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So technically I am an hour late on rymenhild's December meme request to fanwank Kage Baker's Company novels in such a way as to preserve the awesome and jettison the OMGWTFBBQ, but given that I went straight from work to a six-hour car ride to DC I hope I will be forgiven!

Okay, so the Company novels. What you need to understand about the Company books is that I discovered the first book, In the Garden of Iden, probably about a year after it was published in 1997. I was thirteen and fell head over heels for Mendoza, misanthropic teen cyborg botanist in Elizabeth England, and her doomed and tragic romance with a brilliant heretic, and her equally doomed and tragic semi-father-daughter-relationship with the cyborg who created her, and Kage Baker's dark and hilarious blend of incredibly well-researched historical fiction and deeply cynical science fiction dystopia populated with SO MANY SAD FASCINATING CYBORGS. I devoured each new book as it came out! I fell in love with every single side character introduced! I was more than happy to let Kage Baker spend forty pages describing a bunch of cyborgs MST3K-ing D.W. Griffith's Intolerance; that kind of thing was EXACTLY WHAT I WAS HERE FOR.

In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that Kage Baker and her massive nerdouts about film history are a significant part of the reason why I am right now a moving image archivist. I referenced these books in my entrance essay to grad school -- and to be clear, this was after the last couple books came out; I was at that point under no illusions. But there is no way for me to shake how important the Company books are to me and how many feelings I am ALWAYS GOING TO HAVE ABOUT THEM.

But . . . the last couple books. Oh, the disappointing and quite frankly horrifying aspects of the last couple books. OH, MY OVERPOWERING DESIRE TO FEED EDWARD ALTON BELL-FAIRFAX, VICTORIAN DOUCHEBAG, TO THE CROCODILES.

So how would I fanwank fix the series? Well, I could write out a detailed and thoughtful treatment that took into account all the threads of the plot, but that would probably require me to reread the last book, which to be honest I have mostly blocked out of my mind except for everything involving Lewis and Princess Tiana Parakeet and immortal cyborg William Randolph Hearst. So right now, at 1 AM after a very long car ride, my diagnosis is pretty simple:

- MENDOZA FEEDS EDWARD ALTON BELL-FAIRFAX, VICTORIAN DOUCHEBAG, TO THE CROCODILES ROUND ABOUT THE MACHINE'S CHILD, AND EVERYTHING IS BETTER

(And then think of all the things a Mendoza liberated from the awful warping factor of Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax could do! She could go rekindle her friendship with Nan! She could plot revolution with Latif and Suleyman! She could sort out her relationship with Joseph! Hell, she could go hang out and shoot the breeze with Juan Bautista and his thirty pet birds and THAT WOULD MAKE FOR AN INFINITELY BETTER AND MORE REWARDING STORY than any plotline she had in the last two books.)

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And this is not a meme post, and it is still 1 AM and I should be in bed, but I have to write this anyway because I just finished Ancillary Justice today and if I do not publicly recommend it RIGHT AWAY then I am going to spend all my time for the next week buttonholing people and recommending it to them individually. To be fair I will probably do that anyway, but at least this way I can pretend that I'm lessening the impulse by getting it out here first.

So the narrator and protagonist of Ancillary Justice is Justice of Toren, a warship of the Radchaai empire. Justice of Toren consists of a vast artifical intelligence deployed across hundreds of ancillary units. She's stationed at Ors, officially the last planet that will ever be annexed by the empire, which is changing A LOT of its policies lately - and Justice of Toren and Lieutenant Awn, one of her favorite officers, are about to get caught in the crossfire of that.

Twenty years later, all that's left of Justice of Toren is the unit One Esk Nineteen. Instead of a vast linked consciousness, she has a single human body. Instead of her favorite lieutenant, she has a confused and unpleasant time-displaced drug addict she found dying in the snow, who coincidentally used to be one of her least favorite lieutenants before a wacky twist of fate sent said unpleasant lieutenant into a suspended animation pod for a thousand years. And instead of a calm sureness of purpose and commands to follow, she has a seething anger the size of -- well, a spaceship -- and a very strong need to make a choice, the kind of choice that will matter.

If you've seen this book recced before, you have probably seen people talk about how it does things with gender and language and class and colonialism thoughtfully and well, and all of this is one hundred percent true. PLEASE READ IT FOR ALL THOSE THINGS.

You may also have seen qian's post about the amazing id factor of SPACESHIP WITH FEELINGS. I agree, but I would like to add what is to me a really important extra id factor, which is that she is a REALLY JUDGY spaceship with JUDGY feelings. This delights my heart and soul! I love every single conversation along these lines:

ONE ESK: *makes mild comment*
OTHER PERSON: oh no u mad
ONE ESK: ...I am very sure my face did not make an expression of any kind
OTHER PERSON: no, but still, you're JUDGING ME! I can tell!

Actually, this may seem like a strange comparison, but there are ways in which One Esk reminds me of Anthy Himemiya. Partly this is because of the way people treat her when she's a ship. Partly it is the passive aggression and the divided loyalties and the calm, simmering resentment. OF COURSE I LOVE HER.

And I love, too, that is not striving for humanity, this is not that kind of story; there are many things she's striving for, but humanity is not one of them. Late in the book, various people try to convince her that she is human, and she's like "...no...you have a fundamental misunderstanding of me..." WHICH IS ALSO GREAT. It is not necessary to be human to have feelings or agency!

( People who have read the book already, click here! )

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bookblather asked me about TRUE CRIME for December 7th, and at first I didn't think I had a ton to say about true crime, but that's a lie. It's true I don't read a ton of true crime books - I like discussions of historical crimes/mysteries and I will happily read them and talk about them if someone recommends them to me, but otherwise I don't usually think to pick them up. (And speaking of, if anyone has any great historical true crime books to recommend -- I'm ALL EARS. Eyes. Whatever.)

But I do intake a ton of true crime stuff, actually, because I work as a transcriptionist at a company that gets a lot of business from ABC 20/20, and 20/20 LOVES true crime -- the weirder and more sensational, the better.

I always feel a little guilty for being relieved whenever I get assigned the 20/20 stuff at work, because . . . like, sometimes I am listening to people talk about quite horrible things! But nonetheless it's the best option, because:

- guilty as I feel for getting interested in the salacious details . . . I do totally get interested in the salacious details, and it makes for an infinitely less boring shift than the mornings that I spend transcribing Financiers Talk About Tips For Balancing Your Asset Investments
- professional reporters interviewing people about weird crimes for sensational TV news specials UNDERSTAND HOW TO ENUNCIATE, and you have no idea how much easier that makes my life

But it's okay, because soon I will get to quit my transcription job! And so I will stop having to feel guilty about enjoying the days when my work consists of "TEEN BANK ROBBER COMPELLED TO JOIN HEIST BY EVIL FATHER! LET'S INTERVIEW HER IN PRISON!"