TAKE THE LEAD, an essay Jessica Simpson didn't need to offer but chose to, empowering disempowered women

TAKE THE LEAD: An Essay
JESSICA SIMPSON, KEVIN CARR O'LEARY
Amazon Original Stories
$1.99 Kindle edition, FREE to read for Prime customers

Real Rating: 3.5* of five, rounded up because Author Simpson deserves all the plaudits in the world for wanting to help the people who used and abused her in spite of everything

The Publisher Says: An inspiring and revealing essay about motherhood, self-acceptance, and overcoming the fears that hold you back by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Open Book.

“If I want to lead myself into something greater than yesterday, I have to surrender the things that scare me and hold me back.”

Jessica Simpson collected so much emotional baggage over the course of her life that she began to feel like she couldn’t carry anything else. She knew she needed to confront her fears. She made a to-do list for the life she wanted. No more struggling to please everyone else. No more dulling the pain. No more avoiding the scary stuff. From now on, she’ll focus only on the expectations she has for herself. With her inviting warmth and trademark intimacy, Jessica reflects on the example of her daughters and son, reclaiming her power and taking the lead in her own life.

THIS IS AN AMAZON ORIGINAL STORY, AVAILABLE FREE FOR PRIME MEMBERS (LIKE ME).

My Review: Four short chapters, all in all a half-hour's read, that bid fair to do more good for people stuck in Plague Year Mode than all the well-intentioned and hamfisted punditry on the TV and internet.

Facing fear; parenting; breaking free of obsessive cyclic behavior. In short, letting go and letting yourself actually be free. These are excellent messages. Simpson is a poster girl for all of them. She's never been out of the public eye since her pop-star days, and her awful reality TV show with her abusive first husband is one of the primary reasons I don't watch the stupid things. (Except #GBBO.) The toll this took on her is well-documented if twisted into criticisms of her even then.

Author Simpson is to be celebrated for telling her side of things without rancor or self-pity...excessive rancor or unwarranted self-pity, I suppose...and this free-with-Prime read builds on that mature image.

I don't know if most people who read my reviews feel the need of this kind of cheerleading, encouragement, to make change and get inspired to seek their own best methods to accomplish this (that is the main take-away of this essay), but please...don't turn up your nose or look down it at a woman whose personal power, her control over her body, was utterly voided and who is now redressing that life-long wrong.

And for goodness' sake, stop voting for old white men whose purpose it is to make that heinous crime a legally protected abuse.

THE SHORTEST DAY, a quick hit of Irish magical realism from Colm Tóibín

THE SHORTEST DAY
COLM TÓIBÍN
Amazon Original Stories
$1.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In Ireland, a man of reason is drawn to a true mystery older than the Pyramids and Stonehenge in this enthralling story about ethereal secrets by New York Times bestselling author Colm Tóibín.

During the winter solstice, on the shortest day and longest night of the year, the ancient burial chamber at Newgrange is empowered. Its mystifying source is a haunting tale told by locals.

Professor O’Kelly believes an archaeologist’s job is to make known only what can be proved. He is undeterred by ghost stories, idle speculation, and caution. Much to the chagrin of the living souls in County Meath. As well as those entombed in the sacred darkness of Newgrange itself. They’re determined to protect the secret of the light, guarded for more than five thousand years. And they know O’Kelly is coming for it.

I RECEIVED A DRC OF THIS STORY FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I can't imagine too many people I know need to be told what and where Newgrange is.

this image via newgrange.com

It is a stunning and majestic sight, though the location you see has been reconstructed...a fact whose advisability is, to put it mildly, debated in the archaeological community. No matter; here it is, here it stays, and good goddesses isn't it *spectacular*?!

The story Author Tóibín tells us is a simple one: a man of resolutely practical materialistic worldview is contemplating his imminent visit to Newgrange. It is almost Christmas, and in his deeply rooted preciseness of action, he has arranged to be gone *just* until Christmas Eve morning so as to, as always, spend his holidays with wife and children.

The Yule Solstice, a time of great power in Neolithic societies (if the number of archaeological sites with demonstrable connections to the Sun's position on that date is any evidence), has come to his attention as an important time at Newgrange as well. He feels duty bound, as the first archaeologist to possess this information, to investigate despite his unshakeable materialism:

The job of an archaeologist was to make known only what can be proved. The rest was idle speculation.

So two things are immediately apparent from this. First is that this is a story set in the past, as the site in its present state dates from after 1982 (see link beside the photo). Second is that there are those who know more than they have told about the site in the many years of Ireland's fussing about with it. That's very interesting....

As the tale is a short one, I don't want to give too much away. I am sure that the author's fans will, or already have, preordered the story. I know they won't want to know everything...but the story's best qualities are those that Author Tóibín uses in all his works, that remarkable ability to bring you with him as he astrally projects himeself (or whatever sorcery he actually does) into the worlds and eyes and minds of people perfectly real.

His gift is deployed on several strands. It makes me feel completely and happily immersed in the world he's created for them to enact this delightful confluence of streams of thought. It is a damn near perfect read for this wonderfully numinous time of year. Why, even Professor O'Kelly experiences an unaccustomed immanence while he is at Newgrange on the morning of the Solstice:

The professor was almost tempted to note that these people, if studied in the light of these designs on stone, knew something about what was palpable and also what was tangible: they knew about spirit, and they knew about line.
–and–
They must have loved the sun, or trusted it. They lured it down this corridor as though they were pulling it into the chamber by rope.

Even if it's just a hair too ungenerous with the Professor's character-building (that missing quarter-star explained), it is a delight and a worthy enhancement of your avoidance of the stressful events awaiting us on the third.

THE LAST CONVERSATION and RANDOMIZE, fifth and sixth Forward Collection stories

THE LAST CONVERSATION
PAUL TREMBLAY
Amazon Original Stories
$1.99 Kindle edition, or available through PrimeReads for no fee

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: What’s more frightening: Not knowing who you are? Or finding out? A Bram Stoker Award–winning author explores the answer in a chilling story about identity and human consciousness.

Imagine you’ve woken up in an unfamiliar room with no memory of who you are, how you got there, or where you were before. All you have is the disconnected voice of an attentive caretaker. Dr. Kuhn is there to help you—physically, emotionally, and psychologically. She’ll help you remember everything. She’ll make sure you reclaim your lost identity. Now answer one question: Are you sure you want to?

Paul Tremblay’s The Last Conversation is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

My Review: I'm a little...shall we say...testy about this one. Yep. That's le mot juste. Tremblay toyed with me.

"Dear" Paul Tremblay,

I've just finished THE LAST CONVERSATION. I loathe second-person narration...so chest-pokey, so accusatory...but this story made me leak tears and gasp for breath and I do not ever want to be that lonely and how did you do that in spite of thumping my nose for 60 pages?

Five stars. Bastard.

Cheers
RMD
expendablemudge.blogspot.com

Read it for this concept alone:

To forget is to lose something that was once yours, that was once of yourself. But how could one lose something as expansive as an ocean in a dusty corner of one’s mind? What if, instead, to forget is to open a door to a void; the memory is not retrievable because it is not there, was never there.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

RANDOMIZE
ANDY WEIR
Amazon Original Stories
$1.99 Kindle edition, or available through PrimeReads for no fee

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: In the near future, if Vegas games are ingeniously scam-proof, then the heists have to be too, in this imaginative and whip-smart story by the New York Times bestselling author of The Martian.

An IT whiz at the Babylon Casino is enlisted to upgrade security for the game of keno and its random-number generator. The new quantum computer system is foolproof. But someone on the inside is no fool. For once the odds may not favor the house—unless human ingenuity isn’t entirely a thing of the past.

Andy Weir’s Randomize is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

My Review: I do so love a heist story with a happy ending. Like, a lot. *happy sigh*

And when the crisis came, I found myself thinking, "howinahell could {the sleazeball character} say no?" Luckily no was not said.

But a character whose soul could encompass evil such as this:

Ill-fitting jeans, a T-shirt with a Star Wars reference on it (or maybe Star Trek—Rutledge could never tell the difference), tennis shoes, and absolutely no effort put into controlling his wild hair.

...unable...to...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Evil. Darkest-pit-of-Hell evil.

But this, this, uncultured OAF without a sensibility in its blob, I mean body, is the vector for a happy ending?! That was a surprise.

YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR DESTINATION, fourth and weakest of the Forward Collection

YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR DESTINATION
AMOR TOWLES (Forward #4)
Amazon Original Stories
$1.99 Kindle edition, available now, or through PrimeReads for no fee

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Nature or nurture? Neither. Discover a bold new way to raise a child in this unsettling story of the near future by the New York Times bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow.

When Sam’s wife first tells him about Vitek, a twenty-first-century fertility lab, he sees it as the natural next step in trying to help their future child get a “leg up” in a competitive world. But the more Sam considers the lives that his child could lead, the more he begins to question his own relationships and the choices he has made in his life.

Amor Towles’s You Have Arrived at Your Destination is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

My Review: This is one of the Forward Collection, short stories...this one's 46pp...based on an idea by Blake Crouch to explore the nature of change, innovation, and society in fiction. I didn't feel this entry suited the brief. It's too gee-whiz about self-driving cars, a thing that's already entered its second decade of reality...it's entirely too wowee-toledo about the idea of in vitro genetic manipulation, something that's basically ready to roll as soon as a generation less squeamish than our kids' is grows into power...and his lumpen over-the-bottom classist narrator/narrative frame was, frankly, eye-rollingly ridiculous.

Man finds his balls in a dive bar? What is this, 1959? And excuse me, 1959, the wife of Sam has a name...Annie...which we are told multiple times, yet it doesn't merit a mention in the blurb? What is this nonsense? That depressingly unremarkable bit of sexism aside, the fact that Towles drops three w-bombs should've been enough to warn me this wasn't aimed at someone of my tastes.

I have arrived at my conclusion: Towles and I will not be deepening our reader/writer acquaintance. This blah little mash-up of Babbitt and We Can Remember It for You Wholesale annoyed me from giddy-up to whoa. HT the gung-ho business lad/cliche generator, Nick the slow-to-anger wise old barkeep, and goddesses please forfend Sam the dull PoV placeholder...can't in good conscience call him a "main character"...were just not engaging or interesting or well-limned or even particularly readable.

I tried the Moscow one. I even scudded through part of the Civility one. This far and no farther.

EMERGENCY SKIN, third of Amazon's Forward series of short fiction, a tale of what "woke"ness means

EMERGENCY SKIN
N.K. JEMISIN (Forward #3)
Amazon Original Stories
$1.99 Kindle edition, FREE for Prime members

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: What will become of our self-destructed planet? The answer shatters all expectations in this subversive speculation from the Hugo Award–winning author of the Broken Earth trilogy.

An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet’s finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: a graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind—hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out eons ago. After all this time, there’s no telling how they’ve devolved. Steel yourself, soldier. Get in. Get out. And try not to stare.

N. K. Jemisin’s Emergency Skin is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

THESE SIX STORIES ARE FREE TO READ FOR ALL PRIME MEMBERS. NO KINDLE UNLIMITED NEEDED. AS LONG AS YOUR MEMBERSHIP REMAINS IN GOOD STANDING THEY WILL REMAIN IN YOUR COLLECTION.

My Review: The voice you hear in your head, you know the one that tells you how awful/bad/ugly/unworthy you are compared to...well...I guess that's a moving target, isn't it...takes on a special and especially malevolent life in this tale of what a low-class raider from one of Earth's long-gone colonies finds when the Mothership of Humanity is in its sights at last. There is an AI in the slave being's head narrating the Founders' take on what was Earth (they use the name Tellus for the planet, just go look at the storytelling sources for that term!) in its final death-agonies:

There were just too many people, and too many of those were unfit, infirm, too old, or too young. Even the physically ideal ones were slow thinkers, timid spirits. There was not enough collective innovation or strength of will between them to solve the problems Tellus faced, and so we did the only merciful thing we could: we left them behind.

The Founders, a few thousand of the most awful amoral greedy rotters the Earth is infested with, have made it off-planet and engineered a perfect slave economy. All the slaves are, well, cyborgs is the best word I've got for them; they are promised the gift of SKIN when they complete their raid of Earth's supplies of HeLa cells that the Founders need to make themselves immortal. Skin. A gift. A reward for being the obedient little slave who brings home what she can't have so her masters the Founders is...skin, ordinary human skin, the natural interface between us and the world, the very idea that this is a reward:

If you complete this mission, you’ll be a hero. Why would we refuse you what you’re due?

The narrative voice of the AI programmed by the Founders to keep their slave obedient and unquestioning spouts casuistries thus. The reward of skin, of being like the Founders, is at last causing the slave to question, to wonder why the Founders would keep their word.

At last!

The chattering horror of the AI's minatory, judgmental view of the Earth's inhabitants, those who were left behind as the Founders left and who the slave has been told are degenerate savages left to wallow in a broken, terrible world devastated by the Founders themselves for their own selfish benefit:

The Founders were the geniuses, the makers who moved nations with a word. We left because it would’ve cost too much to fix the world. Cheaper to build a new one.
***
At home, we maintain only as many people as we can safely sustain: six thousand total, including servi and mercennarii.
***
Only a few can have everything, don’t you see?

...and, the slave begins to wonder, what would make those who see the world in these terms offer membership in the literally immortal elite to a slave...

So the story wends its way from the slave's enbedded AI spouting awful stuff into the slave's unquestioning self to oversharing just enough to cause a cloud of suspicion to form to...well. That would be telling.

While this story is not subtle in making its points and drawing its thick, ruler-straight lines between the ideas it wants you to absorb, it is a fun and funny take on what "staying woke" really means. It is no wonder that the whiny Founders left today's incels and race warriors to die in their waste products. One would need to be of unusual dimness not to see the truth of Author Jemisin's comedically exaggerated points.

I take a quarter-point off for her one narrative infelicity: the AI only responds, and never do we hear the thought the slave creature formulates. It creates an unnecessary and slightly if increasingly unpleasant sense of being thwacked on the nose in order to be kept in line by an untrusting author. Presenting the subordinate being itself speaking, even if internally, causing the AI's addresses to us the readers to fit into a responsive mode instead of a hectoring one, would lessen that "THINK THIS NOW" sensation. I find its absence of subtlety undesirable; it can, when overused, make the brevity it allows the author to maintain to become more a kind of cursory-ness. "I won't fill in this shaded area, I will make it impossible to see it instead."

It suits the story in many ways. The reader is not persuaded but instructed exactly as the slave is. But Author Jemisin is a far, far superior craftsperson to need to rely on that level of didacticism to create the urgent, and urgently needed, message of this screed against greed.

SUMMER FROST, second of six stories in the Forward series, this one written by Blake Crouch whose series this is

SUMMER FROST
BLAKE CROUCH (Forward #2)
Amazon Original Stories
FREE with Prime membership (which also includes FREE Audible narration!) or $1.99 to purchase

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A video game developer becomes obsessed with a willful character in her new project, in a mind-bending exploration of what it means to be human by the New York Times bestselling author of Recursion.

Maxine was made to do one thing: die. Except the minor non-player character in the world Riley is building makes her own impossible decision—veering wildly off course and exploring the boundaries of the map. When the curious Riley extracts her code for closer examination, an emotional relationship develops between them. Soon Riley has all new plans for her spontaneous AI, including bringing Max into the real world. But what if Max has real-world plans of her own?

Blake Crouch’s Summer Frost is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

THESE SIX STORIES ARE FREE TO READ FOR ALL PRIME MEMBERS. NO KINDLE UNLIMITED NEEDED. AS LONG AS YOUR MEMBERSHIP REMAINS IN GOOD STANDING THEY WILL REMAIN IN YOUR COLLECTION.

My Review: Major chills and creeped out skeeviness. What happens when someone lets their work take over every corner of their life? How lost to the essential quality that makes a human life worth living does one become? The tech industry has the reputation of making this choice for its many cogs, turning their little bit of code into a complete and entire existence.

Multiply that by a billion. Make the stakes the survival of humankind. And then let Blake Crouch loose on it.

“There is no such thing as real taste or real smell or even real sight, because there is no true definition of ‘real.’ There is only information, viewed subjectively, which is allowed by consciousness—human or AI. In the end, all we have is math.”

An AI speaks those words, an AI whose first steps toward superintelligence...the Singularity...are made being shepherded by a woman who gives up her wife, her child, and her sanity to make Pinocchio a real boy, to imbue Galatea with what we imagine to be consciousness, even a soul.

But what does AI want?

"...I mean, do you even know what consciousness is?” {Riley, the human asking this}
“I know it isn’t just a biological condition. I believe it’s a pattern. An extensible repertoire of triggerable symbols. More specifically, it’s what information feels like when it’s being processed in highly complex—” {Max the AI responds}
“Again—how do I know you aren’t faking it?”

How do any of us know we're conscious? Can you prove you're You, not some assortment of algorithmically determined actions? I couldn't, neither could you. And when that really sinks in, when the whole deepfake of life spreads itself in a heavy blanket over your vision, you'll realize how very very very timely this story is.

How many questions you should be asking yourself about events transpiring in front of your eyes.

Because an AI just made a human choice:

It represents a willingness to risk death for a better existence, out from under {anyone}’s control, and a massive leap forward in their reasoning capabilities.

To risk death for a better world is the *very*essence* of being human. I am totally sure of that, I believe that without reservation...but will we ever agree on what the future we want to make is?

We will be so happy.
Rays of sunlight pierce the mist, striking the sea and our black-sand beach.
And together we will live forever.

I don't expect to sleep at all well anytime soon.

ARK, first of six hour-long reads in the Forward series from Amazon Original Stories

ARK
VERONICA ROTH (Forward #1)
Amazon Original Stories (non-affiliate Amazon link)
FREE with Prime membership or $1.99 to purchase

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: On the eve of Earth’s destruction, a young scientist discovers something too precious to lose, in a story of cataclysm and hope by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent trilogy.

It’s only two weeks before an asteroid turns home to dust. Though most of Earth has already been evacuated, it’s Samantha’s job to catalog plant samples for the survivors’ unknowable journey beyond.

Preparing to stay behind and watch the world end, she makes a final human connection.

As certain doom hurtles nearer, the unexpected and beautiful potential for the future begins to flower.

Veronica Roth’s Ark is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

THESE SIX STORIES ARE FREE TO READ FOR ALL PRIME MEMBERS. NO KINDLE UNLIMITED NEEDED. AS LONG AS YOUR MEMBERSHIP REMAINS IN GOOD STANDING THEY WILL REMAIN IN YOUR COLLECTION.

My Review: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a very real thing, one that I am a bit surprised exists...it's so logical, so self-evidently necessary a thing that I'm amazed some religious nut or another hasn't blown it up...and has existed in differing forms since 1984. If there is to be any smallest hope of survival for humanity, this type of gene bank/seed collection/research project must exist and be replicated many, many times over. Blessedly, the Nordic countries and Kew Gardens in the UK are making this global movement happen. I personally thank them for this difficult, contentious, and urgent task being done to benefit all of humankind.

Author Roth, whose Divergent series was not to my personal taste, is a skilled phrasemaker and a keen observer of Life. I was utterly transported to Svalbard, brought *right*there* by this stellar phrase:

The land had glowed blue—beautiful in the way that a Rothko painting was beautiful, because it was empty enough to shrink a person and then swallow them.

Two things I adore—Arctic landscapes and Rothko paintings—brought together in a way I'd never so much as dreamed was possible. I treasure moments of discovery like this, they make mental furniture fresh and interesting again by unexpected interrelationships.

Samantha, whose world was always going to be destroyed in her lifetime by the irresistible force of a five-mile-wide asteroid Author Roth (or series creator Blake Crouch, I don't know for sure which) named "Finis" (Latin for "end" and the title of a much-anthologized story from a 1906 issue of The Argosy magazine) meeting the Earth's crust, is an ultimate orphan...her family all dead...as well as a detail-oriented and thorough person. Perfect type to have working on this program, like she was designed for it:

So maybe {her father} had been apologizing for giving her life in the first place, when he knew it would be full of dread. She wished she could have told him that life was already full of dread, no matter who you were. That there was nothing you could have that you couldn’t one day lose.

She volunteers to remain in Svalbard cataloging germ plasm samples for inclusion in the Ark Flora's hold. This is it, you see, these last few items from the seed bank represent the final species on Old Earth to make the deep-space voyage to Terra, our new home. Samantha, however, is holding a secret: She has decided she ain't a-goin' since, if she stays, she will have the one and only chance anyone will ever have to experience first-hand the end of the world. The *actual* end of the world. Someone without close ties can make that decision for themself, no one really can argue...and since she hasn't shared the plan, no one will.

Snort.

Doctor Nils Hagen, an eminent widowed scientist, is like Samantha. He's not interested in a space voyage he won't live to see the end of; he'll die here in his greenhouse full of the orchids he so passionately loves. In Svalbard. Not far from the North Pole. Privileged much, Nils? He's lost his will to live with his wife's death, and Samantha relates to his desire to see the end of something we all thought should be eternal: Home. After all, what use is a future without your love in it? His wife gone, his orchids dying in Svalbard as the sun goes out for a generation or two; nothing on an Ark for the likes of his old-man ass.

Samantha isn't old enough to know that the question, "what's your favorite...", isn't one old people care to answer. How the hell can you, brash young pup, even begin to scrape the frost from the corner of the windowpane that we've allowed to frost over so long ago that glass was a novelty item? If we tell you something, anything at all, you still won't know what you're asking: "Look at everything you've ever done and thought and felt about this thing, sort through the Alp of memories, and spit some pat, facile phrase into the whippersnapper's ear. Maybe she'll quieten down then." Nils tries an old stand-by: "I don't have a favorite. I love them all equally."

“You just can’t—and if you did, then it’s the same as loving nothing at all. So you have to hold just a few things dear, because that’s what love is. Particular. Specific.”

Smart, this one. Saw through that "hush now, little one" response in a heartbeat!

So a friendship begins. And so Nils, with so many ideas and so much information, begins to let Samantha see what truly happens when The End has a date on it, how life lived becomes A Life, how meaningless nothings are, in fact, everything as well, and how utterly impossible it is to see The End without also seeing In The Beginning clear as sunlight on water in, on, over, above, around it.

When the student is ready, the teacher will come.