Number6's Journal

And not any good reason, just been sort of meh and not had much to say that felt worthy of a post on its own. But there have been a few things building up that, maybe collectively, work.

First, OMG Heat Wave of death these last couple days, but it's finally over. Not as cool as I might like, but at least it's reasonably comfortable. I suppose in the end it wasn't all that bad, I'd suffered through worse and longer (as have others), but it was at the point where I couldn't do much beyond lie back and blerg.

Secondly, I got my first smartphone! Which also happens to be my first cell phone. Except, aside from receiving a couple spam text messages, I haven't yet used as a cell phone, despite having to buy 3 months service to get the phone (it was discounted a fair bit though so, in the end, I came out ahead). Heck, nobody even asked for my number. But really, all I wanted it for was so that I could be out and about and access free wifi, and for the 13mp camera that I can use when going to Toronto Fan Expo. I'll get to that in a moment, but for the record, it's a Sony Xperia T, that they're selling as the James Bond phone because apparently he used it in Skyfall. So therefore I assume it can also be made to explode or let out a smokescreen or shoot tranquilizer darts, but I haven't pressed all the buttons yet. Otherwise, it's nice, takes a little getting used to the interface, and typing can be an annoying chore, but I'm getting better at it. I've already loaded a few free SF books on it so I have something to read on hand whenever I carry it, and a few free games and a police scanner so I can figure out if they're closing in on me! Well, actually, every time I've tried the scanner in my area, it doesn't seem to get anything (the transit police and fire department ones work), and I don't believe the police want me for anything, so I'm good. Actually, I haven't really taken it 'out in the wild' yet, since I first set it up, the farthest I've gone with it is the laundry room. That's because I want to ensure it survives, unwet and undamaged by the rigors of work, and unstolen, at least until the end of August. I'll take it out on baby steps (once I get some kind of waterproof container in case of rain), maybe when I visit my grandmother this week, but I'm taking it slow. I also plan to root my phone (for many reasons, but not the least of it is to delete the annoying bloatware apps I never plan to use but are by default undeleteable), but again, not until after August. Why then?

Toronto Fan Expo, of course. Yeah, I'm planning on going this year. After all, Nathan Fillion AND Gina Torres will be there. How could I not? (Morena Baccarin will also be there but I already have her signature on my Firefly boxed set, so, she's not enough, on her own, to go). A number of other cool people too, but I doubt I'll be collecting any other signatures... they cost so much these days, so I save it for the ones I really like. I do also hope to hook up with Adrian Alphona (err, not in the romantic sense, although I DO like his art an awful lot and it might be hard to say no if he asked! ;)), and see if I can get a commission done, because he's one of the few artists I would be willing to pay for. But I think the only way it'll work is if I can contact him in advance and just pick it up at the con.

I will not be wearing a costume (aside from my usual Blue Sun shirt)... still haven't thought of any I could pull off, much less assembled one. But I will enjoy seeing all the other costumes and, with my phone, hopefully will have a camera better able to capture some of them!

That's about all the big personal news I have (lame as it is), so let's move on to the 'discussing other media' portion of my post! This time I'll leave the Book Foo to the end. First, since it's relatively fresh news, let's talk Veronica Mars. At the SDCC, they released the first look at the movie footage! You can see it here! It's pretty much finished filming already, and really, I'm astounded not just at the fact that they managed to get it kickstarted, but also how many people from the original series they got back to make appearances. I mean, virtually everybody I wanted to see (who was still alive when the series ended), they got, with maybe one exception (and he was, though not dead, written out pretty definitively, and, with these people, might even still be coming as a surprise). And a lot of the actors seem super eager to be back, and have been recording thank you messages. The best of all of them, was indubitably Ryan Hansen (Dick Casablancas)'s awesome video where he clearly spent a lot of time and effort in it (and pulled in guest stars!). Seriously, you gotta watch. Well, you don't gotta, but it's fun.

Other news? Game of Thrones is over, good season... Falling Skies is ongoing, enjoying it, but not wowed. Defiance got a little better... also not wowed, but it was watchable, at least. Still waiting on Korra season 2, and beyond that, it's pretty much just the fall season I have to look forward to (well, I still gotta watch S2 of Continuum but I've been slacking). Oh, and Under the Dome, which was... disappointing. Not for the changes, I actually like MOST of them, but... I dunno, it feels too episodic (like 'ZOMG PLAGUE!' episode that gets comes up and gets resolved in that episode) and at times doesn't really treat the premise with the seriousness it deserves (for the most part everybody seems to be just going about their business as normal... and as I read somewhere else... they've been Domed for how many days now and they haven't had a big town meeting to discuss the issue and the possibilities?). It just makes for a big lack of tension. I'm still watching, but it hasn't met my hopes, and my hopes weren't all that high.

Movies? Nothing really new, though I did watch the Evil Dead remake (okay, bit too gory for my tastes, but even there I appreciate the effort that went into making that look good), Oz The Great and Powerful (reasonably cute), Superman Unbound (decent but kind of forgettable, except for one awesome Lois scene... really needed Nathan Fillion though, since it had two other Castle stars!), Jack the Giant Slayer (also decent-but-forgettable), John Dies at the End (funny at times, decent plot ideas, didn't think it came together completely, but I'd be willing to see a sequel). Oh, and Justice League, New Frontier... which I liked mostly (and I'm kinda surprised how occasionally explicit DC's willing to be in these animated movies... maybe not compared to other action movies, but at least far more than in TV cartoons. But I approve.)

And I guess that leaves us with books. As usual, mostly just cut and pasting my reviews from Goodreads.

Finished: The Living Dead, (short story collection)

A collection of zombie tales, with a variety of tones and even a variety of types of zombies. ( Read more... )

Finished: A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge (reread)

( Read more... )

Finished: A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge (reread)
( Read more... )

Finished: Vortex, by Robert Charles Wilson

Vortex is the third book in the series that started with Spin. Spin was a great work of science fiction, seamlessly weaving incredible science fiction concepts with believable human drama, and it ended with a tease for wonder-inspiring stories to come. (More behind the cut, spoiler-free version: Okay, disappointing as a followup to Spin, but less so than the previous sequel)
( Read more... )

Finished: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge, by Vernor Vinge

Short version: A few great stories, but the collection as a whole is probably worth it only for superfans.
( Read more... )

Finished: Crypto-Punk, by George Traikovich (received free!
A sinister force is changing some of the kids at Bixby Elementary school, but as a new fad called "Crypto-Punk" takes hold at the same time, only a few ten-year-olds notice any problem, and have to act to stop it.

Full disclosure: I received this book for free through Goodreads' First Reads program. When I signed up to receive the book, it wasn't entirely clear what age-group it was targeted towards... the fact that it was set at an Elementary school suggested it skewed young, but not every book about kids is geared towards them, and Elementary school covers a wide range of ages. But upon reading it, it's pretty clear this is targeted towards preteens and early teens, at about the same level as the first Harry Potter book. ( Read more... )

Finished: All You Need is Kill, by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
This is an acclaimed Japanese SF novel (read in translation), about a common soldier fighting on the front lines against alien invaders who've ravaged much of the Earth. It's his very first battle, and despite the technological Jacket he wears and the weaponry he carries, he dies... only to wake up 30 hours earlier, before the battle starts. And then it happens again.

It's basically a "Groundhog Day" plot, grafted on to an action SF plot about fighting a swarm of aggressive aliens with no personality. He uses his loops to get better but somehow can't avoid dying and returning back to the start. ( Read more... )
So, on the whole, I'm pleased. I have a feeling it's probably going to be more enjoyable than the inevitable Tom Cruise movie adaptation (that's not a random slam, there literally is one on the way).

Finished: Children of the Sky, by Vernor Vinge (reread)
This is the long-awaited sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep, set about a dozen years later, with Ravna Bergsndot and what were once the children of a science lab that caused a galactic disaster, trapped on the world of the Tines, a species based on small hive-minds made up of four or more dog-like creatures that, only collectively, make up people. Ravna's doing her best to advance the world's technology level, for she fears that a monstrous evil is still on its way to destroy them all, decades in the future... only she discovers that the greatest threats might be closer to home.

The first time I read this, I was probably too excited about finally having it to really evaluate it objectively. On this, my second read through... I'm probably still too excited, but it's easier to notice and admit the flaws.( Read more... )

Started: The Rapture of the Nerds, by Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow
Started: Hyperion, by Dan Simmons (reread)

Okay, 6 out!

So... I just got some books in the mail, finally using up my Xmas gift card (I got Impulse, by Steven Gould, the third book in the Jumper series, one of my favorites, The Fractal Prince by Hannu RajaIdon'twannalookuphisnameagainrightnow, and an anthology of zombie stories because it was in the Bargain Books list), and I realized it had been a while since I'd done a post like this. So, let's get caught up on the books I've been reading lately.

Finished: Gridlinked, by Neal Asher
Finished: The Line of Polity, by Neal Asher

I'm going to treat these more or less as one. I bought The Line of Polity first, accidentally thinking it was stand-alone (or perhaps the first book in the series). Once I realized my mistake, I went back and found the first book.

This series didn't particularly do anything for me. It's sort of a combination of secret agent tales and space opera, and I suppose it's fine for all that, but none of the characters really connected to me and I saw many of the events coming, and, for the most part, I read just to get through it. I did notice that one of the main personality characteristics of the main character, from the first book, seemed to have been completely brushed aside in the second... and while I didn't much like him then, I don't think the best approach was to make him even blander.

It's kind of a sad commentary on the series that my favorite character in it is an artificially intelligent shuriken that never communicates to others or indicates its thoughts to the reader or anybody else in anything but the most limited ways.

Maybe I'll give the series another chance somewhere down the line, but I don't think I'm going to be reading the rest anytime soon.

Finished: Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card (reread)
One of my all time favorite books (and yes, I know, many of the author's political views are abominable, but the book rises above it... I can hold it against the author, but not against the book), and I just felt like reading it again, especially because the movie'll be coming out this year.

Finished: The Lady of Mazes, by Karl Schroder (reread)

I've read this before, but I still really enjoy this. I'll do a bit longer here, behind the cut, because I just reviewed it on Goodreads, too and I might as well copy and paste. ( Read more... )

Started: Ender's Shadow, by Orson Scott Card (reread)
Started: Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge (reread)

Also, last book foo, in a short story collection (Year's Best SF 15), there was one thing that I wanted to quote, just because I liked it, but I forgot to. Well, now I'm remembering. It's from the story Collision, by Gwyneth Jones:
"Down all the millenia, people like you have said science is 'challenging the Throne of God.' The funny thing is, your 'God' doesn't seem to mind. Your 'God' keeps saying to us, Hey, wonderful! You noticed! Follow me, I've got some other great stuff to show you--"

Okay, off books, and onto TV... I don't have a lot to talk about. Walking Dead starts again this Sunday, which is cool. I've also been lately getting into Leverage in reruns... it turns out to be a lot of fun (and a lot of SF people in it). And I've been watching Tabletop online. Oh, Wil Wheaton, if someone had told me years ago you'd become my favorite TNG cast member (okay, maybe just behind Patrick Stewart), I would have thought they were crazy. It's a lot of fun, but I especially like the games where there is some roleplaying involved, and indeed think they should do a spinoff that is just RPGs (I never watched Being Human, either version, but Sam Witwer from the US version is clearly not just a gamer, he's apparently also a GM so I like him now, too.)

But the main show that I think we need to talk about is Fringe.

Fringe... what happened to you, man? You used to be cool.

(major spoilers for the series will be behind the cut... spoiling pretty much the whole last season... no, wait, the WRITERS spoiled the last season).

In the end, I'm so disappointed in Fringe that I wish it was cancelled, not LAST season, but the season before. Yes, they screwed the pooch so much that I wish we could undo that last two seasons. And maybe a few minutes or seconds before the end of the finale before that (just to better wrap it up rather than leaving on a surprise dangler).

( Read more... )

On a similar vein, and moving from TV onto movies, we have the movie Looper.

Looper has a silly premise. I'm sorry, it does... "Time Travel gets invented... but it's only used by the mob... to dispose of bodies! Because there's nothing else that can be done with it!"
is silly on the face of it. But you look past it... and some of the silliness that comes with stylistic choices... and it's actually pretty enjoyable. Well acted, tense, and even introduces a few plot elements out of left field that don't automatically fit in with a time travel movie, but made things a little cooler. And they went to some very dark places, with a lot of ambiguity. And then... that ending (major total spoiling spoilers behind cut)...
( Read more... )

Also watched The Dark Knight Returns Part 2. Still don't get why this was two movies. Put the runtime of both together, no special features, and you get an hour and a half of movie. But it was enjoyable, and I liked it a lot more than reading the comic (I didn't like the art). I know it's heresy, but I actually think they should make a sequel... The Dark Knight Strikes Back, in animated form. Except... don't do the sequel Frank Millar actually wrote. Just take the best ideas in it and write the sequel it SHOULD have been.

I think that's about it. I've got a few other recent new (on DVD) movies but I never get around to actually watching them.

Had a genuine full plot SF dream, that was (relatively) coherent, even if the plot itself was a little cliche.

Anyway, the idea was people were starting to get chips in their head that enabled things like mental internet access. The problem was it was also a sort of government mind-control conspiracy. The government could see and hear anything they wanted to from a chipped person (although they normally weren't watching everyone at all times, they searched for keywords), and could actually take over a person entirely. It also tended to make people with them more trusting of the government and compliant, a bit Stepford-ish, but otherwise were almost themselves, with their own opinions and such. Apparently, the rich and famous, the new masters of the world (a combination of gov't people and corporate people and such) often monitored for specific things and intervened in specific ways. One particular example we witnessed was that apparently King Charles (in the dream he was the King) was apparently paranoid over some sort of rumors that he'd been involved in a conspiracy to kill Diana, and so whenever anybody chipped either spoke of it or heard anybody else speak of it, Charles (or one of his lackeys) would take over the nearest chipped person to denounce the idea. If it was the chipped person themselves who said it, this experience would make them reverse their opinions after being taken over. If it was somebody else, usually they'd be added to a list of people who would be pressured to take a chip.

Anyway, my parents (who weren't actually my real parents, so I guess I was somebody other than me, sort of how sometimes I dream myself into a movie) who had already been chipped, had gotten me chipped without either my permission or even my knowledge, I guess because I was notably and vocally skeptical of it all. Somehow I'd been given a faulty chip, maybe a deliberately faulty one... I had access to all the 'mental internet access' and positive benefits, but wasn't monitored, couldn't be taken over, and my personality was left alone, although I had to pretend. For some reason I had a little brother, 13 or so, and they were getting ready to schedule the operation to implant a chip in his head too, and I couldn't take losing another family member, and also knew that he was unsure about it as well (the more people getting chipped the more obvious it was that it was a mind control thing but the less anybody could do about it), so I had to tell him the truth about my faulty chip and the run off with him so we could get to a nearby country where the chips were outlawed.

The dream didn't, unfortunately, have an ending, we were on the run and trying to hide from people after us but using my own chip I had access to satellite feeds so I could pick routes where nobody was looking for us. I have a feeling I was also supposed to meet up with some sort of resistance, the people who arranged my faulty chip, but I never got that far into the dream... that was the feeling I got immediately after waking when my mind insisted it had to know what was going to happen next and in a flicker of a moment changed to insisting it already knew what was going to happen. So, unreliable but somewhat logical.

Anyway, rather cooler than most of my dreams of late.

I should point out something, I guess, unrelated to the particular dream, but since I'm talking about dreams in general. I've noticed something in the last... year or two, I guess. One of the many 'standard types' of dreams I used to have was the 'perfect store' dream. Basically, I'd be wandering around, find a store (often a comic store or a used bookstore) that's like... perfect. Not only is it new (well, sometimes it's a store I visited before but somehow lost track of), with a new variety of stuff to look through, but also it has a huger selection and I often find things that don't really exist, but I want to... like, issues of a favorite comic series that got cancelled long ago, that I've never seen before, or new seasons of a TV show, similarly, or a sequel to a movie I always wished got a sequel, or something that couldn't happen due to business reasons (an epic crossover movie).

I mention this because this dream seems to have disappeared, in the last year or two, in favor of the "perfect website" dream, which is similar, but I find a website that has all sorts of things I want but don't exist (sometimes it's more specific, like, a BoingBoing type site that's reporting all kind of news that I wish was true, or a hangout site where I meet lots of cool people, or old people I lost touch with, or a site similar to some other type of site I already use, but with much better features). I remember from my XET days, about the Dreamlands of the Cthulhu mythos, where they said that the collective unconscious of the human race was always something like 500 years behind reality, which is why the Dreamlands read like fantasy fiction, and it occurred to me that, while 500 years is an extreme overstatement, something similar does seem to happen to me... my dreamscapes are always a little out of date, at least in terms of locations and settings (elements that are extremely recent can always show up). It often takes several years of living in a new place before I start dreaming about it.

I guess my perfect store dream's caught up to the Internet age, and is now considering the Internet a 'location' much like a store.

So, the past month has been a bit disappointing for Sci-Fi news... on the fall schedule there's one SF show that I'm definitely interested in (Revolution), and a handful of others that I'll probably give a look to. Fox isn't even doing one new SF show. Not one!

This is a little depressing, because usually there's a couple good new shows each year to pique my interest.

However, to close off the month, my home and native land, Canada, has surprised me with a show that just started on one of our own cable networks. It's called Continuum, and stars Rachel Nichols as a cop from 2077 who is accidentally stranded in 2012 along with a group of terrorists from her time.

It's not perfect, but I found myself rather enjoying it. (minor spoilers ahoy) ( Read more... )

Overall, though, I quite enjoyed it. I was worried it might wind up being something cheesy, and although it has that potential, it could also be quite good, for a time travel story. A pleasant surprise, considering I hadn't even heard about it (or if I had, I'd forgotten it), before the day before yesterday when I saw commercials for the premiere!

Of course, it's only 10 episodes so most likely it'll be over by Fall, so it's really no cure for the Fall TV Blues, but it is certainly nice! And I get to play "Canadian TV Star Bingo!" (in the first episode alone, I've seen two recurring characters from Stargate, one minor character from Stargate Universe, a minor character from Caprica, an X-Files villain, and one of the main cast of Andromeda (there is some overlap). We do a lot of SF, and so the same faces show up a lot. Also nice: It's actually set in Vancouver! So yay, Canadian pride!

Might be worth checking out if anybody on my flist has access to where it plays or... 'other means' of acquiring it. (Don't let the Canadianness put you off, it's hard to tell unless you look for it!)

I guess I haven't been posting much. Part of this is the traditional post-Christmas-spiral-into-crippling-even-more-depression-than-usual, which I'm weathering but, as usual, doesn't make me feel especially communicative (also yay, even greater depression trigger coming next week). But also I haven't really been doing much, things have been dead on a number of fronts. TV's kind of blah, I'm checking out Alcatraz but I'm still a bit iffy on it. At least some of that's due to change... Walking Dead comes back this month, and April for Game of Thrones, the new Spidey cartoon, and, I'm hoping, the new Avatar series (I heard a rumor somewhere, but I don't remember where or know how accurate it was).

But I have been reading... so, let's do a book foo!

Finished: Spin State by Chris Moriarty

Part of the reason this book caught my eye was because the author was listed as one of the apparently few female writers who write 'hard SF'. Part of this is because they're apparently actually steered away from it, due to the percepion (whether real or not) that readers aren't interested in it. To the point that, in this case, Chris Moriarty looks like a male name (and I actually checked... in the 'about the author' section, and references to her in other reviews printed in the book, not only is there no picture, but they seem to studiously avoid any gender pronouns that might give the game away). The odd thing was, I saw these books in the store an awful lot before I knew Chris was a female author, and it just didn't catch my eye even to the point where I picked it up and read the back (maybe once)... pretty much what got me to give it a real look was hearing she was a she.

Anyway, enough about the author. The story involves a military officer and genetically-constructed being who's drafted to do a murder investigation in a mine on her homeworld. And the verdict... the science was a little less Hard than I was hoping, and the story's just okay, but it didn't blow me away. More spoilers behind the cut, nothing huge but just in case. ( Read more... )

I'll probably read the sequel, eventually.

Finished: Cetaganda by Lois McMaster Bujold

Another book in the Miles Vorkosigan series by Bujold, involving a short, brittle-boned but brilliant spy from a society where mutation is feared. In this one, he's on a diplomatic mission to another culture where he gets involved in shenanigans.

I don't really have a lot to say about it. I enjoyed it, and yet... I think I may be done with the series. Not because this one is bad by any means, and the character is still appealing, but I've read 5-6 books with him in it and it just feels like if I don't read any more, I'm okay with it... and in fact, the effort of trying to figure out which books I've already read and which one I need to get next to continue reading his adventures outweighs the positives I'd get from actually doing it. Maybe this is just my general blahs leaking through undeservedly on the series, and in a few months I'll get an inkling to try again, but right now I'm not feeling any particular urge to keep reading it.

Finished: The Windup Girl by Paulo Bacigalupi

Set in a future where oil has virtually run out and so the world has expanded (or horizons have shrunk, depending on your point of view?), metaphorically (because sail is about the fastest form of travel and so it takes weeks to make journeys that used to take hours), and biotechnology has in some ways ravaged and in others improved the world, the story is set in Thailand where a corporate spy seeks a suspected secret genetic library and a fugitive genetic engineer, Thai officials cope with severe corruption and the competing drives to protect their borders from dangerous products and to help themselves by encouraging trade, and a genetically engineered girl is a slave not just because she was designed to be subservient but also because she has no right to exist in the country and would be mulched if the wrong people find out.

The book won both the Hugo and Nebula (tying one of them, I believe, but it's still a win), and I can see it as an ambitious work. I'm actually not really sure if I like it or not. Part of the problem was that there were few people I could really wholeheartedly root for, aside from the title character. Viewpoint characters who seemed okay at first would contain traits I find wholly unsympathetic (and the exceptions to the rule are usually horribly mistreated in the course of the story). That can be a good thing, it can mean the characters are complex but in this case, I don't know. I'm also not sure I buy entirely into some of the premises of the world. Yet there were cool ideas and occasionally images, and I think I'll be thinking about it longer than most books I read.

I'm still struggling with the 'did I like it' question. I'm deeply ambivalent about it, but I am glad I read it.

Finished: The Oroboros Wave by Jyouji Hayashi
This is a translation of a Japanese SF novel.

This one actually IS a hard SF novel. Humanity discover a miniature black hole in our solar system and decides to harness it, build a ring around it to provide virtually unlimited energy. In many ways it's a series of linked short stories with a few shared characters, rather than a novel. In fact, they tread on a lot of the tropes of classic hard SF short stories... there's the "slight astrophysical mystery that has a rather mundane, though unexpected cause", the "new biological life form" and others.

It also feels a little stilted at times, particularly where characters are concerned, which may simply be because of the translation, or it may be just like a lot of English hard SF (particularly of early decades), where that aspect was second fiddle to the plot and science.

I did really enjoy it though, maybe in part because I was craving hard SF and not entirely satisfied by the other books on my list. I felt it fell down a little towards the end, where it feels a little unfinished, but I suspect that's because (if I interpreted the author's note correctly), it's meant to have a sequel.

This is my first experiment with the "Haika Soru" imprint of novels (from Viz Media, who also I believe imports Manga), and only the second Japanese-translated novel I've read, after Battle Royale (also released through Viz, but not from that imprint... probably before). So, quite a good start. I think I'll be checking out more of their work in time.

Started: Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks
Started: A Thousand Words for a Stranger by Julie E. Czernada


In other news, the Beta for Gotham City Imposters is now closed. The game releases today on some platforms, tomorrow for XBL I think I'll purchase the game, it is quite a bit of fun, and now I don't entirely suck anymore. I'm still nothing compared to awesome players, and my aim overall sucks (particularly when in a running battle), but there are certain methods and tricks I can use that make me potentially formidable among newer players or those who don't pay attention - I use a stealth build, invisibility gas and a one-shot (With about 30 seconds between uses) weapon that kills virtually everybody in one hit. So I'm getting skilled at sneaking up on people, uncloaking, and throwing my hatchet to kill them. Doesn't work as well if they're running around, since you have to aim it precisely, but nothing's quite so satisfying as taking down a huge guy while he's guarding an objective. (Invisibility also isn't perfect, you can see a blurr, so I can be targeted and spotted, it's just not always easy).

Start off with a book foo:
Finished: Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower Book IV), by Stephen King (reread)
Started: The Wolves of the Calla (Dark Tower Book V), by Stephen King (reread)

Wizard and Glass is probably my least favorite of the Dark Tower books. I can also imagine it must have been somewhat unsatisfying for readers who read them as they cam out. (spoilers behind the cut, but only for up to this book)
( Read more... )

Finished: Tesseracts 4 (short story collection)
Started: Tesseracts 5 (short story collection)

Yes, more Canadian short stories. This one's a bit amusing because it contains two stories by people I've interacted with. Karl Schroeder (who I met for the library's Writer-In-Residence thing back in February) co-wrote a short story "The Toy Mill", about a little girl and an evil Santa (I believe they later turned it into a novel/novella), and Allan Weiss, who writes a story called "Ants", taught a class I took in "Apocalyptic Science Fiction". At the time I'd never read anything of his (that I can recall), though I was aware he was a SF writer.

Those two stories were among the better ones in the anthology, which is a little on the uninspiring side. Another writer who I've been exposed to mostly through the Tesseracts series that I'm becoming rather fond of is Elisabeth Vonarburg, a Quebec-based writer who writes in French (her stories are translated, of course, for I read very little french). They're a bit hard to describe, but there are some neat ideas and images in the ones I've read so far and unlike a lot of other-language translations, they don't feel especially stilted or awkward. Actually lately I've become more interested in SF in translation from other languages and cultures, just to see what ideas they have that I can steal... err, I mean, that might be missing in more mainstream works. (I suppose steal, too, but only in the sense that, particularly in SF, writers are frequently inspired by ideas of others, not stealing the story directly but one idea and going in a completely different way with it). Unfortunately I'm not QUITE interested in it enough to want to buy a new anthology or translated novel (though there are a couple of translated Japanese SF novelsreleased lately that sound interesting, they're all in hardcover or overpriced oversized TPB format. Publish in normal paperback, then we'll talk) , but I do try to keep an eye on used bookstores for things like it.

Now, off of books for a moment and to a meme: (although if you want to do it on a book character, you can!)
Name a character from one of my fandoms/shows/anything and I'll give you:

(a) Three facts about them from my personal fanon.
(b) A reason he/she sucks.
(c) A reason he/she is amazing.
(d) Five things that I'd like to see happen to them.
(e) Five people that I can't ship that character with and why.

Since I doubt I'll get many different people participating, and it seems like a kind of fun thing to do, if you WANT, you can ask me more than one.

And finally, I believe I'll be going to my work's XMas party next weekend. Yay for me being slightly less than a total hermit with no social life. Although I don't expect anything other than an awkward lonely experience in a bigger crowd than my usual solitary lonely experiences, at least there'll be a free meal thrown intp the deal.

Finished: 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 ( Read more... ). 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) ( Read more... )
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. ( Read more... )

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 ( Read more... )

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.

First one in a while, since I stopped buying the only comics I buy due to the crossover.

I got:
New Mutants #15 (interesting setup, although since I skipped the crossover a bunch of what they're talking about doesn't mean that much to me)

I also picked up some nice finds in the used bookstore:

Tatja Grimm's World, by Vernor Vinge (early novel)
The Dreaming Void, by Peter F. Hamilton
The Exile Kiss, by George Alec Effinger (Book 3 of the Budayeen/Marid Audran novels)
and
Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card (and a pretty good deal for used in hardcover too... I'd have preferred softcover but most used bookstores would even sell the softcover for more than that)

And, in video game news, I picked up Left 4 Dead 2. You know me and the zombies. I've been having a ball playing #1 online. I'll practice a bit on the levels for 2 solo (so I get a little familiar with the maps) before playing that on line.

And blah, mid-writing this, checked my e-mail, another rejection on a short story. I didn't really expect much, since it was one of the big ones (Asimov's), but still harshes my buzz from the purchases. So that particular one's going on in the trunk for a little while, maybe to try again if I get a printer or one of the current 'mail only' places opens up to e-mail submissions.

So, yes, the event I alluded to in my last post that I would have to write about today was, in fact, my evaluation with Karl Schroeder (author of Ventus, Lady of Mazes, Permanence, and the Virga series).

He told me I stunk at writing and I should give it up forever.

He told me my story was awesome and publishable right now and in fact he's already lined up a publisher.

He kicked me down the stairs and then stole my wallet, and threatened my family if I ever told anybody.

In other, alternate universes, all of those may have happened, but in this particular universe ( Yes, I'm making you click on the cut )

This week I got one book:

New Mutants #9 (relatively good... technically released last week, but I didn't realize).

Full reviews as usual at my comic reviews site for anyone interested.

At the used bookstore (and one at a regular bookstore's discount bin), I picked up the following:
Shadows Bend by David Harbour and Richard Raleigh ("HP Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard really teamed up to fight the type of Cthulhuesque evil Lovecraft wrote about")
Old Twentieth, by Joe Haldeman
Nebula Awards Showcase 2007

Also discovered a new used bookstore. Technically not new, I guess it's been there for a few months now, and technically I saw it about a month or two ago, but I didn't enter the first time I saw it and hadn't had a chance to go in until now. But it's right on my way home from comics, and yet still close enough from home that I can see myself popping occasionally even if it's not a comic day. Respectable size SF shelf, too (they even have a separate shelf for Canadian SF). Didn't buy any of the books from there this time, but I could see myself doing so in the future.

Oh, and I just learned that series 2 of Survivors has FINALLY started airing. Have to get that (through... magic) and watch it, really enjoyed the first season.