Thunderhead

Neal Shusterman

Book 2 in Arc of a Scythe trilogy

Picking up where Scythe left off, the Scythedom is polarized between the old and new guard. The old guard promotes the solemnity of the job of the Scythe while the new guard caters to the sociopathic tendencies of those who simply enjoy killing. We follow new Scythes Rowan and Citra (now Lucifer and Anastasia) as they play out their roles in the post massacre politics that ended book 1. Interstitial to the "main story" (but actually the driving plot) is the influence and thought process of Thunderhead, the AI that runs everything on earth (except the Scythes). On the surface, this is a traditional and standard fantasy/sci-fi treatment of a possible future that has yet to be designated dystopian/utopian. But the most interesting piece of this writing is the development of Thunderhead. In book 1, the AI was sentient, and nearly omnipotent. Here we see that the AI is really just a teenager. The Thunderhead is nearly omnipotent, but considers the things it does not know as practically irrelevant. So basically it is omnipotent, and therefore basically a god (very much the attitude of most teenagers). The Thunderhead is also discovering what it knows about itself, as separate from what it was taught by its parents, is beginning to push boundaries and assert its own personality, which we see as benevolent, but also petulant at times. I love this idea of a long story arc that allows us to see the aging and character development process for an AI. We talk about AI learning, but we don't really talking about AI personality development. Here we see that both are necessarily interconnected. If only book 3 were available now.
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A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived

Adam Rutherford

History of genetics, what we know, how we know it, and what it will tell us soon. Most books in this 'popular science' genre are simultaneously fascinating and so-dry-they-are-a-chore-to-finish, and this book is exactly that. Get it, keep it handy, and read a bit now and then. Don't try to power through, and don't get frustrated that you can't finish it. Even in short spurts, I learned something every time I picked it up. Some of the most interesting things that stick with me are how we can use genetic comparisons to tell us something about the history of migration and what genetic testing does/does not tell us about race. 

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Jesus and the Disinherited

Howard Thurman

Written immediately post WWII as a treatise on what it means to be a follower of Jesus at the same time you are a member of an oppressed class. Thurman talks about fear and deception as tools that the oppressed utilize to cope with their reality, or as tools to 'get over' on the oppressor. The argument here is that these tools are precisely what Jesus was teaching against and offering alternate ways to cope and 'get over'. Thurman takes the additional step, arguing that in fact, utilizing these will always turn back on the user, in effect ceding your power to the oppressor instead of giving you power over them. In his opening section, and supported thereafter, Thurman sets an important foundation for the argument by showing how important it is to read Jesus life and teaching first knowing the context from which he lived and taught. The book was a foundational work for radically nonviolent social justice movements that followed over the next several decades, and is unsurprisingly still relevant and challenging today.
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The Dead Lands

Benjamin Percy

A very clever dystopian future fiction that recreates the Oregon trail and the journey of Lewis and Clark. Earth is in a post global nuclear war scenario, where the nuclear bombs were dropped not out of aggression, but in an attempt to burn out an impossibly virulent flu that decimated humanity. The opening setting is St Louis. A few tens of thousands of people live in St. Louis, and they have built a serious wall around the city to keep out the monsters and goblins, who are in reality mutagenic results of the massive radiation dosage on earth. Most people have cancer, or will have cancer and water is the premium limiting resource in the desert of St. Louis. Due to a series of circumstances, the local museum curator (Lewis) and low level police deputy (Clark) escape the wall and begin a journey to the west coast and Oregon. I love the occasional breadcrumb of historical trivia overlapping this dystopian future. I love the world created... well, the world created is quite scary, but I love the detail and imagination of a post flu epidemic/nuclear catastrophe North America. This is quite fun and engaging throughout.
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