Coates is with dialogue? Still true. I love the dialogue; and I love the things people don’t say, which can be as vivid as the things they do say; and I love the relationships between even minor characters. And the relationship between Boyd and Hallie. Like this, for example:

There was something about the way [Boyd] said her name, about the way he entered a space, whether she was looking at him or not, like the air changed, like he figured she would always know that it was him. And maybe she would. Like a dance without music. Like they almost knew each other.

And this:

He paused, like he was figuring out what to say next, a problem they both had, not just because they didn’t know who or what they were to each other, but because the subject of their conversations kept being things neither of them had ever heard of or knew anything about.

I could quote so many great bits! It’s all so much more interesting and evocative and somehow real-sounding than the way the Female Lead thinks about the Male Lead in your typical paranormal/UF kind of story. Hallie and Boyd argue, and stop themselves from arguing, and protect each other, and stop themselves from protecting each other, and it’s just a really great developing relationship. We learn a lot more about Boyd in this book. He really does suit Hallie down to the ground. There’s this neat bit where she says, “You’re not my type,” and he just says, “Yes, I am.” And of course he’s right, and she knows he is. It’s like, there’s this great relationships that’s rocky and sometimes tense, but without the angst that gets so tiresome in so many romances.

So, yeah, this one worked for me. Plus, that beautiful cover! I’m definitely looking forward to the third book.

Coincidence? Or a dangerous sign for the future?

You know, I got my Kindle in March? Well, I bought six books in January, six in February, 30 in March, and 30 in April. Kind of scary, isn’t it?

In March, I bought 14 books in paper and 16 in e-format.

In April I bought 12 books in paper and 18 in e-format. Oh, and six audio, because I need to eventually use up my Audible credits plus they had a sale. So that’s really 36 books in April. Heaven knows how long it will take me to listen to the audible books. The next major road trip coming up is in July, but I plan to listen to audible books while weeding this summer. (If we ever get a summer, which at this point is not looking like it’s ever going to happen.)

ANYway, it’s terrible. All these books! I see these great recommendations over at Bunbury in the Stacks or Fantasy Book Café or Chachic’s Book Nook or whatever, and then it turns out the book is an absolute steal in Kindle format, and there you go. Add that to the authors I love who come out with new books which I just have to get in paper. It all adds up.

In case you’re interested:

April acquisitions, in paper format:

Blackout, by Myra Grant, because it’s nominated for the Hugo and I have the first two anyway.

The Lost Gate (Orson Scott Card)

The Bones of the Old Ones (Jones)

Blood of Dragons (Hobb) — I have the others in this series, so naturally I must see how she finishes it.

Protector (Cherryh)

Froi of the Exiles (Marchetta) — turns out I don’t have the first one, though, so I really need to get that before I read this one.

I Hunt Killers (Barry Lyga)

Snake Agent (Liz Williams)

Steel’s Edge (Ilona Andrews) — because, hey, Ilona Andrews, right?

Sword Dancer / Sword Singer (Jennifer Roberson)

Elfland (Freda Warrington)

And in Kindle format:

Katya’s World (Jonathon Howard)

Emilie and the Hollow World (Wells)

The Chocolate Thief (Florand)

Terms of Enlistment (Kloos)

Crown Duel (Duology) (Sherwood Smith)

A Stranger to Command (Smith)

Stolen Magic (Stephanie Burgis)

Stealing the Elf-King’s Magic (Duane)

A Wind from the South (Duane)

Hollowland (Hocking) — time to try one by Hocking, I decided

The Secret Countess (Ibbotson)

Writing Down the Dragon (Tom Simon)

Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement (Wells)

Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary

Shadow Unit 1 (Emma Bull et al)

Shadow Unit 2

The Spark (Bigelow)

The Three Languages of Politics (Arnold Kling) — the only nonfiction title on the list.

And in Audible format:

False Colours by Georgette Heyer

Dark and Stormy Knights — a short story UF collection with lots of authors I like

A Beautiful Friendship (David Weber)

Warm Bodies (Isaac Marion)

The Blood of Flowers (Anita Amirrezvani)

To Say Nothing of the Dog (Connie Willis) — amazingly long, so I guess maybe this one will work for weeding all summer?

I can’t even tell you which titles I’m most excited about. I mean, lots of them.

I can tell you, though, that I MUST whittle down my paper TBR pile before I open my Kindle again!

The books you remember forever –

Are, it seems to me, generally the ones you first read in high school. I don’t mean the ones that you’re forced to read for class, of course, though come to that I think I was scarred for life by LORD OF THE FLIES and ANIMAL FARM. No, I mean the stories you read voluntarily and fall in love with and read again and again. The books that turn into comfort reads, so that you reach for them when, say, you need to take yourself away from the exhaustion and misery of pneumonia.

For me, this was THE RIDDLE-MASTER trilogy by Patricia McKillip. And THE BLUE SWORD by Robin McKinley. And LENS OF THE WORLD by RA MacAvoy. (Is there something about authors whose name start with Mc or Mac?) Let’s see, what else? All right: CUCKOO’S EGG by CJ Cherryh is on the list, and the Chanur series. So is SHARDS OF HONOR by Bujold. There are others, but that’s a reasonable sample.

I don’t think you can really tell, when you’re a teenager, whether a book is objectively great — I suspect you tend to forgive a book’s flaws if it really speaks to you. Though, to be sure, a book can be flawed and yet be great.

But what I do know for sure is, the really good ones grab you hard. They glow in your memory: There, that one, that one is perfect. Even years and decades later, you might be actually offended when you read any non-glowing review of one of these perfect books. And rightly so. Those stories deserve your passion: they shaped you not only as a reader, but also as a person. What you can compromise on, where you must stand firm, what matters most, the kind of person you want to be, all those deep questions of identity that you’re struggling with in your teenage years, that’s where those books sink in and take hold.

And no wonder. Because it turns out that teenagers probably really do feel everything more intensely than adults, that the memories laid down during adolescence really are more vivid and more emotionally charged, that a teenager’s social experiences really do have an important and permanent effect on how he or she reacts to all kinds of social interactions later.

Which is not necessarily a good thing, since the hothouse of teen society we call high school is often pretty toxic. The article I just linked is pretty negative about the effects of the high school experience, even for popular kids. Probably justifiably. Remember a few weeks ago when a long-time teacher, Brandy, weighed in on a discussion about “books for boys” vs “books for girls”, commenting that boys in public school totally reject books with girl protagonists, whereas boys in co-op schools don’t? I think there’s a lot to worry about in high school culture today, especially in the way it’s so divorced from the often more generous and more tolerant adult culture.

But. But, especially with that kind of concern . . . isn’t it then even more important to find the kind of story which holds up before you, in the most vivid way possible, a model to which you can rightly aspire? When, besides your teen years, do you more need to fall into stories featuring heroes who take responsibility for their own lives and for the people around them and the whole world, who show clear agency, who fight to defeat evil, who never give up or give in? Heroes who are, perhaps, a bit larger than life; who might be realistically flawed but are still genuinely admirable, who aspire to be better people and to achieve great things — and who, against long odds, succeed.

Or at least, those are the sorts of books I wanted as a kid, and the sort I hope kids fall in love with today.

Recent Reading: in search of Emma Bull

You know what one book I forgot about when thinking of the all-time great paranormals/urban fantasies? WAR FOR THE OAKS by Emma Bull.

And of course the reason I forgot about this book is that Emma Bull hardly writes anything, and is that a shame or what? WAR FOR THE OAKS, FINDER, BONE DANCE, TERRITORY, and I think that’s it. Wait, also FREEDOM AND NECESSITY (with Steven Brust).

Now, W for the O is really, really good. I think it was her debut novel, which is just amazing, because it is flawlessly put together. Fey in Minneapolis / St Paul, right? I love Eddi, I love her relationship with the pooka, but really all the characters are beautifully drawn.

For me, BONE DANCE was ambitious and interesting, but not my favorite. It’s fascinating, though, to read it the second time and see if Bull played fair, hiding that big plot twist — she did, though. Only a really good writer could get away with what she pulls off in this book. If you haven’t heard of BONE DANCE and you’re intrigued, I strongly suggest that you avoid reading any reviews of it until after you’ve had a chance to read it cold. This is seriously a book you do not want spoiled. It would be like someone telling you, “Hey, you know, Bruce Willis is a ghost!” before you watch The Sixth Sense. (I hope you all knew that already! Surely everyone has already seen The Sixth Sense?)

That huge leap in time in FALCON bothered me a little and I’m not sure I ever really accepted that the two halves of the book belonged together, and I’m not sure I liked the ending. The writing, yes, two thumbs up, but the plot, I don’t know. Maybe I should re-read this one sometime, see how I feel about it now.

I believe I really liked TERRITORY, but honestly, it is only the first half of a story, and God knows when or if the second half is ever, ever going to come out. I don’t remember it that well; I always meant to re-read it when the second book came out, which may mean never, since it was supposed to be about ready at the end of 2011 and there’s no sign of it yet.

FREEDOM AND NECESSITY is a big, ambitious, difficult book — epistolary, with four protagonists. I don’t recall that it was up for major awards, but it should have been, honestly, it is way out of the ordinary. It’s set in 1850, in England, with a kind of is-there-magic-or-isn’t-there vibe. Everything changes, and changes again, as we shift viewpoints and learn the real truth (or is it the real truth?) about what’s going on. It’s excellent, but not a book for a cozy, comfortable evening with hot chocolate. Well, everything goes with chocolate, but seriously, you do have to stay awake to read this book.

But! When I was recently looking around to see if anybody on the internet had the inside scoop on the other half of TERRITORY, do you know what I discovered? That Emma Bull has been one of the movers and shakers behind a really interesting shared-world series called SHADOW UNIT.

If you don’t have a Kindle, then you can read these stories on the Shadow Unit website, here. Of course the formatting is more annoying, but on the other hand the stories are free. And the website does state that eventually there will be print versions, too.

Anyway, I read the first volume in bits and pieces during the show weekend, since it consists of four linked novellas plus little extras, ideal when you’re constantly being interrupted, right?

SHADOW UNIT is like reading novelizations of a TV show that was never made: like Criminal Minds crossed with The X-Files, kind of. The forward declares that it’s “The best TV show that was never made”, which made me smile, but also might be true, if you like this kind of TV show. Which I really did, back when I had time to watch TV.

Here’s the description of the first volume:

The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit hunts humanity’s worst nightmares. But there are nightmares humanity doesn’t dream are real. The BAU sends those cases down the hall. There, Stephen Reyes and his team pursue criminals transformed by a mysterious force: the anomaly. Welcome to Shadow Unit.

Contains four novellas:

“Breathe” by Emma Bull

“Knock On Coffins” by Elizabeth Bear

“Dexterity” by Sarah Monette

“A Handful of Dust” by Will Shetterly

Well, for a free volume of novellas by these authors, sign me up! And all the stories turned out to be good, too. There’s a complicated cast of characters, but every character is memorable, so you sort them out pretty quickly. There are more than a dozen volumes out (e-book); the first one is — clever if obvious marketing ploy — free. Now that I’ve read the first volume, I’ve bought the second, because I’m definitely planning to follow this series. I love how I can get a book in two minutes via my Kindle!

On the other hand . . . I’ve sworn to whittle down my physical TBR pile next. I have books piled on the floor again! Must get about ten book read to clear that pile out of the way. It’s a tough job, but we all have our crosses to bear, right?

Recent Reading: PROTECTOR

So, just finished PROTECTOR by CJ Cherryh. The Foreigner series is so satisfying, in a slow-paced intellectual way — all complicated politics all the time, convoluted talk-heavy diplomacy occasionally interspersed with attempted assassinations and other violence. Of course, this is the 14th book in the series (the 14th! Wow.), so by now the reader is very, very familiar with all the continuing characters and with the ateva society. We don’t need a fast-paced adventure or a hot love affair to care about what’s going on — if we did, we would hardly have made it to the 14th book, right? We want the whole complicated situation to work out, we’re rooting for Tabini-aji and the whole ateva society, and the peripheral human societies, too, annoying as they can be.

So: Cajeiri is finally getting his dearest wish for his birthday (the fortunate ninth birthday, following what we have to admit was a pretty infelicitous eighth year. Maybe there’s something to all that ateva numerology after all, hey?)

The human kids have finally made it down onto the planet, so we’re getting to actually know them for the first time. I like them all; in just a few words Cherryh has turned them all into real people. And how awed they are by ordinary river pebbles and things, since they’ve never been on a planet before. Very nice! I’m glad these kids are clearly going to be around for at least one more book; it wouldn’t surprise me to find them all continuing to be present through the rest of the series.

Naturally there are political complications wrapped around the birthday party, and it’s nice to see that the good guys are finally in position to take out a huge chunk of the opposition, now that they’ve finally figured out who that is. The plot for the third book in this particular sub-trilogy of the series is pretty clear, though no doubt something complicated will happen that we don’t yet see coming.

I’m pretty sure that this series is aiming at eighteen books. The series has just about got to include a sub-trilogy where the kyo, so often referred to since we met them, actually do show up again. If I were guessing, after the next book where the aji’s political situation will get resolved, Cherryh will do one last sub-trilogy where she brings back the kyo and everyone meets some major crisis and we actually get to a more complete resolution that leaves the whole world and all three species in a better place. I can see her setting it up. At least, I think I can.

Anybody else out there following this series? It’s certainly not what I would suggest for an intro to CJ Cherryh — far too long, and slow to get started, and not everybody likes complicated politics. But for creating an alien species and society that feels utterly real and complete, well, I don’t think it’s ever, ever been done half as well by anyone else.