Documentary Review: Don't Die

On Bryan Johnson's obsessive quest to bring science fiction to real life

Cards on the table: I fully agree that death is bad. Zero stars, don't recommend. I'll be among the cheering crowd if medical technology somehow succeeds at solving all diseases and making it possible for us to live thousands or millions of years—emphasis on if. So far I've found no reasons to expect that über-rich tech bro Bryan Johnson will succeed at outrunning his own body and unlocking the secret to immortality. The current state of scientific progress simply isn't there yet. However, his Netflix infomercial documentary Don't Die, which you shouldn't for a second believe isn't part of his meticulously curated regimen of 24/7 self-branding, does something more interesting than expositing on the state of the art of the study of aging. Where he aimed at portraying himself as a bold pioneer opening up the next frontier of human history, what actually comes off is a tragic character study whose inadvertent revelations reach beyond the power of his obvious control over the narrative.

That's right, people: I'm taking the message from the enemy of death and applying Death of the Author to it. Irony engines, engage!

You can easily guess my verdict on Don't Die by the fact that it presents itself as a true story from real life but this is a science fiction blog. Johnson's self-imposed mission to eliminate death is, in the most literal sense, science fiction: his goal is unfeasible in this century, no matter how vehemently he persists in preaching the gospel of eternal youth. It's been a while since fellow anti-death prophet Raymond Kurzweil made one of his eyebrow-raising predictions about extending human life to infinity by digital means, and until actual results are shown, we should remain no less skeptical of Bryan Johnson's promise to achieve the same by chemical means. (And no, his massive abs don't count as "results." At a decade older, Jason Statham looks just as ripped and far less stressed.) We won't know for certain whether those numbers on the chart of Johnson's biomarkers mean something until he enters actual old age.

While we wait for the big news, he's hard to tell apart from other enthusiasts of extreme body modification, such as Henry Damon, Michel Praddo, or Dennis Avner, whom I don't recommend you look up. However, those guys tend to describe their transformations in terms of artistic self-expression. Despite his habit of posing half-nude for Instagram, Bryan Johnson doesn't appear to be motivated by an aesthetic ideal, or at least doesn't claim to be. His grueling routine of over a hundred pills, brutal weightlifting, sessions of artificial light, a set of diet restrictions that can only be described as sadistic, and the occasional injection of plasma from his son (because why try to live forever if you can't go full vampire) don't add up to an enjoyable life. The documentary even recognizes the incongruity of spending so much of his waking hours working so hard to buy himself more days of life... which he ends up not living because he's too busy trying not to die. If this were a form of artistic self-expression, its message would be legible as a cry for help. Could Johnson be staging an elaborate performance project, a vociferous statement on the commercialization of healthcare and the fundamental inequality that lets him fly outside of US jurisdiction to receive super-illegal genetic therapies for a sum that could buy years' worth of deworming pills for Third World kids? Or is he instead the world's worst case of orthorexia? Is he like French artist Orlan, who uses her own body as the shapeable material of her work, or is he like Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, who spent his old age desperately seeking an alchemist who could brew the elixir of eternal life?

Regardless of whatever useful scientific advance may eventually result from this, the one thing that is clear about Johnson is that he's a businessman, and he's learned very well how to sell his product. At the start of the documentary, the camera quickly scans over a long list of the blood tests he takes regularly, conspicuously stopping at the exact position where his testosterone levels would appear right in the center of the frame. In a later scene, text on the screen summarizes his progress according to various medical parameters, the unmissable last of which is the quality of his erections. Johnson knows exactly the demographic of insecure young men that his message is likely to attract. He ought to know; he's been there.

Johnson lets us glimpse bits of his psychology when he starts recounting his youth in the Mormon church, his way too early marriage, his first business successes and the soul-draining rhythm of nonstop work that it took to become a multimillionaire. He describes a period of suicidal depression around his 30s, when he realized that he didn't know in what direction he wanted to go with his life. He did end up leaving the Mormon church, but he seems to have never noticed how the particularly twisted Mormon version of patriarchal expectations must have contributed to his mental breakdown. Like many people with depression, he correctly identified that he shouldn't listen when his mind was telling him that he had to die. Unlike probably everyone else with depression, he took that insight too far, and decided to stop listening to his mind about anything. When he describes how he built an inflexible algorithm that makes all life decisions for him, his evident relief is hard to empathize with. It's like hearing Victor Frankenstein tell the happy story of how all his worries went away after he gave himself a lobotomy.

The way Johnson puts it, "Removing my mind has been the best thing I've ever done in my life." Such an admission comes from a man who claims to be working to help people stop behaving self-destructively, a profoundly troubled man who hears his son tell him during casual conversation that he's disconnected from his own emotions and still doesn't get the hint. That fateful step of surrendering his agency to impersonal laws, of ceasing to make his own choices (which for all purposes is equivalent to ceasing to be a person) is the key to the whole puzzle. Johnson developed his self-hatred to its logical conclusion: in the contest against natural death, his winning move was to snatch its victim first. Time can no longer annihilate him, not because he hardened his body against all harm, but because he preemptively severed that body from consciousness before nature could do it. That's how he finally ensured that he won't die: by the standards of humanism, he has already commited suicide.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

TV Review: The Eternaut

The end of the world feels different when it's the Third World that's affected

A pioneering work of Argentinean science fiction, The Eternaut is a serialized comic strip published during the late 1950s and endowed later with a prophetic aura when its author, Héctor Germán Oesterheld, was kidnapped by his country's far-right dictatorship because of the political content of his stories and his participation in an armed resistance group linked to Liberation Theology. Just like what happened with his four daughters and sons-in-law, Oesterheld was never seen again. His legacy as a writer, however, has prevailed and risen to the status of legend.

After decades of frustrated attempts, The Eternaut has finally been given the live-action treatment, in the form of a Netflix series whose first season has just been released, while a second one is on its way. It tells the story of a group of middle-aged Porteños suddenly caught in the middle of an anomalous climatic event that, while devastating on its own, is only the prelude to a much bigger threat: an invasion of Earth by mind-controlling aliens. The source material also contains elements of time travel and multiverse travel, but the show's first season only gives very indirect hints of those plot points, preferring to start on a firm grounding by focusing the story on ordinary people's Herculean efforts to stay alive, stay together, and cling to hope.

Oesterheld wrote his masterpiece during the early period of the Cold War, when the terrifying prospect of nuclear fallout and nuclear winter was just entering the public consciousness, but his version of it is much more dramatic: the mysterious snowfall that opens the narration kills instantly with the slightest touch. That's the reason for the iconic image of the protagonist wearing a diving mask that used to appear on the covers of The Eternaut's collected editions. It's also an example of the story's aesthetic, distinguished by the creative use of common tools repurposed to deal with a world-ending catastrophe. The choice to follow characters with no specialized expertise or ties to the centers of power also sets The Eternaut apart from the tone that has become usual in the apocalypse disaster genre.

Because the process of adaptation inevitably recontextualizes every story, the TV version of The Eternaut doesn't evoke the fears associated with the Atomic Age that were so relevant to the comic's first readers. Instead, the imagery of snow in the middle of summer brings to mind the nightmare predictions about global climate change; the dread of stepping outside, the masses of dead bodies and the ubiquitousness of protective gear dig into the unhealed wounds we still carry from the coronavirus quarantine; and the scenes of social disintegration and the downfall of modern civilization carry painful echoes from the violent protests that shook Argentina as a result of the collapse of its economy at the turn of the century.

Maybe the choice to postpone all the time travel and multiverse travel until a later season was made to carefully steer the show's reception by today's viewers, who are yet to recover from Marvel exhaustion. This frees up much-needed space for the story to explore its large cast, which the production team has described as a collective hero as opposed to Hollywood's individualist bent. Much of the runtime is used in portraying the complicated evolution of personal relationships put under a strain that no amount of decades of closeness can prepare anyone for. Lifelong friendships are tested by the primal struggle for survival, and viewers can identify moments in the story when a survival strategy based on competition is pitted against one based on cooperation. Some pillage and some share; some swindle and some trust; some would sacrifice others for any reason and some would sacrifice anything for others. It's a truism of scriptwriting that true character is revealed at moments of crisis; in The Eternaut, a persistent state of crisis spreads everywhere and in doing so lays bare the spirit of a whole community.

Also, the tension is skillfully handled with a steady series of escalations: at first, the characters' sense of urgency is about staying indoors and not touching the deadly snow; next, about finding survivors without attracting the notice of hostile neighbors; next, about avoiding capture by the alien monsters that overrun the city; and finally, about thwarting the mind control conspiracy that might bring about the defeat of humankind. For us watching in Latin America, it's an added bonus that the action involves characters whose outlook on life and sensibilities are closer to ours. We've always watched the end of the world happen in New York or London, and such locations may as well be Mars to us. Bringing The Eternaut to worldwide streaming is one more step in the march of the ongoing Rainbow Age of science fiction, one of whose main features is what I like to call opening up the future to the rest of the planet. It's no small thing that this time, for a change, the heroes defending Earth speak Spanish and listen to tango.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Book Review: Kitemaster by Jim C Hines

An appealing protagonist in an interesting and intriguing fantasy world

Nial has a problem. She has, or thought she had, a very minor talent in controlling the wind, one of three so-called Wisps in the village of Allon-li. But when she sets up a spirit kite for the soul of her deceased husband, one year dead, the unexpected happens, especially given that she is now an adult. She gets exalted as a full Kitemaster. While Wisps and their minor talents are common, Kitemasters are rare, with their ability to control the winds, a gift from the Dragons themselves. And a newly exalted Kitemaster is going to be noticed, quite quickly. Nial’s quiet life is not only gone, but she is propelled into conflict, intrigue and adventure that she cannot imagine. And moral quandaries as well.

This is the story of Jim C Hines’s Kitemaster.

Kitemaster’s strength is in the rich world that Hines presents here. I won’t bury the lede: Kitemasters, in this world, have the capacity and ability to sense storms and manipulate wind. As a result of these magically blessed individuals, the setting features kiteships, which basically are galleon-like ships festooned with kites that the kitemasters on board (typically 2-4, depending on size) keep aloft in the air. Kitemasters have some other abilities as well, including some clever uses in hand-to-hand combat as well.

The state monopoly on kitemasters, and the fact that they derive their abilities from dragons put me in mind of the universe of White Wolf’s Exalted, in particular one of the types of the Dragon Blooded: The Air Exalted. There aren’t kiteships like Hines’s creation in the Exalted setting, not exactly, although there are airships of a somewhat different caliber, run by Air Exalted, working for the Empress. The parallels work rather well, although the nature of the dragons in Hines’s world is very different, but to say more of them would be rather spoilery of the back half of the novel.

And we do get a lot of Nial training to be a kitemaster, especially on a kiteship as well as just the general training of her powers. Hines has put a lot of thought into how his kiteships work, and how to live and work upon them. Even more than being at sea, being on a ship high above the ground, sometimes in rather windy conditions, can be a nerve-wracking and dangerous enterprise. And yes, we do get scenes of what happens when kiteships and their kitemasters come into conflict. Some of these action sequences are among the most pulse-pounding, page-turning parts of the novel.

There are some other unusual bits to the worldbuilding that take a little getting used to and coming to terms with compared to more standard fantasy novels. Even with unusual nonhuman creatures, a monarchy, and other elements you might expect from a secondary world fantasy, Hines has much more than just the kiteships up his sleeve to provide a unique world, such as the very variable nature of the night sky. The fact that the night sky is not at all the fixed bowl of stars in our own world is a real indicator that, for all of its similarities, this is very much not a world next door, but one at least a few blocks away, multiversally speaking. The inciting incident, the setup of a spirit kite for Nial’s dead husband, is an opening not just for her exaltation, but reveals an interesting afterlife for souls in this world.

More than the worldbuilding in the importance of the novel is the character of Nial herself. We start off with her at her lowest point; it’s been a year since her beloved husband has passed away. It’s her connection with that, perhaps (it is deliberately mysterious) that causes her exaltation as a kitemaster. And then her story is off and running. Questions of duty, necessity, privilege, and doing what is right with the gifts that one is given fill her story, and the stories of those who become her companions. For all of the aforementioned world we get, this is a very character-focused novel. Nial is already an adult in her early 20s, but in many ways, this feels like a coming-of-age novel, something more akin to YA than anything else. To be absolutely clear, it would not be YA by any standard definition¹. But given her relative youth, and the feel of her story and position in the village and among her family and friends, this is a book whose protagonist is in the “next cohort” past YA and thus shares at least the afterglow of the tropes from that category. Being from an isolated village, and not greatly aware of the greater portion of the three kingdoms, or the world, her journey from the village, and eventually the capital and quite beyond, takes on the form of a Bildungsroman.

This works both in terms of personality as well as growing into the role. Nial learns what it means to be a kitemaster, but more than just the raw power and the abilities and the coolness of that, she learns some rather painful lessons about how other people can and do act when given power, and learns how to step forward, take risks, and when needed, take a stand.

Thus, beyond the worldbuilding, and tied into the character study, are the ethical and social questions that the novel engages with, all centering around power. I had expected a coming-of-age story around Nial’s unexpected gift, and her coming to terms with it, and her changed life. And I hoped for some additional resolution regarding her deceased husband, since his spirit kite is quite literally the inciting incident for the entire novel. We get all that. But when Nial realizes that her hazy glow of respect for the Queen is terribly misplaced, there are some real ethical and social questions here: What is her duty? What is the right thing to do? Nial doesn’t always gets it right, and in fact often gets it wrong. The novel engages with these questions, and Nial’s decisions and the ultimate arc of the story engages with her moral choices, which in the end boil down to her growth and maturation.

I went into Kitemaster expecting a fun, fresh and fascinating world and main character, as I have come to expect in Hines’s work. I was thinking this would just be a coming-of-age story, and would have been satisfied with just that. What I didn’t expect and also got in the bargain was something more: a meditation on war, conflict, autonomy, and the justice and injustices of a ruler.

Highlights:

• Appealing and engaging protagonist
• Immersive and interesting worldbuilding with a highlight on the titular kitemasters
• Interesting social and moral questions around rulership, right action, and more

Reference: Hines, Jim C. Kitemaster [Caezik, 2025].

¹ I acknowledge the Realpolitik of the publishing industry and the prejudices and perceptions by readers. If Jane C. Hines had written this book, Kitemaster would have, without question, been marketed and described as YA, even if it does not fit those boundaries. But that, as they say, is a story for another time. I will also note that the cover feels more like a YA cover with how Nial is depicted.

Realm of the Elderlings Project, The Liveship Traders Book 2: Mad Ship

In which themes are thematic, brilliantly so

Cover art by Stephen Youll

One thing that Mad Ship does NOT do, in any possible way, is suffer from Book-2-itis. Instead, the plot thickens, and thematic resonances start flying thick and fast, in a way that your ninth grade English teacher tried so, so hard to make you recognize in Return of the Native or Hard Times or whatever piece of literature was being mistaught to you. Mr. Teagarten should have picked up some Robin Hobb if he wanted to make us see why recurring ideas and intertwining themes are so brilliant, but perhaps 850-page tomes is a bit of a big ask for a 14-year-old. (That said, I definitely was reading Robin Hobb in 9th grade.) Anyway, because I cannot discuss all 850 pages of this piece of magnificence in anything like justice, I've decided to talk about its recurring ideas and intertwining motifs. Or rather, a subset of them. The three I've selected are far from the only three, but they are the ones that made me stop and (literally!) take notes when they popped up. They are: the need to accept things you cannot change; the plot-thickening dangers of blind rescue; and the concept of personhood.

When last we left our Vestrits and pirates at the end of Ship of Magic, Kyle Haven (ptooey) had turned the liveship Vivacia into a slaver, and Kennit had captured her. In the sea battle that frees the enslaved captives, he gets his leg chomped off by one of the ubiquitous sea serpents who always follow slave ships. (They do this because slave ships are deadly places, after all, the consequences of which deadliness get thrown overboard. Free lunch.)

Wintrow, with his unique position of both having been officially enslaved and also being the requisite family member whose presence is necessary for any liveship to sail, does not share the fate of the sailors who were complicit in the slave trade (i.e., serpent lunch). Instead, Kennit keeps him aboard Vivacia, and a fascinating kind of relationship triangle forms between the three of them. Kennit woos Vivacia with charm and respect and deference, exactly what she never got from Kyle Haven (ptooey), and never had the chance to receive from Althea. But Vivacia is a liveship, and needs to be with her family, and so she continues to reach out to Wintrow, who resents her presence but also feels an obligation to her. In a perfect world, Wintrow would give his allegiance to Kennit, so Vivacia would not feel torn between the two of them. Kennit knows this, and so alongside Vivacia, he also tries to woo Wintrow. In his logical conscious thinking, this wooing makes sense, a way of tying Vivacia more securely to his goals. But underneath that, Kennit sees in Wintrow the boy that he, Kennit, once was, the boy who was taken under the wing of a pirate and grew into the man he is now. For Kennit, that was salvation; and so in Kennit’s mind, he must do the same for Wintrow, as a duty to the boy he once was.

This triangle is one fertile ground to find the first theme: the struggle to accept (or refuse to accept) one’s fate. The point is first articulated by Etta, Kennit’s… lover? She identifies herself as Kennit’s whore, but it’s clear that her devotion and loyalty to him are strong and terrifying in ways that go far beyond sex worker and client. When she sees that Kennit wants Wintrow on his side, while Wintrow struggles to accept it, she takes matters into her hands. You can never return to the monastery, she tells him bluntly. That path is closed to you. You can either accept this life, and make what you can of it, or you can fight it and die pointlessly. One learns such things in a brothel, she says—but she says it without self-pity. She does not see herself as mistreated, though she undoubtedly has been. I do not think she could have developed such a violent loyalty to Kennit if she had known other types of real kindness. However, she has accepted her life, and works within its constraints to find purpose and strength. In her case, that purpose and strength usually leads to murderous protectiveness of Kennit’s interests. In Wintrow’s case, that purpose is to seek out the wisdom and ways of Sa, regardless of his proximity to any monastery.

This same lesson recurs with other characters. Kennit himself, struggling to adapt to life without a leg, must figure out how to be a one-legged pirate. And we see it again towards the end, as word of Vivacia’s capture finally makes it back to Bingtown, and Althea Vestrit and Brashen Trell mount an expedition to go after her. Such an expedition needs a ship, and the only ship is the titular mad ship, Paragon. Paragon is a liveship himself, but he has been beached for decades after a series of catastrophes at sea killed the family who sailed on him, left his face blinded from axe blows that destroyed the wizardwood of his eyes, and destroyed his logbooks—and with them his memories. And now Althea and Brashen and the Fool Amber are refitting him, preparing to sail in him, despite his madness and the risk that he might kill them as he seems to have killed his previous crews. In his moments of lucidity, he had accepted his fate to be a forgotten hulk, but he struggles to accept that he might have a part to play in the world once again.

Paragon also serves as a locus of the second theme: the idea of rescue, and the consequences thereof. We already saw it with Kennit: he rescues enslaved captives and reaps broadly positive consequences: acclaim, reputation, and, eventually, his dearest wish: a liveship of his own. But that liveship is going to be another link in a chain of consequences, because Bingtown will never let a pirate keep a liveship—hence Paragon’s refit, and Althea and Brashen’s mission. In Althea’s eyes, the rescue is aimed at recovering Vivacia (and maybe her nephew Wintrow). In Malta’s eyes, the rescue is for her father Kyle Haven (ptooey). And Malta has a unique opportunity to help, by means of indulging in a bit of rescue of her own. In the course of her magic-infused courtship with Reyn, the son of a prominent Rain Wilds trader family, she has become linked with the voice of a trapped dragon entombed in a buried log of wizardwood. This dragon haunts Malta’s dreams, demanding, threatening, begging for release. So Malta makes a deal: she will rescue the dragon if the dragon rescues her father.

But wait—a dragon, trapped in wizardwood? How did that happen?

The relationship between dragons and wizardwood brings us to our third theme, the one that I think is the truly brilliant revelation of this book, the discovery that both tarnishes and deepens the sense of wonder of liveships. Thus far, wizardwood has been seen as a rare, magical, magnificent substance that makes liveships into the glorious sentient creatures that they are. But in this book, we learn the whole truth: wizardwood is not mere wood, but instead a cocoon, formed when a sea serpent finishes its larval stage at sea, and returns up the Rain Wild River to hibernate and grow into a dragon, shepherded by the living dragons who guide them, and watched over by the now-disappeared Elderlings who lived symbiotically with them. But centuries ago, the Elderling city by the dragons’ hibernation spot was buried in an earthquake, and the cocoons were blocked from the sun, unable to hatch. This is why dragons disappeared from the land; this is why they had to be built with Skill and sacrifice in the Farseer trilogy. The living dragons gradually died, and their successors were buried during the disaster, unable to hatch. For every liveship constructed from wizardwood, one of those cocoons was cut open, and the embryo dragon inside tossed away like trash. The magic and sentience that makes liveships what they are is in fact nothing more than the ghostly remnants of a dead dragon’s memories that the wizardwood absorbed from them. Liveships are dead before they ever quicken; and in their construction, an entire race of creatures was destroyed.

Can you imagine learning such a thing about yourself? To imagine yourself a living, thinking, sentient magical being, a liveship, who has a family, and memories, and agency in the world—only to learn that your entire existence is the consequence of a horrific genocide? That your ability to move and speak, to form memories, is not true life, but instead a simulacrum, a husk, a shell, an existence stolen from another being? Are you even a real person?

What does it mean, then, to be a person? In a way, this question has a kind of resonance with a lot of science fiction stories about the personhood of AI. In the framing of one of those tales—let's say, arbitrarily, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Measure of a Man”—a liveship’s identity, personality, agency, and sentience would unquestionably endow it with personhood. But what those stories lack is the horrifying cost of the liveships’ creation. To waken one, four lives must be given: the dragon, and then the three generations of family members whose deaths are needed to quicken the ship. Traditionally, those last three lives are given willingly, lovingly—but they don’t have to be. Paragon’s quickening happened prematurely, during the mysterious violent death that killed his crew and the last two generations of his family. In principle, a liveship could be wakened by taking a grandparent, parent, and child aboard and slitting their throats. Four people (including the dragon) must die to create this artificial person. Does that matter in determining personhood?

To the liveships it does. Or it can. Because under the right circumstances, they can gain direct access to the memories of the dead dragon whose husk was used to build them. When this happens, they realize—or perhaps decide?—that they are dead, that their lives as ships, as the person they had been, are false, a dishonor to the memory of what they might have been. They renounce their identity built from their liveship existence, but have nothing to replace it with other than the knowledge that their intended life as a dragon has been stolen from them. It is like a kind of madness, or a return to sanity. Or a shattering of delusions that is worse than madness. One finds oneself wondering if such a revelation is responsible for Paragon’s current state.

These three themes (acceptance, rescue, and personhood) wind together as sinuously as any sea serpent. Memory builds the personhood that defines the liveships, built from the bodies of dead dragons; but it also defines the sea serpents that follow behind the liveships, feasting on the bodies of dead humans—and, at times, the wizardwood of liveships too. Because the serpents’ memories are faulty. They have no adult dragons to guide them back to their nesting places, and so they stagnate, withering, losing themselves, forgetting their names. They cease to be people, and become instead beasts. Then toward the end, Wintrow comes across a trapped sea serpent, one which carries the memories that are necessary to keep the other serpents aware long enough for them to find their way back to the Rain Wild River. Being Wintrow, he naturally frees the trapped serpent (rescue again!), thus making it possible for these lost creatures to find a guide and make their way home before their identities are lost forever.

And finally, while I’m talking about what this book does so well, let me take a moment to discuss Malta. Remember Malta? The unspeakable brat? She begins her transformation in this book. The pivotal moment, as I see it, is on page 319, when she sneaks out to meet a suitor, the brother of one of her friends, named Cerwin. Certainly she goes about it in a very Malta-ish way. She flirted with Cerwin, and in her head she knows exactly how she wants Cerwin to behave. She wants him to be big and manly and passionate with her, to see her as a mistreated maiden sacrifice who must marry for the sake of her family’s welfare, while simultaneously calculating every facial expression, every gesture, every apparently unconscious movement. She presents herself as someone who needs rescuing, (rescue!), and presents an identity built upon lies (personhood!). Yet when Cerwin falls for her manipulations and asks how he can serve her, she does not ask for something selfish. She is smart: she asks him to persuade his father to come to a Bingtown Council Meeting to support her family’s agenda about slave trading and pirates. This is the moment when Malta stops thinking of herself, stops wallowing in frustration about what she cannot have. Instead, she accepts (accepts!) the hand that she is dealt and puts to use her wiles and manipulations and skills at bending people to her will.

Do you see? Do you see how it all intersects? And I’ve left so much out! And Book 3 has so much more! The more I write about this series, the more I am agog at this astonishing tapestry Hobb has woven. I’ll see you next month to talk about Book 3, Ship of Destiny.

Reference: Hobb, Robin. Mad Ship [Bantam, 1999].

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative, and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/ergative-abs.bsky.social

Rebellions are Built on Hope: Andor S2E2

In “Sagrona Teema,” the separation of class and who is endangered during the rebellion becomes clear

While episode 1 of Andor season 2 sets the foundation for various problems, episode 2 explicitly demonstrates who is at risk when taking direct action against the Empire—the undocumented, the worker, the person of color. Following in the footsteps of season 1, this season not only continues to examine how a galactic empire would function but also turns a critical eye to how the opposition to empire functions. In these first three episodes, culminating with “Harvest” (more in my next post), a clear critique of leftist opposition rises.

This critical look comes from the juxtaposition of Mon Mothma on Chandrila with Bix on Mina-Rau. In season 1, I appreciated Genevieve O’Reilly’s portrayal of Mothma, but this season, she’s truly hit her stride as she hosts a three-day wedding for her daughter. Long shots show her talking with guests before slipping into her role as a funder of the rebellion all while navigating the guilt of her teenage daughter being wed to a stranger, which Mothma agreed to in order to help Luthen.

One of the guests is Tay Kolma (Ben Miles), who Mothma worked with in season 1 in order to hide some financial blemishes as she funnels money to Luthen and the rebellion. At first, Tay seemed totally dedicated to the cause—and with a bit of a crush on Mothma, possibly. Now, his wife has divorced him, and he seems to have soured with Mothma—or at least think he deserves more attention, however that might be interpreted.

This lavish party is juxtaposed with Brasso, Bix, and Wilmon on Mina-Rau, where the Empire has arrived to audit the farming groups, including arresting undocumented farm workers. In solidarity with his workers, the grain farmer tries to help Brasso and the others figure out how to escape Imperial detection in hopes of furthering the rebellion’s mission.

While Mothma may have to deal with Tay’s indelicate advances for more attention, Bix finds herself cornered by an Imperial officer asking her out on a date. Even though she claims her husband will be returning to the planet soon, that doesn’t seem to deter the officer. As an undocumented, migrant worker, Bix’s position is far more dangerous than Mothma’s. The interweaving of the stories of these two women both working for the rebellion reflect the often real-world implications of who is most endangered during times of protest and revolt. While Mothma stands to lose much, her precarity does not represent the same risk that Bix, an undocumented woman of color, is taking.

While I often find myself caught up in the plot and minute political commentary of Andor, this first arc also has beautiful visual storytelling. Mon Mothma’s home filled with lavishly dressed guests is bright and decadent in color and saturation compared to Brasso, Bix, and Wilmon’s current home, where the shots are less saturated, the skies grayer, and the uniformity of wheat dulls the view. Both storylines are full of life as well as secrecy. Where Brasso, Bix, and Wilmon have lovers, friends, and community, some of who know about their illicit activity, Mothma finds herself alienated while surrounded by people.

These two communal storylines further juxtapose with one of my favorite aspects of Andor: showrunner Tony Gilroy’s continued dedication to making the Empire less cool. In this episode, it’s revealed that Dedra Meero is living with Syril Karn (played by Kyle Soller). While their relationship is hinted as a possibility at the end of season 1, I was still surprised to see them living together. In her totally white and devoid of character apartment, she and Syril reunite after her work trip to learn about the Ghorman plan. It is the most awkward and purposefully cringe interaction of the show.

In my next post about the third episode, “Harvest,” I’ll write more about the importance of portraying the Empire as an empire, but for now, I was reminded when watching this episode of a video essay, “Fascists will waste your time” by Thought Slime, which reiterates again and again that we need to remember that fascists are, simply, evil losers. I’ve always struggled with how “cool” the Empire appears in much of Star Wars, even while doing evil acts, and Andor was one of the first Star Wars properties to directly confront this idea—at least that I was aware of. I appreciate the continued dedication to this task. Dedra and Syril having a relationship does not detract from how socially broken, awkward, and fascist they are. They have little to no social awareness in addition to being cruel.

The final important plot point in “Sagrona Teema” involves Cassian, who is able to escape the Maya Pei rebels. Their continued infighting and silly arguments have delayed him considerably, which feels especially scary while his friends are facing down the Empire on Mina-Rau. We do get one final hint that the Maya Pei band are going to be important as Cassian finally managed to steal back his ship and fly away—right over the towers of Yavin 4.

POSTED BY: Phoebe Wagner (she/they) is an author, editor, and academic writing and living at the intersection of speculative fiction and environmentalism.

Book Review: Humans a Monstrous History

A book that looks at the history of monsters in human society and civilization, and comes to insightful conclusions about their role in the narrative of our culture

Monster.

Let’s start this review of Humans: A Monstrous History by not with the book itself, but the dictionary. What does the dictionary say a monster is? Here are some of the definitions:

• one unusually large for its kind
• an animal or plant of abnormal form or structure
• one who deviates from normal or acceptable behavior or character
• a threatening force
• something monstrous

And where does the word come from? What is the word’s etymology?

Middle English monstre, from Anglo-French, from Latin monstrum "omen, monster" from monēre "to warn."

The word monster, as you can see, is freighted with meaning, multiple meanings, and always has been. Thus monsters have always been with us, and this is one of the arguments in Surekha Davies’s book Humans: A Monstrous History.

I don’t normally lead off with the cover of a book, especially not a nonfiction one. But this is an exception that deserves further discussion. Look at the book image again. That shiny oval in the center is meant to invoke a mirror, with a suite of silhouettes of various monstrous forms as its. The author, right on the cover, is presenting her point of view and her concluding argument in visual form. We are the monstrous, or more accurately, a world where we can see all of us as monsters means that no one is monstrous.

To get to that final concluding argument, and working that thesis is the whole premise and mission of the book.

Davies takes us on a history of monsters, or as the jacket says, a history through them. This is really a look at how monsters have been seen and siloed and othered throughout human history. Although she does have some side discussions about other societies now and again, especially to contrast with the Western tradition, her study is mainly in that Western mold and that Western perspective. That doesn’t meant it’s all familiar; the author goes all the way back to Herodotus and forward through history. Gerald of Wales, a Norman/Welsh noble, looked down upon the English race as an abject sort, showing that racism can have unexpected axes, but has always been present in some way or another. There are always people to monstrify. There is always an out-group, it seems, and Davies has some good discussion about the role of others and their monstrification in society. There is a lot of discussion of people such as Antonietta Gonsalvus, the daughter of a “wild man” of the Canary Islands, and similarly afflicted with Ambras Syndrome, and thus hairy all over, including the face. Davies makes the point that, since such people seem to blur the boundaries between animals and humans, existing in that monster space, they are disquieting precisely because they make hard and fast lines impossible.

Monsters really are a way to put up a mirror to ourselves. In the process, Davies goes a lot into race and how groups have been sawed off of the norm. The Spanish colonial system of caste in North America, for instance, shows not only how people are divided and subdivided again as being more or less human (that is, Castilian White), but Davies also goes into how some of those boundaries and castes were far more porous than advertised. This just goes to her point that the identity of a monster is in the end often just a social convention or decision. Monsters and monsterhood can be situational, in time and space. A discussion of persecutions of Jews, up to the Holocaust, comes in as well.

So in that context, the most provocative group that Davies discusses in terms of monsterhood is women. I confess I had never thought of women in quite this way, but Davies lays out the case for the monstrification of women quite plainly. “Monstrous births,” both real and fake, are just part of this otherization of women and classification of them as monsters throughout history. This book made me think of the gorgon Medusa in a new light. This book is so rich with examples but it also provoked me and made me think of others she did not include in her thesis. Honestly, to list and discuss every example would have been impossible. Davies is selective. There is one "monster" I think she should have included, which I mention below when we get to the more science fictional aspects of the work.

This ties into a discussion of trans people and how they are being monstrified right now as of the time of the writing of the book and this review.

What this has to do with science fiction and thus this review space is, well, plenty. Science fiction, as the author points out, has dealt with the monstrous since its very beginnings in Frankenstein, with the titular character’s creation. And science fiction was an early proponent of embracing monsters. Monsters like Dracula, Caliban, King Kong and plenty of antecedents before the modern day. When the author gets to the modern-day depictions and ideas of what monsters are, her science fiction generally leans a lot on Star Trek. Data comes in for discussion, especially the episode “Measure of a Man,” which is all about the humanity (or non-humanity) of the android. Since we have already seen the whole idea of the not-quite-human as being a definition of monster before, the fact that Data is not quite human literally makes him potentially a monster in this context, to the author’s eyes. And for that alone, there are those who would seek to control him. Davies also makes an interesting point about Lore, Data’s double. In some ways he is very much more human than Data —he lies, uses contractions, mimics human speech and behavior more effectively than Data— and thus is very much more uncanny valley in the process. Lore is much more of a monster than Data ever is.

Davies goes on to talk about some other SFF properties, from Men in Black to, particularly, District 9 and how the plight of the protagonist, Wikus, and his slow transformation, his monstrification, makes him an outcast and distrusted in real time. It is a case study for the processes that she has described throughout the book. Battlestar Galactica, with its Cylons that can pass for humans and even interbreed with humans, particularly come in as well. Although she doesn't mention it, it is telling that many of the female Cylon "monsters" are very much concerned with motherhood while the male Cylons are not interested in fatherhood. Also consider that the most memorable of the Cylon infiltrators are female: Sixes and Eights.

However, I think she missed a trick in not discussing Spock. She does mention Star Trek: The Original Series in the context of the gender and race makeup of the bridge crew, and makes some points about monsters and boundaries in the process. But Spock is even more like Data in the sense of being a potential monster: he is half human, for one thing, which ties into earlier discussions in the book about the boundaries of humanity (Kirk’s words about Spock upon his death in Wrath of Khan come to mind). But the point is, even if Davies doesn’t discuss him, Spock and his transgressive nature, and on the bridge at that, as first officer to Kirk, fit in entirely with Davies’s thesis and is another data point in her favor.

The book ends with our present and looking toward the future. She points a finger at the new kinds of monstrifcation, including poverty, the use of LLMs and AI, and the anti-trans and anti-DEI campaigns. She concludes that, by having us embrace and see the people being called monsters right next door, the ones right within us, we can take steps to make this a more just and equitable society. If we are all monsters, none of us are.

With sound arguments, excellent and entertaining writing, and a fascinating dive into history, myth, and literature and art, Humans: A Monstrous History accomplishes Davies’s goal of presenting her thesis and ideas that the way to a more equitable world is for us to embrace the others. To embrace the monsters that are in fact us (remember, once again, the cover of the book). Monsters are warnings, just like the etymology states—warnings of what happens when we exclude and make the monster outcast.

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Highlights:

• Excellent and crisply written and accessible
• Deep dive into history, culture, and science fictional aspects of monsters in human society
• Strong central theme and thesis
• Provokes thought and consideration of even more examples and ideas than in the book, extending the conversation and thought for the reader

Reference: Davies, Surekha. Humans: A Monstrous History [University of California Press, 2025].

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Film Review: Sinners

A powerful example of layered storytelling that blends horror, history, and magical realism with meaningful social commentary.
 

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is a uniquely crafted exploration of culture, connection, and spirituality contrasted against a relentless tide of oppression, manipulation, and cruelty. Using innovative film techniques, Sinners lures us in with an unsettlingly quaint setting and a group of memorable characters who create an allegory for the larger Black experience. The theatrical trailer for Sinners gives us a general overview of a pair of confident Black gunslingers in 1930’s Mississippi who build a juke joint and end up fighting blood-thirsty vampires. But that isn’t all the movie is about. Sinners is an example of layered storytelling which will mean different things to different people. Every scene, word, and reference is heavy with implications and unspoken undertones. The visuals are gorgeous but quietly haunting and the result is an emotional journey that leaves you wanting to rewatch it to discover all the layers of meaning. 

[MILD SPOILERS]

In 1932 Mississippi, Sammie (Miles Caton) is a likeable young Black musician, nicknamed “Preacher Boy” because his protective father Jedidiah (Saul Williams) is the pastor of the town’s very small Black church. Sammie and his father review the scriptures (which Sammie knows perfectly) for the next day’s church service but Sammie is anxious to get into town where he meets up with his older cousins, Elijah and Elias, nicknamed Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan in a dual role). Smoke and Stack are back in town after an adventurous stay in Chicago. Sammie is starstruck about their time in Chicago versus their country town, but Smoke confirms that Chicago is just as racist and dangerous as Mississippi, and the twins would rather deal with the devil they know in their hometown. Smoke and Stack decide to build a juke joint on the edge of town so the Black residents can have a place to enjoy themselves in peace. They buy a slaughterhouse from a smooth-talking racist but are determined to open the place that same night. In a cleverly filmed sequence of scenes, the twins encounter and gather various characters needed to help open the place on short notice. In the process, we learn the backstory of each character, including old musician, Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) who is hesitant to join them because he thinks a Black business won’t survive. In a hypnotic scene, Slim tells a horrific tale of exploitation and cruelty while sounds from his memories float around him. We also meet smart-mouthed Cornbread (Omar Miller), who works as a field laborer. Two of the stores in town are run by Grace Chow (Li Jun Li) and her husband Bo (Yao), so Smoke hires them to provide supplies for the new place. Stack gifts Sammie a guitar, and Stack and Delta Slim are both amazed when they hear the stunning way Sammie plays and sings. They also encounter another singer Perline (Jayme Lawson), with whom Sammie is infatuated although she is married. Stack runs into his demanding ex-girlfriend, Mary (Hailee Steinfield) who is white but has some Black ancestry and feels close to the town’s Black community. Meanwhile, Smoke asks his estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) to help with the cooking at the new place. Annie understands the supernatural and uses her knowledge to create protection for the twins and she and Smoke revisit their grief over the loss of their baby daughter. But things take a turn when an ancient Irish vampire, Remmick (Jack O’Connell), arrives, fleeing a trio of sharp-eyed Choctaw vampire hunters. Remmick senses the magical power of Sammie’s talent and targets Smoke and Stack’s place. As the evening becomes more dangerous we see how each of the main characters responds to the arrival of a new kind of oppression.

Michael B. Jordan is intriguing in his dual roles as Smoke and Stack, and the entire cast delivers compelling performances. Sinners is not a perfect story and, at times, characters make confusing choices that seem inconsistent with who they are. But it is a powerful example of unique filmmaking that blends horror, history, and magical realism with meaningful social commentary. There are so many thematic elements and symbolic components that viewers may need to see the film several times to catch everything. From a blues jam across the centuries to reciting the Lord’s Prayer while fending off a vampire attack, the film literally gives you a little bit of everything. A few themes particularly stood out. 

Family Relationships

Although the brothers have similar mannerisms, Smoke is more pragmatic and grounded. He is concerned about achieving success through money and power; he is closely acquainted with grief through the loss of his daughter; and he understands true sacrificial love through his connection to Annie. Stack is more lighthearted, reckless, and more compassionate to those who can’t pay the full price. Despite their differences, Smoke and Stack are intensely loyal to each other and they are both protective of Sammie. In a brief but crucial scene, Stack talks about his violent father and asks Sammie about his relationship with Jedidiah, but Sammie confirms his father does not abuse him. We also see a playful scene between Sammie and his mother as they begin the day. Despite his giftedness, both Sammie’s father Jedidiah and his cousin Stack warn Sammie not to pursue life as a blues musician. Jedidiah warns that if you dance with evil, one day it will follow you home. Stack orders Sammie to find a respectable community to settle in and leave the dangerous living to sinners like him and Smoke. 

Economics as Power 

The field workers are paid with wooden tokens which can only be used at the general store. When some of the juke joints customers pay with the wooden tokens, there is a difficult conversation between Smoke who wants real money as payment and Stack who wants to let people have fun and Annie who wants to show compassion for the plight of the exploited Black workers. Despite Stack and Annie’s desire for flexibility, Smoke knows the lack of money is unsustainable and he understands that the larger problem is the manipulative payment which is designed to indenture Black workers and hurt Black businesses. Similarly, in an earlier scene, Smoke takes a moment to teach a young girl how to negotiate a proper salary. 

Literary Symbolism 

The film is filled with archetypal characters and symbolic places: the complementary brothers, the reliable, spiritually attune wife; the angry, selfish girlfriend, the adulterous wife, the wise mentor musician who has seen suffering, and Sammie, the gifted chosen one, who turns out to be the true center of the story. Racist salesman Hogwood (David Maldonado) and slick-talking vampire Remmick are parallel characters, artificially polite, manipulative, and lethal. The juke joint becomes a rebellious center of culture built in a slaughterhouse where the blood has been scrubbed away but the memory of death remains imbedded. In key scenes the doors of the slaughterhouse/juke joint are compared to the doors of the church. Remmick wants to take Sammie’s talent, noting that he once had his land stolen from him. Remmick uses truth mixed with lies to seduce his victims. Sinners has two post-credit scenes and begins and ends with a specific song of encouragement. The music in the film is stunning, and each performance tells its own story. The title of the film gives us a layered meaning of “sinners” as rebellious, independent, broken, cruel, conquering, fearful, and universally all of us who must live with real-life horrors that rival the symbolic horror of the murderous vampires. 

Taking Risks 

A core theme of the story is whether to be bold with your talents or whether to play it safe. That answer may seem simple, but Sinners reminds us that those who are talented become targets for aggression and exploitation. Ultimately, the message of Sinners is finding a path between the extremes of devastation or the safety of hiding. Sinners has echoes of the “Parable of the Talents” where rewards are given to those who take risks with the gifts they are given. It’s a hard lesson for those who want to pursue “goodness” by playing it safe.

Of course, there are many other important messages in the film. And there are layers of meaning that make the story more than just another vampire story. Using unusual film techniques, clever storytelling, and heavy symbolism, Sinners gives us a complex tale that will keep viewers talking about it for a long time.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Highlights

• Thoughtful visuals and music
• Traditional vampire violence contrasted with unique symbolism
• Memorable, layered storytelling

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction-writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.