Review of The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

Ernest Hemingway is considered by some a titan of early 20th century fiction. Focused on animal themes, his stories are steeped in nature, from hunting and fishing to the opera of love, loss, and mortality. Africa, Montana, the Caribbean, and other settings are presented as places of beauty, as well as places where humans test themselves in blood sport against trout, lions, sharks, and other animals. But we are now in the 21st century. Social perspective on blood sport has changed (love, loss, and mortality less so). Animals have become, at least more often in Western eyes, something to be protected and/or nurtured. It is an interesting contrast, as witnessed by Ray Nayler's 2024 The Tusks of Extinction.

The Tusks of Extinction is set in a near future in which DNA can be used to bring extinct animals back into existence. Mammoths have been recreated and raised in numbers high enough to re-populate the Russian steppe. In tow have come poachers, men who hunt the massive animals for their tusks, as well as trophy hunters, billionaires looking to take down one of the large males for a wall decoration. Angry at these killings, a group of scientists decide to input the mind of one of their own into a mammoth to give the massive beasts a chance at survival.

Non-fiction: Review of The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

I am Gen X. I know what it's like to have a land-line telephone in the house. I had thousands of negotiations with my teen sister, who gets to use that phone and when. And nowadays, I know what's it's like to have a smartphone, to be able to connect any time, almost anywhere—not only to a person, but to the collection of human knowledge and advertizement, for better and worse. But my two children, 7 and 9, don't have this perspective. They know only a smartphone world. And they are the first generation to have such a perspective—the guinea pigs of the human race. Jonathan Haidt, in his 2024 book The Anxious Generation, asks us to take a closer look at the experiment.

The trigger for The Anxious Generation were the spikes in teen anxiety and depression Haidt and his team observed post-2009/2010 til now. Looking deeper into the data, Haidt, a social psychologist, was particularly interested in identifying the potential causes. After all, nobody wants the future leaders of the world to enter adulthood with significantly higher chances of depression.

Review of Praetorian of Dorn by John French

Rogal Dorn is a primarch situated on Terra, a planet far from the loyalist vs. traitor battlefields happening across the universe as Horus attempts to take over the Imperium. He and his Imperial Fists are preparing defences, knowing Horus is coming. But as with any large scale assault, Horus knows shaping operations are necessary. Praetorian of Dorn by John French (2016) are precisely those operations.

In military parlance, shaping operations are covert military operations intended to destabilize defenders before a major frontal assault is launched. Typically performed by special ops, it's appropriate the Alpha Legion, led by its enigmatic primarch Alpharius, are the team sent secretly in to Sol to “soften the ground” at the outset of Praetorian of Dorn. Undercover agents appearing in the most unlikely of places with powerful psyker mind games being played internally and externally, the novel quickly escalates, turns on a dozen dimes, and still has room for surprise at the conclusion. The novel is a bit of controlled chaos, exactly as operations shaping Horus's assualt on Terra should be.

Review of Scars by Chris Wraight

I'm almost at the Siege of Terra. But before cracking the first of those ten books, I promised myself I would read at least one Horus Heresy book per Legion. Some Legions have featured prominently in several books—Sons of Horus, Ultramarines, Emperor's Children, Death Angels, Blood Angels, etc. But some make minimal appearances. Legion, for example, is the only novel (to my knowledge) to focus on the Alpha Legion. And here there is Scars (2013), the 28th book book in the series, which focuses on one of the other aloof legions, the White Scars.

Scars centers on the primarch Jagatai Khan's legion and their journey from outliers to participants in the Heresy. Living distantly, far from the events of Isstvan and beyond, their creed has kept them out of the battles engulfing the human species. The events of Prospero, however, prove to be the catalyst bringing the Scars into the picture. With reports of brother attacking brother, Jagatai cautiously boards his ships and heads out to find out precisely what happened between Leman Russ and Magnus the Red, and in the process must do the last thing he expected, or wants to do: choose sides.

Review of Expect Me Tomorrow by Christopher Priest

Most avid readers have their favorite authors, and 2024 has been been merciful to a few of mine. Terry Bisson and Howard Waldrop both passed away, taking with them unique, meaningful voices of speculative fiction. And the year likewise took Christopher Priest, a giant in the field. A book published just two years ago, Expect Me Tomorrow (2022).

Expect Me Tomorrow rotates through three time periods/perspectives, steadily revealing the relationship between them. Told in brief, dry snippets akin to a history book, the first perspective is the story of a Victorian confidence trickster named John Smith who was found guilty of cheating women out of their valuables. The second is told in a warm, first-person perspective with a classic English lilt.  It tells of a pair of Norwegian twins in the mid 19th century, Adolph and Adler. Night and day in terms of career interests, Adler is an academic researcher interested in climate who ends up spending many years in the US pursuing knowledge while his brother Adolph is an opera singer who tours South America. And the third perspective is an alternate take on our modern times, written in Priest's precise prose, in which a police profiler has a piece of network tech installed in his head giving him direct access to the internet. Disparate stories at the outset, Priest slowly weaves these three into a single tale.