No Good Read Goes Unrewarded

The DVD project I mentioned a couple blogs ago is still in progress, but doesn’t fill every quiet moment, especially in bed at night waiting for sleep to show up. An old fashioned book in hand still is preferable then. Four recent reads:

Seriously Curious is a collection of essays from The Economist expanding on numerous facts and factoids. A few examples of topics: How to measure the black market for cigarettes, why board games are so popular in Nigeria, why there is a French argument over a new punctuation mark, and why Swedes overpay their taxes. (The reason for the last one is negative interest rates in Sweden, so it makes sense to overpay and get the overpayment back later as a refund: in effect, a charge-free deposit.) The book is good for the occasional distraction when there isn’t time to invest in something more demanding.

**** ****

Washington in New York, written by a local historian who was kind enough to autograph a copy for me, covers the busy first 1½ years (1789-90) of Washington’s Administration when New York was the capital. (It had been the capital under the Articles of Confederation since 1785.) As part of a compromise over Hamilton’s financial plan, at the end of 1790 the capital was shifted temporarily to Philadelphia and then permanently to its current site on the Potomac. I’ve read quite a lot of history of the Early Republic, but I usually learn something new (or relearn something long since forgotten) from every competent author who turns a hand to it, and that is the case here, too. For example, Nisley notes the oft-overlooked importance of French economic policy-maker Jacques Necker to Alexander Hamilton who was deeply influenced by Necker’s memoirs. Regarding a less weighty matter, I once knew but had forgotten (I had one of those “oh, yeah” moments) that Thanksgiving, which is such a major holiday in the US today, was first declared a national holiday by George Washington, though initially as a one-off event. It was re-declared intermittently until Lincoln established it as an annual holiday. The New York era was notable not only for what Congress and the President accomplished but for what they failed to accomplish: to end slavery or at least chart a path toward the end. Those interested in these key years of the Republic should enjoy the book

**** ****

I posted about roboticist Daniel Wilson's clever tongue-in-cheek How to Survive a Robot Uprising a while back. Much of his advice was put to use in his subsequent novel Robopocalypse. The upcoming robot uprising is well-trodden ground in scifi. It was the plot of R.U.R. (1920) by Karel Čapek, who put the word “robot” in the dictionary in the first place. That is OK. It is, after all, the rare scifi novel with a premise that is altogether original. The quality of the writing is what matters. Regrettably, that isn’t so much on display in this work. Part of the problem is that the novel is written as a history of the war against the sentient AI Archos (aka Rob), so we know from the outset that the war was successful. The history is written as a series of vignettes of participants in the war: British hackers, a Japanese engineer with an AI love doll, Osage militia, etc. This would be OK, too, if we cared about any of these people enough to wonder if they survived the conflict, but we don’t. Archos decides humanity’s fate in much the same way as Skynet in you-know-what-franchise, but withholds the nukes, which at least is sensible. Unleashing nuclear weapons always seemed to me to be a bit hard on the infrastructure even from Skynet's point of view; with robots and AIs (including self-driving cars, cleaning robots, and even thermostats) in sufficient numbers, the humans are easily targeted without them. The best hope for the humans’ survival is assistance from friendly AIs – a direction Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was plainly going when it was abruptly canceled in its second season.

The novel is not terrible by any means; it’s just not especially good. It is well-structured for cinematic adaptation, however, and unsurprisingly it is in development for that with Chris Hemsworth cast in a major role. Promisingly, the director is Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods, Bad Times at the El Royale), so it might be better on the screen than on the page.

**** ****

Victor Gischler writes rollicking good adventure tales and fills them with humor and likable (or at least relatable) characters. His preferred genres are crime (e.g. Gun Monkeys) and science fiction (Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse). No Good Deed is closer to the former, but is really in yet another category: a thriller delivered in his characteristically witty prose. Francis, an ordinary and unimpressive guy with a cubicle job in New York, has a bad start to his day when his girlfriend leaves him. The day gets worse when he sees a suitcase in an alleyway. He picks it up and emails a message to the address he found on a card inside the case saying that he has it – just a minor good deed. At his job, where he is immediately dressed down by his boss for being late, Emma, the owner of the case, shows up in green hair and combat boots. Goons show up, too, and both Francis and Emma are in their crosshairs. Francis is suddenly over his head in a cross-country adventure chased by the NSA and by gun-wielding thugs working for Emma’s estranged husband, a brilliant but neurotic tech billionaire in California who already has arranged for the deaths of former employees with too much information. It’s all about a very special AI algorithm, and Emma has a copy. Well-written and fun. Thumbs Up.

Mindi Abair and the Boneshakers – No Good Deed Goes Unpunished