Phillip Winn

The Butlerian Jihad used to be, for me, one of the most fantastical elements of the Dune series. Sure, melange enabling interstellar travel and giant worms, but a war fought to prevent anything like computers?

With the rise of generative AI models, I think I see it now. It isn’t that humans fight against the machines, it’s that humans fight against humans to prevent the use of the machines.

I now believe Dune to be among the most realistic science-fiction sagas ever written. It’s about a company strictly controlling a valuable resource that enables transportation, and being willing to do anything at all to preserve their monopoly.

The oil must flow.

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Phillip Winn

I think my predilection for reading books the last few years might be the result of how easy it is to track reading books. I spent many hours listening to the History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan, but at the end of it, it was only the fact that I then went on to read his book based on all of those hours that was recorded for posterity.

I finished an audiobook recently, and marked it as completed at Bookrastinating. Then I started a podcast that has been recommended to me repeatedly. If it were a podcast with an unknown number of episodes that went on and on, I might not even think of the two activities as similar, despite both involving spoken audio I listen to in the same personal contexts (mostly during exercise). But this podcast is ten episodes long, with each episode about an hour long, so it is very, very much like starting a ten-hour audiobook.

At the end of these ten hours, I might know more, or be more entertained, or both, but I won’t have anything to record the event and look back at later, no trigger for memories in years to come, like I will with the audiobook that preceded it in that personal time slot.

Although I had not actively considered it before starting this post, both the podcast season and the novel are the first entries in a trilogy. At least for now. It might be more likely that the podcast produces a fourth season than the author writes another book in that series, but there are a number of series of audiobooks that go on for many volumes. I count 48 “seasons” of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct available for me to listen to, for example.

So why is is a seven-hour audiobook a “book,” while a ten-hour podcast season is not?

So now it is.

bookrastinating.com/book/42881

It turns out to already be a book on GoodReads, but BookWyrm relies on user-generated content, and I might be the first BookWyrm user to listen to Blowback Season 1, making it my job to add it to the database. If, as I suspect I will, I decide to listen to season 2 later, I’ll add that then.

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Phillip Winn

Digital narration for audiobooks - Apple Books for Authors

authors.apple.com/support/4519

This really boggles my mind. I think it is typical of Apple to find one of the best possible practical uses of what most companies would consider the edge of technology and many hard-core nerds would say was the leading edge a couple of years ago.

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Phillip Winn

Prologue now has 14 downloaded audiobooks, so I’m ready to start this year. Now I just have to pick which one comes first.

N.K. Jemisin? Becky Chambers? Chuck Wendig? Or maybe P.L. Travers?

I’ll read them all eventually. What a delightful problem to have!

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Phillip Winn

I don’t think I have enough time today to finish another book, or even start one, so my count for the year stops at 128.

More pages but fewer books than last year.

That’s an average of 2.85 days per book, which seems amazing even to me. I know some books took much longer than that, but I also remember a few days in which I read multiple books back-to-back, reading from morning until night.

31 of the 128 were audiobooks, and two were graphic novels.

I read so many good books this year! In 2022 I finished Ada Palmer’s fantastic Terra Ingota series, discovered the wonderful books of Diana Wynne Jones, and met the wonderful Leonid McGill character of Walter Mosley.

I started a new job this year, and the increased demand on my brain meant I read more in the first half of the year than the last half. Then again, I think that seems to be true every year. Still, I’m tempted to lower my target for next year.

I am far behind most of my friends and family when it comes to movies and TV shows, but I think I probably read more than average.

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Phillip Winn

.

I’m pwinn, rhymes with Quinn.

I’m into . I’m a professional nerd, currently paid to write , an upgrade from . I’m also an avocational nerd, mostly writing on my own time.

I’ve written a . It’s cheap! Tillie Madison vs Reality is a novel. I love , and read more than two per week on average. I include and in that, but not individual issues of or .

I collect things, mostly but not exclusively electronically. To that end, I have a coouple of NAS units. The newest one is a 95-terabyte , while the older one is a 28-terabyte with a 32-terabyte Drobo attached. One of them runs , but not for public consumption. I’m not a . I’m not! I can quit anytime!

I enjoy , including tabletop RPGs () like . I like jigsaw too. I’m going to reward myself for posting this by starting one of my new 2000-piece Ravensburgers.

I realized recently that I watch more and than I do American , but that comes and goes.

Other things about me: I live in , I’m , I’m a , I’m a , I lean far politically on most things, I like , I really like , and I’ve been playing with both and lately.

I’m sure I’ve left out something important, but I don’t see any rule that I can’t have more than one , so I’m not bothered.

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Phillip Winn

I read a lot of books, by which I mean I probably spend more time reading than I do any other single thing outside of work and sleep. Some years I focus on particular genres or themes or author demographics, but lately I've just been reading series that seem interesting.

Goodreads tells me I've read 111 books of my 104-book goal so far this year, so I guess I can relax now. Of course, to relax I mostly read, so...

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