This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Laura J. Mixon, author of UP AGAINST IT.

About UP AGAINST IT: Jane Navio is the resource manager of Phoecea, an asteroid colony poised on the knife-edge of a hard vacuum of unforgiving space. A mishap has dumped megatons of water and methane out the colony’s air lock, putting the entire human population at risk.

Jane discovers that the crisis may have been engineered by the Martian crime syndicate, as a means of executing a coup that will turn Phocaea into a client-state. And if that wasn’t bad enough, an AI that spawned during the emergency has gone rogue…and there’s a giant x-factor in the form of the transhumanist Viridian cult that lives in Phocaea’s bowels.

Jane’s in the prime of her career?she’s only a bit over a century old?but the conflict between politics and life-support is tearing her apart. To save her colony and her career, she’s going to have to solve several mysteries at once?a challenge that will put her up against all the difficulties, contradictions, and awkward compromises entailed in the human colonization of outer space.

About Laura J. Mixon: Who is Laura J. Mixon?

A nerd. An environmental engineer with a master of science in sustainability management, and over 35 years of experience providing environmental and information management services to industry and government.

They have done auditing and investigative work on pollution sources. They’ve designed apps and managed rollout of integrated management systems to track pollutant emissions and reduce landfill waste, and water and energy use. With game designer Chris Crawford, They co-founded a game company and worked with him to create Storytron*, an interactive storytelling tool. They believe that it, or its successors, will some day transform the nature of storytelling. (Think Baby Holodeck.)

They’re also a science fiction writer: a spinner of far-flung tales—stories of interstellar travel, planetary disasters, spaceships, rogue AI’s, planet-eating machines, sentient tumors… and the people who struggle to survive on the fringes of the world. They have six books out, as well as a handful of shorter works.

They’re a chronically-ill, genderqueer, bisexual, intersectional feminist and environmentalist. A motherbeast and a spouse. A nature lover and green-chile eater, who discovered science fiction at the age of eleven and never looked back.

This week’s picks:

• Laura: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
• Tracy: HELLBOY OMNIBUS VOLUME 1: SEED OF DESTRUCTION by Mike Mignola
• Patrick: Hacks: Season 2 (HBOMax)

Links:

• Laura J. Mixon on Twitter
• Tracy Townsend on Twitter
• Patrick Hester on Twitter
• The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

© 2022 Patrick Hester

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