Book and Dream Foo
Nov. 2nd, 2006 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6First up, Dream Foo! Heroes related, mostly, plus I create a new superhero... in my SLEEP!
Can't remember a whole lot about it except Hiro was in it and involved time travel... like Future Hirocoming back and warning about something new that was happening that was awful and had to be stopped right away. There was more to it, but that's about all I can remember... except one thing.
After future Hiro was left, Hiro's friend Ando couldn't be with him for some reason, so in order to serve as Hiro's side kick was... a little bumblebee.
Except it wasn't a actually a bumblebee. It was manufactured.
It was sort of a cross between The Great and Powerful Turtle from Wild Cards and Wasp, I guess, from comics. The bumblebee was a tiny, bee-sized spacecraft (with weaponry that was called its 'stinger'), with a tiny human inside. I'm not sure if the human was naturally tiny like Shortpack or if he just shrunk to get into the device. (I suppose technically, it could also work if it was controlled by remote control like a video game, but that wasn't how it was in the dream).
I actually kinda like the idea and may use it somewhere, even if only in an RPG.
Book Foo!
Finished: The Protector's War by S.M. Stirling
and
Appleseed by John Clute
Some spoilers behind the cuts, but nothing too big. First, TPW: Liked the first book more than this one, since it had more to do with the immediate survival of the Event, whereas this one is set 8 years later. So, this was mostly swordfighting, politics, and more fighting, and so my problems with Stirling's writing in general stood out a little more. The most interesting thing to me was their discovery of the general principle behind why engines and such don't work, and from that an extrapolation to a piece of olden day tech they _could_ use, with some modifications. But that was almost an afterthough, with very little effect on the rest of the plot.
Still, it was midly enjoyable. No quote stands out - I'll more usually do those for rereads because new ones I'm more interested in getting the story and such rather than keeping an eye out for good lines.
And as for Appleseed... well, I can tell why this book, a new book, was priced at $1.99 at a normal, non-used bookstore. Here is a few sample paragraphs. These are not even particularly unusual paragraphs, just average paragraphs from the first few pages:
Meanwhile, Kirtt uploaded into Mowgli a chip carafe of data perfume gained during Tile Dance's sweep upwards along the trade Tropics from the warmth of stars farther up towards galactic centre; in exchange, Mowgli uploaded a case of carafes containing all the latest news. Fastidious but leaden in his chip state, Kirtt washed each carafe with care, filtering out great streaks of rust -- the random garbage and spoilage typical of planetary perfume this close to the rim, plus a few trillion snoops coated in sheep's clothing -- but chip snoops were easy to detect, easy to banish. Kirtt also swatted a whining haze of spam mosquitoes.
Having no need for protection against vacuum, the aspects or Unfleshed -- sigilla and eidolons and toons, tied entities and rogues, revenants in mirrorcam trance, caspers sucking up for love, freelance lifestory avatars on hire -- floated everywhere, some propelled by rampacks, some (being immaterial) by the power of thought. They were innumerable. They congested the model of docking country in the holograph cube, glittering as flesh could not, for they were self-illuminated, their eyes were red or yellow, body sigils flashing at every movement.
Now, casually introducing weird concepts and language without explanation is okay in SF, even good... the principle of abeyance holds, where you sort of go with the flow until you understand what you're talking about. The problem is that this book goes, IMHO, way over that line. Clockwork Orange had more stuff you didn't understand, but you could at least piece it together because you understood the world behind it. In Appleseed we don't even get a good idea of the laws of physics and how they work before being assaulted with terms that are never really explained (oddly, the book opens with an explanation of two words, but they're words that are used far fewer than any other). I suppose if you really wanted to focus your attention on it, it's probably understandable, but I was trying to get invested in the story first, and, well, that point never came. So, it was a bit frustrating, one of the few books I almost stopped mid-book and put away. As it turned out, I did far more skimming than I usually do.
I have a vague idea of what happened, and a much vaguer view of why. But mostly, I just didn't care. There were one or two good ideas in it (like the idea of God as an information-eater), but on the whole I'm glad I didn't pay more than $2 for the book, because I would have felt I'd wasted my money. Not my type of book at all.
Started: When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger (Friday/Sunday)
and
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling (Wednesdays)
The last book is a very obscure one, but a few people might have heard of it. Freaks, mostly, but still, I'll check it out. Haven't actually started it yet but put it in my bag for Wednesady. WGF's interesting so far, a noirish cyberpunk novel set in a ghettoish highly dangerous part of a mostly Muslim city in (apparently, from a quick google) North Africa.
And speaking of books and writing, today I start my PerExWriMo! (Personal Extra Writing Month). I'm not doing full NaNo, but I'm devoting 2 hours of every non work day to writing without anything else good to distract me, and no napping (save on work days, if I'm particularly wiped or Sunday when I get up early). Well, we'll see where it goes.
Can't remember a whole lot about it except Hiro was in it and involved time travel... like Future Hirocoming back and warning about something new that was happening that was awful and had to be stopped right away. There was more to it, but that's about all I can remember... except one thing.
After future Hiro was left, Hiro's friend Ando couldn't be with him for some reason, so in order to serve as Hiro's side kick was... a little bumblebee.
Except it wasn't a actually a bumblebee. It was manufactured.
It was sort of a cross between The Great and Powerful Turtle from Wild Cards and Wasp, I guess, from comics. The bumblebee was a tiny, bee-sized spacecraft (with weaponry that was called its 'stinger'), with a tiny human inside. I'm not sure if the human was naturally tiny like Shortpack or if he just shrunk to get into the device. (I suppose technically, it could also work if it was controlled by remote control like a video game, but that wasn't how it was in the dream).
I actually kinda like the idea and may use it somewhere, even if only in an RPG.
Book Foo!
Finished: The Protector's War by S.M. Stirling
and
Appleseed by John Clute
Some spoilers behind the cuts, but nothing too big. First, TPW: Liked the first book more than this one, since it had more to do with the immediate survival of the Event, whereas this one is set 8 years later. So, this was mostly swordfighting, politics, and more fighting, and so my problems with Stirling's writing in general stood out a little more. The most interesting thing to me was their discovery of the general principle behind why engines and such don't work, and from that an extrapolation to a piece of olden day tech they _could_ use, with some modifications. But that was almost an afterthough, with very little effect on the rest of the plot.
Still, it was midly enjoyable. No quote stands out - I'll more usually do those for rereads because new ones I'm more interested in getting the story and such rather than keeping an eye out for good lines.
And as for Appleseed... well, I can tell why this book, a new book, was priced at $1.99 at a normal, non-used bookstore. Here is a few sample paragraphs. These are not even particularly unusual paragraphs, just average paragraphs from the first few pages:
Meanwhile, Kirtt uploaded into Mowgli a chip carafe of data perfume gained during Tile Dance's sweep upwards along the trade Tropics from the warmth of stars farther up towards galactic centre; in exchange, Mowgli uploaded a case of carafes containing all the latest news. Fastidious but leaden in his chip state, Kirtt washed each carafe with care, filtering out great streaks of rust -- the random garbage and spoilage typical of planetary perfume this close to the rim, plus a few trillion snoops coated in sheep's clothing -- but chip snoops were easy to detect, easy to banish. Kirtt also swatted a whining haze of spam mosquitoes.
Having no need for protection against vacuum, the aspects or Unfleshed -- sigilla and eidolons and toons, tied entities and rogues, revenants in mirrorcam trance, caspers sucking up for love, freelance lifestory avatars on hire -- floated everywhere, some propelled by rampacks, some (being immaterial) by the power of thought. They were innumerable. They congested the model of docking country in the holograph cube, glittering as flesh could not, for they were self-illuminated, their eyes were red or yellow, body sigils flashing at every movement.
Now, casually introducing weird concepts and language without explanation is okay in SF, even good... the principle of abeyance holds, where you sort of go with the flow until you understand what you're talking about. The problem is that this book goes, IMHO, way over that line. Clockwork Orange had more stuff you didn't understand, but you could at least piece it together because you understood the world behind it. In Appleseed we don't even get a good idea of the laws of physics and how they work before being assaulted with terms that are never really explained (oddly, the book opens with an explanation of two words, but they're words that are used far fewer than any other). I suppose if you really wanted to focus your attention on it, it's probably understandable, but I was trying to get invested in the story first, and, well, that point never came. So, it was a bit frustrating, one of the few books I almost stopped mid-book and put away. As it turned out, I did far more skimming than I usually do.
I have a vague idea of what happened, and a much vaguer view of why. But mostly, I just didn't care. There were one or two good ideas in it (like the idea of God as an information-eater), but on the whole I'm glad I didn't pay more than $2 for the book, because I would have felt I'd wasted my money. Not my type of book at all.
Started: When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger (Friday/Sunday)
and
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling (Wednesdays)
The last book is a very obscure one, but a few people might have heard of it. Freaks, mostly, but still, I'll check it out. Haven't actually started it yet but put it in my bag for Wednesady. WGF's interesting so far, a noirish cyberpunk novel set in a ghettoish highly dangerous part of a mostly Muslim city in (apparently, from a quick google) North Africa.
And speaking of books and writing, today I start my PerExWriMo! (Personal Extra Writing Month). I'm not doing full NaNo, but I'm devoting 2 hours of every non work day to writing without anything else good to distract me, and no napping (save on work days, if I'm particularly wiped or Sunday when I get up early). Well, we'll see where it goes.
