#cold equations

Currently reading through “Typhon Pact - Zero Sun Game”. Enjoying it so far!

Spoilers ahead:

Mack brings to life a really awesome full agency realized version of Sarina Douglas, Bashir is just right for my tastes and his capacity got self reflection shows his growth in and after the series, and my girl Ezri looking adjusted to that worm at last; confident, daring, decisive, and clever, oh captain my captain how far you’ve come. And she never becomes Short Jadzia, she always feels like Ezri.

The Typhon Pact are a fascinating concept for a villain alliance in Star Trek, taking the ever popular Romulans and aligning them with a cadre of more underused antagonist races and those rogue elements that get left behind as the Federation (now with Bajor!), Klingons, Ferengi, and Cardassians become all friendly after the Dominon War. The Breen taking on industrial responsibilities in this partnership feels right for them. Thot Keer is perfectly captured as a tired foreman trying to get a job done and not giving a damn about these politics no matter how much the Romulan and Gorn representatives want to bother him. All of the worldbuilding for the Breen as well is excellently done and the idea that a multitude of species are hiding under those masks (I imagine including the alpha canon Breen from Discovery) is super interesting.

The baby Breen in a little baby helmet fucking took me out though oh my god I burst out laughing they put the Breen mask on the baby oh my god lmao.

On page 126 so we’ll see how things develop further, enjoying how this is is developing so far.

My current plan after this one is to read through the duology of Warpath and The Soul Key because Taran’atar seems like a fascinating character and I love Ro and Kira working together and I’m a big mirror universe girlie who ships Mirror Ezri/Mirror Leeta hard and likes seeing my Rebellion homies in general. I will try to forgive them for killing off the Intendant to prop up prime Illania Ghemor. Then after that either Wrath of the Prophets or the SCE reunion under the guise of a TNG novel “Indistinguishable From Magic”, a major favorite of my beloved girlfriend @laneleeta

You are a geek. You like science fiction, fantasy, and other genre media. You listen to podcasts, and you listen to old time radio dramas. You like messageboards and role playing games enough to be a forumite on rpg.net. Somebody on rpg.net forums recommends a podcast called A Thousand Maybe Worlds, a discussion and review podcast dedicated to the X Minus One radio show.

You are listening to podcasts one night at work, and hear the A Thousand Maybe Worlds episode about the X Minus One episode "Jaywalker".  The hosts don't think much of the episode under discussion, calling it shitty "Cold Equations" with an out.  You didn't dislike the episode that strongly, but it's interesting to hear Richard and Ryan ripping on it anyway.

In order to fill time and have a discussion, one of the hosts, Richard, who is a literature professor, talks about second person narration, which was one of the odd things about "Jaywalker".  During the course of that discussion, he talks about Italo Calvino's novel If On A Winter's Night A Traveler.  It sounds interesting and that title sticks with you.

You've been working steady for a while now, and have some disposable income.  You set up a pull list and start placing Previews orders at a comic store.  You see that Dark Horse Comics is putting out an Omnibus edition of Flaming Carrot comics, and fondly remembering your few encounters with the character/book, you decide to take a gamble and order it.

Then one day, you have a night off of work, after a night you worked third shift and decide to stay up into the daytime to pick up your comics.  When you get to comics store, one of the books waiting for you is Flaming Carrot Comics Omnibus volume 1.  After you pick up your comics, you decide to stay up even later in the day and check out an Indian buffet that is new to you.  The food is good, and sitting down for awhile gives you a chance to go over the comics you picked up.  The text introduction to Flaming Carrot Comics Omnibus volume 1 by Kevin Eastman is interesting and the actual comic by Bob Burden is one of those things that feels revolutionary and surreal.  Or maybe that's just because you're addled from lack of sleep; you did mistake raita, a sort of yogurt sauce with onions in it, for kheer, a rice pudding, because the colors and textures were close and you couldn't remember the word kheer.

In order to get home, you need to take the 28th street crosstown bus that stops near the Indian restaurant to Woodland Mall to get a bus that will go downtown so you can transfer to the bus back to your home neighborhood.  Since you're at the mall anyway, you decide to go to Barnes & Noble.  When you're in Barnes & Noble you wander into the general fiction c's and see some Italo Calvino, including If On A Winter's Night A Traveler. You buy the book and get on the bus, and as you are riding towards home, you start to read a book that begins:

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought.

“He sank his feeding tube into the ground.” Funny sentence that made me happy, rereading it about..53 years later. That remembered moment in this short story made me want to find it again for years. Finally figured out I had read it in this anthology. Including the very memorable story Cold Equations.

Just guessing, I bet Jim Shooter read it (Plasm), Joe Dante (Innerspace) read it, Whoever did Fantastic Voyage and Osmosis Jones read it. Woody Allen probably was thinking of it in Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex.

Photo by Michael Gomez Nashville indie shoegaze band Cold Equations dropped their new single “Satellite” today via Sweet Cheetah Records. The track features a dense, dreamlike wall of layered distortion, reverb, and delay. Songwriter Drew Kohl’s buried vocals and an aggressive, beautiful sound explore the cyclical nature of past relationships. Recorded in a single studio day, the single delivers…