[continued from previous message]   
      
   	That is one of the things about human nature that never   
   	made sense to me. But I'm only a robot, and robots aren't   
   	supposed to understand such things.   
      
   	I'll say one thing for the Earth people. They don't let not   
   	being liked stop them. They go right on doing things for   
   	the System as though they were loved and cherished clear   
   	out into infinity.   
      
   Finally, what I took for a completely happy ending in the 1960s   
   looks less so on re-reading.  Rex's initiative and wild scheming   
   have ended up with him recognized as a special robot and he will   
   get to stay with Paul, to some extent anyway, but as an adult I   
   come away realizing that his life is still not his own in a meaningful   
   way, and the question of how many other robots are play-acting to   
   cover interior lives is never addressed.   
      
      
   Welcome To Night Vale   
   https://podbay.fm/p/welcome-to-night-vale   
      
   "Welcome To Night Vale" is an ongoing podcast which has run since   
   2012.  One shorthand way to think about it is what if H.P. Lovecraft   
   instead of Garrison Keillor narrated the tales of Lake Wobegon.   
   Night Vale is a small city in some, unspecified, desert area in the   
   Southwest.  It is very difficult to get to Night Vale, and almost   
   impossible to leave.  Most of what we know about Night Vale comes   
   from listening in to Night Vale Community Radio, in particular the   
   show of host Cecil Palmer most often comes over the airwaves.  In   
   general Palmer's broadcasts will have a standard format.  He will   
   mention some odd, sinister, or newsworthy event that will end up   
   influencing the rest of the broadcast, have some commercials which   
   sponsors would probably pay not to air, go to "The Weather" which   
   will be a indie type song which will go on until the plot events   
   have resolved themselves, or things have gotten worse.   
      
   Palmer is generally a nice guy, though oblivious on a number of   
   points, and too protective of the local power structure (which he   
   believes to some extent he is part of, which he is not), and   
   introduces us to an ongoing cast of characters, and developing and   
   resolving plotlines.  At times the storytelling can be a bit over-woke,   
   but in the main we are made to care about these characters and the   
   deadly world they live in.  Not that things always end well for   
   them.   
      
   There is often an element of the absurd in the stories along with   
   the darker elements, and from time to time the authors play with   
   the narrative structure (a pretty scary episode consisting only of   
   questions, for example), something that works better than you would   
   expect.  I am currently several years behind in episodes, but from   
   my point of view, we have just learned that Night Vale has become   
   "real", and episodes are being narrated by Cecil's cat (who is not   
   a cat).   
      
   Anyway, that brings us to the first Night Vale novel:   
      
   Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel   
   by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor   
   https://amzn.to/4ggzsqa   
      
   The early days of the podcast featured an ongoing mystery involving   
   a man in a tan jacket with a deerskin briefcase who was interacting   
   with Night Vale residents on some sort of urgent basis, but nobody   
   could ever remember what he said, or after a few moments, even   
   seeing him.  This book unravels that mystery.   
      
   It is mainly the story of two Night Vale women, who rarely come   
   on-screen during the podcast, and whose lives had heretofore rarely   
   intersected.  Jackie Fierro, technically 19, but also much older   
   because of the way time doesn't work exactly right in Night Vale   
   runs the town's only pawnshop.  She gets the kind of items you might   
   expect in Night Vale and her routine and the shop are not exactly   
   normal (she dies several times a day), but she is comfortable with   
   them and her life despite her ongoing estrangement from her mother,   
   who she mostly cannot remember growing up with, and her absent   
   father.   
      
   One day an agitated man in a tan jacket, carrying a deerskin briefcase   
   shows up at her shop and hands her a piece of paper which says,   
   simply, "King City" and vanishes.  She quickly finds that she cannot   
   put the piece of paper down, or rather if she does, it quickly finds   
   its way back to her hand.  It is inconvenient and unsettling.  She   
   has no idea what, or where, King City is.   
      
   PTA treasurer Diane Crayton is a single mom raising a moody teenaged   
   son.  That's usually enough drama, but in this case since her son,   
   Josh, is a shapeshifter, his moods carry over into his transformations,   
   and things can get tense from time to time.  Diane loves Josh, and   
   Josh loves Diane, but like most teenagers and parents, they really   
   have very little common ground for talk and a meeting of the minds,   
   especially since Diane has recently put her foot down, insisting   
   that Josh must manifest limbs if he is driving the car.  To make   
   matters worse, Josh's father (a jerk if there ever was one to Diane's   
   way of thinking) is trying to contact Josh, and it appears that   
   Josh may have run away to find him... in King City.   
      
   Brought together by that name, Jackie & Diane(!) must brave the   
   dangers of the Night Vale Library, facing down Librarians by   
   themselves to gather the fraught history and location of King City,   
   and then make the perilous journey to a place that you technically   
   can't get to from here.   
      
   I was on the bubble at first, thinking there was going to be too   
   much parent/teen emotional drama for my tastes, but the book quickly   
   pulled me in, and I ended up thoroughly enjoying it.  The book   
   definitely had an emotional core, but it wasn't sappy, and the   
   writing was always entertaining, and genuinely creepy in the King   
   City segment, finishing with a surprisingly strong family message.   
      
   If you are a fan of the podcast, Cecil does put in a (radio)   
   appearance from time to time, but this was not his story, and you   
   don't have to know anything about the podcast to appreciate it.   
   (As to how the podcast dealt with the revelations about the man in   
   the tan jacket with the deerskin suitcase without spoiling the book:   
   humorously).   
      
   Anyway, I will definitely get to the other Night Vale books at some   
   point, hopefully not as long as it took me to get to this one.   
      
   Big Demon Energy: An Enemies-to-Lovers Urban Fantasy (Bedeviled Book 1)   
   by Deborah Wilde   
   https://amzn.to/3JSee5A   
      
   Honestly, I already can't remember much about this one.  Aviva   
   Fleischer is in paranormal law enforcement in a setting where magic   
   is based on Jewish tradition.  She is on the rebound after being   
   dumped by a handsome vampire prince, and putting all her effort   
   into her work, trying to land the right to run her own cases,   
   something hindered more than you might expect by the fact her (not   
   exactly estranged, not exactly  loving) mother is her boss.  She   
   also has a big secret:  In a world where demons exist and are on   
   the other side, Aviva is half demon.  Just when she looks about to   
   get her big break: The lead on a case of murdered vampires, she is   
   told she has to share the case with, guess who?   
      
   Apart from all the relationship drama, which I quickly got tired   
   of, I never had a clear idea of the magic system, or how the world   
   was organized despite a lot of exposition around those issues.   
      
   I came around, mostly, to liking Wilde's "Unlikable Demon Hunter"   
   series, but I don't think I'll stick around for this one to play   
   out.   
      
   Out of this World Hardcover - January 1, 1958   
   by Murray Leinster   
   https://amzn.to/481BpEy   
      
   These are (all but one of) Leinster's stories of the lazy hillbilly   
   genius, Bud Gregory.  The stories all have a common formula: Something   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)