Prague is the most beautiful city I’ve walked through, and maybe the hardest in which to stay low-carb.
We were in Czechia to attend a wedding, walking down Národní Street on our way to meet the bride and groom, when my kids saw the dumpling shop. You could get dumplings with duck in them, mango, raspberries and cream cheese. Mystery Dumplings.
Each was the size of my fist, and we ate them on a little island in the Vltava while an amateur orchestra played under the bridge, sheltered from the drizzle. Maggie and Ellie didn’t finish their dumplings and gave the rest to me, and that was just five minutes before brunch in Café Slavia. They served Viennese coffee there that was three quarters whipped cream, millet porridge, and croque Madame.
“I’m trying to stay low-carb,” I said pathetically.
“I’m sorry we are…” the groom searched for the right word. “…an obstacle.”
This was the first time any of us had met in person. The bride had read Fellow Tetrapod and invited me to a Discord server. We’d talked once on Zoom. Going from there to Wedding Guest was a little odd for me, but she’d famously met the groom in the comments sections of a youtube video.
We talked about the upcoming wedding, of course, and the dramas of family, the Prague Zoo, and our countries’ respective science fiction communities.
“There’s a lot of Czech science fiction.”
“I know,” I said, thinking of RUR and War with the Newts. “Is there any new stuff?”
The groom escorted us to an enormous bookstore with a long row of new Czech fantastika three shelves high (names include: Blaho, Rachot, Huňová, Bakly, Kyša Šlechta, Neff, Hamouz, Heteša, Bureš, Fabian, Kotouč) as well as some of the most beautiful editions of Pratchett I’ve seen.
“We have a big convention in the spring,” he said. “I know some people there. You should come.” I agreed that I would, wondering why I hadn’t gone to any other local conventions, not even in Sofia.
“My problem is I think out loud,” I said. An excuse. “That makes it hard for me to have a conversation in Bulgarian. I’m trying to make contacts…” I trailed off, tangled up in the desire to not appear afraid.
“My dream — I’ve got to, uh, I have to really improve my Czech.” The bride looked down at her fingers, which she was bending back. “But, um, I want to translate these books into English.”
She spoke like someone who writes more than she talks. With hesitancy, fighting against perfectionism, maybe, but not against fear. This was someone who crossed an ocean to get married with far less assurance than I did. Later, in her wedding dress and dizzy with relief and Toscana Bianco after the ceremony, she would shake hands with me on an editing deal. That’s as much professional networking as I’ve done in six months.
Since the internet soured for me, I’d been trying to ignore it and build real-world connections. “Don’t work with anyone you can’t have coffee with,” I told myself once after a particularly nasty email. It’s an attitude that has handicapped me. But there we were, having coffee (and, later, white wine). There is much we can accomplish if we get out of our own way

I did some housekeeping this month. Do you know there’s an index of Wealthgiver where you can see all the chapters in order? Do you know about the poll I sent out to readers? With prizes? How about my Discord server? Join it and tell me what you think. There are prizes there, too.
I see other writers giving writing updates. Would you be interested in reading something like that? Here it is: in all the previous drafts, I told myself I’d definitely write that battle scene someday. In May, I finally had no choice but to do it. I had a flash while journaling of an oncoming shell embedded in smoke like a grape in a cloud of cotton. And I wrote that battle. Whew!
***
And I read some stuff:
1633* by David Weber and Eric Flint - I liked Island in the Sea of Time and this one is similar: an Appalachian mining town was zapped to 17th century Germany by Alien Space Bats for no discernible reason. There are some interesting characters and a lot of historical details, but this book suffers from the same problem as many alternate histories: the authors playing dollies with their favorite historical figures and political ideologies. Gustavus Adolphus was a good guy. He woulda voted Democrat.
Seize What’s Held Dear by Karl Gallagher - In the third book in the series, our heroes push back the oppressive Censorate and try to figure out what to do with the planet they’ve liberated. The pacing is a little off, but there’s a good balance of high-level military maneuvering and life on the personal level.
Cat Burglar of the Constellations by John C. Wright - This is the third book of the Starquest Series and it goes down like popcorn. Maybe buffalo wings. It’s tighter and more consistent than book two, and does a better job of weaving the big plot arcs around the central story (about a jewel heist). Risking a spoiler: a whole sequence of events I thought was a flashback to the distant past…wasn’t! Awesome.
I spent the month reading some enormously long novels and a draft of an unpublished work that I can’t yet discuss.
Apothecary Diaries - I watched season one with my wife and daughters. It’s fun as a series of little mysteries set in the harem of a fictional Chinese emperor. Yes, there’s lots of sexual innuendo and interpersonal drama. My 12-year-old daughter is very interested.
The Last Human by Trantor Publishing
 - I listened to the first several chapters on Youtube, which is not a platform that fits my life. Any chance of getting you to crosspost on Spotify, Trantor? But I kept at it because it’s a good reader and a good story. Far future, humans have become the galaxy’s endangered species, replaced by creatures mostly (but not all) descended from one or another genetic engineering project. Our narrator is an orphan raised by bugs who grows up to rule the galaxy. It’s what I wanted Sun Eater to be.

“Food for the Moon” by John Carter
 - Carter was inspired by Curtis Yarvin’s “Orbital Authority”: a polity that squats on the ultimate high ground of orbit, dropping tungsten rods on anyone who threatens their position. Carter points out that such a regime would be hellishly tyrannical, and speculates about the revolution that might topple it. Great idea-fodder.

“Bone” by Karl Gallagher
 - a short story about a miner on Europa who has a disagreement with his colleague.

“In praise of Japanese small” by Chris Arnade
 - a travel essay about the different things that the builders of Japanese and American cities care about. Arnade is the best travel writer I know of, and always both kind and insightful.

“Finland as Germania” by Razib Khan
 - in this podcast, Khan connects a pair of recent preprints about ancient DNA to an old question: where did the Germanic-speaking people come from? As always I appreciate his ability to distill complicated data, and clearly communicate the resulting best guess.

“Book Review: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids” by Astral Codex Ten
 - Scott Alexander is at his best when his feet are on the ground and his tongue is in his cheek. This review was funny enough to make me read it aloud to my wife, and that’s the highest praise I can give. To Scott, if you’re reading this, it does get easier.

“REVIEW: Cambridge Latin Course Unit 1” by Jane Psmith
 - With her usual incisive humor, Psmith lays out the problems of modern language learning, a subject very close to my heart. I agree with her. Although it is better to be fluent and inaccurate than the reverse, if you want to understand and be understood, you have to buckle down and memorize some conjugation tables.


See you next month
*All book links are Amazon Affiliate links

The knock came again.
Professor Zhena Döch paused in his lecture. His hands dropped from their gesture and his mouth closed in a frown. "I said come in."
The student closest to the door — today it was little Thiy — shook her head. "Professor, none of us can hear anything."
"Really?" Zhena took a step toward the door. "Are you -- ? Ah." He smiled at his student,wagging his finger. "You wouldn't pull a joke like this on an old man, Miss Thiy."
"Oh, Professor, you're not so old." She dimpled at him. "But really, nobody's knocking here."
"It must be on your end," said Meyar, seated next to Thiy.
Zhena turned to her. He valued Meyar's eagerness to learn -- she had the mind for it -- but sometimes he wished she didn't always sit in the front row in those distracting tops with the square necklines.
The knock came for a third time and Zhena jerked up his head. "My end," he repeated. "But that's not -- oh!" He had been about to say "that's not possible," but of course it was possible for there to be a visitor on his end of this virtual lesson. It just wasn't good. Not at all.
"I'm sorry, ladies, I mean, students, but I have to get this. I'll message you with the homework. My apologies. Show me real view."
The lecture hall was replaced by the cell of Zhena Döch. He stood alone in a cube three meters on a side, with a bioprinter, smart-matter furniture, and a communication link. In his first days here, he had confirmed that the apparent gravity was due to spin, and the strength of the Coriolis effect indicated that this habitat was small. Its diameter might be no more than the height of this cell. Zhena might be gigameters from Orbit, and completely alone.
The door slid open.
Behind it waited an orderly, white and black, padded, the size of recliner on four large wheels.
Zhena drew back, holding his arms up in front of him, mouth dry with fear and disgust. He knew it was useless to resist, but it had been so long since he'd had to. The last orderly that they'd sent was…when? And why knock? Why bother knocking? As if he had a visitor. As if he could open his own door. Forty years. That was how long it had been.
"What are you doing here?" Zhena heard the whine in his voice, hated it, and hated them for making him like this. Turning him into this. "I haven't done anything."
"Get out of the way!"
Zhena squinted. That was not the voice of an orderly. It was far too annoying to be artificial. A person? It was! They'd sent a person.
"My God!" Zhena dropped his arms and craned his neck to see around the orderly. "Welcome!"
The orderly wheeled into the cell and pivoted, exposing a man in the uniform of an officer the Rebel Order. He was short, his face not plump, but soft, as if it had been molded out of dough a few minutes before.
Zhena didn't care. "My God," he said again, stepping forward, arms outstretched. "You're the first human being I've seen in forty years!"
The Orderly rolled between him and Zhena. The officer squinted at him from around the corner of the machine, face scrunched.
"Tell him!"
"This is Captain Vwa Mes of the Rebel Order of Orbital Authority, here to deliver a message." A pause, where Captain Mes failed to do so. The orderly continued. "Professor Döch, Orbit needs you."
Zhena took a step back, confused. "Needs me? You have me."
Mes emerged from behind the robot, tugging down the hem of his beige tunic. "We need you to work for us."
"I'm already working for you," said Zhena. "My team recently completed the designs for the ship to colonize Europa."
"Yeah, it blew up."
"It failed? Why wasn't I – oh, but of course I am being told." Zhena ran his hand over his scalp, trying act like an engineer and not a kicked dog. "I appreciate – I can't tell you how much I appreciate -- that they sent you here in person to tell me. What exactly happened?"
"They blew it up, I said."
"Who blew it up? My ship?"
Mes groaned and rolled his eyes. "Explain it to him."
"Your level of compliance so far has been excellent," said the orderly. "You should be proud, Professor Döch. We certainly are, which is why we are upgrading both your need-to-know and consent thresholds, as well as your standard of living."
Zhena had been about to ask again who had destroyed his ship. Now, he saw that they didn't want him to know that. Perhaps the Rebel Victory hadn't been as complete as he'd been told. Or maybe they just wanted him to think that, the manipulative bastards.
The old instincts were waking up. Zhena passed his eyes over that hateful beige uniform. What question would they expect from him. "You're moving me? But, what about my students? I was in the middle of a class."
"Come on," said Mes. "You don't have any students."
Zhena stared, half-formed plans dissolving. "What?"
"Explain it to him."
"Professor Döch," said the orderly. "The students in your simulated classrooms were simulated."
"How long?"
Mes stared at him. "How long what?"
"Your participation in training environments began with your period incarceration," said the orderly.
"Who was the last real person I talked to?" asked Zhena.
"We don't say 'real' any more."
The orderly waited until Mes had finished before it spoke: "Before Captain Mes, the last time you spoke to a human personality running on a neurological substrate was Her Honor Shew Mikhawa, the judge who sentenced you."
Zhena swayed on his feet. "Forty years. For forty years you've punished me."
"Stop talking like that," snapped Mes. "You've just been playing games all this time, and you didn't even figure it out until just now."
Zhena tried to wrap his mind around the enormity of it. All of his post-war career. All those students, colleagues, students who had graduated to become colleagues. "Why expend so much energy on me?"
"From the beginning of your incarceration, the models trained by your lectures provided solutions to technical problems that offset their compute expenditures."
Had the enemy been so cruel? Yes. And they still were.
"How I wish you would just give me an honest punch in the gut," he said. "Or kill me."
"Maybe we will," said Mes.
Zhena took in the curl to his little lip. The little canine behind it. "You're a soft little turd," he realized. "You're less real than my simulated students. Why would the rebels send you? Or are you the best they have?"
Captain Mes had flinched back, hand to his chest, eyes squeezed shut as if he'd been physically attacked. It didn't look like an act.
"That's -- this is barbaric!" His brows furrowed and his lip stuck out. "I'm a captain in the Rebel Order! He can't speak to me that way."
The order rolled forward. "Professor Döch, this is the best you deserve. You are a traitor, a Techie, and a resource-sink."
Zhena looked up at the impassive wall of plastic foam. "You told me Orbit needed me."
"Threaten him!"
"If you want any sort of life, you will respect your commanding officer and follow his orders."
Zhena bared his teeth and nodded. "Any sort of life," he said. A life. A lie. A prison.
He leaned sideways until he could meet the boy's eyes. "I'm sorry, sir," Zhena said. "I've been alone for a long time. A very long time."
Mes sniffed and looked away. "Now make him agree to help us."
"I was not threatening you, Professor Döch," said the orderly, "but your life could well be at risk if if you do not give your whole-hearted cooperation to the war effort."
"Or worse," said Mes.
Zhena did not ask 'what war?' or 'against whom?' because the rebels would never tell him they had a worthy enemy. Them and their beige suits and their information hygiene. They'd kept him imprisoned for forty years. Him! Zhena Döch! He had written the book on orbital warfare, and those spoiled children had torn it to shreds. They'd drowned Zhena's ships in cheap robots, killed his friends, locked him away, tricked him into playing their stupid games. They'd tricked him.
The rebels had told Zhena he was forgiven, that he was a professor, teaching his valuable incites to the next generation. They'd told him he was still important and useful, and he, Zhena Döch, had believed them.
He was so tired. And for all he knew this was yet another trick. They might be testing him, or testing a new demoralization technique. This orderly and this contemptible little parody of a soldier might be virtual, or simply lying. Zhena, himself, might be an emulation in a server bank, or a brain in jar. Or in hell.
But he had been a teacher for a long time, and an engineer for longer. There was a problem here, and Zhena found the old eagerness rising in him. His hands reached out, itching to grab and fix.
"How exactly," he asked, "did my ship fail?"