Sort of back from being sort of away
Aug. 27th, 2021 08:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishI am freshly back online from a lovely vacation that involved very little structured time - exactly what I needed!
We visited some friends in southern states, which involved some magnificent fish dishes and some truly excellent BBQ. (After a lovely sampling of available sauces, I have picked a mustardy one that went well on everything, and purchased a bottle to take home.)
Bookwise, I picked up Andy Weir's most recent book, Project Hail Mary, a novel very much in line with The Martian for "smart person does thoughtful science carefully for high stakes and laudable goals." Overall I thought it was a fun and fast-paced read with a character, Ryland Grace, an extremely smart person who is also doing some really interesting things.
I do notice an element from The Martian that has carried over here, which is that Weir is pessimistic about politics and governments functioning together well and quickly in groups when faced with major stakes - in The Martian, this is handled by having all the committed scientists do an end-run around the politicians of their various countries to work together directly, any fallout in their future be damned- and Weir just doesn't really return to that, but it feels relatively natural; in PHM, this is handled by giving one character a 'get out of international law free' card for the scope of the scientific project they are working on, and then pointing out that there will be consequences for their actions later. While I think the second approach might better convey the idea that, actually, it's quite hard to make large groups of people work towards a single goal, no matter how much it's in their own interests, I preferred the first approach. PHM shunts the problem of imperfect authority to one side and says, this single person will make the right call - which is just moving the problem of authority onto one person rather than handling it.
I'm mentioning it here because I'm chewing it over a bit - it's pretty clearly a plot device to let Grace get to the cool science faster with less political discussion and I think it does the job quite well. But, man, if they had picked the wrong person to be the de-facto dictator of the big important science, none of this would have worked at all.
I'm also reading House of Leaves, which I have started before and put down before - I think this time will be better because I am less freaked out by the horror elements, and I have more time to devote to reading it on this vacation. I'm also letting myself write in the margins a lot, which is a great way of tracking my progress and my thoughts in a book this prone to sending the reader towards the end notes.
We visited some friends in southern states, which involved some magnificent fish dishes and some truly excellent BBQ. (After a lovely sampling of available sauces, I have picked a mustardy one that went well on everything, and purchased a bottle to take home.)
Bookwise, I picked up Andy Weir's most recent book, Project Hail Mary, a novel very much in line with The Martian for "smart person does thoughtful science carefully for high stakes and laudable goals." Overall I thought it was a fun and fast-paced read with a character, Ryland Grace, an extremely smart person who is also doing some really interesting things.
I do notice an element from The Martian that has carried over here, which is that Weir is pessimistic about politics and governments functioning together well and quickly in groups when faced with major stakes - in The Martian, this is handled by having all the committed scientists do an end-run around the politicians of their various countries to work together directly, any fallout in their future be damned- and Weir just doesn't really return to that, but it feels relatively natural; in PHM, this is handled by giving one character a 'get out of international law free' card for the scope of the scientific project they are working on, and then pointing out that there will be consequences for their actions later. While I think the second approach might better convey the idea that, actually, it's quite hard to make large groups of people work towards a single goal, no matter how much it's in their own interests, I preferred the first approach. PHM shunts the problem of imperfect authority to one side and says, this single person will make the right call - which is just moving the problem of authority onto one person rather than handling it.
I'm mentioning it here because I'm chewing it over a bit - it's pretty clearly a plot device to let Grace get to the cool science faster with less political discussion and I think it does the job quite well. But, man, if they had picked the wrong person to be the de-facto dictator of the big important science, none of this would have worked at all.
I'm also reading House of Leaves, which I have started before and put down before - I think this time will be better because I am less freaked out by the horror elements, and I have more time to devote to reading it on this vacation. I'm also letting myself write in the margins a lot, which is a great way of tracking my progress and my thoughts in a book this prone to sending the reader towards the end notes.
