Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 28

I enjoyed Star Born (1957) a lot more than Star Hunter. The main characters are more interesting, the world is more fleshed out and has more to do with the story itself, and the story actually has a point to it beyond “cool stuff happens!”

Again there are two main characters: one the descendant of humans who fled an oppressive Earth decades ago and were stranded on another world. The other, a member of a modern survey team from a freer Earth. The colonists befriended an ocean-dwelling species that helped them survive, but the survey team is focused on the cities built by the planet’s other intelligent species, one that looks more human and has more complex technology, but is far more brutal and warlike than the mer-people.

On one level it’s an adventure: the human born on this world is going through a rite of passage with his best friend from the mer-people. The city-builders are sifting through the ruins of their own nuclear war for lost technology. There are giant beasts to fight and so on. But woven through it are themes of colonialism, prejudice, and cultural identity, sometimes nuanced, sometimes ham-handed, but ultimately more important than the space opera.

It’s a sequel to The Stars are Ours, but I didn’t know that going in and didn’t feel like anything was missing. The book stands well on its own.

I’d never read any of Andre Norton’s books before, so when I saw a bunch of them on Standard Ebooks, I figured I’d take a look. The first one I read was Star Hunter, which maybe wasn’t the best place to start. It’s mainly an adventure story, a jungle survival trip with ruthless rivals that could just as easily be set in any wilderness area on Earth.

Of the two main characters, one is the tough guy type who runs safaris on alien worlds, and wants to “find” the lost heir to a fortune who had crashed on the planet some time ago. The other is captured and brainwashed into believing he’s the lost heir, then dropped on the planet ahead of the expedition. Things go wrong, adventure ensues.

But the adventure isn’t really satisfying. Even when weird things start happening because it’s an alien planet, they’re never really addressed as ideas, just as obstacles. And the ending pulls a plot twist out of nowhere to wrap everything up with a bow.

Fortunately, I picked up a few more of her books that I liked better!

A fast, funny, informative read about, well, pigeons (and to some extent other birds). Readers of the author’s webcomic about nature, Bird and Moon, will recognize the quirky humor and the drawing style of the illustrations.

You might think pigeons are boring because they’re so common, but they can be as interesting as any other bird once you start looking. And because they’re found everywhere humans live (there’s a reason for that), anyone can go out and start looking in the real world for the patterns and behaviors described.

The irreverent but enthusiastic style draws you in as the book runs through the long history of pigeons and humans. We’ve bred them for messaging, food, chemistry and as pets since ancient times, and the common pigeons seen today are descended from domestic pigeons that have escaped over the years. It continues through an overview of pigeon anatomy, what types of coloration are most and least common, the extremes of modern pigeon breeds (there are still pigeon races and pigeon shows!), and of course pigeon behaviors.

If you buy an e-book edition like I did, it’s worth pulling it up on a color screen when you get to the chapters on appearance.

You can find a print copy through Bookshop.org.

An accident at a hospital gives each person nearby access to someone else’s memories…including the US President on the eve of a top-secret mission that may resolve or worsen international tensions. But who has the President’s memories?

The thriller part of the plot really didn’t stick in my head, and the conclusion was one of those out-of-left-field endings that sometimes work and sometimes don’t.

What does work is the exploration of how memories work, how they’re triggered, and how we reconstruct them from pieces.

If you want to seriously edit OpenStreetMap while you’re out and about, Vespucci is the way to go. You can add, remove, and modify just about any paths or structures on the map, trace paths using your phone’s GPS and either add them through the app or upload them to use another tool. It uses a lock/unlock system so you don’t make changes accidentally, and you can place geolocated photos on the map to help you position features. It’s easiest to use on a tablet, but still packs its full capabilities into a phone-sized screen.

That said, there’s a steep learning curve. Moving around the map is a bit clunky (which matters less in an editor than it would in a navigator), and the current version is a bit buggy at placing geolocated photos.

Vespucci is available for Android phones and tablets on the Google Play Store, the Amazon App Store, and F-Droid.

Compared to StreetComplete

StreetComplete and Vespucci are complementary. StreetComplete is good for casual mapping (ex: filling in street info), while Vespucci is good for more significant changes (ex: adding a new street). I use both regularly.