★★★★☆ Postapocalyptic Jupiter buddy cops

The Mimicking of Known Successes

Malka Older

I picked up The Mimicking of Known Successes because it is a finalist for the 2024 Best Novella Hugo.

So, yeah. It looks like we finally managed to do it -- wipe out life on Earth. After decamping to Mars for a while and trashing that, too, we are now camped out on Jupiter. We hope one day to fix Earth and go back, but I'd say the real question is whether anything will be left of Jupiter when we're done with it. Over a hundred years have passed since the abandonment of Earth.

These are the main political divisions of the Jupiter colony. One political movement, the Classicists, works towards fixing, repairing, and returning to Earth. Their main political opposition is the Moderns, whose main goal is to make life livable on Jupiter. There are no political conservatives -- indeed, the word "Conservative" has become a slur. (I suspect that is a hint about Malka Ann Older's 2023 political inclinations, but that's just a guess.)

Nowhere in the novel is Jupiter referred to by that name. The inhabitants call it Giant. However, Pleiti mentions looking up and seeing Europa and Io, which are moons of Jupiter, so that's presumably the giant where they're all living. Jupiter is not a planet like Earth with a solid surface -- it's a gas giant. How the colonists engineered a place to live is only sketchily described. It was apparently done by fabricating several steel rings that completely encircle the planet. Trains run on these rings, and they support solid platforms on which people live and work. These rings are given names like "the 4°63' line" or "the 0°30' line". The numbers are the measures of small angles -- a longitude or a latitude, I presume. Latitude would make most sense, since the rings extend primarily East-West, however, the different rings intersect and there are rail stations at the intersections, so that one can get from one ring to another. This is puzzling, since lines of latitude don't intersect. That all this could be engineered strikes me as physically implausible. I would certainly like more information on how Older imagines it all. A map would have been helpful.

OK, I'm nerding out here. Apologies. However, the issues I just raised are relevant to the story. It's basically a mystery -- a brief and simple mystery. It's a novella, and there's not room for involved world-building and a complicated mystery. So, fair enough. I still enjoyed it.

The "buddy cops" I referred to in my title are, as you've already figured out from the series title, Mossa and Pleiti. Pleiti, our main point of view character, is not literally a cop -- she's a researcher at the big University of Valdegeld. (I'm using feminine pronouns for Pleiti, because the publisher's blurb does, but I suspect Older may be pulling a Scalzi here and deliberately leaving Pleiti's gender ambiguous, since I didn't notice any gender commitment for Pleiti in the novel itself.) Mossa IS a cop -- that is, she is an Investigator. She is trying to track down a missing university researcher, and she asks Pleiti to assist. Many years ago, when they were students together at the University, Mossa and Pleiti were an item. They broke up on graduation, but it is obvious that the feelings have not gone away. The romance takes a back seat to the mystery, but it is there.

This was fun, even if it felt a bit sketchy and unfinished. I was pleased to discover that it is the first novel in a series that, sadly, comprises only two books at the date of writing this review, 19-May-2024. I certainly plan to read book 2 (The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles), and probably eventually book 3, etc.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

★★★★☆ Alana in show-biz

Saga, Volume 4 Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples (Illustrator) If you're like me, your first question on seeing Saga, Volume 4 is, "Who is that woman on the cover?" That, my dear friend, is Alana. About halfway through Volume 3 Alana and Marko had a brief conversation about The Circuit, which is a performance venue of some kind that people can tune into with a virtual reality helmet. Before she became a soldier, Alana harbored ambitions of performing on the Circuit. Now that their lethal pursuit has been temporarily distracted or put out of commission, they're focused on making some kind of living. Marko encouraged her to audition. So now Alana is performing on the Circuit, and what you see on the cover is her bewigged with wings bound and hidden in order to perform. She's the family breadwinner. Marko is a househusband, staying home and taking care of Hazel. The Marko-Alana-Hazel story in this volume is a bit dull. Without giving away any spoilers, it's kin...

★★★★☆ Making heroes of Rednecks and Hillbillies

Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver You already know that Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver is a retelling of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens . Indeed, it is so faithful a retelling that, if the publisher had not already spilled the beans, I would feel compelled to mark this review a spoiler because of mentioning David Copperfield . If you have read David Copperfield at all recently, then you will recognize the characters and the major plot points as you read Demon Copperhead . (I last read David Copperfield when I was a kid in the late 1960s, so I was blessedly free from this detailed anticipation as I read Demon Copperhead . I did, however, check out the Wikipedia plot summary of David Copperfield on finishing Demon Copperhead , so I'm up to speed on both plot outlines.) And this, I say, is absolutely fine! If you're going to steal, by all means, steal from the best! I am co...

★★★☆☆ Good fairy stories, dreary ruin stories, and a John Hughes movie

Patreon Year 3 Seanan McGuire I will begin by clarifying what I am reviewing here. Seanan McGuire has a Patreon Creator page. Patreon is a website where artists can share their work with subscribers. Subscribers pay a certain amount (usually monthly, but that varies from artist to artist), and in return get access to things ("rewards" in Patreon-speak) that the artist posts on Patreon. "Things" can mean images, videos, or (most relevantly in this case) eBooks. Typically there are multiple reward tiers -- the more you pay, the more you get. McGuire set up her Patreon page in June 2016 and has posted a story every month since then, which makes 63 now (August 2021, when I am writing this), plus a few one-time extras. These "stories" can be pretty substantial literary works. For instance, the reward for July 2021 was a short novel. The way Patreon works, if you subscribe to a tier, you typically get access to everything that was posted for that tier at any...

★☆☆☆☆ Petty Evil 101: Corporate edition

Power Jeffrey Pfeffer I read this eleven years ago (21-Sep-2011). At the time, I wrote this brief note to myself: Based on the first chapter or two, a singularly repulsive little book. It's basically "Petty Evil 101: Corporate edition". Amazon review Goodreads review

★★★☆☆ Ghosts and grief

Installment Immortality Seanan Mcguire I read Seanan McGuire 's Discount Armageddon in May, 2021. It was the first book by McGuire I had ever read, and I was immediately hooked. It was full of life, and so funny! The Aeslin mice alone were worth the price. I subsequently went on to read every extant Incryptid novel and story, as well as McGuire 's Octboer Daye series, and eventually every work of fiction she's published that I could find. The first two thirds of Installment Immortality are puzzling. They do all the obvious, concrete things right. The characters are well-drawn and interesting. This is the second Incryptid novel focused on Mary Dunlavy, who has long been one of my favorite Incryptid characters. The plot is intricate, complicated and unpredictable enough to be interesting, and yet not so complicated as to be difficult to follow. It continues the old Price Family vs Covenant of S...

★★★★★ Tactical Assault Clown

Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up Dave Barry There is one living human who can write prose that makes me laugh so hard I can't breathe. That person is Tactical Assault Clown Dave Barry . Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up had that effect on me at least twice -- an automatic five-star rating. ("Tactical Assault Clown" is right up there with "Combat Epistemologist" ( The Jennifer Morgue ) on my list of creative military specializations. And if you're one of those people who get their knickers all in a twist when someone uses parens inside of parens, you know what you can do about it.) (Yes, I know I'm not funny.) It's not all ROFL funny. In fact, he tells about his father's alcoholism ( that story has a happy ending ) and his mother's suicide ( that one obviously does not ). Later in the book he tries to convince us that his real li...

★★★☆☆ Drivel with occasional brilliance

Songs of Innocence and Experience William Blake I have to begin with a disclaimer. Usually I read poetry very slowly, one or two poems a day. This gives me the time to savor it. However, I had surgery two days ago and brought William Blake 's Songs of Innocence and Experience along to read while waiting for the surgeons to slice me open. It is possible that these are not the best conditions for appreciating Blake . With that caveat, I was more disappointed than pleased by this volume of poetry. It consists mostly of drivel like this: When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it; interrupted by occasional flashes of brilliance like this O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. or this The human d...

★★★☆☆ What is it like to be an octopus?

Children of Ruin Adrian Tchaikovsky There is a famous essay called What is it like to be a Bat? / Wie ist es, eine Fledermaus zu sein? by philosopher Thomas Nagel . (Although I am not a philosopher, I am a neuroscientist, and as a neuroscientist it is almost impossible to avoid knowing a little of the nonsense philosophers think about how minds work.) Nagel attempts to make an argument about consciousness. He argues that the consciousness of a bat is an experience a human cannot possibly have or understand, because echolocation is so unhuman. I have a little fantasy about Adrian Tchaikovsky 's Children of Time series . I imagine he read Nagel 's effusion and said to himself, "Utter nonsense! I'm gonna show that I can imagine not only what it's like to be a bat, but even what it's like to be a spider or an octopus!" ( Nagel in fact raises the question of invertebrate experience in his essay, only to make the point that it is an even h...

★★★★☆ Matrimonial predators

The Brides of High Hill Nghi Vo We catch up with Chih, who is accompanying the Pham family -- Mr and Mrs Pham and their daughter Pham Nhung to the castle of Lord Guo. The Phams are a family of merchants down on their luck, and Nhung has been proposed in marriage to Lord Guo. She and Chih met cute, and she asked them to accompany her to Lord Guo's castle for the marriage negotiation. Chih appears to have a mini-crush on Nhung, which she appears to encourage. Chih desperately misses their neixin Almost Brilliant, who is mysteriously absent. Nhung is naturally worried about being married. Chih, who knows many stories, true and fictional, about husbands and wives, would like to reassure her, but cannot honestly do so. Stuff happens. You will recognize the story pretty quickly. It's Bluebeard. You probably already figured that out -- the plural "Brides" in the title kind of gives it away. In this one Chih faces serious personal danger, more immediate than in any other S...

★★★☆☆ Advice I am not going to follow

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals Michael Pollan Michael Pollan is a person who cares deeply about food. I am not (which is a little strange, since I worked 31 years as a neuroscientist studying feeding behavior). “Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.” ― Socrates I am definitely a person who eats to live. There are a few books in what I call the "history of substances" genre, for instance The True History of Chocolate , A Perfect Red , or A History of the World in 6 Glasses . I find these fascinating and would be happy to find more. I picked up The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals because I thought they were books in this vein, and The Omnivore's Dilemma was getting a lot of love from my friends. Well, my hopes were not completely disappointed. The Omnivore's Dilemma does indeed contain fascinating information a...

Search This Blog