Kill It With Fire!

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

In which I discuss a book I really wish I hadn’t read.

Content Warning: this post contains references to psychological trauma, gaslighting, physical abuse, and sexual assault.

"Kill it with fire!" The best way to unwant something.

I’ve never especially hated vampires. During the late 90s they became the new flavor of the month and lost any remaining potential shock value as villains or romantic interests. Although they’re overused and often annoying, I’ve never felt that the “kill it with fire” reaction was particularly justified– until now.

A book I just read has change my outlook, at least in regards to its specific fantasy world, and not for the reasons you might imagine. As far as appearance, they were your run-of-the-mill monsters.

But by the fifty percent mark, I wanted to drop napalm on the author’s entire fictional world. I wanted to nuke it from orbit. I wanted to watch every single one of these miserable creatures burn.

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Review: S.E. Anderson’s Starstruck

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

In honor of the fact that it’s the holidays and life is supposed to be cheerful, this week’s blog is devoted to my review of S.E. Anderson’s Starstruck.

Cover of S.E. Anderson's Starstruck

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I started reading this book. I had been assured that it was science fiction, and the description compares it to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. On the other hand, the cover looks a bit like the love child of a hard scifi novel and a romance. Suffice to say I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but was pleasantly surprised by how the story played out.

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Fun With Spammers

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

Let's have some fun with spammers

Continuing the tradition of blogging about things that bug me, this week’s episode is about spammers. Not the kind that turn up in your DMs or your spam folder, but the kind awaiting moderation in your blog’s comments.

I’d also like to recognize Vowatrox, aka Avantdah– two posters who not only share the same IP address, but also a penchant for appending lengthy lists of low quality X-rated links to their nonsensical comments. Without them, this post couldn’t have happened.

Content warning: there are some vaguely offensive X-rated links shown in the screenshots for this post. View at your own risk.

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Endure Review

Posted on by Leland Lydecker
This week on the author blog, Leland Lydecker reviews a book about his home town that gets almost everything wrong. That’s right, it’s Craig Martelle’s Endure: End Times in Alaska!

Cover of Endure: End Times in Alaska

Endure has garnered a lot of criticism for eschewing the explicit violence, conservative values, and thinly-veiled racism that are common components of the Post-Apocalyptic genre. I have no problem with that. The problem lies in the fact that Martelle hasn’t replaced the those themes with anything of substance. There’s no conflict. There’s never any real sense that Chuck and his family are in jeopardy. Endure is a survival story without the survival.

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Facebook Is Watching You… For Your Own Good

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

Content warning: this post discusses suicide, depression, traumatic events, and Facebook’s unwillingness to protect their users from credible threats.

Facebook is Watching You-- For Your Own Good

Hello folks! I’m guessing that by now most of you have heard about Facebook’s new “proactive suicide detection” AI. Reactions have ranged from relief to disbelief to outright horror, but Facebook has already made it abundantly clear how little it cares about users’ privacy. It will not be possible to opt out of monitoring while continuing to use the platform.

Facebook says it trained the AI by finding patterns in the words and imagery used in posts, videos, and live streams that have been manually reported as a suicide risk in the past. It also looks for comments like “Are you OK?” and “Do you need help?” The AI will scan all posts for patterns that seem to indicate suicidal thoughts and forward “worrisome” posts to Facebook’s human moderators. “When necessary” the program will send mental health resources to the user or their friends, or contact local first responders.

Sounds fantastic, right? Well, at least if you don’t mind a Facebook algorithm and a team of dubiously qualified human moderators snooping through your most personal posts– regardless of your privacy settings. Aside from the fact that this is a massive violation of users’ privacy, here’s why this might not be such a great idea.

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The Holidays

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

I’ve been informed that we’ve entered the holiday season.

Oh, I know that the Christmas decorations went up in stores about a month ago, but I’ve gotten pretty good at ignoring those.

As a functioning adult, I’ve earned the right to forego participating in these social traditions. I have my own place, so I’m not obliged to sit through any more festive gatherings. I rarely get invites to other people’s parties and holiday dinners. Being the guy who fills up his mug with gin and retreats to a dim corner, my presence doesn’t add much to the festivities.

Some people might assume that my aversion to cherished cultural traditions stems from loneliness or some kind of personality disorder, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I prefer my own company, and I wouldn’t be any more inclined to celebrate if I had others to celebrate with.

You see, this season makes me wonder more and more each year what the actual fuck it is that we’re supposed to be celebrating.

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Trackers: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series Review

Posted on by Leland Lydecker
Today on the author blog, Leland Lydecker reviews Trackers: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series by Nicholas Sansbury Smith.
Warning: contains spoilers.

As the title suggests, the Trackers series chronicles the struggles of the survivors of an apocalyptic event. That event is the detonation of several high-altitude EMPs over the contiguous United States. The attack is ostensibly retaliation for an ill-conceived mission which liberated the granddaughter of a US Senator from a North Korean prison camp.

Trackers begins with the inciting raid, then cuts to the day of the EMP strike. In regards to the science of the attack and how it might realistically be carried out, Sansbury Smith did his homework. Trackers contains one of the more believable end-of-the-world scenarios I’ve read.

The meat of the story concerns a gruesome murder mystery playing out at the same time as the attack and its aftermath. Compared to the stagnant fare of “the world is screwed and we’re trying to stay alive” that dominates the Post-Apocalyptic genre, this premise comes across as fresh and interesting. The rest of the novel, sadly, is more standard post-apocalyptic fare.

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Leland Lydecker Reviews The Mask of Tamrel

Posted on by Leland Lydecker
Today on the author blog Leland Lydecker reviews The Mask of Tamrel, the first book in Scott J Couturier’s Magistricide series.

It’s not often that I come across a book I unequivocally like, so keep in mind that this a rare statement when I say that The Mask of Tamrel is the best work of fantasy I’ve read in a long time. Couturier’s elegant and vividly descriptive writing pulled me in, and I quickly found myself hooked on the exquisitely crafted world of Thevin. 

Each scene is so richly detailed that you can almost see the colors, smell the scents and taste the food, yet the pace at which the story unfolds is anything but slow. Like a whiff of exotic scents, this tale wraps itself around the reader in a thoroughly pleasant way before digging its hooks into the psyche and revealing itself to be a cleverly disguised addictive substance that keeps the reader turning pages to find out what happens next.

“This is really good!” I found myself thinking. “This is unbelievably good!” I had to stop and check if The Mask of Tamrel wasn’t actually from one of the big publishing houses. I read the first half of the book in one night because I couldn’t put it down.

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Cyberpunk Is Now

Posted on by Leland Lydecker

I’ve heard a lot of talk about how cyberpunk is over. Its predictions of brain jacks and virtual reality never came true. It hasn’t aged well.

In some ways, that’s is true. The classic, 80s-inspired neon dystopia looks pretty dated. Fashion and architecture have moved on. Culture and social standards have evolved.

But cyberpunk is still relevant. In fact, you could say it’s more relevant than ever. Here’s why.

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