fevered.earth

  • Books 6

    Books? Care for some books, Madam? Can I interest you in a short review of a book? Yes I can!

    Clarissa Oakes – Patrick O’Brien

    As is often the case with these later Master and Commander books, O’Brien is going back over ground already trodden – in this case the difficulties presented by having even a single woman present in the all-male environ of the Royal Navy ship at sea. In this case though it’s a well-deserved barnstormer, the titular Oakes an excuse to lay out in exacting detail how discipline and good manners aboard slowly disintegrate

    The dénouement is slightly contrived, with Oakes letting slip some essential puzzle piece in a casual conversation to Stephen ‘James Bond at sea’ Maturin, but otherwise it’s still astonishing how much O’Brien is getting from what is now a very long-in-the-tooth setting. Also he still hates Australia.

    Case Study – Graeme Macrae Burnet

    A funny one this, presented in the infamous modernist framing story where the author is provided with a bundle of papers, these ones alternating between a biography of a fictional enfant terrible psychotherapist in the 60s and the macabre diary of one of his latter-day patients. I found the slightly trashy diary sections preferable to the more literary biography, which despite being humourous and well put together was a bit much like reading an actual biography of a psychotherapist, which I wouldn’t often do.

    The Book of CP-System – Fabien Sanglard

    Despite owning both Sanglard’s Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein and Game Engine Black Book: Doom, I wasn’t going to bother with this one as I have no particular connection to or affection for arcade machines; somehow however I got sucked into reading it during lunches at work. And it’s excellent, a detailed and fascinating breakdown of one of the great pieces of custom arcade hardware and what must have been involved in putting together games for it. I’d buy a physical copy but the price of Amazon’s print-on-demands is, uh, considerably more than I remember.

    Shadows of the Empire – Steve Perry

    Look, all respect to fan favourite character Dash Rendar but this is not a good book. Partial mark for the characterising Darth Vader as a sort of long-suffering Smithers to the Emperor’s Mr Burns, but everything else is tedious at best and gratuitously sexist at worse. I posted a round-up of some of the most Marenghi-like sentences.

    He Who Whispers – John Dickson Carr

    Back on the Dickson Carr, this one’s a real firecracker with each act taking place in an outlandishly gothic setup. There’s a central London dinner club no-one has turned up for, a man murdered alone atop a great stone tower, and sneaky goings-on in a New Forest stately home. Still sexist though.

    Inversions – Iain M. Banks

    I took the dive and read the last Banks Culture book I hadn’t covered. Turns out this was a great one to leave till last, knowing all the usual Culture series tics made spotting them from the outside in this inverse telling very satisfying. But the story stands as a fantastic bit of sci-fi all by itself, the story of nations – and by extension worlds – being given gentle nudges in the direction of what you might call progress by two different (but ultimately very similar) outsiders. Only flirts with the kind of ultra-violence that Banks tones down from this point on in the series, but was very prominent in e.g. Use of Weapons. It’s a slow burn in general, without much of the kind of action denouement Banks likes to give to the Culture novels. All the more memorable for it.

    The Long Shoe – Bob Mortimer

    Picked up this Bob Mortimer book at my Mum’s and read it over a weekend. Mortimer has such a distinctive patter that it can be distracting at first to read paragraphs written in his style, though he does occasionally throw it out and fill in a chapter or two from an outside perspective just to show he can. The plot is mostly nonsense, this is entirely about hanging out with the character sketches, so it’s a shame that some of them here are a little stale – ‘South London lifestyle yoga instructor’ is very mid-2000s – but I did enjoy it.

    A Game in Yellow – Hailey Piper

    I feel like I missed a lot of references and allusions here by not having read Chambers’ The King in Yellow. Having bought it entirely from seeing the cover in a bookshop window (I don’t read much horror), it was an enjoyable read on its own merits, a story of terminal self-sabotage with a strong noir flair. The depiction of BDSM is unusually authentic, almost to a fault. Like writing sex scenes as a whole, too much attention to detail can draw out the absurdity. That said, I’ve certainly read worse.

    Thrawn – Timothy Zahn

    I wasn’t expecting much from Thrawn 2.0 but Zahn really pulled out all the stops here, having been given the chance to start again and do Thrawn ‘right’ twenty five years after first writing the character. He turns in something which is actually kind of on the pulse of genre writing, with a handful of characters – Thrawn, his provincial attache Vanto and disinherited mining magnate Pryce – who are all in some way trying to serve an Empire that is inherently hostile to them. Shades of A Memory Called Empire or The Traitor Baru Cormorant, and Pryce’s story in particular is that kind of bureaucrat power play porn, culminating in her commiting an atrocity. The trick of the book is to get you to root for these bozos. It’s not Proust, it’s still a Star Wars book and it in fact directly ties in to a season of a children’s cartoon where Thrawn is a moustache-twirling characature, but I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected.

    Anathem – Neil Stephenson

    Scurrilous monks! I’d have been happy had they never left that monastery (or ‘concent’, as the book’s alien phraseology would have it) and they were just Name of the Rose-ing it up for 900 pages. In the event this was still a very wild ride, with the constant reconfiguration of setting and mystery meaning that the high page count flew past. It occasionally becomes a bit “Boy’s Own Adventure Weekly” with the regularity with which our motley protagonist Erasmus and crew are placed at the centre of attention, to the point where there’s an extremely jarring part where Erasmus returns to his formal rank within the order he’s part of and it just feels bizarre.

    It’s possibly the most end-of-history book ever written, albeit with a kind of strange optimism to it despite the deeply, utterly cynical account of human nature it presents. The philosophical and mathematical asides were fine, it’s something of a novelty to see phenomenology represented at all in literature, let alone as a positive development, so I appreciated that.

    Previously:

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  • Great lines from ‘Shadows of the Empire’

    Yes, I read the tie-in book for everyone’s favourite Star Wars midquel multimedia project, Shadows of the Empire. It is a masterpiece of prose, as soon you will learn:

    • [Guri] had long and silky blond hair, pale and clear blue eyes, an exquisite figure. Normal human males would find her attractive.
    • [Prince Xizor] also exuded natural pheromones that made most of the human-stock species feel instantly attracted to him
    • “Chewie owes Han a life debt. That’s a big deal among Wookies.”
    • Males. Didn’t seem to matter what species they were when they wanted female company. And it didn’t seem to matter what species the female was, either.
    • “This… person has dishonoured the title of Vigo”
    • Leia liked Chewie okay, but here was another reason to find and free Han – so he could call the Wookie off.
    • Somehow, Ben had known Luke would find this book. Somehow, he had prepared it so that only he could open it safely. Amazing.
    • “You see, to contend with Xizor is to lose.”
    • [Leia] saw a small blast furnace set up on a table. Was Luke making some kind of jewelry?
    • The Emperor was capricious. He had been known to have whole cities destroyed because a local official defied him. He’d once had a wealthy and influential family banished from the core systems because one of the sons had plowed a ship into one of the Emperor’s favorite buildings, damaging it
    • Darth Vader sat naked inside his hyperbaric medical chamber.
    • The dark side was addictive, more potent than any drug.
    • “Hey, Wedge! How’s it going, buddy?” “So-so. Another day, another credit—before taxes, of course.”
    • Xizor was tempted to hire a dozen assassins, not tell them who their target was, and loose them on Vader.
    • He set his jaw. Uh-oh. She’d insulted his manhood. She knew that look.
    • “Clean up the mess,” Vader said.
    • Use the Force, Luke. Luke grinned. The first time he’d heard that, during the attack on the Death Star, he hadn’t understood. He knew what it meant now.
    • Because of [Xizor’s] hormonal makeup, his ability to produce overwhelmingly powerful pheromones, he never had any trouble attracting new companions. But because it was so easy, he quickly tired of them, no matter how beautiful, no matter how clever.
    • Lando shrugged. “[Dash Rendar] doesn’t want to owe anybody, doesn’t want anybody to owe him. He works for whoever pays the most. He’s downright magic with anything that flies, and he can pick wing nuts off a tabletop with a blaster without scorching the finish. He’s a good man to have at your back when the going gets hot—as long as your money lasts.”
    • “Chewbacca says that Master Dash must be part bird.”
    • Xizor knew that exercise was necessary, was essential for optimum health — and it helped keep underlings in line if they knew you were physically powerful.
    • Xizor never used a wrist slap when a hammer fist was called for.
    • Artoo said something that was probably derogatory. “Yeah, well, you just remember that next time you need a lube.”
    • The Emperor did like to crack the whip now and again, to show that he still held it and was not averse to using it.
    • Probably eating a fine meal or spending money on expensive entertainment. Females did love such things.
    • A Jedi Knight wouldn’t just sit around when there was vital Alliance business in the works, would he? No. He wouldn’t.
    • This was one of those times, and as usual, it was a double-edged blade. Swung with care, it would cut both ways. Just as it was supposed to cut.
    • Sitting behind a desk in front of a clear wall of transparisteel was the Bothan who’d sent the message to Leia. Well, at least Luke thought it was the same one. They all looked pretty much alike to him.
    • Well, why not? No rule said a woman couldn’t be a criminal.
    • “Don’t start again, you two.” “Very” or not, few things made a Wookiee nervous. Certainly not normal women. Something to consider.
    • When she was gone, Xizor considered what she had said, then dismissed it. He walked the cold road, and his passion was always safely leashed until he let it free.
    • “Bring one of my dueling droids,” Vader said to the air. “No. Bring two of them.”
    • “Not me! I don’t miss. I should have clipped that missile! Bothans died because I missed, you understand?”
    • He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. Sometimes it was almost disappointing how easily he accomplished his ends.
    • The Emperor sat in his favorite throne, the one set a meter higher than the rest of the room.
    • “Rise, Lord Vader.” Vader did so. He hoped whatever the Emperor wanted was something easy and brief.
    • “Yes, we have had our share of adventures, as well. I must say I don’t like all this business the least bit. Couldn’t we find a nice quiet planet and take a vacation? Someplace warm, with a deep pool of lube?” Luke grinned.
    • Falleen pheromones were more potent than the strongest spice. Leia might want to resist him with her mind, but her body would ache for him. There was no antidote save one.
    • Vader said nothing. Solo’s ship, the Millennium Falcon, no doubt, now under Luke’s control. Perhaps he had the young princess with him and that traitorous gambler Calrissian.
    • There was an old Sithian proverb that said, “Even when fighting the great sabercat, it is best not to turn your back upon the lowly serpent.”
    • And [Xixor] wasn’t wearing a bodysuit under it. He was big under the thin cloth, hard and muscular, and if there were any visible anatomical differences between him and basic stock humans, she couldn’t see them.
    • Vader ground his teeth.
    Dash Rendar in action. Not pictured: the Bothans.
    • [Leia’s] body wanted one thing, but she was a civilized woman and her mind was what controlled her, not her hormones.
    • Ah, people would say, how devious the Dark Prince is. Beware! Beware, indeed.
    • The Luke-size lieutenant frowned as he entered the stall, Luke right behind him.
    • Luke ordered the man to strip,
    • “I anticipate that I shall return in three weeks,” the Emperor told him. “I trust you can keep the planet from falling apart while I am gone?”
    • Dash Rendar! Oh, man. Here he was saving Luke again. Luke hated this.
    • By itself a grain of sand was nothing, but with enough grains, one could cover a city. It would not do to tip his hand too early. As of now, he had enough sand to begin. A bit more and he’d be able to bury Xizor … He must be removed, once and for all, and the day was coming when it would happen. Soon. It would be soon.
    • Xizor could sit alone in a room for days staring at a wall and be as busy mentally as most men working a complex and demanding job.
    • [Xizor] would wait as long as necessary to taste Leia, and when he had done so, he would be satisfied and finished with her.
    • “I will be the judge of what is too dangerous,” he said. “And since we know it is Skywalker, this is where it ends. I will dispatch him personally!” [Xizor] would not be embarrassed in his own castle.

    and finally:

    Moonglow was found only on a single satellite world, in a small section of one forest; it grew naturally nowhere else in the galaxy; in fact, it could not be grown anywhere else. Many had tried to transplant the funguslike tree, and all had failed. About the size of a man’s fist, the fruit contained in its natural state one of the most potent biological poisons known. A single unaltered slice divided into a thousand tiny pieces would be enough, if consumed, to kill a thousand people and to do it in less than a minute. There was no known antidote, but there was a way to neutralize the poison before eating the fruit. Such preparation of moonglow legally required a chef who had studied the technique for a minimum of two years under a certified Master Moonglow Chef, and the process itself consisted of some ninety-seven steps. Should any of the steps be omitted or performed incorrectly, the resulting dish might cause anything from a mild stomach upset to a painful, thrashing, hallucinatory coma, followed by death. If a would-be diner went into a restaurant that had the proper licenses to offer the dish, the price of a single serving of moonglow would be somewhere around a thousand credits. Xizor generally ate it three or four times a month and had the most respected moonglow chef in the galaxy on his payroll. Even so, a small thrill always arose when he consumed the fruit. Always the possibility, however slight, of an error.

    Previously: A Grand Admiral?!

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  • Xteink X4 Sleep Images

    Swerve from the usual content – I recently bought an Xteink X4 e-reader to replace the Kindle Keyboard that Amazon have cruelly torn from my grasp. It’s a nifty little thing, as small as you could possibly want an e-reader, pictured here with a bottle of Tabasco for scale:

    I’ve installed the Crosspoint firmware on it which allows you to set custom sleep screens, so I ran a few holiday photos through Paint.NET to try out. I think they work pretty well so I wanted to share them for anyone looking for some interesting sleep screens. There are nine in total, of various bits of Tanzanian wildlife and scenary.

    Download

    To make them work, place them in a directory named ‘sleep’ or ‘.sleep’ in the root of your SD card. Note that they are formatted for the X4 and won’t fit the screen shape of the Xteink X3.

    CC-BY-NC

    This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.

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  • Label Maker Devlog 2

    First off the bat, since the last time I posted about my game I thought up a much better name. ‘Gentle People‘, a reference to the Scott MacKenzie lyric, was a bit opaque and it’s not like the game is particularly 60s-themed any how, despite nominally being a representation of that period. ‘Label Maker‘ is more dynamic and snappy, and crucially it’s also a pun. No-one can dislike a pun.

    One of the things you don’t necessarily expect about game development is how slow it is – though you might guess from the curious emphasis on speed that all the various gamedev tools boast about. It often resembles nothing so much as attempting to build a ship in a bottle, with vast amounts of effort going into the placement of tiny bits of rigging and polish. Having sprinted all the way to having a 3D environment for the game to take place in, actually having things occur there is a long, slow process.

    For example, in the last few weeks I have put multiple days work into two fairly trivial problems: one, having a band of four or five people walk to the elevator, disappear, then return, and two having a single person walk to the break room and back. The former required some way to know when a band was ‘off-stage’, so to speak, and the latter required being able to figure out where someone should go back to according to their role and the current state of the game. Neither was trivial to do!

    A selection from my todo list for Label Maker.

    As you can see towards the top, I’m currently implementing a feature where you manage a stable of songwriters in addition to bands, so that bands can cover each others songs and play standards – or be singer-songwriter setups who are deeply concerned with authenticity and all that. I also think there’s something inherently fun in giving the player some agency in picking the name of the song, even if it’s just from a limited list.

    I’ve also been working through adding a bit of visual interest to the game: specifically, walking animations for the little people and instrument items for the relevant band members to carry. As well, I’ve made the floor of rooms where you can do something flash yellow when hovered, to nudge you into clicking into them.

    All this new work has paused updates to the web build for some months. I’m almost ready to post a new release, but I need to go over to Itch at some point and replace all the assets that reference the old name. Not the first time I’ve had to do this either! The early prototypes for this were called ‘Culture Prototype‘ on Itch (to pair with ‘Swat Prototype’ for the narrative 3D game I didn’t make).

    Previously: Devlog 1

    Recently: Books, Poirot

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