Sunday Story Ratings #14: Orion Arm

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Orion Arm by Julian May

Originally published 1999; this edition 2000

Publisher: Voyager

 

M

(V, S, L, D)

Violence

Sexual References

Coarse Language

Drug Use

 

Representations

Gender:

As with the first novel in this series, first-person narration by the male protagonist. There are also anonymised interludes from the perspective of a male antagonist. Essentially identical to Perseus Spur.

Sex:

First appearance of non-vanilla, non-heterosexual is as degrading exploitation of prisoners for gratification of the privileged classes and each other. There are some incidental trans characters portrayed as grotesque and potentially victims of coercion. One character on the side of the heroes mentions in a throwaway line having previously been in a relationship with another woman. All other depictions of non-normative sexuality are as perversion or punishment.

Race & Ethnicity:

The characters of colour from the previous book return in reduced roles. One new character is from Eastern Europe.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

The characters must deal with aliens of diminutive stature relative to humans, and spend time on one of their vessels. Coercive body modification including transgenderism used as threat, punishment and symbol of moral corruption.

 

Awards

None of note.

At least the worst of what is mentioned above had a relatively small presence in the story.

In a series like this it is normal, I believe, for the cast to expand and fill out over successive volumes. Here the focus contracts around the narrator / protagonist more tightly, meaning we see less of the characters I liked from the first volume and the new characters have reduced presence compared to last time.

I also dislike in mysteries getting anonymised snippets from the or a villain's perspective. The additional context gets in the way of my desire for 'pure' detection, where we have only information and perspectives available to the protagonists and they must work out what is happening, how and why, without our knowing for sure. In this case, because the last book left us with a strongly favoured suspect for a traitor, the anonymised perspective here made it pretty immediately clear to me which other person it actually was and spoiling what may have been meant to be a twist toward the end of the novel. I probably would have been surprised otherwise (because I'd not noticed a significant clue in the first book).

This would have been a satisfying end to the story except that all the outcomes promised on the first page of the first book had not yet happened, so I ordered a cheap copy of the final volume. This copy, along with the first volume, was picked up from a discount bin at a newsagent most of a decade ago.

Tserss

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Feeling quite stressed of late because I am trying to go back to university and finish that astronomy degree I failed and dropped out of barely short of graduating.

I've been trying to get myself back up to speed by doing exercises from my old textbooks on a supposedly regular basis for over a year now, particularly mathematics since that is what brought me low last time, and having a hard time of it. That's a hard time in the regularity and in the successful accomplishment thereof. The last one I spent a couple of weeks asking advice and looking up online educational resources to discover where I went wrong, only to finally discover I had it correct to begin with. That's partly heartening in reassuring me I have some competence, but also frustrates me with all the time wasted.

Problem is - I may have mentioned this before - the university I had been studying at no longer offers astronomy or just about any 'hard' science courses, so I've had to apply at another one. I did that some months ago and got accepted, and also paid for a transcript for the old course and made my application for credit for prior studies, so hopefully I won't have to do the whole thing over.

That came back in the affirmative too, and now on Friday I have my actual enrolment session, where I put in the units I want to study and hope they are accepted, and that I am awarded any actual exemptions. All I got so far are credit points for potential exemptions, and I have to present unit outlines for my old classes and find out if I get to not have to repeat that part. Stressful. Will probably have to get in touch when I can this week and get some clarifications on details like, do I put down units I hope to get exempted from on my plan of study and hope to get out of them, or do I assume that and change things if I don't get them?

Especially worrying because I still have that job and want to keep it while studying, so I'm aiming to do this course part-time if I can. I didn't look for work when I was studying previously because I didn't believe I was capable of studying and working successfully simultaneously.

Also stressful because I want to move to the USA to be with my loved ones, and I'm worried that putting another 3-6 before that to get some letters after my name is a terrible decision. I'm not sure I ought to get those exemptions anyway, because it has been so long I hardly remember any of what I studied.

My plan, such as it is, is to accumulate workplace experience while here - I'd hoped to get a job right out of my library technician course in mid-2009 and have built up enough experience to be moving overseas nowabouts with some hope of being employable over there - get this degree, move overseas and potentially bolt a library Masters degree on top of it after moving. It's all very optimistic.

Well, a bit of further optimism occurred to me today. Am wanting to mainly computing units for electives, so started wondering if maybe I can do the core units, the physics and astronomy parts and their pre-requisites first, then switch to distance education and do the electives I need to graduate remotely, after moving. It may not be possible, but it could make things less stressful if it is.

Let's see if I am panicking more or less a week from now.

Because one can never do too many things, or pad supposed leisure too much

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Nevermind that previous stuff, I've taken it into my head to try a couple more reading projects (current one is 'read books I've bought but haven't read, interspersed with other unread-by-me books in the house and rereads', if we want to dignify that as a project. 'tis really more an artefact of compulsive systematising that enables me to be less paralysed by indecision.).

Since starting work at the library I've been tempted to do something foolish like 'make a goal of reading all the books on the Premier's Reading Challenge (PRC) list'. I feel I can justify that as a sort of professional development activity, familiarise myself somewhat with what's what in children's and youth literature these days. The trouble has been where I would fit this reading in, since it is a huge list - I would take the current year's list and go through that, however many actual years it takes - and I don't want to cut time out from reading other things. It felt a bit more doable when the other idea crept into my head, however.

The other idea is, since I've been having a craving for crime / mystery / spy / thriller fiction of recent, why not take a reading tour of the genre? I've been trying to compile a list of notable authors and would greatly appreciate any recommendations - or just single book recommendations, if someone wrote only a small number worth reading. I tried putting out a call on Twitter previously but didn't get any response. Hopefully people here will know some good ones? Otherwise I'll just have to get by on personal experience and names with big advertising budgets.

When I think about it, I would tend to say science fiction, fantasy, and mystery are the three main genres I read. But I've read hardly any mystery in a long time because the first two get much higher priority from me, especially for purchasing, and I've ironically not used a library for enjoyment in many years.

At the moment my reading pattern is alternating something in my to-read pile with something else from around the house, and I am thinking to make that into a rotation, with a book from the mystery reading tour and one or a small number from the Premier's Reading Challenge added to that. I probably won't do ratings for many of the PRC books, because many especially early on are picture books or 10-minute reads and the prospect is exhausting. Might do a few words about what I thought of them?

Anyway, the point amidst all that rambling, so far as audience participation goes, is a request for author or book recommendations. I've got a couple of other reading projects in mind that I might ask recommendations for later, too, but I'd rather give these a try first. See how it goes.

Edit: Thought I should include the list so far. Those with an asterisk are authors I've read something by already.

Raymond Chandler

Agatha Christie*

P. D. James

Ruth Rendell

Dorothy L. Sayers

Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe)

Dashiell Hammett

Bill Pronzini (Nameless)*

Patricia Cornwell

Sue Grafton

Michael Connelly*

Ross Macdonald

John Le Carre

Elizabeth Peters

John Creasey?

Ian Fleming*

Len Deighton

John Dickson Carr

Edith Pargeter (AKA Ellis Peters - Cadfael)

G. K. Chesterton

Jeffery Deaver

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*

By the by

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

I've also been posting at Google+ and Diaspora* for a while now. Mostly crossposts of the same stuff as here, but perhaps people would rather use those other sites, or get an invitation to Diaspora, where the main obstacle to being a more exciting site is a lack of users in its alpha state. Which is easy to fix if people want to try a more user- and privacy-centric social networking site than Facebook or Google+.

Blah! I flee now! *vanishes into the distance*