Never Be Bored
17 January 2019
The R Smith Edition
Parhelion webcomic by R. Smith. Too Like the Lightning novel by Ada Palmer, Worm webserial by Wildbow, Welcome to Night Vale podcast created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor.
Where do I find things to put on my never-ending queue? I've been lucky, I have a fabulous friend, the one and only R. Smith. Honestly, they're part of the inspiration for this blog—over the seven years (!!!) we've known each other they've introduced me to so many really amazing books and series.
R. Smith is also the amazing artist behind the sci fi webcomic Parhelion, about gay space pirates and how difficult it is to coordinate bureaucracy across a galaxy. I love love love their art style—a geometric blend of simplicity with delicate details, it's totally unique. Pages of Parhelion are often rendered in shades of just one color, which gives each chapter a cohesive look, but the chapter covers in full color are gorgeous. And R is of course an absolute master of alien language glyphs.
Aside from the artwork, they've put so much thought into the world of Parhelion. On Worldbuilding Wednesdays they post a short essay on some aspect of the Parhelion universe, topics ranging from the history of the home planet of one of the main characters to competing governments to religions and communication systems.
If you appreciated the amount of care that went into creating the world of Parhelion, then you might enjoy Too Like the Lightning, one of my favorite book recommendations R has ever given me. Too Like the Lightning has an absolutely fascinating setting because so many aspects of this futuristic society are very different from today (speaking about religion in groups is illegal! countries of origin are barely important! choose your own government!) and yet it's all presented in such a way that you absolutely could see how our world could become this in four hundred some years.
One of R's favorite characters from Worm is Accord, a supervillain whose powers give him intelligence to scale with whatever problems he wants to address (solve world hunger? easy) but is constantly distracted by Incorrectness (tie asymmetrical? now this is a Problem). For an incredible cast of powered individuals, badass fight scenes, and moral ambiguity, give Worm a try.
Welcome to Night Vale was one of the first recommendations R gave me that I actually followed up on and loved, so although neither of us keep up with it much anymore, I still associate it with our friendship. This podcast is community radio from a little town in the desert where angels visit, days of the week get canceled, the secret police helicopters patrol, and absolutely no dogs are allowed in the dog park. It's delightfully weird.