#in 2021 I started watching Game of Thrones with a friend/guy I was kind of seeing. I don't miss him or the rest of the friend group

[nostalgicfun]

When we talk about nostalgia we generally talk about our childhood, but what’s something fairly recent-ish you’re somehow already nostalgic for? 🌈

[swordsandrayguns]

Science Fiction And Fantasy Fans Should Write Reviews

Writers, especially indie authors like yours truly, always ask for reviews. Why? Is it just to be annoying? Truth is, on ebook retailers, reviews = increased visibility. Even Google has indicated reviews affect search engine returns. So that is honestly a big part of why authors ask. Some of us also ask because we really want the feedback. I know I do, but I can’t pretend like that is why all authors ask. Because of that, I always feel kind of sleazy asking for them. It is like a waiter not so subtly reminding you to tip as they present the bill. However, I think there is a good reason we (all of us) should write reviews for books we read. I believe it helps the overall science fiction and fantasy community.

Hear me out; I know this sounds like me trying to justify asking for reviews but I really mean it is for the good of us all. See, I am old enough to remember the fan organized science fiction newsletters and fanzines, although I was too young to actually participate in that culture. I do, though, distinctly remember when conventions and other fan gatherings were the only time you could see obscure science fiction and fantasy shows/movies and find certain books, magazines, etc. Back when “anime” was “Japanimation,” for example, the 24 hour viewing room at the local convention was your best, maybe only, chance to see stuff like Vampire Hunter D, Fist of the North Star, Macross or Dirty Pair. If you were lucky, there was a club in your area that gathered monthly and crowded around a TV to watch untranslated VHS tapes traded with other clubs or laserdiscs purchased through friends in Tokyo. I was in one that met monthly at the Pantera’s in Webster Groves. Pizza and Captain Harlock in Japanese makes for a great Saturday afternoon!

Today, there are thousands of anime options out there… you don’t even have to buy them. They are on YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, etc… How do you decide? How do you cut through the madness? Same thing with books. Actually, it is even worse with books because you have all the independent authors and small presses available, too. Back in the day, if you were a science fiction and fantasy fan, you were a “science fiction and fantasy fan;” there were no distinctions and Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain books sat to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation titles and nobody even thought about putting them in separate sections! You read what was at the library or on the paperback rack at the bookseller of your choice because that was all there was! Hardback science fiction was pretty much just from the Science Fiction Book Club (if you had that kind of money/were old enough to enter a mail order contract). I don’t even remember if there was a dedicated fantasy book of the month club; you probably just had to hope the Science Fiction Book Club would throw you the odd bone. If you were lucky, you had maybe a dozen titles in that spinning paperback rack (because science fiction and fantasy probably shared the real estate with Louis L’Amour westerns, spy and detective thrillers and romance novels) and whatever you hadn’t already read at the library. That was it! That was all you could get unless you had spare cash for expensive mail order or could swap books with friends. If you were really lucky some selfless fan would donate a paper grocery sack of their paperback cast-offs to your library and keep you going for weeks! 

But in 2021 Amazon alone dumps about 18 bajillion-million books in your lap (bajillion-million is really a word; they had to invent just to describe Amazon’s book catalog). There are physical books, ebooks, web only stuff and audiobooks. At the same time, the science fiction and fantasy meta-community is now fragmented into at least a thousand distinct fandoms. You do not have to be a science fiction and fantasy fan anymore; you can get very, very specific about your tastes. You only like martial arts stories framed with video game conventions? It’s a thing. Prefer historical novels told from an extraterrestrial point of view? It’s a thing. Female driven tales of magic set in the modern day as a metaphor for larger social problems? It’s a thing. Robots versus dinosaurs? Stories of Elvish warriors with a well defined and unique culture? Belgian post-apocalyptic comic books set in America? They already made that into a TV show. 

How do you cut through the noise and find what you really want? How do you figure it all out? You only have so much time you can read and you have to budget it as carefully as your money… maybe even more carefully. After all, even if you are not buying, most libraries participate in e-book lending systems that still dump thousands of titles in your lap for free. How do you choose between the 400 books with spaceships, lasers and/or dragons on the cover published since you started reading this article? Reviews are your answer. Scratch that; good reviews, written by other fans, are your answer! 

I used to shy away from writing reviews for two reasons: one, I always felt like I should write a dissertation on a book and two, I kind of didn’t want to admit to how many Star Trek books I end up reading because Simon and Schuster sells a new group of Star Trek ebooks every month for 99¢*! And even as I started to adjust my attitude and realize why book reviews are good for the science fiction and fantasy reader communities, it isn’t like anyone needs a review to discover Star Trek, right?

Let’s be real, that is probably fair. It is really, really hard to imagine someone stumbling across Star Trek, Star Wars or Game of Thrones in book form without any previous knowledge of the franchise… and I imagine things for a living! If you are pressed for time or nervous about writing reviews, it seems reasonable to not worry about the big franchises so much. On the flip side, if you are a serious Star Trek or Star Wars reader, for example, you could post reviews mentioning if a story felt true to the series, where the book would fall in the chronology of the overall series, which characters from the shows/movies appeared and the like. Some readers want to know these things and that is really what I think reader reviews should address!

Some of you are nervous about posting a review because you are nervous about sharing your thoughts and writing. I get that (for me it is that I feel obligated to write a dissertation as a matter of respect to the author and the work they put in). I suggest you just write a review as if you were telling a friend about the book. That is essentially what you are doing anyway; true, you probably haven’t met a single person who will read that review but just the fact they are considering reading that book with spaceships and lasers and dragons on the cover makes them part of the big science fiction and fantasy community, so they certainly could be a friend!

When it comes to writing a review, the only rule is no spoilers! You are not trying to re-tell the story, just help potential readers figure out if it is what they want in a story. I honestly suggest answering any questions you wanted answered when you were choosing the book. I think it is fair to mention other, possibly better known, properties the story brought to mind. Not necessarily compare, but more in terms of categorization. “The title suggests this book would be something like Doctor Who, but it made me think more of Blake’s 7 with a dash of Space: 1999,” or “This story reminded me of Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar stories and Greek mythology.” Would you read either of those books? Would you not? That is what I am suggesting we try to do with reviews. 

I think it also might be a good idea to mention any content concerns. “This seemed kind of R-rated for the Star Wars universe,” “The author does not shy away from violence,” and a simple “Contains adult language” could all be tremendously helpful to other readers. This is the only time you might bend (not break) the no spoilers rule... If there is something in the story you believe could truly upset a reader (a racist character, sexual assault, the bad guy kills dogs), mention it if you must. Just try to respect the no spoilers rule to the best of your ability. 

Some people might not want to speak negatively of a book. Maybe you realize just because it was not your cup of tea this does not keep it from being the story that will change someone else’s life or maybe you just believe if you don’t have anything nice to say, be quiet. That is 100% okay. You could only review books you truly like. That is still going to help the community of readers. Or, you can stick to reviews that do not pass judgement. I am advocating reviewing books as a kind of crowd sourced categorization method for the overall and heavily segmented science fiction and fantasy community. With that in mind, I do not believe a “review” has to offer an opinion or judgement about a book, only information to help other readers decide if it is something that may be of interest to them. 

This leaves one big question: where do you post a review? That is a good question and I believe the answer is wherever you would look for information about what to read next. The logical place to start is wherever you got the book. Pretty much every book retailer, be they online or brick and mortar, has a web presence that will let readers post reviews. Some will even automatically ask you for one. That seems a perfectly logical place to post a review, but if you are reading library books there may not be an opportunity to review titles (although my library system does post reader reviews, yours might not). There are social media options, Goodreads springs to mind, but there is no reason you could not post your thoughts on books to Facebook, Twitter, whatever. There are also websites and blogs which take reader reviews. You can post on as many or as few as you want (but please post a review somewhere!)… Personally, I guess I would think about the level of privacy and anonymity I want. As a reader, I did not really think that way but as a writer I do. I will admit I am afraid some Goodreads members, for example, may permanently discount my own writing because I read comic books or assume because I posted reviews of the 1950s Tom Corbett, Space Cadet novels my books are going to be of that shiny silver rocket ship brand of science fiction. I have actually kind of abandoned Goodreads for review platforms were I am anonymous. I do not use my name on Amazon, for example, so I post reviews there. In setting up profiles in other platforms I am careful now to stay generic. Goodreads requires a name, so if that bothers you find another place to post reviews. 

I mentioned the fanzines and conventions earlier in this article. Sometimes I hear people kind of mourning those days, when the science fiction and fantasy community felt like more of a community because it was so much harder to get access to materials and merchandise. Maybe this is the complaining that all generations start as they decide the next generation has it so much easier, but I can say as someone in on the tail end of things, back in the day the science fiction and fantasy community did kind of feel more like a community. Whether you went all in and organized a club, convention or fanzine or just participated by attending or subscribing, fans had to go out of their way to participate and find the things they loved. Nobody was accidentally a science fiction and fantasy fan. Writing reviews, making that little commitment, means you are participating and contributing.

I hope I have convinced you to start reviewing books (or podcasts or movies or whatever part of science fiction and fantasy you love) because it is going to help us all find the next things we love. And also, despite our thousand fandoms today, I personally would love to see the science fiction and fantasy meta-community become a little more of a community again. 

Thanks for reading. It really does mean a great deal to me just to get some other people thinking about this… if you have enjoyed this little article, if you find yourself agreeing with me please take a couple minutes out of your day and review the next book you read. Let me thank you in advance for the person you are going to end up helping to find their next read!

* If you are unaware of Simon and Schuster’s monthly selection of 99¢ Star Trek ebooks, you can find them here, I don’t get a piece of this or anything, just sharing: https://www.simonandschuster.com/startrekbooks

[anovel70]

May 2019 Update

My goals this year have been simple as I narrow down my interests from the previous years. At the beginning of the year (before I got busy and forgot to post my stuff), I came up with three major categories of everything I wanted to do in 2019. Since then, things have changed because of my dislocated shoulder and failures.

work - do good at my job, actuary, investment, do my own taxes and loans, organize my life

social - making friends, find a girl, looking clean

entertainment - Pokemon, TV, running

With work, I don’t know what to think of it. I haven’t gotten fired yet, and I hope I don’t in the future. My coworkers have all been laid off or resigned, which probably gives me job security. I’m struggling with learning my role, and no one really has availability to help me. My coworker is still trying to make me look bad, even though I’m new.

As for my actuary exam, I failed. I got 51.5 on the exam while the pass mark is usually 53. I don’t see the pass mark being any different for this sitting. Failure wasn’t a thing I had considered when I made my plan. Now, I plan on retaking MAS I in the fall, Exam 5 in 2020, and Exam 8 in 2021 before taking a break to focus on my engineering exam.

In May, I just want to sit at Starbucks and focus on statistical programming on R. R is widely used by actuaries and I need to get good at this program. Plus, it helps me understand the material even better if I can integrate it to my studies. I’m not going to be studying for MAS I specifically, but I am going to use the guides from various actuary exams to help me learn and use R to solve problems. In June, I should get my official score report back, and I will start studying for MAS I again.

With R, there are four textbooks that are required reading for exams. Even though R is not required, it is still useful to know to put on your resume. I will separate my learning out in chapters. There are 10 chapters in Statistical Learning, 12 chapters in Time Series, 15 chapters in Bayesian, and 8 chapters in Linear Mixed Models. I don’t care about learning R or learning material in the exams. I will only care about learning practical uses of R, and using R to solve problems in these textbooks will be ideal. There are 45 chapters in total, so I will work at them at a rate of one chapter a day. That will bring me to the end of June, which will be time to start studying for MAS I again.

Now that I’m done studying for actuary for now, I want to figure out what my finances are. My mother made me sign up for a bunch of credit cards that I have not kept track of throughout the years. I also want to handle paying for my student loans myself and keeping track of my two bank accounts. I already have an Excel spreadsheet I used for stocks last year. Now I’m going to expand that spreadsheet to include all of finances. I need to include web links, passwords, and usernames in this spreadsheet.

The first quarter of 2019 was bad. I dislocated my shoulder, then I got sick at speed dating at a college with uninteresting girls. In February, I’ve been watching old scenes from Gossip Girl, Friends, and How I Met Your Mother. I have no idea why. I remembered a scene from 2015 I thought was really funny on Friends. The thought just popped out of nowhere. I haven’t thought about that scene in three years, but somehow I remembered it. It was the last episode where Phoebe thought something was wrong with the phalange.

With TV this year, I hope to watch the Office and Pretty Little Liars, but we’ll see how far I get with this goal. Also, I need to continue watching Game of Thrones, 13RW, and Stranger Things. On top of that, I need to watch Kim Possible Live Action, Pokemon Live Action, and Frozen 2. I watched Kim Possible Live Action, and I watched Christopher Robin live action. I found it on the plane. Then I watched a Wrinkle in Time and now I’m focused on the Man in the High Castle. I will start watching Game of Thrones on May 5.

The only good thing that happened to me this year is my trip to Montana for work. I have a friend from Montana, so I was texting her a lot but that sort of ended after I came back home.

The Man in the High Castle is great. It takes place after WWII when the Axis powers won the war. America is divided between Japan and Germany, while Italy is somehow not referenced, even though they helped the Axis powers. I liked the fact that Germany bombed Washington DC to end the war instead of America bombing Japan to win the war. It is almost like a parallel universe. Also, instead of the Cold War happening between the US and Russia, it happens between Germany and Japan, which is really interesting if you think about it. At first, it looks like Japan is the good guys, since they are underpowered and do not have weapons of mass destruction. Plus, their people have more freedom than under Germany’s rule, but still not as free as the US.

All the main characters are very likeable. Even Hitler is likeable in this timeline. Although he is mostly referenced and only shows up no more than twice in the series, he is the one that’s keeping the peace in the world. However, he’s about to die in 6 months, which will start a war that Japan is guaranteed to lose.

So you have Joe, who’s working for the Nazis, but is considering joining the Resistance against the Nazi and Japan because of his affection for Juliana. Juliana joins the Resistance when she sees her sister gets killed and now she wants answers. Her boyfriend Frank lost his family and is framed for shooting the Japanese crown prince because he actually made a gun and was about to do it. But instead, Ed protects him, who is the biggest bro in the series, and now its Frank’s turn to save Ed from Kido. Frank is working with an antiques seller, Childan, who successfully sold a fake antique, which Frank outed in the first episode of Season 2.

Kido is on everyone’s cases and I really don’t like him. He’s the head of the Japanese police and his main focuses are Ed and the shooting of the prince, even though he found the Nazi who actually killed the prince. He killed Frank’s sister and her family when Frank wouldn’t tell him where Juliana went because they wanted a film from her. Once they found someone that stole Juliana’s bag, it was revealed that this person did not have the film he was looking for, so they freed Frank. He’s also after the Japanese mafia who has a film that Juliana needs to get for the resistance, but the mafia has warned him that they will go public about Japanese officials doing illegal activities if anything bad happened to them. Lastly, he’s after Tagomi, the Japanese trade minister who wants peace between Germany and Japan. He does all this, and yet he claims he is “not a monster” in the second episode.

Now let’s talk about how awesome Tagomi is. He wants peace. He gets a German Nazi Wegener to give him plans for a bomb so that Japan will be on par with German in terms of nuclear weapons. He then gets Wegener out of the Pacific States of America (California) before Kido can accuse him of conspiracy. I love the rivalry between Kido and Tagomi throughout Season 1, but it looks like they won’t be in any scenes together in Season 2. Because of Wegener, Kido thinks Tagomi is responsible for the crown prince’s death. He tries to get Tagomi to stop drug trade from the mafia. He disapproves of hiring Juliana to help Tagomi. Kido says goodbye to Tagomi when he was going to commit an honorable suicide since he failed to find the crown prince’s killer, only to realize he could blame Ed. Tagomi also has a vision of a more peaceful America, which is basically what happens in our timeline. He’s one of the few good guys working in the government.

Unfortunately for Tagomi, his contact Wegener gets arrested by a Nazi, John Smith, who’s been giving Joe instructions. John is also a respectable character, and I like him, even though he wants to kill Juliana for being part of the resistance. He wants to get rid of traitors within the Nazi ranks because Hitler does not want another war once he’s gone. Hitler is aware that there will be war and he does not want this. Hitler is portrayed as a good guy who’s trying to resist war, which is strange because we usually see him as a bad guy in our timeline. Also, the Nazi’s sign in America is an eagle carrying the Nazi swastika, which is really cool because Hitler did not completely remove America’s heritage when he took over.

I really want to see stories in other places, like the UK and France. They do mention Mexico and South America, which makes me wonder what happened to places like China or India. Apparently, the characters want to “flee to Mexico”, but what does that mean? Its actually kind of ironic how Mexico is the “safe place” in this timeline since in our timeline, Trump wants to build a wall.

With Pokemon, that’s been coming along nicely. I’ve finished catching the 403 Pokemon in the Aloladex so now I’m hoping to borrow some games from the library. However, a lot of those games are missing, which puts a dent in my plans. I might have to buy a flashcart sooner than expected if I want to catch them all.

Now in Pokemon, I need to make sure I have one Pokemon from each evolutionary line. I also want them to have their Hidden Abilities. If they evolve by trading, I’ll include the evolved form instead of their base form. For Golem, I will have to include both forms, but the Kanto Golem should have its HA. Since I can search by symbols now, every Pokemon in this breeding living dex that I want to keep or has its HA should have a star so I know which ones I should keep. A heart will mean that it has good stats but no HA.

So my week-by-week plan in May is the following:

5/13: Finish up running, finish watching Man in the High Castle Season 3, start learning R, start learning about my finances, clean up my old computer, finish getting gift Pokemon in Ultra Moon and practice for the VGC weekend

5/20: Grab some friends for the long weekend, finish watching GOT last season, play Pokemon VGC weekend

5/27: watch a bunch of movies, RNG Pokemon Black, finish organizing my Pokemon