Book Foo, some TV stuff.
Sep. 25th, 2010 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Finished: The Dreaming Void, by Peter F. Hamilton
Not bad. Dreaming Void is in the same universe as Hamilton's "Pandora Star" and "Judas Unchained", but about 1000 years later. However, because people routinely live for centuries, a few familiar characters do appear including Paula Myo and whats his name, the guy who was a good guy in the previous books but had a secret past as a terrorist he was ashamed of). I guess I enjoyed it... I had the same problem I have with a lot of his works - there's some cool ideas and SF concepts, but I don't find myself drawn in by many of the characters. And plotwise there's a bit of a problem for me (minor spoilers) The book concerns a 'Void' in the center of the galaxy that somebody dreams that there's a way in and a whole religion is spawned around it who wants to migrate (but other people think that if they try the void will expand, swallow up lots of civilizations and maybe even the whole galaxy). And we see some of the dreams as the book continues. Except, none of the dreams really give me any indication of why so many people would want to co in there. I mean, it seems nice in a low-tech fantasy world kind of way, but I can't imagine wanting to go there. This is addressed in the book a little, there's a suggestion that there's more to come that will explain it all (the book is part 1 of 3, and the dreams are told chronologically with the understanding that it took quite a few of them for them to get a following), but I kind of wanted at least some glimpse by the end of the first book at what this awesome life-in-the-void is supposed to be about.
Started and Finished: Tesseracts edited by Judith Merrill (and signed by her!) (short story collection)
Started: Tesseracts 3 (short story collection)
Tesseracts claim to fame is that it's an anthology of Canadian science fiction. And poetry. About half the entries are poems (but each only takes up about one page, compared to the stories which take up 20-30 or more, so the poetry's not overpowering). I'm not a big poetry fan, so for the most part I'd have preferred if they just left them out, but whatever.
The collection's not bad. I do think some of the stories weren't the greatest quality. I don't know, but there's a certain 'type' of short story that there seemed to be a couple of examples in the collection (some might have been poetry)... where it's like "This is a wacky planet, and wacky things happen here for no particular reason", and it's literally just a list of the ways that this alien planet is different from ours, sometimes just literally the opposite of our world, and often are quite stupid ('People don't take medicine when they're sick, they take medicine when they're healthy!') (This is not saying anything about preventative medicine, the way it was in the book was just basically backwardsland). I don't think I liked a single one of these, and thought they should have just been left out. But there were a few good stories. I liked William Gibson's submission "Hinterlands", as well as Elisabeth Vonaburg's "Home by the Sea", A. K. Dewdeny's "2DWorld", and Spider Robinson's "God is an Iron".
And of course, it's worth owning just for Judith Merril's signature. For those who aren't familiar with the name, she's one of the early female SF authors, and wrote some of the classics in the genre, and even though she's probably better known as an anthologist, what she wrote herself was still influential. "That Only a Mother" (about the horrors of atomic-power-related mutations... it was the 40s), is still regularly in short story collections. She's not a born Canadian, but came here to escape the Vietnam war, and wound up staying. She donated her entire collection of SF to the library in Toronto, to start the "Spaced Out Collection of Science Fiction" (later renamed The Merrill Collection, the very place I met Karl Schroeder for a writing workshop back in February). In the early 80s, she used to host the Canadian broadcasts of Doctor Who, and in the 90s I regularly saw her interviewed on Prisoners of Gravity. So as a SF geek, I'm thrilled by unexpectedly getting a signed copy of a book she edited, and for only $1, too.
Tesseracts 3 (and 2 and others) were edited by somebody else, her suggestion was each volume be edited by new people to provide different voices.
Finished: Blindsight, by Peter Watts (reread)
Started: The Gunslinger: Dark Tower I, by Stephen King (reread)
Blindsight was great as usual. I can't say enough how much I enjoy the book, it's quickly become one of my favorites. Glad Watts won a Hugo for a short story this year, but he really should have won for this when it came out. Oh well, maybe the sidequel
-
So, new TV started. What's been on? Well, lots, but being discussed here (spoilers will be behind cuts):
The Event: I was ambivalent about the series when I first heard about it, and I still am. I suppose in one area I'm a little more reassured, but overall, still Wait and See. They promised SF elements, but you never knew how to take it. For all we knew the SF element was, say, a plague that the entire human race had already been exposed to, and would one day kill everybody except a few, and the whole series was about covering that up. Or it could have been a government conspiracy all surrounding a secret weather control device.
But at least in the first episode they revealed that, at the very least, whatever the event is, there's something capable of teleporting/wormholing an entire plane. That at least has interest behind it. Could be aliens, people from the future, people with super powers, parallel Earths, all of which have been explored recently before or presently (V, 4400, 4400 again as well as Heroes, Fringe). We don't know who yet but we've been promised some kinds of answers would be coming early. It's interesting enough to give me a few episodes in. But I have worries.
Chief among them is their technique of jumping around wildly in time. This guy's on a plane, possibly terroristly? No, here's how he was when he was just an average guy in love, finding something out. Here's the president preparing for a press conference! Now here he is when he learned for the first time something about what the press conference is going to be about! Back and forth over and over again.
Most of the time when a show or movie takes that route, I tend to think of it as an admission that they realize their plot is boring enough that a straight narrative would be unwatchable. I mean, from time to time a little of that, there's nothing wrong with it, but if it's going to be a key feature of the whole series, I can see it getting old REALLY REALLY quickly.
Fringe: Premiere didn't blow me away, but it was better than last season's. I liked it, just not wild about it. I kind of wanted to see Olivia actually dealing with being in the other universe, instead of just brainwashed to think she's alt-Olivia. Maybe that'll come later as she realizes inconsistencies, but I'm getting worried it's an excuse to have regular looks in on the other world and just see how they normally operate, while still having the spy-Olivia plot. Also when you have people like her partner who KNOW that not only was there an alternate universe, but Olivia's alternate universe counterpart visited, I find it hard to believe all of them are so willing to swallow that our-Olivia is really their-Olivia-who-just-thinks-she's-our-Olivia.
Supernatural: Kind of meh, overall. Have to see where it goes.
Was there anything else? I don't think so, at least nothing that I feel needs a comment. Coming this week, Stargate Universe and No Ordinary Family.
Not bad. Dreaming Void is in the same universe as Hamilton's "Pandora Star" and "Judas Unchained", but about 1000 years later. However, because people routinely live for centuries, a few familiar characters do appear including Paula Myo and whats his name, the guy who was a good guy in the previous books but had a secret past as a terrorist he was ashamed of). I guess I enjoyed it... I had the same problem I have with a lot of his works - there's some cool ideas and SF concepts, but I don't find myself drawn in by many of the characters. And plotwise there's a bit of a problem for me (minor spoilers) The book concerns a 'Void' in the center of the galaxy that somebody dreams that there's a way in and a whole religion is spawned around it who wants to migrate (but other people think that if they try the void will expand, swallow up lots of civilizations and maybe even the whole galaxy). And we see some of the dreams as the book continues. Except, none of the dreams really give me any indication of why so many people would want to co in there. I mean, it seems nice in a low-tech fantasy world kind of way, but I can't imagine wanting to go there. This is addressed in the book a little, there's a suggestion that there's more to come that will explain it all (the book is part 1 of 3, and the dreams are told chronologically with the understanding that it took quite a few of them for them to get a following), but I kind of wanted at least some glimpse by the end of the first book at what this awesome life-in-the-void is supposed to be about.
Started and Finished: Tesseracts edited by Judith Merrill (and signed by her!) (short story collection)
Started: Tesseracts 3 (short story collection)
Tesseracts claim to fame is that it's an anthology of Canadian science fiction. And poetry. About half the entries are poems (but each only takes up about one page, compared to the stories which take up 20-30 or more, so the poetry's not overpowering). I'm not a big poetry fan, so for the most part I'd have preferred if they just left them out, but whatever.
The collection's not bad. I do think some of the stories weren't the greatest quality. I don't know, but there's a certain 'type' of short story that there seemed to be a couple of examples in the collection (some might have been poetry)... where it's like "This is a wacky planet, and wacky things happen here for no particular reason", and it's literally just a list of the ways that this alien planet is different from ours, sometimes just literally the opposite of our world, and often are quite stupid ('People don't take medicine when they're sick, they take medicine when they're healthy!') (This is not saying anything about preventative medicine, the way it was in the book was just basically backwardsland). I don't think I liked a single one of these, and thought they should have just been left out. But there were a few good stories. I liked William Gibson's submission "Hinterlands", as well as Elisabeth Vonaburg's "Home by the Sea", A. K. Dewdeny's "2DWorld", and Spider Robinson's "God is an Iron".
And of course, it's worth owning just for Judith Merril's signature. For those who aren't familiar with the name, she's one of the early female SF authors, and wrote some of the classics in the genre, and even though she's probably better known as an anthologist, what she wrote herself was still influential. "That Only a Mother" (about the horrors of atomic-power-related mutations... it was the 40s), is still regularly in short story collections. She's not a born Canadian, but came here to escape the Vietnam war, and wound up staying. She donated her entire collection of SF to the library in Toronto, to start the "Spaced Out Collection of Science Fiction" (later renamed The Merrill Collection, the very place I met Karl Schroeder for a writing workshop back in February). In the early 80s, she used to host the Canadian broadcasts of Doctor Who, and in the 90s I regularly saw her interviewed on Prisoners of Gravity. So as a SF geek, I'm thrilled by unexpectedly getting a signed copy of a book she edited, and for only $1, too.
Tesseracts 3 (and 2 and others) were edited by somebody else, her suggestion was each volume be edited by new people to provide different voices.
Finished: Blindsight, by Peter Watts (reread)
Started: The Gunslinger: Dark Tower I, by Stephen King (reread)
Blindsight was great as usual. I can't say enough how much I enjoy the book, it's quickly become one of my favorites. Glad Watts won a Hugo for a short story this year, but he really should have won for this when it came out. Oh well, maybe the sidequel
-
So, new TV started. What's been on? Well, lots, but being discussed here (spoilers will be behind cuts):
The Event: I was ambivalent about the series when I first heard about it, and I still am. I suppose in one area I'm a little more reassured, but overall, still Wait and See. They promised SF elements, but you never knew how to take it. For all we knew the SF element was, say, a plague that the entire human race had already been exposed to, and would one day kill everybody except a few, and the whole series was about covering that up. Or it could have been a government conspiracy all surrounding a secret weather control device.
But at least in the first episode they revealed that, at the very least, whatever the event is, there's something capable of teleporting/wormholing an entire plane. That at least has interest behind it. Could be aliens, people from the future, people with super powers, parallel Earths, all of which have been explored recently before or presently (V, 4400, 4400 again as well as Heroes, Fringe). We don't know who yet but we've been promised some kinds of answers would be coming early. It's interesting enough to give me a few episodes in. But I have worries.
Chief among them is their technique of jumping around wildly in time. This guy's on a plane, possibly terroristly? No, here's how he was when he was just an average guy in love, finding something out. Here's the president preparing for a press conference! Now here he is when he learned for the first time something about what the press conference is going to be about! Back and forth over and over again.
Most of the time when a show or movie takes that route, I tend to think of it as an admission that they realize their plot is boring enough that a straight narrative would be unwatchable. I mean, from time to time a little of that, there's nothing wrong with it, but if it's going to be a key feature of the whole series, I can see it getting old REALLY REALLY quickly.
Fringe: Premiere didn't blow me away, but it was better than last season's. I liked it, just not wild about it. I kind of wanted to see Olivia actually dealing with being in the other universe, instead of just brainwashed to think she's alt-Olivia. Maybe that'll come later as she realizes inconsistencies, but I'm getting worried it's an excuse to have regular looks in on the other world and just see how they normally operate, while still having the spy-Olivia plot. Also when you have people like her partner who KNOW that not only was there an alternate universe, but Olivia's alternate universe counterpart visited, I find it hard to believe all of them are so willing to swallow that our-Olivia is really their-Olivia-who-just-thinks-she's-our-Olivia.
Supernatural: Kind of meh, overall. Have to see where it goes.
Was there anything else? I don't think so, at least nothing that I feel needs a comment. Coming this week, Stargate Universe and No Ordinary Family.
