Meme, Dream Foo and Book Foo
Jun. 24th, 2004 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Only one I could find that didn't have my lover a guy. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not for me. :)
On dream Foo...
nothing really exciting to report, but I did have a lucid dream last night where I attempted an Amber-esque method of changing my location to what I desired. I flew around for a while, then decided to land and for some reason wanted to go back to my old high school, so I modified reality in the following way (each 'Might as well' was followed by me looking away, looking back, and that particular change happened):
Well, That thing might as well be a swing.
If there's a swing, it might as well be a whole playground.
If there's a whole playground, it might as well be attached to a public school.
That school might as well be a high school.
Hey it might as well be my high school for that matter.
And so it was. Couldn't find any of my old friends or anything before I woke up, unfortunately.
And, finally, Book Foo...
Finished: American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
Started: Sirius, by Olaf Stapledon
More thoughts and such, including minor spoilers, after the cut tag.
How should I put this? American Gods is like one of those big chocolate hollow eggs they have around Easter, filled with other types of chocolates or candies. The outer chocolate shell is all pretty good, and may be why you bought it in the first place if you didn't know what was inside. But the really good part is in all the little bits.
That is to say, I liked the story, for the most part, about the battle between New Gods and Old in America, Shadow's quest, and so hand. But what really kept me smiling through the book were the treasure trove of little stories, tall tales, jokes, cons, and so on.
Unfortunately it's hard to talk about them individually, so I'll just stick to the main story. As I said, I enjoyed it for the most part. Unfortunately I didn't recognize a lot of the mythological references, (and sometimes I thought I might have liked things better if I did know where these things came from) but I did get a few of them which was fun.
The ending did leave me a bit unsatisfied though. It was just sort of 'okay, so, that's it?'. I mean, I appreciated the solving of the little mystery at the end, but beyond that there were a couple of seeming loose ends, and it just didn't seem to reach a satisfying conclusion.
I think I still prefer Neverwhere to this, both because of the whole sense-of-wonder thing, and the wanting-to-be-there thing, and also the differences in ending. Neverwhere's ending left me imagining the future adventures and wanting to know more. American Gods just left me saying, "Oh well, I guess we're at the end of the book."
This isn't to say the book was bad by any means, it was just my biggest problem with it. I still recommend it.
Sirius, by Olaf Stapledon, is a pretty old book as my tastes go. It was written in 1944. The title character is a dog who was given hormones in the womb to increase his intelligence dramatically and extend his lifespan, such that he's about human level intelligence (maybe more), and raised alongside the scientist's family as another child. He can understand English, even talk after a fashion (although without human vocal chords really only his family could understand his approximations of human speech, and they kept it a secret), but he doesn't have usable hands and still has some of the instincts of a dog.
I've only read one other thing of Stapledon's, Star Maker, which was an idea of big ideas, but the writing wasn't particularly smooth. This one is much better so far, flowing much more as a narrative, telling us the life and upbringing of this dog.
The author seems to be pulling off a nice balance, making Sirius perfectly relatable as a human mind, but not making him _too_ human, keeping in mind the differences between a dog and a man (for example, Sirius is color-blind, but his sense of smell is a significant asset, and he has a hunting instinct that gives him great pleasure when he succumbs, but also makes him ashamed).
The relationship between Sirius and his family, particularly Plaxy is also pretty well-done so far.
There is a bit of a sexual undercurrant in the work that's a bit surprising to me for SF of such early times. The dog's sexual interest in other dogs is discussed a good deal, (and at times I wondered if they were hinting at a sexual relationship between Sirius and a human, but I haven't read far enough to know if that's just my imagination), and, although they're not explicit, some sexual experimentation of the humans while growing up is dealt with pretty frankly too. I know that's not unusual for literature in general (well, maybe the dog-human thing), but SF that I've read tended to be fairly puritan until around the late fifties/early sixties (in part because of perception that it was literature for young boys).
Still so far I'm quite enjoying it. Should be finished by the next time I have to have something to read on the bus, as it's a fairly short book and I'm about halfway through.
