3

Novel + novel + novel.

As I mentioned last time, 1st up was "The Chemical Wedding" by John Crowley. The full cover says "The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz A Romance in Eight Days by Johan Valentin Andreae in a new version by John Crowley". Phew! So Andraea wrote this allegorical, alchemical tale, 1st published in 1616 in Germany. It is written as a journal being kept by a monk named Christian Rosencreutz - German for Rosy Cross, also known as Rosicrusians, which has been a popular name for christian ceremonial magic / mystical sects apparently since the 15th century. Crowley retells the tale, updating the language and commenting. A lot of Crowley's comments dwell on how bizarre the story is. I totally agree, it is completely off the walls, but generally in somewhat of a charming way.

The book was only 211 pages, it was an odd, quick read - but fun. I got most of the references to ceremonial magic symbolism as I had studied it some during my "explore all religions" phase when I was maybe 21-23 YO. Most of what I read then was early 20th century Rosicrusianism, Waite, Crowley, Tarot. Interesting, I remember that the red fluid and white fluid mixed to create the elixir of life / philosopher's stone were female and male respectively. In this book red is masculine and white feminine. I guess you shouldn't expect consistency with made-up stuff.

The book was illustrated, and I found the illustrations mostly unappealing. They really didn't do much for me - I guess I was spoiled by Arthur Rackham, Kay Nielsen, and Edmund Dulac. Also, some of them just seemed inappropriate - like the picture of a statue of Venus sleeping which has hair curlers.

Next up, "Babylon's Ashes", by James S. A. Corey, The Expanse #6, 544 pages. Wow, it didn't seem like that long a book. It started out slow but then picked up pace well. The ending, tho, I thought was weak - it somewhat fell into the old sci fi "deus-ex-machina" trap. But it was a relatively happy ending.

I think the novels are now being influenced by the SyFy screenplays. The addition of 2 new crew members to the 4 we knew well from the 1st 5 novels I like, but it somehow seems influenced by TV.

I thought this novel totally broke my "100 pages per narrative thread" rule for novels - but I didn't realize it was 544 pages long. Let's do the math anyway. Here's the chapter count per narrator - there are 53 chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue featuring characters who take no part in the main action of the book.

• Pa 10
  
• Filip 7
  
• Holden 11
  
• Salis 1
  
• Clarissa 1
  
• Dawes 2
  
• Avasarala 3
  
• Prax 3
  
• Alex 2
  
• Naomi 4
  
• Jakulski 1
  
• Fred 1
  
• Bobbie 2
  
• Vandercaust 1
  
• Amos 1
  
• Marco 2
  
• Roberts 1
  

So the 100 page rule would say each narrator should get 10 chapters. Only Pa and Holden make that. 17 total narrators? Seems to make it harder for the reader. Roberts is introduced as a narrator in chapter 44. Maybe this is more screenplay thinking? I wonder what these numbers are like for Game of Thrones?

Finally, "Broken Monsters", by Lauren Beukes, 2014, 449 pages. From urban sci fi to time-traveling serial killer, Ms. Beukes has wound up now writing full-bore horror. I reviewed this in Kobo, here's that review:

This is a very well written book, very well paced with great characters and great background development. I suspect the internet tech overlay will become dated quickly, but it works now.

But, it is definitely horror, and it made me realize I really don't like horror novels. I was totally creeped out the 2nd 1/2 of the book, and I really don't like being creeped out. Too old maybe. I'm more of a bright shiny future kind of guy.

If you like horror, then Joe Bob definitely sez, check it out.

Her prior novel, "Shining Girls" was somewhat headed in this direction, but did not totally creep me out the way this one did. This novel also has more police procedural overtones to it. It seemed to be exceptionally well researched. I guess I just don't like horror as a genre.

Lots + 1 + 1

I'm still attempting to ignore reality for a while, so, more science fiction!

I had not read any short stories for a while and noticed I had Just Over the Horizon The Complete Short Fiction of Greg Bear (Book 1) so I went for it. Greg Bear was one of my favorite authors in the 1980s, particularly his "Eon/Eternity" books and "The Forge of God/Anvil of Stars", "Blood Music", "City of Angels", and his fantasy series "The Infinity Concerto/The Serpent Mage". Lots of good physics. I have read all of these books multiple times. Hmmm, he is 73 days younger than me.

The short stories were OK, but I think he is much better at longer form writing. The short story version of "Blood Music" was fun to read again. Some of the things that dated some of the stories were interesting. One example, a cafeteria in a medical facility that had a smoking section. Ha ha, of course all medical campuses that I know of now are completely smoke free.

I then noticed I had a short story by John Scalzi, "An Election", 24 pages. The eBook was $0.99. I hadn't read any Scalzi in a while. The story really didn't do much for me. I think it was supposed to be cutesy, not so much to me. In a finger to the eye of the puppies, the protagonist is married to another man. Progressive SF is definitely in favor of LGBTQA inclusion.

Finally, I noticed a novel that seemed to have come to the top of my eBook reader: "Among Others", by Jo Walton, 2011, 304 pages. This book won the Hugo and Nebula for best novel. I guess since the protagonist is 15 YO, it is yet another YA novel that makes excellent reading for all ages. It is a fantasy, but I liked that it wasn't until 3/4 of the way through the book that you knew that for sure. Up until that point, it could have been a mainstream novel about a troubled young woman with schizophrenia including as a symptom extreme pareidolia.

The protagonist is also a voracious reader, mainly of science fiction. There is much discussion of various authors and titles, all pre-1979/1980, when the story is set. This reminded me of some movies about movie-making, where the gist seems to be "We make movies, movies are magic, we're really cool!" In this book, though, this did not come across as nearly so self-congratulatory. It wound up being fun, as the authors were mostly among my favorites from Back In The Day, and I had read most of the titles discussed - but 40 or so years ago!

I have been (exercising in the morning,) reading in the afternoons, and watching movies at night. I powered on through this book last night and finished around 11:00. With about 10 pages to go, my iPad ran out of juice - the charging cable had come unplugged! So a slight delay to reaching the very satisfying conclusion. This was a very enjoyable book.

Next up to read, "The Chemical Wedding" by John Crowley. I really enjoyed much of John Crowley's work, going back to the late 1970s. Very self-referential - I remember a couple of his novels where the characters gradually come to understand that they are characters in a fairy tale. I hadn't seen anything from him for a while, so I backed this kickstarter.

My reward was a hardcover copy of the book, which came last week. But, somehow, my reward also included 5 x 500 page hardcover books (9" total thickness) - The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 17th-21st editions (2004-2008). I had the 4th and 8th editions of this series, so there was a place for it on my bookshelves. I guess the publisher had a bunch of these in a warehouse somewhere and wanted to get the space back, but still, when I saw what had been included, I was definitely like "post-scarcity utopia"!

4 x Fantasy

I really wanted to read the Tim Powers short story collection that came in to the Kobo eBooks on my iPad. So I decided to change mode to fantasy for my junk reading.

1st up, "Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr", by John Crowley (2018). The story of the serially immortal crow Dar Oakley, who was the 1st crow to have a name and the 1st crow to talk to humans. I have a lot of hardcopy Crowley (1 of my fav authors) in the FL library, so I bought this in trade paper.

Crowley also allows for the possibility that this is all the delusions of an extremely grief-stricken widower.

I am a huge fan of the family Corvidae: crows, ravens, and blue jays. I loved just reading about how it feels to be a crow.

They are so smart. In Lexington, KY, we have vast numbers of the American Crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos. In Naples, FL, we have mostly Fish Crows, Corvus ossifragus. iBirdPro says that they are almost completely indistinguishable except for their calls. And, yes, the nasal "kaa" of the fish crow could never be mistaken for the "caa" of the american crow.

There are also American Crows in Florida. One of our standard destinations in SW Florida is Shark Valley Everglades National Park. It is off of US 41 (Alligator Alley), 2/3 of the way from Naples to Miami, ~1 hour from Naples. I usually see some american crows there.

There is a great 13 mile loop you can bike, or take a trolley, or walk, with an observation tower 1/2 way. There are signs by the bike racks for the tower that say "Do not leave backpacks. Crows can work the zippers." ?!?!? Crows are so smart!

So, if you are a corvid fan as I am, this will be a fun read for you too. But regardless, it will be a thoughtful one, as Crowley explores the relationship between humans creating mass quantities of dead bodies via war and religion, and crows being quite happy to gorge on those dead bodies.

Next, the Tim Powers short story collection, "Down and Out in Purgatory" (2017). 20 stories of ghosts, immortal body thieves, time travel. He does this so well. I was surprised to find that he seems to be a practicing Catholic. So it's not surprising that there is a story about a priest being visited by a ghost in the confessional.

3rd, "The Bookman", by Lavie Tidar (2016). Very fun steam-punkish fantasy, where, among many other time slips, the extraterrestrial Lizard Men have replaced the Tudors on the English throne. Very imaginative, consistently so. Babbage's corporation produces simulacrums (androids) based on famous dead people and on independent personalities. The writing is excellent. I highlighted this passage:

This is the time of myths, Orphan. They are the cables that run under the floors and power the world, the conduits of unseen currents, the steam that powers the great engines of the earth.

But, somehow, this just didn't work for me. No ongoing serious topics, maybe? There are 2 more in this series, I will forgo them.

It was also odd, after the main book finished, there were 6 chapters of "From the Lost Files of The Bookman Histories". They fill in some of the details of earlier actions. Presumably they were omitted to keep the main narrative thread moving briskly. But, it's like deleted scenes in a movie. There is a reason they were deleted ...

4th and finally, "The Tangled Lands", by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Bucknell (2018). I left this for last because Paolo is always a dependable read. But, I was disappointed. It was billed as a novel, but it is 4 independent novellas, 2 by Paolo and 2 by Bucknell. And I had already read the 1st Paolo story in another collection. The stories are entirely consistent in their shared world and are compelling reads, but, I was expecting a novel. Still, very well written, well worth a read.

Next up, something worthwhile for a change!

Zoom ...

Hands are better, playing more guitar, but I still seem to be reading more. Watching almost 0 TV, 1-2 movies/month. I'll prolly start watching some college basketball soonish. Reading-wise, a lot more novella length stuff (plus 1 very short story).

1. "Firewalkers", by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2020, 165 pages, 45k words. Book 2 of the Terrible Worlds: Revolutions series. Book 1 was blogged here. In a globally warmed world, venturing outside of the air conditioning is a perilous occupation. But, for those with nothing to lose, eh, it's a job. A quick and targetted read.

2. "Flint and Mirror", by John Crowley, 2022, 292 pages, 90k words. There have been so many works of Crowley's that were things that gave me hope. Here's the query of my blog for his stuff. This novel makes you turn the pages, but, overall, I didn't find the content that interesting. And, what should have been the defining turning point of the book, faery rides in support of the Irish vs the English, is a total shit sandwich. :-( Characters, etc., are of course well done. Set mostly in Ireland, towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth I of England.

3. "Precious Little Things", by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2021, 26 pages, 7k words. Wow, a very short story, apparently the prequel to a novella level piece. A really nice concept, that a moment frozen in time with a wizard casting a spell provides the magical energy for many generations of puppets to animate their puppet children. The Zombie Apocalypse via Pinocchio. :-0

4. "Dogs of War", by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2017, 264 pages, 82k words. Book 1 of "Dogs of War". Just purchased book #2 in the series "Bear Head", starring Honey, FTW! Anytime I meet a dog, I immediately ask "What is his/her name?". And then it's "Good boy, Gambino!". "What a good dog, Gambino!". "Good dog!", "Good boy!".

   So now we have the cyborg dog Rex with lots of human DNA, 7' tall at the shoulder, with laser-targetted cannons mounted on his shoulders. And Rex REALLY REALLY wants to be a good boy! Plus his teammates Honey, the uplifted bear/philosopher; Bees, the honeybee group mind; and Dragon, the 12' long iguana/gecko/who knows, who likes to climb buildings to get a nice sniper vantage point for his back-mounted sniper rifle. Plus the sadist who conditioned them all to kill whomever he says, in exchange for a "good boy". Very compelling, very well-paced.

5. "Starling House", by Alix E. Harrow, 2023, 367 pages, 114k words. Harrow has written some really great, compelling stuff lately. Here is the query for Harrow in my blog. I am so sad that Harrow is no longer my neighbor, 30 miles to the SE in Madison County, KY - I read where Harrow was relocating the family to Virginia. :-(

   Well, before they left, they left a gift to their old KY neighbors. This book is set in Muhlenberg County, just like in the John Prine song "Paradise", but in a town called "Eden". The magical Starling estate has some very nice coal seams below it, so, civilization ho! Time to revisit verse 3 of "Paradise".

   Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
   And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
   Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
   Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man

   My friend, excellent singer/guitarist Marty Nelson, was playing this song, I got up to sing harmony on the choruses. But, verse 3 came along, I was screaming these lyrics as loud as I could, and crying.

   So, point is, my KY sensibilities were inflamed by this book. It is a great story, not a haunted house, but, maybe, a possessed house, with a purpose.

   I just today was talking with a bridge engineer who had designed a bridge to carry the 250,000# dump trucks carrying coal ash to whatever location they have decided to environmently destroy. He said he always liked to go look at the bridges he designed, but, not that one :-(

   My wife was active in Sierra Club for many years. Maybe ~10 years ago, we went to a site in far western Louisville/Jefferson County, KY. On the east bank of the Ohio River, LG&E had mountains of coal ash: 10 stories tall x 1/4-1/2 mile. The extent of these coal ash mountains was completely jaw-dropping.

   There was a residential community nearby. Their kids would go outside to play, and come back inside covered in coal ash. They complained. LG&E hired "scientists" to come study the problem. "What problem? That coal ash on your children is totally harmless! No problem!". Yeah, fucking right. Driven To Tears.

6. "The Dispatcher: Murder by Other Means", by John Scalzi, 2021, 137 pages, 37k words. The Scalzi novella "The Dispatcher" came out in 2017, blogged here. How was I not notified of these 2 follow-up novellas being published? Kobo is normally pretty good about this, as opposed to Apple & Amazon, who salivate for me to subscribe to their streaming music and all-you-can-eat ebook services. WHICH I WILL NEVER, EVER DO, ASSHOLES.

   Anyway, the premise of these novellas is totally odd and off-the-wall, but, it makes for an interesting universe in which to have murder mysteries. A quick and fun read. The King of Snark almost never disappoints (I didn't like "Red Shirts" much - so of course, it won the Hugo Award).

7. "The Dispatcher: Travel by Bullet", by John Scalzi, 2023, 133 pages, 41k words. Well, I liked #2 in the series, and it was short, so I decided to plow on through to #3. More of the same, a well-paced, enjoyable read. The protagonist has just a little bit too kind of a heart. Good for him.

8. "After Many A Summer", by Tim Powers, 2023, 62 pages, 19k words. What an odd book, but it totally felt like vintage Tim Powers. Short and punchy, and then ... it just ends! Better than the last of his I read.

9. "The Power", by Naomi Alderman, 2017, 343 pages, 106k words. Not sure where I got this from, but, OMG, must read! (Mostly) Women develop the abiity to deliver up to and including lethal electrical shocks from their hands. Mmm, does the balance of power between males/females shift, maybe? We'll find out 5,000 years in the future, when this mess sorts itself out?

   I recommended to my wife, who started watching the Netflix series version. Not sure if she is going to continue. But I told her, as bad as some episodes of "Breaking Bad" were, there will probably be episodes of this show much worse. OMG, I get it, but, well, damn, I'm lying curled up on the floor, kick me in the head, back, wherever a few more times, for good measure.

Okay, removed these 9 books from the Unread collection in the Kobo eBook app on my iPad, Unread collection is down to ... 147 books. Well, I got that going for me. It's always good to have things going for you.

It's Getting Better All The Time

Well, I liked the last 3 sci-fi/fantasy books I read much better than the prior 3 that got the "meh".

1st up was a collection of stories and essays, including a review of another author and an interview, by John Crowley, entitled "Totalitopia", 2017, 113 pages. The fiction was very good, and the essays interesting - Crowley admits that his secret sauce was always that the characters in his stories know that they are in stories. The author he recommended was Paul Park. I have purchased his "A Princess of Roumania", which Crowley recommended as an entry point.

2nd up was "The Delirium Brief", by Charles Stross, 2017, 384 pages. This is the 8th book of the Laundry Files, which is Dilbert meets H.P. Lovecraft and occasionally James Bond. In reviewing maybe book 5-7 of this series, I said I thought Charlie was kind of burned out on this series, but he is back in top form on this one. I think that his inclusion of modern political issues, in this case privatization of government services, enables him to deploy his snarky wit to its fullest.

3rd up was "The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection", 2017, 704 pages. The stories were consistently strong. I have noticed I like less sci-fi about exploring the moon, mars, and other stuff relatively close by. I like it more cosmic, across both time and space. But I did really enjoy, say, the film "The Martian", for its celebration of science and engineering.

I read all 3 of these in hardcopy, as that is how I have all of the many prior works by these authors which are in my collection. I will be glad to get back to eBooks.

Three Library Books

Visited our most excellent Beaumont Branch of the Lexington Free Public library. Came home with 3 novels.

First, "The Alchemist", by Paolo Bacigalupi. I would suspect this is a chapbook -- not clapbook, as I first wrote. Paolo has broken out as a science fiction author with near future tales of global ecosystem catastrophe. This short story is a fantasy -- in the preface he says he wanted to try something different. It is a very pleasant read, with a nice fairy tale feel.

Secondly, "Redshirts", by John Scalzi. I would characterize this is a meta-story that borrows from the Star Trek mythos. Sometimes I like meta-stories more than others. The first I remember was "Beasts", by John Crowley (1976), where you gradually realize that the characters are mostly fairy tale and fable archetypes placed in a science fictional background -- it was magical and charming. Even better from Crowley was the award winning "Little, Big" (1981), where the characters themselves by the end have realized that they are characters in a fairy tale. More recently, I loved the stories within stories of "The Fractal Prince", by Hannu Rajaniemi, about which I blogged here.

But on the other hand, I remember blasting Heinlien's "The Number of the Beast" in this blog post to the effect that "reusing literary figures is a kind of a cheap ploy, and I usually interpret it as a lack of imagination". And I remember my first reaction was annoyance when a writer as good as Dan Simmons ended the award winning "Hyperion" with the characters linking arms and singing "We're Off To See The Wizard".

"Redshirts" I reacted to somewhere between these two extremes. The fact that Star Trek is pop culture (and a favorite of fanboys) rather then more general archetypes made it a little cheezy for me. Like I was wondering, could someone who had never seen Star Trek, or who wasn't vaguely a Trekkie, have enjoyed this at all? I guess they probably wouldn't have picked up a book titled "Redshirts" -- no, they wouldn't have gotten the reference, would they, they might still have picked it up randomly?

"Redshirts" also seemed to end rather abruptly, and then was followed by 3 short addenda, told from the viewpoint of three somewhat ancillary characters. I liked the third of these, but this still seemed gimmicky -- almost like alternative endings, or fan fiction. I guess I mostly like getting sucked into a main narrative and staying there.

Finally, "The Cold Commands", by Richard K. Morgan. Sequel to "The Steel Remains". Morgan broke out in 2002 with "Altered Carbon", which I thought was great. After a couple sequels to that, he did "Thirteen", which was very good as well. Then he switched to a sword-and-sorcery fantasy, but very gritty, and with a gay protagonist, and explicit homosexual sex scenes. I'm always up for some good sex with my action and adventure, but the male homosexual stuff definitely sets off my "yuck" reaction.

Reading the full library edition, with dust covers and all, I always enjoy reading the synopsis, "about the author", etc. -- kind of like appetizers for the main course, the book itself. This was one case where that was a mistake, because the synopsis says "the characters are going to be doing this", but apparently "this" got pushed to the 3rd book. So the pacing seems off throughout. Aside from that, a good read. The homosexual stuff seemed toned down a bit (phew) -- and a lesbian sex scene I of course found totally unyucky. I'm hoping Morgan will get back to sci-fi after this fantasy trilogy concludes.

On a different topic, I made the decision to retire (rather than work at a new 50-60 hour per week startup) Labor Day weekend of 2012. So it's been 4-1/2 months now. I sleep late; exercise every morning; go to lunch a few days a week; and read, fool around online, blog in the afternoons. I cook 2-3 times a week. I haven't been playing as much music as I expected due to the arthritis in my hands acting up. The long and the short of it is, I'm acting like I'm on a prolonged vacation, and will probably continue to do so until it no longer seems appropriate. My mind seems to be smoothing out with regard to worries, ambition, etc, like ripples in a pond dying down. Getting in touch with my inner buddha -- or my inner complete slacker, one or the other. I did have an idea for an iPhone app last week that I'm exploring -- very slowly. But from this point on, I think I will only work again if it's something I (or conceivably a good friend) come up with.

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe: Jebus Says It's OK To Bite Your Enemy's Face Off

Wanted to see "King Kong" or "Memoirs of a Geisha", but no 7:30-8:30 playtimes. So, we went to see "Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe". I read the books around 30 years ago, OK but certainly not Tolkien. Anyway, at 2h12m, the movie went by fairly quickly given that it was relatively boring. Lately, I seem to have a problem with fantasy when it is entirely of an arbitrary nature -- like "what are they going to pull out of their ass next?" I think you have to stay very close to the archetypes for a fantasy to work. I think, tho, even worse, is when it is fantasy with a subtext, particularly when the subtext is christianity.

It is well known that C.S.Lewis was a christian apologist, and that Aslan is indeed supposed to be a jebus figure. *** SPOILER ALERT *** But, in a fantasy context, what a load of crap. The movie is full of Greco-roman mythological creatures, all of which christianity seriously suppressed. My favorite was the ending tho, where Aslan (off-camera of course) bites the face off of the White Witch. Which gospel is that in?

It was amazing tho. No show times for King Kong, and this thing was playing on 2 screens, and the theater was full -- of dumbass christians, sent by their preachers to enjoy the christian values of this "wonderful" movie. Fucking shit, these morons will apparently believe anything that anybody tells or even suggests to them. They started out the movie laughing aloud at not particularly funny stuff, and ended it with "Wasn't that just wonderful?", "Oh yes, wonderful.". Grrr. I'd say a mind is a terrible thing to waste, but I think that sometimes, when you raise people to believe instead of think, that not much in the way of a mind ever develops.

My friend David sent me this link to some great atheist t-shirts. I have to pick out a few and start wearing them to the Fayette Mall on Sunday.

Been on a science fiction binge since finishing "Meta-Math!". Read a collection of short stories by John Crowley, "Novelties & Souvenirs". These are nice stories, an extended time travel one "The Great Work of Time" is very nice. Crowley writes very well, i.e., almost serious literature. His early novels "Engine Summer", "Beasts", "The Deep", and "Little, Big" are most excellent. He hits the archetypes hard -- a very nice recursive turn in that they tend to be fairy tales where at some point the characters begin to realize that they're in a fairy tale. His newer novels, "Aegypt" and "Daemonomania" are very well written, but don't have the charm of his earlier stuff.

Then hit my excellent local library where I have not been in months. Interesting, "No Cell Phone" signs up. Picked up 5 sci-fi novels. First read one of Octavia Butler's early short novels that I seem to have missed somehow, "Survivor". Very nice read. I really liked how her first 5 or so novels had 2-4 intertwining themes, but done in a way such that you can read them all standalone. Her 3 Xenogenesis novels were very good, and her newer stuff is also very readable.

Then read Greg Bear's latest, "Dead Lines". So, as previously blogged, after having one character experience god in "Darwin's Children", now we have a life-after-death novel. I was wondering, is he just getting old -- checked, he's 2 months younger than I am -- so he's definitely getting old. Well, he has a new one out, "Quantico", we'll see if it has creeping supernaturalism in it as well.

Just finished yesterday "Reflex", by Steven Gould". This is the sequel to his 1st novel "Jumper", which I loved. It reminded me of a book I would have loved when I was 12-15 and 1st reading escapist literature heavily. Plus, the main character's superpower, teleportation, is reminiscent of Gully Foyle in "The Stars My Destination" (still no apparent progress on Russell Crowe playing Gully Foyle). Anyway, "Reflex" is a totally pleasant read, I was sorry when it was over. Gould's other novels, "Wildside" and "Helm" are also great reads, they do the same thing, somehow make me feel like I'm a teenager again.

Made a fire in the fireplace yesterday, 1st time in probably 15 years. Only 4 seasoned small logs, kept it going around 2.5 hours. Tending a fire is great stuff, I love the smell and the feel of it. When I'm biking and I smell woodsmoke, it really slaps my mind -- million year old circuits kicking in.

It's like walking in the dark. I have gotten to really enjoy that in the summer, it really wakes up your senses and your old, old brain -- you're back to being a primate who knew that there were lots of things in the dark that wouldn't mind eating you, better be alert. Like the time I was hiking in the Saguaro National Monument east of Tucson and Mr. Rattlesnake rattled "hello" from 18 inches away -- I was definitely more awake and alive for the next hour of the hike.

Time for lunch, then see if I can get a load of firewood delivered. High in the 50's today, but we should have some more cold weather before the winter's over, I am looking forward to more of the fire thing.

The Blog and Winding Road

So, no entries in February. Mostly due to wanting to finish the serious book I started on the way home from our most excellent vacation the week of Valentine's Day to Grand Case, St. Martin, FWI. We stayed once again at the Grand Case Beach Club. It is so cool that my wife and I both really like St. Martin. From the beach club it's a 2 block walk to Boulevard of Grand Case, billed as "The Gourmet Capital of the Caribbean" -- 8-9 blocks of restaurants (mostly French), little shops, with a few houses (one complete with chicken coops). You cannot get a bad meal there. If you get tapped out from paying $100-150 for dinner at the French places, you can eat at the LoLo -- six little outdoor restaurants where they are grilling ribs, chicken, fish, lobster and serving sides bought from home: slaw, potato salad, baked squash, red beans & rice, spaghetti, salad, conch chowder. The last one we ate at, a big pile of ribs with all the sides was $7. The same with a chicken leg/thigh was $6. Rum and coke for $2.50.

The last time we were there, I couldn't figure out why most places would take cash dollars for euros. I think I get it now. It's a French island, so the official currency has to be euros, but it looks like the unofficial currency is dollars. About 1/3 of the tourists there are French, I asked if that didn't piss them off -- no, I was told, they change their euros for dollars.

My wife got to water-ski twice -- "Incredible" was the driver's comment. She also found a "professional" ski rope handle, wide enough for her to put her head through -- oh boy, more tricks. We saw Pierre, who drove her two years ago. He had his own business now, the "Leisure Master", renting boats, cruises, diving, etc.

We also took the ferry to Anguilla -- didn't like it much, it had that poor, British island feel about it. Our cab driver gave us a tour of one of the five star hotels there (Cuisinart), pretty posh I guess. But, my wife and I discussed a few times, how many of the people we know wouldn't enjoy Grand Case -- too many rough edges, not enough like Disneyland. But, to us, it's a real place. All the French wastrels hanging around reinforce it, the French invented wastreling.

We also took the big catamaran over to St. Barts, walked around Gustavia a bit, taxi-toured the island. Very chi-chi, I guess, if you want to go the Caribbean to shop at Tiffany's. It's still St. Martin for us. Talking to the captain of the catamaran, who had sailed it over from France (24 days, 3 with storms, his 13th Atlantic crossing), about favoring reality over american hyperreality -- "I don't need to go to Paris, I went there in Las Vegas". He said he thought that sailing across the ocean was about the most freedom you could find now -- nobody else's programs to follow.

Interesting, the boat trip was 2 hours each way over fairly open sea. 3 of the passengers (all French but us and 1 other) were badly seasick the whole way there. That evening I was getting some landsickness -- uh-oh. But, I would close my eyes, picture the boat on rough seas and then sailing into perfectly calm seas -- and the landsickness would go away. Oooh, mind over matter! Maybe I can try another cruise after all, test my new superpower when we get back.

We also went to Ile Pinel, swimming distance from Cul-de-Sac in the northeast corner of St. Martin. 40 yards off the beach, water waist deep. Nice trails, you can pretty much hike the whole island.

Reading on the trip:

• "The Cobweb", by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederic George. Originally published under the pseudonym Stephen Bury in 1996. Weird read, given current events, about Iraqi grad students implementing the Iraqi biological weapons in the US midwest around the gulf war. Stephenson's dialogue is as snappy as ever, very enjoyable, 4 stars. Next out from them: "Interface" -- I have "Interface", by Stephen Bury, on my to-read shelf, woo-ha! My friend David gave it to me 7-8 years ago, I guess it's time to read it.
• "Polaris", by Jack McDevitt. A good mystery, not his normal astro-archeology, a nice read, but I figured out the ending 2/3 of the way through. 3 stars.
• "Blind Waves", by Steven Gould. I missed this somehow, had to buy used. A good vacation read, not quite as charming as "Jumper" and his others, 3 stars.
• "The Translator", by John Crowley. Very nice, about an expatriate Russian poet and the female college student who translates some of his poetry, set in the early '60s. Crowley's hidden worlds, worlds within worlds, are there nicely. Very interesting, per the book you can never translate a poem. Too many idioms, double meanings, puns get lost. What you are doing is creating a new poem based on the original -- if you are lucky. My wife ran out of books to read, she has been reading it and enjoying it as well. 4 stars.
• Finally, my serious book (so I wouldn't run out of reading on the trip home): "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon", Daniel Dennett's latest. Dennett used to be annoying by putting on his Professional Philosopher's hat and spending lots of words explaining why he is right and all his philosopher colleagues are wrong. In this one, he is annoying by addressing an imaginary religous reader and challenging them to question the assumptions of their faith -- yeah, right. It takes a very memetic approach to the subject, traces the development of the modern religious packages from early folk religions, and talks about various aspects of the religion memeplex, such as belief in belief, and the "you can't discuss this stuff, particularly if you're not religious" meme. All in all, somewhat disappointing. He comments positively on "Religion Explained" by Boyer that I have on my to-read shelf, I'll have to get around to that one. 3 stars.

Went to the wedding of a young coworker yesterday. Scripture reading talked about a braid of three strands being stronger than a braid of 1 or 2. I must have zoned out and missed some stuff, I was thinking "Whoa, what's up, who's the 3rd person, kinky stuff up?", then figured out the 3rd strand was god. Then at the end the minister says, "Jerry McGuire was wrong when he said 'you complete me' -- god completes you both." Seriously annoying shit. I really enjoyed the talk of the minister at my son's wedding (on the Radisson Niagara Falls package -- we were lucky to get to attend). I guess my son and his wife picked the non-religious ceremony. The minister (from Ghana, great James Earl Jones voice) talked for 10 minutes about the problems of maintaining a lifetime relationship, practical things about support, love, sharing hopes and dreams. It was very inspiring and uplifting -- and no trying to figure out how to shoehorn god in there somewhere. "The love of a man and a wife is like the love of jebus for his church" -- what the fuck is that supposed to mean?

I've really been enjoying the Astronomy Picture of the Day site I blogged earlier. There are so many great pictures out there of stuff we only had blurry images of when I was an astrophysicist 30 years. Google images is crazy, I looked for NGC 1275, one of my favorite galaxies, and got 203 hits. Really cool pictures, there's a spiral in the middle of that mess!

Haven't listened to much new music lately. I have a half dozen or so e-mails in my inbox (my todo list) with recommendations, have to start checking some out.

Impulse bought a Fender Blues Junior amp from music123.com (free shipping and a free guitar stand, who could resist) to help further my musical "career" at the Legion -- woo-haa. Really nice sound, but had to send it back, the reverb was totally inoperative. I didn't even know it had reverb, but still, for $400, you want all the features working. Hopefully it won't take too long to get the replacement.

Before I Forget

I think that's going to be my new catchphrase: "Before I Forget". 4 novels in danger of being forgotten - time for the exocortex to get to work.

1. "The All-Consuming World", by Cassandra Khaw, 2021, 268 pages, 72k words. I think this is Khaw's 1st novel? I had read some of her shorter stuff and liked it, but then decided it was too much horror, which I've kind of quit reading. This novel, tho, I think had a good recommendation as a hard sci-fi space opera. It was indeed all of that. Tons of action, building to a satisfying conclusion. Joe Bob sez, check it out.

2. "A Choice of Gods", by Clifford D. Simak, 1972, 187 pages, 58k words. This was probably $0.99 or $1.99 at BookBub. An interesting premise. Reading this old stuff, the characters are always so ... white. The topics covered are pretty cosmic, it was worth the reread.

3. "The Circumference of the World", by Lavie Tidhar, 2023, 170 pages, 52k words. Tidhar writes really well. This novel definitely has a meta feel to it. Does the fabled book exist or not? Plus we have its author introduce us to many golden age sci-fi authors. It has a bit of a Philip K. Dick feel about it. A good read.

4. "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town", by Cory Doctorow, 2006, 412 pages, 112k words. What an odd novel, totally unlike any other Doctorow I have read. Kind of meta, like the last one - the A brother, our protagonist, is writing a book. Meanwhile, his father is a mountain, his mother a washing machine, the B brother sees the future, the C brother is an island, the D brother is a malevolent zombie psychopath, brothers E, F, & G are Russian dolls, and his girlfriend has wings. Quite, what, postmodern? Definitely reminiscent of John Crowley, which is high praise from me. It's fairly long, LOL, I guess to make room for more weirdness. But somehow, it seems to be making a statement to the effect that there is no such thing as "normal". All the more reason for inclusivity.

The Unread shelf in the Kobo app on my iPad is at 135 books.

5 More

Well, I did start writing the review of the economics book. Got maybe 1/4 of the way done. Then, my wife came down Saturday Feb 10, & Saturday we drove to Miami & flew to St. Martin for a week's stay. Our 1st time back at Grand Case Beach Club in 15 years! After visiting Martinique & Guadeloupe, it was amazing how small St. Martin/St. Maarten is! But Grand Case was as funky as ever. Our favorite restaurant Il Netuno was gone, as was Le California. The FishPot was now Seaside 82 or some such. The French food did us in tho. You have got to be in training to eat that rich stuff. We found a place with a good seafood or shrimp or nicoise salad & ate there 3x.

Unfortunately, either during the ~1 hour I waited (unmasked) in Punta Gorda airport for my wife, or during the (masked) trip to St. Martin from Miami International, I finally caught the COVID. Symptoms Sunday, miserable Monday night, tested positive Tuesday. Still symptomatic, mostly mild but variable, I hope to be over it soon.

But enough brain fog that I don't think I'm up to trying to disentangle / refactor the economics book, so I'll grind through the easy books I've read since last time. I may go on and do another Music In batch too.

1st, "Imperium Restored", by Walter Jon Williams, 2022, 510 pages, 138k words. I think this is the last book of this series! I always enjoy Williams' writing, but, enough of this feudal, classist universe already! I looked back through my comments on the other volumes of this series and there is definitely ambiguity in my views. A little bit of a twist at the end, and, we're done!

2nd, "A Mirror Mended", by Alix E. Harrow, 2022, 132 pages, 33k words. More on the multiversal versions of Sleeping Beauty/Snow White, this time featuring the Evil Queen trying to escape her narrative. Quick & easy read, creative ideas. Harrow was my neighbor for a while, ~40 miles away in KY, it appears she has moved to Virginia :-(

3rd, "Children of Memory", by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2022, 406 pages, 125k words. The 3rd in the series. It started with uplifted hunter spiders, then uplifted octopuses & a bacterial race with atomic memory encoding. This installment ... CORVIDS, FTW!!! Uplifted 2' tall crows with yet another very odd model of intelligence. Plus a very complex, very rewarding framework. Tchaikovsky continues to delight, he has done really well with this series. Just preordered the 4th book, out in June, yay!

4th, "Lady of Mazes", by Karl Schroeder, 2005, 402 pages, 116k words. Schroeder has some of the most interesting ideas out there, somehow I have found it hard to engage with his writings. Hence just reading this 2005 release. A future post-scarcity utopia, with AIs ruling the solar system & preventing humans from becoming post-human, although there are some "gods" who used to be humans. Virtual reality tech allows multiple, technologically incompatible worldviews to coexist and overlap. But, is it a utopia or a dystopia? A very good read.

5th, "Hopeland", by Ian McDonald, 2023, 495 pages, 153k words. What an odd novel! It starts out reminding me of John Crowley's "Little, Big" - high praise - with 2 "magical" "families" finding each other, plus electromancy with Tesla coils used to fight demons, & winds up a work of climate fiction?!?!? A great, if strange, read.

Phew!

Well, I'm glad that's over. I decided I wanted to read some fantasy, so I plowed through the Paul Park tetralogy: "A Princess of Roumania", 2005, 480 pages; "The Tourmaline", 2006, 352 pages; "The White Tyger", 2007. 304 pages; and "The Hidden World", 2008, 384 pages. 1520 pages total. These stories had many glowing recommendations, in particular by John Crowley and Kim Stanley Robinson, both of whom I greatly respect. Park does indeed write well - he teaches a course in writing at Williams College - but I am still really glad to be done with the series.

It is set in an alternative universe where magic works, allowing conjurers to enter 2 additional planes, the hidden world and the land of the dead, and to summon demons, among other things. The world seems stuck around World War I; the British Isles are gone due to earthquakes; America is unexplored beyond the Hudson; and the dominant world center for development & technology is Abyssinia (nice!).

The dozen or so major characters are mostly well developed - there is some inexplicable behavior, but not too much. One of the major characters is a young woman, a mostly male soldier, and a dog. Nice!

But the plotting seems odd. At times major events happen, but you're not quite sure they did. A somewhat interesting universe, but the story is really not that engrossing, and very slow at times. The 2nd 1/2 of the 1st book is spent by some of the characters trying to travel 40 miles west to Albany. They barely get started, and never come vaguely close to Albany.

It's interesting how much a part feudalism plays in so much fantasy. The long lost princess, etc., etc. The Germans, who are mostly the bad guys for the 1st half of the series or so, are pushing rationality and maybe even The Enlightenment. The princess' noble family, of course, believes in republican ideals.

But you see this in sci fi too. The Atreides in "Dune" were lovable fascists, but they were fascists none the less, just like the unlovable fascist Harkonnens.

I think some sci fi before I'm back to economics.

Ancillary Detection

I read this year's Nebula Award winner for best novel: "Ancillary Justice", by Ann Leckie. It is a very good 1st novel, but I'm not sure it was the best of 2013. It is a space opera, with a human-based galactic empire. The 1st 2/3 of the book has 2 narrative threads, 1 in the present, and 1 doing backstory from 20 years before. The backstory thread then completes and we just finish out the present. There has been some discussion online of the oddly gendered characters in the book -- they mostly seem to be women, but there are "him" and "her" among them. It didn't seem to really affect the story much. It did make me think of "The Left Hand of Darkness", by Ursula K. LeGuin, from decades ago.

Everyone in the book was religious, with the empire's state religion being very open about enfolding other religions it encountered. I guess if you're doing a non-Culture space empire (non-utopian, non-socialist, non-anarchist), then your empire probably would embrace a state religion as a tool of control. Altho I did wonder if this was a side effect of the female empire -- women have always seemed to me on the average to be more ready to embrace religion than men.

The ending of the book is somewhat ambiguous, but we are clearly going to have at least a trilogy here. The blurbs for the next one suggest what may be an uninteresting direction. So I'll give it a try and keep my fingers crossed.

I reviewed this blog for "science fiction" for 2013. Nothing jumped out as being superior to this novel. Hannu's 2nd came out in 2012. The 2nd book of James S.A. Corey's Expanse series was nominated, but seems to me that giving awards to subsequent volumes in a series is bogus somehow.

The future I want to live in is, of course, Iain M. Banks's The Culture. He died this year of cancer, age 59, on June 9th. A new Culture novel was always a cause for rejoicing. I guess I will have to, every year or 2, go back and reread 1 of the 9 that exist.

When I finished "Ancillary Justice", I just had my iPad, which doesn't have my Kobo password memorized, so I could not buy the Piketty -- giving me an excuse to read another novel! So I read "The Manual of Detection", by Jebediah Berry. This is a retro urban fantasy, very Kafkaesque. The line between reality and dreaming is severely blurred. It reminded me some of John Crowley's early novels, where reality is blurred with fiction. It also reminded me strongly of the movie "Dark City", with the perpetual rain, and the citizens of the city being manipulated as they sleep.

This was also a 1st novel, and seemed to me a lot fresher and newer than "Ancillary Justice". It was also nice that it did not seem to be setting itself up for a sequel. To me it is one of those novels that paints a unique picture and is complete in itself.

OK, enough stalling, on to the Piketty!