The Murderbot Diaries

Since I've run a few Murderbot quotes lately I thought I'd rerun the review of the series which I first highlighted in 2021.

I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don't know, a little under 35,00 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure. — All Systems Red

The first thing you need to know about Murderbot is that it doesn't like humans. Even though its job is to protect them.

The second thing you need to know is that Murderbot would really rather be watching TV. Specifically the most unrealistic soap-opera science fiction available.

These books are the most fun I've had reading for a long time. The story plots are somewhat beside the point, just as in a big, splashy action thriller where what you want is action and thrills. And yet, the plots do matter because that's where we find out that Murderbot actually does care about more than watching TV. 

And, you know, we kind of wind up loving Murderbot, so we care too.

It begins with four novellas.

All Systems Red 

Artificial Condition 

Rogue Protocol 

Exit Strategy 

These four novellas  encompass one large story arc, so in essence they are like four long sections in a book. (So you need to read them in order.)

 The series is light, entertaining, fun, and exciting. All that with a sense of humor and a mystery in each book in order to keep everyone alive. Each novella is a thriller-adventure with Murderbot reluctantly acting as the Security Unit for a group of humans as cover for other things it is trying to accomplish.

I like that Murderbot uses its free will to spend all day watching TV, if possible. I also liked the reason that it was capable of the killing that makes it name itself "Murderbot." 

In a way, the series feels a bit like it could have been from the Firefly universe. Or maybe Futurama? Every time Murderbot said "kill all humans" - and it was said a fair number of times - Bender flashed before my eyes. 

I've seen a few complaints that the novellas are too short and episodic feeling. You mean just like the entertainment that Murderbot loves to watch so much? Maybe that's why I like them. Sometimes what you want is a good episodic adventure with a likable hero struggling against the odds. And that's what the novellas give us. 

Network Effect

If the novellas are like TV episodes, then the novel is the movie we've been waiting for. 

This book put me in the almost unprecedented position of wanting to read as fast as possible (the way I always do with the Murderbot books) and yet to also slow down so the story didn't unfold and end too soon. So I read every spare moment, but deliberately ... and that made the book last two days! Hahaha - mission accomplished. 

Martha Wells wove a complex action-adventure story that kept me on the edge of my seat while taking the time to further develop Murderbot's character. Not to mention developing those of past friends and new partners in action. Toward the end a new character is added in the most satisfying yet surprising way - one I hope we see more of in the future. 

The novellas are good but the novel is better. 

Read the novel after the novellas.

Fugitive Telemetry

System Collapse

Now there are a couple more novellas. Fugitive Telemetry is a murder mystery set before Network Effect. I like to read it after Exit Strategy but it really doesn't matter. 

System Collapse is set after Network Effect and is the least successful of the series in my opinion. Wells has Murderbot dealing with a personal problem in an exceptional clunky way. However, the last half of the book more than makes up for the slow beginning. It is very rewarding for those who, like me, enjoy Murderbot's love of media.

Iron Giant

More robot art, from a favorite movie of ours, to accompany today's Murderbot quote.

Where 90% of my problems are

Overse caught up with me and asked, "Are you all right? ... Just remember you're not alone here."

I never know what to say to that. I am actually alone in my head, and that's where 90% of my problems are.

Martha Wells, Network Effect

Again with a good Murderbot quote. And this one works for all of us most of the time.

Robot Visions

Since today's quote is from a robot in literature, I though this was a great piece of art to feature too.

When a murderbot avoids eye contact ...

Just a heads-up, when a murderbot stands there looking to the left of your head to avoid eye contact, its probably not thinking about killing you, its probably frantically trying to come up with a reply to whatever you just said to it.

Martha Wells, Network Effect

The Murderbot Diaries have become my relaxation reading during stressful times. Very much like Murderbot always falling back on running episodes of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon during its own times of stress. Lately — Murderbot is my friend for nighttime reading. Plus it is just good reading anytime.

Solemnity of St. Joseph

This is a Solemnity, y'all! Lent is off for today! Enjoy whatever you gave up, like it's a Sunday! In our household that means ice cream, listening to podcasts and audiobooks, and eating lunch! Plus, we just love St. Joseph.

Giuseppe Maria Lo Spagnolo Crespi - Death of Saint Joseph [c.1712]
Via Gandalf's Gallery

The season of Lent is interrupted by the Solemnity of Joseph, Husband of Mary. With the exception of Our Lady, there is no greater saint in Heaven than Saint Joseph. This feast originated in the fifteenth century and was then extended to the whole church in 1621. In 1847 Pope Pius IX named Saint Joseph Patron of the Universal Church. Pope John XXIII had Saint Joseph's name included in the Roman Canon.

Here was an ordinary man to whom God granted extraordinary graces. Joseph was to fulfill a most singular mission in the salvific design of God. He experienced indescribable joys along with the trials of doubt and suffering. We recall his perplexity at the mystery of Mary's conception, at the extreme of material poverty in Bethlehem, at the prophecies of Simeon in the Temple, at the hurried flight into Egypt, at the difficulties of having to live in a foreign land, at the return from Egypt and the threat posed by Archelaus. Joseph proved himself always faithful to the will of God. He showed himself always ready to set aside his own human plans and considerations.

The explanation for this remarkable fidelity is that Jesus and Mary were at the centre of Joseph's life. Joseph's self-giving is an interweaving of faithful love, loving faith and confident hope. His feast is thus a good opportunity for us to renew our commitment to the Christian calling God has given each of us. (St. J. Escrivá, Christ is passing by)

In Conversation with God, Vol. 6: Special Feasts: January to June

St. Joseph, Terror of Demons
by Deacon Lawrence Klimecki

My favorite title for St. Joseph is Terror of Demons. For more about that title, read here.

I also really love this reflection on how we can see a little of what St. Joseph was like through his foster-son Jesus' storytelling and actions.

It is certainly true that St. Joseph had a deep interior and contemplative life — we know that because he heard the voice of God so clearly and directly at critical times in his life. And there is something to be gleaned from the Church’s traditional sense of the saint’s quietude.

But I’m beginning to suspect that’s not the whole story.

Joseph’s foster son, Jesus of Nazareth, was a compelling and charismatic enough preacher to attract apostles, disciples, and to see thousands of people gather around him to hear him preach. He told witty, insightful, and extemporaneous parables that made a point. He was often funny. He was comfortable with all manner of people.

Jesus, of course, is both fully human and fully divine. The interplay of his divine and human is a mystery we can’t wholly understand. But as Jesus is a person with a fully human nature, the Church has always known that Jesus learned at the table, and workbench, and hearth of his foster father, St. Joseph.

And given the Lord’s presence — his abilities as a raconteur and as a preacher, I think it’s fair to assume he learned some of that from the old man.

I’ve begun to suspect that St. Joseph was a really enjoyable guy to spend some time with. And I’ve started to wonder whether — if you ambled into his carpentry shop — he might not sometimes talk your ear off. He might have even been funny.

When Jesus told his apostles that “whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” he was talking about his heavenly Father.

But I think it’s also true about his earthly father — He who has seen Jesus has seen St. Joseph, too.

The history of devotion to St. Joseph is really fascinating. And I want to be careful here — I don’t want to remake the saint in my own image, and thus turn devotion into a kind of self-worship.

But I think the lesson of St. Joseph is that there’s not only one template for what it means to be a Christian man or woman. Being a saint means being more fully who we are, not less.

And St. Joseph embraced his vocation with the whole of his own personality — whatever it was.

May we do the same.

J.D. Flynn, The Pillar

 

The Holy Family with a Little Bird, c. 1645–1650

 I especially love paintings imagining what the Holy Family's life was like. Saint Joseph and Jesus together are particularly wonderful here.

Vanitas: Still Life with a Skull and a Quill

Vanitas Still Life with a Skull and a Quill (1628) by Pieter Claesz

The term memento mori, a Latin phrase meaning ‘remember you must die’ is often a term used when describing certain types of still life works. Paintings, for example, which may include a portrait with a skull but other symbols commonly found are hour glasses or clocks, extinguished or guttering candles, fruit, and flowers. Closely related to the memento mori picture is the vanitas still life.

My Daily Art Display
where there are more still life paintings by this talented artist

Testing the Truth

From introduction to the The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion by Marshall McLuhan. This is part of McLuhan's conversion story. This is written by McLuhan's son, Eric, one of the editors of the book.

At every turn, while he was investigating the background for his study of Thomas Nashe, he would encounter the Church — what Chesterton called (another book title) The Thing. It was everywhere. At one point, he later told me (and he was never very specific just when that point occurred), he decided that the thing had to be sorted out or he couldn't rest. Either it ws true, or it wasn't. Either the entire matter was true, all of it, exactly as the Church claimed, or it was the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on a gullible mankind. With that choice clearly delineated, he set out to find which was the case. What came next was not more study, but testing.

The matter had to be tested — on its own terms: that is, by prayer. He told me that the principal prayer that he used was not some long or complex formula, but simply, "Lord, please, send me a sign." He reported that, almost immediately, not one but a deluge of signs arrived. And they continued to arrive unabated for a long time. As to just what the signs consisted in and what happened next, well, some things must remain private. The reader may deduce the rest from the fact of his conversion. ...

I simply absolutely love this guy's sheer logic. Here's how it's supposed to work. So let's find out.

And, as it turned out, McLuhan was answered abundantly in the way that only God can.

Top o' the Mornin' to Ya: Happy St. Patrick's Day

This and that for St. Patrick's Day.

Note - optional memorials are not celebrated during Lent, so technically St. Patrick's Day is never celebrated in the Church. Except wherever it isn't optional, such as in Ireland where it is a solemnity and national holiday.

Just a little something to keep in mind. But be of good cheer! The Solemnity of St. Joseph is coming in two days and that calls for a big celebration!

St. Patrick is more a saint for our modern times than you might think. He dealt with pagans and arguing Christians — sound familiar?

Time and again Patrick's life was in danger from various quarters, principally from his mortal enemies the Druids; that he managed to survive them all was due to his own shrewdness and, on more than one occasion, to the special intervention of divine Providence. However, Patrick always regarded his greatest trial to be the opposition to his mission which originated within the circle of his fellow Christians in Britain and Gaul, who circulated so many scurrilous stories about him that he felt called upon to defend himself in writing; thanks to this we are fortunate enough to have his Confession, which is the main source of the details about his life.

Francis Fernandez, In Conversation with God: Special Feasts January - June

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We think of green beer for St. Patrick's Day so this linking of beer and the saints is fun.
"It is my design to die in the brew-house; let ale be placed to my mouth when I am expiring so that when the choir of angels come they may say: 'Be God propitious to this drinker.'"So said St. Columbanus.

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A bit of St. Patrick's Confession which you may read it its entirety here.

1. I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most contemptible to many, had for father the deacon Calpurnius, son of the late Potitus, a priest, of the settlement [vicus] of Bannavem Taburniae; he had a small villa nearby where I was taken captive. I was at that time about sixteen years of age. I did not, indeed, know the true God; and I was taken into captivity in Ireland with many thousands of people, according to our deserts, for quite drawn away from God, we did not keep his precepts, nor were we obedient to our priests who used to remind us of our salvation. And the Lord brought down on us the fury of his being and scattered us among many nations, even to the ends of the earth, where I, in my smallness, am now to be found among foreigners.

2. And there the Lord opened my mind to an awareness of my unbelief, in order that, even so late, I might remember my transgressions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my insignificance and pitied my youth and ignorance. And he watched over me before I knew him, and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son.

3. Therefore, indeed, I cannot keep silent, nor would it be proper, so many favours and graces has the Lord deigned to bestow on me in the land of my captivity. For after chastisement from God, and recognizing him, our way to repay him is to exalt him and confess his wonders before every nation under heaven. ...

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St. Patrick's Breastplate ... the confession above is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to have led to the glory that is this prayer.

I arise today, through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the threeness, through confession of the oneness, of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today, through the strength of Christ's birth with his baptism, through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial, through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension, through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

I arise today, through the strength of the love of the Cherubim, in obedience of angels, in the service of archangels, in the hope of the resurrection to meet with reward, in the prayers of patriarchs, in prediction of prophets, in preaching of apostles, in faith of confessors, in innocence of holy virgins, in deeds of righteous men.

I arise today, through the strength of heaven; light of sun, radiance of moon, splendor of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of wind, depth of sea, stability of earth, firmness of rock.

I arise today, through God's strength to pilot me: God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me, God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me, God's word to speak to me, God's hand to guard me, God's way to lie before me, God's shield to protect me, God's host to save me, from the snares of devils, from temptations of vices, from every one who shall wish me ill, afar and anear, alone and in a multitude.

I summon today, all these powers between me and those evils, against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul, against incantations of false prophets, against black laws of pagandom, against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry, against spells of women and smiths and wizards, against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.

Christ to shield me today, against poisoning, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, so there come to me abundance of reward. Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks of me, Christ in the eye of every one that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today, through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the threeness, through confession of the oneness, of the Creator of Creation.

(The full text of what has come to be known as St. Patrick's Breast Plate. While it's not known for sure, ancient tradition has ascribed the prayer to Patrick himself. This is an older translation.)

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For Celebrating:

• Make some Irish Soda Bread. (For other Irish recipes, check here ... I'm not into corned beef at all, but lamb? Oh yeah ...)
• If you can't go dancing or to the pub  then watch The Quiet Man.
  
• I love the idea of  Irish dancing. See, that's how you use up all that alcohol in the Guiness (you are drinking Guiness today aren't you?) ... leaping and twirling?
  
  
  We foot it all the night,
  Weaving olden dances,
  Mingling hands and mingling glances
  Till the moon has taken flight;
  To and fro we leap
  And chase the frothy bubbles,
  While the world is full of troubles
  
  WB Yeats, The Stolen Child

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Irish Heritage: 

I have been asked if I am Irish and yes I am. I believe it was my great-great-grandfather who was named Reeves. That then lead to some thought that the surname was actually an occupation as well, which I hadn't thought of. And so it was, according to Wikipedia at any rate.

Reeve may refer to:

• High-reeve, a title taken by some English magnates during the 10th and 11th centuries
• Reeve (England), an official elected annually by the serfs to supervise lands for a lord
• Reeve (Canada), an elected chief executive in counties
• Shire reeve, an office position that originated the term Sheriff

So I come from a proud line of middle managers. Ah, tradition ...

Stained-glass window of St. Patrick

7th Sunday of St. Joseph

Reflecting on St. Joseph on the seven Sundays leading up to his solemnity is an old tradition.

Coronation of Joseph, Valdés Leal, c, 1670

The Fatherly Intercession of St. Joseph

The fatherly intercession of Saint Joseph in the Church is a prolongation of the authority he exercised over Jesus Christ, the head of the Church, and Mary, Mother of the Church. This is the reason why Saint Joseph has been declared Patron of the Universal Church. That home in Nazareth contained all the elements of the nascent Church. It is fitting that Joseph care for the Church in the same holy manner in which he watched over the Holy Family  in Nazareth. (Pope Leo XIII) ...

Saint Joseph's mission extends to the end of time. His fatherhood applies to each one of us. Saint Teresa of Avila has written: Would that I could persuade all men to have devotion to this glorious Saint; for I know by long experience what blessings he can obtain for us from God. I have never known any one who was really devoted to him, and who honored him by particular services, who did not visibly grow more and more in virtue; for he helps in a special way those souls who commend themselves to him. It is now some years since I have always on his feast asked him for something and I have always received it. If the petition be in any way amiss, he directs it aright for my greater good.

In Conversation with God: Volume Six: Special Feasts: January - June

A Princess of Mars

Frank E. Schoonover, A Princess of Mars

Catholic Faith, Exuberance, and Hope

I feel about Catholicism as G. K. Chesterton did—that it encourages an exuberance, a joy about the gift of life. I think my conversion was a natural growth. Even in the darkest hours of my childhood, I was an irrepressible optimist, always able to find something to fill me with amazement, wonder and delight. When I came to the Catolic faith, it explained to me why I always had—and always should have—felt exuberant and full of hope.

Dean Koontz

Rereading an old quote journal I came across this quote which reminded me of blogging days of old, when it was a new discovery that Dean Koontz is Catholic. This must be why his horror novels, though they may contain some very bad things indeed, have characters who are themselves full of hope and determination.

Mummy Portrait of a Woman

Attributed to the Isidora Master (active 100 - 125), Mummy Portrait of a Woman
The J. Paul Getty Museum

As is so often the case I am astounded by how modern this woman looks. It is not the age of the portraits that make them look old and so unlike us, it is the artistic style. This style translates perfectly into our modern times.

Worshippers of Moloch were members of a mature and polished civilization ...

There was a tendency to call upon spirits of terror and compulsion. There is always a sort of dim idea that these darker powers will really do things, with no nonsense about it. In the interior psychology of the Punic peoples this strange sort of pessimistic practicality had grown to great proportions. In the New Town, which the Romans called Carthage, as in the parent cities of Phoenicia, the god who got things done bore the name Moloch, who was perhaps identical with the other deity whom we know as Baal, the Lord. The Romans did not at first know quite what to call him or what to make of him; they had to go back to the grossest myth of Greek or Roman origins and compare him to Saturn devouring his children. But the worshippers of Moloch were not gross or primitive. They were members of a mature and polished civilization, abounding in refinements and luxuries; they were probably far more civilized than the Romans. And Moloch was not a myth. These highly civilized people really met together to invoke the blessing of heaven on their empire by throwing hundreds of their infants into a large furnace. We can only realize the combination by imagining a number of Manchester merchants with chimney-pot hats and mutton-chop whiskers, going to church every Sunday at eleven o’clock to see a baby roasted alive.

G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

What is terrible is that today we don't have to imagine Moloch worshippers being civilized the way Chesterton did. We've got abortion clinics all over the country.

Notes on Mark: Jesus Heals the Gerasene Demoniac

6th century AD Mosaic of the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac
from the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna

MARK 5:1-20
This is the familiar story of Jesus sending the demon from the possessed man into the swine, which then rush over the cliff. I knew that the presence of pigs would signify a Gentile population but never fully realized all the elements in this scene that speak to Jesus saving Gentile nations. And I've gotta say that the symbolism connected with the sea is fabulous. I certainly never heard that in any homily!

Gerasenes: Gerasa is one of the cities of the "Decapolis" (5:20), a confederation of ten cities in NT Palestine. They were predominantly Gentile in population, and most of them were located east of the Jordan River. The presence of "swine" in 5:11 reinforces this Gentile context, since the Jews would never herd animals that God declared unclean (Lev 11:7-8).

Legion: The term for an armed regiment of nearly 6,000 Roman soldiers. It points to the overwhelming presence of demons in the man and accentuates the intensity of spiritual combat between Jesus and the forces of evil...

Allegorically (St. Bede, In Marcum), the demoniac represents the Gentile nations saved by Christ. As pagans, they once lived apart from God amid the tombs of dead works, while their sins were performed in service to demons. Through Christ, the pagans are at last cleansed and freed from Satan's domination.

Into the sea: Biblical symbolism associated with the sea is diverse and flexible. According to one tradition, God's enemies arise from the sea in the form of beasts that oppress God's people (Dan 7:1-3; Rev 13:1). Here Jesus reverses the direction of evil by sending the demon-possessed swine back into the sea. Like Pharaoh's army in the OT, God's adversaries are drowned in the waters (Ex 14:26-28; 15:1).

The Gospel of Mark(The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible)

Looking Forward: here is a parallel connection,a foreshadowing, that never occurred to me (yes, there's a lot of that going around).

The principles "sitting" and "clothed" reappear in Mark 16:5, again in the setting of a tomb, where it describes the young man who announces Jesus' resurrection. With these verbal parallels Mark hints that the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac, like all Jesus' miracles in the Gospel, is an anticipation of the power of his resurrection, already at work in the lives of human beings.

Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture: The Gospel of Mark by Mary Healy

And we see that power at work in the life of the demoniac when Jesus tells him to proclaim what has been done for him. Yet another leap forward from the present text that I hadn't made, but one that works powerfully in my imagination in looking at my own life.

The seemingly inauspicious missionary, a former demoniac, faithfully carries out Jesus' command by broadcasting throughout the entire region his story of deliverance--the kind of proclamation that is impossible to refute. Indeed the success of his efforts appears later from the very different reception Jesus meets on his second visit to the area.

Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture: The Gospel of Mark by Mary Healy

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Sources and Notes Index   

Scott is hiking in Austria with a friend. Julie is biking in Austria with a friend. Both are looking for a podcast partner! Surely it is fated that they will meet.

 We discuss a surprise favorite in Episode 351: Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)! Join us!

The Medium and the Message

A colleague, Joe Keogh, wrote in the Ottawa, Ontario G. K. Chesterton Newsletter of a curious exchange between my father [Marshall McLuhan] and Toronto's then Archbishop Pocock. The good Bishop, it is said, once asked that given John's famous prologue to the fourth gospel, did this not indicate that Christ Himself is the archetypal example of the medium as message? He readily assented.

Introduction to The Medium and the Light by Marshall McLuhan

Isn't that just the best? I love the way this guy (and that bishop) thought. And the McLuhan book is excellent.

Aurochs, Horses, and Deer

Depiction of aurochs, horses and deer; Lascaux

I just love cave art. To get a truer sense of the art, go to the official Lascaux website.

Self portrait of the 13th-century illuminator Claricia

Self portrait of the 13th-century illuminator Claricia
Via J.R.'s Art Place

I love Claricia's playful spirit in making herself the tail of the Q!

For fellow lovers of The Pickwick Papers

Pickwick is in Dickens’s career the mere mass of light before the creation of sun or moon. It is the splendid, shapeless substance of which all his stars were ultimately made. You might split up Pickwick into innumerable novels as you could split up that primeval light into innumerable solar systems. The Pickwick Papers constitute first and foremost a kind of wild promise, a pre-natal vision of all the children of Dickens. ... Dickens, like every other honest and effective writer, came at last to some degree of care and self-restraint. He learned how to make his dramatis personæ assist his drama; he learned how to write stories which were full of rambling and perversity, but which were stories. But before he wrote a single real story, he had a kind of vision. It was a vision of the Dickens world—a maze of white roads, a map full of fantastic towns, thundering coaches, clamorous market-places, uproarious inns, strange and swaggering figures. That vision was Pickwick.

G.K. Chesterton, Appreciations and Criticisms
of the Works of Charles Dickens

I avoided The Pickwick Papers for a long time because I heard how they weren't really a good book, not really Dickens as he was in his other works. Once I tried them, I loved them. And then I felt a little shame-faced to admit it. It made me glad to see G.K. Chesterton championing them.