Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 13

A tighter story than Rocannon’s World, with better-drawn characters, and more ambitious in its worldbuilding and themes.

The planet’s year is 60 Earth-years long, and while the stone-age nomadic tribes know how to deal with the turn of seasons, only the oldest among them can remember the previous winter by the time the next one comes along. Some handle winters by building a temporary city to live in for the season. Some handle them by migrating southward, raiding other tribes along the way.

One city is permanent, built by colonists from Earth generations ago, and home to the dwindling descendents of those who were left behind when their ship departed, never to return. The Alterrans are isolated and alone, keenly aware that they’re the aliens here. Their biochemistry is different enough that they still need nutritional supplements. They can’t interbreed with the native humanoids. They’re not even susceptible to local diseases, useful as that can be.

Change comes slowly, but when it does, it’s ovewhelming. The raiding tribes have gathered together, the beginning of a nation, and instead of just grabbing what they can along the way, they’re wiping out cities and taking them for their own.

The Alterrans and the nearest tribe have to band together, but they don’t trust each other. At all. Help the aliens? Work with the primitives? A proposed alliance is rejected, accepted, broken, rejected again, and ultimately forced on them as most of the second half of the book deals with the siege of Alterra. It’s grueling, both for the characters and the reader. In the end it’s adaptation that makes it possible to survive, leaving a door open to a better future.

Initially I wasn’t sure whether to round 3.5 stars up or down, but after reading City of Illusions (collected in the same volume), I really started to see how the two novels were connected thematically, which has helped me appreciate both of them more.

I have mixed feelings about the first season of Star Trek: Picard.

Picard himself is, of course, fascinating to watch. There would be no point in doing this show if you couldn’t get Patrick Stewart back, and he’s not phoning it in. The new characters are appealing, and each of them has something they have to deal with over the course of the season: Raffi with her desperation to solve the mystery, Rios’ guilt complex, Dr. Jurati trying to keep her head above water, and Soji slowly becoming aware that something weird is going on around her.

And there’s action, and effects, and doing something different with the Borg, and easter eggs. (It’s possibly the first time Vasquez Rocks has appeared as Vasquez Rocks!)

But it’s kind of like the Star Wars sequel trilogy: On one hand, it’s nice to check in on these characters again after all this time and see what they’ve been up to. On the other…things haven’t turned out as well as one might hope. I mean, sure, Picard’s got his vineyard, but you always figured he’d retire from Starfleet with honors. Riker and Troi have a family, but there’s a tragedy they still haven’t quite moved past. Seven of Nine…well, she’s kicking butt and taking names, but at the end of the day she can’t escape the feeling that it’s not enough. And then there are some of the minor characters…

(I was reminded several times of the line from Sandman about how the secret to a happy ending was knowing where to stop, because if you keep going, eventually all stories end in death.)

And maybe that’s more realistic. ST:TNG, like the original series, was very optimistic about what could be accomplished, what could be solved…and it’s damn hard to stay optimistic these days. So it’s darker than TNG, and more introspective than Discovery. On one level, it’s “Picard rides again!” On another it’s deconstructing the idea of Jean-Luc Picard, looking at the pieces critically, and reassembling them.

And this is Patrick freaking Stewart. You don’t bring him back after 30 years just for a special effects extravaganza. You give him a chance to act. And they did. The plot is about Picard getting a ragtag crew together to find and protect synthetic androids from Romulan spies. But the story is about the heavy, personal cost of doing the right thing, even when opposed or ignored by those around you. They’re constantly faced with the question: was it worth it?

Like The Last Jedi, a lot of it is a grueling journey where we watch that tiny flame of hope flickering in a hurricane. And like The Last Jedi, it finishes on a positive note: Yes, it’s worth it, it tries to say.

But the finale is really abrupt. Motivations are opaque, and decisions are made for the sake of the plot. The story threads don’t all tie together (well, maybe if you stretch some of them like bungee cords). And most importantly: the pieces of the idealized Jean-Luc Picard appear to have been put back in place just the way they were before. Examined, yes, but with no indication that he’s learned anything from the process.

That said, it’s still better than The Rise of Skywalker, and handles the artificial intelligence/natural intelligence conflict at least somewhat better than season two of Discovery.

Update

Season Three (and to a lesser extent Season Two) has given me a new appreciation for the first season of the show. In large part because they added a lot of interesting ideas to the Star Trek canon:

• Exploring the flip side of the event that kicked off the Kelvin timeline.
• Picard’s role in the evacuation and resettlement process, Starfleet’s unfortunate response, and how he deals with it.
• Seven of Nine trying to make her way in the galaxy.
• The Zhat Vash and the Romulan history with silicon/synthetic life.
• The Qowat Milat and the Way of Absolute Candor. (I can’t hear the phrase “choose to live” without thinking of Elnor’s warning.)
• The Artifact and the team studying it, and trying to actually rehab ex-Borg into somewhat functional people again.
• Linking the Romulans, the Borg, and Dr. Soongh’s work building synthetic humanoids.
• Generally making the Romulans less monolithic. (And the simple explanation of the appearing/disappearing forehead ridges, making it just part of the normal variation within the species.)

I don’t think I’d bump it up to four stars, but maybe three and a half.

The kind of neighborhood coffee house that actually feels like it’s part of a neighborhood. Community bulletin boards, bookshelves, sometimes local art. And a little bit of everything: coffee, tea, pastries, smoothies, and boba. (I don’t know how long they’ve had boba - I just noticed it for the first time on the menu last week.) Offbeat and home-y despite its spot at the end of a row of trendy restaurants. (And it’s been here longer than most of those!) Decent amounts of both indoor and outdoor seating, all of it in WiFi range. The kind of atmosphere that makes you want to hang out there.

Most of the street parking has been converted to outdoor dining for those nearby restaurants, but it’s a very short walk from the metered parking lot across from Trader Joe’s.

Good coffee and creative flavor combinations. REALLY good breakfast sandwiches. Your kids will like the filled donuts. (Sadly, the french toast cubes have been discontinued.) Friendly service, lots of seating both indoors (kind of echo-y) and outside in a shaded patio. They’re currently remodeling a bigger dining room for the “Eats” part of the “Sips and Eats” slogan.

It’s a bit out of the way, in a small incomplete shopping center where you can clearly see the spaces set aside for more buildings…eventually…but the only time I can remember seeing it anywhere close to empty was the time I got there five minutes before closing on a holiday.

Good coffee with a wide range of flavored drinks. Indoor seating is small but inviting, the kind of place you’d want to hang out for a while. Well-suited for small gatherings, or reading a book, or working on a laptop. I keep meaning to try some of their baked goods, but I still haven’t gotten around to it. Open later than The Crafted Scone across the street.