Xi'an's Og

Read a further and last Hugo best novel contender, Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky, already an Arthur Clarke Awardee 2016 for Children of Time (another first contact story). Of all the works I have read for the Hugos, this is by far the most intellectual and the most hard science book. There is a massive investment in constructing a coherent, ultimately alien, world with its own chemistry and biome. And in unwrapping the interactions between invasive if involuntary so humans and the intelligent species on the planet. This is the opposite of space opera, despite partly hibernating humans travelling in a gigantic spaceship towards securing mining planets. And slow-paced, following a pedestrian escape of an unlucky duo towards an unlikely rescue. What fails imho is the representation of the alien(s)’s train of thought, as it remains all too human. With, as a second, the ability of said aliens to incorporate and exploit human technology almost immediately. While the human technology does not seem to rely in the least on artificial intelligence, apart from autonomous drones. Hence, not ranking first in my list.

Cooked more of the same (soba, tuna, vegs) while in Japan. And visited a wasabi farm!, dating from 1915, cleverly made into a tourist trap. (Where we made fresh wasabi paste from the (local) wasabi root to mix with rice and condiment. And had a wasabi ice cream, in a clash between creamy sweetness and strong pungency! Much more a successful clash than the lavender ice cream the day after….) Also tasted oyaki dumplings filled with pumpkin, daikon, and nozawana, a local delicacy of Nagano.

Travel-wise, the trip through Japan has been mostly seamless (with no bear sighting so far), except for a rental car reservation cancelled for bringing the wrong translation of our licences. I had not realised only official Japanese services by the Japanese Automobile Federation can deliver said translations. This constraint makes sense on one level, as nobody knows the translation was made by a dog on the Internet,  but is also past its shelf-life in the era of LLMs and automated translation engines. (The issue got solved within two days, inducing a big saving on the rental!)