Usage: Fortuitous

Fortuitous has come to mean fortunate, lucky, but that is not its actual definition. It actually means random, happened by chance — subject to the whims of fortune. So it could refer to something that happened that was lucky or unlucky.

So if you are a traditionalist — or about to be judged by one — remember that it does not mean by happy chance; it only means by chance.

Book Lovers’ Memes (Set 10)

Spelling: Defuse vs. Diffuse

These words have become popular lately, and they get mixed up frequently.

Defuse is what you do with bombs to stop them exploding. This includes metaphorical bombs, like tense situations and quick tempers.

Diffuse is a chemistry term. It’s what happens when you add dye to water and it spreads out, for example. Metaphorically, it would be used when talking about something just sort of petering out or slowly affecting everything.

Trick to Remember
Defuse is what you do to things with fuses. 

Diffuse –> Diffffffffuse. See the f’s spreading out.

Review: Medusa Uploaded

Medusa Uploaded (The Medusa Cycle #1) by Emily Devenport

I haven’t read many generation-ship books yet, though I like the idea. This book has a lot of interesting ideas, and the writing is solid and shows real talent. But I think it could have used another revision.

I was confused a lot of the time. There are zero descriptions in this book. It’s as if the author was so afraid of info-dumping that she avoided exposition completely. I don’t know what the ship(s) looked like, what they were made of, how big they were, how big the hallways were, what color anything was. I still don’t get how the servants’ clothes worked. I can extrapolate a full visual image from just a little information, but I need that foundation. It’s like I was expected to explore this world blindfolded, but I failed at that.



Medusa is one of many androids that you wear. Again, without any descriptions, this was difficult to visualize. The Medusa androids can be worn like suits yet they are their own AI persons. I really don’t know how this works.

The society is broken into Executives — an aristocracy — and Worms, the servants. Oichi is a Worm. (I thought this meant she was a non-corporeal AI at first; again, no descriptions or explanations.) This society is waaaaaayy too airlock-happy. The ship appears to have about 200 airlocks. (Why so many??) They are used almost every day for executions, murders, and suicides. They are never monitored, guarded, or locked, apparently.



As a music teacher, I appreciated Oichi’s dedication to music. It WILL make kids’ brains smarter.



But I never knew what her goals were beyond sharing music with everyone else. Social equality? General knowledge? It just felt like she was meandering around, collecting other outcasts and getting tossed out of airlocks repeatedly. Also, the author doesn’t know what reticent and disinterested actually mean. A decent editor should have fixed that.

Nice audio performance.
Reader’s Choice Nominee, Summer 2019