N things make a post

[cjsmith]

The moon is beautiful tonight. I look up at it and think of others also looking at the moon, people both near me and far away. ♥

Seven more work days. I. Will. Survive.

I would throw a “yay unemployed!” party but if I invite people they don’t come, and Rob doesn’t have time to send out invites. Maybe next career change. I do seem to be prone to them!

I just had homemade chicken curry for dinner BECAUSE I CAN and I am about to eat a tiny slice of rosehip jelly candy BECAUSE I CAN and I shall probably have ice cream with frangelico on it for dessert BECAUSE... sense a theme yet?... and then I’m going to sit in the hot tub and then finish Red Mars. Life has its problems but right now it’s acting pretty sweet. Long may the honeymoon phase last.

Comments

[wcg]

The moon looks beautiful from Arizona too. Enjoy your delights.

[cjsmith]

Thank you! I hope you enjoy your evening, and the view, and your vacation, as well.

[zahraa]

The moon was amazing. I saw it rising near Mt. Lassen. Yay, Red Mars! I just loved it.

[cjsmith]

I love living on a planet with a nice big moon!

I was less enamored of Red Mars. I guess I'm just not the target audience.

[zahraa]

We do have an amazing moon.

Red Mars is different from a lot of Stan's other work, and even the rest of the Mars series, in that it had that murder mystery aspect. But that was part of what I liked about it. I thought it tied the story together and made the flow better. A lot of Stan's work, well, drags.

[cjsmith]

Wow, I didn’t even catch a murder mystery aspect. I mean, yeah, there were killings aplenty, but even from the intro chapter we seem to know who did a lot of it (even though it may take a while to see why). I guess there’s the mystery of where the heck Hiroko went. :)

To me the book had two messages: 1) I am sooooo smart, and 2) humans seriously suck.

[zahraa]

The book starts out with a murder. We know a lot, yes, but there's still some stuff to be figured out. It's true that the theme of a lot of Stan's work is 2) humans seriously suck. But the theme of an awful lot of literature is 1) I am soooo smart. I mean, an author's writing a book, right? That's a thing that smart people do. I'm not so sure that's a terrible flaw. I get that you find it annoying, though. Certainly, to the extent it's a flaw, it's a flaw that pervades Heinlein's work.

[cjsmith]

It’s true that there’s a lot of back story on why that murder took place that we figure out throughout the book. I enjoy that aspect of a complex storyline. I think that was well done in Red Mars.

Not sure I’ve read enough Kim Stanley Robinson to know about theme 2). If that’s so, perhaps he’ll never really be a favorite of mine.

I find 1) is a very strong theme in a certain branch of science fiction. It’s as if the author has to beat you over the head with it and if he is insufficiently heavy handed he won’t get published. I agree it’s pervasive in Heinlein too. It’s one of the themes I find tiresome in (what I guess people call “hard”?) sf. Authors can be smart - blindingly smart - without being so pushy about it: Weir had a deft touch with it in The Martian.

[zahraa]

Well, on theme 2), he writes a lot about climate change, which kinda comes down to theme 2).

You are definitely right that a lot of hard SF features theme 1). I guess I have a relatively high tolerance for it.

[cjsmith]

Yeah, climate change is 2), also 100 people can’t get along enough to set up the most basic framework on a new planet... Perhaps he simply doesn’t like people much. He wouldn’t be the first. :)

And yeah, I used to have a much higher tolerance of the dick-waving of theme 1), and now I’m a lot pickier in that I view it as juvenile ego display and I wish its participants at least had the maturity to be a little embarrassed about it and paper over it a bit. God, but I’m old and grumpy! What a curmudgeon.

[zahraa]

Huh. I guess I hadn't thought of it as dick-waving, really. I think of dick-waving as showing off how much you can hurt someone else. I guess showing off how smart you were could be some form of dick-waving. It's never tweaked my dick-waving allergy, though.

[cjsmith]

Ah - I think of dick-waving as any form of the one-upmanship showing-off self-congratulatory competitive posturing stuff that is so incredibly prevalent in American alpha-male hierarchy-status-sensitive culture. Showing off how much one can hurt someone else is one case, yes, and I'd have to agree it's among the most poisonous.

I know people who are by nature bisexual and who have simply said no more cis het men in their lives. I'm... close. (See? CURMUDGEON!)

[zahraa]

Ah. I am super sensitive to power imbalances in relationships, so the thing that really bugs me is the lording a position of power over someone else. I find this theme pervasive in fantasy literature, and it's part of why I don't like to read it.

As for the other posturing, I do remember going to parties in the 90's where we would see a lot of behavior that Zyxwvut would describe as "My career is bigger than your career." I merely find that annoying. I think it's really hard to draw the line between the sort of posturing that you're talking about and, "I got a raise!" or "I got a promotion!" or "I won a photo prize!" or even "I hit a 200-day Duolingo streak!" (which are things to which I myself might posture about, and I'm female and short, but you know).

[cjsmith]

In my social circles I see a lot of “my brain is bigger than your brain”. It’s one thing to say I hit a 200 day Duolingo streak but quite another to say it right after someone else was happy about having hit 100. And the little oh-so-clever digs on social media, made so that the snarkiest person will get extra thumbs up, always the one-upmanship of smarter word play or the slightly more pointed zinger of a comment or... Yeah, there are reasons I don’t have many friends.

[zahraa]

I see exactly what you mean. I bet avoiding Facebook has helped a lot!

[cjsmith]

A ton. There are people I think are great in person whom I frankly dislike on social media (or perhaps just on FB). Those behaviors have simply reached a limit for me. I’m no longer willing to put up with them at all.

[marahmarie]

Is this the chicken curry with tomatoes? I think I had the curry I swapped recipes with you on a few weeks back on the same day (subbed shrimp)! (Behind on my reading, as I'm sure you can tell by this.)

Glad yay unemployed! moment's almost arrived. :)

[cjsmith]

It is! I hope you enjoyed yours. :)