Tag: martha-wells

495: “Wibbly” (Martha Wells)

                “‘You can do this, babe. You’re a bulkhead.’
                ‘I’m a wibbly bulkhead,’ Arada muttered.
                (The wibbliness was why I trusted Arada. Overconfident humans who don’t listen to anybody else scare the hell out of me).”
                -Martha Wells, Network Effect

                I’ve been feeling pretty wibbly lately.
                With the historical moment we’re standing in, with the situation so many of my loved ones are in, with my own work—pretty wibbly, that’s me. If I were a wall on a spaceship (I love stories with spaceships, and there’s plenty in Network Effect) I’d be worried about how well I was going to hold up. Which is why it’s wonderful to stumble back across this line from Martha Wells.
                Back in college, I remember one of my friends looking at someone laying out how everything had to be, and saying, “Where’s their blessed doubt?” Doubt—uncertainty—I hadn’t usually seen such things held out as important parts of what made people people. And for me, like for my friend, they are. I’m not saying there isn’t work to do (or that I don’t intend to work at it). But I am trying to find a new space and love with which to hold my wibbliness. I am trying to turn toward the kind of trust and connection that doesn’t deny it, but instead weaves with it. If you’re feeling the same, I hope you find some of that space, love, and connection, too.

by Azlan

448: “It Needed to Read My Reactions” (Martha Wells)

                “It needed to read my reactions to the show to really understand what was happening.” -Martha Wells, Artificial Condition

                The “it” here is a super intelligent AI starship pilot, very much an important character in the series, and the speaker is our main character murderbot — a part organic/part synthetic construct designed as contracted security that’s now playing around with its hard won freewill. Playing means lots of watching tv, it turns out, and the AI pilot wants to watch too — but since its whole experience is being a spaceship and piloting a spaceship through space, it needs murderbot’s reactions to help fill in the meaning and context of the tv shows. It needs to watch together.
                I think I need to watch together. Because my partner and I have been reading Wells’ novellas together, and it’s lovely to sit with how much of what they mean flows from our lying in bed at the end of every day and reading together. Because I’ve gotten more interested in gardening (see all my gardening and compost metaphors in the last months/years), and that has a lot to do with my friend Dusty, who gardens a lot and who I sometimes get to garden with. And what gardening means — my understanding of what we’re doing, what gardening is, and my attempt to be with soil/water/seed/plant — has a lot to do with watching and sharing in Dusty’s reactions. Because my novel manuscript grows from talking with so many friends about how we experience gender, community, fear, magic. Although maybe that adds a layer to “reaction.” I think it’s in our shared sensing, our overlapping experience. That’s where I feel us making a happening out of all this is in front of us. We weave into so many sensings to find our way here.

by Azlan