What it Means to Survive–Lucas Bale

What It Means To Survive is a short story from Lucas Bale author of The Heretic (Beyond the Wall Book 1) and Defiance (Beyond the Wall Book 2). I think it may be set in the same universe but it is a standalone story focussing on what it means to be a good person even when the situation you’re placed in would make it very easy to take the easy route.

While reading this story I became convinced that Bale lives somewhere with significant amounts of weather as in the two novels I recently read the environment whether interior or exterior; hot or cold is always an important part of the story. So I checked his website and was amazed to find out he lives in Surrey which is about as temperate in weather as it is possible to be. I can only think that he dreams of weather which is more interesting than a little bit cool, a bit warm and slightly rainy.

4/5

Defiance (Beyond the Wall Book 2) – Lucas Bale

 

After reading The Heretic (Beyond the Wall Book 1)I immediately started on the sequel Defiance (Beyond the Wall Book 2) which demonstrates how much I liked the first book. I was expecting the same continuance of the Firefly inspired universe. Instead I found I was reading something far more interesting and promising of a much wider and fully realised universe. There are still some very Firefly influenced events but Bale has taken the opportunity in this second in the series to (I hope) set us up for a third book which I’m very much looking forward to.

4/5

Steel Breach–Casey Calouette

Steel Breach

While many people are quite dismissive of military sci-fi I’m quite fond of it and when I came across Steel Breach I thought it would be a nice easy read for commuting and with a bit of luck would not be so badly written as to be unreadable (this can be a problem with cheap military scifi).

What I can report back is that this book is well written, it’s enjoyable and I’d quite happily read more in the series or other books by the author.

It’s not going to win any awards for originality as it’s a semi feudal system of humans fighting against personality free insects while a greater danger lurks unknown. However, I don’t think that’s a terrible problem as the elements fit well together and allow for a decent story.

The Heretic–Lucas Bale

I picked up this while looking for something to read on Kindle Unlimited and browsing on the Kindle is a pretty annoying experience so I tend to look for something which has a decent number of reviews and looks like it might be reasonably written.
So when I first saw this book I was a bit wary as there’s a lot of positive statements from people I don’t know and authors of books I haven’t read or heard of, then there was the fact that it was clearly making a plus point that this was a very Firefly inspired book. But, as I said I was browsing on the Kindle and wanted something to read there and then.
Yes, this is a formulaic scifi adventure book. Yes, it has rather shamelessly been influenced by Firefly to the point where you expect to see references or characters moved outright from one universe to another. These are not good reasons to not read it though, as this was actually a very good read.
Things I liked about the book

1. The references to key things in the universe which weren’t expanded upon in this book made me feel the author had enough ideas to turn this into a series
2. The way the weather was used to make simple challenges harder and allowed more space for characters to struggle in without having to rope in hordes of soldiers or some magic technology
3. The pacing. At no point do you either feel that there’s nothing happening or that so much is happening you can’t track what’s happening

There are some points I’m not so sure about such as the spaceship having so much of a personality that it’s in danger of becoming a character (I don’t really like non-AI machines being anthropomorphised) and the rather clunky symbolism in the character names.
I think this can really be summed up with this.
I read this book over the course of two evenings and immediately downloaded the sequel.
That’s a pretty solid sign that I enjoyed it and want to read more in the series.
The Heretic (Beyond the Wall Book 1)

Forever Magazine - Thoughts on Issues 1 & 2

Forever Magazine now has issues 1 & 2 available and is the new magazine from Neil Clarke (announced here). I’ve now read both issues and this is what I think.

1. I’m very excited by it and have subscribed
2. I was irritated by the fact that I’d already read everything in Issue 1 in other anthologies

Issue 1
The first issue contains

• The Regular by Ken Liu (novella)
• The Fate of Mice by Susan Palwick (short story)
• Firebrand by Peter Watts (short story)

Having already read Upgraded which was edited by Neil Clarke I felt a bit short changed that The Regular was a reprint and The Fate of Mice which a brilliant story had previously appeared in The Mammoth Book of Best New Sci-Fi 21 and The Fate of Mice (short story collection); finally Firebrand was previously published in Twelve Tomorrows.
I’m not sure I’m being unreasonable but I did expect a new magazine to have something previously unpublished.
Issue 2
The second issue contains

• Dream Houses by Genevieve Valentine (Novella)
• The Endangered Camp by Ann Leckie (Short Story)
• Mitigation by Tobias S. Buckell & Karl Schroeder (Novelette)

Overall I enjoyed this a lot more for two reasons

1. I hadn’t read Dream Houses and it was very good
2. Ann Leckie & feathered dinosaurs!

So I’m going to go in reverse order of enjoyment
Mitigation has an interesting premise which is that carbon sequestration in the artic is going to be a bit wild west with large corporations arguing in the courts while small players run between the cracks trying to make money anyway possible and long lost seeds are worth something when everything is copyrighted. The only problem is that it felt like something Paolo Bacigalupi would have written and done in a more interesting style. 3/5

The Endangered Camp is a short but very enjoyable look at feathered dinosaurs on a mission to explore Mars. It’s hard to write more without spoiling the story so I’m going to limit it to stating how much I enjoyed the idea of oral history in decision making and that it has the same concise writing style that made A Calculated Life such a pleasure to read. I am terrible with names (having recently referred to Iain McEwans Culture Series) and having two authors I've both recently loved having the same first name confused me. Anne Charnock is the author of A Calculated Life.  4/5

Dream Houses is one of those stories where a key thematic element (choral music) is so wonderfully described that you feel an overwhelming urge to learn more about it to better appreciate the story. Amadis is a deeply interesting character full of flaws and insecurities and they way the background for these issues is created is very well done and believable. 5/5

Practical work with Powershell

One of the things I sometimes need to do is to be able to generate sets of reports with different parameters. As some of these reports can take a while to run this is an ideal opportunity to script the task and as I’m currently spending more time in PowerShell it seemed like the obvious tool.

For working with Excel I’ve been using ClosedXML although in the future I’m going to investigate EPPlus as there are claims that it’s better for larger files.

So the first thing to do is to demonstrate how easy it is to use ClosedXML with PowerShell to write to a file

Then it’s a case of getting the data out of the database and into a DataTable

One of the things I like about ClosedXML is the ability to pass in a datatable as an argument to the new sheet method and have it do the work automatically.

This results in the final script which can be used as base for further customisation