Not enough superlatives for this collection from Ted Chiang - feast for a hungry brain that didn't know it was even hungry. Chiang applies the precise reasoning of the best hard sci fit and the melancholy reflections of the best humanist sci fi to the angst of religion and evolutionary intelligence with rigorous prismatic perspective. While the thought experiment has fallen by the wayside in recent years as a backlash to the speculative literary or the opportunistically filmic, Chiang's resuscitation of private obsessiveness in science fiction is a welcome return to the notion that natural inquiry should by necessity inform our approach to the mysteries in life.

The film, Arrival, is a wonderful adaptation of Story of Your Life - a titular tale of first contact but also a reflection on the ways which communication and knowledge have the power to transform. Overly atmospheric but meditatively beautiful, Arrival leans hard into the personal and elides the science behind the premise. Such slippery dramatic editing tunes the sympathies of a broad audience to the inherent triumph of the heart or the mystical deus ex machina of the plot. However, the central strength of Chiang's story is a rationalist's emotional transcendence - the idea that the details of scientific resolution matter, that the hard work of gaining knowledge in order to truly comprehend and break through, is something that no greater power can gift us.

Lexicon was recommended by a white haired Neal Stephenson fan at an airport bookstore after being queried for a new Science Fiction read. Tightly constructed, Lexicon is actually a thriller bolstered by fast paced action writing tempered with just enough social/media commentary and academic hypertext to feel like more than just popcorn fluff without getting bogged down by theory. Centering around the student of a Hogwarts-esque school (if Hogwarts specialized in a nefarious mind control curriculum for blossoming con artists), the story cross-cuts between a mysterious amnesiac, and an enigmatic bounty hunter. The prose is better than expected and often emotionally resonant in ways that contributes to our understanding of the characters within the framework of an unexpected romance or coming of age. Meanwhile, the premise hovers just in the background - context at large - degrading communication in the the age of mass media and how the widespread dissemination of personal information is used as a performative, manipulative, semiotic attack on self agency. The ties between the two are tenuous, as the heady stuff is to the plot, but overall a fun, cohesive enough, ride

Incredibly dense and hyper prescient, Synners reflects the sensory overload of a dystopian cyberpunk world on the cusp of technological/biological revolution. Cadigan sometimes lost me in a grimy industrial haze of transistor underbelly, Machiavellian corporate, digital world building confusion. But the book builds like a fever dream and the pain is worth the tox, ie trip, and by trip I mean technology is the next literal new drug. Save your synapses for this read.

In reference to the ongoing Hugo Brou-Ha-Ha (to which I've refrained from commenting), the cultural ancronymosity surrounding it, and the greater controversy to which it rightfully belongs, I throw my hands up at the pseudo political catch-22. Because, regardless of my gender, or political leanings, or small obsessions, I do not self-identify with m/any parties in "the war" except the one which is deeply personal - namely, an abiding relationship with the body of science fiction, fantasy, games, and literature at large that has profoundly shaped who I am as an individual. I have never needed the genre to reflect me, despite many contradictions or exclusions, because I came to expect fiction that explored the contemporaneous hard questions beyond me, to push the boundaries of what we can and should expect from our future, to delve into places that are impossible or simply incredible - to both remonstrate and demonstrate. Yes, at the same time, to escape, entertain, to exhilarate. And also, Yes, to communicate in a such a textual barrage of marvelous craft and language so as to convince me that there are different ways of looking at things whether I agree with them or not. Science fiction, in short, liberated me, and to find myself at this moment inadvertently in bed with some backward imperative to categorize, weaponize, attenuate, and defile is just, in a word, shitty.

Thought Sunday, the smart space traveling monkey human, reviving from cryosleep...

"I'm the punchline... I'm the period, the full stop at the end of an immensely long and convoluted argument, a rambling chain of happenstance and contingency stretching from the discovery of fire down in the Olduvai Gorge, through the inventions of language and paper and the wheel, through all the unremembered centuries to... this. This condition. Being brought out of hibernation aboard a spaceship orbiting another planet. Being alive in the twenty second century. Being a thing with a central nervous system complex enough to understand the concept of being a thing with a central nervous system. Simply being."

Consider all the inanimate matter in the universe, all the dumb atoms, all the mindless molecules, all the oblivious dust grains and pebbles and rocks and iceballs and worlds and stars, all the unthinking galaxies and superclusters, wheeling through the oblivious time-haunted megaparsecs of the cosmic supervoid. In all that immensity, she had somehow contrived to be a human being, a microscopically tiny, cosmically insignificant bundle of information-processing systems, wired to a mind more structurally complex than the Milky Way itself, maybe even more complex than the rest of the whole dammed universe.

She had threaded the needle of creation and stabbed the cosmic bullseye.

That, she thought was some fucking achievement.

"Good morning, Sunday Akinya," said an automated but soothing voice. "I am pleased to inform you that your hibernation phase has proceeded without incident. You have reached Mars administrative airspace and are now under observation in the Maersk Intersolar post-revival facility in Phobos. For your comfort and convenience, voluntary muscular control is currently suspended while final medical checkout is completed. This is a necessary step in the revival process and is no cause for distress. Please also be aware that you may experience altered emotional states while your neurochemistry is stabilizing. Some of these states may manifest as religious or spiritual insights, including feelings of exaggerated significance. Again, this is no cause for distress." 

"Surely I should receive something for my troubles".
- Haviland Tuf

A curiously PK Dick heavy list...Compilation of first and second series reprints:

1. The Forever War - Joe Haldeman *
2. I Am Legend - Richard Matheson **
3. Cities in Flight - James Blish *
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick **
5. The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester **
6. Babel-17 - Samuel R. Delany 
7. Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny 
8. The Fifth Head of Cerberus - Gene Wolfe 
9. Gateway - Frederik Pohl **
10. The Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith
11. Last and First Men - Olaf Stapledon
12. Earth Abides - George R. Stewart 
13. Martian Time-Slip - Philip K. Dick 
14. The Demolished Man - Alfred Bester 
15. Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner 
16. The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin *
17. The Drowned World - J. G. Ballard 
18. The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut 
19. Emphyrio - Jack Vance 
20. A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick *
21. Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon 
22. Behold the Man - Michael Moorcock 
23. The Book of Skulls - Robert Silverberg 
24. The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds - H. G. Wells *
25. Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes **
26. Ubik - Philip K. Dick 
27. Timescape - Gregory Benford 
28. More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon 
29. Man Plus - Frederik Pohl 
30. A Case of Conscience - James Blish 
31. The Centauri Device - M. John Harrison 
32. Dr. Bloodmoney - Philip K. Dick 
33. Non-Stop - Brian Aldiss 
34. The Fountains of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke 
35. Pavane - Keith Roberts 
36. Now Wait for Last Year - Philip K. Dick 
37. Nova - Samuel R. Delany 
38. The First Men in the Moon - H. G. Wells *
39. The City and the Stars - Arthur C. Clarke **
40. Blood Music - Greg Bear 
41. Jem - Frederik Pohl 
42. Bring the Jubilee - Ward Moore 
43. VALIS - Philip K. Dick 
44. The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Le Guin *
45. The Complete Roderick - John Sladek 
46. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - Philip K. Dick 
47. The Invisible Man - H. G. Wells *
48. Grass - Sheri S. Tepper *
49. A Fall of Moondust - Arthur C. Clarke 
50. Eon - Greg Bear 
51. The Shrinking Man - Richard Matheson 
52. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Philip K. Dick 
53. The Dancers at the End of Time - Michael Moorcock 
54. The Space Merchants - Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth 
55. Time Out of Joint - Philip K. Dick 
56. Downward to the Earth - Robert Silverberg 
57. The Simulacra - Philip K. Dick 
58. The Penultimate Truth - Philip K. Dick 
59. Dying Inside - Robert Silverberg 
60. Ringworld - Larry Niven 
61. The Child Garden - Geoff Ryman 
62. Mission of Gravity - Hal Clement 
63. A Maze of Death - Philip K. Dick 
64. Tau Zero - Poul Anderson
65. Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke **
66. Life During Wartime - Lucius Shepard 
67. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang - Kate Wilhelm 
68. Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky **
69. Dark Benediction - Walter M. Miller, Jr. 
70. Mockingbird - Walter Tevis 
71. Dune - Frank Herbert **
72. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein 
73. The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick *
74. Inverted World - Christopher Priest **
75. Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut *
76. The Island of Dr Moreau - H.G. Wells 
77. Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke*
78. The Time Machine - H.G. Wells*
79. Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delany 
80. Helliconia - Brian Aldiss 
81. The Food of the Gods - H.G. Wells 
82. The Body Snatchers - Jack Finney 
83. The Female Man - Joanna Russ 
84. Arslan - M.J. Engh
85. The Difference Engine - William Gibson and Bruce Sterling *
86. The Prestige - Christopher Priest *
87. Greybeard - Brian Aldiss 
88. Sirius - Olaf Stapledon 
89. Hyperion - Dan Simmons
90. City - Clifford Simak 
91. Hellstrom's Hive - Frank Herbert 
92. Of Men and Monsters - William Tenn 
93. R.U.R. and The War with the Newts - Karel Čapek **
94. The Affirmation - Christopher Priest 
95. Floating Worlds - Cecelia Holland 
96. Rogue Moon - Algis Budrys 
97. Dangerous Visions - Harlan Ellison (ed.) 
98. Odd John - Olaf Stapledon 
99. The Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons 
100. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams **
101. The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells *
102. Synners - Pat Cadigan 
103. Ammonite - Nicola Griffith 
104. Sarah Canary - Karen Joy Fowler 
105. The Continuous Catherine Mortenhoe - D.J. Compton 
106. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley *
107. Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban
108. Doomsday Book - Connie Willis
109. Unquenchable Fire - Rachael Pollock
110. The Caltraps of Time - David I. Masson
111. Engine Summer - John Crowley 
112. Take Back Plenty - Colin Greenhand
113. Slow River - Nicola Griffith
114. The Game-Players of Titan - Philip K. Dick
115. The Gate to Women's Country - Sheri S. Tepper
116. The Sea and Summer - George Turner 
117. The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells
118. A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller, Jr. **
119. Wasp - Eric Frank Russell (May 2013)
120. To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis 
121. The Gods Themselves - Isaac Asimov **
122. This is the Way the World Ends - James Morrow
123. The Deep - John Crowley
124. Time is the Fire: The Best of Connie Willis - Connie Willis
125. Double Star - Robert Heinlein 
126. Random Acts of Senseless Violence - Jack Womack 
127. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams *
128. Transfigurations - Michael Bishop
129. Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams*
130. The Door into Summer - Robert Heinlein
131. Half Past Human - T.J. Bass
132. The Godwhale - T.J. Bass