#martin macinnes

[easternpine]

Life all around us, inside us

“The air was thick with teeming life, just as the oceans and the rivers were. A spoonful of seawater or a pinch of soil between your fingers held billions of living things. We were blind to this out of necessity, because if we saw what was really there we would never move. It was around us, between us, on the edge of us and inside us. It coated our bodies and we released waves of it when we breathed and spoke. It was in every skin cell and in the eyelashes that fluttered when we dreamed. It adapted to ever aspect of our behavior; if animals were shaded out, and microorganisms illuminated, then our ghosts would be clear in these bright peripheries.”

Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

[writerly-ramblings]

Books Read in September:

1). If I Survive You (Jonathan Escoffery)

2). The House of Doors (Tan Twan Eng)

3). Lifescapes: A Biographer’s Search for the Soul (Ann Wroe)

4). So Late in the Day (Claire Keegan)

5). Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert, trans. Lydia Davis)

6). Stay with Me (Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀)

7). A Spell of Good Things (Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀)

8). All the Little Bird-Hearts (Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow)

9). Prophet Song (Paul Lynch)

10). The Bee Sting (Paul Murray)

11). In Ascension (Martin MacInnes)

12). On Not Being Someone Else: Tales of Our Unled Lives (Andrew H. Miller)

13). The Wren, The Wren (Anne Enright)

14). The Nearest Thing to Life (James Wood)

15). The Fraud (Zadie Smith)

[bormgans]

IN ASCENSION - Martin MacInnes (2023)

A couple of days ago, the shortlist for the Clarke Award was announced. In Ascension is nominated along 5 other titles. As such, the book seems a rare exception of a title that straddles two worlds: science fiction genre fandom, and regular literature – MacInnes’ book was longlisted for the Booker too. Possibly as a result of that longlist spot, In Ascension is being translated in ten languages…

[waywordsstudio]

Review: "In Ascension" by Martin MacInnes -

Yes, it can feel slow-moving, but MacInnes asks us to pause and immerse, because these small "subplots" along the way reveal their cosmic-level significance for all of us. A novel of environmental politics? Of spirit? Of more?

[j-ayne]

Second read of the year

[lilianeruyters]

Martin MacInnes || In Ascension

Booker Prize Longlist 2023 I am afraid I can be short about this one: too much sci-fi for my taste. Sci-fi not in the sense of being set in a galaxy and time far far away but in the sense of an overload of technical details I really could have done without. The enumerations distracted me from what MacInnes was trying to say, I just could not get through to the novel’s real meaning. In In…

[earlyspringtranscendence]

re-reading the sparrow bro at a certain point there was one single person on the whole of earth who alien life forms were speaking to

[stargazerbibi]

[ 3rd march, 2024 • DAY 21/145 ]

studied like 5h. it was mostly a chill day and i'm really happy about finally having a weekend when i can actually rest and do things i enjoy

-> finished building a Super Mario Piranha Plant!! it looks so cool on the bookshelf ahhhh >v<

-> edited a video of me building the Valentine's Day Lego. making stupid videos instead of worrying about everything is kinda fun

-> ES project invariant 3 test (the rage, the rage...)

-> finished reading In Ascension, by Martin Macinnes (what am I supposed to do now. i need more info. where's the info at?! ;-; )

-> ES notes (corresponding to the first week)

[augustinajosefina]

A request

Please suggest books to me! Preferably in the glove kink/lesbian space atrocities, urban fantasy or dark academia genres but I'll happily try any SF/fantasy at least once.

So far I've read and loved:

Before 2023

The Imperial Radch (Ancillary Justice/Sword/Mercy) - Ann Leckie

Jean le Flambeur (The Quantum Thief/The Fractal Prince/The Causal Angel) - Hannu Rajaniemi

The Windup Girl/The Water Knife - Paolo Bagicalupi

Memory of Water/The City of Woven Streets - Emmi Itäranta

2023

The Locked Tomb (Gideon/Harrow/Nona the Ninth) - Tamsyn Muir

The Masquerade (Traitor/Monster/Tyrant Baru Cormorant) - Seth Dickinson

Teixcalaan series (A Memory Called Empire/A Desolation Called Peace) - Arkady Martine

Machineries of Empire (Ninefox Gambit/Raven Stratagem/Revenant Gun/Hexarchate Stories) - Yoon Ha Lee

The Murderbot Diaries (All Systems Red to System Collapse) - Martha Wells

The Broken Earth (The Fifth Season/The Obelisk Gate/The Stone Sky) - N. K. Jemisin

Klara And The Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro

Xuya universe (The Citadel of Weeping Pearls/The Tea Master and the Detective/Seven of Infinities plus short stories) - Aliette de Bodard

This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

The Goblin Emperor/The Witness for the Dead/Grief of Stones - Katherine Addison

Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh

2024

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab

The Craft Sequence (Three Parts Dead/Two Serpents Rise/Full Fathom Five/Last First Snow/Four Roads Cross/Ruin of Angels) - Max Gladstone

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution - R. F. Kuang

Dead Country - Max Gladstone

Hands of the Emperor - Victoria Goddard

Read and liked:

The Moonday Letters - Emmi Itäranta

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

Great Cities (The City We Became/The World We Make) - N. K. Jemisin

Autonomous - Annalee Newitz

Dead Djinn universe (A Master of Djinn/The Haunting of Tram Car 015/A Dead Djinn in Cairo/The Angel of Khan el-Khalili) - P. Djèlí Clark

Even Though I Knew the End - C. L. Polk

Station Eternity - Mur Lafferty

The Mythic Dream - Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe

Shades of Magic (A Darker Shade of Magic/A Gathering of Shadows/A Conjuring of Light/Fragile Threads of Power) - V. E. Schwab

The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling

Last Exit - Max Gladstone

The Stars Are Legion - Kameron Hurley

Ninth House/Hell Bent - Leigh Bardugo

Machine - Elizabeth Bear

Our Wives Under the Sea - Julia Armfield

She Is A Haunting - Trang Thanh Tran

Sisters of the Revolution - Jeff & Ann Vandermeer

Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel

Nettle & Bone - T. Kingfisher

Monstrilio - Gerardo Samano Córdova

Was uncertain about:

Light From Uncommon Stars - Ryka Aoki

The Kaiju Preservation Society - John Scalzi

Paladin's Grace - T. Kingfisher

The House in the Cerulean Sea - TJ Klune

In the Vanishers Palace - Aliette de Bodard

Uprooted - Naomi Novik

What Moves The Dead - T. Kingfisher

All The Birds In The Sky - Charlie Jane Anders

And read and disliked:

To Be Taught, if Fortunate - Becky Chambers

A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon

The Calculating Stars - Mary Robinette Kowal

The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson

How High We Go in the Dark - Sequoia Nagamatsu

Shadow and Bone - Leigh Bardugo

The Passage - Justin Cronin

In Ascension - Martin MacInnes

(My pride insists I add that I have, in fact, read other books as well. Just to be clear.)

[minipliny]

For the book ask, 2, 3, 17!

2. I reread Seamus Heaney's Collected Poetry because it's a giant comfort read to me. I have some of his poems memorised (.......it's the one about the endless depths of the bog because of course it is) and I just. I love the way his poetry sits in the mouth, and the way it's so humane, and the observation of it all. And the set of poems where he just gets super weird about bog mummies. Ideal.

3. Top five books of this year. Oh HARD. I'm going to whittle this down to books that I think may need my gentle encouragement for the world to read them, because you don't need me to tell you that e.g. James Baldwin can write, but this is also verrrry arbitrary because this was a year of reading a lot of really good books

The Fortress, Meša Selimović (a classic of Balkan literature apparently!)

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, Shehan Karunatilaka (...this won the Booker Prize in 2022 but it's really good. It's really good)

Night Theatre, Vikram Paralkar (imprinted permanently on my brain)

Azazeel, Youssef Ziedan (a Syrian monk, Arianism debates, Hypatia of Alexandria, doomed and not so doomed love and the devil. Ideal)

In Ascension, Martin MacInnes (MOSS AND LICHEN BOOK MOSS AND LICHEN BOOK)

17. Already answered this one for surprisingly good books but I'm going to add a shout-out to the Shardlake series which I'm mid-audiobook of for being absolutely fantastic Tudor crime adventures because I'm so fond of Shardlake. He just wants to do the right thing and help out and he is all too fucking aware that he is in the fucking Tudor era and there is always going to be one more thing. I appreciate very much his inner monologue about not wanting to do his damn exercises for his scoliosis because he is too busy trying to lawyer up. I appreciate that he is solving crimes as a property lawyer. I appreciate that he gets ~*~ disillusioned ~*~ about Cromwell. I appreciate that he is like, trans rights while having no fucking idea what's going on because its 1531. My precious baby Shardlake. Katherine Parr didn't know what she was missing out on. Truly the opposite of copaganda.

[exponentiate]

StoryGraph puts together a book cover collage of the books you finished this year. (No alt text as it’s 110 book covers and the only thing worse than me trying to type them out would be someone’s screen reader reading them out. But if you’re curious about them I’m @tgebst on StoryGraph or you can ask!)

I don’t do ratings, but I did pick my top 3 books that I read each month, which I will paste under the cut.

January

The Helm of Midnight (Marina J Lostetter)

Spear (Nicola Griffith)

Use of Weapons (Iain M Banks)

February

Him (Geoff Ryman)

Exordia (Seth Dickinson)

Just Like Home (Sarah Gailey)

March

In Ascension (Martin MacInnes)

The Cage of Dark Hours (Marina J Lostetter)

Bang Bang Bodhisattva (Aubrey Wood)

April

Babel-17 (Samuel R Delaney)

Deadhouse Gates (Stephen Erikson)

Memories of Ice (Stephen Erikson)

May

Barrayar (Lois McMaster Bujold)

Brothers in Arms (Lois McMaster Bujold)

The Circumference of the World (Lavie Tidhar)

June

The Unraveling (Benjamin Rosenbaum)

The Mountain in the Sea (Ray Nayler)

The Unbroken (C L Clark)

July

A Scanner Darkly (Philip K Dick)

Bury Your Gays (Chuck Tingle)

The Element of Fire (Martha Wells)

August

Ubik (Philip K Dick)

The Tainted Cup (Robert Jackson Bennett)

Nemesis Games (James S A Corey) (I guess)

September

Assassin’s Apprentice (Robin Hobb)

These Burning Stars (Bethany Jacobs)

Babylon’s Ashes (James S A Corey)

October

Assassin’s Quest (Robin Hobb)

Tiamat’s Wrath (James S A Corey)

Monstrous Regiment (Terry Pratchett)

November

1984 (George Orwell)

The Sunforge (Sascha Stronach)

Three Assassins (Kotaro Isaka)

December

The Saint of Bright Doors (Vajra Chandrasekera)

Ship of Magic (Robin Hobb)

Mad Ship (Robin Hobb)

These were not all the good books I read this year! But you gotta narrow it down somehow. I mean, you don’t gotta. But you kinda gotta.

[easternpine]

"Life is a repeated failure to apprehend something. Coming close then veering away again, sensing this unnameable category, music heard distantly through a series of doors, a dull echoing bass, a sound hitting your body."

-Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

[noxaeternaetc]

Matthew Wong (1984-2019) End of the Day, 2019. Oil on canvas, 203.2 × 178.1 cm.

According to the description in the museum: 'Visualising the idea of that place or memory or thing that transcends its physical experience, but at the same time simply doesn't exist.' This is how Wong articulated a central theme of his art. The landscape in 'End of the day' is such a place that transcends reality to evoke a distinct emotion. With a solitary figure in the painting, Wong expressed the feeling of being alone in an overwhelming world.

Somehow that abrupt transition from sunset to stars reminded me of photographs taken from the ISS of earth's atmosphere:

Together with the small human figure dipping their toe in a lake or river this created a sense of vastness and depth

It reminded me somehow of a passage from In Ascenscion (Martin MacInnes, 2023):

"The experience was uncanny, with something of the vivid irreality I'd noted in my childhood during episodes of shock. I was there and not there. I swam through the sunlight layer at the same time as I looked back on myself from some unknown, uncertain future point […] It was only then that I started to become aware - really, viscerally aware- of the depth. I was perhaps an equal distance from the seafloor and the upper sky, the ocean under me as far away as aircrafts above. The realisation hit me in the pit of my stomach. I moved my arms to test and reinforce buoyancy, some precaution against plummeting, and then suddenly I felt like I was moving through the sky.[…] Drifting, hanging as a star on the sea surface. The sky and the sea exactly the same ultramarine. A sense of existing at a great height, of exceeding something, of being close to the unlimited."

[sobreiromecanico]

Fórum Fantástico 2024 - Sugestões de Leitura

A edição deste ano do Fórum Fantástico viu regressar - e em boa hora, acrescente-se - o clássico painel de sugestões de leitura, ou leituras do ano. Foi no Sábado às 10:30, uma hora quase madrugadora que nem por isso demoveu uma bela plateia no auditório da Biblioteca Orlando Ribeiro. Desta vez, o painel contou com as sugestões do Rogério Ribeiro, da Cristina Alves, do Artur Coelho, e das minhas também.

O Artur já divulgou as dele aqui; a Cristina deverá fazê-lo entretanto (actualizarei o artigo). As minhas seguem-se agora:

The Vanished Birds, de Simon Jimenez (2020)

The Spear Cuts Through Water, de Simon Jimenez (2022)

The Saint of Bright Doors, de Vajra Chandrasekera (2023)

The Siege of Burning Grass, de Premee Mohamed (2024)

Some Desperate Glory, de Emily Tesh

Drinking From Graveyard Wells, de Yvette Lisa Ndlovu (2023)

Meet Us By the Roaring Sea, de Akil Kumarasamy (2022)

Como Sobreviver Depois da Morte, de André Canhoto Costa (2024)

In Ascension, de Martin MacInnes (2023)

Track Changes: Selected Reviews, de Abigail Nussbaum

DIE, de Kieron Gillen e Stephanie Hans (2018-2021)

It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth, de Zoe Thorogood (2022)

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, de Kate Beaton (2022)

Rare Flavours, de Ram V e Filipe Andrade (2024)

Deixei ficar uns quantos de fora (assim de repente: Arboreality, de Rebecca Campbell, e O Mangusto, de Joana Mosi), mas o Rogério já prometeu que no próximo ano o painel regressa, pelo que deverá haver nova oportunidade.

[waywordsstudio]

3 Word Review: “In Ascenscion” by Martin MacInnes -

Akin to the visionary work of Arthur C. Clarke but latched firmly into hard science, yet still a story crafted with literary rewards.

[darthmaclunkey]

since I did it with films, woe: all the books I've read so far in 2024 and my brief thoughts on them be upon ye:

some desperate glory (emily tesh) - very underrated (so far), great debut sci-fi with a very well crafted MC. highly recommend if you're into space opera

hurdy gurdy (christopher wilson) - looked funny, was kinda funny, but contemporary references were a bit unsubtle. immediately gave to my dad after reading. it's a liberal dad kinda book

the doloriad (missouri williams) - I got #influenced by an instagram book account to read this because they said it was too gross for them. it was interesting and very poetic, but by talos did it need a paragraph break or two

tender is the flesh (agustina bazterrica) - subtle as a brick. didn't really like the way it was written but I'm never really sure if that's a valid criticism when something is translated

eileen (otessa moshfegh) - actually loved this. more gross woman protags pls

the mother tongue (bill bryson) - I had the original edition (library book) so some of it was a bit out of date but still interesting and fun to read

the terraformers (analee newitz) - worldbuilding was decent but man was this badly written. I ended up speedreading just to move onto another book and immediately donated it to the local free library shelf

hell bent (leigh bardugo) - very enjoyable, but I think it should have been hornier, actually, considering how much word count was spent on darlington's glowstick dick

on writing (stephen king) - genuinely great advice. my copy has about 1000 sticky tabs and notes in it now

system collapse (martha wells) - i ♥ murderbot forever and always

in ascension (martin macinnes) - this was so boring. rip to all the ppl who loved it but what was it saying, really, that couldn't have been said in a sub-5,000 word short

cursed bread (sophie mackintosh) - enjoyed, but I don't really remember much about it. probably because I read it in a crowded airport while waiting for a heavily delayed ryanair flight

camp zero (michelle min sterling) - didn't feel like it fully explored all the routes it should have, but the chapters written from the collective perspective of the researchers were interesting

klara and the sun (kazuo ishiguro) - oof ouch owie my feelings

the beauty (aliya whiteley) - technically a short story but I read it in book format. it was fun

shadow and bone (leigh bardugo) - if I'd read this when I was 12, you best believe I'd have spent my teenage years writing fanfiction about the darkling. as a 29 year old, wasn't really for me tho

the player of games (iain m banks) - talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, showstopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or not reference, put it in a blender, shit on it, vomit on it, eat it, give birth to it. RIP iain banks, you are sorely missed

lord jim at home (dinah brooke) - visceral read. probably best read in one sitting if poss, the pacing is breakneck

the word for world is forest (ursula k le guin) - to paraphrase a shelf label under her books in my local indie bookshop: "JUST READ HER!! READ ANYTHING BY HER!!!!"

children of time (aidrian tchaikovsky) - really good. I will never look at spiders the same way

giovanni's room (james baldwin) - astonishing. one of those classics where you're like 'I'm sure this will be good' but then you read it and you're like 'nobody quite conveyed just HOW good tho'

red rising (pierce brown) - hated this tbh. the hunger games for redditors. darrow is a textbook mary-sue but ppl in the goodreads reviews don't seem ready to have that conversation

for thy great pain have mercy on my little pain (victoria mackenzie) - interesting speculative history, very beautifully conveyed

brutes (dizz tate) - do I know what was going on? no, but I really liked it, so well observed

the discomfort of evening (lucas rijneveld) - another one where I was #influenced because an instagram book person said it was too gross for them. I think it was actually a bit too gross for me too, but I can appreciate that it was well written

pride and prejudice (jane austen) - only read it because I'm going to a p&p themed party but my god, they're not lying, it really is THAT good

currently reading: islands of abandonment (cal flyn)

I am on storygraph if you find my taste in books compelling; I'm always looking for book recs: storygraph