Persepolis Rising CH 1 through 17

Prologue page 10

Its thirty years in the future.  Duarte, the former martian that's now in charge of Laconia is trying to become immortal by injecting purified proto molecules into himself.

Chapter One: Drummer pg 22

Drummer is the head of the belt.  Technically she's the head of the transport guild.  Some ship did an a hole thing with the gates and flitted from one hole to another without clearance.  Do you give the OK top blow up the next ship that tries that shit?  No you levy fines against the two systems involved.  She's at a big fancy to do about a new space station opening up in Earth's orbit.  She calls Holden (can't wait to hear how Holden's constantly cancer ridden body is holding up thirty years in the future.)  To ask/tell him to go basically give the system the ship came from some shit.

Chapter Two: Bobbie pg 32

They're going to the system that's the source of the ship.  Alex is old and bald.  Bobbie is old and her body hurts all the time.  Clarissa Mao is old and I think she's dying.  Amos is old and he's trimmer than he used to be.  They talk about the sentence the trade federation has handed down to the colony.  Three years and no portal travel.  They only have food for six more months so this is basically a death sentence.  Also they're big on having guns.  So Holden is gonna go down there, tell them they're all gonna die and then they're gonna shoot him with their guns.

Chapter Three: Santiago Jilie Singh pg 42

Singh is a newly appointed captain in the Laconian navy.  He has been summoned to meet with High Consul/Admiral Duarte.  They talk about how Singh ratted out his old captain for not being strict enough.  Duarte instituted some harsher punishments and the old captain didn't enforce those new harsher punishments cause he thought they were too harsh.  He sounds like a good dude.  Singh sounds Like a follow the rules to the letter boot licking dhipshit.  That was a typo, but I like it.  D-hip shit.  For being as such, Duarte is giving him command of the new ship and tells him “We’ve been hidden away from the rest of humanity long enough. Time we showed them what we’ve been doing.”

That sounds ominous as fuck.

Chapter Four: Holden pg 52

Man, I was kinda hoping Bobbie was just gonna be the viewpoint for the Roci this book, but no, we gotra have a Holden Viewpoint or it wouldn't back an expanse book would it.

Holden goes to this settlement and tells them of the death sentence the union has bestowed upon them.  But there's a twist.  He also gives them the option to turn over the governor and he'll go to prison for these crimes.  They bring the governor strapped to a wheel borough.  

Chapter Five: Drummer pg 63

Drummer's job as president of the trade vederation is hard.

She doesn't like what Holden did and sends him a message saying that's not gonna work.

chapter six: holden pg 74

The crew is debating how they feel about Drummer's response to their actions.  Naomi tells Holden maybe it's time to retire to a beach on Titan.  Then the ship stops all of a sudden.  Nobody knows why.  This is bad.  Also the governor isn't in his cell anymore.  So really bad.

chapter seven: Bobbie   pg 84

They figure out their prisoner is in engineering and very food at space ship stuff.  They're gonna storm the castle.  Bobbie going in from behind via the hatch from outside thebship and Amos blowing up the interior door if it comes to that.  Bobbie makes her way in and for her efforts she's rewarded with a fire extinguisher to the head.  She recovers and ends up taking Houston out with an elbow to the chin.

Holden tells her he's seriously considering retirement and would Like her to be the new captain.  She gets a little emotional.

chapter eight: Singh    pg 95

Singh and his ship have joined up with an admiral on the super fancy ship.  The plan in to go through the ring gate, disable the station rail guns and take over Medina station.  Singh feels real good about this part of the plan.  His big problem is that when earth and mars come with their famcy new ships to take it back, they're going to have a lot more battle tested personnel.  Laconia hasn't had any actual fighting.  Barely any of their navy has actually been in a battle.  Admiral isn't worried about it.  Their new ship The Tempest will put anything the earthers or martians have to shame.

chapter nine: Bobbie    pg 109

Holden gives his retirement speech.  Largely everyone is cool with it.  When they get back to Medina, Naomi and Holden will get off and Bobbie is gonna bring on some hired hands.  Alex is pretty enfatic about it.  Bobbie has a talk with Amos to double check.  He's good, but he suggests Bobbie have a talk with Clarissa Mao.  They do, its good.  It's emotional cause not only is Holden leaving but they also have a very serious talk about Clarissa's end of life plans, something Bobbie is a bit shocked and disappointed that Holden never had this talk with Clarrisa.

chapter ten: Drummer    pg 119

There's a message coming from the long dormant laconian gate.  They come in peace.  Drummer is thinking the best thing to do is to make this Mars' problem.  Their old deserters are coming back and maybe Mars will want to do something about it so Drummer won't have to.

Chapter eleven: Bobbie  pg 129

Medina station sent the Roci a message.  Mandatory meeting to discuss the Laconia situation.  There are only two gun ships in the slow zone.   The Roci is gonna be the backup ship while the other ship takes point. A HUGE ship comes through the laconian ring gate.  But doesn't respond to hails.  The other gun ship gets a target lock and all of a sudden iT's just gone.  Near as they can tell it wasn't shot.  Nothing was fired from the Laconian ship.  Bobbie calls the station rail guns and tells them to open fire.

Chapter twelve: Holden  pg 140

The Laconians have some kind of magnet beam weapon that destroyed the other gun ship and made quick work of the railguns positioned on the station.  The trade union is hopelessly outmatched.  Immediate surrender is the only option.  They have taken over Medina station and the admiral gives a speech that amounts to join us or die.  Also.please tell Earth and Mars not to attack so we don't have to kill them.

chapter thirteen: Drummer   PG 152

Things are real bad.  Duarte has taken over the ring gates and at the Moment there's nothing they can do about it.  Avasarala is still alive and she shows up and says they gotta rally their forces on this side of the gate and she knows people and hints that she can communicate with people in the ring gate.

Chapter fourteen:   Singh   pg 163

Singh in the governor of Medina station now.  He's doing his best to get people in line.  He's finding it to be a trying task, but he's a dipshit so I suppose I like that he's having a hard time trying to force his authoritarian BS on the belters.  It gets interesting when the current better head of security Onni comes in and Singh tells him there's no job for him anymore.  Hoping to ingratiate himself with Singh he tells him that when they used their fancy new ship to shoot their fancy new magnet gun at the station to take care of the rail guns it had an interesting side effect.  It spewed gamma radiation out of the other side of the rings.  It took out four ships that were incoming.  Singh is intrigued by this news but does not care for Onni and tells him to fuck off.

Chapter fifteen: Bobbie pg 176

Bobbie is waiting in a long line to talk to an authority figure.  The Laconians have taken the Roci.  There are forms she can fill out to try and get her property or money in Louie of property back.  The crew gets drunk at a bar.  A bunch of angry belters go by in big coats.  Amos knows shit is going down.  Bobbie drags alex and Clarissa to the ground to avoid getting shot.  Amos stays standing cause he wants to watch the shooting happen.  Bullets start flying but we can't see them cause we are Bobbie who is on the floor trying not to Get shot.

Chapter sixteen:    Singh   pg 187

Singh was the target of the angry belters.  It didn't work out for them.  They got shot a bunch by laconian marines and died.  One Laconian died.  Singh finds this whole situation unacceptable so he's gonna institute some oppressive new stuff.  His head of security doesn't think this is a good idea.  Singh gives her.  Also, he's super.psyched about this thing where they can shoot their magnet ray at the station and it spews gamma radiation out all the portals.  It gives them a pretty easy way to defend the ring gates.  You send a ship, we zap the station, your ship gets destroyed by gamma radiation. 

Chapter seventeen:  Holden  pg 198

Holden does not care for being oppressed.  He and Naomi decide they gotta get the band back together and be part of the revolution.  Its a simple enough plan.  They talk to a lady as they watch the laconians building prison cells.  She says her ship has been comundeered and at the moment she and her crew are homeless.  Holden realizes this is super bad for his plan.   The crew won't be on the Roci.  They could be anywhere on Medina station and he has no idea where or how he would even start looking for them.  His best bad idea is to just go room to room till he finds them.  This strikes him as funny and he let's out an involuntary laugh.  “It’s just not very long ago I was thinking how small Medina felt.”

project hail mary CH 26 to the end

Ch 26 pg 428

Flashback to narrator being imprisoned by Stratt.  She's trying.to explain herself to him.  He really doesn't care.

Back in the present narrator is lonely.  He turns on the spextrazcope so he can look at Rocky's ship's exhaust trail.

He's gonna distract himself by working on the Beatles.  He opens one up and disaster.  It's not full of astrophage, its full of predator poop.

CH 27 pg 438

Narrator is shutting off all possible access to the astrophage to make sure the predator doesn't infect the fuel he needs to get home.  He floods the crew cabin with nitrogen to kill any predators that might be in there.  He does something similar with the tanks he has the nitrogen resistant predators in.  He's trying to figure out which one has the.leak.

Ch 28 pg 443

Narrator figures out the problem with the predators is that they can somehow make their way through xeonite.  Nbd, make sure all the predators are in metal boxes, problem solved.

Then narrator freaks out when he realizes Rocky has the Same problem only way worse cause his whole ship is made of xeonite and the predators are gonna eat up his whole fuel supply and he'll die and so will his whole planet.

Ch 29 pg 453

narrator does some cool science to figure out where Rocky's ship is.  it wasnt quick or easy but evwntually he makes it over thete.  he gets rocky back on the ship.  je tells Rocky that hes gonna starve to death.  rocky has an idea that maybe narrator can eat something from the astrophages home planet.  cant eat astrophage, way too hot.  maybe he can eat the predator.  rocky says . “I have twenty-two million kilograms of Taumoeba in fuel bays. How much you want, question?”

ch 30 pg 470

narrator is on Rocky's home planet of Erid.  its super cute, the chapter number is an Eridian number Vℓ.  i suppose hes been there for a long time cause he talks about how hard the first few years were.

he has been here 16 years.  but hes much older than his years due to both malnutrition (suicide missions usually dont include a large supply of multi vitamins) and the impact of Erid's much higher gravity.  he was able to live off of the predator for his caloric needs but Erid scientists were able to make vitamins so he wouldnt die.  then they were able to synthasize other food he can eat.  the best is they were able to do cloning and they cloned him and now he has meat.  it doesnt count as canabalism if its me.  he eats what he calls a Me burger every day. the scientists have been able to observe our sun.  they can see its back at full strength.  Rocky delivered the news and narrator cried and they're still best friends.  Rocky brings up the idea that maube theres other stars out there with planets with intelligent life.  maybe there will be a sequel where they go out on some kinda star trek.   The super cute ending is that narrator is teaching science to young Eridians.  hes a middle school teacher again.

project hail Mary CH 21 through 25

CH 21 pg 342

Flashback to awkward meeting where everyone talks about how they want to commit suicide when the mission is over.  Back to the present, Rocky is still alive.  They're doing experiments with asteophage and other microorganisms they find in the sample from the planet.  Trying to find the predator.  They do.

Flashback to prep for launch.  There's been an explosion.  Both the science people for the mission are dead.

Back to the ship, they're doing science that mimics the atmospheres of the planet they're near and Venus and the.planet in Rocky's solar system where the astrophage is reproducing.  They're gonna do some science and see if under those conditions the predator can feed and reproduce.

Ch 22 Pg 363

The lights have gone out.  Its pitch black.

Narrator makes his way to the control room where he finds one lit control panel and is able to turn on the backup battery power for life support systems so eh doesn't die.  He makes his way to the power generator and finds instead of it being full of astrophage like he expects its full of fowl smelling gunk.  The predator has some how made it into the fuel tanks and eaten and pooped out all the astrophage.  

Rocky is able to clean it out and put in enough astrophage to power the ship.  But not anywhere near enough to propel the ship.  If they can get back to Rocky's ship they can get all the astropage they need.  Narrator has an idea.  Use the small ships that are there to send word back to earth to get them back to Rocky's ship.

They do that.

CH 23  Pg 382

Flashback to talking an out the scientists that blew up.  Then telling narrator that he's the best replacement.

In the present they're setting up the beatles to take them back to Rocky's ship.  They're gonna accelerate for three hours and then coast for 11 days.  Narrator wants to use the gravity for that three hours to do science.   He does science with the Venus and the other planets atmosphere and he finds that the astrophage is alive and well.  Somehow the predator can't survive in those environments.  It sucks and Rocky is pissed.

Flash back to narrator telling Stratt to get someone else cause he doesn't wanna go on the mission.  Stratt says she doesn't care, he's going anyway.  She's gonna drug him and put him on the ship and by the time he wakes up from the coma it'll be too late.  But as an extra fuck you from Stratt to narrator she explains that she will additionally be giving him drugs that cause a temporary amnesia so he won't remember any of this.

Now I'm glad that the Venus experiment failed.  Maybe they can figure out a way to save Rocky's planet and everyone on earth can die.

Ch 24 pg 395

Narrator is bumbed that he got Shanghai'd but he's here so he's still gonna try yo save earth.  They figure out that the problem with the predator is the nitrogen.  It dies when nitrogen is introduced to its atmosphere.  Narrator has an idea, what if they can breed nitrogen resistant predators.  We have antibiotic resistant gonorrhea, why not predators that can handle nitrogen.  

They're done thrusting so they spin up the centrophuge so they can keep doing science.  They're a little successful with the nitrogen resistant predators.  They've got some that resistant to up to a 1.5 % nitrogen environment.

Ch 25 pg 409

We have huge success with the nitrogen resistant predators.  They've bred predators that are capable of living in up to 8% nitrogen.  We're at the point where its time to say goodbye.  But there's drama.  Narrator doesn't have enough food for the trip back.  Of course he doesn't, this was meant to be a one way trip.  He only has the amount of food he does cause two people died on the way here.  The problem is fixed by Rocky making narrator some extra fuel tanks so he can get home faster.

Now it's really time to say good bye.  It's very emotional.  Rocky is narrator's best friend and they are never going to see each other again.

you feel it just below the ribs

CH 1 pg 7

Foundanuscript from Dr Miriam Gregory.  She lived before the reckoning.  Back when people had families.  Her family (dad, mom and brother) died in the war.

CH 2 pg 19

This is an alternate universe where world war 1 went really bad.

People rioted in the midst of the war and the plague and society collapsed around the world.

Miriam is living all alone in the world.  She scavenges and runs away whenever she sees people and she survives that way.  But one night she's sleeping in what she thinks is an empty house and she's confronted by a group of girls.  They say she can stay for a few days.  But then it starts snowing and she just becomes part of the group.

CH 3 pg 29

The group of girls goes around from place to place searching for food.  There's plenty of clothing and shelter, but food is hard to come by.  Girls come and go from the group.  Some leave to army recruiters, some leave to other groups.  There's one girl named Naija who always cleans up the dead bodies when the house they find to stay in has them.

There's also a man that they periodically run into who gives them food for their stories.  We think he was a spy.

The army finds them at one point and declares that they're all enemy spies and arrests them.

CH 4 pg 39

into thin air CH 15 through epilogue

CH 15 pg 205

This chapter would be really dramatic if I cared if these people lived or died.  With the storm that came in after narrator headed down to camp 4 everyone is in real bad shape.  You couldn't see more than a few yards ahead of you.  As a result, everyone is lost.  The eastern European guide tried to bring up few oxygen tanks, but nobody has radios to tell him where they are so his efforts are for naught.  The Japanese lady dies.  So do some less remarkable people.

CH 16 pg 225

The south Africans had the only radio at camp 4 and wouldn't share even though people were dying up the mountain.  Narrator was all confused when he got near the tents at camp 4 and misidentified someone he thought he saw die.

CH 17 pg 233

Rob Hall didn't make it.  He was trying to get Doug and Andy back down and they didn't make it he went by himself.  That didn't turn out so great.  He has a perfectly working radio and he was able to talk to base camp and the folks at camp 4 and through some sort of radio sat phone transfer at base camp his wife.  They tried to send some Sherpas up to bring him down but the freezing wind was too strong.  Their summit day was May 10th, they found his body on May 12th.

CH 18 pg 249

This chapter has some tidbits about some Indian and Japanese teams that were climbing everest from the Tibetan side the same day.  It went badly for most of them.

CH 19 pg 255

Turns out there were a couple they thought were dead that it turns out were still alive.  But just barely and they were in no shape to make it back down to camp 3.  So they left them.  Also, the wind has pretty much destroyed the tents, so the able boddied folks have no choice but to take the trip down to camp 3.  This means having to leave behind anyone that needs help.  29,000 feet is no place for morality, just survival.  There are no more guides left to take them down.  A guy from Montreal takes the lead.

Narrator volunteers to take up the rear.

CH 20 pg 269

They make it down to camp 2 but a couple of the climbers have severe frostbite.  There's a couple real dramatic helicopter rescues and the frost bitten are rescued.  And thank goodness cause in between camp 2 and 1 is the ice shelf.  It's inconceivable to think that you could head down the ice shelf dragging a couple of frostbitten guys.  So the able bodied are gonna head down to camp 1.  They might be able  boddied, but they're sure not able minded.  Everyone has to check everyone elses masks and harnesses and what not cause none of them are doing a great job of doing their own stuff.

CH 21 pg 277

This is the crying chapter.  Narrator makes it to base camp and they have a beer and they cry.  He flies back to Seattle and he cries.  Loved ones of people that died on the mountain call him and he cries.  A week later the IMAX team and what's left of the south African team go up the mountain and people cry because at the very least its disrespectful to the people that died the previous week.  But also cause it's just really dangerous.  One guy dies.

Epilogue pg 293

Narrator and others involved in the climb get a lot of hate mail.

project hail Mary CH 16 through 20

CH 16 pg 262

Narrator tells rocky an out his suicide mission.  Rocky asks him how much astrophage it took to get him here.  Rocky says he can easily spare that much.  So narrator isn't on a suicide mission anymore.  There's a flashback to a bit where the astronauts for the hail Mary mission are being introduced.  Narrator isn't one of them.  Talking to the astronauts one of them tells him that he also has the coma gene and he's a little uppity that Stratt didn't tell him.

He watches Rocky eat and its gross.  He basically opens up his belly carapace and puts chopped up meat inside and passes out.

  

Ch 17 pg 277

Narrator and Rocky make their way to the planet that the astrophage is going to from this solar system's sun.  They have a thing that can capture astrohphage.  They do that.  There's a flashback to narrator training the science officers on the astrophage.  The fun thing is that the primary and secondary science officers are having an affair.  

They examine the astrophage and they find a couple interesting things.  The first is that there's less astrophage than expected.  The second is that there's a bunch of other little animals in the sample.  The theory is that one of these is the natural predator of the astrophage and that's why this star isn't dwindling like outs is.  So the idea is that if we can introduce said predator to our solar systems it will eat the astrophage and the problem will be solved.

Ch 18 pg 292

Rocky and narrator are looking at the samples and they don't find the predator they're looking for.  They come up with the idea that the predator must not be in the apostrophage line,  but deeper down in the atmosphere.  They do some science and figure out it's 9 kilometres deeper than the ship can go.  So they're gonna build a chain that is 9 kilometres long to collect the predator.  

Also they talk about why rocky has so much extra astrophage.  The answer is that rocky and his people were basing their calculations based on newtonian physics, not Einstein's models so no relativity.

Then theres a flashback to the aircraft carrier and everyone is telling narrator hes Stratts number two and hes like, nah, im just another scientist.  Allso he talks to the guy that's working on the little ships to send back data to earth.  He calls them the beattles and the one hes using for earth testing is named Pete.

Jokes about the Beatles give me joy.  Thats what made the powerpuff girls so great.

Ch 19 pg 308 

Narrator and rocky have come up with a great system to lower the chain with the sampler down to the planet in the hopes of getting a sample of the astrophage predator.  They lower down and attach new links 50 meters at a time while having just the right amount of thrust at just the right angle to keep in close orbit.  The crank back up is more complicated.  They can't just pull up the whole chain cause it would wrap around the ship or trail behind and get destroyed by the ships exhaust or whatever and it'd be real bad.  So they come up with a system that pulls up the chain link by link and then removes the links individually so they fall harmlessly down to the planet.

That part seems to work OK and he gets the sample back inside.  But theres a hole in the fuel tank and he ejects a couple tanks but all the while he's being crushed by the force of the thrust.  He is saved by Rocky.  The problems has been solved, but Rocky is freezing to death in earth's atmosphere on the ship and tells narrator top save his planet.

Ch 20 pg 326

Through a lot of hard work and pain narrator gets Rocky into his containment unit with his alien atmosphere.  He's doing other science stuff with the samples he got from the planet.  He doesn't feel real good about any of this.  He's hurt and he's tired and he's not thinking straight but he's trying to save rocky and two solar systems so he keeps at it.  He basically creates a leaf blower and puts it in Rocky's area and he's able to blow a bunch of smoke and dust and what not out of what he refers to as Rocky's vents.

into thin air CH 8 - 14

Ch 8 pg 105

Aclimitizing is a lot of work.  You repeatedly have to climb up from base camp to camp one and then up to camp two and then back down and back up.  Some groups are real organized in their approach to this.  Other folks are kinda loosely goosey.  One example of the loosey goosey approach ended up with a Sherpa suffering from altitude sickness up at base two without any professionals.  The amateur climbers up there did their best to help and got him back down to base camp.  At base camp there was a bit of an oddly similar situation and there was a lack of urgency to treat the Sherpa.  The result was his tragic death.  

This chapter also talks a lot about a rich lady.

CH 9 pg 125

In this chapter they were supposed to go up to camp 3, but a storm rolled in and they went back to camp 2.  

There'a a lot of talk about how the Sherpas believe that premarital sex on the mountain, especially at higher altitudes makes the gods angry and then people die as punishment.

CH 10 pg 137

Going from camp two to camp 3 is hard.  Lots of virticle ice climbing. Camp 3 itself is a narrow ice shelf with some tents.  Up at that altitude there's lots of worry about the different high altitude sicknesses.  But they did it and acclimatization appears to have been accomplished as narrator is able to breathe easy going back down to base camp.  Every climbing team seems to be ready and they're talking turkey about who is gonna go when.  Except for the dick from south Africa.  He says hell go whenever he damn well pleases.  This pisses narrator's guide Hall right off.

Also the dipshit from Texas isn't that bad I guess. 

CH 11 pg 149

Camp 3 is cold and ice and the air is to thin to support life, so you breath canned air.  At least you should.  But narrator gets claustrophobic and sleeps without it.  Camp 3 is really icey.  So much so that I'd you aren't careful when you go out to do your business you can slide down the mountain and into a crevasse and they find you and they pull you out, but your condition worsens and you die.  

CH 12 pg 165

Going from camp 4 to the col is serious business.  Guide tells narrator he needs to stick with the group.  Narrator is not a team player.  He's all pissed off that he has to wait for people.  There's a famous lady being led by the group with the guide from seattle that narrator knows from toher climbs and he's real dedicated to getting her to the top.  So much that he has a sherpa short line her (this involvles tying her to himself with a 3 foot rope, basically dragging her along) and it kinda sucks cause as narator is being a dick and trying to stomp to the head of the pack to get to the south ridge that they'll then climb to get to the summit, said sherpa is puking his guts out.

Ch 13 pg 179

This chapter is all about rope.  Or rather, the lack there of.  Usually before any paying guest gets anywhere near the summit, sherpas or guides or someone decides to be in charge and lays out rope so that everyone has something to hook onto so that when they're trying to breath the super thin air at 29,000 feet and they take a bad step, they don't plunge 7,000 feet to their doom.  But due to confusion or whatever narrator gets to that spot near the top where you really need rope and there isn't any.  So he volunteers to help a couple other guides set up the ropes.  Then when he's close enough he's like "hey, is it cool if I just go to the top" and the guide is like "sure, I'll finish up the ropes" and so he makes it to the top of Mount Everest.  In theory one should be overjoyed at this accomplishment.  But narrator has been listening to his guide and also has a bit of experience submitting mountains to know that making it to the top isn't really getting to the end.  It's getting to the half way point cause you gotta get back down.  The Southeast ridge of Everest is littered with the bodies of people that made it to the top but couldn't make it back down to camp 4.

ch 14 pg 191

On the way down narrator runs into a traffic jam he talks about at the beginning of the book.  He helps someone with their oxygen tank, which has frozen over and he asks them to close up his tank a bit so he can conserve his oxygen for later when the traffic jam has cleared up and he can get on the move.  But instead of closing it, this other person opens it up and then after 10 minutes of standing around, narrator's oxygen is out.

Narrator is looking forward to going back down after the traffic jam and getting a fresh bottle of oxygen.  One of the guides has kinda lost it and tells him that there isn't any.  That there's just a pile of empty bottles.  But narrator gets down there and hooks up a bottle and it's sure full of breathable oxygen.  Hindsight being 20/20 narrator feels like he should have raised some sort of alarm at that point so the guide knew there was something wrong with his breathing regulator or his brain or whatever it was that made him think all those tanks were empty.  

narrator runs into a guy on the team that basically can't see anymore and at that point he should have insisted he bring him down to the south col with him.  But narrator's not really a team player so he's like, there's a guide coming down with another person on our team and so the guy that can't see will just wait for them.  Narrator, being a selfish dick is psyched to go down alone.  And this is where the storm starts to get bad.  Narrator once again runs out of oxygen.  But he's able to clip onto a rope that takes him most of the way to the south col.  He runs into the guide the has already lost it but they keep moving and both of them make it safely into their tents on the south col.  Which is great for them, but not so great for the 19 people still trying to make their way down with the storm getting worse every second.

project hail Mary CH 11 - 15

CH 11 pg 185

Narrator is trying to explain our measurement system via the use of a tape measure.  Fun thing, the tape measure he sends to the alien (who he calls rocky) has a rubber coating and the alien atmosphere is so hot the rubber melts off.  Narrator tries to show Rocky the centimeters on the ruler but rocky doesn't seem to see it.  Theory, Rocky can't see, he uses an advanced form of eco location like bats to "see" things.  That's why the tape measure is no use, there's no texture to be echo located. Its just paint.

There's a fun flashback scene where boss lady is in court being sued by all software intellectual property holders everywhere because the Hail Mary didn't pay for any of the software it's taking into space. She show off her universal presidential pardon and the judge is like, you still gotta do the trial.  She's like, no I don't.  You got an army to stop me from leaving?  Cause I've got the US army and a bunch of army guys come in and they leave.

This leads us to a scene where narrator is going to use this software to try to communicate with Rocky.  But Rocky's not there.  He thinks maybe rocky is sleeping.  So he figures he'll do the same and using Popsicle sticks leaves a be back in 8 hours sign using Rocky's numbers.

C12 pg 198

He sleeps 10 hours and Rocky is Not pleased.  He takes his laptops down to the tunnel and starts to "talk" to Rocky.  He starts with the clock numbers and within minutes he knows how Rocky speaks those numbers.  Things get more interesting when we get the the word yes and confusing when we try to say no.  

Then we are learning other words and it's a little clumsy as narrator has too look back and forth between laptops.  So he goes back and writes a script that can take the notes it hears and cross reference the spreadsheet and displays it to narrator.

Rocky doesn't seem to need to write things down or use computers or anything.  He just sort of remembers everything.  

They keep talking and its much faster now.  They get to the point where narrator can intelligently explain sleep to Rocky.  He'd like to sleep now.  Rocky wants to watch.  So narrator drags his bed to the tunnel to.sleep while Rocky tries to fix something.  

They talk a lot more first a few days and they are able to figure out how much a kilogram is relative to Rocky's weight UM.  Now Rocky needs to sleep and he wants narrator to watch him.  This is what the aliens do, tgwy watch each other sleep.  Narrator asks rocky why one of his shipmates can't watch him.  Rocky explains they're all dead.  They started with 23, but only rocky made it here.

CH 13/pg 221

They're flashing back to a guy in prison.    He's there because a bunch of people died on a project he was in charge of.  He claims he is innocent.  The problem is that he also imbezled a lot of .money and that makes you look real guilty.  

But  we're here for is he has a plan for growing astrophage.  It involves covering a quarter of the sahara desert with anodized aluminum foil and then in the hot sun and glass and some other details and vuala tons of astrophage.  

Back in the present narrator and rocky do all their sleeping in the tunnel together.  They have developed their language skills to the point where they can now real talk about the astrophage.

They understand they have the same problem and they're gonna work together to solve it.  They talk about why the rest of their crews died.  Narrator thinks Rocky's crew died from radiation.  But rocky has no idea what he's talking about.  Trying to explain radiation is hard.

We're flashed back to narrator talking to that lady that hates him cause of his no water life theory.  They talk about neutrinos and how the hailmary is going to have enough a radiation protection.

They figure out that the astrophage is pretty much radiation proof.  So the plan they come up with is to fill the hull of the ship with a thin layer of astrophage.

CH 14 pg 232

There's a flashback to a French climatologist.  He estimates the earth has about 19 years before half the human population is dead.  The solution is more global warming.  They blow up a chunk of Antarctica and release a bunch of methane into the atmosphere.  

In the present they figure out the way that rocky is alive when all the rest.of his crew died is because he was an engineer and spent most old his time surrounded by the fuel tanks and the fuel is astrophage, which protected him from radiation.

They talk a lot about their different biology.  Rocky makes himself a space suit so he can check out the human ship.  Human technology is far more advanced than Rocky's technology, but we think is technology is amazing cause he's got superior building materials.

Ch 15 pg 250

They meet the science lady that invented the coma technology.  Stratt and narrator get tested.

Rocky brings all his stuff over to narrators ship cause they are gonna do science together on narrator's ship.

Rocky is real sad and not very optimistic.  He's just an engineer.  He's not a scientist.  All the smart scientists that were on the ship died and rocky doesnt thinknhes smart enough to figure out the astrophahe problem.  Narrator has enough optimism for the two of them.  

They start talking about how much time they have to solve this thing and in doing so we learn that the aliens live way longer than people.  Like up to a thousand years.

into thin air ch 1 through seven

ch 1 pg 6

so our narrator is at the summit if mount everest and i gues hes done with that cause theyre trying to go down and hes taking pictures and after the fact looking at the pictures he can see a storm coming.  but at the time, his oxygen starved brain didnt see it.  so hes trying to go down and theres one narrow spot with one rope and he has to stop because people are coming up that rope.  so hes a little pissed that he has to wait for these people to get up and all the while hes losing brain cells because of the lack of oxygen.

ch 2 pg 13

A few stories of the early attempts at climbing Everest in the 1950s and 60s in this chapter.  the one that matters most to our author Jon Krakauer is about a 1963 expedition that included Willi Unsoeld from Oregon.  Hey, i'm from Oregon.  awesome, way to go Willi.  You got my attention Jon, tell me more about Willi.  Willi lived in Corvallis and at the time, so did Jon.  Another level, Jon's dad and Willi were friends.  Jon played with Willi's kids.  leanring this local comnection makes me care about Jon a lot more.

Jon is an accomplished climber.  He's climbed mountains all over the world.  Many that are considered to be more difficult than Everest.  He's become a bit of an accomplished writer and was invited in 1995 to come to Everest base camp to do a story about how crazy overly commercialized Everest has become.  He decided je couldn't just go to base camp.  if he's flying across the world to see Everest, hes gomna climb it.  So he went in 1996.

ch 3 pg 29

Jon's guide is a guy from New Zealand named Rob Hall.  He's very accomplished.  hes done this a lot.  so much so that no less a man than Sir Edmund Hillary himself criticized Rob for being a significant part of the Everest over commercialization.  Jon is getting uneasy.  he likes Rob and another guy in the party named Doug, but the group is large and of varied backgrounds and experience levels.  Previously Jon has really only ever done climbs like this with other very experienced climbers, most of whom he already knew.  So this is a really different sort of deal for Jon.

ch 4 pg 41

this chapter is all about the elevation aclimatizing walk climbers make as they slowly go from an elevation of 9,000 feet at the top of the Himalayan platue to basecamp at 20,000 feet.  they only walk a few hours a day because it take A Lot more energy to do anything when you're a couple miles up from sea level.  theres a village everyone stops at 16,000 feet.  usually its pretty relaxed.  but this year it was crazy poop in the streets crowded.  the snow was thicker than ussual due to a cool spring.  So it is taking a lot longer to get from there to base camp and so all these people that would  normally habe made it up to basecamp by now are stuck in this tiny village.  

Then, like Sticky Fingaz says, "Bu-bu-bu-but wait it gets worse."

Rob Hall gets word from base camp that one of their sherpas that went up to base camp ahead of the group has been injured.  so Rob is gonna go deal with that while the group hangs out in this insanely over crowded village.

ch 5 pg 59

The sherpa is gonna be ok.  everyone else gets to leave the crazy overcrowded village and go to base camp at 17,600 feet.  but the village has done a lot of damage to the crew.  lots of them are leaking out of both ends.  Jon has a nonstop cough he got from the dung fireplace.  they're a mess.  but you spend a lot of time at basecamp getting aclimatized to the elevation.  elevation even at base camp is higher than Jon has ever climbed.

ch 6 pg 75

the key to aclimitizing to the altitude is you do a lot of climbing up a few thousand feet from base camp and then back down again over and over again.  the hardest part is the ice fall.  it can be very unpridictable whether or not the ground beneath you is going to be solid or not.  so the system is that one team does it first and then once theyve established the safe route for the season all the other teams pay them to use their route.

ch 7 pg 89

project hail mary ch 6 through 10

ch 6 pg 100

 our narrator makes it to the distant sun hes headong toward.  the best part is that he does not adjust well to zero G when the decelleration finishes and he feels himself about to puke and he doesnt have a bag ir anything so he ends up puking down hsi shirt.  gross.  he uses his special instruments to see the Petrova line.  while he's observing it all of a sudden theres a bright light and it heads his way and he kinda gets scared and stops looking.  its scary, something heading at you super fast.  especially in space.  when he looks again, the Petrova line is half as bright.  The second best part is that as he's looking around he sees something blocking his view of the Petrova line.  he looks a bit more and realizes its an alien space ship.  

ch 7 pg 121

narrator does some measuring and figures out the alien space ship is only 217 meters away.  its 139 meters long.  his ship is 47 meters long.  reading this at first i thought ot would be fun if the distance between the ships was gonna be equal to their lengths added together.  he takes control of the ships navigation and does a bit of moving around.  the alien ship mirrors the movements.  then a robot climbs on top of the alien ship and throws a canister to narrator.  its thrown very slowly so narrator has plenty of time to ger on his space suit and get out there and catch the cylinder.  he gets the cylinder inside the ship and is super excited and he opens it up.  it smells bad and its hot enough to burn his hands.  so he decides to slow it down and do some science.  problem is all the science stuff is set up to work in gravity.  so narrator has to figure out how to do that.

ch 8 pg 136

flashback to earth when they realize they need the lab to have gravity to work.  the ship is a centrifuge so the lab has gravity.  

back in the present narrator has opened the cannister and its a model of all the stars and planets affected by the astrophage.  one star is specially labelled.  narrator interprets this to say this is the star the aliens are from and they came here with the same goal of figuring out why Tau is not affected by astrophage.  he finds the sun in the model and marks it and sends it back to the aliens.  they send back a cannister with models of the two ships connected by a tube.  they want to meet face to face.

ch 9 pg 154

tubing commences.  narrator goes into the tube, which has a door half way.  possible big problems.  1 their air is very amonium smelling so they might not breath the same air.  2 their side of the door is super hot.  they might not be able to live at the same temperature.  theres a knock on the door.

ch 10 pg 169

There's an alien on the other side.  There's a lot of math and science based communication.  We learn some important stuff.  The aliens atmosphere is ammonia and their atmosphere is 29 times denser than earth's.  Also that their numbering system is base six and their second is a little less than two and a half earth seconds.  He's also able to explain the concept of two hours to the aliens.  Cause he needs a nap.  

Babelon's ashes ch 37 through 53

ch 37 Alex pg 307

Alex and Sandra Ip have quite the whirlwind romance going.  They make love and he lies in her bed while she went to work.  Shes an engineer on the station so shes always got work to do. Alex is a pilot who's ship isnt plannimg to go anywhere soon.  so they've got real different lifestyles.  Alex goes to lunch and Holden calls.  They are shipping out in thirty hours.  He finds sandra and says his goodbyes.

ch 38 Avasarala pg 315

Avasarala is talking to a Martian commander.  She says they need to talk alone.  The target is the ring gate.  More specifically to take over the Roman station they've strapped railguns to.  The how is by sending a TON of ships into the ring.  They are also going to send a hauler with the Rocinante as a distraction while they do it.

ch 39 Naomi pg 32

No matter what type of fight you're in, you're hoping for the element of surprise.  Fun reference to book 1 Forgotten arm

Amos and Bobbie are gonna be on the ship they're escorting.  They're hoping not to be noticed on the way so they can slip into the ring to attack the station.  It's not working.  A couple ships from ganamyde have spotted them and are heading their way.

ch 40 Prax pg 331

Prax is the one that sent the info on the super fungus to Earth.  He has been waiting for the free navy to find out and come for him.  Some uniformed thugs come for him at work.  They ask him about the super fungus that his underling was working on.  They ask why he moved those plans to a shared folder and who had access to that folder.  Prax starts spouting a bunch of biochemical mumbo jumbo.  He effectively baffles them with bullshit.  They tell him to be more serious about data security in the future and they let him go.  When he gets home to his wife and she asks what happened he says “I confessed,” Prax said. “I told them … I told them everything. And then they let me go.” “They did what?” “They said I shouldn’t do it again, and that I should leave,” he said. “It wasn’t at all the reaction I expected.”

ch 41 pa pg 339

Pa's group is hitting Pallas station.  The plan in to take out what defenses they can to ram a ship into the docs to render the station useless.  Then they head to Titan.  But in the midst of the plan Pa hates it.  She knows it'll end up hurting the people on the station way worse than it hurts the Free navy.  So instead of a hit and run she is turning this into a blockade.  She has a talk with the government of the station trying to convince them to surrender.  Things aren't really going well,  but they're not going badly.  The problem is it's just a matter of time before the station is able to get around their blockade.

But Pa's gotta try to do this as peacefully as she can.  "Killing people because they got in the way is inner-planets bullshit. It’s Free Navy bullshit. We’re better than that.”

ch 42 Marco pg 347

Marco is fighting, just like always.  He is fighting OPA that aren't free navy anymore.  The fighting is going well, but the free navy operation in totality is bad.

Filip is asking what the plan is now.  Like the real long term plan.  Not whatever the next thing Marco is gonna make up.  Tell the real truth for once.  Marco says he's having a tantrum and laughs at him so Filip leaves.

 The economic guy is explaining again to Marco that if they don't get some start of stability their currency will be worthless and they'll have to start using Mars and Earth money again and that defeats the whole purpose of everything they've done.  Marco wants to attack Tyco station so he can kill Holden.  One of his people tells him Holden's not on Tyco station.  They've found the rocinante escorting an old ice hauler.

ch 43 Holden pg 355

The ice hauler is full of smaller ships.  When they get close enough to the ring gate they're gonna launch out of the ice hauler and attack.  But before that they have to make it there and there's two free navy ships launching missiles at them.  They make it through without any casualties and lots of ships launch out to attack the ring.  But Holden really only cares about the one with Bobbie and Amos on it.

ch 44 Roberts pg 363

They're getting ready for the attack.  The ships from Ganymede are still attacking as holden and the old ice hauler make their way to the ring.  The goal is to make them move faster than they want.  Hope in their haste they get sloppy and make mistakes.  When the ice hauler gets there they see thousands of drive plumes.  Mostly missiles.  But lots of real tiny ships.  Roberts sees one big problem.  Any ship that small is gonna have the rails go right through it.  So they cant shoot the railgun at the ships that have positioned themselves between the Roman station and Medina station or they'd effectively be shooting at Medina station.  Every one is pretty pleased with themselves as the rail gun and the Medina station defenses are making quick work of the missiles and ships small enough to be indistinguishable from missiles.  But Roberts sees that a couple of those small ships that are hanging out between the Roman station and Medina station are making their way to the Roman station.  They're gonna take over the rail guns.  EVERYONE needs to prepare for the rail guns to fire on them.

ch 45 Bobbie 371

Their little transport makes it to the Roman station.  But there's Martian bunkers full of people with guns.  Taking over the rail guns isn't going to be easy.  In fact, it.looks like it will be impossible.  They're going to die here cause they're outgunned and Holden can't help cause the second he gets into the ring, those rail guns will tear them to shreds.  Amos has an idea, the rail guns have got to be getting power from something on the station.  Let's get rid of that and we solve a pretty big problem.  Bobbie takes the idea and runs with it.  She gets their little transport into the air again.  It's a tricky deal.  If she flies too low she can't get a good view of things and if she gets too high the rail guns will take her out.  She threads that needle and finds the reactor powering the rail guns.  She bails out and the transport crashes into the reactor.  It messes things up real bad.  All the rail guns are now inoperable.

ch 46 HOlden pg 379

Things go amazingly well. Medina station surrendures right away.  Avasarala is doing a press conference and feeling very confident about everything.  Bobbie says this is foolish cause she's just gonna look super bad when Marco takes the station back.  This is a surprising and upsetting idea to Holden.  Bobbie lays it out real simple, Marco is close by and has lots of ships with guns.  Also Duarte and the other laconians might come back through the gate to help Marco.  Earth and Mars are very far away and any backup they send won't get here until Marco has finished killing them.  Without the railguns they don't have much of a chance to keep Medina station.  The button on the chapter is Bobbie saying this is a good hill to die on.

ch 47 Filip  pg 387

Filip is hanging out at a bar on Calisto talking to a girl.  He asks her how bad the attacks were.  His thought is they just attacked the Martian ship yards, so it couldn't have been too bad for the belters.  But you don't just kick half a ball.  The whole ball gets kicked.  Lots of units got cracked and people died.  Her mom was one of those people.  

Some guy comes along and bumps Filip and starts hassling him.  Filip considers pulling our his gun and killing this guy.  It'd be easy and he'd get away with it cause he's Marco Inarezes son.  He decides to just walk away.

He gets a call on Hus tablet.  Its time to go.  They're gonna kill Holden and Naomi and take back Medina station.  Philip starts walking to the docks.   He gets there and sees the dock for their ship.  But instead of getting on, he puts his gun and tablet in the recycler and heads to the employment office.  He says he needs a job.  The lady says come back tomorrow and she'll see what she can do.  He puts down his name as Filip Nagata.

ch 48 Pa pg 395

Pa is at a luxury resort on Titan.  She gets a call from Avasarala asking her to help Holden.  Giving her sincere condolences that two of her spouses died in the fight for Titan.  It's pretty sad.  She messages back that she's got  no ships to send.

She feels bad for all of this.  She fought and people she loved died and for what?  Things won't be better for belters.  If anything things will be worse for belters because she joined up with Holden.  This song is called I am sad, so very very sad.

ch 49 Naomi pg 403

Naomi is pouring through the Medina station data and sending it out to everyone.  Holden comes in and they talk about their options RE: Marco and the rest of the free navy ships headlong their way. 

They are just gonna stay and fight and probably die.

Avasarala wants all the data they have on the disappeared ships so she starts digging through that data.  She thinks she's figured out something important.

ch 50 Holden pg 411

The important thing Naomi thinks she's figured out is that after a certain amount of mass and energy goes through a gate the next ship after that gets disappeared.  She thinks if the big ice hauler and the Rock go.through just right maybe the next ship to go through after them disappears.  So that's Tue plan.  They're gonna go through a gate and hope that the next ship disappear and then one less ship to fight.

ch 51 Marco pg 419

Marco is a crazy person.  He thinks a lot of thoughts and when I see them strung together on paper they're the ravings of a mad.man.  when he goes through the ring he sees his molecules start to stretch out and disappear.  

It worked even better than expected all fifteen ships disappear.  “Huh,” Amos said over the ship system. “That is super creepy.”

ch 52 Pa pg 425

Its been six months.  They have big problems.  Mainly a lack of air, water and food.  The solution should be easy, there's plenty of all those things on the other side of the ring gates.  But we've gotta come up with a system cause if we don't ships will keep randomly disappearing.  Holden has a plan.  We create a government -esque organization to organize all traffic through the ring gates.  Anyone that's able bodied will end up on a planet.  So this governing organization should be made up of belters that will not have that ability.  And the person in charge should be someone that's always done what's good for the belt.  Michio Pa.  

Michio hadn’t come to a meeting. This was an anointing.

ch 53 Naomi pg 434

They're All just hanging out talking abouwhat t the future might bring.

Epilogue Ana pg 441

remember preast Ana who was in the slow zone?  shes taking her family on a ship to the new settlement Eudoxia.  it should be better than earth.  good luck.

Project Hail Mary CH 1 - 5

CH 1 pg 3

Our narrator is being asked math questions by a computer.  It takes a while to gain back their facilities before they can answer.  They are attached to a bunch of tubes.  After they regain the ability to move robot arms remove most of the tubes.  A cathader, a butt tube and an IV.  The computer asks our narrator their name.  The narrator has no idea what their name is.  But it's a white guy so he guesses John and the computer says incorrect.  Next time our narrator wakes up, little robot arms are shaving his face.  He jumps out of his bed and the IV and butt tube come out OK.  The catheter comes out with much more pain.

Flashback: narrator is eating breakfast at a diner in San Francisco and he reads an email from a Russian lady about odd IR light activity in our solar system.

Narrator wakes up from the flashback and is underwhelmed by the lack of useful information.

There's two other beds in the room with people and they're both dead.  Like been dead for a long time cause they look.like mummies.

The computer gives narrator a tube of food.  He feels stronger and is able to climb up a ladder to another room.  In that room he does physics and calculates the gravity here is 15 mpss not 9.8 like it should be.  So he's not on earth.

CH 2 pg 20

Narrator does some more physics and then has a flashback and realizes he's on a spaceship.  The two mummies are people he knew.  A lady named Marisa and a military guy he can't remember the name of.  But he still can't remembehis own r name.  Commence uncontrollable sobbing.  Another flashback and he remembers the reason he's on this mission is the IR oddness mentioned before is actually draining the sun.  Its like Venus is draining the sun.

The ship keeps telling him “Angular anomaly" and he assumes that means the ship needs some sort of course correction but he has no idea how to steer this ship.  He remembers something else about himself.  He's a teacher.

CH 3 pg 34

Our narrator has a flashback to his teaching days.  Sixth period has just finished and he's looking forward to chillaxing in the teachers lounge with a cup of coffee.  “Ryland Grace?” said a woman’s voice.  She tells him he's on the team to study why the sun is dying.  It's mainly because of a paper he wrote back in his academic days about how you don't need water for life.  It pretty much ended his academic career cause it was so whckypants.  She tells him they think they found life on Venus and it might be what's killing the sun.  They want him to study it.  He doesn't want to.  But when he goes home the FBI is there to abduct him. The lady is at the place they take him and she says welcome to your new lab.

He comes out of the flashback and tells the computer his name.

His name gets him into the pilot's cabin.  There's all sorts of screens and what not.  It turns out the angular anomaly was just an informational message to let him know that his measured speed didn't match his actual speed.  He flashes back to his time in the lab.  The short story is they have found life on Venus.  It consumes energy from the sun and then uses that energy to emit light, which it uses as a means of locomotion.  We go back to the ship.  There's a screen focusing on the sun.  Doing some science he comes to the conclusion that this isn't our sun.  He's in another solar system.

CH 4 pg 54

Lots of flashback in this chapter.  Ryland is doing a lot of lab work on the alien algae that he has named Astrophage.  It doesn't reflect light, its always black to look at.  Radiation doesn't have an affect on it.  But he kills one by stabbing it with a nano needle and does a bit of an autopsy.  He finds that they are mostly water and that makes him sad cause it goes against his life without water theory.  And also how does something made of water live on the sun?  Back from the flashback on the spaceship he sees that one of the screens is labeled Astrophage and its what is powering the ship.  It has a constant temperature of a bit above 94 degrees Celsius.  Maybe that's how something made of water can live on the sun cause it can keep that constant temperature.  

Flashback again, the lady in charge of the lab tells Ryland she's having the astrophage shipped off to a bunch of other labs all over the world to be investigated.  Ryland wants to keep investigation and she says she can't give him any astrophage cause they're all spoken for.  Each lab is only getting five.  He begs and pleads and cries about his kids and she says he can have 3.

Back on the space ship he realizes this is a one way mission.  He's sent to gather info and then put it on four ships named after the Beatles to send it back to earth.  He's gonna die here all alone.

CH 5 pg 74

This chapter is all flashback.  

He does a bunch of science and figures out the reproductive cycle of the astrophage.  They gather up energy on the sun.  Then they go to the north pole of the sun and launch off.  Then once they're far enough away from the sun to detect a source of CO2 they use the stored up energy to go there and once they hit the CO2 they reproduce.  Then they go back to the sun and do it all over again.  He's able to get one of his three to reproduce.  He tells the leader lady about this and says cool, we gotta go.

An army guy takes him to a chopper, which takes him to a plane, which takes him to Hawaii.  Another plane takes him to an aircraft carrier and then a chopper takes him to a Chinese aircraft carrier.  All these super smart people that have been doing astrophage experiments are here.  They talk about how they need to make a lot more astrophage and get it fully charged up so they can use it to power a spaceship to get to another solar system.  They call the.project hail Mary.  His ship is named Hail Mary so obviously this plan worked.  The question now is where is he going and why.  The where is a star named Tau Ceti and the why is that it's the only star they're aware of that isn't infected by the Astrophage.  Every other nearby star has gone down by 10% if the sun goes down by 10% earth won't be able to support human life anymore.

bush height

this is how large they are today.  I'm curious how much they grow in the next week.

the anthropocene reviewed ch 30 super mario cart through ch 44 three famrers on their wya to a dance

ch 30 super mario cart pg 181

One of the fun things about super mario cart is that it's really competitive beacuse the further back you are the more powerful your question box items are.  This is basically the exact opposite of real life.  

ch 31 bonneville salt flats pg 185

The slat flats are in soithern utah near thr navafa bprder.  It was part of the great salt lake fifteen thousand years ago.  Now its just left over salt.  It's this crazy huge piece of baren land.  it sure is cool looking.

ch 32 hiroyoku Doi's circle drawings pg 191

Just hn likes signing things because its a taks he can get engrossed in.  Doi draws circles because hes overwhelmed by sadness due to the deathnof his brother and drawing circles distracts him from that.

ch 33 whispering

John didnt used to.like whipsering.  But due to the global pandemic,  nobody whisprs anymore cause of the germs.  He kind of misses it.

ch 34 viral menigitis

John had viral menengitis anf it sucked.  He had a headacje for basically a week straight when he was in the hospital.  He didnt have any sort if  openi g expericne that .ade him appreciate life more or anything.  It was just all consu.ing pain.  Then he had the same headaches on and off for a year.  He is not a fan of the this too shall pass approach that most people have with someone in pain.  His whole thing is that we should simpley acknowledge the pain of otheres.

ch 35 plague

Covid sucks.  The black plague was significantly worse.  But a lot of things were the same.  Blaming minorities, the poor being disproportionately affected, misinformation, etc.  There were some silver lining stories, but largely wife scale human suffering is just really bad.  All i hear is the wind slapping against the gravestones of those who didnt make it.

ch 36 Wintry Mix

Thjs is kinda about gardening and kinda about the winter before the apocalypse.  Summer and fall are perferable to wintery mix, but winter without covid is preferable to spring with it.

ch 37 the hot dogs of baejarins Beztu Pylsurw

hangovers suck, hotdogs are a good hangover food.  The first ever olypic metal was in handball in 2008.  The economic collapse in 2008 was a once in a lifetime bad deal.  Except for the once in a lifetime bad deal we're going though now.

ch 38 the notes app

John writes a lot of notes.  Mostly in the margins of books he's reading.  But in the modern era he often finds himself pen less and has turned to the iPhone notes app.  There's some fun ones with explanations in this chapter.

ch 39 the mountain goats

John likes the band the mountain goats.

ch 40 the qwerty keyboard

that was easy to type cause those letters are right next to each other.  The history of the qwerty keyboard is fun.  There used to be a bajillion different typewriter setups.  Almost all of them had jamming problems.  The thing that made the QWERTY keyboard better was that you were often switching hands as you typed and as such were less likely to have two of the hammers jam together.  The other thing is that the gun company bought the keyboard right after the civil war and flooded the market, basically putting all other keyboard companies out of business.

ch 41 the world's largest ball of paint

The world largest ball of paint started as a baseball tha that a guy and his son painted and then other people came around and painted it now its a HUGE roadside attraction.  John's thought is this is a metaphor for all art.  You do your part and then it kind of takes on a life of it's own as other people consuume it.  Yoh may think what you created was great,  but it takes a lot of luck for the circumstances to be right for your art to be well received.  The paint that the guy and h is son painted are under tons of layers of other paint, but that doesn't make it any less his art.

ch 42 Sycamore Trees

Life is meaningless.  But then you see a squirrel run up a sycamore tree and you think maybe its not all bad.

ch 43 new partner

New partner is a song john likes.  I guess its about love cause there's talk about love in this chapter.

ch 44 three farmers on their way to a dance

This photo is German.  Who knew?  The three young men on their way to a party are not farmers.  It's two iron miners and an office worker.  This photo was taken just before WW1.  All three of them served for the German army in WW1.  One of them died.

Altered carbon ch 37 - 42 ( the end )

 Ch 37

They're cleaning up the aftermath of the invasion of the fight club.  Ortega and Takeshi are talking about what must a guy like Carnage have prepar ed for backuo and restore when he gets RD'd.  Ortega says hes gotta habe people that can download his memories basically to the point of his death.  Takeshi counters with the theory that he might be better of with a week of missing memories if he was doing something really illegal.  Th cant interrogate you for memories you dpnt have.  He has a bit of an opifany and thunks he knows what really happeded to Boynton.  Jes gotta get to the cloud place.

chh 38 pg 317

Takeshi has been a naughty boy.  He made a copy of humslef in a badass ninja sleeve.  His first thought is that if being in this sleeve is wrong (cause earth is trying to make their import illegal 🚫 ) he doesnt wanna be right.  He has a long entertaining talk with himself.  

ch 39 pg 325

The plan is tha Takeshi in Ryker sleeve is gonna go bang miriam Bancroft again.  The ninja sleeve is gon na go do the attack on the ☁ cloud place.  Somehow this involves going with ortega to get drugs.  Allso everyine with Elliot getting in a virtual space created by Jimmy Hendricks.  

ch 40 pg 335

They do some awesome space age mission impossible stuff to get ninja Takeshi on the cloud unnoticed.  Ortega is basically a distraction talking to Kawahara about Takeshi. Takeshi witnesses some of the super illegal stuff the cloud gets so handsomely paid to keep hush hush and he kills the customer.

Ch 41 pg 345

Takeshi makes his way to Kawahara.  He has guns and he explains that elliit has corrupted her stack backup with a virus.  So if she wants to make it out of here alive, it'll be with a full confession, which he will record via a divise in his eye.  The rough stuff story is that the Meths are against this 653 law where they can bring dead people back to testify.  Right now Catholics are exempt.  Soo the meths pretty !uch only use Catholics for their snuff play.  I dont remeber the details but basically after Bancroft killed a Catholic girl who was given plastic surgery to look like his wiife, Kawahara told him about this whole conspiracy and framing Ryker and everything and he decided to kill h imself rather than get involved.

trepp shows up and shoots Takeshi.  The n she turns on Kawahara but Kawahara haas Takeshi gun and kills trepp.  Takeshi with his fancy ninja body is still alive and fights Kawahara.  Shhe ends u p ripping the recording device out of his eye,  but he has a tiny bomb in his hand and it s powerful enough to blow up the floor and the tw o of them start falling.

ch 42 pg 360

Takeshi visits a science lady and she confesses she injected one of Bancroft's clones with some chemical.  He then goes to Miriam and she confesses that Kawahara had her inject the clone knowing it would make his seed poisonous and as such the next person  he had sex with would die.  That's how they had him murder the Catholic girl to get the blackmail that didn't work.

altered carbon ch 31 through 36

Ch 31 pg 277.

They get an apartment and Irene does the virus.

Ch 32 pg 279

Tak convinces Bancroft of the virus story it seems.  As hes getting ready to leave he notices the telescope eyepiece has been wiped off.  It's focused on head in the clouds, a fancy pants 👖 airship.  He's gotta go investigate.   On the way out he tells Miriam Bancroft that the job is done and she and kawahara can relax cause larents won't be finding out the truth of what happened.

Ch 33 pg  285

Takeshi doesn't have any connection to the head in the clouds so he talks to someone that does.  After a bit of talking we are told this is the doctors head we're talking to.  He's pretty well conditioned.  So the questioning doesn't go well.  So Takeshi jumps out of the virtual and runs a torture program on the doctor.  I got the impression it was a deal where he made a copy of the doctor and had the doctor torture himself.  

Takeshi has a talk with the hotel.  About how long the torture is estimated to take before the doctor is likely to result in useful answers to Takeshi's questions.  Also about the legal ramifications of all this.  If the cops come looking for the doctor, the hotel will be bound to give them all the data.  They will find that the hotel was involved in the torture and the punishment for that can be up to total shutdown.  So basically the hotel is putting it's life on the line for Takeshi.

CH 34 pg 292

The hotel has broken the doctor.   It tells Takeshi it could put a fakw Takeshi in the simulation to keep the doctor company.  With this info Takeshi says, well if thats possible, just have the copy do the whole interogation.  Kadmin calls.  He's got Ortega.  Either Takeshi turns himself over to Kadmin or Ortega dies.  So like any self respecting hero he runs to save the damsel in distress and sacrifices himself.

CH 35 pg 299

Kadmin brings Takeshi to the fight barge.  There Carnage talks to Takeshi about how there's gonna be a fight and it will be broadcast and the appeal is that a lot of people know Ryker and want to see him die violently.

CH 36 303.

Kadmin is in a much more powerful sleeve.  Takeshi had no  chance of not dying.  But this isn't just a guy trying to kill another guy.  We've got lots of paying customers to entertain.  So kadmin takes Hus time.  Too much time cause the cavalry of Trepp and Ortega's partner Bautista show up to save Takeshi.

Babylon ashes ch 19 through 36

ch 19 pa pg 166

Pa and her ship captains are looking at their options now that they have left Marco and there arent a ton of them.  They decide joining up with Fred Johnson is the best move.  

ch 20 naomi pg 174

There's lots of bobbie and naomi talking about Pa.  Part of them want to welcome her back into the good OPA with open arms cause she was good people during the slow zone book.  But she did abandon fred and was more than happy to join up with Marco when he murdered a bunch of earthlings.  Holdens going.

ch 21 jakulski pg 182

jakulski is our eyes and ears on medina station.  Hes just a tech.  He gets suckered into being part of the welciming party for the martians that are coming back through the ring.  They built a ship on the other side and people are psyched to see it.  But now hes drinking woth the rest of the tech team and theyve a

L got different theories as to why the martians have decided to come back now.  Each more frightening than the one before.  Lots of doom and gloom around here.

ch 22 holden pg 189

Off they go to meet Pa.  Fred pulled all his people so it's our original four plus peaches and Bobbie.  They make there way to where Pa is and there's a bunch of ships and targeting lasers are active and it feels like they're hopelessly outnumbered but they're ready for a fight.   But Pa answers their hail and talking starts. 

ch 23 pa pg 198

Holden and pa are talking, she has a colony ship and Holden wants her to hand it over and she obliges.  Then mistles are headed their way.  The roci shoots them down.  There's a lot of talking about the existential crisis they're in.  Marco is coming after them and they don't have any assurance that anyone is going to welcome them into the warm honeyed bussom.

ch 24 prax pg 206

The free navy are walking around Ganymede with guns now.  Making it very clear they're in charge.  Prax is supposed to be uploading some data but instead finds himself watching two hours of Holdens videos from ceres and China and other places people live to show people that don't live there that we're all people.  Things kinda suck here politically speaking, but life is good for Prax and his family. 

ch 25 fred pg 213

Fred is going to meet woth other opa heads that didn't go over to Marco.  He is trying to keep it on the downlow so Marco doesn't find out about it and kill them all.  So he wants a ride there from holden.

ch 26 filip pg 221

Marco found the Rosinante heading from Ceres to Tyco.  They're pretty sure fred is on that ship .  They're gonna go take them out.

ch 27 bobbie pg 228

Marco has three ships to their one.  On one hand this seems real bad.  The analogy to show maybe its not soo bad is a guy with the football running ahead of a pack of defenders.   Doesn't really matter how many guys are chasing you,  if they can't catch you, you're likely to score the touchdown.   But bobbie likes to fight so we're fighting.  They get some help from ceres and one of Marcos ships splits off to deal with that.  The roci is trying to shoot missles and anti missle bullets at Marco but eventually they will lose that battle because thyre still out gunned.  Except that the Roci has a rail gun.  After some fancy flying by Alex and fancy shooting by Bobbie, they win the fight.

ch 28 holden pg 236

All that fancy maneuvering had a cost. Fred had a stroke and died.  It's almost as bad as if they'd been blown up.  Getting Fred to Tyco alive was they mission and they failed.

ch 29 Avasarala pg 244

Avasarala is overwhelmed by everything.   Getting the message from holden that fred is dead was a crushing blow.  A bit of an ego crushing blow.  She tells her assistant Said (sai eed nen an en ji bad.  It's not that difficult.   Why can't anyone in this country properly pronounce my name) to cancel everything.   He lets her grand daughter  (who she had been avoiding) come in so she can take part in the emotional pain.   She straightens up and sends a return message to Holden.  You get your sorry ass to Tycho Station and make this work.

ch 30 Filip pg 252

Marcos is blaming philip for their losing the fight to holden.  It's standard Marco bullshit.  If he loses he tries to remessage it as a win for his master plan and if he cant do that he finds a scapegoat.  In this case, Philip was the gunner, so it's  his fault they lost the fight.

ch 31 pa pg 260

Nico Sanjrani, chief economist of the belt comes to talk to Pa.  He lays out the plans he had to develop the infrastructure the belt would need to survive without earth.  Then he tellls her tjat Marco didn't follow through with any of it and they've got three years til everything goes to shit.  She asks what They need to do now.  He doesn't know.  I guess he just wanted to share his panic with someone. 

Holden calls to beg Pa for help.

ch 32 Vandercast pg 268

Vandercast works with jakulski from chapter 21.  Vandercast is in jail on medina station getting interrogated about some ships that came back from the other side of a ring all at once trying to attack medina station.   It dodnt work out.  The railguns Nd station defenses did their job real good and all the attacking ships were destroyed. After a bit more interrogation and isolation a group in free navy uniforms comes along to tell him hes free to go.  He goes back ro work.  Turns out he was gone for threee days.  The free navy reports they found the mole that helped the colonists plan their attack.  Vandercast thinks maybe not, maybe it's just a scapegoat. 

ch 33 holden pg 276

There's 5 belter higher ups for the meeting.   Four invitees and Anderson dawes,  former governor or. Ceres.  Pa recorded a video for an introduction to holden. Holden  l a imz frex hD a plan.   If you wann hear it, come back in 20 hours.  You're free to leave before then.  If you tske part in the planning meeting,  you're in and won't be free anymore.

ch 34 dawes pg 284

Despite being kicked out of the belter planning party cause he qasnt invited, Dawes is going around campaigning for Holden.  Talking to everyone who was invited and telling them what they need to hear un order to get them on Holden 's side so they can take this stand against Marco.

ch 35 Amos 292

Amos has a simple straightforward relationship with sex.  Its a thung he needs to do every now and then.  Whhen he feels the nit having had sex for too long tention has built up too much he goes to a whorehouse to release the tension.  The main benefit of down ng it this way is that after first sexual encounter re

Eases the tensuon, he sleeps super good.  But its not working.  Something about those missles in the battle against the three free navy ships is bothering him.  So he goes to talk to Holden.  They had a direct hit with one of those missiles.  But it didnt go off.  Holden tells him its cause he shut them off.  Filip was on one of those ships and Holden wasn't gonna kill Naomi's kid if he could avoid it.  Amos is ok with that.  But then he has to ask holden if maybe thats a sign that he's not the man for the job of replacing Fred, the butcher, Johnson.  Holden knows he's not, but he's gonna try anyway.

ch 36 Filip pg 300

Filip is on whatever place they're on right now and he's having some noodles and a beer.  He feels very alone.  Some guy fr the ship comes to talk about his feelings.  Its hard, father son relationship.  Especially when you work on a spaceship together.  Ship guy says he and his dad almost always settled their beefs via physical violence.  

But Marco's not just dad.  He's president or wjayeber of the free navy can't have a fight with the free navy head to squash dad beef.  On the news feed Fred Johnsons death is annniunced.  They go back to the shio and its party time.  Some drunk girl kisses Filip.  Marco gives a speech and he's all "we did it."  Filip is hurt by this.  When they lost the fight to the Rosi, its filips failure.  When Fred Johnson dies because the ship that Filip was shooting at had to make maneaubers that cause Fred to have a stroke Filip doesn't get the credit, its just "we" did it.  

Altered carbon ch 25 through 30

Ch 25 pg 221 Tak gos to europe with Trepp and meets someone in a basillica. Said person's name is Kawahara amd they're another d ch and powerful like Bancroft. Kawahara tells Tak to convince Bancroft he killed himself. They offer money and when Tak refuses they turn to threats. Remember Sarah from the beginning of the book? Kawahara has her and if Tak doesn't do what they want they're going to put her in a bpdy and torture her. 

 ch 26 pg 231 Trepp wants to party and Tak is down. So they do eye drop meth and get super duper high. Tak says hes gonna go back to bay city and do what Kawahara told him to do. 

 Ch 27 pg 241 Tak and Ortega have sex 

 CH 28 pg 250 They're ona boat. It's Rykers boat. He got it working a case in Australia. There the cops are often private contractors that have get paid in spoils from the person that they arrest. This is illegal in bay city. The point of this story is to remind Tak that Ryker was a dirty cop even if he wasnt guilty of what he got.put away for. Annd so is Ortega cause she beat up kadmin. Now Tak is gonna do some sort of qhore house investigation to help. Onvince Bancroft that he killed himself. 

 ch 29 pg 255 Tak's plan is to convunce Bancroft he got a computer virus from a whore house and he kiLed himself an hour before his backup to prevent his backup from getting infected. He has Kawahara get a hold of auch a virus and tak is gonna create the fake paper trail. Hes also havong Kawahara get someone named Elliot off the stacks amd into a body. 

 ch 30 pg 266

Irene Elliot is the mother of one of the sex workers that Bancroft ruined.  She's gonna plant the virus at a virtual whorwhouse.  Tak takes her to hang out with her husband for a while before she does the deal.  Tak and Trepp have some coffee and make small talk that serves as more world building about the corps.

The anthropocene reviewed CH 15 academic decathalan through ch 29 monopoly

 Ch 15 academic decathlon n

John went to an alamaba boarding school.  He's a smart kid tjays ba d at school.  His friend Todd is a smart kid thats good at school.the academic decathalon has a set up where you have 3 a stufents 3 b students anf 3 c studemts.  Todd was an a stude t anf john was a c student.  John Domi nated agasi t c stufents.  Fun childhood memory.

chCHh 16 sunsets

The sun is your only God

ch 17 Jerzy Dudek's perfornace on may 25, 2005

Jerzy dudeck is a polish goalie.  He grew up in a mining town amd got his start on his mining companies team.  Then he went semi pro.  Then he signed on with a dutch team and eventually did well enough to make a living at it.  Reading this i had no idea what the year was.  It was 1995.  So it shouldn't be a huge surprise thay jerzy as one of the best goalkeepers in Europe got a multimillion pound contract to play for Liverpool.  Where this goes into 2005 is when pope john paul, a fellow Pole, died on the day of the European final between Liverpool and Milan.  This messed up jerzy something fierce cause a polish pope doesnt happen that often and he was one of Jerzy's heros.  So it shouldn't be a huge surprise that he did not play well in the first half of the game and Liverpool went down 3-0.  But Jerzy got it together and they came back to win the game.    The part of this that is great to think about in the middle of a global pandemic is that eventually we will feel.comfortable going to sports in person.  I sure hope it's by next summer cause id really like to go back to the NBA summer league.

ch 18 penguins of madagascar

The opening scene of the penguins of Madagascar is remarkable because the boom operator sends our three heros into their life of adventure by nudging them off a cliff.  This is true to reality because the myth that lemmings run off cliffs en mass is based on a documentary where the film maker trapped a bunch of lemmings, put them in a dump truck 🚚and dumped them off a cliff.  What a bunch of assholes.

ch 19 piggly wiggly

The piggly wiggly was the first supermarket in the 1920s.  The way groceries used to work was you gave your grocer a list of what you wanted and they went and got it.  It was mainly fresh food and there weren't many brand names.  The piggly wiggly changed all that cause people picked their own food.  One side effect was cheaper prices and more processed foods with brand names.  It was hugely successful.  But the owner was a real dick and there were some walstreet shenhannegans amd he lost the chain and declared bankruptcy.  He ended up a!king a second fortune with a supermarket chain he named after himself, Clarence Saunders, sole owner of my name.  He also had a super successful football team he also named after himself.  But like a lot of people, he lost everything in the depression.

ch 20  thenatan's famous hot dog eating contest

Eating contests are gross.  The 4th of july nathans hotdog eating contest is the grossest.  And i guess also racist.

ch 21 cnn

John thinks cnn talks too much about what's new and not enough about the circumstances that led to the current news.

ch 22 harvey

Thus is the movie where jimmy Stuart is mentally ill and has an imaginary friend named Harvey who's a man-sized bunny 🐇.  John's first serious bout with depression came when he was young in Chicago.  He couldn't eat, he just drinks sprite.  He tells his boss he's gotta go home to Orlando to figure it out.  He tells him his job will be waiting for him when he comes back.  He also tells him to watch Harvey.  He ended up coming back in a couple 💑 months.  

ch 23 the yips

Rick Ankiel was a pitcher.  He got the yips, a sudden unexplainable loss of your ability to do some sort of athletic skill.  Like pitching accurately or serving in Tennis.  Rick s career as a pitcher was over.  But he came back as an outfielder. Good for him

ch 24 auld lang syne

It's a good song about remembering old friends.  One such old friend of John is a lady named Amy who helped him get his writing career going by giving him little writing gigs for radio.  She died and John doesn't feel like he handled it well.  But he thinks of her when he sings the song.

ch 25 googling strangers

John likes to google strangers that he knows will be going to the same party as him.  He's often astonished that he can basically learn everything there is to know about a person by googling them.  John did a stint as a hospital chaplain back when he was considering going to divinity school.  The worst experience he had was with a little boy who had serious burns.  He always assumed the boy had died because the ER doctor was pretty sure he wouldn't make it when he got sent up to the ICU.  But John googled him recently.  Turns out he's still alive.

ch 26 Indianapolis

You gotta live somewhere.  But Indianapolis isn't so bad.  Even when compared to New York where John came from.  His neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks and his yard requires too much maintenance, but it's one of the most economic and ethnically diverse neighborhoods in America.  His neighbor Chris told him to google it.  We know John likes to google.  He did and it is.  Not too shabby.

ch 27 Kentucky bluegrass

This chapter is all about lawn maintenance.  John doesnt like it.  Its very wasteful.  This chapter makes me think i should replace my front lawn with planters.  I water my lawn so its nice for my dog to walk on.

ch 28 the Indianapolis 500

Car racing huh?  Allso buke riding amd coolers with water and beer.

ch 29 monopoly

This is about the board game monopoly.  How it accurately shows that as time goes n capitalism ends up with a consolidation of wealth.  It speaks of the history of the invention of the game.  How a lady invented it to show the ills of capitalism and she didn't make any money from it.  She just shared it with her friends for fun and over time the game evolved.  The guy that got rich off it did so because he patented it and was then able to sell it and became a millionaire.

altered carbon ch 19 through 24

CH 19 - they go to the fight club.  Take spends the whole time acting like he's Ryker cause the fight guy thinks he's Ryker.  They've got some awesome sleeves.  Tak asks what the point is of having someone in the latest greatest sleeve fight against an old and basically gets the it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog speech.

CH 20 there's a bit of flirting as Ortega drops off Tak at his hotel.  She says to stick around cause she wants him to talk to someone later, might take a while to set it up.  Bancroft's driver is waiting for Tak at the hotel says they need to talk.  He's relaying a message from Mrs. Bancroft asking again if he wants to take her up on her sex island invitation.  The driver is jealous and picks a fight with Tak.  Tak explains how outmatched the driver is.  An envoy isn't human.  They strip away your humanity to turn you into a killing machine.  It was work for him not to kill people.  The driver is currently alive because Tak put in the extra effort to fight against his killer instinct.  Then a cop shows up and they talk about Ryker.  The question I cared about most was how long Ryker is locked up for.  It's 200 years.  Tak thinks ortega is a little nuts for paying the sleeve storage.  So do I.  The cop explains that Ryker was a good cop as far as he knew.  He thinks Ortega's theory that Ryker isn't guilty of all they say about him might be right, but he doesn't know.  Ryker got put away cause he went up to Seattle for some vigilante justice.  He put 124 holes in the car he was chasing.  

CH 21. Ortega and Tak go on a virtual reality call to meet the lady that was seven months pregnant with Laurent Bancroft's baby and Miriam Bancroft beat up so she lost the baby.  She thinks Miriam killed Laurents.  When they get done with the call there's people waiting to kill them.  They do not succeed.

CH 22 something one of the would-be killers said makes Tak think it's Kadmin.  He tells this horror story from his home world.  He tells her to write down a location for them to meet in secret.  He tells her to check the stacks at the police cause he's certain it's Kadmin trying to kill him and if Ortega sees he's not in the stack, that will confirm it.

CH 23 a lady sleeve doctor tells Tak that nefarious people have been doing bad things with sleeves at her precinct for a long time and she turned a blind eye.  She gives him a disk, which I suppose will help tak find kadmin.

CH 24 Tak goes to Seattle and kidnaps a bad science guy that did things to Ryker's body.  Then a lady shows up.