I'm Not Expendable, And I'm Not Going

This article at TV Tropes, "Men are the Expendable Gender" was really illuminating for me in terms of how a lot of people I've known view violence against women vs. violence against men . . .

(Of course, there are obvious reproductive reasons why this double standard takes hold in cultures. 5 men and 100 women can produce a lot more babies than 100 men and 5 women...)

Books: Suns, Wireless, Thrawn, Spaces

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

In the far future, galactic society is dominated by Houses, each composed of copies of their founder's brain, in a multitude of different immortal bodies. They circle the galaxy in vast ships, coming together every 10,000 years to share memories and par-tay. Two of these "shatterlings", late for their reunion, discover that someone has ambushed most of their House, killing off 99% of their siblings . . . The rest of the novel is an untraditional murder mystery, involving vast and odd intelligences across spans of megayears. The ending was a bit abrupt, but the ideas in this novel are lovely and well-braided. Recommended.

Wireless by Charels Stross

A collection of short stories, including the Cold War in the year one million, the Devil in a UK unwarmed by the Gulf Stream, interstellar spam, a Jeeves & Wooster-on-Mars pastiche, and a couple lovely spins on the Cthulhu Mythos. I just wish there'd been more of the ekranoplan aircraft carrier. Recommended.

Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn

These novels came out in the early 90s, and were the proof that the Star Wars Expanded Universe was both viable and could produce good fiction. They are set five years after Return of the Jedi, and feature Grand Admiral Thrawn, last of the Empire's grand admirals, who is leading the Imperial's resurgence back into New Republic territory. Thrawn is brilliantly realized, being a convincing tactical genius, and coming across as almost not evil. He's polite, does not kill his underlings unnecessarily, accepts ideas from other people, is a great art admirer, and would calmly take a baby from its mother to give to a madmen if it would further the Empire.

Oh, and Luke, Leia, Han, et al, are in there, too.

The plot and style of the trilogy are good SF. They narrowly miss being perfectly Star Wars, in that they're a little too logical, and not as pulp fiction/Republic serial as the movies. But I'm really not going to complain about tight plotting, and how the characters make sensible use of the technologies available to them. Recommended.

Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams

This novel is billed as "swords and singularity", which is a bit misleading. Our hero starts out as a swordsman, but that's just because he's in a pocket universe which conforms to swordsman tropes. And, it's only post-singularity in the sense that AIs have gotten really smart, to the point where they can create pocket universes. Our hero discovers a hidden conspiracy undermining the stability of the solar system, and must battle toxic memes and rogue AIs to save civilization. The plot twists are a little obvious, but I think the title of the book was intended to telegraph them. An implied space is determined by what's missing, nu? Recommended.