After the Revolution (October Reading)
Nov. 2nd, 2005 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseA Slight Trick of the Mind (Mitch Cullin): I've read maybe two Arthur Conan Doyle stories in my life, but I keep picking up the ancillary fanfic fiction. This is emotionally awful - I don't care who you are, being 92 is a rough thing on a good day - and reasonably good fiction.
Future Washington (Earnest Lilley, Ed.): Lilley stood up at a WSFA meeting and said, "wouldn't it be cool if there were a collection of SF stories about Washington, DC?" This collection is the result. I am captivated by the central conceit, because DC is the city I've orbited since I was six, so of course I grabbed this as soon as I could. It's not as good as the anthology I read last month, but it includes several stories that made me very intellectually happy. So between the good, the bad and the joy of analyzing the downright ugly (see below), I think I got my money's worth.
High points: "Human Readable" (Cory Doctorow), "The Day of the RFIDs" (Edward M. Lerner), "Primate in Forest" (Kim Stanley Robinson). The KSR entry is an extract from his latest book, Fifty Degrees Below (coming soon to a library - and hold request - near me!). I would love it to death for that alone, but KSR tops it off by making extensive use of Rock Creek Park, aka Not The National Mall. There is more to DC than the monuments. Really. "Human Readable" has complex characters with interesting interpersonal dynamics, but subtly failed to explain the central concept to me, which meant I got lost at the conclusion. It's great that people are arguing passionately about stuff in realistic ways involving grassroots campaigns and heavy lobbying, but it's not so great that I was fuzzy on why. "The Day of the RFIDs" is the story that I want everyone to read so I can talk to people about it. "Day" is a semi-epistolary short story that works for me. Casting the narrator as a blog-pundit gave the story a very cool future-is-now feeling. I think I disagree with the final message, but that's all right; this is an ideas story with just enough characterization to work.
Low points: Travis S. Taylor's "Agenda", "The Lone and Level Sands", by L. Neil Smith. Both suffer from severe technical problems of the "commas striking for higher wages and workplace respect" variety. Taylor has most emphatically not mastered the art of the comma. Nails on a chalkboard in almost every single sentence. This was so distracting I remember very little of the actual story, except that the end was very, "huh?". Smith attempts to write a story that's 50% flashbacks and 40% exposition, generously laced with political agenda. On the Cherryh-to-Weber exposition scale, "Sands" piles its dunes at the Weber end. That doesn't leave much room for, you know, plot or characterization, the things that make me not want to brain the author with his own agenda.
That was the good, and the ugly. The merely bad included "A Well-Dressed Fear" (B. A. Chepaitis), which I challenge anyone familiar with fanfic to read without whispering, "Marissa Amber Flores Picard!", and Thomas M. Harlan's noir-ish "Hothouse", which had me cheering for the Black Hats.
Minor notables in the collection: Joe Haldeman's "Civil Disobedience", which demonstrates what control of narrative pacing can do, has a little local color and includes a nicely ambiguous protagonist; "Hail to the Chief" (Allen M. Steele), an ironic, brutal little piece about the end of the two-party system.
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Marjane Satrapi): Autobiographical graphic novel. Living in Tehran after the revolution seems to be a universally miserable experience for women.
Wizards at War (Diane Duane): One day, I will learn my lesson and stop reading books in one day. Really. Promise. Until then, the flaws will stand out more than the good bits.
My most profound quibble is that this is a kid's book, and I'm not a kid. So moments like Nita and Sker'ret busting out the big guns are less likely to give me giddy moments of joy and more likely to give me giddy flashbacks to Lois Bujold's The Vor Game and the infantry trainees in the fetaine incident. There's nothing like lethal force for nasty unintended consequences.
Carmela, on the other hand, made me laugh, and laugh, and laugh. Go Carmela!
Less frivolous thoughts: W@W has the most sophisticated structure of the YW books to date, juggling three PoVs, a "save the Universe" A-plot and several ongoing character arcs. The technical stuff works, thank goodness. It's interesting to note the increased emphasis on combined spelling and team wizardries through the course of the series; SYW... is all Nita & Kit, the second and third books involve relatively small groups, the fourth book hinges on a really big battle, etc. I'm less sold on the thematic aspects. Wizards at War is the seventh novel in the YW series, and ninth set in the YW universe. It felt very much like The Book of Night With Moon, since both dealt with incomplete species Choices and wizardry being hijacked by the Lone Power. Also, the climatic sequences are getting a little well-trodden. There's only so many times you can do, "we beat the Bad Guy and there was light everywhere" before I get bored. But again - kid's series. I am not the target audience.
Back to the frivolous: I'd like to predict Roshaun is emphatically not dead, and may get dragged out of some obscure underworld by Dairine. There "so not dead" signs were just short of neon.
Next month: bio nonfiction, hopefully. Also, much physics nonfiction, in the form of Serway's "Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Vol. 1". The class is - well, you've heard how the class is - but the textbook is shockingly good.
Future Washington (Earnest Lilley, Ed.): Lilley stood up at a WSFA meeting and said, "wouldn't it be cool if there were a collection of SF stories about Washington, DC?" This collection is the result. I am captivated by the central conceit, because DC is the city I've orbited since I was six, so of course I grabbed this as soon as I could. It's not as good as the anthology I read last month, but it includes several stories that made me very intellectually happy. So between the good, the bad and the joy of analyzing the downright ugly (see below), I think I got my money's worth.
High points: "Human Readable" (Cory Doctorow), "The Day of the RFIDs" (Edward M. Lerner), "Primate in Forest" (Kim Stanley Robinson). The KSR entry is an extract from his latest book, Fifty Degrees Below (coming soon to a library - and hold request - near me!). I would love it to death for that alone, but KSR tops it off by making extensive use of Rock Creek Park, aka Not The National Mall. There is more to DC than the monuments. Really. "Human Readable" has complex characters with interesting interpersonal dynamics, but subtly failed to explain the central concept to me, which meant I got lost at the conclusion. It's great that people are arguing passionately about stuff in realistic ways involving grassroots campaigns and heavy lobbying, but it's not so great that I was fuzzy on why. "The Day of the RFIDs" is the story that I want everyone to read so I can talk to people about it. "Day" is a semi-epistolary short story that works for me. Casting the narrator as a blog-pundit gave the story a very cool future-is-now feeling. I think I disagree with the final message, but that's all right; this is an ideas story with just enough characterization to work.
Low points: Travis S. Taylor's "Agenda", "The Lone and Level Sands", by L. Neil Smith. Both suffer from severe technical problems of the "commas striking for higher wages and workplace respect" variety. Taylor has most emphatically not mastered the art of the comma. Nails on a chalkboard in almost every single sentence. This was so distracting I remember very little of the actual story, except that the end was very, "huh?". Smith attempts to write a story that's 50% flashbacks and 40% exposition, generously laced with political agenda. On the Cherryh-to-Weber exposition scale, "Sands" piles its dunes at the Weber end. That doesn't leave much room for, you know, plot or characterization, the things that make me not want to brain the author with his own agenda.
That was the good, and the ugly. The merely bad included "A Well-Dressed Fear" (B. A. Chepaitis), which I challenge anyone familiar with fanfic to read without whispering, "Marissa Amber Flores Picard!", and Thomas M. Harlan's noir-ish "Hothouse", which had me cheering for the Black Hats.
Minor notables in the collection: Joe Haldeman's "Civil Disobedience", which demonstrates what control of narrative pacing can do, has a little local color and includes a nicely ambiguous protagonist; "Hail to the Chief" (Allen M. Steele), an ironic, brutal little piece about the end of the two-party system.
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Marjane Satrapi): Autobiographical graphic novel. Living in Tehran after the revolution seems to be a universally miserable experience for women.
Wizards at War (Diane Duane): One day, I will learn my lesson and stop reading books in one day. Really. Promise. Until then, the flaws will stand out more than the good bits.
My most profound quibble is that this is a kid's book, and I'm not a kid. So moments like Nita and Sker'ret busting out the big guns are less likely to give me giddy moments of joy and more likely to give me giddy flashbacks to Lois Bujold's The Vor Game and the infantry trainees in the fetaine incident. There's nothing like lethal force for nasty unintended consequences.
Carmela, on the other hand, made me laugh, and laugh, and laugh. Go Carmela!
Less frivolous thoughts: W@W has the most sophisticated structure of the YW books to date, juggling three PoVs, a "save the Universe" A-plot and several ongoing character arcs. The technical stuff works, thank goodness. It's interesting to note the increased emphasis on combined spelling and team wizardries through the course of the series; SYW... is all Nita & Kit, the second and third books involve relatively small groups, the fourth book hinges on a really big battle, etc. I'm less sold on the thematic aspects. Wizards at War is the seventh novel in the YW series, and ninth set in the YW universe. It felt very much like The Book of Night With Moon, since both dealt with incomplete species Choices and wizardry being hijacked by the Lone Power. Also, the climatic sequences are getting a little well-trodden. There's only so many times you can do, "we beat the Bad Guy and there was light everywhere" before I get bored. But again - kid's series. I am not the target audience.
Back to the frivolous: I'd like to predict Roshaun is emphatically not dead, and may get dragged out of some obscure underworld by Dairine. There "so not dead" signs were just short of neon.
Next month: bio nonfiction, hopefully. Also, much physics nonfiction, in the form of Serway's "Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Vol. 1". The class is - well, you've heard how the class is - but the textbook is shockingly good.