Nobody, darnit

Went to the Paranormal Bender, tbclone47 has pictures.
We got there early (to compensate for traffic that didn't exist. Coming home was hell, though.) so we lost ourselves in the sf section of the University Bookstore, letting Duane tell us stories like The Missing Chapter in a Robin Hobb Book That We Had to Photocopy and Hand Out To People.

I spent almost $100 on books, and since I'm saving $1000 bucks by not going to Worldcon, I can do this. Mainly, I got people I know, online or otherwise. Of the speakers, I only got Mark Teppo's Lightbreaker and Cherie Priest's Fathom, since I've already got stuff by the others (and I just really wanted Fathom).

With 40 minutes to spare, we settled into the seating area, which had a table so San could finish his fan drawings. It's in the poetry section, so I was able to continue my search for a good poetry instruction book that includes traditional forms other than just the sonnet. They had a huge volume of Russian poems translated by Nabokov. I drooled, but it was 40$ and would have broken my arm carrying it around. However, I read the opening, which included a poem by Nabokov about translating poems. It included lines like (paraphrased) desecrating graves and dove droppings on your monument. I <3 Nabokov.
Then, to my joy, I found it. A book about poetry, emphasis on the traditional, by Stephen Fry.
<3 <3 <3

I'm reading a book I randomly grabbed at the library* called Enemy Glory by Karen Michalson. There's some cool stuff in there, and some beautiful descriptions that occasionally veer into the ridiculous (oh, god, she loves the word, "darkly.") There's also occasionally a D&D allusion that smacks me between the eyes with a twelve-sided 2x4. (He's an evil cleric! There's an illusionist gnome! They actually have alignments!) I could put up with that until the characters actually sat down and started playing D+D. I'm serious. There's no character sheets (so far) but WTF? We'll see if I can keep going.



*Because it--well, the sequel--had the word "Hecate" in the title. Anything to do with Hecate, Persephone or Lilith, I'll probably read. And if you know enough to do something with Hestia or Kore, I'll squeal with delight.

I just started one of Jo Beverley's books (Skylark). So far, she's the only romance novelist whom I've enjoyed consistently. I'm a crotchety, cynical, practical thing (as are, to my delight, many of her heroines) but I'm also a closet romantic. I love reading about emotional humans, human relationships, and soft, squooshy, broken people. I like to giggle and sigh while reading in bed.

This is the third book of Beverley's that I've read, and I'm starting to figure out what makes me like them. Most of the heroines have something else at stake in their lives beyond the need for love. In Skylark, the hero isn't even brought up until the third chapter. The heroine in Skylark also beautifully fits my definition of squooshy and broken. In those first three chapters--heck, in the first chapter, I get the picture of a heroine ready to be unfolded. The hints of her potentially uncontrolled lust, her readiness for new love, her need for an ally in her life. I'm excited for when she'll unfurl from worried widow and mother into a windblown romance heroine. The romance isn't all out there at once. So many authors rub my nose in the puddle of sugary piss that just dribbled down the heroine's leg on the first page when she saw her burly man.

Though I know Beverley has enough books out there to fill my occasional urges for romance, I'd like to broaden out. So, I made a little more effort to look at the romance novels in the grocery store's meager book section last night. I just read the first page, and didn't check the back. No luck, so far.

So far, I've been hooked by the first page of each of her books, so I think I can use that as a reliable indicator.

So I'm annoyed at the book I'm reading right now. It's well written, and well paced, and the characters aren't annoying. It's just...blah.
Normally I wouldn't whine about a mediocre book, but I figured out what's bugging me, and I think it's an important lesson.
First: There's no mystery. The big cool thing that happened in the beginning, which set everyone onto the paths they're taking, the HOOK, is solved. I know the how why what where and who of it. Maybe everyone's wrong, but there's no indication of that. Something bad happened, and no everyone's going to war over it. Which is fine, but why do I care?
That leads to point two:
The characters have nothing personal at stake. In Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, all the characters have something to worry about other than the big political stuff. Jon angsts about being a bastard and needing to find his uncle and wanting to be a scout and not getting to. Ned worries about his children and his honor.

This book... not so much. They have families, but the families are far and emotionally distant. War is a great thing to write about because it makes people pick sides (or create their own sides) and make hard choices. In this book, there are plenty of choices, but none of them are hard.

I'm about a quarter of the way through Harry Turtledove's Disunited States of America (Thanks, Tor!) The first chapter's great-- tense, exciting, you quickly figure out we're in an alternate USA about 100 years in the future. He's got a lot of great worldbuilding at first. There's a war memorial that lists a bunch of wars, so you can tell that our timeline and theirs split sometime around the start of the 19th century. As a result, the states are basically independent nations -- usually violent and repressive.

Then some people from our timeline show up, and the story turns into, "My alternate timeline! let me show you it!" And since everyone is stuck in a tiny town in west Virginia, that means the adults lecture the kids on history.

What I'd like, is to experience the world from the point of view of a native. I want to sink in and live it. Unfortunately, our native pov character is from California, a much freer state than Virginia, and she has about the same, "OMG this is awful!" attitude as the guy from our timeline. At one point, she even asks Mr. From-Our-Timeline "what do you think it would be like if we were all one country?" GEE, I'VE NO IDEA!!

I'm at the point now where every time they talk about history, which right now is pretty much constantly, it knocks me out of the story. The ways he brings up the history are great (two adult characters are historic coin experts) but there's just so much of it.

It's a fascinating world with decent characters and plot, but the infodumping is driving me batty.

Of course, I still worship the guy.

I went and bought more Dresden Files books thanks to watching the show the other night. I'm on Book 5 now (I believe my order of reading has been: 7,2,3,8,4 and soon 5, 9). Of course, the pissing off relates to religion - can't talk about religion without pissing someone off. I'm able to forgive him a little for defining an agnostic as someone who doesn't commit to the existence of god(s), but his (Harry's, at least) argument seems to boil down to: because there is crazy magic stuff, there must be a god(s) (even if you don't have to side with any.) Any other explanations aren't even considered. So what if you've met an angel? Didn't Harry ever listen to Styx? Maybe the angels are aliens? Maybe they're just massively powerful spiritual entities working on their own?

A lot of anti-god stories are functioning in a gnostic framework, whether they know it or not. An omnipotent god is not something you can kill, therefore it must be fallible and therefore not ultimate. So if you take the ruling deity as an ignorant and/or malevolent demiurge intent on oppressing us, it leaves room for something unknowable beyond that. (Ain, Pleroma, Brahma, Collective Unconscious, whatever.) Which is why I find Philip Pullman and his controversy train so damned funny.

And to me, calling that Beyond Thing "god" is pretty shaky, because I personally include "tends to mess with the world" as part of my definition of god.

Granted, gnosticism is way more complicated than I'm making out. I'm just using the Creator God vs Ultimate God theology it sets up.

I finally finished Accelerando, and it kind of blew me away. There is so much stuff in there that I don't understand (Stross is big on economics, whereas I can't get much past supply and demand.) He may well be crazy, but I can't tell. His book gives you future shock, as I think it's supposed to. He's saying that someday we'll be living in a world that right now, we couldn't even begin to comprehend. But the characters keep you grounded. They always manage to stay relatable, even when they're spawning ghosts of themselves and in general, doing stuff we can only barely imagine what it would be like.

The only stuff that bugged me was some either strange copy-editing, or unnecessarily artsy language on Stross' part, lots of his written dialects, and the ending, which was abrupt and confusing. But when you're barreling along like he does, I suppose some stumbling at the landing is inevitable.

I fell victim to cheap books again. This time, from the library used book sale, I got Dream Makers, Vol II, by Charles Platt. It's a bunch of interviews of science fiction writers. The interviews are done in the authors homes, and are all very fascinating. Platt is great at making each of the authors seems absolutely batty in their own way. Then again, I did intentionally start out with the batty ones. (William Burroughs was living in a former locker room. It was bare and full of concrete and there was a table with a lone typewriter on it. I am terrified of that typewriter. One of the most memorable, disturbing movie scenes for me was the "rub it on my lips, Bill," scene from The Naked Lunch movie. Talking cockroach typewriter.)

I don't know what to think of Platt, though. He has this huge introduction where he justifies his lack of female and minority writers, since apparently people yelled at him for that in volume 1. If he hadn't said anything, I never would have said anything, but he points out that most science fiction writers are men, and most of the women are either newcomers or tend towards fantasy. He then proceeds to trash the shit out of the fantasy genre. (First he says the science fiction authors who can actually write are the true oppressed minority, buried under a glut of crap, then goes on to say that all fantasy is crap. Well fuck you too, man. (Of course, the word, "anti-rational" automatically sets me off) )

Anyway, I decided I want to read the authors' work before I read their interview. So here's the list:

Harry Harrison
Donald Wollheim
Theodore Sturgeon
Christopher Priest
James Tiptree, Jr.
The first one I read. The interview was done in 1982, and is creepy. I really want to get that biography of her.
William S Burroughs (see above)
Jerry Pournelle
Arthur C Clarke
Edward Ferman
Joanna Russ
Fritz Leiber
Janet Morris
Keith Roberts
John Sladek
DM Thomas
Larry Niven
Stephen King (who gives the impression he was full of coke at the time)
Joan D Vinge
Keith Laumer
Alvin Toffler
Joe Haldeman
L. Ron Hubbard Okay, I haven't read his stuff, but I see his creepy seventies-era portrait through the window of the Scientologists every evening.
Kit Reed
Poul Anderson
Piers Anthony
Andre Norton
Jack Vance
Robert Anton Wilson





Holy Crap, it's snowing! That was unexpected.