Weekly Preview: Jan 11, 2021

Monday, January 11, 2021 at 4:28am

This week I will be winging it. I normally write prepare all my blog posts on the weekend prior, then do some minor clean up on the day they go into digital print. I wasn’t able to do that this past weekend, and so, this week, I’ll be writing each post the day of publication.

In terms of reading, I was able to finish the China Miéville novella I started, This Census-Taker. As you will see from the title of my upcoming critique, I found the narrative problematic. More on that at the end of the week. I am straying out of science fiction for a bit. My next reading adventures will be a nineteenth century Russian novel and a mid-twentieth century work of non-fiction.

As for writing, nothing much has been done, but I am far enough ahead of schedule that I am not concerned. My next big push will involve closing out initial edits on Chronicles of Ytria, and then I need to do my final revision pass (perhaps passes) on Intersection Thirteen.

The past week could not go without a commentary on the events that transpired in the United States, and I have been thinking for some time about doing a post that ties together all the reading I have done on liberalism (super important for understanding me correctly: American “conservativism” is actually a form of classical liberalism; in the United States we only have variations on liberalism and nothing else). Expect that tomorrow, unless I botch it, in which case, I’ll figure out something else entirely.

I was thankful for my exercise regimen this week. It helped to keep me from getting distracted by the state of the world. I passed another milestone as well. I hit a three-plate squat (315lb). Rationally, I know that the 90lb plate increments are completely arbitrary, and I am only nominally stronger than I was two weeks ago, but when a 25-plate and a 10-plate and a 5-plate and a 2.5-plate disappear from the bar and become another huge 45-plate, it feels special.

This week’s blog posts shall be:

• The Center Cannot Hold, a summary and exploration of three books about my society’s intersecting values of capitalism and liberalism.
• How to Resist Violence, a critique of Eye of the Heron by Ursula K Le Guin
• Space Colonialism and Pandemic Bioethics, on the writing of the story Adaptive Response for Chronicles of Ytria
• Deus Ex Civil Servant, a critique of This Census-Taker by China Miéville