“It says speechSynthesis.speak returns ‘void.’ What’s ‘void?’” “It says that? Well…” I tried to think of an answer that was both honest and helpful. I settled on, “some people use the word ‘void’ to mean the absence of a value. For JavaScript code, they really mean undefined.” Cat, ever focused on the task at hand, took my hand-waving for what it was and continued working on her web application. But that interaction stuck with me.

Collecting the articles (and videos) that stuck with me this year. It’s disappointingly incoherent, reflecting a somewhat unscrupulous news diet on my part. “American democracy” is not a heading I expected to require at this time last year. Here’s hoping for a more equitable year in 2022. American democracy Denial Is the Heartbeat of America - Kendi challenged my early attempt to internalize the riots The American Abyss - my introduction to Timothy Snyder–a historian whose words I found myself reading all year long.

Climate change is notoriously difficult to reason about. There’s this enormous threat, and even though we routinely see evidence of its existence, we still struggle to quantify it. Some people say we’re doomed. Others might disagree, but even the most optimistic can’t muster more than “it’s maybe not that bad.” I got to feeling like the only sure thing is that we need to be scared. That position probably won’t motivate action, it very likely doesn’t inspire logical thought, and it certainly isn’t going to help you appreciate your good fortune in the present.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things injects menace where you’d least expect to find it: a road trip to visit your partner’s parents. The aura isn’t so much threatening as it is unsettling, so it’s more likely to intimidate rather than frighten. When it comes to horror, whatever the medium, I prefer more psychological stuff. From Jacab’s Ladder, to House of Leaves and Silent Hill, I’m consistently drawn toward the threat that refuses to show itself.

In 1986, David Mazzucchelli drew my favorite superhero story, “Daredevil: Born Again”. He followed that by drawing the “Year One” arc on Batman–another deservedly-famous superhero story. His subsequent projects received less attention (both from the industry and from me), and his pace dwindled as he pursued other interests. He hardly published anything at all throughout the 2000’s. Then, in 2009, he completed Asterios Polyp, a 300-page graphic novel that he wrote and drew.

As the second book in the Terra Ignota series, Seven Surrenders picks up right where Too Like the Lightning left off. That’s hardly surprising, as Lightning doesn’t conclude so much as it… halts. This made it really easy to pick up, with the major aspects of the world mostly fleshed out. There’s still plenty of complexity that needs clarification–it’s just easier than starting from square one. Author Ada Palmer nails down a bunch of details, once again smartly mixing subtle clues with direct explanations from Mycroft Canner to their reader.

In 1998, the Smashing Pumpkins released a music video for their latest single, Ava Adore. Like many of the great music videos of the era, it’s visually engaging, conceptually enticing, and thematically unrelated to the song it tracks. Too Like the Lightning is a science fiction novel written twenty years later, and despite the laws of time and causality, it explains the Pumpkins’ music video far better than the music itself.

Too Like the Lightning is a swirling, chaotic fever dream set 400 years in the future, and I love it. Author Ada Palmer describes a convincingly-complex world. The population is divided across seven nations called “hives” which, thanks to technological advances, are not bound by geography. Their citizens have distinctive values, reflected in their unique governing structures. A world war situated in the book’s past and our future culminated in a universal ban on organized religion.

I’m feeling pretty shallow these days. Blacksad is the second consecutive work I’ve picked up based on appearance. And for the second time, my superficial interests have been rewarded with depth. I hope I’m not learning any lessons. Somewhere in the Shadows (the first volume of the 2010 collection) is pretty standard hard-boiled crime fiction. I’ll read a good detective story any day, but I wouldn’t necessary call it “deep.” The subject matter in the other two volumes, Arctic Nation and Red Soul, caught me off guard.

Back when Mirror’s Edge was released in 2008, gamers I knew generally enjoyed it, but nobody was blown away. Still, it seemed like a distinctive and polished game, and I was convinced that I missed out on something special. I also knew that it’s pretty short. Since my present-day tolerance for long games is still unproven, I decided to give it a try. The game’s least subtle trait is its visual style, so we’ll start there.