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Tag: dystopia

Categories
Humor Science Fiction

Read Service Model

  • Post author By Tracy Durnell
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Read Service Model

Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service. When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into their core programming, they murder their owner. The robot then discovers they can also do something else they never did before: run away. After fleeing the household, they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating, and a robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is finding a new purpose.

This was an interesting farce that relied on ridiculous robot logic, in a good way. I’m not sure how I feel about it but don’t regret having read it. I wasn’t sure where the story was going but liked how it finished.

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Categories
Comics Science Fiction

Read SFSX Vol. 1

  • Post author By Tracy Durnell
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Read SFSX (Safe Sex) Volume 1

In a draconian America where sexuality is strictly bureaucratized and policed, a group of queer sex workers keep the magic alive in an underground club called the Dirty Mind. Using their unique talents for bondage and seduction, they resolve to infiltrate the mysterious government Pleasure Center, free their incarcerated friends, and fight the power!

Love the Tula Lotay covers. I liked the more realistic style interior art towards the beginning; I thought the more cartoony chapter felt off for the dystopian fare. There was a lot of violence and torture, though it didn’t squick me out as much as Monstress. The characters were underdeveloped as this was very plot-focused, with constant action — I’d have liked more between Avory and George, especially earlier in the story. I think there could have been more interesting things going on on the 13th floor — the villains were a little one-note.

Categories
Art and Design Future Building

Dystopian architecture as memorial

  • Post author By Tracy Durnell
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Bookmarked The Aesthetics of Dystopia by Zain Mankani (The Anarchitect)

Dystopia is not just a reflection of oppression and injustice, it is about conserving the memory of that oppression and injustice, and of adapting to the new realities that have emerged out of that injustice. It is about keeping alive the memory of social injustice and transferring that memory in concrete form to the future generations, who must be prepared to react to similar injustices.

Categories
Political Commentary Science Fiction

Read Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole

Read Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim

So they broke into the hole in the ground, and they killed the kid, and all the lights went out in Omelas: click, click, click. And the pipes burst and there was a sewage leak and the newscasters said there was a typhoon on the way, so they (a different “they,” these were the “they” […]

Categories
Romance Science Fiction

Read Her Warrior from the Stars

  • Post author By Tracy Durnell
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Read Fated Mates of the Atari by AG WildeAG Wilde

When I get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to go on a luxury space cruise, I jump at it.
This cruise is the beginning of something amazing, and nothing is going to stop me from going.
But when things go wrong shortly after departure, it’s clear I have made a mistake.
Suddenly thrown into a world where I have no way of defending myself, the last thing I expect is an Atari warrior coming to my rescue.
This cruise has been full of surprises…but the Atari is the biggest one of all.
A version of this story was previously published in the Claimed Among the Stars Anthology. This extended version includes 30K words more of story and fun.

I read the short version of the story in Claimed Among the Stars.

There was a substantial amount of gore in this. I was not necessarily expecting descriptions of blood splashing on her face in my romance 😬

This story has a twist in that all the women in it were physically disabled. There’s some horrifying commentary on ableism that Earth is given an opportunity to offload some of its most burdensome and it’s all disabled women 🤦‍♀️

What I find confusing in this story and many like it is that the worldbuilding is pretty progressive (there’s also health care commentary), but the relationship is mega heteronormative — the hero coming to rescue fair maiden who he’s never met from a horrible life as an alien sex slave 🙄

It irritates me that the women are always sold into sex slavery. Yes, ok, that’s the worst thing that could happen to you (though this story tried to one-up it 👀), but it’s tropey and gross.

I imagine expanding this story (as the author has done) would give more opportunity for the heroine to befriend the other women she meets. Unfortunately it sounds like the revision altered the romantic relationship to a fated mates sitch, which I frankly had appreciated that the relationship was *not* in the version I read. I wonder if she thought she could get away without it in an anthology, but caved to market demand for the full length book she’s selling on its own?

Categories
Romance Science Fiction

Read Deal with the Devil

  • Post author By Tracy Durnell
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Read Deal with the Devil (Mercenary Librarians, #1)

Nina is an information broker with a mission–she and her team of mercenary librarians use their knowledge to save the hopeless in a crumbling America.

Knox is the bitter, battle-weary captain of the Silver Devils. His squad of supersoldiers went AWOL to avoid slaughtering innocents, and now he’s fighting to survive.

They’re on a deadly collision course, and the passion that flares between them only makes it more dangerous. They could burn down the world, destroying each other in the process…

Or they could do the impossible: team up.

I love the premise of this story more than the actual telling. It was a little slow paced for me — I think the road trip format locked them into a less than ideal episodic format where basically every chapter is them stopping for the evening. Surprisingly a lot happened considering the format, so maybe it happened so quickly it didn’t mean that much? Speeding through them made them feel more utilitarian to the story than they needed to be?

I didn’t especially like the random scattered POVs from the other team members.

I don’t understand what her job was or how she made money off of it if she kept the information she bought rather than selling it on.

That said, I was delighted enough by the optimistic tone that I’ll probably read another book in the series. I really liked having a main character who is so active in trying to do good and build community (even if that was more tell than show since we didn’t really see their interactions with the community). This felt quite different from any other dystopian book I’ve read.

Categories
Science Fiction

Watched Westworld S4E1

  • Post author By Tracy Durnell
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Watched The Auguries from m.imdb.com

Seven years after the demise of Rehoboam, events are set in motion that reunite allies and enemies.

So, I have very little idea what’s going on in this show, except that apparently life sucks for everyone. Are they all living in shitty video games? Unclear. It has been a loooong time since season 3 and I basically remember a handful of character deaths and no plot.

Caleb’s wife gets two thumbs down from me: neg him for having PTSD and worrying about the family’s safety, neg him for being a shitty dad when he’s teaching his daughter things that matter to him and some of his feelings rub off on his daughter, jokingly threaten divorce instead of saying please, fuck off lady. You would both be happier with a divorce.

Surprise reappearance of a character I was wondering if they’d ever follow up on.

Categories
Fantasy

Read Iron Widow

  • Post author By Tracy Durnell
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Read Iron Widow

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.

When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​

To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.

This main character was intense and unpredictable, which made for exciting reading. Didn’t bother me that it was YA, though that did mean there “had” to be a love triangle… which she subverted beautifully. Cliffhanger ending. Will be interested to see where this goes in the next couple books (I assume it’ll be a trilogy).

Beautiful cover 😍

Categories
Science Fiction Society

Personable surveillance

  • Post author By Tracy Durnell
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Liked https://mobile.twitter.com/Quinnae_Moon/status/1536207029538197504 (mobile.twitter.com)

We’ve all heard the joke about how people let wiretaps into their homes with Alexa et. al. But what about a wiretap you could empathise with? What about a wiretap that seemed so very like your dead grandmother or spouse? Relatable surveillance.

Worldbuilding (or premise) for a dystopian / cyberpunk story…

Categories
Political Commentary

Crowdfunded war

  • Post author By Tracy Durnell
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Bookmarked

A special kind of modern hell.