Nikolas P. Robinson's Blog, page 42

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

This review was originally written in 2015.

I felt like I might need a little bit of time to digest Seveneves by Neal Stephenson before giving it a proper review. I loved Anathem and Reamde, but I think that Seveneves is my favorite of his novels aside from The Baroque Cycle trilogy and Snowcrash.
The first two sections of the novel, which constituted approximately 3/4 of the narrative, were some of the most depressing and devastating segments of literature I’ve read.
Beginning with the destruction of our moon, detailing the desperate worldwide push to establish an orbital colony wherein a very small percentage of the human species could weather the thousands of years during which Earth itself would be uninhabitable, and painting a painfully accurate portrait of just how badly we would mess everything up to the point where that small percentage was whittled down to only a handful of women (the “eves” referred to in the title)…the first two sections of the book tease the reader with hope and glimpses of ingenuity and adaptability that we all know human beings are capable of, only to taint that with our propensity for paranoia, infighting, and self-aggrandizement.
The novel jumps forward 5,000 years between the second and third sections and that final quarter of the book is jaw dropping in so many ways. I won’t give anything away, but though there is still ample evidence of a lot of those less desirable human traits that led to the attrition earlier in the book, what we experience as readers is something magnificent, something that would be awe inspiring to see us achieve.
I don’t know if Stephenson had intended it, but I saw the big twist coming from well before the jump forward in time…the surprise awaiting the characters we follow during the final part of the book wasn’t any surprise at all to me, beyond the finer details at least.
I hope that Stephenson expands on this world he’s created in Seveneves; I would love to see where things go from the conclusion of this book, because there is really so much more to be explored.
Having finished the novel, I want even more to see this adapted into a movie or (better yet) a miniseries on one of the cable networks that could provide the budget necessary to do the story justice…and I still want to see Neil deGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk play the characters that were so obviously modeled after them.

Dark Intelligence: Transformation Book One by Neal Asher

This review was originally posted in the summer of 2015.

Having finished Dark Intelligence: Transformation Book One by Neal Asher I am in the unfortunate position of having to patiently wait for the next book to come out.
I recall that feeling well, from the times (not altogether so long ago) when I was impatiently waiting for each of the Ian Cormac novels to be released.
There are exceedingly few authors, maybe a dozen I can think of, who never disappoint me…and Asher is absolutely near the top of that list. He’s right there with Jonathan Maberry, Alastair Reynolds, Peter Watts, Richard K. Morgan, and Neal Stephenson as far as the authors I would list as being the best currently writing material that in any way would be associated with the science fiction genre…though both Maberry and Stephenson tend to cross over a number of genres in the process.
Dark Intelligence, like many of Asher’s novels, weaves together a convoluted plot with a frenetic pace that few could contain in words with the skill that Asher pulls off.
The characters, even relatively minor ones, end up feeling like fully realized individuals…more impressive in the cases of those who are suffering from pretty severe identity crises, and there are a few of those included in this narrative.
I was happy to see both Amistad and Penny Royal back again, having found their previous presences in Asher’s novels to be fascinating. I was also pleased to get more of an introduction to the Atheter; after reading The Technician and some short fiction, I was very interested in delving further into what was going to happen on the planet Masada.
I suspected that I was going to end up loving this book before I had placed it on preorder, but it exceeded my expectations.

The Mind Is a Razor Blade by Max Booth III

This review was originally written in the summer of 2015. As you can probably tell from the picture above–as well as other, more recent reviews–I’m a bit of a fan of this particular author.

I went into The Mind Is a Razor Blade by Max Booth III without any expectations and no knowledge of the plot beyond what the back cover provided.
It starts off sporadic and disorienting, perfectly conveying the state of mind of our protagonist, the very definition of an unreliable narrator.
A man wakes up naked in a river with a corpse nearby and no idea who he is, who the corpse is, or how either of them got there. In the first few minutes of reading the book our protagonist has stolen a coat from a corpse, shot a man numerous times, and made a stumbling but successful escape from the police.
Believe it or not, the story gets crazier from there on out. As our protagonist begins getting a marginally better grasp on who he is and what is going on the narrative simply becomes more bizarre and disturbing along the way, keeping the narrator on his toes (and, by extension, the reader as well).
Through the protagonist, we become unwilling tourists through a city driven mad by drug use, organized crime that crosses into the supernatural while exhibiting the hallmarks of a cult, and inhuman creatures that hunt for organs from the populace…also, there are spiders, lots of spiders. In the midst of all of this, there is also redemption and at the core a sense that love can transcend even the most horrific experiences.
This book contained all of the best elements of noir, horror, a sort of perverse humor, and surrealism. If you’re a fan of the movie Dark City or the book John Dies At the End, this is definitely something you might want to check out.

Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong

This review was originally written in January of 2016. Since I reviewed the sequel on here, I figured I should copy over my review of this novel as well.

Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong (aka Jason Pargin) is a John Scalzi novel that Scalzi hadn’t gotten the chance to write, or at least that’s what it feels like while reading it.
The only thing anyone could use to distinguish this novel from one written by the author of The Android’s Dream and Redshirts would be the requisite dick jokes that certify it as being a David Wong book. It isn’t meant to be derogatory when I compare Wong’s writing and narrative in this novel to John Scalzi, because I consider Scalzi to be one of the most imaginative and versatile authors in the science fiction genre…though he seems to have some competition in Wong.
Wry humor, ridiculous action sequences, satire and absurdity, and implausible science in equal measure are combined to create a fascinating and entertaining story…which should come as no surprise for anyone who read John Dies At the End and This Book Is Full of Spiders.

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck)

This review was originally written in early 2016

Leviathan Wakes is, without a doubt, the beginning of something amazing. I have the next two books in the series and I am looking forward to reading those as well as the additional novels I don’t own yet.
I owned this book for about three years without ever picking it up from my book shelf (I had pretty much forgotten about it) and I may have continued to neglect it were it not for The Expanse being produced by SyFy. Sadly, I watched the first season of the series before reading this novel and I don’t like doing that…but I don’t feel like it was detrimental in any way. I’d like to discuss a couple of the differences for those who have only either read the book or seen the television show before I do anything else.
There are some pretty dramatic differences between the book and the series, the biggest being that the first season ends about 3/5 of the way through the narrative of the first novel, which is something I truly hope SyFy addresses with the second season since there is a lot going on in that third act of the story.
The other major difference between the book and the television series is that we aren’t introduced to the political environment and maneuvering taking place on Earth in the novel, though I appreciate that additional subplot from the show and actually kind of wish it had been part of the book.
Beyond that, the differences are really quite minimal, some characters who don’t quite line up between the two mediums (either because of descriptions that don’t match up with the casting for the series or because the personalities/interactions are just a little bit off) and a couple of plot points that play out a touch differently or occasionally in different sequence…but those aren’t as troubling as they could be.
Written by James S.A. Corey (a fictional person, really the collaboration between Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), this is one hell of an ambitious novel, successfully weaving space opera, militaristic science fiction, and noir mystery into an exciting, intense, and sometimes even scary tapestry.
The stated goal of the authors was to fill in the gap that is almost always present where science fiction is concerned. Typically we either end up with near-future cyberpunk or dystopian stories or distant future space operas and the like taking place after we have spread throughout the galaxy or even the universe itself. This book (and presumably the whole series) provides the reader with a suitably rich and detailed vision of what we have between those intervals, during the time when we are still colonizing our own solar system and only just considering setting our sights further into what we have beyond our galactic neighborhood.
The interactions between Miller and Holden (as well as their separate storylines) are fantastic and well-written enough that the two protagonists really do provide vastly different lenses through which the same events are being experienced. We see a lot of that in The Expanse, but there is a lot of subtext that gets lost in translation between the two mediums.
After reading this book I am determined to pick up some of Daniel Abraham’s fantasy novels, which I might have ended up doing anyhow. The man is an excellent author and Ty Franck clearly learned a thing or two while working for George R.R. Martin where grand, sweeping narratives and visceral (almost punishing) inevitability in narratives are concerned.
Whether you have already seen The Expanse or simply want to read an excellent science fiction novel, I have to recommend reading Leviathan Wakes.

Strangers by David Moody

This review was originally written in 2015, but I thought it merited being shared here…now that I’m actively putting my blog to use.

I have been a long time fan of David Moody as an author, intensely enjoying his novels and short fiction to an extent that I can’t seem to experience with most writers.
Strangers, like many of his stories, is a desolate thing with some highly unpleasant subject matter and narrative twists. If you’re familiar with his work you will discover the elements of paranoia and division that arise in most of his stories to varying extents…but developed and explored quite differently.
The subject matter here is definitely adult and frequently more graphic than in his previous novels…running the gamut from domestic violence and the dangers associated with sex to the more eerie aspects of being uprooted and moving to a strange location surrounded by unfamiliar faces.
If you enjoyed the story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell (the basis for John Carpenter’s The Thing, which was a truer adaptation of the story than the earlier film The Thing From Another World) and David Cronenberg’s Shivers, you will love this novel. I was thinking about the similarities between this book and the movies The Thing and Shivers not altogether too long before the same correlation is drawn by characters within the narrative, which was a nice touch by the author, outright paying homage to some of the clear influences.
This was an uncomfortable, spooky book, and I can’t recommend it strongly enough.

Full Brutal by Kristopher Triana, narrated by Dani George

If you’ve ever asked yourself what American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman would be like if he were a teenage girl living in the current age as opposed to Wall Street of the 1980s, Full Brutal by Kristopher Triana is the book for you. I’m only joking a little bit with that introduction because–much like Ellis’s most popular character–Kim is pretty, popular, and superficially passing as being not only normal but successful and even a role model of sorts. This is, of course, a facade.
As the story unfolds, Kim goes from being a calculating, manipulative sociopath dwelling on suicide–as much out of boredom and a desire to shock/stun the people who believe they’re close to her as very real depression over the fact that nothing brings her any sort of pleasure in life–to a cold-blooded monster. The turning point seems to be that pivotal decision in many teenager’s lives, whether they should have sex and with whom.
Developing a fixation on serial killers as well as torture-porn movies (and actual pornography featuring torture) and finding a spark of pleasure in these things, it’s no real surprise that everything goes dark and brutal from there. She determines her first time should be with someone she has to break down and degrade to get there, and she sets her sights on her sex-ed teacher. When sex itself turns out to be less than the life-changing experience she was hoping for, instead of letting it depress her further, she finds entirely new ways to get herself off.
Destroying lives, creating turmoil that spreads everywhere around her, and always seeking an even greater thrill, Kim finally discovers that catharsis she was desperately searching for. As she decides to go “full brutal” everything continues getting worse for those surrounding her.
Dani George provides fantastic narration that captures the coldness and cruelty of Kim as well as breathing life into the vapid superficiality of her peers and friends–if one could consider these people to be either of those things.
I’m torn, because I appreciate the way this book turns the psychopathic killer trope on its head in a sense, transitioning the usual victim of these sorts of stories into the perpetrator. The skillful storytelling is the same as I’ve come to expect from Triana, along with the depravity and attention to gritty, unsettling details. Those things are fantastic elements.
On the other hand, I feel like Kim is sort of an exaggerated, almost sexist caricature of the sort of girls all rape-culture assholes like to pretend are all over the place. You surely know what I mean if you’ve bothered to torture yourself by reading incel screeds and the like. To a certain sort of guy, the world is populated by girls/women who will manipulate, dominate, and take what they want at any cost. For that sort of person, all girls are a stone’s throw from threatening to cry rape if they aren’t getting everything they want, or just because it’s funny to ruin someone’s life. To guys like that, most (if not all) girls are secretly very much like Kim…excepting the murderous streak. In that sense, I find the character and the story to be a bit problematic in the same way I would if the protagonist were a caricature of the mythical “welfare queen” from the Reagan era…as it sort of breathes life into an ignominious stereotype that should be allowed to die the off-screen death it deserves.
Taking the good with the bad, I still can’t help but recommend this book to anyone who enjoys extreme horror. The best sort of horror is the kind that makes you uncomfortable and forces you to examine things you’d rather ignore, and that’s precisely what you get with Full Brutal.

Eight Cylinders by Jason Parent, narrated by Joe Hempel

Jason Parent’s Eight Cylinders captures a sort of grindhouse action/horror vibe that I appreciated a great deal. We’ve got a story about crime, cars, creatures, confusion, and condemnation in the middle of the desert…and if that doesn’t appeal to you at least a little bit, there’s probably something wrong with you.
Comparing it to movies and other visual mediums, as I usually do, it’s a little bit Tremors, a touch of From Dusk Till Dawn, a good bit The Road Warrior, and a dash of the old show The Prisoner (or maybe, for those who never watched that one, Lost). If you were to toss all of that into a blender and add a splash of cosmic horror, you’d end up with something along the lines of Eight Cylinders.
This story had me invested as soon as Seb began using a novelty Magic Eight Ball glass eye to make his decisions for him as he sped away from Vegas after a deal gone exceedingly bad. Criminal and “bad guy” that he might be, Seb is particularly relatable as a protagonist, and you can’t help but cheer him on as he races through the desert multiple times throughout this short tale. The attention to detail concerning cars, trucks, and ATVs through the narrative gives one the impression that Parent is a bit of a gearhead at heart, or certainly one who spent some quality time researching this tale with gearheads…and that comes through clearly with Seb’s absolute love for his Dodge Charger and his appreciation of other vehicles in the narrative.
Joe Hempel’s narration is excellent, and I’ll surely be watching for other titles he’s provided his voice talents to.
My sole complaint about this story is that it felt a little rushed at times like we were racing from one point to another without getting enough time to really experience where we were.

Embracing Change

In early March of 2021, I interviewed for what I hoped would be a second job I could work in the evenings and over the weekends, to gain some much-desired experience and add some surplus income. I anticipated being able to pay off my 2019 Mitsubishi Outlander SE early, maybe purchase some new camera gear, and add a bit of savings for potentially rainy days down the road. This is not how things worked out.

I had spent almost six years working in a call center environment for GE Appliances. Initially, it seemed like the sky was the limit for me there. I was promoted from my original position in less than a year, and promoted again in another six months or so to a position I’d decided I wanted when I’d gone through training in May of 2015. For the next two years, I worked as a Team Support Specialist, fielding supervisor requests from consumers, providing floor support when not otherwise occupied, approving or rejecting requests to bend our guidelines for individual situations, and assisting our new representatives for the Consumer Relations department as they first started taking calls (and for the subsequent month or two until they were dispersed to their respective teams).

I thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing at that time, the work itself was rewarding and the people I worked with were largely a fantastic group of people. I only vacated that role when a position I desperately wanted became available. I applied, and was hired, for a position as a Trainer and Curriculum Developer for the Product Service Specialist department (essentially technical support and the GE Appliances answer center). For the following year, I got to work in a position I might never have considered leaving. I didn’t exclusively train new representatives for that position, occasionally training new Consumer Relations classes as well as aiding with training for our Home Delivery department (interfacing with Home Depot and certain other retailers for whom we assisted with delivery/installation of new purchases for consumers). There was hardly a position I couldn’t slip into within our particular call center environment without the slightest bit of difficulty.

I excelled at that role, receiving post-training scores that rivaled or even surpassed colleagues who had been in the same position for years before I’d gotten the Trainer position. I successfully graduated the first class with 100% perfect attendance in a long time, largely by instilling a sense of accountability to one another and to me in each of the trainees in that class. Maintaining perfect attendance as a class, through the whole of our training period (five weeks) became a challenge my trainees wanted to achieve…and they did indeed achieve it.

I had a particularly low attrition rate (individuals who did not complete training vs. the total number of trainees who had started my training classes) and a great many people I trained were promoted internally within months of graduating from my training classes. I can’t take all of the credit for that success rate, as I could only work with the people who came through the door, but I did prepare them for everything I conceivably could and made certain they had the clearest understanding of what they could/should do when unexpected scenarios presented themselves.

The year after I’d become a Trainer, the company hired a new Director of Quality and Training from outside of the company and everything changed. The writing was on the wall, there was a push to start from scratch and establish a whole new training environment for GE Appliances. I honestly expected that I’d make it through the new interview and come out the other side still a Trainer. That was not how things worked out either. Instead, I found myself in the unpleasant and unfortunate position of needing to either find a new role within the company (if appealing positions became available before the Valentine’s Day of 2020 deadline) or accept severance and part ways with the company.

I had done nothing wrong. I’d not only displayed competence and capability in every role I’d had within the company for the previous (almost) five years, but I had exceeded expectations whenever I’d been given the opportunity to do so…and now I was being forced to apply for positions I didn’t really want so that I could keep my job, my pay, and my benefits as they were. I maintained as much positivity as I conceivably could, having been dealt a blow like that. I’d not only lost the position I’d worked for years to obtain, but I was also potentially going to lose my job altogether. My two colleagues who’d been in the other Trainer roles opted for severance…and it was a choice I understood, with their greater seniority with the company. I was not thrilled with the way things had turned out and my colleagues weren’t either. I suspect anyone would be hard-pressed to accept that sort of turmoil with a smile and total acceptance.

I did find and accept a new position within the company, in one of the only roles where I might have new things to learn. Until the Valentine’s Day deadline, I continued working as a Trainer…assisting not only my replacement who’d been hired from outside but also the lady who’d taken the Director position. I held no bitterness nor resentment toward these people, and I worked hard to make sure the transition could be as seamless as possible for all parties involved. I wanted the department to continue being successful after I’d vacated my position and moved on to the lateral role I’d been able to find.

I was still in a pseudo-leadership role in the new position. There had been no pay cut and no major adjustment to my schedule. I should have been happy. I was not.

For a period, I was content with the new position, learning a different side of the business and doing things I’d never had to do in previous jobs within the company…but contentment is not the same as pleasure. I found no pleasure in what I was doing. At this point, I was just doing a job and collecting a paycheck. There was no more passion and there really wasn’t any room for surpassing expectations or going above and beyond in the role where I’d found myself.

Sadly, it became apparent that there seemed to be no room for me to go anywhere else within the company either. I interviewed multiple times over the final year with GE Appliances, even managing to impress people who worked at the corporate level in one of those interviews…but I didn’t find acceptance in any of these attempts to perhaps move back into a position where I could feel something rewarding in what I was doing. More than that, certain members of the leadership within my particular call center environment seemed to actively strive to keep me precisely where I was. I felt I was receiving none of the respect I had absolutely earned through the years I’d put into the company up to that point. In fact, I felt actively disrespected in some instances.

I began feeling stifled and demotivated. I dreaded even moving from my bedroom to my home office to log into the work computer to start my day. The pseudo-leadership role I’d pivoted into was beginning to feel less and less like a “leadership” position and more like something being micromanaged and otherwise dismissed.

Sure, I was making just shy of $40k a year and I had three weeks of vacation to look forward to every year as well as a bank of accumulated paid-time-off that rolled over into each new year and could have become quite substantial. The health insurance, dental, and vision were fantastic and reasonably low cost. There was plenty to keep me there, and so I remained in that position I’d never wanted in the first place for more than a year.

I applied with Gray Television (the media conglomerate that owns/operates the ABC and FOX affiliates, KOTA and KEVN, locally) because a friend of mine who works there had told me a position opened up for a Technical Media Producer (a combination of master control operations and directing newscasts). He and I had worked together at KNBN (the local NBC affiliate) years before, during the eight years when I’d worked there between 2002 and 2010. I’d made a comment during one of our conversations that I actually sort of missed working in television broadcasting and he had that remark in mind when the position became available. I’d worked in Master Control for ten years between my previous stint with KOTA (when it was still locally owned/operated) and the years I spent with KNBN. I’d also worked in any number of positions in the production department for newscasts, aside from directing. This seemed like a fantastic opportunity I’d be foolish to ignore.

I applied, not sure whether I’d even be considered, having been out of the industry for 11 years. I’d worked here and there in various production capacities for short films being produced/directed by local filmmakers as well as working on the Full Throttle Saloon television show for what became their final season of the series…but those were different things altogether from what I’d be needing to do in the Technical Media Producer (TMP) role. I figured it was worth a shot, just because of the potential to gain some new experience and expertise while making some extra money. Working part-time in television again might be refreshing enough to make me hate my full-time job just a little bit less.

It turned out that there were no part-time positions available. The job was full-time and they wanted me for it.

I was going to be facing a pay cut to almost half of the $19+ an hour I’d been making (not quite half, but near enough that it’s not worth being more precise) if I accepted the job. There was no way I could work both jobs, I spent a while dwelling on the logistics involved, and it simply wasn’t an option. I told them that I’d need to consider things and weigh everything before making a decision. I wasn’t sure if I could realistically take that sort of financial hit. They accepted that I wouldn’t have an answer until the afternoon of the following day. Based on the reaction when I called and stated that I’d like to accept the job, I don’t think they expected me to take it, knowing how much money I’d be losing in doing so. Though I’d gone into the interview hoping to increase my income (instead, I was being faced with potentially decreasing it dramatically), I also knew that I wasn’t happy where I was, regardless of the income level.

Since starting with Gray Television on the 19th of March, my 16-year-old daughter and my significant other both seem to think I’ve been happier. My schedule was all over the place during these first three weeks, and the permanent shift I’m transitioning into has me waking up at 3:45 AM Monday through Friday, but I can’t deny that I’m happier now than I’d been for more than a year with GE Appliances. Not only that, but less than three full weeks into my new job and I already spent almost a full hour and a half directing newscasts today. Good Morning KOTA Territory is an hour and a half morning newscast that runs from 5:30 to 7 AM (on KOTA, obviously), followed by Good Morning Black Hills from 7 to 8 AM (on KEVN, in this case), and then there’s an interval until the Noon newscast runs on KOTA for half an hour. This morning, I directed most of the 5:30 to 6 AM segment of Good Morning KOTA Territory, the full 6 to 6:30 AM segment, as well as the full KOTA Territory News At Noon. Naturally, I had another director there to shadow me in case I fucked something up beyond repair–I didn’t, by the way–but I already feel like I’m treated with more respect with Gray Television than I had with GE Appliances for quite some time.

There, now you have an update on what’s been going on in my life.

Sometimes there are more important things to consider than money, though it can be damned difficult to take a leap that will diminish one’s income. It’s not a choice everyone can make, that’s for sure.

Penpal by Dathan Auerbach

This is a review I’d originally written in January of 2016. I wanted to post it here because this happens to be one of my favorite books.

Dathan Auerbach created one of the most disturbing novels I think I will ever read with Penpal.
I don’t know that I will be able to shake the feeling left behind from reading this book for a while to come.
Perhaps some of the feeling of being unsettled is due to the fact that I relate a great deal to the protagonist laying out the story. As a child I had few friends, when I had any, and a great deal of that youth was spent wandering aimlessly through the woods here in the Black Hills of South Dakota…either by myself or with one or another of the small number of friends I was somehow fortunate enough to make. Much like the child in Penpal, I filled the forest with sinister things in my own imagination, especially in the darkness as night approached. Needless to say, I felt a sort of kinship with the young boy in this book, and that made the events of the narrative that much more difficult to shake.
Even without that sort of association, the story would be a spooky one though for anyone, I think.
During Kindergarten, the boy’s class has a project. They were to write a brief letter to accompany a helium-filled balloon requesting a letter and a photo. As the letters begin coming back as response, our protagonist finally receives a single Polaroid photo without any explanation. More letters come in and are ultimately ignored until months later when it is discovered that he is in many of the pictures that his new penpal is sending…and that is really just the beginning.
As a parent and as a former boy who spent his days and nights exploring the woods near home, this is without a doubt one of the most uncomfortable books I have had the pleasure of reading. I am torn between hoping that Dathan Auerbach has more books to come and half-heartedly wanting him to call it quits after a novel that would be challenging to top.