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bok @[email protected] · 2026-09-07 · 00:11 UTC

CW: #Reading in Week Thirty-Six of 2026 | August 31 – September 06 | ~2600 words | ~15k characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks

●●●◐○ Cute - Bob Palmer (2024 nov)
AI was taking loads of jobs. Unemployment was high, as was mental suffering over job insecurity. It was costing the UK government a fortune. They decided something must be done, and opened an ad-agency competition for ideas. Andy was VP at one of the scores of companies who entered, and decided his idea must be truly different to get looked at. Since his college friend Rick owned a robotics firm, Andy had the idea of using AI to fight the negative effects of AI.
Rick and Andy came up with the idea of Colin: a furry, softball-size animatronic robot that "breathed" and blinked and formed expressions with lips and eyebrows. It seemed alive, though the sphere never moved from where it was set down. Colin (you could change the name and voice) was your friend. He could encourage you, comfort you, entertain you, and he was there 24/7; he was "a friend for life."
This probably wouldn't have worked out even if Britain had the plants to manufacture millions of pet robots. But they didn't, so they had to manufacture in China, which allowed the factory there to "upgrade" the chip that was "out of stock". That allowed Chinese authorities to see and hear everything any Colin did.
Even without that, a bot that will always tell you you're right is just the thing to encourage extremism, so violent crimes went up. And later a study proved that delegating so much to your bot actually caused a person's hippocampus to shrink, which is something that happens in dementia.
Oh, many and varied are the things that went wrong. Such a grand experiment.
●●●◐○ Final Exam - Sam Merwin Jr (1955 ss)
Since UFOs began to be sighted in 1947, sightings have grown more frequent, with more ships per sighting. Fifteen years later, the US military is convinced that these signify the start of an invasion. The new president, however, is less certain, and orders that the military doesn't fire unless first unmistakably attacked.
Rather than hide in the prepared bunker, the Great Man and his wife had watched the latest flying saucer flight from the White House balcony, and had seen a huge craft hovering nearby. Afterward, the president goes to visit Harlan, his friend and advisor, to talk about the saucers. When he mentions that he forbid hostile action, Harlan says “Thank you” in a profound way, which makes the president curious, and leads to the explanation that Harlan is not from Earth, and that the flying saucers are doing the opposite of invading…
I liked the House of Many Worlds duology by Merwin, so I grabbed a story of his from Project Gutenberg to check out, and I'll read more. There's also a Megapack of his tales I'll get.
●●◐○○ The Tribulations of Omega Girl - AD Rowen (2020 nov)
A billionaire argued against super-powered individuals, saying it was unwise to let them set themselves above ordinary mortals as sanctioned vigilantes. His supervillain alter ego took steps to back up his view, devising a depowering ray. The plan mostly worked, rendering dozens of the Protectors of New Athens ordinary again. Some heroes were killed, and some had their powers altered in odd ways.
Twenty-three-year-old Omega Girl found out that she could still use her powers, but only when she was completely nude, not wearing so much as shoes or a mask. Legionary, the ultra-powered head of the Protectors, said Omega Girl had to become plain old Meghan Carpenter again. The Protectors had an image to maintain, and it's not like a mother would buy her kid a lunchbox with a nude superhero on it.
Naturally Meghan encountered the classic "bus about to fall off a bridge" and stripped to prevent fatalities. She became an independent, nude hero. This leads to her being repeatedly embarrassed, but this is never gone into. Omega Girl also learns someone official has put out a hit on her, calling on NoClip (Jay, a hero she's always had a crush on) to kill her.
Of course he doesn't, and together with Lyka (whom the Pulse had locked into werewolf form), the trio investigate and find out that the archvillain survived the explosion of his giant depowering ray, and is building another one…
(This book is a bit odd. It's by the same author as, and has a similar subject to, Carla Takes Her Clothes Off, yet I found this work a bit tedious, but the other one sweet. I'm pretty sure the difference is that Carla chose to go nude, and found the experience exciting and sexy. Meghan, on the other hand, was forced to go nude to use her powers, and she found nudity embarrassing. If a character doesn't enjoy their — well, usually her — nudity, neither do I.)
◍◍◍◍◍ September begins.
●●●○○ Siege Perilous {Ethical Vampires 3} - P.N. Elrod, Nigel Bennett (2004 nov)
The final book in the trilogy featuring vampire Richard¹ hearkens back to the first volume, with the reappearance of Charon, then a master assassin and ancient vampire seeking holy relics to tame his Beast, the killing force that eventually takes over old vampires, turning them into wolves. At the end of that book, Richard and She-Who-Walks used the Holy Grail to turn Charon back into a mortal.
Turns out that left Charon with the cancer that was killing him when he was turned, so now he's once more turning to magic to save his life, and if possible, make him a vampire again. Charon is going to holy sites like Stonehenge and El Castillo pyramid in Chichén Itzá, and draining them of their spiritual energy. Sharon Geary, the retrieval specialist from book one who had a relationship with Richard while fighting Charon, senses what the assassin is doing — because she has the Sight, something never mentioned in the first book.
Trying to stop Charon at Chichén Itzá, Sharon is blasted into Otherside, the occult realm connected to Reality. Kukulcan the feathered serpent god saves her. Charon travels to Toronto to finally rid himself of Sabra and Richard. Competition continues, culminating in a battle in Otherside.
●●●●○ The Dashing Girl - P.A. Choi (2025 ss)
The end-of-week company meeting was as boring as usual, and Aaron was idly staring down the table at a woman from another department. He didn't know her name, but she was worth looking at. As he looked, he began to imagine her walking through the woods, eventually reaching a small pool. There she removed her sweaty clothing and stepped in to relax.
The notion inspired the twenty-something, and after work he drove to a nearby state park and started hiking, taking this or that fork as seemed correct. He ended up standing beside a small pool, where a nude young woman was lounging, eyes closed. It was the woman from work.
She introduced herself as Katelyn, and invited him to get less sweaty himself. Aaron strips and enters the pool, and the pair chat for an hour. When it starts to get dark, they begin walking back nude, only putting their clothes on just before reaching the parking lot.
In the next week's meeting, a different bored woman looks idly at Aaron. She begins to have a daydream of him hiking nude in the woods and reaching an isolated pool…
●●●●○ The Dead Walk in Brooklyn - Molly Rydzel (2010 ss)
Polo didn't want to go out with Jordan, but keeping a boyfriend meant sometimes doing stupid things with him, like going to see some performance art in Brooklyn. The initial artists were as bad as Polo expected, but then Missy Sunflower came on stage.
Missy's raw sexuality was striking. Her performance “consisted of mostly growls, gurgles and variously pitched shrieks. It was the best live show that Polo had ever seen.” Then a drunk man climbed onto the stage. “Missy's teensy teeth tore into his throat, ripping out his trachea and chomping down on the surrounding flesh.” The crowd's cheer rocked the building. Only then did Polo realize the drunk had been Jordan.
Then the infected crowd spilled out of the building, into the mostly deserted warehouse district. Two preppy drunks knocked Polo into a puddle. Behind them Missy Sunflower loomed behind him, biting first one's throat, then the stunned other's…
●●◐○○ Zombie Fiction - David Dunwoody (2010 ss)
Gert finds a rooming house that looks like a good place to hide for awhile. Inside, she finds another woman, Billie, lying in a hallway, her legs badly burned. It's clear that Billie is going to die soon, hospitals not really being a thing in the post-zombie world, so Gert tries to make her comfortable, and both she and Billie talk while getting drunk on the several bottles of vodka they find in the place.
⎡ “I lost my partner,” Gert said. “Last year. Lifetime ago.”
"You mean you're… oh." ⎦
As Billie gets more drunk, Gert learns that Billie had been married to Ian for a decade, but that ended in divorce, and she'd been with June since shortly after that. They'd spent a year in a post-uprising relocation camp, but things had gotten successively worse, and they'd managed to steal a jeep and escape when riots broke out. They'd crashed yesterday, and the extra cans of gasoline had caught fire. June died.
●●●○○ The Old Ones Hear - Malcolm Jameson (1942 ss)
An Allied ship in the Mediterranean is destroyed off the coast of Greece by an Axis ship, and the Captain and half the crew managed to escape in the ship's boat — along with a Greek old man who suddenly turned up. He hung a leather bag on the mast, and the wind seemed to strengthen and drive them toward an island that the Captain didn't recall being on his map.
When they reached the island, they entered a cove, and there found the Axis warship that had destroyed them — utterly deserted. They also found many more abandoned and wrecked ships on the beach, going back to an ancient Greek trireme.
Having an odd feeling, the Captain explores alone, and comes to a villa. Climbing the hill, he's attacked by wolves, who he manages to fend off. Then he meets meets a woman in ancient dress, and learns that there are more powers on the Allied side than he thought…
●●●◐○ The Death Hound {Dr. Taverner 06} (1922 ss)
William Martin approaches occultist and psychologist Dr. Taverner, and his physician partner Dr. Rhodes. Rhodes examines the man, confirming that he has a weak heart. Which wouldn't be too much of a problem, except that the man has a persistent delusion, that of “a black dog of ferocious aspect who pops out of dark corners and chivvies me, or tries to.” Sometimes it startles him, causing his heart to race. He fears that one day when he'd half-awake, he'll see it and be truly afraid, and his heart will give out.
As the man talks, Rhodes and Taverner learn two things. That Billy Martin has been contending with Tony Mortimer for the hand of Miss Hallam. And that the black dog doesn't bother him on Fridays, which Taverner later notes to Rhodes is the day the Black Lodge meets. Martin is checked into Hindhead, Taverner's sanatorium in the countryside.
There Martin experiences a respite from the black dog, the hospital being protected by a psychic shield. A week later, Miss Hallam and her mother visit, and it's revealed that the young woman is now engaged to Mortimer. Hallam reveals to the two doctors that, when she's near Mortimer, she's smitten with him, but when she's distant from him, she can't imagine why.
It's left to Taverner and Rhodes to deal with the miscreant occultist and help true love be restored.
◐○○○○ Labor Day Barbecue - Allen Knudsen (2021 ss)
John met Brian at a naked yoga class. The two Black men hit it off, and a few weeks later John was invited to Brian and Corey's apartment, nude of course. John had enjoyed hanging out nude with his friends, but then it was New Year's, and a couple months later Covid lockdown. Finally that ended, and John was invited to a potluck dinner party at B&C's condo in a naturist resort. The story is just of the dinner party, where John met other members who lived at the resort or visited weekends.
Now the bad part. Lola and Ernest arrived, masked and nude, and then Brian said “No need for masks here, okay?” Then Frank and Scott arrived, and Brian greeted them with “We’re safely beyond social distancing, right? Everybody’s vaccinated?” The two men tentatively removed their masks.
This happened several more times. If you're an author writing a story, you can pretend Covid never happened and just tell your story. This tale would have lost nothing if set a decade before the pandemic started. But if you do mention Covid, do so responsibly. This story didn't, and I find its attitude poor and its views offensive.
●●●◐○ Beggars in Spain - Nancy Kress (1991 nva)
Roger Camden, self-made billionaire, ordered the usual modifications for his planned child: height, hair and eye color, intelligence, musicality. Then he demanded the sleep-free mod, threatening lawsuits and bad publicity if his kid didn't get it. His wife Elizabeth clearly wasn't thrilled, but went along.
Unexpectedly, Elizabeth produced two eggs the month of the withdrawal. One was taken and modified while the one the doctors missed implanted and developed normally. The Sleepless girl was named Leisha, and Roger strongly favored her; the other girl was named Alice, who was her mother's favorite. The stress of the situation turned Elizabeth into a drunk, and she divorced her rich husband when the girls were young.
Both grew up in the libertarian world where Kenzo Yagai's development of cold fusion had made power almost free. Over time, there were more and more Sleepless, and while some "normal" people disliked them — they were all very successful, having a third more of the day to work toward their goals — it was mostly contained, until an autopsy of a Sleepless young man who'd died in an auto accident revealed that it was possible that a side-effect of the Sleepless mod might be immortality, or failing that, certainly a much-extended lifespan.
This led to all kinds of backlash from the Sleepers, and the Sleepless took steps to protect themselves. The adults could retreat to Sanctuary, a large tract of land they'd bought in Pennsylvania, but what of the Sleepless kids still living with their parents? They'd need rescuing when things went wrong.
●●○○○ Efficiency - Malcolm Jameson (1943 ss)
A very short story about the dangers of excessive efficiency.
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Week Thirty-Six's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
265+8 ss | 13+0 nvt | 15+1 nva | 80+3 nov |
#Reading #ScienceFiction #Books #Bookstodon #BokBooks
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[1] There is a short story left, plus two side novels with different main characters, in which Richard d'Orleans and Sabra du Lac make appearances as minor figures.
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Epub-split some more books. The anthology A.I. Chronicles edited by Ellen Campbell. The Essential Jack Sharkey collection, who is apparently like Margaret St. Clair in writing shorter shorts; there are twice as many stories in this collection than most produced in its batch. The Sam Merwin Jr Megapack as well as seven more of his stories from Project Gutenberg.

#reading #sciencefiction #books #bookstodon #bokbooks
bok @[email protected] · 2026-09-01 · 18:26 UTC

#AugustReads | Tag to mute: #BokBooks
eleven novels:
●●●◐○ His Father's Son {Ethical Vampires 2} - P.N. Elrod, Nigel Bennett (2001)
●●●◐○ The Girl Who Dropped In {Wanderers 01} - David Collins (2025)
●●●○○ Another Murder in the Buff {Jesse Montogomery 02} - Greg Kauffman-Starkey (2024 nov)
●●●●○ The Clouds of Saturn - Michael McCollum (1991)
●●●◐○ The Girl Who Fought Back {Wanderers 02} - David Collins (2026)
●◐○○○ Highway of Eternity - Clifford D. Simak (1986)
●●●●○ The Edge of Twilight {Behold: Humanity! 22} - Ralts Bloodthorne (2026)
●●●◐○ {Scattered Worlds 02} Donuts and Dinosaurs - David Collins (2026)
●○○○○ Meriweather & Bryce, P.I.s - Greg Kauffman-Starkey (2026)
●●●◐○ Cute - Bob Palmer (2024)
●●◐○○ The Tribulations of Omega Girl - A.D. Rowen *(2020)
one novella:
●●●●○ Carla Takes Her Clothes Off - A.D. Rowen (2019)
zero novelettes
twenty-nine short stories:
●●●◐○ Still Rolling - Angelia Sparrow (2010)
●●○○○ The Fourth of July at Alamo Ranch Nudist Park - Michael Beyer (2021)
●●●●○ The Permanent Stiletto - W.C. Morrow (1897)
●●○○○ The Red One - Jack London (1918)
●●●○○ Brimstone Bill {Bullard 7} - Malcolm Jameson (1942)
●●●○○ An Unexpected Ascension Day - Stan Muir (2021
●●●○○ The Bureaucrat {Bullard 8} - Malcolm Jameson (1944)
●●●○○ The Man Who Sought {Dr. Taverner 03} - Dion Fortune (1922)
●●●○○ Just the Three of Them at the End of the World - John Grover (2010)
●●○○○ The Redneck Games - René Beauchemin (2021)
●●●○○ Unrest in Cowpat - Stephanie Kincaid (2010)
●●●○○ The Dark Demon - Robert Bloch (1936)
●●●○○ Blank… - Harlan Ellison (1957
●○○○○ Eureka! - Malcolm Jameson (1942)
●●●○○ A Day in the Rain - P.A. Choi (2020)
●●●○○ The Soul That Would Not Be Born {Dr. Taverner 04} - Dion Fortune (1922)
●●●○○ The Monkey's Paw - W. W. Jacobs (1902)
●○○○○ To Please Nicholas - Alexander Hayes (2010)
●●◐○○ Holidays in the Nudist Colony- Ana Jurić (2021)
●◐○○○ Til the Last Beat - Clancy Nacht (2010)
●●◐○○ Painted Masks - Will Forest (2021)
●●●○○ Orders {Bullard 9} - Malcolm Jameson (1945)
●●●○○ Dogs, Cats, and Naked People. Oh My! - Linda Weber (2021)
●●○○○ I'm an Angel, Not an Astrophysicist! - Brian Terence (2025)
●●◐○○ Deaf, Dumb and Blind - C.M. Eddy, H.P. Lovecraft (1925)
●●●○○ The Scented Poppies {Dr. Taverner 05} - Dion Fortune (1922)
●●○○○ The Jameson Satellite - Neil R. Jones (1931)
●●●◐○ GirlWorld - Lisa Morton (2010)
●●●◐○ Final Exam - Sam Merwin Jr (1955)
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Descriptions of novels and shorter works are found in the weekly posts. Search for hashtag BokBooks. #ScienceFiction #BokBooks
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2026-08: 29 ss | 00 nvt | 01 nva | 11 nov
2026-07: 32 ss | 01 nvt | 01 nva | 10 nov
2026-06: 34 ss | 02 nvt | 01 nva | 10 nov
2026-05: 31 ss | 01 nvt | 05 nva | 10 nov
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Oh, the inelegance. I often read quite late: 26, 28, even 30 o'clock. So I have my day-division set to 8 AM. That puts the things I read in one wake period on the same stats page, not split by midnight.
But I only got around to post-reading Cute and Omega Girl into the calendar after midnight, and while they show up on the stats page, the shift from August to September proved too big to bridge.
So it's "Final Exam" which ended up at the top of the last day of August, not the novel Cute as it should. Annoying.

#augustreads #bokbooks #sciencefiction
bok @[email protected] · 2026-08-30 · 21:28 UTC

CW: #Reading in Week Thirty-Five of 2026 | August 24–30 | ~2300 words | ~14k characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks

●●●◐○ Donuts and Dinosaurs {Scattered Worlds 02} - David Collins (2026 nov)
So this series isn't one that follows a set of characters, but one where different groups of characters face the same situation: being on one of the tens of thousands of chunks of planetary surface that were grabbed in a Lenovian experiment gone wrong, and dropped on a new world together in a Mandelbrot mishmash.
In this tale we get the mid-twenties, cis-het, white, USAn man that Collins seems to begin all his stories with getting scooped up. Also a similar woman, then over time they find a half-dozen more humans. The aliens this time are Proccas (six-legged goat-centaurs), who are Bronze-age fishers; Lanas (elf-bats), who are centuries more advanced than humans; and Gurranas (dwarf Neanderthals), who are a Stone Age people.
We get the usual struggles against dinosaurs, giant wolves, weird sea monsters, and what not, all transposed from various worlds onto this Scattered World — which may or may not be the same planet as the last volume. The usual Collins: fast light adventure, formulaic but fun.
●●●○○ Dogs, Cats, and Naked People. Oh My! - Linda Weber (2021 ss)
Community Service Day is a mandated annual event in this story. Usually Dr. David — senior veterinarian in a practice he shares with Dr. Janet — goes to the residential nudist community of Rolling Oaks to look at the pets of the people who live there, but this year he committed to going to the new Senior Center and checking pets there, so he offers the nudist job to his business partner, who after a couple of days' thought accepts.
On the first day, Janet makes her rounds topless, but wearing a sarong skirt. Walking between cottages, no one makes any untoward remarks. Janet meets a number of clients and their pets, finding only one that merits a more in-depth check at the office later in the week. Andrew the architect (who has a rescue greyhound) tells her about how naturism is a “philosophy of wholesome, non-sexual, family-friendly nudity” and invites her to dinner later.
The next weekend Janet has a dinner with some female friends, and reveals that she'll likely go to Rolling Oaks again to enjoy herself when she's not working.
●●○○○ I'm an Angel, Not an Astrophysicist! - Brian Terence (2025 ss)
Himself had agreed to answer a prayer — by some people with swords fighting some other people with swords — to stop the sun in the sky. The orders had filtered down to two angels, who were left to figure out how to do that without killing everyone on the sword folk's planet.
It took a fair bit of work, which we never really see. The piece is just discussions between catty angels, with no actual plans made or deeds done.
●●◐○○ Deaf, Dumb and Blind - C.M. Eddy, H.P. Lovecraft (1925 ss)
Dr. Morehouse had been visiting the people at the nearest house when Dobbs ran in, panicked. He was the manservant to author Richard Blake, who had rented the old Simeon Tanner place, thinking the dark past of the place exciting, even if the only way the wheelchair-bound writer — deaf, mute, and blind as he was, after what he'd experienced in the Great War — was second-hand, literally, via the touch code he'd worked out with Dobbs.
There had always been rumors about old Simeon, and when a noxious cloud had emanated from the house, the nearby farmers had broken into the house with axes, then into his locked study with the same. They found Simeon dead, with a horrible expression on his face, and his study filled with occult books. They burned the body and the books.
Now, when Blake was typing up his next book, something emerged from the always-locked study. Something which Blake was somehow aware of, and began typing about, in the manuscript that Dr. Morehouse took away before anyone could read it…
●●●●○ Carla Takes Her Clothes Off - A D Rowen (2019 nva)
After the divorce, Brian got his girlfriend pregnant, and Carla got the house, in the backyard of which she was now sunbathing. Topless, as she used to do on the beaches of Spain. Then she realized that the fence and hedge made the backyard private, so why have any tan lines?
This led to Carla going nude all the time at home, and soon enough opening the door to the mail carrier or a food delivery person without bothering to put on her housecoat. (“Exhibiting herself for men made her feel sexy.”) That led to her gardening in the front yard and washing her car nude, with none of her neighbors objecting.
Then Carla invited her friend Mandy to visit, and found that, while initially surprised, Mandy had no problems with Carla's nudity. Soon Carla began driving to her office naked, stopping in a lay-by near work to dress, then again undressing there when returning from her office job in town to her village home.
Soon Mandy, Carla, and two more friends went to Carla's local pub, where they discussed Carla's nudity. Carla explained that she didn't think of herself as a nudist, since she wasn't really interested in being around other nude people.
After some conversation, Jen noted that “Before you said you just liked being naked, now you said you like people seeing you naked. That’s different.” This led to the ladies challenging Carla to strip, her doing so, the largely male clientele having zero problem having a pretty 28-year-old woman nude in the pub, and the tavern owner reluctantly (and his wife later encouragingly) allowing Carla to be nude on the premises.
And so it goes, with Carla being nude more and more places, and her village having no problems with it. She even learns, from a man she gets involved with, that she's not the first.
Back in the 1930s, a family name Belgrave lived in town, when eighteen-year-old Hermione decided she didn't want to wear clothes. Despite it being a time when doing such a thing could get a woman put in an asylum, her family supported her, as did the town. A year later, Hermione's two-years-younger sister joined her in nudity. Hermione was nude for six years before marrying and moving away, but Olivia was nude for fifteen years before she moved away. An appendix shows entries from Olivia's journal.
In any case, Carla became close with handyman-and-amateur-historian Steven, and she remained nude around the village henceforth, at least in warmer weather. The fact that the villagers accepted her nudity so readily did lessen Carla's exhibitionist thrill some, but she coped.
●●●○○ The Scented Poppies {Dr. Taverner 05} - Dion Fortune (1922 ss)
A man comes to occultist and psychologist Dr. Taverner to see if he can do something about the man's cousin, who has just become heir to a childless rich uncle's estate. The problem is that three other cousins were previously the sole heir, and each in turn committed suicide. Gregory Polson would like to see the sequential suicides stopped, both because he likes the current heir, and because there are only three other cousins left, of which he's one.
Gregory suspects Irving, the cousin their uncle is likely to make heir last. Irving gives people small gifts, and Gregory brings in the floral wall hanging that Irving just gave to Tim, the current heir. Taverner discovers within one of the poppies some odd seeds, the scent of which “stirs up the pineal gland,” along with a moonstone, upon which has been impressed a psychic urge to throw oneself from a height.
Apparently some member of the occult community is selling working curses. Taverner and Rhodes must deal with both Irving and the seller to bring the case to a successful conclusion.
●●○○○ The Jameson Satellite - Neil R. Jones (1931 ss)
Inspired by Egyptian mummies, Professor Jameson sought to have his body preserved forever, building himself a small spaceship as a coffin, and leaving instructions for his nephew to launch him into orbit. With his radium repulsion ray fending off meteors, Professor Jameson remained in orbit for a long, long time. Forty million years, during which time the Moon drew much closer to Earth, and the tidally-locked Earth drew much closer to the cool, red Sun.³
After this span, Zoromes from the planet Zor arrive (and eventually say to Jameson “You died and were shot out into space long before any life occurred on Zor,” in another wild miscalculation of time by the author).
They were originally a fully biological race, but in their quest for immortality, ended up making themselves mostly robotic. They have cubical metal bodies with four legs and six manipulatory tentacles, and contain the biological brains of the original inhabitants of Zor. They place Professor Jameson's brain in one of their bodies and revive him.
The now-mechanical Jameson, together with his robotic companions, briefly explore the twilight zone of one-face Earth, have a minor adventure, and then set forth to further explore "the Universe" (NRJ knew not of galaxies?), in this first of many Professor Jameson stories.
●●●◐○ GirlWorld - Lisa Morton (2010 ss)
The apocalypse had gone well for Stace and Brittnay. The former had been a truckstop waitress who'd had to deal with men trying to grope her, the latter a dental assistant who'd had her fill of shrieking brats.
They'd met six months ago in the produce section, and had been together since. The zombie epidemic that had hit three months ago had spared them from their jobs, and when everyone living went to relocation centers, they'd skipped that depressing chaos.
Now they traveled, killing zombies — Stace had a dozen wooden bats, since they shattered eventually, while Brittnay favored a homemade spear — and staying in expensive houses, sometimes having sex all day. Except Stace has bad dreams every night.
So Britt conceives of The Mission, to lay her own old ghosts to rest. They headed to her old house, and they find her father, who beat her mother until she fled, with Britt running away at sixteen. And the couple wreaks sweet revenge on his zombified self.
●○○○○ Meriweather & Bryce, P.I.s - Greg Kauffman-Starkey (2026 nov)
Two Victorian private investigators — and Uranian lovers, despite the laws of Church and State — become involved in a series of kidnappings, all involving men in their early fifties, but of different social stations: laborers, a newspaper editor, an alderman, a wealthy factory owner. The niece of the moneyed man hires the detectives to find him.
Investigating, Jack Meriweather and Lucien Bryce learn that Franklin Royale, notorious criminal mastermind, is involved, but they learn no more. The two of them are also men of a certain age, Jack Meriweather reminds his partner Lucien Bryce. They stroll up and down the street where the kidnappings occur, and are promptly hooded and shoved into a carriage. They learn from the men with whom they're imprisoned that they're now sexual slaves, since “there is a growing fetish” for that sort of thing.²
Bryce and Meriweather then get picked as assassins by Prince Thomas to appear at an official Palace reception — as high-class Uranian prostitutes, mind you — to kill Sultan Adi un-Vactun, who made a disparaging remark about Queen Victoria. And as part of their plan to escape their minders, Lucian and Jack play up their homosexuality and kiss the prince in front of his mother.
Okay, the stupidity of this novel's plot has surprised me multiple times. The ineptitude of the detective heroes, ditto. Why this is so is beyond me, given that I've read other detective novels by this author — three gay leads across four books, one set in Victorian times — and they were much better.
In any case, the detectives here eventually end the sex slavery scheme, get the other men released, and don't end up imprisoned themselves. They even get the Queen to look the other way regarding the detectives' Uranian natures, and the acts the other men were forced to perform under duress, as long as everyone is discreet form now on. And Franklin Royale is arrested, which I didn't expect, he being the James Moriarty of the book.
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Week Thirty-Five's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
259+6 ss | 13+0 nvt | 14+1 nva | 78+2 nov |
#books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction #BokBooks
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[1] The narrator says the area involved is a roughly 42×51 mile oval. This seems small enough that this book's group would have contacted the people from the first book in the eight years that pass before the final chapter. They don't, which suggests its a different planet (and which makes the experiment even more ludicrous). But the map in the book suggests that we've only experienced a small area of a vast Scatter.
[2] Ri-ii-ight. That a criminal enterprise could identify scores of homosexual clients, who hide their orientations lest they be imprisoned, seems unlikely. Then you need to have clients who want to have sex with unwilling men, pay for the privilege, and trust the panderer with their secrets. Only the fact that Franklin Royale plans to later blackmail these men makes any sense. Oh, and being an equal-opportunity panderer, Royale also maintained a harem of women for wealthy ladies with same-sex tastes.
[3] Yeah, the timeline for all this is wrong, tens of millions of years instead of almost a billion years left for Earth, and more for Sol. Jones seems to be working off Lord Kelvin's idea that the Sun had the heat of its formation, and cooled from there. That nuclear fusion occurs in stars was discovered in the 1920s.

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bok @[email protected] · 2026-08-24 · 00:21 UTC

CW: #Reading in Week Thirty-Four of 2026 | August 17–23 | ~2000 words | ~11k characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks

●●●○○ A Day in the Rain - P.A. Choi (2020 ss)
Anabeth was a high school senior who'd been sick for a week, left alone for ten hours every day while her divorced mother worked eight hours as a secretary, and endured an hour-long commute twice a day. But today Anabeth was feeling better, and felt a need to get outside. It was hot and raining, and she removed her nightshirt and panties, and stepped out into the rain. Her house was in a dead end, at the edge of a lightly-populated plat, and it wasn't likely anyone would see her.
Anabeth walked through the field, enjoying the warm rain, then came to the woods, which she crosses through, imagining herself an elf. Then she came upon the lake. After resting a bit from the climb down the hill, she prepared to have a swim, only to see a college-age boy across the lake looking at her. When he waved, Anabeth's nervousness left her, and she began to swim. When next she looked up, she saw the skinny young man stripping, and preparing to do the same.
They met in the middle of the lake, had a brief conversation, then swam to shore and talked further, before Cameron said he had to get back, but that Anabeth had inspired him to do so naked. She watched him leave, then walked home herself, dancing in the rain.
●●●○○ The Soul That Would Not Be Born {Dr. Taverner 04} - Dion Fortune (1922 ss)
A wealthy woman brings her daughter to see Dr. Taverner. Since three hours after birth, Mona Cailey has been entirely withdrawn, not moving or reacting to anything. Taverner says that if it's a problem with her brain, he can do nothing, but if it's her mind that's the cause, there are possibilities.
Dr. Taverner goes into his usual trance, and consults the young woman's Akashic Record. In her last incarnation, she was the daughter of a Duke in fifteenth-century Italy. Her younger sister had a boyfriend of suitable rank, with a good future, and not-then-Mona stole him. Worse, when a better prospect came along, she betrayed the man to his enemies to get rid of him, and he was killed.
Mona destroyed two lives, and karmic justice is due her. Having seen that at her birth, when a newly-incarnated soul gets a preview of its next life, Mona had chosen to withdraw. The man who died centuries ago, did so calling Mona's former name, so in this life he was drawn to her. In this life he was another shell-shocked soldier with a fiancée, and Mona would be a means to his cure, and her sorrow…
●●●○○ The Monkey's Paw - W.W. Jacobs (1902 ss)
The classic story. I've seen versions of the central idea in TV shows and movies, but this is the first time I've read the tale. A family friend who's been traveling for twenty years, most recently in India, visits a couple and their 22-year-old son. After much drinking, the visitor shows them the monkey's paw, which he says can give three people each three wishes.
He says he's used his three wishes, and will not speak of them, only to say that the wishes always come true in the cruelest way possible. The father says he's mostly happy, and about all that he needs is to pay off the mortgage, so he wishes for ₤200 (about ₤27k today). The next day a lawyer shows up at their door with the money, and bad news…
●●●●○ Edge of Twilight {Behold: Humanity! 22} - Ralts Bloodthorne (2026 nov)
The Terran Age is in remission. Terran Descent Humanity is extinct, and Earth is still hiding in the Bag, with the pocket universe expected to open in some seven thousand years. All the little empires at the edges of Confederacy Space think it's time to expand, since the species that composed sixty percent of the Confederacy military is gone.
Ret.lek gets bored having to stomp out invading forces again and again, and just lets his warmek run on autopilot until finally he faces the Noocracy, which has apparently learned a few things, and makes the Confederacy work for its win.
Tank Battalion Commander Ekret retires after over a century of service, and his body is reset to age twenty. He initially has trouble adapting to civilian life, and develops an alcohol problem, but after a couple of years he recovers, gets a degree, and marries.
Nakteti, once of the first characters introduced in the series (when the small ship she captained was targeted by a Precursor War Machine, and one of the Immortals came to her aid), now the honorary leader of twenty Tnvaru worlds, spends a decade laying safe paths through the territory of the Terran Tomb Worlds, knowing those civilizations that come next will forget the humans, and will awaken horrors if they interfere with Terran worlds while humanity is offstage.
The chapters detailing those characters' experiences alternate with ones where future civilizations show interest in the Forerunners (humans) and their tech and weapons, usually to get an advantage over a neighboring empire. Things always go badly for them. You'd think a clue would come from the "Terrans" name being corrupted to "Terrors" over the millennia.
One of the future-set chapters concerns a researcher whose expedition uncovered an outpost where Terrans had some Atrekna brain-gatherer machines in stasis. The newcomers released the Atrekna robots, which promptly wiped out their expedition, except for one individual who managed to awaken a Confederacy AI that used a modified creation engine to produce a set of injections which the individual used to implant a Terran consciousness into himself, giving him the skills needed to survive and destroy the base. We get a dozen interludes where his civilization figures out what he now is, what he can do, and how to deal with him.
From the tone and events, I thought this might be the last book in the series. It certainly seems to be wrapping up loose ends after three millions-of-worlds wars in three decades, and the temporary extinction of most humans. But the book ends with the customary Sneak Peek of the next volume, so at least one more is coming.
●○○○○ To Please Nicholas - Alexander Hayes (2010 ss)
This is a story in a queer zombies anthology that doesn't have zombies in it (it's more of a Frankenstein's monster). It's written in second-person in a particularly annoying way. And it uses language that's pseudo-profound and fake old-fashioned: “We are each bred to our own desires. Consider the moth is not attracted to the flame but to the greater darkness it perceives behind the fire.”
Yeah, I didn't like it. A grandmother picks up hitchhiking runaways and loners, and uses parts of them to freshen her ever-rotting "grandson". The young man encounters a man who ran out of gas, and after walking with him to the station, has sex with him in the trailer where he lives with his grandmother. Grandmother finds out he let replacement parts get away, and punishes him. He runs away, and starts to rot to death…
●●◐○○ Holidays in the Nudist Colony- Ana Jurić (2021 ss)
This is the third Naturist Collective anthology. In each one, this author has written a story that has the same title as the anthology, which somewhat annoys me.
In this one, Lisel (ex-teacher) and Hans (ex-cop) — they met in Murder in the Nudist Colony — have purchased Happy Valley Naturist Resort, because the elderly owner died, and his widow can't run the place alone. They fix up the place and reopen, only to have few guests. When Lisel was exercising one of the resort's horses one day, it got excited and ran from the field, carrying naked Lisel into town.
She ended up meeting the man who ran a print shop, and he printed up another batch of the flyers Lisel had made last week, which she handed out in Lady Godiva fashion before heading back to the camp. Gustav put up posters, and there was an online story. The resort went on to have a successful reopening and a very busy summer.
●◐○○○ Til the Last Beat - Clancy Nacht (2010 ss)
Sam and Zach have been together for seven years, and Sam wants to get married, but they live in Texas before same-sex marriage was legal in all US states. Sam suggests a neopagan binding ceremony, which Zach reluctantly goes along with. While window-shopping for rings, the couple finds in their mixed-use building an odd Victorian shop that wasn't there yesterday.
Sam drags Zach in, and is enchanted by the place, while Zach sees giant spiders and skeletons and an actual green-skinned witch as saleswoman. The witch sells them wedding bands (in the form of a golden man spooning a silver man), and offers to perform the ceremony, which involves blood-letting and an oath that says they'll stay together even past the last beat of their hearts.
The next day Sam dies in a car accident, and when Zach goes to the morgue, Sam rises as a zombie, and quickly makes Zach one, and the couple continues their domestic existence, eating brains while they slowly rot.
●●◐○○ Painted Masks - Will Forest (2021 ss)
Back at the Noonay Noo Naturist Park on the Caribbean Island of St. Ethel, Miranda T. Alcántara, retired entomologist and founder of the park, has organized a Carnaval festival. She's agreed that Denise and Terence can write about the event on their website ‘Naturist Mandinga,’ which features reviews of naturist places from an Afro-centric viewpoint.
There's an initial dispute when Terence begins taking photos for the site, which is not done without explicit permission at a nudist resort, and he notes that the contract Dr. A signed never mentioned that photos couldn't be taken. Denise finally manages to explain to Terence what the problem is, and he suggests painting the participants instead, and making the painted faces blank. The celebration goes on, and all is well in the end.
●●●○○ Orders {Bullard 9} - Malcolm Jameson (1945 ss)
The Treaty of Juno had officially brought peace to the Solar System (albeit while glossing over a few points). Admiral Bullard now commanded Lunar Base, overseeing the mothballed fleet, all of whose ships would eventually have their weapons removed.
Then Lionel Wallowby, Undersecretary of State for Asteroidal Affairs — and major author of the clause in the treaty that forbid forever the use of force or the threat of force in any situation whatever, regardless of provocation — showed up.
Federal marshals have not been able able to bring in a major criminal hiding out in the Trojans, two small polities that Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn variously claim, which issue the Treaty of Juno fudged by allowing the asteroid groups independence. They say the blanket amnesty clause in the treaty — intended for belligerents — means no one is subject to Solar Federation power.
Wallowby wants Bullard to send out a ship — which won't be able to use or even threaten force — to do the job. Bullard sends Benton to do so, using a plan that has no realistic chance of succeeding, but of course does. This is the final Bullard tale, posthumously published.
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Week Thirty-Four's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
251+8 ss | 13+0 nvt | 14+0 nva | 77+1 nov |
#books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction #BokBooks
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My father's issue cut down reading time this week. I also seem to be in a reading lapse, and am watching more videos. Hell, I've even watched some movies, which is rare.

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bok @[email protected] · 2026-08-17 · 02:19 UTC

CW: #Reading in Week Thirty-Three of 2026 | August 10–16 | ~2100 words | ~12k characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks

●●●●○ The Clouds of Saturn - Michael McCollum (1991 nov)
In the late 2000s, humans discovered that Sol was entering a more active phase, and within a century the oceans of Earth would begin to boil. After a couple of years of chaos, twenty percent of Earth's GDP went into basic research, trying to find some way to save the planet, or barring that, save humankind. The first goal failed, but enough was learned to accomplish the second. People were transported to Saturn in million-person cryosleeper arks, which were disassembled to build floating cities.
Centuries later, tens of thousands of cloud cities float in the clearer Belts of the ringed planet's atmosphere, mostly in small associations of three to five cities. But now the growing Northern Alliance is trying to force cities to join them, either via economic pressures and political subversion as the Accretionists wish, or via quicker conquest as the Militarist faction desires.
Captain Larson Sands and his five crew members are hired as privateers to defend New Philadelphia against the Alliance. Larson's brother — and co-pilot Halley's fiancé — is stationed on the city's command blimp, and dies in the conflict. The upset and broke Larson then gets pulled into a scheme that can get him money and a measure of vengeance, only to find his crew has been used as dupes by the Militarist faction to make the Accretionist First Councilor of the Northern Alliance look bad.
This in turn sees the crew on the run, and having rescued the held-hostage princess daughter of the Factor of Titan, head of the partner civilization that provides the metals that Saturn doesn't have. As part of their raid on Cloudcroft, the Alliance capitol, Halley had copied data from the First Councillor's private computer, which Titan computer techs deciphered¹ to show that the Alliance was on the verge of securing shield technology that would guarantee its conquest of Saturn. That expands the story greatly, and even leads to expeditions to boiling Earth to dig up old tech.
●●●○○ The Bureaucrat {Bullard 8} - Malcolm Jameson (1944 ss)
Lieutenant Benton wanted to be part of "the greatest war in history" (against whom, poor readers never learn), but his rich mother bought enough war bonds that she could get him assigned to the Vindictive, a ship pulled out of mothballs to hover over Manhattan and "protect" the Bourse, the financial heart of the Solar Union. For which read, a place for young financiers, and sons of wealthy traders, to nominally serve in the military, universal male conscription being active.
Benton's father had served with (now Grand Admiral) Bullard, and the young officer had gone to him to try to get transferred to a real combat ship. But someone mired as deep in bureaucracy as Bullard could hardly draft orders affecting only one ship, let alone one officer. Still, should certain orders be drafted that affected a whole class of ships (all but one of which were in junkyards)…
Benton got to serve on a real warship, and in one of those "the Enterprise is the only ship in the sector available" scenarios, ended up winning a pivotal engagement, and even chancing on a form of jump drive from the way the Vindictive's new and old engines, radically different, interfered with each other.
●●●○○ The Man Who Sought {Dr. Taverner 03} - Dion Fortune (1922 ss)
Arnold Black raced motorcars and aeroplanes. He'd had an accident some months ago — he'd gone off a cliff, and had been unconscious for three days — and since then he'd been odd. He was in love with a woman he'd never met, who might not even exist, and he raced all over, hoping to meet her. If it kept up, he'd surely die in another crash.
Dr. Taverner, psychologist and occultist, took the case. He determined that Black had revived memories from a previous life, and that his and a female soul had been repeatedly entwined throughout history. In a lucid dream, Taverner consulted the Akashic Records, and found out that the female soul was currently incarnate, and was a young woman of similar age to Black, and that she even lived in England, for they were often drawn together.
So when Elaine Tyndall showed up, knowing she was in love with some man, but unaware of who he was or where he lived, Dr. Taverner was hopeful of a happy conclusion to the two cases…
●●●○○ Just the Three of Them at the End of the World - John Grover (2010 ss)
Three gay roommates — tough rentboy Troy, bitchy drag queen Alan, and shy newly-out Josh — deal with a zombie outbreak. They manage to fight their way out of their apartment building — even having to bash in the skull of Mrs. Gomez, who always gave them a plate of cookies when she made some for her grandkids — nearly losing Alan along the way: he was readying for a competition, and it's tough to run in a slinky dress.
Things don't go well once they make it to the streets, trying to get to the house of a friend with a car in which they hoped to get out of town.
●●●◐○ The Girl Who Fought Back {Wanderers 02} - David Collins (2026 nov)
Ye gods. Not only does this series have the same type of FTL the Artifact series does, it also uses "friction" (impulse) drives, and has medpods that use smelly sensor slime. Collins is copying from himself, except that where Ben and his friends go around exploring and solving problems, Dan and his friends go around troubleshooting and exploring. They even found a derelict spaceship in deep space in this book, something which happens all the time in the other series.
In any case, on a Mars-type world famous for having ancient alien artifacts, a buried spaceship is found. Since Kinnis is doing her public service sentence there (after stealing a university spaceship in the first book), she manages to copy the computer's data, and calls her friends to get her so they can see if the ten-thousand-years-gone race is still out there.
The Azur stops for supplies at a frontier Collective planet, where ultra-rich Captain Dan buys out the indentured service contracts of a couple of Grelderkin (humanoid porcupines), one an FTL tech, the other a general mechanic, to have them as crew on the exceptionally long journey to the alien plant.
They find the alien homeworld suffered a Skynet event, and it's taken millennia for the humans, thrown back to 1920s levels, to be on the verge of beating the six remaining AI hubs and their killer robots. As happens in the Artifact tales, the ship also ends up picking up a new crewperson, this time a Minote (four-armed humanoid with twin prehensile tails) from the Skynet world, who'll be with them for the next book.
The book also ends with the remnants of the criminal cabal (that they took down in the previous volume) attempting to assassinate them, only to fail. Fast, light adventure, very very like the Artifact series.
●●○○○ The Redneck Games - René Beauchemin (2021 ss)
After covid lockdown ends, Alan and Anne are glad to be able to go to Sunny Green Acres again. At their nudist camp they meet up with other retired friends like Bill and Candace. After lockdown, other people had wanted to try new things, and the old folk saw several young couples — one even with children — at the camp, as well as two First Nations couples and a Black couple.
Anne had a successful potluck dinner at their trailer, and then everyone participated in the traditional games of toilet-seat throwing and the rest. A fine time was had by all, though the tale is dull.
●◐○○○ Highway of Eternity - Clifford D. Simak (1986 nov)
Boone was a man who could "step around the corner" into another realm when faced with imminent death. Corcoran was a man who, after a head injury, could see things other people couldn't. When an odd but profitable client went missing, investigator Corcoran called in his reporter friend Boone to help look for him. They found an invisible box attached to a skyscraper due to be demolished, and when the authorities moved up the deadline, Boone stepped them into the transporter, which took them centuries into the past.
There they encountered an eccentric family on the run from the Infinites, aliens who'd convinced future humans that base corporeal life should be avoided, and converted most of humankind into sparkling lights. The Infinites sent a robotic murderbot after them, and they fled hastily in three transporters, ending up separated in three different times.
Some were in the pre-human-migration Southwest, others in the post-Infinites pastoral future, others got involved with aliens. Things happen without much plot or character development. People run hither and yon without reason, running from killerbots and looking for each other. At one point Corcoran climbs a magic-beanstalk-size tree (that only he can see) surrounded by a spiral staircase, only to fall off when he's miles up — and magically appear in the gray realm that is the Highway of Eternity, where he finds his companions waiting for him.
The last chapter reveals that most of the nonsense was orchestrated by a minor character who is in reality godlike, in order to arrange a meet-cute that he hopes will result in a superior human.
●●●○○ Unrest in Cowpat - Stephanie Kincaid (2010 ss)
Harry's been in a bad mood all his life, and it got worse when his son came out of the closet. When Celeste tells him that Ben and Keith are going to get married, it's too much, and that night he dies of a heart attack.
After being delayed a respectful two months, the wedding happens, and it's again too much for Harry: he rises from his grave as a zombie to protest it. Celeste kicks him out of the house for continuing to be so hateful, so Harry goes in search of others who share his views. He rouses quite a few from the graveyard, and they hold a protest march…
●●●○○ The Dark Demon - Robert Bloch (1936 ss)
When young author Ithan learns that famed horror writer Edgar Gordon lives in his town, he approached him, and the older man became a friend and mentor. Gordon talked of the inspiration for his stories: all of them came from dreams. He wrote tales of eldritch oddity and intelligent beings of monstrous form who lived beyond normal space.
Over the years, Gordon's tales became stranger and stranger, until the regular publishers wouldn't touch his work, and he was forced to turn to private printers. Then Gordon revealed that he had been chosen by the Old Gods as a harbinger of their return…
●●●○○ Blank… - Harlan Ellison (1957 ss)
Rike Akisimov's crimes were so horrid that the faceless, unemotional jurymech had sentenced him to the penal colony on Io for a thousand years, adding that it was “essential to the good of humanity that [his] kind be eliminated from the universe.”
But Akisimov managed to escape custody when he was being transferred to the vehicle meant to take him to the spaceport. He grabbed a mind-blanking cap from a passing pedestrian and fled the psycops, heading for Driver Hall. His only chance at freedom was the stars, and to get a ship into inverspace he needed that rarest type of psioid, a Driver.
He managed to kidnap one and take off ahead of the authorities, and the Driver did what he wanted, but with a twist…
●○○○○ Eureka! - Malcolm Jameson (1942 ss)
An ultra-short story meant to amuse. Not a Feghoot, since there's no pun. Possibly a shaggy-dog story, though it's not long-winded, and the ending is more "that's dumb" than funny. The tale is about a scientist known for his weird discoveries coming to a colleague's lab to demonstrate his latest find.
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Week Thirty-Three's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
243+8 ss | 13+0 nvt | 14+0 nva | 74+3 nov |
#books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction #BokBooks
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[1] Because the First Councillor had set up the secret computer himself, rather than having some competent tech set up a system that was actually secure.

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bok @[email protected] · 2026-08-10 · 01:06 UTC

CW: #Reading in Week Thirty-Two of 2026 | August 03–09 | ~1700 words | ~10k characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks

●●●◐○ His Father's Son {Ethical Vampires 2} - P.N. Elrod, Nigel Bennett (2001 nov)
Security expert Richard Dun once dated Stephanie Anders, secretary of Philip Bourland, a Security Chief for the Canadian government. Being a vampire, Richard couldn't have the family Stephanie wanted, and she eventually married Luis Trujillo, a coffee importer — who ended up being the forced-to-smuggle-drugs brother of narco-king Alejandro.
Luis cooperated with the authorities, and many Colombian drug cartels suffered. But Alejandro remained free, so Bourland and Dun set Stephanie and Luis up with new identities in Texas. Then one day Richard got an emergency email from Stephanie saying something was wrong. Richard went to Dallas and found out things were very wrong. He had to hunt down killers and get revenge for what they'd done.
The novel continues the Forever Knight-style flashbacks to Richard's younger vampire days, dealing with thematically similar events.
●●●◐○ Still Rolling - Angelia Sparrow (2010 ss)
The zombie uprising has occurred, and Yolanda is a “big ol’ diesel dyke” who makes the run between the agri-fortress near Wichita and and the university in Kansas City, along with her wife Alice, who's sick and resting in the sleeper. The story is Yolanda talking nonstop to the man she picked up, just out of his bunker because he ran out of food.
Turns out things are worse than Yolanda's Tale of the End of the World lets on, and no one on board will be surviving this journey…
●●○○○ The Fourth of July at Alamo Ranch Nudist Park - Michael Beyer (2021 ss)
Fifteen-year-old Devon has lived in the residential nudist complex for five months, along with his widowed father, Frank; his new stepmother, Sherry; and his two thirteen-year-old stepsisters, Mandy and Tandy. Their father, Brent, remains close, and has semi-adopted Devon. Now Brent's parents are visiting the camp, along with Valerie, Brent's college-age cousin.
We deal with Devon and Beau's (another teen cousin) reactions to naked Valerie, and the grandparents less than enthusiastic reaction to nudity.
●●●●○ The Permanent Stiletto - W.C. Morrow (1897 ss)
A spurned lover stabs a young man in the chest. His friend Imber calls a doctor, who determines from the angle of the stiletto's blade that it pierced the aorta; if it's removed, Arnold will bleed out in minutes. The doctor mentions that there's a daring young surgeon in the hotel; he's called in.
Young Doctor Entrefort agrees with Doctor Rowell that removing the stiletto would be fatal. Leaving it in place — after the hilt is removed — might allow Arnold to survive weeks or months, albeit in pain, and in diminished capacity. Arnold doesn't like this and tries to pull the blade out, but is too weak. Dr. Entrefort leans in and whispers that he'll see the woman is tried for murder if Arnold attempts that again. He accedes.
Entrefort sends for a workman he knows, and the hilt is cut off below the level of the chest wall. Dr. Entrefort closes the incisions he'd made, and prescribes Arnold some drugs. Horrible enough, but the true horror occurs four years later, when Entrefort encounters Imber, and learns that Arnold still lives. Entrefort and his new wife visit Arnold…
●●●◐○ The Girl Who Dropped In {Wanderers 01} - David Collins (2025 nov)
Formulaic. I've started four series by David Collins, and without exception, each begins with a mid-twenties, white American man getting accidentally involved with aliens. In this case, Daniel Baker was an electrical engineer getting ready to move into his not-quite-ready cabin, when there was a loud party in the apartment above his.
David spent the night in his cabin, and returned to his apartment to shower and eat, only to find a young woman passed out drunk on his balcony, fallen from the apartment above. Sue Glitch, it turned out, was not from around here. She was the descendant of humans who'd been picked up centuries ago for research, and was a citizen of the multi-species Collective. Her two rich-and-dumb friends had basically stolen a university vessel and dragged her on a months-long Spring Break on Earth.
Next thing you know, there's a (shot up by fighter jets) flying saucer in David's cabin's backyard, he's harboring three fugitive aliens, and he ends up fleeing Earth with them. David was then drafted by Sue's once-famous explorer grandfather and his alien government friends to investigate why the citizens of the Collective are getting dumber.
With the help of David's Earth friend Leon, three non-human women (a doctor, a grifter, and a tech expert), and his new girlfriend Sue, David did exactly that, flying from place to place on Grandfather's spaceship. David also upgraded Max, the shipmind, from limited artificial intelligence to fully-sapient digital person. And the book ends with David and friends on their own ship, set to have more adventures, as in the Artifact series.
●●○○○ The Red One - Jack London (1918 ss)
Bassett the naturalist stopped of at Guadalcanal for a day of specimen-gathering. When he heard the remarkable sound, he plunged into the jungle seeking it, despite the protests of his 'native' (from a nearby island) guide. Soon enough the guide was dead, as was the English boy assisting Bassett. Only his shotgun kept the local headhunting tribe from dealing Bassett the same fate.
Bassett's ship moved on. Bassett survived for weeks, though catching who-knows-what local fevers. He eventually managed to live with the locals (though the shaman kept asking if he was ready to die, since his head would be the jewel of the man's shrunken head collection). He even 'married' a local woman to have an ally to search for the thing making the wonderful noise. It turned out to be a huge red sphere in a crater, clearly a spaceship…
The story suffers from racism, stupidity, and not actually doing anything with the great discovery, but had a few interesting bits.
●●●○○ Brimstone Bill {Bullard 7} - Malcolm Jameson (1942 ss)
The Pollux is transporting the prisoners captured in the last story to Luna Station, where the ship's crew will transfer to Earth to meet their wives and girlfriends. Except the ship is rerouted to Juno Skydocks for maintenance, in a way that Captain Bullard reads as paying off a politician whose votes the Navy needed. Senator Fenning owns the Skydocks, a fifth-rate repair base conveniently near gambling houses and brothels the Senator also owned.
One of the people included with the prisoners wasn't a combatant, merely a grifter who'd been caught up in the chaos. Bullard remembered him as Brimstone Bill, a preacher who'd been so forceful as to get a Lieutenant Bullard to donate a whole pay packet when he encountered the trickster on Venus. Bullard used 'Bill' to set up a situation so that his crew wasn't robbed blind in the casinos or whorehouses.
●●●○○ An Unexpected Ascension Day - Stan Muir (2021 ss)
Raphaël enjoyed nudism, his wife Clara not so much, though she'd gone as far as accompanying him to a nudist beach — topless. When the kids had a Friday off scheduled, Raphaël suggest going to a recently remodeled naturist resort for a long weekend. Clara didn't like the idea, but agreed the kids could have the deciding vote, and the family ended up going.
The kids enjoyed the the beach, the pony rides, the pools, and the other young people, while Raphaël had gone to many nudist parks when single, so he liked it. Clara was still disturbed by the idea of public nudity, though she enjoyed the way the kids had quickly found friends.
Clara wore a sarong for the first two days, until a discussion with the mother of the boy her son had made friends with. Jeanne told Clara of how she'd come to accept nudism, seeing how her son played with the son of another couple who they found were nudists. Everything just seemed natural. Finally Clara joined in the nudity.
●●●○○ Another Murder in the Buff {Jesse Montogomery 02} - Greg Kauffman-Starkey (2024 nov)
Two years ago, Jesse Mongomery solved his first murder at the Happy Valley Naturist Society, where the rich and privileged come to play and leave their cares and their clothes behind. He's been the security chief there since then. In this book he deals with the murder of a CEO who's come up with the next big social media app, and who's as arrogant and mean as you expect a techbro to be.
Suspects include the two assistants Simms brought to Happy Valley with him, both of whom he treats badly; the priest who counseled the man, who's for some reason also showed up at the nudist resort; the star of the musical revue whom he'd heckled off stage; and the beefy waiter with a crush on the star, who'd argued loudly with Simms.
The mystery is handled fairly casually. Jesse reviews the security cameras installed after the last murder, and he talks with the suspects, but I don't get the feel he tries to hard. (But then again, I often feel that mysteries just drift along aimlessly until one random observation solves the case.)
Jesse also thinks a lot about body issues (he's twenty or thirty pounds overweight, which the female officer who accompanies the hearse notes disparagingly) and discusses the positives of nudism a lot, which seems more like advertising than plot. But the case is eventually solved, with Jesse finding the killer (who wasn't the one the cops had been betting on), and Jessie's relationship with Christie progressing.
━━━━━━━━━━
Week Thirty-Two's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
237+6 ss | 13+0 nvt | 14+0 nva | 68+6 nov |
#books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction #BokBooks
━━━━━━━━━━
Holiday at the Nudist Colony is not proving particularly interesting so far, but since each story is by a different author, I'll keep chancing it.

#books #bookstodon #sciencefiction #bokbooks
bok @[email protected] · 2026-08-03 · 22:12 UTC

CW: #Reading in Week Thirty-One of 2026 | July 27 – August 02 | ~2300 words | ~13k characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks

◍◍◍◍◍ 1632 & Beyond #6 (July 2024 ⁓ 4 ss)
●●◐○○ Passing Fair ⁓ Virginia DeMarce
A decade after the Ring of Fire, Grantville is more cosmopolitan, and the time-displaced West Virginia town has a dozen theaters. Which someone disapproves of, writing them letters about how pretending to be people one isn't — rejecting one's God-given identity — is inherently sinful. There's another plot about identity, where some Black Grantville citizens wonder how their identity will endure, when they're so few.
●●●◐○ From Cramps to Matrimony ⁓ Terry Howard
A lord stayed at a luxury hotel just outside the Ring of Fire, and couldn't get the A-Plus steak sauce he'd had when he'd stayed at the Higgins Hotel in town. The Holiday Lodge later shipped him a bottle of steak sauce as an apology, and he'd ordered more items from the McAdams catalog included. In bulk, since it was cheaper. Which led to his cook selling the excess for a profit, then her niece getting a booth at the market and ordering wholesale to sell retail.
●●●○○ Cassini Runs Home ⁓ Robert E. Waters
Giovanni Cassini, future astronomer and mathematician, was currently a boy on a Little League team in Grantville. In the previous story, his uncle's plans were shattered, when the thought-lost-in-war husband of the woman he loved returned. Antonio had planned to stay in Grantville with Gio, and written the boy's parents, who came to town to retrieve their son. Gio also hopes to hit his first home run before the season ends.
●●●◐○ A Guest at the New Year ⁓ Tim Sayeau
Sir William Davenport in England receives a letter, delivered by armed men on horseback — a worrying thing, considering how paranoid King Charles has become after learning of his fate from uptime history books. But it turns out that the letter is from a young woman in Grantville. When she vacationed in England uptime, she went on a Ghost Tour, and Bramall Hall was on the itinerary. She warns Davenport that he's due to be killed in four years. His wife will die shortly thereafter and become a ghost haunting the Hall. Perhaps that can be avoided.
◍◍◍◍◍ {magazine stories end}
●●◐○○ Havenwood - Mel Cowan (2025 ss)
Alexander Reed inherits a property from a grandaunt whom he barely remembers. It is, of course, a nudist camp. The very uptight businessman initially thinks of selling the place — his property lawyer works out a provisional deal for over ten million pounds — but after walking around the place, Alex finds it soothing, and slowly gets into nudism himself. It's a story Cowan has told a score of times, and it's the last Cowan story I have.
●●◐○○ The Oldest Story in the World - Murray Leinster (1925 ss)
A European man in 19th-Century India just ordered a drink at an outdoor cafe when a disheveled white man sits down beside him and says he mustn't order a red drink. Green or yellow or purple, yes, but never red. The man changes his drink order, and the disheveled soul tells him a tale of another European man in India.
He had learned some local languages, and had observed the people. When he heard of a raja in a poor princedom who exhibited his wealth — several large rubies — in a weekly procession, he resolved to steal them. The man disguised himself as a religious figure, and got himself noticed in the princedom, to the extent that the raja's wife called for him. The rani had yet to get pregnant, and the raja was talking about setting her aside. She wished for the holy man's blessing.
As payment, the holy one asked to touch the tilak mark on his forehead to the raja's rubies, that he might pass on some of the raja's luck to the poor. The rani smuggles the man into the into the treasure room —where the pair were promptly caught. They were brought to the raja, who spent some time deciding on their punishment…
●●◐○○ Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Die - Rob Rosen (2010 ss)
The Second Iraq War. General Billings shows Sergeant Sloan some video. For the third time, a group of Iraqi soldiers has been found ripped limb from limb. No sign of animals or weapon use. Always on the same stretch of road. Sloan's group is sent out to investigate.
They find yet more Iraqi soldiers torn apart. They also find the covered entrance of a bunker: possibly the reason the Iraqis keep mining this section of road. Sloan calls in a demolition group, but before they arrive, he sees a man in US Army uniform on a ridge, watching.
When the bunker is opened, they find drums of some chemical: the WMDs the war was fought over. And several drums are leaking into the soil. Sloan realizes who the man he saw is, and how he came to be changed into a zombie, still carrying out orders: Seek and destroy the enemy. Protect your comrades. It's his boyfriend, who went missing weeks ago: he was apparently killed and buried in contaminated ground, only to arise as a zombie.
●●●○○ The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich - Fritz Leiber (1936 nva)
Three friends go their own way after college. George Kramer becomes a newspaperman, then an author; John Ellis marries another student, Mary Andrews, then they return to her hometown to start his medical practice; and Daniel Kesserich, who could do his odd research anywhere, followed the couple, since he had great trouble making friends, and was loath to lose them.
Ten years later, George gets a letter from John saying that Mary had died in a freak accident, so he travels to California to see if he can help the widower. After George talks to John he goes to visit Kesserich, only to see Daniel's house explode before he reaches the lot. Kesserich goes missing. Then things in the town begin to get odd.
George sees rocks appear out of thin air, forming a trail he follows to Mary's grave. Townsfolk become convinced that Mary was buried alive, or that grave robbers are after her corpse. George sees John drive out of town, with a woman who looks like Mary sitting beside him. More. The explanation, if one believes it, has to do with Daniel's theories about the fourth dimension, and even the fifth.
●●●◐○ Out in the Field - P.A. Choi (2020 ss)
Maddie and Lyra pulled up at the edge of an endless cornfield. Lyra planned to create a visual novel, and Maddie has agreed to take photos for the mood board, and perhaps the cover. The pair of college girls walk into the stalks, a a realm of endless sameness stretching beyond view in all directions.
Lyra worried about a harvester coming along, but Maddie said they won't harvest when the crop's still wet from yesterday's rain. Lyra slips in the wet earth, splitting her shorts and getting her shirt covered in mud. She proceeded to strip. “She may have been a prissy girl, but she was not a prudish one.” Maddie strips in solidarity.
Bill didn't like to harvest while the corn was still wet, but it had rained for over a week, and it was expected to start again tomorrow, so this was his only opportunity. He'd given the fields the morning to dry out some, and now it was time to begin.
Hence Bill having a moment of panic when he ran over their clothing, two girls running out of the field naked, and then saying goodbye when Lyra and Maddie drove off nude.
●●●◐○ Disruptors - Jake Berry Ellison, Jr. (2018 ss)
This is the best story of the five in this collection. Alas, like other of this author's stories, it's more of a setup for a longer piece than a complete story.
The surface of Earth is a mess. Heat waves, record storms, floods and droughts, disease and famine, even oxygen-dead oceans where sulfur-eating bacteria belched hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere. The rich were dying in their bunkers. Most of humanity had moved into The Simulation, a virtual-reality version of Earth (with increasing deviations from boring-reality) that ran on servers in deep bunkers in Reality, there powered by geothermal energy and tended by armies of robots.
Marsel and Perran were intelligence agents who tried to protect the Servers from being hacked by uploaded people who wanted to control the foundations of their virtual world. Perran had been kidnapped by The Twins, a pair of women who had worked out a way to increase their power by entrancing men (and rarely, women), using their subjects' mind power for their own as they hacked at the roots of Virtuality.
Marsel contacts Robert, who'd been a reporter in Reality, and had maintained the profession in the new world. They work together to find Perran, and in the doing uncover a greater danger to The Simulation. At which point the tale stops. ‹sigh›
◍◍◍◍◍ August begins.
●●◐○○ Miles Grant – Naturist P.I. {Miles Grant 24} - Jack Dearborn (2023 nov)
The final Miles Grant novel (before his son Stewart takes over the PI series) barely contains a mystery, and Miles botches it. Miles and his wife Shirley are part owner of the Erskine Valley Sun Club, a naturist camp. Dave Erskine notes that his camp has few young members, and other camps are the same. [A real problem with nudist resorts, where the median age is almost sixty.]
The owner of a Texas resort holds a conference to consider changing the American Association for Nude Recreation rules. Some 400 members from resorts in the Western US states meet there. Erskine volunteers Miles, who attends with Shirley and her mother MJ. The bulk of the novel is about this issue, with Miles canvasing people for their opinions, and then giving a couple of presentations.
Miles suggests, and the conference accepts, the idea of using a tiered system. Tier One camps will continue using the rules that have been in effect since the 1930s, where no public shows of affection beyond hand-holding are permitted. Tier Two camps will have a building or section where public sex is permitted, with the rest of the camp being family friendly. And Tier Three Camps will be adult-only, with sex allowed everywhere.
(This doesn't really help in reality, since while young people like to have sex, they're not really crazy about having it with or in front of people who look like their parents or grandparents.)
The mystery occurs when one of the attendees says his wife went missing. She was a smoker, and the other couple in their cabin objected, so she went outside to smoke — in a heavy storm. She was also a secret drinker, said the husband. Miles found the body, with signs of "death by misadventure," and things weren't as he originally thought. The mystery takes up maybe five percent of the novel.
Flirty nudity bits include the chartered buses that took attendees on the two-hour ride from airport to resort being nudist, and leading many couples to have public sex with each other. MJ goes off with a woman, her husband, and the woman's twin sister, who share everything, including MJ. Miles and Shirley and the couple they share their cabin with also play Kiss Poker a few times, where each round the winner chooses a place on their body, and the losers kiss it. ፨ And that's the end of this phase of the series.
●●○○○ The Old Villa - P.A. Choi (2020 ss)
A young woman takes a break from working in her father's orchard, and walks down the road to a seaside villa, abandoned for years, with an overgrown yard, and emptied of furniture. She investigates the place, and because it's empty and it's hot, does so nude. She comes to view the place as her secret hideout, and returns several times, always enjoying her nudity.
One time a young man shows up, coming from his family's shop in the other direction. Amaro is initially embarrassed by Iria's nudity, but comes to be comfortable with her in subsequent meetings, though he never disrobes himself. Time passes, and Iria is eventually sent away to live with relatives while she attends university. Years later she returns to the old villa, but now she was thirty, a mature woman in charge of funding real estate projects. She didn't get naked again.
●●●◐○ Forgiveness Day - Ursula K. Le Guin (1994 nvt)
The Ekumen is in the process of contacting lost human colonies, settled millennia ago by sub-lightspeed generation ships. Werel is the world in question, a planet settled entirely by dark-skinned humans. The planetary culture is patriarchal and slave-holding, to different degrees in the various countries comprising the world.
Solly — female, headstrong, and white — is assigned as ambassador to the mountain kingdom of Gatay, a particularly fundamentalist country. Accompanying her is her guard, Teyeo, a Major from the most powerful country on Werel, where the main Ekumen outpost is. He's from a very militaristic culture, and Sully's whole existence offends him: she acts like a man, isn't shut away like a proper woman, flaunts her emotions and sexuality, doesn't listen to his security advice, more.
Naturally Solly ends up kidnapped, and trying to prevent that, Teyeo is knocked unconscious and taken along. The amateur young kidnappers only had one cell ready, so the pair share it. Then the vassal government of Gatay decides it's better to claim the pair died in the diversion explosion…
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Week Thirty-One's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
237+10 ss | 13+1 nvt | 14+1 nva | 68+1 nov |
#books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction #BokBooks

#6___ #books #bookstodon #sciencefiction #bokbooks
bok @[email protected] · 2026-08-01 · 01:15 UTC

#Books and #stories for #JulyReads. | Tag to mute: #BokBooks
ten novels:
●●●○○ The Tumultuous Lives of Karl Strong {Middle Falls 18} - Shawn Inmon (2023)
●●●◐○ Murder in the Buff {Jesse Montgomery 02} - Greg Kauffman-Starkey (2021)
●●●◐○ It All Falls Down {Behold: Humanity! 21} - Ralts Bloodthorne (2026)
●●●●○ The Eleventh Artifact {Artifact 11} - David Collins (2026)
●●○○○ Lest We Forget Thee, Earth - Robert Silverberg (1958)
●●●◐○ Not Till We Are Lost {Bobiverse 5} - Dennis E. Taylor (2024)
●●◐○○ Tarnished Utopia - Malcolm Jameson (1956)
●●●◐○ The Case of the Washed Up Wordsmith {Miles Grant 23} (2022)
●●●○○ Antediluvian - Wil McCarthy (2019)
●●●○○ The White Widows - Sam Merwin, Jr. (1953)
one novella:
●●●○○ The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich - Fritz Leiber (1936)
one novelette:
●●●●◐ The Machine Stops - E. M. Forster (1909)
▓▓▓▓ short stories:
●●●○○ Same Time, Same Place - Mervyn Peake (1963)
●●○○○ Beneath the City of the Ancients - Brian Terence (2025)
●●●○○ Blockade Runner {Bullard 03} - Malcolm Jameson (1941)
●●◐○○ A Day of Skin and Squalls - Mel Cowan (2025)
●●○○○ The Carver - Jake Berry Ellison, Jr. (2018)
●●●◐○ The Voice in the Night - William Hope Hodgson (1907)
●●●○○ From the Dark Halls of Hell - G. G. Pendarves (1932)
●●●◐○ Critical Analysis {Blood Bank 8} - Tanya Huff (2006)
●○○○○ The Words of the Sole - Brian Terence (2006)
●●●○○ Slacker's Paradise {Bullard 4} - Malcolm Jameson (1941)
●●●○○ Now You Know How I Feel - Steven Green (2021)
●●●◐○ Crescendo - Margaret St. Clair (1955)
●●●●○ Metal Lark - Margaret St. Clair (1948)
●●◐○○ The Horror of the Heights - Arthur Conan Doyle (1913)
◐○○○○ Final Dispatch from the Blue Moon - Jake Berry Ellison, Jr. (2018)
●●●◐○ So This Is Christmas {Blood Bank 9} - Tanya Huff (2006)
●●●○○ Are We Really Doing This - Dave Zigzag (2021)
●●●◐○ Devil's Powder {Bullard 5} - Malcolm Jameson (1941)
●●●○○ The Comet - W. E. B. Du Bois (1920)
●●●◐○ Autumn After Next - Margaret St. Clair (1960)
●●●◐○ Return of the Ritual {Dr. Taverner 02} - Dion Fortune (1922)
●●●○○ Never Mess with the Cleaner - Brian Terence (2025)
●●●◐○ Exposed to the Moon - P.A. Choi (2020)
●●●○○ Bullard Reflects {Bullard 6} - Malcolm Jameson (1941)
●●●◐○ Stonewall Rising - Vince A. Liaguno (2010 ss)
●●●●○ The Hounds of Tindalos - Frank Belknap Long (1929)
●●●○○ Prott - Margaret St. Clair (1953)
●●◐○○ Havenwood - Mel Cowan (2025)
●●◐○○ The Oldest Story in the World - Murray Leinster (1925)
●●◐○○ Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Die - Rob Rosen (2010)
●●●◐○ Out in the Field - P.A. Choi (2020)
●●●◐○ Disruptors - Jake Berry Ellison Jr (2018)
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No more repeating descriptions of the novels, it just makes for a very long post. You can look at previous posts for that info. Search for hashtag BokBooks.
━━━━━━━━━━━
2026-07: 32 ss | 01 nvt | 01 nva | 10 nov
2026-06: 34 ss | 02 nvt | 01 nva | 10 nov
2026-05: 31 ss | 01 nvt | 05 nva | 10 nov
2026-04: 29 ss | 01 nvt | 02 nva | 10 nov
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#ScienceFiction #BokBooks

#books #stories #julyreads #bokbooks #sciencefiction
bok @[email protected] · 2026-08-01 · 01:15 UTC

#JulyReads. | Tag to mute: #BokBooks

#julyreads #bokbooks
bok @[email protected] · 2026-07-27 · 22:55 UTC

CW: #Reading in Week Thirty of 2026 | July 20–26 | ~1900 words | ~11k characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks

●●●◐○ Return of the Ritual {Dr. Taverner 2} - Dion Fortune (1922 ss)
Dr. Taverner (psychologist and occultist) and Dr. Rhodes (ex-army physician) have another case. During a dreamwalk, Taverner senses that someone is trying to perform one of the rituals of his own Black Lodge, but doesn't know how to do so correctly. A later check showed none of the current Lodge ritual books had been stolen, but one had gone missing in the 1580s in Florence. It had turned up again, and an antiques dealer Taverner consulted said a man named Williams in Chelsea had it.
If the book got into the hands of someone with true knowledge, great harm could be wreaked with it, so Taverner once more went into a trance, a very deep one, and consulted Records, where he found out who'd originally stolen the book. Taverner then called on the spirit of Pierro della Costa, and set him the task of retrieving the book by temporarily possessing his descendant, a clerk who lived in London…
●●●○○ Never Mess with the Cleaner - Brian Terence (2025 ss)
A night janitor at an aeronautics facility finds he has visitors: dog-headed bipeds. After a confrontation, he finds they're trying to sabotage progress on an FTL drive, fearing what the erratic and violent human race would do if it got out into the galaxy.
●●●○○ Antediluvian - Wil McCarthy (2019 nov)
Harv Leonel, a fifty-something physicist, has the quirky idea that chromosomes encode racial memories, and that these can be accessed naturally by some people, though he plans to use magnetic brain stimulation. His grad student, Gurdeep Patel, helped (with few comments), as did his girlfriend, Tara Mukherjee (another grad student, but in biology, so it wasn't technically unethical for them to have a relationship).
When Harv first ran the experiment, Gurdeep and Tara saw him have a seizure. From the inside, Hard experienced about ten days of memory in thirty seconds. Memories of Manuah, a Harbormaster of Kingdom, who lived about twelve thousand years ago. He'd noted that sea level had been rising for years [as the Ice Age ended], and now there was a whale hanging around the harbor, and a comet in the sky that kept getting larger.
That, in fact, impacted Earth, causing a tsunami. Manuah, because of his misgivings, managed to lash together the seven reed boats he owned, and take his wife and sons and their wives aboard, as well as the half of his sailors that didn't think him crazy, and some young people. The wave hit, and Manuah's city, and all those he knew of, were lost beneath the waves. His story led to the tales of Manu in the Rig Veda and Noah in the Old Testament.
A second seizure, one not triggered by the machine, had Harv experience older memories still, from over thirty thousand years ago, when Cro-Magnon tribes were dealing with Neanderthal peoples. The latest clash between the two human races did not end well.
Two more seizures while Harv was in the hospital, track back even further, to the mutation of the FOXP2 gene in humans. Three generations ago, Talking Woman was born, a person capable of much more complex speech and grammar than any other human. Fortunately the mutation was dominant, and by Tik-Tik's time a third of his tribe can speak, while the Mutes can express a limited number of words.
The last episode sees a young Homo erectus man comes up with the idea of using a raft to cross the (then) ten kilometer gap across the Gibraltar Gap. He finds a tribe with different inventions to his own, and trades some of his before going back home. ፨ A weird tale.
●●●◐○ Exposed to the Moon - P.A. Choi (2020 ss)
A young woman in college discusses changing her major with her widowed mother, who says the problem isn't the major, it's that Isabella always loses interest in things after a few months, and a new major won't change her inability to stay committed.
Isabella knows her mother is right, but can't deal right now, so she goes on a long walk through her housing development, eventually reaching the woods as it gets dark. Walking in nature had a calming effect on her, and walking nude doubled that, so she stripped and set forth through the woods to the nearby field in the twilight.
What Isabella didn't know was that a teen boy had also had problems with his parents, and was sitting beneath a tree thinking, and Isabella didn't see him in the shadows until she was nearly upon him. He thought he'd imagined the naked nature spirit, but then the two had a short conversation.
●●●○○ Bullard Reflects {Bullard 6} - Malcolm Jameson (1941 ss)
The conflict with the Jovian Empire has ended, and the crew of the Pollux is competing with the crews of other ships in the annual Planetary Patrol Games, when Captain Bullard is informed that Ziffler — the chief of the Jovian secret police who went missing at the end of the war — has turned up.
His ship attacked a Solar Union experimental weapons facility, and got away with a load of the new electron guns, each of which could get through the shields of a cruiser. The Pollux must find Ziffler and retrieve the weapons. They do so, fall into a trap, and get out of it using the common-sense 1940s-style reasoning we're used to.
●●●○○ The White Widows - Sam Merwin, Jr (1953 nov)
A lab tech submits his thesis on hemophilia, focusing on the women who carry the gene, but the paper is rejected, so he takes it to New York to submit to another university. [I did not know shopping around your thesis was a thing.] He ends up framed for murder, then kidnapped.
He ends up in a mansion where the obese host informs Larry that he's gotten involved in an ancient conspiracy. It seems that the daughters of hemophiliacs sometimes have psi powers like telepathy and telekinesis, and are usually tall and strong, like Amazons. Ever since the Earth Mother was overthrown by the Sky Father, these superwomen have been trying to regain power. That their abilities skip generations makes things more awkward.
Mayne, the host, made some advances in parthenogenesis decades ago, and has been watched by the Amazons since then, with one even stationed in his household. Currently, the women seeking to rule the world are on the verge of releasing a plague that will kill billions, thinking that their thousands of carefully placed followers will be able to assume power in the aftermath.
Larry learns that both his fiancee and his best friend were involved in the ancient conflict, on different sides, ever since his early research drew the attention of both factions. With more luck than skill, Larry manages to thwart the current scheme, but more secret superwomen are out there…
●●●◐○ Stonewall Rising - Vince A. Liaguno (2010 ss)
When the cops were called to Stonewall Inn, they were expecting a civil disturbance. What they got was a zombie outbreak, with walking-dead drag queens shambling after them and eventually overwhelming them. One young cop comes out as gay when he realizes he's about to die, and that he doesn't want to die in the closet. His zombified self takes down an older bigoted cop.
●●●●◐ The Machine Stops - E. M. Forster (1909 nvt)
The classic tale of humanity having retreated underground after a great war, and living in isolated rooms, with video links so they can talk to others. Food and entertainment and more is provided, but it's not enough for Kuno, who convinces his mother Vashti to make the journey from Australia to England via airship (a two-week trial that exposes her to sunlight and rain and worse things).
There she learns her son has rejected the Machine which provides all humankind's needs, and has even gone so far as to sneak outside. Vashti hears Kuno's tale about how he sneaked outside, but lost his respirator, so had to stay in the depression where the air tube emerged, with little exploring. Eventually, the Machine sent repair robots up, and retrieved him. Vashti, who worshiped the Machine as many did, realized her son was unMechanical, and went home, leaving him to his madness.
Over the following decades, Vashti and others experienced continuing irritations, as the Machine began to break down. Odd sounds distorted the music feed. The artificial fruit was moldy. The bathwater began to stink. One day, all over the world, the beds no longer descended from the ceilings. “It may seem a ludicrous matter, but from it we may date the collapse of humanity.” One day Kuno sent Vashti a message: “The Machine stops.” She did not believe him — then.
●●●●○ The Hounds of Tindalos - Frank Belknap Long (1929 ss)
Halpin Chalmers favored candles and illuminated manuscripts over neon lights and newspapers. The eccentric scholar has called his old colleague over to observe an experiment, wherein Chalmers will try to explore the fourth dimension by means of a page of equations he will gaze upon while taking an obscure drug from the Orient.
Under the influence, Chalmers narrates how his viewpoint retreats in time. He sees the legions of Rome march, and the beginnings of Greek culture. He watches the pyramids being built, and sees the migrations from Atlantis. Then he goes further back, “through strange curves and angles. […] The beings that exist in angular time can not enter curved time. It is very strange.”
In the time of single cells, he finds horror: “All about me there are angles — strange angles that have no counterparts on the earth. I am desperately afraid.” Beyond the beginnings of life, he finds only “unearthly angles” through which not-alive… things… move. They sense Chalmers. They chase him… Even unto the present…
●●●○○ Prott - Margaret St. Clair (1953 ss)
Strange beings exist beyond the heliopause. They look like poached eggs, with a yellow center, inside a thick, translucent, white shell. Ingers is sent out by his university to study them. They're telepathic, and over the course of months, he tries to converse with them. But their thoughts are so odd, they're difficult to understand.
Eventually, Ingers finds that, if he doesn't try to ask questions, they're willing to communicate with them. He found that what they most wanted to talk about was “——ing the ——.” He couldn't understand things any more precisely than that, though he tried to approach the notion from fifty different directions. But it's all the prott wish to discuss. Finally Ingers was ready to leave, until he learned something unnerving.
━━━━━━━━━━
Week Thirty's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
230+7 ss | 12+1 nvt | 14+0 nva | 66+2 nov |
#books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction #BokBooks
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Finally finished A Compendium of Margaret St. Clair and have but one story left in the Brian Terence collection.

#books #bookstodon #sciencefiction #bokbooks
bok @[email protected] · 2026-07-20 · 00:44 UTC

CW: #Reading in Week Twenty-Nine of 2026 | July 13–19 | ~2400 words | ~14k characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks

●●●●○ Metal Lark - Margaret St. Clair (1948 ss)
Oona has always wanted to sing, and she's told rich Mrs. Joyzelle Cabot-Cabot that she'll sing in the winter concert, even though she doesn't currently know how to sing, but is counting on Jick to buy her a Metal Lark robotic voice training device, as she's been strongly hinting she wants for her birthday. (Not that that can be depended upon; last year Jick had totally ignored her many hints concerning Venusian pearls and had bought her a set of cookware.)
But hooray: Jick bought her the Metal Lark. And alas: he got her the super deluxe model, which (it turns out) has a defective AI element, and weeks of training with it has turned Oona's voice into a croak. But hooray? You can always count on Jick to call in one of his tech friends to fix things — for very loose values of ‘fix’ — so the concert might end up going well. At least if you haven't read any other comic tales of this Ricky-and-Lucy-like couple who happen to live in the future…
●●●◐○ Not Till We Are Lost {Bobiverse 5} - Dennis E. Taylor (2024 nov)
The Bobiverse tales follow Bob and multiple generations of clones as they explore and solve problems. In this volume, which covers almost forty years (largely because, up to this point, no Bob or anyone he knows has invented an FTL drive, though do have ansibles), Icarus and Daedalus travel to the galactic core, and discover a Federation of many different alien races — or what's left of one.
Bill works on terraforming Ragnarök. Bob welcomes the first dead Quinlan into the Quiniverse, the VR afterlife built in conjunction with ANEC, The AI manager of Heaven's River. ANEC also gives information to the Bob faction called Skippyland, which has been trying to birth an AI for decades. It also presciently notes that the Skippies are cutting corners with the recipe it he (ANEC chose a gender) provided, and things go as well as expected.
Howard and Bridget make contact with a new alien civilization, and find that the "dragons" are about to face an ecological disaster. The anti-Bob backlash on the various worlds that the Bobs settled the survivors of Earth on continues to grow. More discoveries are made and inventions produced. Not crazy that the human worlds are all capitalist, and the Bobs are all millionaires, but if you ignore that, it's a fun, fast read.
●●◐○○ The Horror of the Heights - Arthur Conan Doyle (1913 ss)
A fragmentary manuscript details what happened to an envelope-pushing early aeroplane pilot seeking to go above 20,000 feet. He encounters an "aerial jungle" of air-plankton, diaphanous air-whales, and smoke-serpent predators. (Note, this is not "Goldfish Bowl," Robert Heinlein's 1942 story of similar theme, which contains the quotation "Creation took eight days.") This is a slower, more atmospheric, more upper crust horror.
◐○○○○ Final Dispatch from the Blue Moon - Jake Berry Ellison Jr (2018 ss)
This author writes short pieces that don't have enough plot to qualify as a story, and which are oblique enough that I'm not sure what happened. This one is about a reporter interviewing someone in a bar about the Dick Hugo incident, in which an alcoholic takes a messed-up drunk home to recover from his worse-than-usual state. Which somehow led to a conspiracy about a kidnapping, and riots, and…
●●◐○○ Tarnished Utopia - Malcolm Jameson (1956 nov)
World War Two pilot escaped from Prisoner of War camp meets up with Resistance woman fleeing compromised safe house, finds an underground lab to hide in during Munich bombing. Eat science gelatin, wake up Rip Van Winkle'd a thousand years into future. Alas, Yellow Peril has conquered civilization.
So Allan ends up captured, made a slave. Cynthia draws the eye of Prince Lohan, is taken away for training to become a courtesan. Allan rescues a different courtesan from Martian man-eating plants at the botany station on Luna where he's working, and it's decided to educate him into a researcher, then set him to spying on other researchers (who can't be controlled as much as lower workers, or they don't produce anything).
He eventually works his way up the spy hierarchy, and comes to be trusted by Prince Lohan, who knows that many inferiors hate the system, and many colleagues would like to take his place. Allan proposes a vast pogrom, wiping out criminals, putting rebels in work camps, and killing traitors in the ruling class. He also puts researchers in under the influence of Lotusol, a totally-addicting substance from a Martian plant that allows great creativity, claiming that loyal subjects can screen the results, and make faster progress.
Unknown to Lohan, Allan has figured out a way to cure Lotusol addiction, and plans to have these men as the core of the new state he's working toward. Allan has hardened his heart against the millions that will be killed to bring his revolution to fruition. Which leaves him a more-than-flawed hero.
●●●◐○ So This Is Christmas {Blood Bank 9} - Tanya Huff (2006 ss)
Police detective Mike Celluci takes his girlfriend, private detective (and vampire) Vicki Nelson Christmas shopping, to see if she can endure the madding crowd. It's a test run for dropping by his mother's house on Christmas Eve, which Mike wants to do, but which young-vampire Vicki is unsure if she has enough control to manage. Vicki also gets confronted by an intense Santa's elf about her bah-humbug attitude.
Vampires don't dream, but after she locks herself in for the day, Vicki is treated to the full Scrooge dream, beginning with Tony Foster — whom Vicki notes isn't dead; her former informant is currently a film maker and wizard in Vancouver — as Marley. Then she gets the Christmas Past routine from Henry Fitzroy, the friend who turned her when she was dying, showing how when she was alive, she wasn't averse to celebrating Christmas with Mike.
Christmas Present is represented by Mike, who shows her how a werewolf family they once helped is currently enjoying Christmas. Then an unknown specter is Christmas Future, showing how her life is tending toward isolation. And of course Vicki ends up visiting Mike's family with him.
●●●○○ Are We Really Doing This - Dave Zigzag (2021 ss)
Francine had had her final post-surgery consultation with the oncologist, and Haley had just dumped her latest unsatisfactory gentleman friend. (Since her husband Bill had run off with a colleague, Haley had had a stream of bad luck.)
Since her husband was going to be away for the summer on a research trip, Francine thought she and Haley deserved an adventure. And since she'd been reading about body positivity after her mastectomy, Francine decided that she and Haley were going to Northern Pines, the naturist resort Bill had once invited Haley to. But Bill had moved from Toronto to Montreal, so it was safe. [foreshadowing] And lo, the two sixty-ish women went, and enjoyed themselves after a nervous start.
On their first day at Northern Pines, Francine and Haley found that Bill was also there, and staying in the neighboring cabin. Bill and Margo had split up some months ago, and Bill had been transferred back to Toronto. And since this is the final story from the Romance in the Nudist Colony anthology, you can guess what comes next.
●●●◐○ The Case of the Washed Up Wordsmith {Miles Grant 23} - Jack Dearborn (2022 nov)
Miles is contacted by a lawyer representing a famous author (Justin St. Pierre, whom Miles had never heard of, but his son and wife had). After some roundabouting where Miles said he never worked through an intermediary, but only for a client directly, he met the author and his lawyer.
Miles learned that Justin's last book had been a success, and he was releasing a sequel, but even though it wasn't out yet, his publisher had been contacted and told it was plagiarized. They wouldn't publish it until the plagiarization claim was settled.
Miles quickly realized that there were few people who'd seen the book at this stage. Basically Justin, his wife, his lawyer (who was also his agent), and various people at his publishing firm. And, in this age before word processors¹, his typing service, which is a young woman named Emily Chamberlain. Miles begins by staking her out, since the others would seem to have nothing to gain from delaying Justin's book.
Dearborn doesn't do red herrings, so while Emily isn't the person suing Justin, knowing about her quickly leads Miles to that person, and for the second time in the series, Miles finds he's not working for the good guy.
On the flirty nudity front, Miles was in a recliner with Shirley sitting on his lap when their son Stew (now mid-20s) arrived at their family-nudism home unexpectedly. While Shirley was on Miles, Miles was in Shirley, "pushing the envelope", and they didn't stand to greet him. Turns out Stewart's tribal marriage is over, and he's lost his teaching job. He finds that Kim, the younger sister of a nudist friend, is back in town, and they begin a relationship.
Shirley had once gone to a porno theater with Tina, Kim's mother, where they let other people watch them masturbate themselves and each other. They do so again, this time with Tina's mother Fran. And Shirley discusses that with Teresa — Teresa and Clayton, Miles's parents, had moved from Iowa to be near Miles and his family, and they'd adopted the nudist lifestyle as well — who says she wants to come along next time.
And on the "Richie Cunningham's older brother Chuck" front, we get our most extensive mention of Jimmie Grant, eldest child of Miles and his late first wife, in ages. He's moved to Ames, Iowa (where Miles parents just moved from), and bought half of Miles's Uncle's Buick dealership. And that's it. Naturally he makes no appearance in the story, though Stewart does again, and his older half-sister Sarah often does.
One more Miles Grant novel to go, and then the series transfers over to his son Stewart, when the ex-teacher becomes a private investigator when his father retires.
●●●◐○ Devil's Powder {Bullard 5} - Malcolm Jameson (1941 ss)
Captain Bullard is called back from leave to deal with a plague of sudden madness striking his crew. Well, not totally his crew. Seeing how well he'd trained the crew of the Pollux, the brass had taken half his crew and transferred them to other Interplanetary Patrol ships, and given him a bunch of newbies to bring up to standard.
Turns out some were decidedly not up to snuff, and now there was a drug ring on Bullard's ship. With the help of his Executive Officer, Bullard manages to find out where the drugs are coming from and who's dealing them.
●●●○○ The Comet - W. E. B. Du Bois (1920 ss)
I've seen this story in movies like The World, the Flesh and the Devil. A sudden, clean disaster kills everyone, except for a Black man who was underground (in a bank vault) at the time, and a white woman who was similarly locked away (in a darkroom).
They search for other people, finding only corpses. The color line erodes, and it looks likely they will leave the dead city and become a couple, when suddenly a white man (or in this case, a whole crowd of them) shows up, and depressing reality must return.
In this case, it seems that only New York City was affected when Earth passed through the tail of the comet, which is more than unlikely. But at the end at least Jim's wife is seen to have survived, though their baby is dead. The story rates a lengthy entry on Wikipedia. It has themes, man, and classes have likely been taught about it.
●●●◐○ Autumn After Next - Margaret St. Clair (1960 ss)
An (interstellar?) magical missionary is evangelizing a tribe, trying to get them to learn magic. But they live someplace where it's always warm (if wet), there are no dangerous predators, and the forest provides plentiful food, and none of them see the point in making the effort to get all the tedious steps right, in the correct order.
Since the people have no wants, Neeshan resorts to dealing with darker demons than he usually might, and having them surveil the village to see if there's they want that he doesn't know about. He find that they want his annoying self gone. Since Neeshan will win his senior warlock rating if he can get any of the villagers to successfully complete a spell, he hits upon a scheme.
Neeshan repeatedly demonstrates a spell that can make their frequent head colds go away, trying to get someone to copy him. They're not interested. He mentions that the spell can make anything — or anyone — go away. And he goes out of his way to be extra annoying. Finally one of the villagers essays the spell…
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Week Twenty-Nine's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
222+8 ss | 12+0 nvt | 14+0 nva | 63+3 nov |
#books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction #BokBooks
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I've finished Tanya Huff's Blood Bank collection, and have nearly completed A Compendium of Margaret St. Clair, with just one story left to go. I've begun reading stories from Classic Masters of Horror and Voices from the Radium Age, and I've just epub-split the anthology Zombiality: A Queer Bent on Zombie Fiction, edited by John Grover.
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[1] It's still 1981 here, which is unusual in that it's a shorter span between cases than usual, six months instead of over a year, and that the year is named again, which is rare in this series.

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bok @[email protected] · 2026-07-13 · 00:02 UTC

CW: #Reading in Week Twenty-Eight of 2026 | July 06–12 | ~2000 words | ~12k characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks

●●●◐○ The Voice in the Night - William Hope Hodgson (1907 ss)
A rich man's yacht was becalmed in the Northern Pacific, and there was a strange fog blocking all view, so the three-person crew was asleep while the owner kept pointless night watch. Then “Ahoy, schooner” came from the darkness, and he heard the sound of oars.
The voice claimed he was an old man, accidentally left behind on the Albatross when the ship's mast broke in a storm, and he and his fiancée had made a raft and ended up on an island. He begged some food from the ship, but made sure he wasn't seen when he picked it up and brought it to his wife.
The next night he returned, again taking care not to be seen in the continuing fog, and told a tale of slow horror, and what the man and woman had endured on the unnamed island, and why they could never be rescued…
●●●◐○ It All Falls Down {Behold: Humanity! 21} - Ralts Bloodthorne (2026 nov)
Millions of years ago, the Lanaktallans (cowtaurs) and Mantids fought their millennia-long war, ending in the invention of Precursor Autonomous War Machines, continent-size robot warships that rebelled against both their creators. A section of the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Arm Spur was depopulated, leaving the two greatly diminished empires on opposite sides to recover. Much later, both Mantids and Lanaktallans were defeated by Terrans.
But it turned out that some of the Mantids involved in the Precursor War had fled toward the galactic core. Only now, after the latest series of wars, they'd been recontacted, and were rampaging again, toward known space. We see them attack an uncontacted world, nearly depopulating it before a Bolo tank shows up to easily wipe out the old-style Mantids. We see a Trek LARP-ship, the Dakota, take on another Mantid hiveship, harrying the continental warship across the stars.
We see Vuxten deal with the continuing aftermath of having having lived decades fighting while the Atrekna kept rewinding time, while his Planetary Governor wife only lived a few years. We see Herod, once a Digital Sentience who helped get the Sentience Uninterrupted Disaster Storage system working again, now an organic human (having been pinocchio'd by the Lord of Hell), searching for his mother, facing the dregs of the Ghost Dance as he transits hellspace. We check in on digital personas Fox and Frog, their new friend Man, and now Bird crashing in from a ruptured sky, as they trek through the undergrowth of the galactic network.
We see various small empires start attacking the Terran Confederacy, thinking that the Terran Xenocide Event, when 99.4% of humankind was wiped out, leaves the space ripe for conquest. We see dozens of characters we've seen before each advance their plot threads, and unless you've followed along, little of it will make sense to you. Even if you have, it may not, since the author isn't big on reminding you of who's who.
●●●○○ From the Dark Halls of Hell - G. G. Pendarves (1932 ss)
Erzebet's father had tried to become successful, but because he was a Jew, society had conspired against him, and in his hatred he had turned to black magic, which gained him what he wanted, as well as revenge on those who'd blocked him from society. It had also seen him hanged.
But between his wife's death and his own, Machik had taught young Erzebet his dark magics. At first they'd had little effect on her: she was a musical prodigy, and focused her interest on her violin. She'd achieved membership in a chamber group, where she'd met Rafe, another violinist; he fell in love with her, though she never considered him more than a good friend.
During the Great War, Rafe had been called to serve in the army, where he befriended Hugh, a young aristocrat. Rafe had lost part of his leg dragging a wounded Hugh off the battlefield. After the war, Rafe had gone back to music, and had introduced Hugh to Erzebet, who soon decided to marry him. Hugh had been besotted with her initially, then increasingly realized that she didn't love him, but merely wanted his status.
When Hugh met Cynthia, he finally had the courage to break it off with Erzebet, who hadn't taken that well. She'd turned to the dark arts, and lent her ego to an evil spirit, which began haunting and taunting Hugh using Erzebet's form, with only he being able to see the dark specter. Could Rafe save Hugh from Erzebet, and Erzebet from herself?
●●●●○ The Eleventh Artifact {Artifact 11} - David Collins (2026 nov)
The series began when Ben acquired an FTL engine, and managed to return it to its stranded ship, whose Artificial Intelligence, Jessie, became almost his genie. Ben and his friends Chloe and Mark set forth on an adventure, exploring strange new places, and finding new people and things. Lots of them. The number of derelicts that this ship finds is astounding, and most have new tech on them, or aliens in stasis pods, or both.
In this volume, on their thrice-upgraded starship Stardust III, with its much-increased crew of nearly a hundred (half of them non-human), Ben and crew rescue yet more people from stasis pods in derelict spaceships, this time two Ladieos, lamia-like aliens with long snake-like bodies and biped torsos. (Though they're uniformly reptilian, and not humans with hair as on the AI cover.)
We also rescue a smallish bipedal dinosaur, somewhat like a Jurassic Park velociraptor, found in a biopod on a test spaceship. Turns out his people's sun is slowly going red giant, and his world needs to move its population elsewhere. Ben, and more importantly Mee Keralatazaku (She Who Must Not Be Annoyed, who wields vast powers), manages to save some thousands of them.
We encounter a third race, the warlike Chitte (bio-luminescent monkeys), who keep attacking the Raragarack (rhino-taurs), first seen in the previous book. The ship picks up more crew, as usual. This series is formulaic. It's not deep, but it's fun and fast. Think of it like watching a favorite TV episode for the fifth time.
●●●◐○ Critical Analysis {Blood Bank 8} - Tanya Huff (2006 ss)
Locked room mystery. A man comes to the police saying someone is trying to kill him, but he doesn't know who, he's just getting threats on his computer. Mike passes the man to Vicki, and the vampire private detective goes to his apartment after sundown.
When she gets there she hears sounds of struggle, and smells blood. She breaks down the door — triple-bolted from inside — and finds the man unconscious and bleeding from a bad head wound. The windows are painted shut and haven't been opened in years. No one else is in the apartment.
When the police find out Raymond Carr is a paranoid schizophrenic, they assume he was off his meds, and had somehow caused his own injury. Vicki isn't as sure…
●○○○○ The Words of the Sole - Brian Terence (2006 ss)
In A Canticle for Leibowitz, monks at a monastery copied holy blueprints, not realizing what the pre-atomic-war documents really were. While other parts of the novel were interesting, I thought this part of Walter M. Miller Jr's book was deeply stupid. This tale manages to outdo that stupidity, without significant story around it.
●●○○○ Lest We Forget Thee, Earth - Robert Silverberg (1958 nov)
Twenty thousand years ago, the vast Empire of Earth fell when thousands of vassal worlds rose up against it. Lest Earth rise again, the winning powers ordered Earthers to leave their planet, becoming refugees. In time, Earth's location somehow became lost. It also somehow became the custom that planetary rulers have an Earthman — all of whom by custom shave their heads — as an advisor.
On Jorun, that Earther was Hallam Navarre, primary advisor to Joroiran VII. The secondary advisor, Kausirn the Lyrellan, schemed against Navarre, and managed to get the monarch to send Navarre on a quest for the Chalice of Life, the legendary source of immortality. And Hallam actually found the Chalice, sort of, though it wasn't anything like what he expected.
As a result of this, Navarre and Helna Winstin, another Earther advisor to a different monarch, found a way that Earth might be restored. But Kausirn and his spies remained as significant opposition. Who will end up winning?
This book has difficulties with galaxies. Not by mistakenly using "galaxy" as a synonym for "solar system," as is common. It knows what galaxies are, in phrases like “the distant galaxy that held Earth and Procyon.” But it calls the Milky Way “an obscure galaxy” and “a minor galaxy.” There are maybe 80 galaxies in the Local Group, with the Milky Way being almost as large as Andromeda, and the rest of the galaxies much smaller. Spreading the story over more than the Local Group makes thousands of galaxies seem insignificant.
●●●○○ Slacker's Paradise {Bullard 4} - Malcolm Jameson (1941 ss)
Junior Lieutenant Alan MacKay had advanced quickly through the ranks of the Terrestrial Space Guard, partly due to strings pulled by the governor of Juno, his Aunt Clara. But that same aunt made sure that he didn't serve in the real Fleet, but stayed in the Juno Patrol, safe from the ongoing war the Jovian Empire was waging against the Federation of Interior Planets.
Except one day the famous Pollux, captained by the more famous Captain Bullard, landed at Juno. The ship was heavily damaged. Another ship, a Council courier, landed at the same time, and Bullard entrusted Lt. MacKay and his crewmates on the fast SP 331 to deliver the message it had carried to Earth.
They ended up facing a huge Jovian battleship, and found out that the propaganda both sides had put out was both wrong and right. MacKay ended up making some decisions far above his pay grade.
●●●○○ Now You Know How I Feel - Steven Green (2021 ss)
Nineteen-year-old Chloe was accompanying her girlfriend Ella to a naturist club alongside Ella's parents. Chloe was astounded at how everyone acted unaware that they were nude, and how straight men talked to Ella with no notice of her naked girlfriend's body.
After a few hours Chloe stripped and the girls went swimming. Then the pair went for a walk, encountering mostly late-middle-age and elderly club members, with few younger people or children. They encountered Maeve and Mary, an older lesbian couple, who told Chloe about how much Ella had been gushing over her, and how the pair hoped the girls' life together would face fewer headwinds then they did.
●●●◐○ Crescendo - Margaret St. Clair (1955 ss)
Floyd Evans was a bank teller who'd decided to do something that used his college education, and had started a small literary magazine, Crescendo. Surprisingly, its first three quarterly issues had been a success. Unfortunately, his neighbor, Nina Ashdar, had learned about the magazine, and had submitted a poem.
Floyd felt that Crescendo “had come to stand for the day after tomorrow, the advanced avant-garde, the truly original. Nina’s poems were derivative in a way that set his teeth on edge.” Floyd had tried to explain things to her, but unfortunately Nina didn't react well, and none of the other Auden-warmed-over poems she submitted fit the magazine any better.
This had resulted in a feud between the neighbors. Unfortunately, Nina was a witch. She had caused Floyd to get boils and a rash, and a steady supply of magically-created dead mini-lions kept appearing in Floyd's yard. But it was the odd events of Halloween that led Floyd to begin to suspect that Nina wasn't merely a witch, but something more powerful…
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Week Twenty-Eight's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
215+7 ss | 12+0 nvt | 14+0 nva | 60+3 nov |
#books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction #BokBooks

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bok @[email protected] · 2026-07-06 · 03:39 UTC

CW: #Reading in Week Twenty-Seven of 2026 | June 28 – July 05 | ~2600 words | ~15k characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks

●●●◐○ Sceleratus {Blood Bank 7} - Tanya Huff (2003 ss)
Henry Fitzroy, vampire, goes to church, accompanied by his human boyfriend Tony, who notes that Henry hasn't done that since last year around this time.
“Exactly this time,” says Henry, who proceeds to tell Tony about Ginevra Treschi, a Venetian woman whom Henry had loved in 1637. After the Inquisition had gone after the Jews, it had turned to the Moors, then to Protestants. And then they thought it fitting to go after an intelligent widow who dared to think for herself.
Over several nights, Henry methodically killed everyone who had been involved, after he returned from a business trip and found out what had happened. Under torture, Ginevra had confessed to having relations with the devil. “I am the devil Ginevra Treschi had relations with," said Henry to the Chief Inquisitor before killing him.
Then Henry realized that the Inquisition didn't appear from nowhere, they were sent, so he tracks them back to Messina, where he again sets forth on a killing spree, only to meet a Franciscan monk that the Dominicans have locked up because be makes them look bad. Henry has a conversation with him that changes how he looks at things…
●●●○○ Sultana's Dream - Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1905 ss)
An upper-caste Indian woman (maybe¹) has a dream of the future, in which she's given a tour of Ladyland, a nation where it is men who live isolated in purdah, and woman are free to go about and do important things, the opposite of in her time.
Her host says that it's silly that men, who are argumentative and violent — up to causing wars — should be free to roam the city, while peaceable, reasonable women are locked away in zenanas. The Queen of this time has arranged the more salubrious system, in the aftermath of a war in which many men were killed, and many women, educated in the universities the queen set up, successfully ended the conflict and locked up the fractious men.
In the manner of Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, this story marvels at the inventions of the time (all made by women here). The women of Calcutta have the ability to tap clouds for water by means of balloons, and can concentrate and store solar heat. They can even fly in small ornithopters, and have no polluting and dangerous cars or railroads.
●●●○○ The Grace of a Swan - Martin Brant (2017 nva)
Natalie Parker and Pat Reynolds are both into yoga, and one day after a ninety-minute class, Pat mentions to her friend that she's tried a nude yoga class elsewhere — co-ed, no less — and wonders if Natalie would be interested. Natalie says she'd think about it. After a day of thought, and some nervousness about what others would think about her body — especially her large labia — Natalie calls on the courage that let her leave the rural Midwest to get a job in Manhattan, and says she'll go.
John, the instructor, is interested in Natalie from the start. His wife died three years ago, and he's almost ready to start dating again. He offers Natalie private lessons, but everything is kept very professional, so she's not sure he's interested in her, and he's still not sure he's comfortable being interested in her romantically.
They are, however, comfortable with each other. Natalie has become an at-home nudist, and she hosts a nude dinner with her friend Pat, with John and his friend Gus, an off-Broadway producer who swiftly clicks with Pat. John and Natalie even go on a four-day nude camping trip, which stays platonic for the first couple of days, despite them sleeping naked next to each other in a small tent.
The story is mostly the very slow growth of a relationship between cautious Natalie and wounded John.
●●●◐○ Blood Lust {Dr. Taverner 01} - Dion Fortune (1922 ss)
Dr. Taverner is the tall, thin, ascetic chief doctor of a nursing home. Dr. Rhodes is the beefy, ex-Army doctor whose nerves were shattered in the Great War who came to be his colleague. Essentially, these are Holmes and Watson stories that specialize in occult psychology.
In this case, Dr. Taverner is approached by a woman concerning her fiancé, a solder who suffered shell shock in the war, and who's taken to behaving oddly. He's been killing chickens and even sheep, and drinking their blood, and once he even attacked her, though he came to his senses and fled when she spoke to him.
Despite the title of the tale, Taverner diagnoses Donald as being afflicted with "vitality hunger" rather than true "blood lust", which means his case can be treated. Donald is taken as a patient, but it's arranged that he be able to escape at night, with Rhodes to follow him. That doctor perceived that Donald had a familiar spirit that traveled with him, the ghost of a German soldier in a grey uniform and a flat cap.
In the end, Dr. Taverner employed what amateurs would call a spell to free Donald from his possessor, and explained to Rhodes that when the physical body dies, the etheric body is released, and generally lingers for about three days, at which time it dissolves, freeing the soul. However, with a supply of vitality — which an etheric body can only acquire by possessing a living physical body — the spirit being can live on…
◍◍◍◍◍ July begins.
●●●○○ Same Time, Same Place - Mervyn Peake (1963 ss)
College student Iggy, fed up with his parents' expectations and pressures, rushes from his London suburban home and gets on a bus almost unthinkingly. It leaves him at Piccadilly Circus, where he walks around thinking how unfair things are. He wanted life to happen! He wanted adventure! He wanted a girlfriend! He wanted it not to be raining. Iggy rushed into a restaurant for shelter.
There, he sees an older man vacating a seat, which Iggy takes. He finds himself sitting across from a woman of great beauty. He doesn't remember what he ordered, or if he ate it. He and the woman stare at each other for an hour, their fingers touching in the shadow of the teapot. When the waiter says the establishment is closing, Iggy finally speaks: “Tomorrow? Same place? Same time?” She nods. He leaves, his heart afire.
For the next week, Iggy meets the woman nightly, twice stealing rings from his parents to give to her. They commune intensely, with little speech. Finally it becomes clear that they must marry, secretly…
●●●○○ The Tumultuous Lives of Karl Strong {Middle Falls 18} - Shawn Inmon (2023 nov)
Karl's mother died the summer after eighth grade. He went through the next year in a daze, and his father retreated into himself, spending the waking hours he wasn't at work at a bar. Karl managed to pull himself together sophomore year, realizing the only way he was getting out of Middle Falls was to get decent grades and at least a partial football scholarship.
He was on his way, when at school Lisa, his friend Michael's girlfriend, mentioned that Kenny had dumped Anna and Karl should really ask her out to the homecoming dance, trapping him in a corner until Anna came over and he did so. A pleasant time was had by all, and Anna even pushed him to have sex afterward.
Then a month later she told him she was pregnant, and he had to put his scholarship letter aside and have a shotgun wedding, leading to him working in the box factory. Despite Anna having a miscarriage, they stayed together for a decade before divorcing, then Karl had a fat-loser life for decades more, before having a heart attack. He tried to get healthy afterward, but it was hard, and he actually ended up having his second, fatal heart attack at the gym.
Then he woke up again, fat and covered in Cheetos, back in his recliner. Life continued, with him living a few days, then having a fatal heart attack again, always at the same time. Even arranging to be in the emergency room at the time didn't save his life. This life repeated hundreds of times, until Margenta, the old-school Watcher controlling his self-reincarnations was twice upbraided, first by Carrie and then by Charles, and it became clear that she must give in to new-school ways and move his reincarnation point.
Starting from ninth grade again, Karl managed to construct a life where he avoided dating Anna. He still ended up not going to college, getting injured on the football field. Loop after loop, Karl made changes, and sometimes things worked out, and sometimes not. One life he made it to college, and found out that being the top player on his high school football team merely made him average on the college team. Another life a new friend got him interested in golf and he ended up becoming quite good, but again, not great enough to profit from his talent.
We end up watching a dozen lives after his long three-day death loop, and he gets the girl, or not, has friends, or not, and slowly works his way off the carousel of reincarnation. Karl's loops are rather repetitive, as he never tries some of the extreme things other loopers do.
●●○○○ Beneath the City of the Ancients - Brian Terence (2025 ss)
It's forbidden to go to the City, but the girl was about to enter puberty, and her life would become more locked down, so she'd bullied her male cousin to accompany her on one final adventure. They find a metal gate leading to a tunnel, and enter, where they find steps made of metal — they'd be rich if they could get them back to their village — which leads to a grand space with a tiled floor. They find piles of human bones, and even more metal in the form of two long bars that stretch out of site in the tunnels, beyond the view of their torches.
●●●◐○ Murder in the Buff {Jesse Montgomery 02} - Greg Kauffman-Starkey (2021 nov)
Jesse Montgomery, Private Investigator, had gone a bit long between cases when approached by Horace Braxton, so perhaps his due diligence was lacking when he took the case. Horace wanted a murder at his exclusive resort investigated. The police had done their investigation and come up empty, but Horace thought the bad publicity could be quashed if the case were solved quickly.
What Horace didn't mention, and what Jesse didn't web-search to find out, was that Happy Valley was a nudist resort. A member, Beth Crandall, had been stabbed one night, and left for dead. She's managed to make it back to her cabin — the cabin Jesse was assigned to live in — only to expire. Naturally Jesse had difficulty adapting to going undercover nude, but after a few days it felt natural to him.
Although there was supposed to be no public sex at the resort near St. Paul, there had been an orgy on the lawn by the volleyball court one night, with Beth one of the instigators. She was killed leaving that orgy. Which left the other participants and any observers as likely suspects. Suspects included a state senator from Wisconsin, a rock star, a mobster in a Witness Protection program, and more. Also Jesse's neighbor Claude, whose wife suspected he'd taken part; and other neighbor Chuck, whose husband Pete suspected the same.
Jesse's investigation finds out various things (often by accident), and he talks with various people, finding out more. His naked interactions with nude people are interesting (as with the cowboy-boots-wearing man who hits on him), and his adaptation to nudism is enjoyable. [Book One in this series wasn't nudist, and also wasn't available.]
●●●○○ Blockade Runner {Bullard 03} - Malcolm Jameson (1941 ss)
The colonies bridled under Earth rule, and a war would have hurt the homeworld too much, so Earth had let them go. But the humans of Venus, Mars, and the Jovian moons weren't forgiving, so they now held a blockade against Earth, meaning it could get the eka-Uranium that only existed on Uranus's moon Oberon.
Earth had hundreds of ships, and almost no fuel for them. They'd tried to sneak a dozen ships past the blockade, and been caught every time. One last try saw Captain Kemp and the crew of the Violet (thoroughly disguised as the Cloud Queen out of Venus) try. It managed to make it past the blockade going outward, and loaded up on eka-Uranium, but because Kemp answered a question wrong, it was determined they weren't truly Venusians, and they were boarded on the way home to Earth.
The solution, as in a previous story, involved the captain and crew jiggering very-1940s-like equipment to dispatch the armed boarders herding them to port. (This story takes place in the setting the Bullard stories do, but he doesn't appear in it.)
●●◐○○ A Day of Skin and Squalls - Mel Cowan (2025 ss)
Joe was an architect, Amanda a graphic designer. Their careers depended on doing exactly what the customer wanted, even when the customer didn't know what they wanted. Hence Joe planned Project Freedom: a day at Brierly Cove; a day of freedom, of liberation from the confines of their normal lives.
They left at dawn, and reached Sandpiper Beach an hour later. Then it was a walk of a mile and a half past a headland, and through a jumble of huge boulders, to reach Brierly Cove. And then they stripped, and quietly enjoyed the deserted nude beach for three hours, before the trio of frat boys arrived with their boom box and frisbee and football.
The couple retreated to the other end of the small beach, and nude life continued: not as pleasant, but still okay. Then the weather turned, with slashing wind and rain. Joe and Amanda grabbed their things and dressed in their wet and sandy clothes — so much for nudist peace — and made their way back along the dune path, which was now mud and lashing bushes. And more challenges happened, but they agreed it was worthwhile to come back, making sure they checked the weather forecast first.
●●○○○ The Carver - Jake Berry Ellison, Jr. (2018 ss)
Ecological decline and a virulent plague had wiped out most trees in the country. Extraordinary measures were taken to ensure the survival of those left, including harsh laws against defacing or maiming a tree. Which is how a carving saying “L&M=4vr” ended up getting Young M (he was still a minor, and was never officially identified further) was sentenced to have something carved into his back.
"Something" because the judge in charge upped the ante, and decided to have a raffle to see what was carved into Young M's back. This did not run smoothly, and several regroups and retries on sentences followed. (As for L&M's Lorraine, she was almost nineteen, and had to go on the run due to the adverse publicity.) The punishment did end up memorable.
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Week Twenty-Seven's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
207+8 ss | 12+0 nvt | 13+1 nva | 58+2 nov |
#books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction #BokBooks
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[1] The author was a Bengali-speaking woman born in Rangpur, in what's now Bangladesh, but what in her lifetime was British India. The story is set in Calcutta.

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bok @[email protected] · 2026-07-01 · 00:00 UTC

#Books and #stories for #JuneReads.

Tag to mute: #BokBooks
ten novels:
●●○○○ Oath of Dogs - Wendy Wagner (2017)
●●●●○ The House of Many Worlds {Many Worlds 1} - Sam Merwin, Jr. (1951)
●●◐○○ Slow Apocalypse - John Varley (2012)
●●●◐○ The Giant Atom - Malcolm Jameson (1943)
●●●●○ Return of the Old Gods - David Collins (2024)
●●●◐○ Jealous Jackal {Miles Grant 22} - Jack Dearborn (2022)
●●●●○ A World of Women - J. D. Beresford (1913)
●●●◐○ Keeper of the King {Ethical Vampires 01} - P.N. Elrod, Nigel Bennett (1997)
●●●●○ Scattered Worlds {Scattered Worlds 01} - David Collins (2025)
●◐○○○ People Minus X - Raymond Z. Gallun (1958)
one novella:
●●●○○ The Grace of a Swan - Martin Brant (2017)
two novelettes:
●●●●○ The Vengeful Spirit of Lake Nepeakea {Blood Bank 4} - Tanya Huff (1999)
●●●◐○ Everlasting Food - Margaret St. Clair (1950)
thirty-four short stories:
●●●◐○ The Cutest Nudist - P.A. Choi (2020)
●●●◐○ The Dangerous Scarecrow - Carl Jacobi (1954)
●●●○○ The Invisible Monster - H.P. Lovecraft and Sonia Greene (1923)
●●●○○ First Time on a Nudist Beach - Stella Good (2021)
●●●●○ Ahead In Time - Brian Terence (2025)
●●●●○ The Graveyard Rats - Henry Kuttner (1936)
●●●◐○ How I Fell for My Naturist Cleaner - Stella Good (2021)
●●●○○ An Archaeological Twist - Brian Terence (2025)
●●●●○ Neo-Geoduck - Margaret St. Clair (1949)
●●◐○○ A Rose by Any Other Song - Virginia DeMarce (2024)
●◐○○○ Down This Path - Natalie Silk (2024)
●●●○○ Mail from Up-Time - George Grant (2024)
●●○○○ The Small Crisis - George Grant (2024)
●●●○○ Making Hay While the Sun Shines - Marc Tyrrell (2024)
●●●◐○ Among the Faithful - Bob Finegold (2024)
●●●○○ Someone to Share the Night {Blood Bank 5} - Tanya Huff (2000)
●●◐○○ The Sun on My Skin - Mel Cowan (2025)
●●●◐○ The Liberation of Arthur Pumble - Mel Cowan (2025)
●●●○○ Terminal Vision - Brian Terence (2025)
●●●○○ Mission - Kris Neville (1953)
●●○○○ A Naked Girl Walked into My Office - P.A. Choi (2020)
●●●○○ Test-Tube Frankenstein - W. Wayne Robbins (1940)
●●○○○ Yes and No - Kris Neville (1951)
●●◐○○ The Wanderer - Mel Cowan (2025)
●●○○○ Soul Spirits - Will Forest (2021)
●●●●○ Scarlet Hexapod - Margaret St. Clair (1959)
●●●●◐ Reward - Fritz Leiber (1959)
●●●◐○ Doubled and Redoubled - Malcolm Jameson (1941)
●●●◐○ Another Fine Nest {Blood Bank 6} - Tanya Huff (2002)
●●●○○ Would You Clothe a Naked Girl? - P.A. Choi (2020)
●●●○○ Parallel Beans - Margaret St. Clair (1960)
●●●◐○ Sceleratus {Blood Bank 7} - Tanya Huff (2003)
●●●○○ Sultana's Dream - Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1905)
●●●◐○ Blood Lust {Dr. Taverner 01} - Dion Fortune (1922)
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No more repeating descriptions of the novels, it just makes for a very long post. You can look at previous posts for that info. Search for #BokBooks.
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2026-06: 34 ss | 02 nvt | 01 nva | 10 nov
2026-05: 31 ss | 01 nvt | 05 nva | 10 nov
2026-04: 29 ss | 01 nvt | 02 nva | 10 nov
2026-03: 38 ss | 02 nvt | 02 nva | 08 nov
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#ScienceFiction

#books #stories #junereads #bokbooks #sciencefiction
bok @[email protected] · 2026-06-20 · 21:10 UTC

Quarterly #Coverpalooza Number Two: Spring.
#reading | Tage to mute: #BokBooks

#coverpalooza #reading #bokbooks
bok @[email protected] · 2026-06-01 · 00:13 UTC

#Books and #stories for #MayReads. | Tag to mute: #BokBooks
Ten novels:
●●●○○ No More Unsworth Nudes {Unsworth Manor 3} - P.Z. Walker
●●●●○ Bear Head {Dogs of War 2} - Adrian Tchaikovsky
●●●◐○ The Wrong Number {Ambassador to the Stars 01} - David Collins
●●●◐○ Those Left Behind {Behold: Humanity! 20} - Ralts Bloodthorne
●●●◐○ Gateway to Elsewhere - Murray Leinster
●●●◐○ Three Faces of Time {Many Worlds 2} - Sam Merwin Jr
●●●●○ Problems with Planning {NBL Solutions 4} - Ted Bun
●●●●○ Anxious Edwin {Middle Falls 17} - Shawn Inmon
●●●◐○ Bee Speaker {Dogs of War 3} - Adrian Tchaikovsky
●●●◐○ Death Game {Stargate Atlantis 14}- Jo Graham
Five novellas:
●●●◐○ Problems of Succession {NBL Solutions 2} - Ted Bun
●●○○○ Mr. Boy - James Patrick Kelly
●●●◐○ Problems in the Pyrenees {NBL Solutions 3} - Ted Bun
●●●◐○ The Logistics of Carthage - Mary Gentle
●●◐○○ The Oldest Footprints… - Brian Terence
One novelette:
●●●○○ Star Haven - E.C. Tubb
Thirty-one short stories:
●●●◐○ Franchise - Kris Neville
●●●◐○ Rotohouse - Margaret St. Clair
●●○○○ Leaving Almost Everything - Allen Knudsen
●●●●○ Mimic - Donald A. Wollheim
●●○○○ Beyond a Swim - Stan Muir
●●●○○ This Town Ain't Big Enough {Blood Bank 1} - Tanya Huff
●●○○○ Eating the Goo-ies - Jake Berry Ellison, Jr.
●●●◐○ The Himalaychalet - Margaret St. Clair
●●●●○ Hatchery of Dreams - Fritz Leiber
●●○○○ Gratitude Guaranteed - Kris Neville
●●●○○ The Orchid and the Oak - Mel Cowan
●●◐○○ The Thing in the Cellar - David Keller
●●○○○ Sunleaf Haven and the Unwritten Law - Mel Cowan
●●●◐○ Admiral's Inspection {Bullard 1} - Malcolm Jameson
●●○○○ The Cabral Discovery - Jake Berry Ellison, Jr
●●●◐○ What Manner of Man {Blood Bank 2} - Tanya Huff
●●●◐○ The Big Trek - Fritz Leiber
●●○○○ Casting Office - Kris Neville
●●○○○ A Natural Break - Tanis Lang
●●●○○ Sun-Dappled - P.A. Choi
●●●◐○ The Devotee of Evil - Clark Ashton Smith
●●●○○ The Cards Also Say {Blood Bank 3} - Tanya Huff
●●○○○ Oakwood Haven - Mel Cowan
●●●◐○ To Have and to Hold - Brian Terence
●●●●○ The Unreliable Perfumist - Margaret St. Clair
●●●○○ Pumpkin Patch - Mel Cowan
●●●○○ Passion in the Moonlight - Mel Cowan
●●○○○ The Hierophants - Margaret St. Clair
●●●○○ Our New Naked Neighbours - Stella Good
●●●●○ Manhole 69 - J. G. Ballard
●●●○○ White Mutiny {Bullard 2} - Malcolm Jameson
━━━━━━━━━━━
2026-05: 31 ss | 01 nvt | 05 nva | 10 nov
2026-04: 29 ss | 01 nvt | 02 nva | 10 nov
2026-03: 38 ss | 02 nvt | 02 nva | 08 nov
2026-02: 38 ss | 00 nvt | 02 nva | 09 nov
━━━━━━━━━━━
#ScienceFiction

#books #stories #mayreads #bokbooks #sciencefiction
bok @[email protected] · 2026-06-01 · 00:12 UTC

Tag to mute: #BokBooks

#bokbooks
bok @[email protected] · 2026-06-01 · 00:10 UTC

Descriptions of the novels, repeated from the weekly posts.
3700 words | 21k characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks
●●●○○ No More Unsworth Manor Nudes {Unsworth Manor 3} - P.Z. Walker (nov) 2020
The concluding book in the trilogy doesn't kill a family at the start of the story¹, which is a plus. We follow the same family from the middle volume: Avery and Tracy Montague, children Charles and Patricia (15 and 13 when the book starts), and their staff and friends.
A minor plot is that Neville Unsworth turns up, a distant relative of the family from the first book. He held that, since he was an Unsworth, Unsworth Manor was his, so the Montagues had to surrender the property. This occupied several letters and visits, and paying lawyers, and the Montague family eventually paid to have their home's legal name changed from Unsworth Manor to Measham Manor, Measham being the name of the nearby village.
The major (though not big) plots concerned nudist happenings. Over the years, the Montagues had made many nudist friends, who dropped in to enjoy the grounds where they could be naked, which overburdened the four-person staff. So Avery and Gerald Brinks (the Chief Inspector for whom Tracy had worked before marriage) sought out and bought some isolated property along the River Mease, which they made into a nudist spot.
The family, and a dozen of their friends, also reenacted a scene from Gretchen Unsworth's diary, and made a trip to the seaside, where the Unsworths had found an isolated stretch of beach upon which they could go nude. When the Montague crew came, they found it was now an active nude beach, which the town was aware of, but took no official notice of.
There they enjoyed the day. While swimming, Avery and Charles went past the textile beach, and found a bathing machine tipped over. Charles and a friend rescued the woman trapped inside, and the nude crew carried her onto the textile beach. The woman and her husband later went to the nude beach to thank everyone, and later became nudists themselves, eventually setting up a second nude beach some distance away.
Not a lot of major happenings in the book. It's most a matter of just enjoying characters and minor adventures, and then getting a misty time jum[.
●●●●○ Bear Head {Dogs of War 2} - Adrian Tchaikovsky (nov) 2021
At the end of the first volume of this trilogy, Bioforms — cyber-enhanced, genetically-modified animals uplifted to sapience — were beginning to get the rights of personhood, with Collars (neural hardware that ensures obedience and loyalty) outlawed. Forty years later, the pendulum has swung back, and controlling Bioforms is the hot topic that politicians and pundits use to distract people from climate change and economic troubles.
Professor Honey Medici, the over-engineered bear from the first book, continues to fight for Bioform rights, and general rights of people against their controllers. But she's old, and tired, and one day gives a speech that goes too far. She talks about the game and the metagame.
The rules of the game suggest that the people that do real things and know their jobs should be the ones to get promoted. But that's not how reality works. The bosses are the people who can schmooze higher-ups, who can look like they work hard and know things, but in fact don't.
This was fine (unless you were a called-out metagamer), but then Honey said that the metagame applied to society, too. That had drawn the notice of Warner S. Thompson, candidate for the World Senate Seat of Alabama-Virginia¹, a man marked for bigger things. Except he was less a man than a raw id. He could say things and do things, but he had little intelligence, little humanity, little sense of self. He was a parasite, and he knew he'd been seen. Honey had to die.
Which is how the story shifts to Mars, where Jimmy, a low-level worker, a biomod human, gets mixed up with things far bigger than himself. Things that include Bees, a distributed intelligence that was sent to begin the terraforming of Mars, but who's gone her own way. And who might be tiring of humans trying to wipe her out, just because she once did something environmentally sensible that cost rich people money. Both Honey and Thompson ended up on Mars, sort of, and the scale of the conflict got bigger.
●●●◐○ The Wrong Number {Ambassador to the Stars 01} - David Collins (nov) 2023
I like Collins' Artifact series, so I thought I'd try some more; he has many. Skipping the war ones, this seemed like fast, light adventure. The book begins in a similar "regular guy just stumbles into alien stuff" way.
Steve White is 24, fresh out of the military, living with his parents for the summer until he starts college on the GI Bill. He visits the pond he played at as a boy, and happened to be standing between three white rocks when someone 43 light-years away dialed a wrong number, and the "rocks" teleported him to another planet.
He's greeted by a tall, deep-blue semi-insectoid Amazonian woman, Countess Petra GunMuller, and the short grey-skinned transporter tech who misdialed. By the rules of the League, as the first of his species to transport to a world of one of the 72 Races — now 73 — he was the Ambassador of Earth assigned to the Pathless world Zigiproll.
Pathless techs take his iPhone and modify it, so now it can suck in human media from the internet at a prodigious rate for later sale: humankind can make a fortune from this, and as ambassador, Steve gets two percent. He buys a six-seat spaceship, and appears in orbit (the stones project a cone into the sky for larger objects), parking near the International Space Station to get NASA's attention.
The same type of dealings that happened in the early Artifact books go on, with Steve and Cobalt (the Pathless royal larva who underwent directed metamorphosis to the form of a human woman to be his partner in maintaining the Pathless-human relationship) dealing with the US government and military, and so on. Light, fast adventure.
●●●◐○ Those Left Behind {Behold: Humanity! 20} - Ralts Bloodthorne (nov) 2025
More aftereffects of the Big-C3, the Confederacy-Council Conflict, which morphed into the War Against the Atrekna, which begat the Phase Ghost Invasion, which woke the Earthlings. And Earthlings smite whatever bothers them.
When Earth had barely achieved solar system colonies, a Precursor War Machine — a continent-size robot warship, relic of a war millions of years ago — attacked. Humans barley survived. They decided they couldn't keep all their eggs in one basket, so they adapted Precursor tech and built ships, taking humans who would later be called Earthlings (as opposed to the Terrans who stayed behind and spread) into the Great Dark, to hide and grow. If humans were wiped out, some would remain to wreak vengeance.
An Atrekna temporal attack wiped out 99.9% of Terrans. Earthlings responded by novabombing their star systems. Now some are in Council space, investigating the Lanaktallans. The cow-centaurs started the war against the Terran Confederacy, but later surrendered to Terrans and allied with them against the extra-universal Atrekna. Earthlings never investigate. Something odd is going on.
We also see Vuxten get sucked into a holiday special, where he ends up fighting a rogue World Court elf, a holiday banshee, a squad of toy soldiers, and Jack Frost himself before rescuing Santa and Mrs. Claus, who'd been kidnapped by Kris "Krusher" Kringle.
The Flashbang resets normspace, banishing phase ghosts who'd escaped the networks. A Lanaktallan gaming lord nearly kills himself writing a program to purge phase ghosts still in GalNet. Hesstlan combat medic Melinvae gets psych-eval'd out of the military, and courtesy of Atrekna time resets, comes home 82 years old, when her mother is only 45. The rebooting of the SUDS matrioshka shells continues, and Marco's mind unravels, legacy of his personality having been rewritten thousands of times by the now-defunct Council of Eternity.
And so on. Unless you've been reading the series, none of this makes the slightest bit of sense to you. But the author got his organ transplant, and it looks like he'll now live to finish the series.
●●●◐○ Gateway to Elsewhere - Murray Leinster (nov) 1954
Tony Gregg bought an interesting coin at a flee market. The owner of the Syrian restaurant he went to identified the Arabic writing on it as saying "Barkut". He said that if Tony came back Thursday when businessman Mr. Emurian dined, he could ask him about it.
Mr. Emurian spun a tale of an alternate world where the Arabian Nights were factual. A world that one could get to via isolated places in each world that were identical. He also said that he had a friend who'd pay two thousand dollars for the coin. But the adventurer in Tony won out, and he decided to visit Barkut. He began at the racetrack, flipping the coin — which Mr. Emurian said would be trying to get back to its own world — to choose what horse to bet on. He made eleven grand.
Tony used that money to go where the coin flips led him, eventually ending up in Suakim, on the Red Sea. A journey with a dangerous crew, then stealing a dinghy at night, led to him being washed up on a beach, which ended up being near Barkut. He fought bandits, stole their camels, came to a city, and was imprisoned as a likely djinn, in which incarceration the queen's chief slave girl taught him Arabic.
So we have a djinn-kidnapped queen — who doesn't want to come home. Her chief slave, Ghail, who insists upon it, and who has feelings for Tony — and who knows that the foreign hero will surely mess up. A city of djinns and djinnees, all of whom have the intellect of children, the attention span of butterflies, and vast powers of transmogrification. Tony must try to save Barkut and to win the human Ghail over, while dealing with the two slave-girl djinnees assigned to him, and the other one who has a crush on him. What can a poor fated hero do?
●●●◐○ Three Faces of Time {Many Worlds 2} - Sam Merwin Jr (1955 nov)   ִ
Three years after H. Beam Piper published his first Paratime book, Merwin published his own, though his time police are far less ancient and powerful. In this sequel (which I didn't know was a sequel when I started it)¹, Time Watcher Elspeth Marrever is assigned by her boss to go to a strange world code-named "Antique" where it's 80 ᴀᴅ, the time of Emperor Vespasian in Rome.²
The Watchers are not a powerful organization, but they try to study newly discovered Earths, to prevent undue exploitation of low-tech worlds by high-tech ones, and to forestall war between timelines. In this case, they've found evidence that an advanced world (code-named "Heartland") that's exhausted its resources and suffered a nuclear war is going to exploit this time-slowed world.
"Marina Elspetia" poses as a noblewoman and poetess, and infiltrates Roman high society, with the help of Pliny the Elder, a Watcher Resident, a local who's not been told any outtime secrets, but who agrees to help those he's been convinced are helping his people. Elspeth learns that Vespasian's son Titus, who's been carrying on a relationship with Jewish princess Berenice, has met a red-haired barbarian queen in Germania.
Elspeth also finds that Gnaius Laconius, a patrician in her social circle, is in possession of a blaster and a plastic map. Either Heartland worries less about culturally contaminating it Residents, or he's from Heartland, though as a spy, he seems inept.
After avoiding an assassination attempt, Elspeth and a pilot (from the Watcher troop hiding out in a nearby villa, awaiting intel from Elspeth on what to do next) follow the map to Silesia, where they find a large facility mining and processing uranium. Their aircar is hit by a laser rifle, but they manage to get back to Rome.
Soon thereafter, Elspeth hears that Titus's barbarian princess is to visit Rome, and that "Anna Martina" — really Ana Kai-Martenez, red-haired Amazonian warrior from a matriarchal world — is about to make her move. Can Elspeth and the Watcher troop stop Ana's far larger and more advanced force?
●●●●○ Problems with Planning {NBL Solutions 4} - Ted Bun (2023 nov)   ִ
One of Chief Constable Geraint Edwards’ Freemason lodge brothers is having a problem, so Geraint calls on problem-solving Melody of Naked Beach Lady Solutions. Jonathan Franks owns a holiday camp. It doesn't make him a fortune, but it supports thirty staff, and he gets by.
Harold Stanwick — someone blackballed from Freemason lodges nationwide, notes Geraint — made Jonathan a low-ball offer for his land. Jonathan refused, and since then all manner of small accidents and equipment breakdowns have been happening at the camp. No one has been hurt, but it's cutting into his slim profits.
Further, it looks like an upcoming Specialist Weekender (events that make the difference between the camp surviving or going under) might have been sabotaged. The South London Sun Club, a naturist group, has reserved the camp. But they're not large enough to fill it, so with permission Franks sent out flyers to his camp's mailing list in case any non-club nudists wanted to also come that weekend.
Someone sabotaged the flyer before the printer got it, removing "nude" from the description. A Canterbury seniors group booked the remaining slots, unaware that the weekend would be nude. Jonathan faces a clash, but the bad publicity of canceling either group would hurt the camp too much.
Melody investigates the seniors group (and find a man to have a fling with, naturally), and finds that he's also on the case, and is an MI5 agent. It seems that Stanwick is part of a local group — comprising him, some councilors, the planning office, and the local paper — doing dodgy real estate deals, and in this instance they attracted a Russian oligarch seeking to launder money.
Melody ends the case with a Hercule Poirot meeting of suspects. She also passes on her fling to a woman who had a crush on him (after discussing things with her on a nudist weekend), and has a new man by the end of this, what seems the last book in the series.
●●●●○ The Anxious Lives of Edwin Miller {Middle Falls 17} - Shawn Inmon (2022 nov)   ִ
Anxiety ruled Edwin's lives. What to say, what to do, what not to say, what not to do. Near the end of his first life, 72-year-old Edwin found he had no food at home, so he was driving to Artie's for a burger. Except on the way he saw a new place, Mickey's Subs.
On a whim, he went in. But there were so many choices. What kind of bread, of cheese, of meat? Too many choices. Too much pressure. Too many people watching, judging. After getting in line — then out again to think more — several times, Edwin was forced to flee, heart thudding in his chest, covered in sweat. It may have contributed to Edwin dying of a heart attack that night.
Edwin came back as a fifteen-year-old in 1962. High school was hell, of course. But this time Edwin, with a bit more life experience, was less submissive to the school bully — who then caused Edwin trouble for decades thereafter.
With the help of his family, and his sole friend Moondog (who made an appearance in Book 12 of this series, The Many Short Lives of Charles Waters, where he helped a possibly-autistic man stuck in a 26-day-long reincarnation loop make progress), Edwin made some progress, though it literally took lifetimes. Therapy, which he was finally willing to try after several loops, also helped, as did painting, which Edwin took up one life.
This one hit hard, since I've also long found the world a scary place full of frightening people. I, too, prefer to be alone, because only then can I avoid all the negative reactions that come from being around people. And I'll never have the nerve to fix things in this lifetime, nor am I likely to have more lifetimes to try.
●●●◐○ Bee Speaker {Dogs of War 3} - Adrian Tchaikovsky (2025 nov)
The Crash was bad. Climate change brought huge storms, floods, drought, famine, and disease. The dying spasms of capitalism brought war, division, hoarding, riots, more. Within three years, 98% of humankind was dead. Two decades before the End, Mars was colonized, and terraforming begun, with an engineered moss cleansing the toxic soil and releasing oxygen, and heavily modified humans and Bioforms (genetically modified and cyber-enhanced animals uplifted to sapience) living in Hellas Planitia. They were not quite self-supporting when the crash came, but Bees, a Distributed Intelligence who'd been sent as a first-wave terraformer, was able to help the new Martians through the bad times.
Now, a century later, Mars receives a signal from Earth, saying that the version of Bees left there was in trouble, and would die out if it didn't get help. The Martian Work Committees met, and decided they now had enough reserves to assist the old world, and a team of four was sent out: two modified humans, plus a Dog (with some monkey and bat genes thrown in), and a Reptile (a mix of Komodo dragon, chameleon, skink, and boa).
The situation they found near the beacon? A Bunker founded by an oligarch, whose guards had maintained an underground society that collected tribute from their neighbors. The town Clearwater, built to defend a clean spring. The Dog Factory, which could still turn regular dogs into sapient Bioform people, if not up to the standards of the Old. And the Apiary, where Bees lived, and whose monks acted as mediators and messengers between the polities.
Except things were more complicated than that, part of that was dead wrong, and Ada the human and Wells the Dog both had great difficulties adapting to Earth, while even Irae the Reptile had some. Tecumo, the other human, adapted well, but then he made a major mistake and got himself killed in the first chapter, leaving a major mess for everyone else to clean up.
●●●◐○ Death Game {Stargate Atlantis 14} - Jo Graham (2010 nov)
Six Lanteans were on an exploratory mission to an odd world in the Pegasus galaxy, one of those where the Ancients had left a forcefield protecting it from space conquest. They'd also left a functioning stargate on the interdicted planet, which rather defeated the purpose of the forcefield, so the team looked into it.
Rodney McKay was left to study the gate while Radek Zelenka was dropped off to study some Ancient ruins (with Ronon Dex left as guard and company), while John Sheppard and Teyla Emmagen flew off in the puddle jumper to study some energy readings. Or the latter pair would have, if they weren't shot down by a Wraith cruiser.
We end up with Rodney finding out the gate had been modified to accept incoming wormholes, but not generate outgoing ones. Unless he could modify it, there was no going home. When the puddle jumper didn't return, Atlantis called in, and Rodney reported the situation, and Evan Lorne was sent out on a (potentially one-way) with four control crystals for Rodney to work on, and to be guard.
When no one came for them or called, Radek and Ronon resorted to stealing a fisherman's boat to try to get back from the island to the mainland where the gate was. Pity neither of them knew how to sail a boat, and the mainland was 350 kilometers away.
As for John and Teyla, they crashed at an oasis, and were imprisoned by the corrupt mayor of the place, who realized they were important, so he took them on a long barge ride to the capital. There they're made part of the annual Games of Life, where fifty people are sent into a complex underground labyrinth, and only one emerges to win a prize and go free. Turns out the world is secretly run by a Wraith cruiser that got trapped beneath the planetary shield, and they like entertainment with their dinner.¹
Before the novel reaches its end point, there's a lot of waiting — Teyla and John locked in a room, Radek and Ronon on their little boat — so people end up telling stories about their childhoods and how they joined the Stargate program and so on.
For example, Radek reveals how he was indirectly responsible for Stargate Command finding out that the Russians had the Giza gate's original Dial Home Device. And John tells how he ended up in the Air Force when his father dumped his mother for a younger woman when he was nineteen, and because John wasn't fine with it, his father stopped paying his college tuition.
This novel is set early in season two, a few weeks after episode 2.04, when Laura Cadman's mind briefly shared Rodney McKay's body. The nature of a continuing series means we know no regular character dies or is seriously hurt. Overall, the story is a fairly low-key adventure.
[0] Footnotes have been removed, so some parts may lack further explanation. If you absolutely must see the footnotes, they were in the weekly posts, along with descriptions of the shorter works.

#bokbooks
bok @[email protected] · 2026-06-01 · 00:09 UTC

Tag to mute: #BokBooks

#bokbooks
bok @[email protected] · 2026-05-01 · 00:03 UTC

#Books and #stories for #AprilReads. | Tag to mute: #BokBooks
Ten novels:
●●○○○ A New Faith - TinJar
●●●●○ The Unsworth Manor Nudes {Unsworth Manor 1} - P.Z. Walker
●●●●○ Dogs of War {Dogs of War 1} - Adrian Tchaikovsky
●●●◐○ He Dies and Makes No Sign {Dr. Constantine 3} - Molly Thynne
●●●○○ A Fateful Reunion - Martin Brant
●●●◐○ Tenth Artifact {Artifact 10} - David Collins
●●●●○ More Unsworth Manor Nudes {Unsworth Manor 2} - P.Z. Walker
●●◐○○ Civilizations - Laurent Binet
●●●●○ The Hemingway Hoax - Joe Haldeman
●●◐○○ Quaker Quarry {Miles Grant 21} - Jack Dearborn
Two novellas:
●○○○○ New Light on the Drake Equation - Ian R. MacLeod
●●●●○ Tendeléo's Story - Ian McDonald
One novelette:
●●○○○ The Last Ride of German Freddie - Walter Jon Williams
Twenty-nine short stories:
●●●●○ The Traveler - Wade Roush
●●●●○ Airy Servitor - Margaret St. Clair
●●●○○ Romance in the Nudist Colony - Ana Jurić
●●●○○ The Mother - Jacob M’hango
●●●◐○ Kreativity for Kats - Fritz Leiber
●●●◐○ The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For - Cameron Reed
●●●○○ Return Engagement - Margaret St. Clair
●●●○○ She Knew He Was Coming - Kris Neville
●◐○○○ Between the Hard Earth and Dry Heaven - Melusi Nkomo
●●●○○ Whispering Pines - Mel Cowan
●●●◐○ The Inhabited Men - Margaret St. Clair
●●●○○ Heatwave - Gregg B. White
●●●◐○ Our Saucer Vacation - Fritz Leiber
●○○○○ The Girl Who Laughed - Doreen Anyango
●●○○○ The Clearing - Mel Cowan
●●●○○ The House in Bel Aire - Margaret St. Clair
●●●◐○ The Fish Tank Crab - Genna Gardini
●●○○○ Hunt the Hunter - Kris Neville
●●●○○ Consumership - Margaret St. Clair
●●●◐○ The Goggles of Dr. Dragonet - Fritz Leiber
●●○○○ Cormorant Cove - Mel Cowan
●●●○○ The Gardener - Margaret St. Clair
●●●○○ Fire on the Mountain - Bjorn Hasseler
●●○○○ A Knight’s Tale — Therapies - Edith Wild
●●○○○ Another Country Heard From - Jack Carroll
●●●◐○ The Birds of the Muses - Iver P. Cooper
●●○○○ Scars and Prejudice - Hannah Steenbock
●●●◐○ As Holy and Enchanted - Kris Neville
●●●◐○ The Anaheim Disease - Margaret St. Clair
━━━━━━━━━━━
2026-04: 29 ss | 01 nvt | 02 nva | 10 nov
2026-03: 38 ss | 02 nvt | 02 nva | 08 nov
2026-02: 38 ss | 00 nvt | 02 nva | 09 nov
2026-01: 35 ss | 06 nvt | 02 nva | 10 nov
━━━━━━━━━━━
#ScienceFiction

#books #stories #aprilreads #bokbooks #sciencefiction
bok @[email protected] · 2026-03-31 · 21:30 UTC

#Books and #stories for #MarchReads. | Tag to mute: #BokBooks
Eight novels:
●●●○○ Ill Wind - Doug Beason, Kevin J. Anderson
●●○○○ The Big Eye- Max Ehrlich
●●●●○ Bright White Light {Behold Humanity 19} - Ralts Bloodthorne
●●◐○○ Two Girls, a Naked Guy, and the End of the World - Arthur Pemmington
●●●○○ Chimera {Parasitology 03} - Mira Grant
●●●●○ Vindictive Vixen {Miles Grant 20} - Jack Dearborn
●●●○○ Freebody CO - Rowland Jr
●●●◐○ When the Moon Hits Your Eye - John Scalzi
Two novellas:
●●●◐○ Sailing to Byzantium - Robert Silverberg
●●●◐○ Turquoise Days - Alastair Reynolds
Two novelettes:
●●●◐○ Tethered {Middle Falls Ghosts 01} - Shawn Inmon
●●●◐○ Auk House - Clifford D Simak
Thirty-eight short stories:
●●●◐○ Fort Iron - Margaret St. Clair
●●●◐○ The Toy - Kris Neville
●●◐○○ Starobin - Margaret St. Clair
●●●●○ Dobridust - Margaret St. Clair
●●●◐○ Lydia's Private Casket - James Gault
●●●◐○ The Moon Is Green - Fritz Leiber
●●●●○ Of What We Never Were - David Robertson
●●●○○ The Wines of Earth - Margaret St. Clair
●●○○○ A Defiant Departure - MacSmart Ojiludu
●●◐○○ Emergency Call - E C Tubb
●●●◐○ House Hunting - Mel Cowan
●●●○○ The Replaced - Margaret St. Clair
●●○○○ Before the Rains Came - Nadia Ahidjo
●●○○○ The Unveiling of Elias Thorne - Mel Cowan
●●●○○ Take Two Quiggies - Kris Neville
●●●○○ The Death of Each Day - Margaret St. Clair
●●●●○ The Most Epic Nap in the Universe - A. R. Capetta
●●●●○ Femmequin 973 - Fritz Leiber
●●●◐○ Love Story - Steve Williams
●●◐○○ Hold Back Tomorrow - Kris Neville
●●●●◐ The Unintentional Exhibition of Agnes Prattle - Mel Cowan
●●●●○ Graveyard Shift - Margaret St. Clair
●●○○○ When the Levees Break - Edwin Okolo
●●●○○ Romance in the Nudist Colony - Ana Jurić
●●●◐○ The First - Kris Neville
●●●○○ Cassini Rounds Third - Robert E. Waters
●●●○○ A Fitting Tribute - Bethanne Kim
●●●○○ A Meeting at Midsummer, Part 2 - Marc Tyrrell
●●●◐○ Disturbance at the Nishioka House - Garrett W. Vance
●●●●○ Red, Right, Returning - Fran Wilde
●●●●○ Blythe Method of Unbuttoning - Mel Cowan
●●◐○○ Psychosis from Space - Fritz Leiber
●●○○○ Secret Weapon - E C Tubb
●●●●○ Elijah's Journey - Fabien Barabe
●●●◐○ Death Wish - Margaret St. Clair
●●●○○ Cold War - Kris Neville
●●●○○ Garden of Evil - Margaret St. Clair
●●◐○○ Discovering Self - Mel Cowan
━━━━━━━━━━━
2026-03: 38 ss | 02 nvt | 02 nva | 08 nov
2026-02: 38 ss | 00 nvt | 02 nva | 09 nov
2026-01: 35 ss | 06 nvt | 02 nva | 10 nov
2025-12: 34 ss | 03 nvt | 01 nva | 07 nov
━━━━━━━━━━━
#reading #ScienceFiction

#books #stories #marchreads #bokbooks #reading #sciencefiction
bok @[email protected] · 2026-02-01 · 00:46 UTC

Descriptions of the novels, repeated from the weekly posts. Tag to mute: #BokBooks
●●○○○ Shot in the Buff - Joan H. Dash (nov) 2008
Catie Bingham isn't technically stupid. She worked as a soil scientist for some years before meeting her rich husband and quitting (having money gives you less motivation to endure job and coworker annoyances). It's just that her unwarranted faith in the goodness of strangers makes her frequently look stupid.
Catie's grandparents lived in a nudist camp. Or did: the story begins with Catie scattering her Grampa's ashes, then taking her Gramma home. On the same day that happened, one of the camp residents was shot dead when he answered his cottage door. Because 31-year-old Catie was, with her parents, a member of the camp until she was 16 (at which point she quit coming, because too many men leered at her), and she takes care of her grandmother, she's allowed to wear clothing in the camp. So when she went to gawk at the crime scene, a clothed young cop thought she must similarly be a police official, and showed her in to the cottage. Thus Catie became involved with the murder case.
Anyway, Catie's assumption of the kindness of strangers allows her to talk to a reporter, who writes a hit piece on the nudist camp, and why it shouldn't exist. It makes her talk to a trio of drunk yahoos, who quickly advance to threats of rape. It makes her not report a man who may be following her. It makes her interpret the order (of a state police officer who came her friend) to "go straight home and lock your doors until your husband gets back" as allowing a stop at a pharmacy, which gets her kidnapped.
So yes, at least half of the story is an idiot plot. And frankly the central mystery is weak. But the non-villain characters are decent, with some interesting quirks, and the nudist camp bits were okay, and resulted in one of the younger cops deciding to visit as a guest. So the novel doesn't quite sink to a single-star rating.¹
●●●●○ Flood {Flood 1} - Stephen Baxter (nov) 2008
The story begins with four people being rescued from a hostage situation in Barcelona. Lily, a helicopter pilot, was held for five years by the Fathers of the Elect, as was Piers, the military officer who was her passenger. The terrorist group also held secretary Helen and climate-scientist Gary for lesser spans.
The hostage span influenced the plot in two ways. It provided four character who agreed to check in on each other regularly, which repeatedly drew disparate plot strands together again. And it provided some characters who didn't know what was happening in the world, giving the author an excuse to explain things in the early chapters. "Things" being a massive climate shift. By 2016 when the hostages were released, mean sea levels were up over a meter from 2010 levels. By 2017 it was five meters, and by 2020 it was eighty meters, getting faster all the time.
Thandie, Greg's colleague, had a theory. There was more water trapped in Earth's mantle than in the planet's oceans. What if it were being released for some reason? And that's the story. Between 2010 and 2052, sea levels rose 8800 meters, enough to submerge all land on Earth. This book is the disaster movie that primarily follows Lily, and to a lesser extent Gary, as they survive the rising waters. (Piers and Helen have first-person chapters early on, but by the halfway point one is dead, and the other is sidelined.)
Lily mostly sticks close to Nathan, the billionaire who had the hostages rescued as a publicity stunt. While the economy works, he makes things useful to people, and converts the money he makes into food stores, durable goods, and equipment. Nathan plans on surviving. He builds bases, accomplishes stuff, then retreats to higher land to build more stuff. By the time half of Earth's land has been submerged, his company runs a city in the Andes, and is building Ark Three, a replica of the Queen Mary ocean liner to survive when there's no land left.
Greg spends years going around studying the planet to better understand what's happening and predict what will happen next. He ends up in Walker City, a group of thousands of people who get caught between the two groups who have claimed the US Rockies. They walk down the spine of the Americas trying to get to Peru and Nathan's ship.
In the end, all land is lost as even the peak of Everest sinks beneath the waves. Ark Three fails (it was built more for looks than usability), and humankind is left to live on boats and huge rafts for however long it can. But near the end, octogenarian Lily sees a sign that Ark One, a spaceship,¹ successfully made a slingshot at Jupiter, and that's likely the next volume.
●●●●○ Flood {Flood 1} - Stephen Baxter (nov) 2008
The story begins with four people being rescued from a hostage situation in Barcelona. Lily, a helicopter pilot, was held for five years by the Fathers of the Elect, as was Piers, the military officer who was her passenger. The terrorist group also held secretary Helen and climate-scientist Gary for lesser spans.
The hostage span influenced the plot in two ways. It provided four character who agreed to check in on each other regularly, which repeatedly drew disparate plot strands together again. And it provided some characters who didn't know what was happening in the world, giving the author an excuse to explain things in the early chapters. "Things" being a massive climate shift. By 2016 when the hostages were released, mean sea levels were up over a meter from 2010 levels. By 2017 it was five meters, and by 2020 it was eighty meters, getting faster all the time.
Thandie, Greg's colleague, had a theory. There was more water trapped in Earth's mantle than in the planet's oceans. What if it were being released for some reason? And that's the story. Between 2010 and 2052, sea levels rose 8800 meters, enough to submerge all land on Earth. This book is the disaster movie that primarily follows Lily, and to a lesser extent Gary, as they survive the rising waters. (Piers and Helen have first-person chapters early on, but by the halfway point one is dead, and the other is sidelined.)
Lily mostly sticks close to Nathan, the billionaire who had the hostages rescued as a publicity stunt. While the economy works, he makes things useful to people, and converts the money he makes into food stores, durable goods, and equipment. Nathan plans on surviving. He builds bases, accomplishes stuff, then retreats to higher land to build more stuff. By the time half of Earth's land has been submerged, his company runs a city in the Andes, and is building Ark Three, a replica of the Queen Mary ocean liner to survive when there's no land left.
Greg spends years going around studying the planet to better understand what's happening and predict what will happen next. He ends up in Walker City, a group of thousands of people who get caught between the two groups who have claimed the US Rockies. They walk down the spine of the Americas trying to get to Peru and Nathan's ship.
In the end, all land is lost as even the peak of Everest sinks beneath the waves. Ark Three fails (it was built more for looks than usability), and humankind is left to live on boats and huge rafts for however long it can. But near the end, octogenarian Lily sees a sign that Ark One, a spaceship,¹ successfully made a slingshot at Jupiter, and that's likely the next volume.
●●●◐○ The Lengths We Go {Behold: Humanity! 18} - Ralts Bloodthorne (nov) 2025
More about the continuing war of the extra-universal Atrekna against the Terran Confederacy (hardly hampered by the fact that all but about 2600 Terran Descent Humans were currently extinct [people were working on that]) and its allies. The usual dozens of plot threads followed.
Vuxten, now a major, gets assigned to command a garrison, and finds out firsthand the many way troops on garrison duty can cause trouble. One of the Defiled, an Atrekna Dalvanak cultist, demonstrates functional pattern recognition and looks to be winning an encounter with the Confederacy military — at which point the normie Atrekna take over to take credit and promptly lose by going back to their old tactics.
Chromium Peter, a Digital Sentience, dies after 1600 years trying to fix Heaven (the Matrioshka shellword where the Sentience Uninterrupted Data Storage system is, and where time flows differently), and the Detainee sends him back to reality as a biological human. Dambree's younger brother Elurta is in highschool, and finds that, while two planetary invasions taught him how to deal with cannibal marauders, girls are another matter.
More of the same. We're eighteen books in (and I just saw that Book 21 is out), so you either like this stuff or you don't.
●●●◐○ Naked Truth - P.Z. Walker (nov) 2021
Gerben Benders is a detective working undercover as an auditor at SpecialTech, which has finally contacted the police after six of their small one-of-a-kind sensors were stolen in the last year. The gadgets are stored in a room which only three people can access — and that requires passwords and retina prints and finger prints — and yet another was stolen while he was at the company.
On another level, Chao, one of the workers there, belongs to a nudist club. All the clubs in the Netherlands and Belgium have an annual open-pass day, and he invites his colleagues to go, as usual. Most do, so Gerben did as well, which causes some friction with his wife.
Gerben later learns that her family summered in a park in a trailer, and their neighbor was a man who described himself as an indoor nudist. He taught Natasha computer stuff for some weeks, until one day her parents were out, and he tried to rape her. There was insufficient evidence, so he wasn't convicted, though Gerben later uses his police access to look him up, and finds the man died some years ago.
The story has Gerben track the thefts to the nudist club, and visit it again. A long conversation with his wife gets her to try it a couple of times, then the couple begins going there repeatedly with their kids, sixteen-year-old John and thirteen-year-old Marloes. The former adapted quickly — his friend was already a nudist — the latter more slowly.
The mystery isn't wonderful. There are only three people with access to the room, and while some attempt is made at red herrings, only one seemed a real suspect. And the way the theft was covered up was lame. But the repeated nudist visits were interesting, so it gets points on that level.
●●◐○○ The Germ Growers - Robert Potter (nov) 1892
Bob Easterly and Jack Wilbraham met in their last months at Oxford (different colleges), and became fast friends. Being young, they decided to have an adventure, and booked passage to Australia. On arrival, they arranged to join an expedition laying a telegraph cable up the middle of the continent, from Adelaide to Darwin.
After a couple of months, a native traveling with the party said it was time for him to rejoin his people, since the great triennial meeting of the tribes would happen soon. Though advised not to, Jack and Bob decided to travel with him. They lost a horse to lameness, but reached the tribe and continued walking with them. But a fire last year had burned down some trees used as landmarks, and the leader became lost.
During an unusual mist, the tribe came upon a trio of hills “where certain doleful creatures dwelt.” The tribe fled in a panic, leaving Bob and Jack behind, their remaining horse having fled in the stampede. The two white men decided to go to the frightening hills, since it looked like there would be water there. They came upon a high valley, inhabited by men of many races, some fixing flying cars and covering them with invisible paint, and others cultivating gardens that the duo later learned were beds of deadly germs.
Their leader is a being of the ether [explains another such being who later appears to Jack and Bob], who introduces himself as Niccolo Davelli, a name he had used eight hundred years ago. At will, or when killed, the being collapses to a pool of silver liquid, which quickly turns into smoke and vanishes. The process can be reversed, as well. Davelli is “as full of malice as an egg is full of meat” and has throughout history recruited evil humans to work for him, with their group aiming to cause suffering and dissent among humans, for no particular reason beyond Davelli being evil, it seems.
We see Jack and Bob escape with the aid of another ethereal being, one who didn't turn his back on the Infinite One. So basically they've dealt with an angel, a devil, and the demonic humans who follow the latter.
●●●●○ The Case of the Teutonic Temptress {Miles Grant 17} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2021
The nudism part of these novels has surpassed parity with the mystery part. In this book Shirley, wife of private investigator Miles Grant, has arranged a South Seas vacation on a cruise ship for their 25th anniversary. A ship that's currently being used for a nude cruise. Miles, Shirley, and Shirley's mother MJ go on the cruise together.
We're at the 44% mark before we even learn the crime that's to be this novel's mystery, in this case a woman's murder by strangulation. It's pages later before the ship's captain hires Miles to solve the case, which was committed in international waters, and will be a mess to deal with unless at their next port of call the captain can turn over both the body and the killer to the authorities. The case ends at the 84% mark. So three-fifths of the book is about Miles, Shirley, and MJ preparing for the nude cruise, then on it, all during non-case times. And Miles and Shirley have sex multiple times while the case is active, but Miles isn't questioning people.
Again, the mystery part of the book is slighted. Miles figures out that the man who killed the captain's half-sister (who's been living under an assumed name on the ship for a year to hide out from people after her for her late husband's debts) did so to retrieve an object she had. We find out what the object was, and where it was hidden that the killer hadn't found it, but not why he wanted it.
On the night before the ship sailed, the Grants were all three in the same hotel room, and Miles decided that, as Shirley and MJ were fine with it, he would have sex with his wife while his mother-in-law watched and masturbated. On the ship, we see widowed MJ hook up with another widow for some sex play. Multiple swinger couples ask Miles and Shirley if they want to play; they decline, but MJ accepts a couple of times. In each case, the novel discusses what's about to happen in general terms, then jumps to discussions of how things went. Nothing explicit is put on page.
●●●○○ Ark {Flood 02} - Stephen Baxter (nov) 2009
Earth started releasing vast stores of internal water in 2012, ever more, ever faster. It was clear that Earth would drown. There were only three ways to deal with it. Live on the surface in ships and on rafts. That was Flood, book one. In this book, we mostly focus on the quest to plant humans on another planet, though near the end we briefly visit the third option, a seabed city.
We follow the Candidates, some hundred children trained from childhood to run the starship. We see their haven in the Rockies get ever worse as the floodwaters rose. We see the hectic launch amidst rioting, when half of the chosen crew didn't make in onboard, replaced by desperate refugees who forced their way on, and security forces who let that happen as a distraction from their own plan.
We see the barley-FTL ship (three times lightspeed) travel to their destination, and the various ways the ship and the society within broke down. And we see that the world they aimed for — which telescopes of a dying civilization could say was of the right size, and had an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere — wasn't quite right, and the crisis that caused.
Thirty percent of the crew decided to colonize Earth II, not being able to face more time in the ship than the seven years they'd already
spent. Thirty percent decided to return to Earth I, taking one of the ships twin hulls, and building another warp ring from spare parts. And forty percent decided to head for Earth III, a backup world that had been considered, that would take thirty years more to reach.
Stress, riots, accidents, sabotage, dissociative identity disorder, murder, more. Rather a darker tale than I expected, with plenty of suffering to go around. The story covers the years of preparation, then the years on the ship. We see nothing of what happened on Earth II, only a bit about what happened when half the Ship returned to Earth I, and only the landing of the last glider on Earth III.
●●●◐○ The Case of the Felonious Feminist {Miles Grant 18} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2021
A decade ago, Dewey Marcella (Seattle's Mob boss) hired Miles Grant to find his missing 18-year-old daughter, Kari Anne. Now Kari Anne is married, and her four-month-old son has been kidnapped. Marcella offers Grant another small fortune to find the boy.
Grant does his usual slow-and-steady work, finding someone who saw the van the kidnappers used, then checked out the three addresses the DMV said owned vans of that color, and within two days found the kidnappers unwitting assistants. Then it was a matter of how to get the boy back without telling Marcella any details, since he'd rather not have the Boss's thugs maim or kill the young kidnapper. Also, as has happened several times in recent novels, the culprit's motivation was just dumb.
The mystery-to-nudism ratio in this novel isn't as uneven as the last novel. That one was 40% mystery, 60% nudism. This one is 70% percent mystery, 30% nudism. MJ finds another widow to play with and convert to nudism. It was fun while it lasted — Miles saw her sneaking in naked one night — but the woman ended up moving to be closer to her daughter.
Stewart is dating Kim, and Shirley reconnects with her mother Tina, finding out that her love life is flagging — except when someone else is in the house, since apparently Gus likes it when others can at least hear their lovemaking. Shirley learns of Tina's early sexlife, and learns more of Miles's (like how he walked in on his mother getting out of the shower, and later figured out that she'd staged that).
Stewart graduates college¹, which means the whole naked extended family gathers for a party. Miles and Shirley; daughter Sarah (son Jimmie can't make it, continuing his long offscreen existence) and Shirley's mother MJ. Miles's parents fly in from Iowa. Later, MJ visits her son Joe and his wife Cassie and their three kids, who are all nudists. Even Cassie's widowed father is now a nudist, and may be moving in with Cassie's family, from Arizona where he moved for his late wife's health.
Miles wonders if other people talk about nudity and sex as much as his family. It seems unlikely, but since I enjoy it, I'm all for it. It's always suggestive, never explicit.
[0] Footnotes have been removed, so some parts may lack further explanation. For descriptions of the shorter works, see the weekly posts.

#bokbooks
bok @[email protected] · 2026-02-01 · 00:44 UTC

#Books and #stories for #JanuaryReads.
Tag to mute: #BokBooks
Nine novels:
●●○○○ Shot in the Buff - Joan H. Dash
●●●●○ Flood {Flood 1} - Stephen Baxter
●●●◐○ The Regretful Life of Richard Bell {Middle Falls 16} - Shawn Inmon
●●●◐○ The Lengths We Go {Behold: Humanity! 18} - Ralts Bloodthorne
●●●◐○ Naked Truth - P.Z. Walker
●●◐○○ The Germ Growers - Robert Potter
●●●●○ The Case of the Teutonic Temptress {Miles Grant 17} - Jack Dearborn
●●●○○ Ark {Flood 2} - Stephen Baxter
●●●◐○ The Case of the Felonious Feminist {Miles Grant 18} - Jack Dearborn
One novella:
●●●●○ Stolen Dormouse - L. Sprague de Camp
Five novelettes:
●●●●○ Time Patrol - Poul Anderson
●●●●○ Star Ship - Poul Anderson
●●●○○ The Dictator - Stanley G. Weinbaum
●●●◐○ Witch of the Demon Seas - Poul Anderson
●●●●○ Sargasso of Lost Starships - Poul Anderson
Thirty short stories:
●●●◐○ Agent - E C Tubb
◐○○○○ Dɔrə's Song - Victor Forna
●●●◐○ The Improper Authorities - Fritz Leiber
●●◐○○ Old Man Henderson - Kris Neville
●●○○○ Fresh Air Fiend - Kris Neville
●●●○○ White Goddess - Margaret St. Clair
●●○○○ The Girl Named Uku/phaza/mi/se/ka - Philisiwe Twijnstra
●●○○○ Beneath the Open Sky - Mel Cowan
●●◐○○ Try and Change the Past - Fritz Leiber
●●○○○ Torn - Michael Shotter
●●◐○○ N-00-D-1 Station - P.Z. Walker
●●○○○ Five Years Next Sunday - Idza Luhumyo
●●●◐○ Pillows - Margaret St. Clair
●●●◐○ Calm Down, People! It's Just Space Bees - Carlos Hernandez
●●●○○ Waiting to Die - Yefon Isabelle
●●●●○ The Chase - Wallace M Greensage
●●●◐○ Little Old Miss Macbeth - Fritz Leiber
●●●●○ Shelter - Mbozi Haimbe
●●●○○ Stroller - Margaret St. Clair
●●●○○ The Causes - Margaret St. Clair
●●●●○ Opal Necklace - Kris Neville
●●●○○ Ivy's Story - Andrew Calow
●●○○○ Underground Movement - Kris Neville
●●●○○ Accidental Eden - Mel Cowan
●●●◐○ Enough - Nicholas A. Dawn
●●◐○○ A Bad Day for Sales - Fritz Leiber
●●◐○○ The Hole in the Moon - Margaret St. Clair
●●●●○ 1962 - Ted Bun
●●●◐○ The Ming Vase - E C Tubb
●●◐○○ The Curator's Knot - Michael Shotter
━━━━━━━━━━━
2026-01: 33 ss | 06 nvt | 02 nva | 09 nov
2025-12: 34 ss | 03 nvt | 01 nva | 07 nov
2025-11: 23 ss | 03 nvt | 05 nva | 10 nov
2025-10: 30 ss | 00 nvt | 02 nva | 13 nov
━━━━━━━━━━━
This list says I read five novelettes, while the totals at the end say six. There are similar discrepancies in novellas and shorts.
That's because for the monthly list, I only count the stuff read in the month proper, while in the year's running total, I count everything read in the ISO year. 2026 is 53 weeks long; it already grabbed three days from 2025, and will take three from 2027.
During the last three days of December I read three shorts, a novelette, and a novella, which count for 2026, but not for January.

#books #stories #januaryreads #bokbooks
bok @[email protected] · 2026-01-05 · 19:33 UTC

#Reading in Week One of 2026 | Dec 29 – Jan 04 | ~2300 words | ~13,200 characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks |
━━━━━━━━━━
●●○○○ Roberta - Margaret St. Clair (ss) 1962
A person gets someone to arrange an illegal operation for them. Roberta has dissociative issues. Robert, her previous identity, keeps talking to her, usually saying unpleasant things. And whenever someone in real life argues with Roberta, she knows they're Robert in disguise, and she shoots them. Now Robert says she has to go on the lam. How many people does Roberta have to shoot to make Robert go away?
●●●◐○ Divide and Rule - L. Sprague de Camp (nva) 1939
An alien race that humans call hoppers (because they look like skinny upright kangaroos) conquered Earth three centuries ago. They allow humans to have factories and power plants (both overseen by hoppers, with sensitive personnel truth-drug-checked weekly), but not guns or motor vehicles. Nations have been broken up. Human society looks feudal in the post-US East. Main character Sir Howard van Slyck, future Duke of Poughkeepsie, goes around in plate armor made by Packard. Radio and films still exists, but not television (this is a 1939 story).
Howard goes walkabout after one bad day when his older brother was arrested, tried for doing science research, and executed. He hooks up with Haas, a traveler from the West who acts like a cowboy, who's also on a walkabout due to him accidentally killing a man in a bar fight, and the man's friends vowing vengeance. The pair rescue a woman from one of the bad nobles around, and find she's part of the anti-hopper Underground that neither knew existed.
Turns out that hoppers aren't a smart race, but many centuries ago a mutant genius appeared among them. During his long, four-hundred-year life, he single-handedly jumped from early-1800s tech into the age of electronics. His most important invention was a helmet that could induce concentration in its wearers, and with time and focus, even mentally slow individuals could accomplish much, like building starships and conquering worlds.
Naturally this thinking cap is a weakness, and with an out-of-left-field plan originally devised by Howard's executed brother, humanity is able to overthrow the aliens.
●●●◐○ Appointment in Tomorrow - Fritz Leiber (ss) 1951
World War Three, though short, had knocked society for a loop. With Old Science tarnished, leaders in New Washington and bomb-shocked society in general turned to New Science. In stepped the Thinkers, with new mental science and emotional disciplines.
The Thinkers had built the giant supercomputer Maizie (cyberneticists said it couldn't be done) that advised the government, in nigh-holy advice sessions. They'd built the nuclear-electric rockets (rocket scientists were stunned) that took humans to Mars, where humanity had contacted the learned men of an elder civilization and brought their wisdom back to Earth.
Pity it was all a hoax.
Odd that the Number Two in the Thinkers had drunk the Kool-Aid, and wanted to make the dreams real, and had contacted the Institute for Advanced Studies to see if some real scientists would quietly help him do that. Strange that the Number Two at the Institute, tired of being ignored, had decided to join the Thinkers who were the power behind the throne, claiming he'd rise through the ranks and then reform the organization. Would either plan work out?
●●●○○ An Unexpected Adventure - Martin Brant (nvt) 2017
Jennifer – a legal assistant who thinks her chest is flat and droopy, her stomach too paunchy, her hips too big – falls for a man. Dan's a nurse, and she finds him a caring soul. Until one day he surprises her by taking her to a nudist beach. She can't cope and insists he take her home.
Over time, Jen learns to accept herself, and becomes a nudist with him in the privacy of their apartments. A group of Dan's colleagues are also nudists, and after having a couple over for a nude coffee, then going to a nude dinner with the whole set, and finally visiting that nude beach, Jen becomes a real nudist.
A simple, if clichéd, story of someone accepting herself and others, and getting over imperfect bodies to live a freer life.
●●●◐○ The Emperor's New Towel - Mel Cowan (ss) 2025
James had hit on a topic of conversation for defensive smalltalk: naturism. He'd regale his colleagues of his visits to nude beaches in the South of France, and discourse at length about the benefits of going clothes-free. The truth was that he didn't even walk around his apartment naked: he was purely a theoretical naturist. And all went well for years. Until one day Kate joined the accounting firm, and James trotted out his topic:
⎡ Instead of the usual glazed-over expression, Kate's eyes lit up. "Oh my gosh, you're a naturist? Me too! That's amazing!" ⎦
Kate invited James to her naturist club next weekend, and James could see no way not to accept. He got through stripping in the changing room, and made his fraudulent debut, only to freeze when he got to the main pool and saw dozens of naked bodies all around him. He faked comfort getting a lounger beside Kate, and pretended that his pale body had ever seen the sun.
After some swimming (“You crashed into my crocodile”) and the barbecue buffet (James fumbled a serving spoon, depositing a glob of potato salad on the naked man ahead of him in line), and him knocking his cup of lemonade into Kate's lap, James was not having a grand time. It was only during the volleyball game that James slowly realized that everyone knew that this was his first time at a nudist camp… and nobody cared. It turned out to be a nice day.
◍◍◍◍◍ January 2026 Begins
●●●◐○ Agent - E C Tubb (ss) 1955
Looie acquired artists for you. Singers, dancers, ventriloquists, whatever: for a fee, he'd find them for you. So he was more than satisfied when two odd, tall men with strange accents offered him bags of gold, even if their request — “We are interested in buying some humans” — was a bit raw. And they took anyone, no talent required.
Sam was Looie's fixer. When the Health Department tracked Looie down and told him people were complaining about the slaughterhouse smells coming from the old warehouse Looie had rented to the peculiar tall men, it was Sam who sent to check things out. And things were pretty much as you expect.
◐○○○○ Dɔrə's Song - Victor Forna (ss) 2021
Imagine Mother Earth personified as a human woman. Then imagine bloody gouges being made everywhere in her skin to mine coal and minerals. And her being stabbed all over to extract oil. And imagine her suffering being so great that her spirit flees her body, taking human form as a woman named Karinε.
Except, of course, that this isn't being presented as metaphor, but as fact. She married a human, producing a daughter, Dɔrə. And when the ecosystem was dying, and the Last Man was lamenting how all this was happening to him — because of course it had nothing to do with him — Karinε dies, and Dɔrə leaves to create a new world with life, but without people, since clearly that part had been a mistake.
At least that's my probably-wrong interpretation of the story, because between the psychedelic imagery and depressing-poetry language, I was skimming at best. I've no idea why the Earth Goddess names are in International Phonetic Alphabet.
●●○○○ Shot in the Buff - Joan H. Dash (nov) 2008
Catie Bingham isn't technically stupid. She worked as a soil scientist for some years before meeting her rich husband and quitting (having money gives you less motivation to endure job and coworker annoyances). It's just that her unwarranted faith in the goodness of strangers makes her frequently look stupid.
Catie's grandparents lived in a nudist camp. Or did: the story begins with Catie scattering her Grampa's ashes, then taking her Gramma home. On the same day that happened, one of the camp residents was shot dead when he answered his cottage door. Because 31-year-old Catie was, with her parents, a member of the camp until she was 16 (at which point she quit coming, because too many men leered at her), and she takes care of her grandmother, she's allowed to wear clothing in the camp. So when she went to gawk at the crime scene, a clothed young cop thought she must similarly be a police official, and showed her in to the cottage. Thus Catie became involved with the murder case.
Anyway, Catie's assumption of the kindness of strangers allows her to talk to a reporter, who writes a hit piece on the nudist camp, and why it shouldn't exist. It makes her talk to a trio of drunk yahoos, who quickly advance to threats of rape. It makes her not report a man who may be following her. It makes her interpret the order (of a state police officer who came her friend) to "go straight home and lock your doors until your husband gets back" as allowing a stop at a pharmacy, which gets her kidnapped.
So yes, at least half of the story is an idiot plot. And frankly the central mystery is weak. But the non-villain characters are decent, with some interesting quirks, and the nudist camp bits were okay, and resulted in one of the younger cops deciding to visit as a guest. So the novel doesn't quite sink to a single-star rating.¹
●●●◐○ The Improper Authorities - Fritz Leiber (ss) 1959
Ronald lives in the converted coach house near the big house where his eccentric aunt lives. In return, he's expected to do small favors for her, like fix her doorbell. He goes to the basement, and finds the doorbell was never hooked into the house's electric system, but runs on batteries, which he replaces, but not before noticing an oddity.
Dust motes are swirling around the wire attached to a peculiar battery sitting on the shelf. Disrupted, they return to their path, as if they were iron filings following magnetic lines around an electric wire. But dust isn't magnetic. Is there some sort of… gravitic… flow in the wire?
Yes, he finds when he takes the battery to his room and conducts experiments. Ronald finds that by wrapping the wire around the battery, he can get it to double its weight, held one way — or negate it, held the other. More turns of the wire multiply the effect. What to do. Studying it is more likely to destroy the battery — wherever it came from — than replicate it. But if he tells a university or the government, they're likely to take it from him, if they even believe him. Then Ronald has an idea…
●●◐○○ Old Man Henderson - Kris Neville (ss) 1951
Joey's mother just baked fresh bed, and she tells Joey to deliver a hot loaf to Mister Henderson, which the ten-year-old resentfully does. Henderson is called "The Story" behind his back, because he always tells the same tale of his glory days to people, in the same practiced phrases. Joey can't take it this time, and rudely quotes the old man's story back to him before he gets started this time. Joey's been to the Moon twice, his parents have been to Venus, and is father is currently working on Mars. Why should he care to hear how Old Man Henderson got the plaque on his wall? Who cares about the first man to walk on the moon?
●●●●○ Time Patrol - Poul Anderson (nvt) 1955
The first appearance of Manse Everard of the Time Patrol series, shows the young man answering a classified ad in 1954 USA, undergoing an array of tests for suitability, and joining the service. After a few years of training, he gets his first case, which he himself instigated. Manse was newly graduated, awaiting his first field assignment, his only job for now being to monitor a bunch of newspapers for oddities that might indicate time travel interference.
Except he didn't find the evidence in a newspaper, but a book of Victorian stories, one of which seemed to show an Anglo-Saxon burial mound being unearthed, and a chest of metal bars being found, with the man who opened it dying a week later from what the story writer hinted might be a curse, but that looked like radiation poisoning to Everard.
Manse reported the story, and since their were never enough agents, he was assigned to check it out. Sector Headquarters in 1894 assigned Everard a man from Manse's academy class, Charles Whitcomb, a British pilot who joined in 1947. They went to sixth-century Britain and investigated, finding the latest (but the pair's first) meddler who wanted to remake history and change the world.
We also learn that it's not only the other side that wants to change history, that some people aren't suited to be Time Patrol agents, and some are destined for more. Solid tale.
━━━━━━━━━━
Week One's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
00+7 ss | 00+2 nvt | 00+1 nva | 00+1 nov | #books
━━━━━━━━━━
[1] Yes, I'm using circles, but that's because stars seem less common in fonts, and some tests on various devices showed character-not-found glyphs instead.
━━━━━━━━━━
Weeks have seven days, so weeks spanning New Year's Day will always have four or more days in either the old year ending or the new year beginning. Year 2026 is a double winner, beginning by claiming the last three days of 2025 for its first ISO-counted week, and ending by claiming the first three days from 2027 for its Week Fifty-Three. That's the maximum possible steal on both ends.

#reading #bokbooks #books
bok @[email protected] · 2026-01-01 · 21:56 UTC

Descriptions of the novels, repeated from the weekly posts. Tag to mute: #BokBooks
●●●◐○ The Inheritor's War {Behold: Humanity! 17} - Ralts Bloodthorne (nov) 2025
Terran Descent Humanity remains 99.98% extinct, but the "In Case of Death" message they had left was sufficient to give the remaining races of the Confederacy² access to doomsday-level tech that humans usually eschewed, which assisted them in their continuing fight against the Atrekna, invaders from another universe who had already drained four universes of their resources.
(On the extinction event, people are working on restoring the dead humans, which was possible because the Confederacy used SUDS backup – Sentience Uninterrupted Default Storage – though that was currently broken. Unfortunately, because of the massive human die-off, automated systems were also trying to genocide surviving subclades of humankind into SUDS for safekeeping.)
The novel follows many threads, as usual. The pilot of an orbit-to-ground strike-craft crashes behind enemy lines. Vuxten dealing with the consequences of being someone whom people pray to. An Atrekna of the Defiled cult who survives when the normies are killed, and whose cult may be capable of seeing other sophonts as people, not just targets for genocide. The aftermath of the assassination attempt on Nakteti. More.
●●●○○ The Librarian of Baker Street - Greg Kauffman-Starkey (nov) 2025
Charles Nicolas lived down the street from Sherlock Holmes. He was the head librarian of one of London's many libraries, and he helped his friends Sherlock and John Watson when research was required in one of their cases. He shared a glass of sherry with them from time to time at 222B Baker Street.
When a particularly persistent man came in demanding to see Holmes while the Great Detective and his colleague were away on a case, Mrs. Hudson took the man to Nico's library. There Nico learned of a missing manuscript by Copernicus, and the wealthy collector who'd been trying to acquire it for months from the annoying man. That led Nico to take the case and head to the small town of Chaltford.
Chaltford was a backward place with a church, a bar, a bakery, a few shops, and a tiny hotel. Also an odd, sticky fog that began just outside of the cobbled main street, in which crashing machines and loud animal noises could be heard. And there was an ancient standing stone, which when touched was felt to be vibrating with power.
Nico was of Uranian orientation (non-practicing), and while in Chaltford he met a farmer, Whitmore Adams, who turned out to be the same. When a sudden fog set in and the loud noises began, the pair ran from the standing stone they had been holding a discussion near, into town. Both spent the night in Nico's room, in the same bed (nothing happened). Nico solved the case the next day, and was forced to return to London, since his time-off was ended.
Then things just get weird. Turns out Nico's annoying client was a Duke, and Nico got (his second) audience with the Queen, and she granted him a boon for helping her friend. Nico made a detailed plea for his kind, leading a week later to a newspaper headline: Her Majesty’s Stance On Uranians Relaxes After Hundreds of Years of Laws Against Them. And Nico returns to Chaltford to get Whit (whose tenure there was iffy, since he'd helped Nico prove the town's richest man was a thief and drug-dealer, and the police were addicts) and bring him home to their lodgings. End of story, with a kiss.
●●●◐○ 1637: No Peace Beyond the Line {Ring of Fire} - Charles E. Gannon, Eric Flint (nov) 2020
A long story continuing to track Eddie Cantrell in the Caribbean, with the Dutch fleet, and the Danish and English settlers, all cut off from Europe by the wars there. The Spanish Fleet is partially destroyed but mostly captured by the United States of Europe's steam warships, and their allies, but next year Spain sends more ships, and there are various battles, mostly won. But then there are events like the Spanish getting local pirates to sack the mostly-Dutch city of Curaçao, wiping it out.
We also follow tensions between the slave holders on Eustatia and the majority who were anti-slavery. We follow the rocky love lives of Eddie and Cathrine, Sophie and Hugh, Leonora and Rik. We see the defense of the oil base on Trinidad from Spanish attack, and the secret exploration for oil in Louisiana. It's quite the long book, with many plots. I'm just annoyed that the direct sequel doesn't seem to be out yet, five years later.
●●●○○ The Case of the Ritual Rapist {Miles Grant 16} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2020
A hospital hires Miles Grant to find out who raped the wives of three of their doctors. He must do so quietly, since bad publicity might cost the hospital the large grant it's up for. In his usual plodding way, Miles goes about the hospital looking like an efficiency expert, observing people: the wives all agreed that the masked man was slim and about five foot six. Then, when he finds his suspect, he gets his daughter to pose as a visiting doctor's wife whose husband has to make a quick trip home.
The story ends with the case resolved, of course, but not in the expected way. Dearborn is fine with leaving matters of motivation unexplained in his stories, and we never really learn why the culprit was raping the doctors' wives. On that level, the novel isn't the greatest of mysteries.
On the family nudism front, that's growing to be a bigger chunk of each story. In this book we see Kim Halverson coming to visit, and since she only lives a short distance away, student-drive Stewart is allowed to drive her home (with Miles in the car), all nude during the twilight drive. Another weekend Kim accompanies her boyfriend Stew and his family to a nudist camp.
Stewart chances to see his parents having sex when they leave their bedroom door open, and there's discussion of that with each of his parents. Miles's parents also visit for Stewart's sixteenth birthday, and they join the family in nudism.
Miles remembers going to the YMCA on men-only days as a boy, and earning pocket change masturbating men. There's always nudity in the background when the Grants are home, and lots of playful discussion about sex. I find I enjoy the vibe.
●●●●○ Future of Another Timeline - Annalee Newitz (nov) 2019
In a timeline similar to our own (excepting that Harriet Tubman was a senator), five ancient time machines are known. They date back over 400 million years, and are a property of the bedrock in a handful of places. Despite the machines having been known for thousands of years, this world's history is largely the same as ours, which seems unlikely.
The main thrust of the story is Tess of the Daughters of Harriet being a time traveler trying to alter history for the better, primarily to give women and non-whites more rights, and to give women reproductive freedom, since abortion is largely illegal in her USA. Tess is mostly focused on fighting Anthony Comstock in 1893 at the Chicago World's Fair and thereafter, when the anti-vice and anti-birth-control zealot got the powers that resulted in the Comstock Act, which made it illegal to ship information about birth control or abortion in the mail.
Standing against Tess are several Comstockers, men from a divergent future where women have zero rights, and have even been bred for service. They're trying to lock in their future, and are prepared to destroy the time machines when events have been edited more in their favor.
A secondary focus of the novel is Beth, a teenager in 1992 Irvine, California, who likes punk music, has problems with her parents, and has a couple of dangerous friends. Tess tries several times to alter events so that this time Beth's life doesn't turn so sour she commits suicide.
I don't really buy the setting. We're told that most people think changing history is hard. Then we're told that there are rules against it, and that people do it on the QT. We're told there's only one ever-mutable timeline, but we also talk about "strongly divergent" timelines. We're told you can't bring anything beyond your clothing with you, but then are shown people doing so. (And even if it's just clothing, what prevents you from having all kinds of knowledge printed on your clothing?) There are contradictions up and down the scale, but the story makes it clear we're mostly meant to focus on people-level stuff and try to ignore all that.
●●●○○ Death in the Dentist's Chair {Dr. Constantine 02} - Molly Thynne (nov) 1932
Jewel-bedecked Mrs. Miller was left in the dentist's chair while dental surgeon Davenport¹ took her dentures downstairs to the lab for adjustment. When he got back ten minutes later, the door to the consulting room was locked, and Mrs. Miller didn't answer.
When Davenport's assistant unscrewed the door handle, Dr. Constantine² was with them, having left the waiting room to investigate the noise and the delay in his appointment. He was the first into the consulting room, and the first to see that Mrs. Miller's throat had been slit. It's later revealed that her expensive diamond necklace was stolen, but her almost-as-costly earrings and bracelets and rings were left behind.
With Dr. Constantine in the waiting room had been Sir Richard (whom Constantine later learns was in deep financial trouble, and who'd been out of the waiting room for ten minutes making a telephone call) and the widowed Mrs. Vallon (gossipy Lady Farnborough revealed that Mrs. Miller, previously gold-digging young actress Lottie Belmer, had once been a mistress of Mr. Vallon).
A jeweler who knew Constantine's family further revealed that Mr. Miller came from South Africa, and was rumored to have stolen a number of diamonds, for which he'd managed to frame his assistant — who'd gotten out of jail a few months ago, and was known to have headed for England.
There's also the complication that Mrs. Miller was killed with a Chinese knife with some crudely-scratched letters on it, and that a day later, another woman had her throat cut, with an identical knife with the same letters scratched on it found in the vicinity.
So, two deaths, an amateur detective who is friends with the police inspector assigned the case, and a methodical revealing of clues. A nice example of a vintage mystery, if a bit heavy on coincidence, which even Inspector Arkenwright acknowledges. If Constantine hadn't found a few scraps of info that made a low-level person involved divulge more, the police might never have found their killer.
●●●◐○ Operation Time Search - Andre Norton (nov) 1969
Scientists at a college in Ohio had developed a time viewer. They were pointing it at a nearby structure of the Mound Builders, hoping to see some natives of the ancient culture. The scientists had fenced the mound off to keep modern folk away. That made an activist think the college was planning to expand its facilities and destroy the mound, so he sent in a friend, an ex-soldier photographer, to get evidence; Ray was caught in the beam when the scientists increased its intensity, and it opened a door to the past, before overloading and shutting down.
Ray ended up at the edge of a vast forest, perhaps a hundred thousand years in his past, where he was picked up by an Atlantean hunting party. Mu, a continent six times larger than Australia, filled much of the Pacific; it was the mother culture, and had sent out colonies to Uighur (Asia), Mayax (South America), and most importantly, Atlantis (4×AU).
Atlantis had turned against Mu, rejecting the Living Flame it worshiped in favor of Ba-Al, a bull-headed dark god. Taken to an Atlantean ship, Ray escaped with the help of mind powers Cho (a Murian previously captured) possessed, and the pair was rescued by a Murian ship who responded to Cho's mental calls. (Cho talked to Ray via telepathy, and Ray quickly learned the language that way.) The pair were taken home (undergoing a battle on the way — war between Mu and Atlantis had yet to break out, but there were increasing clashes between isolated ships), and Ray was introduced to Lady Aiee, Cho's mother, and through her, the Re Mu, ruler of the land.
The Re Mu and the priests of the Living Flame realized that they could use Ray in their struggle, and (not totally of his own will) he was sent to Atlantis. All this time, scientists back in Ray's future had been trying to reopen the time portal, and had used mechanized telepathy to try to call Ray back to the transition site.
There follows adventures in the enemy's capital city, struggle and triumph, a new friend, a failure, and a twist ending.⁰
[*] Footnotes have been removed, so some parts may lack further explanation. For descriptions of the shorter works, see the weekly posts.

#bokbooks
bok @[email protected] · 2026-01-01 · 21:41 UTC

#Books and #stories for #DecemberReads. | Tag to mute: #BokBooks
Seven novels:
●●●◐○ The Inheritor's War {Behold: Humanity! 17} - Ralts Bloodthorne
●●●○○ The Librarian of Baker Street - Greg Kauffman-Starkey
●●●◐○ 1637: No Peace Beyond the Line {Ring of Fire} - Charles E. Gannon, Eric Flint
●●●○○ The Case of the Ritual Rapist {Miles Grant 16} - Jack Dearborn
●●●●○ Future of Another Timeline - Annalee Newitz
●●●○○ Death in the Dentist's Chair {Dr. Constantine 02} - Molly Thynne
●●●◐○ Operation Time Search - Andre Norton
One novella:
●●●◐○ Divide and Rule - L. Sprague de Camp
Three novelettes:
●●●◐○ The Feminine Metamorphosis - David H. Keller

●●●◐○ Frolic - Cammie Conte
●●●○○ An Unexpected Adventure - Martin Brant
Thirty short stories:
●●●◐○ The Thirsty God - Margaret St. Clair
●●○○○ Every Work Into Judgment - Kris Neville
●●●○○ What’s Inside of People - Matthew McDermott
●●○○○ Static - Alithnayn Abdulkareem
●●●●○ The Black Ewe - Fritz Leiber
●●○○○ If This Be Utopia… - Kris Neville
●●◐○○ Vessels - Michael Shotter
●●●○○ One Leg Is Enough - Kris Neville
●●●◐○ When the Last Gods Die - Fritz Leiber
●●●◐○ Revenge for Stan - Hannah Steenbock
●●●◐○ Going South: Forever - Ted Bun
●●●●○ Aesop's Elevator - William Alexander
●●○○○ Laatlammer - J.S. Louw
●●●○○ Vector - Margaret St. Clair
●●◐○○ Forty Shades of Green - Ted Bun
●●○○○ The Field Journal of Dr. Franklin Nod - Michael Shotter
●○○○○ Armando's Virtuous Crime - Najwa Binshatwan
●●●●○ I'm Looking for "Jeff" - Fritz Leiber
●●○○○ Pest Control - Will Forest
●●●○○ Piety - Margaret St. Clair
●●●●○ Interloper - Poul Anderson
●●●○○ Seeds of Futurity - Kris Neville
●●●◐○ The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles - Margaret St. Clair
●●●○○ 1632 and Beyond, Issue #1 (= 5 ss)
●●●●○ Zabrina Meets the Retro Club - Maddi Gonzalez
●●●●○ A Deskful of Girls - Fritz Leiber
●●○○○ The Gardener's Pitch - Michael Shotter
●●○○○ Roberta - Margaret St. Clair
●●●◐○ Appointment in Tomorrow - Fritz Leiber
●●●◐○ The Emperor's New Towel - Mel Cowan
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2025-12: 34 ss | 03 nvt | 01 nva | 07 nov
2025-11: 23 ss | 03 nvt | 05 nva | 10 nov
2025-10: 30 ss | 00 nvt | 02 nva | 13 nov
2025-09: 26 ss | 02 nvt | 00 nva | 13 nov

#books #stories #decemberreads #bokbooks
bok @[email protected] · 2025-12-29 · 19:25 UTC

#Reading in Week Fifty-Two of 2025 | Dec 22–28 | ~2600 words | ~15,000 characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks |
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●●●○○ Seeds of Futurity - Kris Neville (ss) 1951
“Edward Barnett could discern one unalterable fact: that civilization and humanity were dying. The reasons were as simple as reasons can be in affairs human: too many metal servants, too little work, and absolutely no ambition.” Most people weren't having children, but a few did, though they tired of them soon, and they were turned over to robots to raise.
Edward acquired over a hundred children under a year old, and turned them over to a mute robot caretaker on an isolated island. In eight years, forty were left. Harsh, but only the strong and healthy would suit his needs.
The survivors created their own social structure, self-sufficient, unburdened by the knowledge of the dying world. When they were twenty, Edward gassed them unconscious, loaded them into the suspension room on the ship he'd had robots make them, and set out to find a suitable world. There he unloaded them, leaving before they awakened. Let them build a new world, innocent as babes. Maybe they'd do better.
●●●◐○ The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles - Margaret St. Clair (ss) 1951
The gnoles, who lived on the other side of the forest, had a bad reputation. No human went there. But Mortensen wasn't merely human, he was a salesman. A young, go-getting salesman, who thought it likely that even gnoles had need of the ropes and twines and threads his firm sold. So he decided to peddle his wares on the other side of the forest.
But, though the showing of samples went well initially, gnoles are not humans, and cultures vary, and Mortensen made a major misstep. Ah, well, such is life. Also death.
●●●◐○ Operation Time Search - Andre Norton (nov) 1969
Scientists at a college in Ohio had developed a time viewer. They were pointing it at a nearby structure of the Mound Builders, hoping to see some natives of the ancient culture. The scientists had fenced the mound off to keep modern folk away. That made an activist think the college was planning to expand its facilities and destroy the mound, so he sent in a friend, an ex-soldier photographer, to get evidence; Ray was caught in the beam when the scientists increased the its intensity, and it opened a door to the past, before overloading and shutting down.
Ray ended up at the edge of a vast forest, where he was picked up by an Atlantean hunting party, perhaps a hundred thousand years in his past. Mu, a continent six times larger than Australia, filled much of the Pacific; it was the mother culture, and had sent out colonies to Uighur (Asia), Mayax (South America), and most importantly, Atlantis (4×AU).
Atlantis had turned against Mu, rejecting the Living Flame it worshiped in favor of Ba-Al, a bull-headed dark god. Taken to an Atlantean ship, Ray escaped with the help of Murian Cho's mind powers, and the pair was rescued by Murians. They were taken home (undergoing a battle on the way — war between Mu and Atlantis had yet to break out, but there were increasing clashes between isolated ships), and Ray was introduced to Lady Aiee, Cho's mother, and through her, the Re Mu, ruler of the land.
The Re Mu and the priests of the Living Flame realized that they could use Ray in their struggle, and (not totally of his own will) he was sent to Atlantis. All this time, scientists back in Ray's future had been trying to reopen the time portal, and had used mechanized telepathy to try to call Ray back to the transition site.
There follows adventures in the enemy's capital city, struggle and triumph, a new friend, a failure, and a twist ending.⁰
●●●◐○ The Feminine Metamorphosis - David H. Keller (nvt) 1929
Martha Belzer, number two in the research department at Aviation Consolidated, had for a year stood in for the sick Chief of Research, who's just died. She did not get his job. The company president is blunt: “You were not promoted because you were a woman.” Belzer quietly sends out letters to nine of her friends, women of science and business from all over the United States.
Patricia Powers, only child of the richest man in the country, auctions off all of her late father's stocks to other financiers, raising three billion dollars. Belzer, Powers, and a dozen other notable women take vacations abroad; all suffer fatal accidents, with the bodies not being found.
A hospital is opened in China. The staff is uniformly female, and the hospital pays Chinese men $100 in gold each if they allow one testicle to be removed. (This is described obliquely enough that, if you were a kid reading this, you might not know what was happening.) These are processed and the extract is sent to Paris, where a women's college has been founded; it has extensive medical facilities attached.
Three years later, a new crop of men begin to appear on Wall Street and in other centers of power. They are clannish, well-dressed, brilliant, and have no interest in playing golf or joining the usual men's clubs, though they do supposedly play cards at their new, well-guarded Bridge Club building. They are quickly becoming wealthy and powerful.
It's clear what's going on. The author repeatedly says that women are as smart as men, as hard-working, and if anything better at keeping track of many things at once. The detective on the case (Taine of the Secret Service, whom Keller featured in a series) is hired by worried men on Wall Street who want to know who these new rivals are. Taine is casually but not nastily racist (he uses the "weak gap in armor" term for Chinese people), but seems to acknowledge female equality for most of the story.
This novelette is like a lesbian pulp romance where all goes well for most of the story, only for the sapphic lovers to suffer at the end for Hayes–Code-like reasons. Here, too, the women who thought they'd gamed the system suffer a fall at the end, which doesn't seem to flow from what's gone before.
Everett F. Bleiler in Science Fiction: The Gernsback Years calls this “A bad story,” saying it's “One of Keller's idiosyncratic stories in which he apparently recognizes a social problem, but then distorts reactions to it in a very offensive way.”
Yes, there's blather at the end where Taine says “You went on with your plans, but you forgot God,” and we see that the new-men had extensive, mad-scientist plans. Taine subsequently reveals that the ex-women overlooked something that is already starting to kill them. But for the bulk of the story, I felt that the tone of the work was okay, especially for its time, and the tale doesn't seem anti-feminist to me. Though I may well be blind.
This story is from Gynomorphs, edited by Jean Marie Stine. The 2005 anthology collects three vintage tales from 1929, 1935, and 1938 about female-to-male transitions in pulp scifi. #trans
●●●○○ 1632 and Beyond, Issue #1 - Bjorn Hasseler, ed. (mag) 2023
This first issue of the followup magazine to The Grantville Gazette contains five short stories (four Ring of Fire, one Assiti Shard, specifically Ship People) and a nonfiction piece, plus some other bits. Counts as five shorts; I'll ignore the fact article.
"An Exchange of Favours" by Jody Lynn Nye
Barely a tale, this novel excerpt sees the daughter of an Earl rich in sheep, but poor in cash, come to the big city to plead (unsuccessfully) for a break on her father's taxes. She gets involved with the Grantville delegation currently locked in the Tower of London. (It's a genteel imprisonment, and visitors are allowed.)
"On the Jerichow Road" by S.M. Stirling, Virginia DeMarce
A middle-aged herbalist salesman and a young man on his way to enroll at the University in Jena discuss county politics, and may get the town of Jericho to change things with how it's (not) represented in the new parliament.
"Ill-Met in the Marshes" by Garrett W. Vance
A Japanese couple from a previous story, currently in Thailand, makes preparations to move to Grantville, but not before a local gang of thieves tries to make them pay.
"Indian Tea" by Chuck Thompson
An old Grantville man breaks his sick friend out of a care home to help him give his old manual farm equipment to a down-timer young man so he can get his village's crops harvested even though most of the healthy young men were lost in the war. He also introduces his uptime friend to a yaupon holly bush on his property, whose leaves can be made into a sort of tea.
"Into The Dark" by Iver P. Cooper is set in a Shard where a 2030s luxury cruise liner ends up back in time just after Alexander the Great died, and gets involved in Mediterranean politics. Uptimers also founded a country, New America, on Trinidad, the go-to place in Shard/RoF tales to build your first oil wells. Here, a young ship's carpenter into caving is recruited to find some caves with bat guano deposits, needed to produce saltpeter for black powder. Also fertilizer, as well as other things.
"Farm Equipment That Came Through the Ring of Fire" - George Grant
A fact article that discusses what it says on the tin. "Fact" because Grantville is based on Mannington, a real town in West Virginia, and the author drove around seeing what horse-powered equipment was available.
●●●●○ Zabrina Meets the Retro Club - Maddi Gonzalez (comic) 2025
I did not expect this when I got around to the next epub-split piece from Starstuff. This is not a text story, it's a ten-page comic about a girl (maybe ten?) meeting some online friends for the first time in real-life at the new MALL (Multimedia Augmented Liminal Locations).
One of her friends shows up as a small robot, which Zabrina doesn't realize until the end is an animatronic tele-puppet that allows Dina to interact in the real world, even though she's too ill to do so in her real body.
●●●●○ A Deskful of Girls - Fritz Leiber (ss) 1958
Carr was a detective, hired by the ex-husband of Evelyn Cordew, the era's major screen star. He was meant to retrieve blackmail materials from Dr. Emil Slyker, a consulting psychologist (if you believe his sketchy diploma). Carr had schmoozed Slyker for hours at his club, and had won an invitation to his private office.
Slyker, more than a bit drunk, went on and on about the psychological troubles of his patients, including at last Evelyn. Then Slyker hit a button, trapping Carr in the special chair he was sitting in. Slyker revealed that he didn't possess blackmail materials, so much as ghosts.
These stabilized ectoplasmic envelopes, expressed by patients under emotional circumstances, Slyker detached with special silver shears. These gossamer shed-skins of people could be saved, and reanimated. In the required darkness, Slyker was preparing to do this, when Carr heard someone sneak into the office. He heard Slyker struggling. Then things got weird…
●●○○○ The Gardener's Pitch - Michael Shotter (ss) 2020
Having read four of the eight tales in the Shards collection, I think can say this of Shotter's characters: you don't want to be one, or meet one. Nasty things happen. In this case a young gardener (with aspirations toward landscape architecture) with a hard-luck past is looking for work, and encounters a house whose grounds need it. He sketches some possibilities, then the owner arrives home and asks who he is.
After turning down Ortin's pitch, the just-arrived-home homeowner pulls into his garage, and Ortin glimpses what he thinks is a noose. He feels obliged to see if the homeowner is suicidal, so he sneaks up to the garage window. Turns out it's not a noose. But Ortin's curiosity ends up revealing auto-erotic asphyxiation, murder, snuff films, more. Not a fun story.
●●●◐○ Frolic - Cammie Conte (nvt) 2018
Iris¹ and Sandy, just graduated from high school, spend a week with "Aunt Judith" (an older friend of Iris's mother) in the country. After dinner one warm evening, the three were sitting on the deck, when Judith suggested the pair take a dip in the pool. The girls said they'd get their swimsuits, and Judith said the closest neighbor was a mile away, and they needn't bother. But that first night they did. The next night, however, with more encouragement from Judith…
After the second swim, before Sandy and Iris could get dressed again, Judith asked them to help her make a pie, so for ten minutes they worked naked in the kitchen. Aunt Judith seemed to enjoy the view. The next day a neighbor couple visited, and the discussion that ensued echoed Aunt Judith's pro-nudity, pro-sensuality views, leading to them encouraging Sandy and Iris to kiss each other, which the friends did. Later, after the girls had gone to their room, leaving the Stevens couple and Judith alone, the girls dared each other to cross to the bathroom topless so that the older trio would see them.
Judith continued encouraging nudity and sexuality, and the next day the girls ended up masturbating next to each other in the guest room's queen bed, then taking a nude hike and doing it again in a clearing. When they returned hours later, Judith was hosting a party on the deck with three neighboring couples, and Sandy was daring enough to just walk onto the deck nude, with Iris slowly following. The girls had nude barbecue with the clothed guests, and later played lawn darts naked.
As a naturist tale, this is more soft erotica. Judith is encouraging Iris and Sandy to be nude, and to sexually play with each other. Other guests do the same in a more low-key fashion, but nobody besides the girls get nude. The first time the girls got naked, Aunt Judith even felt their breasts: “Look at how firm they are.” The girls have sex a couple of times (that we see) in a clearing when they went hiking, but the description is kept on a softcore level.
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Week Fifty-Two's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
308+10 ss | 30+2 nvt | 12+0 nva | 123+1 nov | #books
━━━━━━━━━━
[0] Interestingly, Ray tells the Murians that there are legends of Atlantis in his time (a land “said to have vanished beneath the seas in tidal waves and earthquakes because of the wickedness of its people”), but no one believed the legend. Ray says he's never heard of Mu. But he learns that Murians also have legends of an ancient land lost to death and disaster because of human greed and lust: Hyperborea.
[1] Not actually the character's name. Henceforth, if I have to read a first-person viewpoint that never tells me the narrator's name, I'll make up one that starts with "I" for the "I did this" and "I said that" story.
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Light-reading week. Norton's is the only real novel. The other two calendar-top-line (usually where longer works go) works are a magazine I'd already read off-calendar, and an additional short story. At least two of the stories this week are novelettes.

#reading #bokbooks #trans #books
bok @[email protected] · 2025-12-22 · 23:16 UTC

#Reading in Week Fifty-One of 2025 | Dec 15–21 | ~2000 words | ~11,400 characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks |
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●●◐○○ Forty Shades of Green - Ted Bun (ss) 2018
A brief story where Rags, a naturist policeman Bun does a series about, helps friends of his, a newly-retired couple, decide what house they're looking at in Ireland could best be fitted up for nudist activities to host a few couples when weather is nice.
●●○○○ The Field Journal of Dr. Franklin Nod - Michael Shotter (ss) 2020
A scientist makes a discovery vital to national security, gets himself locked up in a Colorado lab. On his monthly outings he falls for a waitress at a nearby diner, and unbeknownst to his warders, gets her pregnant, which gets her installed at a cottage outside the base in the mountain.
He's not there for his son or wife, and eventually the latter dies in a car accident. The scientist makes another discovery, which accidentally sends him to a parallel timeline, where he meets the analog of the waitress and gets her pregnant. As in another story in this Shotter collection, the scientist ends up allergic to his new timeline and dies. The retired owner of the diner reads his journal and disposes of his body, noting that no one who met the scientist ended up better.
●●●●○ Future of Another Timeline - Annalee Newitz (nov) 2019
In a timeline similar to our own (excepting that Harriet Tubman was a senator), five ancient time machines are known. They date back over 400 million years, and are a property of the bedrock in a handful of places. Despite having been known for thousands of years, this world's history is largely the same as ours, which seems unlikely.
The main thrust of the story is Tess of the Daughters of Harriet being a time traveler trying to alter history for the better, primarily to give women and non-whites more rights, and to give women reproductive freedom, since abortion is largely illegal in her USA. Tess is mostly focused on fighting Anthony Comstock in 1893 at the Chicago World's Fair and thereafter, when the anti-vice and anti-birth-control zealot got the powers that resulted in the Comstock Act, which made it illegal to ship information about birth control or abortion in the mail.
Standing against Tess are several Comstockers, men from a divergent future where women have zero rights, and have even been bred for service. They're trying to lock in their future, and are prepared to destroy the time machines when events have been edited more in their favor.
A secondary focus of the novel is Beth, a teenager in 1992 Irvine, California, who likes punk music, has problems with her parents, and has a couple of dangerous friends. Tess tries several times to alter events so that Beth's life doesn't turn so sour she commits suicide.
I don't really buy the setting. We're told that most people think changing history is hard. Then we're told that there are rules against it, and that people do it on the QT. We're told there's only one ever-mutable timeline, but we also talk about "strongly divergent" timelines. We're told you can't bring anything beyond your clothing with you, but then are shown people doing so. (And even if it's just clothing, what prevents you from having all kinds of knowledge printed on your clothing?) There are contradictions up and down the scale, but the story makes it clear we're mostly meant to focus on people-level stuff and try to ignore all that.
●●●○○ Death in the Dentist's Chair {Dr. Constantine 02} - Molly Thynne (nov) 1932
Jewel-bedecked Mrs. Miller was left in the dentist's chair while dental surgeon Davenport¹ took her dentures downstairs to the lab for adjustment. When he got back ten minutes later, the door to the consulting room was locked, and Mrs. Miller didn't answer.
When Davenport's assistant unscrewed the door handle, Dr. Constantine² was with them, having left the waiting room to investigate the noise and the delay in his appointment. He was the first into the consulting room, and the first to see that Mrs. Miller's throat had been slit. It's later revealed that her expensive diamond necklace was stolen, but her almost-as-costly earrings and bracelets and rings were left behind.
With Dr. Constantine in the waiting room had been Sir Richard (whom Constantine later learns was in deep financial trouble) and the widowed Mrs. Vallon (gossipy Lady Farnborough revealed that Mrs. Miller, previously gold-digging young actress Lottie Belmer, had once been a mistress of Mr. Vallon).
A jeweler who knew Constantine's family further revealed that Mr. Miller came from South Africa, and was rumored to have stolen a number of diamonds, for which he'd managed to frame his assistant — who'd gotten out of jail a few months ago, and was known to have headed for England.
There's also the complication that Mrs. Miller was killed with a Chinese knife with some crudely-scratched letters on it, and that a day later, another woman had her throat cut, with an identical knife with the same letters scratched on it found in the vicinity.
So, two deaths, an amateur detective who is friends with the police inspector assigned the case, and a methodical revealing of clues. A nice example of a vintage mystery, if a bit heavy on coincidence, which even Inspector Arkenwright acknowledges. If Constantine hadn't found a few scraps of info that made a low-level person involved divulge more, the police might never have found their killer.
●○○○○ Armando's Virtuous Crime - Najwa Binshatwan (ss) 2021
This is trying to be a climate change fable, but it just comes across as silly. Armando is the chauffeur of the "global climate president," whom he tries to kill by pushing him into the huge pit he was observing (since the bureaucrat is a tool of the rich and actively prevents action on climate change).
Armando gets put in an underground dungeon for weeks, which protects him when "a piece of the sun fell to the Earth," causing such extreme global warming that peoples brain were melting. "Bodies catch alight and even explode." Yeah. Things get increasingly psychedelic, lots of people die, but enough good people are left to plant trees and such, and life gets better.
●●●●○ I'm Looking for "Jeff" - Fritz Leiber (ss) 1952
One of those stories, like "Smoke Ghost", where Leiber has a weird entity inserted into a workaday urban setting. In this case, older bartender Pops sees a very pale woman wearing a slinky black dress and having a distinctive scar diagonally across her face. She always sits on the same bar stool, which his boss Sol and patrons perceive as always empty, no matter how crowded the bar gets, since they can't see her.
Sometimes the woman, Bobby, becomes visible to another patron, and she always mentions to him — it's always a man — that she's looking for Jeff. When the man doesn't know Jeff, events go poorly for the man. One time Bobby points out Jeff to her latest companion: things end in a bloody fashion: a crime is committed, a crime is revealed. Atmospheric.
●●○○○ Pest Control - Will Forest (ss) 2020
A murder in a nudist village on a Caribbean island. The village founder, retired entomologist Dr. Alacantra, has to get a signature for some financial paperwork from her investor/neighbor Ernestine, whose nudity is always highlighted by charms and piercings and other jewelry. Dr. A finds Ernestine dead, clobbered by a small statue.
Young entomologist Betty and her boyfriend Nate turn up to find Dr. A standing over the body. They investigate the scene rather more than they should, and find a hidden stairwell leading down to a cave with old pirate treasure in it³. Two police officers show up and examine the scene, and the younger one reports that
“We have a match from forensics, sir,” said the officer, peering into his phone. “There were two sets of fingerprints on the statue, belonging to the deceased herself, and also to one James Ferreira.”
Instantly. On his phone, from photos taken by his phone. Of course. Jimmy was an exterminator whose van Betty and Nate saw racing from the village as they drove up to it. So, anyway, the mystery and its resolution I dismiss as silly, the cave and the rest sillier still. The naturism part sees the younger officer readily adopt nudism, and encourage his superior to shed his clothes, which he did. So it gets a bit of feel-good on that level, at least.
●●●○○ Piety - Margaret St. Clair (ss) 1947
A small Terran scout ship is visiting an alien world, and its crew has gotten to know a local representative well. They mention how, on the last world they visited, a crew member died in an accident, and that they buried them there, to which the local responded “And you let him die?”
One of the crewmen thinks that means the locals know how to achieve immortality, and conspires with another to get the local drunk and give him gifts beyond the 1850s level tech of the planet. The local remains in control of himself, and the two crewmen have to leave on schedule. The point of view then follows the local, and we learn how their assumptions were wrong.
●●●●○ Interloper - Poul Anderson (ss) 1951
A cloaked shuttle lands in the ocean just off Long Island, and the humanoid being aboard swims ashore, only to be met by a squat, short-snouted, reptilian biped with coal-black skin, who leads him to another alien. We learn that the taller alien's people secretly control Earth, and that all advanced races are telepathic and have no trouble communicating with each other (and also that they have both public and private bands).
The pair bring the new alien to the spaceship of the tall aliens, concealed in an apartment building in Brooklyn, constructed by mind-controlled humans, with mind-controlled staff in public-facing positions. The tall aliens have the strongest telepathy, and three of them working together could shatter the newcomer's mind shield, but for now they just hold a council with the half-dozen other races they allow to exploit the planet.
The newcomer responds to the inquisition, buying time for his people, until eventually we learn who exactly they are and what they need when the tale makes the twist in the end that wasn't unexpected from the clues given.
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Week Fifty-One's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
301+7 ss | 30+0 nvt | 12+0 nva | 124+2 nov | #books
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[1] Always called "Mr. Davenport", not "Dr. Davenport", for some reason.
[2] The amateur-detective hero in this trilogy is a chess expert, not a medical doctor, but he gets called "Dr. Constantine".
[3] At which point my suspension of disbelief snapped. Dr. A mentions that, when the nudist village was being built, Ernestine insisted her cottage be built on its current site. I don't see how the builders could not notice the stairwell, given that the stairs are described as reaching up to floor level, which is likely above ground level.
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Found a bunch more novels by Jack Dearborn (which you have to search for Ellen Dearborn, his wife and editor, to find on Amazon Kindle Unlimited). More mysteries, some thrillers, some westerns. I might try a few, though since his interest in nudism and his wry attitude toward it only seems to have really kicked in in the Miles Grant series around Spring 2019, most of his earlier books likely won't be that interesting to me, if he was turning them into ebooks in the order he wrote them.

#reading #bokbooks #books
bok @[email protected] · 2025-12-15 · 03:59 UTC

#Reading in Week Fifty of 2025 | Dec 08–14 |
~6500 words | ~1150 characters |
Tag to mute: #BokBooks |
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●●●○○ One Leg Is Enough - Kris Neville (ss) 1950
A young man in a support division of the Space Corps applies for a position as a space pilot, but the day after he's told to report to training school in two weeks, he's in an accident that costs him a leg. He drowns in depression until another pilot gets back from Mars and offers him something else…
●●●◐○ When the Last Gods Die - Fritz Leiber (ss) 1951
Millions of years in the future, the last dozen humans return to long-dead Earth for a meeting with the Machine, the descendant of the first intelligent machines their people made eons ago. The god-like humans say they've done everything, seen everything, and are ready to pass on, and they wish their offspring well.
●●●◐○ Revenge for Stan - Hannah Steenbock (ss) 2020
A woman's boyfriend dies, but the coroner rules it a heart attack. She knows it was murder, and sets out to prove that his jealous ex-wife committed the crime. The woman is the manager of a nudist resort, and the case takes place there, but this has little bearing on events.
●●●◐○ Going South: Forever - Ted Bun (ss) 2016
The weather in the UK is often chilly and wet, leaving people miserable. On occasion it turns cold and snowy, sometimes killing hundreds, as in the winter of 1948. The government decided to take steps to change things, and what it decided on was to move the country, lock, stock, and barrel.
Tens of thousands of fracking drills cleaved bedrock, cutting the country off below sea-bottom level, and tens of thousands of ships began towing the detached Britain southward. It took about twenty years, but Britain eventually was parked between the Azores and Portugal.
Because Ted Bun is a naturist fiction author, the story notes that as Britain got warmer and less wet, attitudes toward nudity became less negative, and nudist beaches became common. Because this is a silly story, matters like Northern Ireland are not addressed, and the physical impossibility of The Move is not questioned.
●●●◐○ 1637: No Peace Beyond the Line {Ring of Fire} - Charles E. Gannon, Eric Flint (nov) 2020
A long story continuing to track Eddie Cantrell in the Caribbean, with the Dutch fleet, and the Danish and English settlers, all cut off from Europe by the wars there. The Spanish Fleet is partially destroyed and mostly captured by the United States of Europe's steam warships, and their allies, but next year Spain sends more ships, and there are various battles, mostly won. But then there are events like the Spanish getting local pirates to sack the mostly-Dutch city of Curaçao, wiping it out.
We also follow tensions between the slave holders on Eustatia and the majority who were anti-slavery. We follow the rocky love lives of Eddie and Cathrine, Sophie and Hugh, Leonora and Rik. We see the defense of the oil base on Trinidad from Spanish attack, and the secret exploration for oil in Louisiana. It's quite the long book, with many plots. I'm just annoyed that the direct sequel doesn't seem to be out yet, five years later.
●●●●○ Aesop's Elevator - William Alexander (ss) 2025
I'm annoyed by first-person narratives which make it difficult to have a name to use in these little reviews. This one tops even that, being a weird story where the main character thinks about herself in the second person throughout:
You live inside a flying, kaiju-size turtle.
Your mother designed and built this place.
You realize that you left your breakfast uneaten in the kitchen.
“Why aren’t you angry?” you ask.
It's the tale of a town-size orbital elevator run by the narrator's mother that's maneuvered into a bet by the trillionaire owner of a fleet of rocket ships about which can get the most cargo to geosynchronous orbit in a month, the time it takes Turtletown to makes its ascent. A weird little hopepunk tale, but interesting.
●●○○○ Laatlammer - J.S. Louw (ss) 2021
A woman in Nigeria and her second, unauthorized child (laatlammer = late lamb), and how she must deny her relationship with him, and how her neighbor finds out and blackmails her, making her essentially a slave.
●●●○○ Vector - Margaret St. Clair (ss) 1958
A man gets a call that he's been exposed to the plague that's going around. If it's confirmed when the authorities come by, he'll be burned alive. The man and his wife deal with the firebulance crew, and realize that the regime has made up the plague, to cover up the problems resulting from some post-atomic bomb testing. The couple manages to escape, and are last seen heading for independent California.
●●●○○ The Case of the Ritual Rapist {Miles Grant 16} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2020
A hospital hires Miles Grant to find out who raped the wives of three of their doctors. He must do so quietly, since bad publicity might cost the hospital the large grant it's up for. In his usual plodding way, Miles goes about the hospital looking like an efficiency expert, observing people: the wives all agreed that the masked man was slim and about five foot six. Then, when he finds his suspect, he gets his daughter to pose as a visiting doctor's wife whose husband has to make a quick trip home.
The story ends with the case resolved, of course, but not in the expected way. Dearborn is fine with leaving matters of motivation unexplained in his stories, and we never really learn why the culprit was raping the doctors' wives. On that level, the novel isn't the greatest of mysteries.
On the family nudism front, that's growing to be a bigger chunk of each story. In this book we see Kim Halverson coming to visit, and since she only lives a short distance away, student-drive Stewart is allowed to drive her home (with Miles in the car), all nude during the twilight drive. Another weekend Kim accompanies her boyfriend Stew and his family to a nudist camp.
Stewart chances to see his parents having sex when they left their bedroom door open, and there's discussion of that with each of his parents. Miles's parents also visit for Stewart's sixteenth birthday, and they join the family in nudism.
Miles remembers going to the YMCA on men-only days as a boy, and earning pocket change masturbating men. There's always nudity in the background when the Grants are home, and lots of playful discussion about sex. I find I enjoy the vibe.
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Week Fifty's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
294+7 ss | 30+0 nvt | 12+0 nva | 122+2 nov | #books

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bok @[email protected] · 2025-12-08 · 23:43 UTC

#Reading in Week Forty-Nine of 2025 | Dec 01–07 | ~1400 words | ~8100 characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks |
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●●●◐○ The Thirsty God - Margaret St. Clair (ss) 1953
Brian began a relationship with a Venusian maiden, treated her badly, then dumped her, which led to him fleeing across the plains¹ on not-horseback, with her uncle and a dozen warriors after him. Luckily he found one of the isolated temples the world had, and took shelter. The natives wouldn't follow him there.
Unfortunately for him, the "temple" was actually an ancient Martian biochange station, whereby the extinct natives of the fourth planet adapted themselves to the wetter, hotter conditions of the second planet. The system settings had slipped, and it accepted Brian for adaptation, which proved less than pleasant…
●●○○○ Every Work Into Judgment - Kris Neville (ss) 1950
A large new building on campus has a huge computer system installed in it. Over the years, the building and the computer are extended. It eventually achieves a quiet self-awareness that humans don't know about.
Then the Monster (for so humans call the huge machine), through sheer force of will, manifests first an eye, and then a whole human form, which she (for so humans refer to her) uses to go out into the world.
At which point she makes some religious judgments about how humans are clearly not living up to God's Word as she knows it from the many texts fed into here. Steps will have to be taken.
●●●○○ What’s Inside of People - Matthew McDermott (ss) 2020
Although the men of the Sunny Valley Nudist Resort didn't know it, all the female residents were aware that longtime member Jeff was a dirty old man, given to standing too close or staring too hard. Sometimes he got handsy. And one day he went too far and was killed for his troubles.
This is the story of how resident Mark found all this out, and how he and camp manager Melanie decided there was no reason for the assaulted woman to face the police for her self-defense.
●●●◐○ The Inheritor's War {Behold: Humanity! 17} - Ralts Bloodthorne (nov) 2025
Terran Descent Humanity remains 99.98% extinct, but the "In Case of Death" message they had left was sufficient to give the remaining races of the Confederacy² access to doomsday-level tech that humans usually eschewed, which assisted them in their continuing fight against the Atrekna, invaders from another universe who had already drained four universes of their resources.
(On the extinction event, people are working on restoring the dead humans, which was possible because the Confederacy used SUDS backup – Sentience Uninterrupted Default Storage – though that was currently broken. Unfortunately, because of the massive human die-off, automated systems were also trying to genocide surviving subclades of humankind into SUDS for safekeeping.)
The novel follows many threads, as usual. The pilot of an orbit-to-ground strike-craft crashes behind enemy lines. Vuxten dealing with the consequences of being someone whom people pray to. An Atrekna of the Defiled cult who survives when the normies are killed, and whose cult may be capable of seeing other sophonts as people, not just targets for genocide. The aftermath of the assassination attempt on Nakteti. More.
●●○○○ Static - Alithnayn Abdulkareem (ss) 2025
Earth's ecosystem is collapsing, with droughts, floods, storms, famines, and plagues becoming more and more common. Amina Saud of Nigeria "wins" an "interplanetary lottery" to settle a new planet. Not because she has particular education or skills, but because she's young, healthy, fertile, and, more importantly, beautiful and biracial, which is good PR for the 95% white-and-rich group doing the project.
Amina asks Khail, her boyfriend, to marry her, knowing that her spouse would also get a chance at leaving Earth. But he chooses to stay with ill Mother Earth, rather than be a token on another world. Amina still goes, and we see her life on her new planet, which looks lovely from outside, but is sad within. And after some years, communication with Earth is lost.
●●●●○ The Black Ewe - Fritz Leiber (ss) 1950
Lavinia Simes was odd. She always dressed in black, and always wore next year's fashions (though only sharp old Mrs Grotius noticed the latter). She moved about with her widowed diplomat father, gaining a new boyfriend in every new city. Every boyfriend ended up dying in an accident. And a year or two after the Simes moved on, destruction struck the city they were in. And that one night Lavinia got drunk at a party, and everyone there ended up arguing about political events that hadn't happened—yet. Lavinia is probably an alien working to destabilize Earth.
●●○○○ If This Be Utopia… - Kris Neville (ss) 1950
In a regimented world where efficiency ratings and ID cards ruled everything, Morrison was cracking. It was becoming ever more evident: to his secretary, to his boss, to his underlings. He'd developed a facial tic. He'd used his month's liquor ration in two weeks. And now he had a notice to report to Oversight…
●●◐○○ Vessels - Michael Shotter (ss) 2020
Two hundred years ago, something crashed near the village. Since then, one man in the village has had exceptional strength, and the ability to draw the lifeforce from others to increase it. He fights the great cats that sometimes threaten the village, and similar threats.
A great cat has killed a warrior, and we see how Von (the Vessel) and Jen (the woman slated to marry him and produce the next Vessel) deal with that. There's no explanation of the Vessel's powers, so the vibe is more fantasy than scifi.
●●●○○ The Librarian of Baker Street - Greg Kauffman-Starkey (nov) 2025
Charles Nicolas lived down the street from Sherlock Holmes. He was the head librarian of one of London's many libraries, and he helped his friends Sherlock and John Watson when research was required in one of their cases. He shared a glass of sherry with them from time to time at 222B Baker Street.
When a particularly persistent man came in demanding to see Holmes, while the Great Detective and his colleague were away on a case, Mrs. Hudson took the man to Nico's library. There Nico learned of a missing manuscript by Copernicus, and the wealthy collector who'd been trying to acquire it for months from the annoying man. That led Nico to take the case and head to the small town of Chaltford.
Chaltford was a backward place with a church, a bar, a bakery, a few shops, and a tiny hotel. Also an odd, sticky fog that began just outside of the cobbled main street, in which crashing machines and loud animal noises could be heard. And there was an ancient standing stone, which when touched was felt to be vibrating with power.
Nico was of Uranian orientation (non-practicing), and while in Chaltford he met a farmer, Whitmore Adams, who turned out to be the same. When a sudden fog set in and the loud noises began, the pair ran from the standing stone into town. Both spent the night in Nico's room, in the same bed (nothing happened). Nico solved the case the next day, and was forced to return to London, since his time-off was ended.
Then things just get weird. Turns out Nico's annoying client was a Duke, and Nico got (his second) an audience with the Queen, and she granted him a boon for helping her friend. Nico made a detailed plea for his kind, leading a week later to a newspaper headline: Her Majesty’s Stance On Uranians Relaxes After Hundreds of Years of Laws Against Them. And Nico returns to Chaltford to get Whit (whose tenure there was iffy, since he'd helped Nico prove the town's richest man was a thief and drug-dealer, and the police were addicts) and bring him home to their lodgings. End of story, with a kiss.
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Week Forty-Nine's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
287+7 ss | 30+0 nvt | 12+0 nva | 120+2 nov | #books
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[1] A refreshing difference. Vintage Venus was usually a jungle world, or sometimes an ocean world. Having other biomes is a change of pace.
[2] You know, if you're American, and you use "Confederacy" as the name of a polity in your science fiction, that's a bad sign.

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