Review: Revenge of the Phantom Press

Revenge of the Phantom Press is a novel by FTBlogger William Brinkmann. It is the sequel to The Rift, which I previously reviewed, although it may be read as a standalone.

To recap The Rift, it follows Tom Larsen, a young man in the skeptical community who goes full men’s rights activist after propositioning a woman in an elevator. It’s a fictionalized story about Elevatorgate and the feminist wars in the skeptical/atheist community. I recommend it if you have any sort of feeling about that topic.

In the Bolingbrook universe, not only is there a skeptical community, but also the paranormal is real. There are psychics, aliens, ghosts, the Illuminati, machine spirits, and more. Many of the leaders in the skeptical movement are participating in the coverup. By the end of the previous book, Tom Larsen has discovered the truth of the paranormal. It goes against his skeptical/humanist values to cover it up, so instead he leaves the skeptical movement to join the unbelievable-yet-true tabloid, The Bolingbrook Babbler. Most people, including his parents, think he went nuts.

At the start of the book, we learn that Tom isn’t very good at his job. He radiates mediocre white dude energy. He struggles to form contacts in the Department of Paranormal Activity, and can’t seem to capture a photo of the local lake monster.

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Heated Rivalry

Heated Rivalry is an M/M hockey romance TV series based on the book of the same name. It’s some sort of popular sensation, supposedly the #3 most popular TV show online. At time of writing, four out of six episodes have been released, and we’ve been keeping up with it. We’re used to accepting a lower quality standard when it comes to gay film. But this is surprisingly high quality, having good writing, good production, and amazing acting.

It’s about two hockey players on rival teams, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov who are having sex with each other. But their relationship has to be kept secret because it would be bad for their careers. Fair warning, these are explicit sex scenes, and there are a lot of them, to the point of being pornographic.
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Review: The Fifth Head of Cerberus

The Fifth Head of Cerberus, by Gene Wolfe is a work of anticolonialist science-fiction published in 1972. Personally, I am suspicious of anti-colonialist fiction of that age. Books may inadvertently take on certain colonialist assumptions and perspectives even while attempting to reject others. (Of course, we continue to do this today.) I was interested to see how Gene Wolfe’s first major book fared.

The book is structured as three novellas taking place in the same universe. There is a pair of twin planets, Saint Anne and Saint Croix, colonized by humans a few generations ago. It’s said that there was an indigenous population on Saint Anne (the Annese). However, there is barely any trace of them left. What’s there is veiled by layers of folklore, hearsay, and charlatanry.
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Hell is Us: War and emotional distance

Hell is Us is a recent action adventure video game, with an emphasis on puzzles and exploration. I really like the game, but this is not a review.  See other sites for reviews. I am here to discuss story and themes.

Hell is Us is about war. But it’s not some high fantasy war, disconnected from reality. It’s a flat out genocide.

It takes place in the fictional country of Hadea, geographically isolated from the rest of the world. There are two religious groups, the Paloms and Sabinians. After years of forced resettlement, racist propaganda, a vote for Sabinian indendence, and so much more, the country has erupted into violence. The Sabinian army now is attempting to eradicate the Paloms. Even otherwise sympathetic characters, even young children, often express hatred for the other side, viewing them as less than human.

Paloms and Sabinians have a history that deliberately evokes Catholics and Protestants. But whether intentional or not, there is ~another~ genocide that very strongly comes to mind.

The player character is Rémi, who was born in Hadea but escaped as a small child. He never fights any humans, instead only fighting the demonic invasion that the war seems to have provoked. He is a heroic character, often helping civilians, and even saving lives. But as for the war itself, he mostly gives it the silent protagonist treatment, giving space to the player to have their own emotional reaction.

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Hating the artist, hating the art

(Disclaimer: to the extent that this article was inspired by a specific creator, it’s not a creator you’ve heard of, and not one that I mention anywhere in the article! I mention a few authors as examples, but I was not setting out to specifically comment on any of them.)

When a creator falls into disrepute, there tends to be a public re-evaluation of their work. “Oh, I re-read their book, and it’s aged terribly.” “I’ve always thought their work was bad.”

This is reminiscent the story of sour grapes. In the Aesop’s fable, a fox tries to eat some grapes, but cannot reach them. So the fox says the grapes were sour anyway, and he didn’t want them. So when an artist falls from grace, people can no longer wholly enjoy the art. So they say that the art was never good in the first place, and nothing of value was lost.

But there is a major difference between the fox’s re-evaluation of the grapes and the public’s re-evaluation of the art. The “public” is made up of more than one person. There may be some individuals who first liked the art, and then stopped liking it. But more often, what happens is we first hear from individuals who liked the art, and then later we hear from another set of individuals who did not like the art. Perhaps no individual re-evaluation took place, and it’s just a matter of listening more to the haters.

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“Brain art” sparks controversy

content note: fiction

Recently, brain interfacing technologies have been leveraged to make images and videos straight out of people’s heads. Some people are calling it art, but detractors say it isn’t art at all.

“It lacks any intentionality,” says prompt artist JustAlice. “All they do is lounge around, and the images are just handed to them. They don’t even need to verbalize what they want, or sort through results to choose the best one. And the results look like shit!” She shows me examples of what she considers bad brain art, furiously highlighting all the five-fingered hands. “Is it so hard to just pick up a keyboard?”

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Risky heroics: Examples

Previously, I discussed the trope of heroes risking it all, and why I think it’s a bad moral value.  Now I want to discuss some case studies. I feel a bit embarrassed to talk about my examples, because arguably, if we want to talk about risky heroics we should be talking about popular movies. But I don’t watch those, and am unwilling to put up with one for a blog post. So instead you’re getting a couple obscure moments that happened to come to mind.

1. Yasna’s choice

The Invincible is a game based on Stanislaw Lem’s sci-fi novel of the same name, although it contains an original story that merely echoes the original novel. It follows Yasna, a scientist who is stranded on the planet Regis III, where she witnesses a series of strange events. (I think it is a decent game, if you like narrative walking sims like Firewatch, but I’m not here to offer a review.)

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