Marilee J. Layman

06:42 pm: Reading Out of Bed
I want to finish Hybrids tonight so I can hand it to whomever wants it at bookgroup tomorrow, but I've had a tough week and got behind. So I sat in the recliner earlier and read 50 pages in 30 minutes. I now know that it's definitely the meds that make me read slower in bed!

I'm just doing laundry today. I finished the baby shower thing and will wrap the presents today. I've been loading my totebag with stuff for tomorrow. I think I'll have to call the librarian's husband, who is usually there first, and see about him carrying the cake into the community room, assuming the icing hasn't melted to bits first. I can't believe I'm so nervous about this -- whatever happens, it will work out.

Tags: books, shower

08:13 pm: Miracle and Other Christmas Stories by Connie Willis
A lot of these stories were in Asimov's, so I wasn't surprised when I recognized them. Then I read "Cat's Paw," which ISFDB says is new, and I know I've read it before. So I thought maybe the movers had gotten the collection mixed up with the new books and I just didn't remember reading it. That happens, but this is pretty new -- 2000. Last night I read the last story, which is also new, and I don't remember reading it. I dunno.

I think Connie Willis writes best at the shorter lengths and these stories, even the two religious ones, are beautifully written and fun to read. I particularly like the two that take place partly in offices, since the offices are so similar to where I worked back when I worked. I think this is a great book to read, even if you're not a Christian.

Tags: books

04:59 pm: Humans by Robert Sawyer
This is the sequel to Hominids, which I reviewed here. A lot of middle books in trilogies sag, but this one not only did that, but offered a 40-page polemic from the Neanderthal about how irrational religion and war were, most of it standing in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I agree with his viewpoint, but I don't like 40-page lectures in the middle of my fiction.

At the end of the first book, the Neanderthal has gone back to his world, leaving the rape victim who has come to love him on our world. In this book, he and an ambassador are sent back here and Sawyer spends almost the entire book telling us how much better the Neanderthals (as he sees them) are than we are. The ambassador brings the top 10 artisans and inventors to the UN and offers all their expertise to our world, the Neanderthal says how irrational we are (his suggestion that if all presidents had to announce war in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, they wouldn't, is clearly wrong), and when the woman from our world goes to theirs, she finds it easier to work without men (the way their society is set up). The book does advance their relationship.

The third book (which is not here yet) had better be good.

Tags: books

06:34 pm: Asimov's August 2008
The front section had a guest editorial by Stephen Baxter about Arthur Clarke, Agberg's reflection on story length, James Patrick Kelly's article on how science fiction is too good, and something on Awakening by Rudy Rucker, which I didn't read. The first paper page has another really awful ad for a self-published book, although at least this one is through Lulu.

I was really struck by three very strong stories in this one:

1. Lagos by Matthew Johnson -- what happens when the World Bank lets Nigerians run telepresence booths? This is much more complicated than that sounds, and it's not just his excellent writing, but the many layered ideas that are there.

2. Divining Light by Ted Kosmatka -- if you use Feynman's two-slit experiment and find that other mammals can't collapse the wave, what do you test next? I disagree with the conclusion of this story and would like to argue about it with someone. Or at least discuss it. It's still a very deep story.

3. Wilmer or Wesley by Carol Emshwiller -- he's captured as a baby (they kill his mother) and put in a zoo. As he grows up, he finds he doesn't look any different from them, he can talk, he's an artist -- why is he different enough to be in a zoo?

Tags: books

09:25 pm: Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer
This was our bookgroup book for today. It turns out I didn't read this before -- he has another with a neanderthal child and I read that. The basic story was interesting enough that I put in a request for the next book, Humans, at the library and just ordered the last, Hybrids, at Abebooks. And then emailed the group so nobody else has to buy it. I'll just pass it on next time to the ones who want to read it.

The story starts with a Neanderthal being dumped from their world's Sudbury Nickel Mine into ours, via a quantum computer. On our side, he has to be saved from the heavy water he landed in, kept from the raging government, and then quarantined. On their side, because of their society and computing advances, they assume his partner killed him, and the partner is accused of murder, the punishment for which is not death, but sterilization for him and everybody who shares his genes.

The Neaderthal society is rather socialized and doesn't make a lot of sense. As usual, the author has left no space for people like me (maybe they kill disabled people, but it doesn't say what they do). We learn a lot about Neanderthal men, but not Neanderthal women, and in our world, there is an unnecessary rape scene to cause sympathy.

The Neanderthal emotions and such are close enough to ours to recognize, which also seems kind of unlikely. In some places, Sawyer has put invented words in the book, but in others, he just uses ours and there seems to be no particular reason. A tabant in their world is clearly a guardian in our world. And the technology they have that we don't doesn't have invented words.

We all agreed that the basic story was pretty good, but the worldbuilding and physics were unbelievable. If you like Sawyer, you've probably already read this. If you don't like Sawyer, don't bother with this.

Tags: books

09:11 pm: The Dragons of Springplace by Robert Reed
I'm finally reading from my to-read piles - I think it's been about a year where I've had other things I needed to read first. I have a number of Reed's books, but I've always liked his shorter works better and this is a collection of those. I read many of them in Asimov's but a number of the others are new to me. I can't pick a favorite -- they all have a sense of place, good characterization, and excellent plots. Several are in a particular universe where we get glimpses of the whole. I really enjoyed this and it's highly recommended.

Here's the ToC, courtesy ISFDB:

* 1 • The Dragons of Springplace • (1997) • novella by Robert Reed
* 39 • Waging Good • (1995) • novelette by Robert Reed
* 79 • To Church with Mr. Multhiford • (1997) • shortstory by Robert Reed
* 96 • Stride • (1994) • novelette by Robert Reed
* 129 • Chrysalis • (1996) • novella by Robert Reed
* 172 • The Utility Man • (1990) • shortstory by Robert Reed
* 187 • Guest of Honor • (1993) • novelette by Robert Reed
* 217 • Decency • (1996) • shortstory by Robert Reed
* 231 • The Remoras • (1994) • novelette by Robert Reed
* 262 • Aeon's Child • (1995) • novella by Robert Reed
* 302 • The Shape of Everything • (1994) • shortstory by Robert Reed

Tags: books

11:31 pm: Jack Haringa Must Die! edited by Nicholas Kaufmann
I bought this chapbook to support the Shirley Jackson Awards, knowing that I'm not much for horror, and that's still true.

On March 7th, a batch of writers wrote little vignettes in their blogs on how Jack Haringa would die. Who's Jack? He's a critic/editor/teacher who drills down to the least error in a book, be it punctuation, grammar, plot, or title. He lent his name for the chapbook, which collects the best of the blog vignettes.

Horror has never moved me, so a lot of these were just so-so for me. I originally planned to list and have very brief reviews of the stories that I liked, but it turns out they're all of one type: Jack is somehow killed by variations of his own elements of fame: punctuation, grammar, etc. I don't expect these vignettes will be published anywhere else so if you want to read them, buy the chapbook!

Seriously, for $10 and shipping, you can support the Shirley Jackson Awards. I suppose you could just donate, but this way you get a book, too!

Tags: books

09:34 pm: Worldweavers: Spellspam by Alma Alexander
I reviewed the first book in this series a few days ago: The Gift of the Unmage.

This is an excellent follow-on book. The things we learned about the protagonist and her world are used in this book and new things are added. Thea turns out to have a gift for cybermagic -- making magic using computers -- and at first she's thought to be the only one. But then spellspams start coming and when you open one, you get hit with the spam, so there must be another. But who? The initial spellspams were just pranks, but they became more involved and more likely to hurt people as they went on.

Thea and her computer-expert friend go to a special mage's house to help find the spellspams and for him to help develop Thea's gift. It was the right place to go, but the wrong reasons. Thea has to push herself to the limit to keep our world safe from the Alphiri and her friends, family, and other mages help.

Again, a quick-reading tale that keeps you up late. Highly recommended for all.

Tags: books

07:42 pm: Stupid Management plus Odd Newspaper Things.
I slept later than I expected, but the guys pushing rollers were still working on the upper section of the parking lot/road when I got up. Now it's raining and that's expected to extend through Thursday. I don't really need the van until next Monday, although I wouldn't mind having it back in before then (and I don't want the parking violations folks to think it's abandoned). I may have to see if I can get a ride out to retrieve it at least through Thursday.

I found a number of interesting things in the May 18 WashPost:

Pulitzer Prize winning critic (and fan and habitue of Capclave), Michael Dirda, reviewed a book on Charles Fort and a book with his collected works.

Crazy spaceman doesn't quite get Dune.

And for my Seattle readers, a question to the travel section:

Q. We'll be flying to Seattle next month and then taking a ferry to Orcas Island. We hear that we'll need a passport for the trip. Is that true?

Tags: books, comics, condo, travel, weather

06:31 pm: Worldweavers: The Gift of the Unmage by Alma Alexander
After I trashed Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians, Alma asked me to read these.

This is the first of an alt-hist series where everybody has magic. Our protagonist, Thea, lives in the Pacific Northwest and as a Double Seventh (the seventh child of two seventh children), is supposed to be a fabulous mage. But she has never been able to do the least bit of magic. In desperation, her father gets her a Time Pass and sends her through an Alphiri portal back to an Anasazi, Cheveyo. The Alphiri are another type of being who live by their Codex -- buying and bargaining -- and Thea feels they are very dangerous. She doesn't know why she's with Cheveyo, but he will teach her, obliquely. She meets other powerful beings from different worlds and is sent back to her world, where she can't do any any of the things she learned. She goes to a school for the unmagic (like dunce school) and makes friends, who help her when she must conquer nothing.

This was a quick read and an interesting story, drawing from a number of myths. I had a moment during the first night where I was snagged by Thea using a four-pin knitting spool that is described as weaving a ribbon that can ravel at the edges, which it can't. Later on, this technique is described as making a braid, which sounds more like kumihumo. It probably wouldn't bother someone who didn't use these tools.

Highly recommended, adults and young adults. I'm looking forward to starting Worldweavers: Spellspam tonight.

Tags: books

08:41 pm: Asimov's Mysteries by Isaac Asimov
I had a sudden urge to read the Wendell Urth mysteries again and from what I saw, this was the only book that had them all. It has a couple other classics, too: I'm in Marsport Without Hilda and Marooned Off Vesta, as well as other stories.

His introduction says that he set out to prove that you can have science fiction mysteries with Caves of Steel and these are his short story science fiction mysteries. I enjoyed reading them again. They're not great prose but the mysteries are still interesting, as is Dr. Urth, the Mary Sue of the stories. The latest of the stories is 41 years old, so they are a bit dated. There are forewords with the stories that explain why he wrote them and so forth.

I had some trouble finding a copy and this one smells of dust so I think that may be why my nose keeps running. It needs a new home and if you would like it for the cost of postage, let me know. If you've never read the stories, you might enjoy them, and if you have, maybe you'd like to read them again! LJ gets first go, then ML, then it goes to the Friends of the Library, so it won't be homeless.

Tags: books

07:50 pm: Alcatraz versus The Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson
This is a middle-grade fantasy and the story is pretty cute. It's a little moralistic and I was totally put off by the idea that it was actually written by Alcatraz, but they had to use Sanderson's name in our lands. I think most kids would believe it was Alcatraz without the silliness and that silliness took up about a third of each chapter.

Alcatraz is a 13-year-old who has been in foster care his whole life. He's had many foster parents because he breaks everything he sees. Not on purpose, usually, but he just touches something and it falls apart. On his thirteenth birthday he gets a package of sand in the mail and this is when he finds out why he's been in foster care. You see, all the countries/continents we consider part of Earth are actually the Hushlands that are ruled by evil Librarians. The Free Kingdoms are continents filling up the oceans (who needs all that water?) and they know the truth. Alcatraz' family, the Smedleys, have been infiltrating the Hushlands and fighting the Librarians for many generations. The Oculators, which Alcatraz and his grandfather Leavenworth are, fight with lenses made from different special sands. Each lens has a different power -- firebringer, torture, tracking, etc. -- and Alcatraz has to learn how to use them quickly because a Librarian has stolen his birthday sands!

The book involves infiltration of a library/castle, small British dinos, a Samoan-like anthropologist/gun expert, and a thirteen-year-old girl who is their knight.

I'm afraid the part I found most interesting is probably not meant to be the most interesting in this or the next four books (which I don't expect to read). You see, the Free Kingdoms consider guns primitive because they have so many parts and can break, when you can just swing a sword around without trouble. They think the same of elevators vs. stairs and computers vs. pencils. It's an interesting idea, but not sustainable.

The idea that Librarians rule is not supported -- he does say at the end that government, organizations, etc., don't know they're ruled, but gives no information.

I read a fair amount of YA, even at middle-grade, and I like a lot of the good stuff. I really don't know if someone in middle school would like this or not. I don't recommend it for adults, and it makes me wonder just how the last volume of Wheel of Time (heh, typed World of Tiers first) will turn out.

Tags: books

08:03 pm: The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
This is an apocalyptic story where plants, named triffids, start growing all over the world and as they grow, they turn out to have stings they can whip at people, and then they start getting up and walking. They have oil that can replace fossil oil, so in the UK, where this story takes place, they're farmed, with the sting cut off. Then one night there's a shower of green lights from the sky and many people go out to look. In the morning, they're all blind. The triffids turn out to be carnivorous -- they sting and sting and then eat lots of the blind people. There are people who are not blind -- our protagonist was in the hospital because he'd gotten some triffid oil in his eyes and had bandages on.

From this point, we follow our protagonist as he finds different sighted people using different methods of trying to save themselves. Some try to save the blind, as well. It's a study of how effective different methods of post-apocalyptic managing are. The book shows us each minuscule society and how many end. One of the amusing ongoing bits in the book was how many Brits expected Americans to come save them -- they just had to hold out until the US planes got there. But triffids were worldwide and we were almost certainly in similar straits.

The book was published in 1951, four years before I was born, and the language and mores didn't bother me and I just muttered at the misogyny. One of the big things that bothered me was that the society that seemed most likely to survive (I vote the human race died out, they didn't have enough diversity) was setting up with polygamy. Now, Watson & Crick didn't discover DNA until 1953, but humans had been breeding plants and animals for millennia. You can't have the three women just have the one man's children. Each woman has to have every child by a different man in order to get enough diversity.

Wyndham was very careful to make it clear that the triffids and the green lights were Earth-based phenomena -- Soviet commie triffids and a falling satellite with some kind of nerve gas -- but it makes a lot more sense for both to be alien, from the giant triffid ship that picked us for the next farm and moved on. I can see that he wanted to show us the options for just Earth, but it makes a much too coincidental coincidence.

Something that is almost never included in books like this are people like me. My meds will run out, I can't walk very far or work very much, but I would probably see (I watch most sky stuff on TV so I don't have to haul a chair out and down the ramp so I can sit and look up without falling). So do they take me along to teach people how to do things? A number of the groups were primarily intellectuals and many of them didn't know how to do things like plow and set up pumps, etc. I know how to do a lot of useful stuff I can't actually do anymore. Or maybe I'm just as useless as most of the blind people. It makes the story less black and white, but I'd like to see it explored more. There are a lot of disabled folk.

It's a pretty good book for being 57 years old, and Ghu knows, we've had tons of jokes from it*, so even though I question some of it, I'd still recommend it primarily to see how you react to the different societies. Most of our group didn't like it.

*Years ago at a Balticon, an elevator broke with the doors open. The hotel people were worried that people would get in, push buttons, not go anywhere and get mad, so they put a large potted plant in front of the door. We made triffid jokes for the rest of the con.

Tags: books

07:32 pm: Saturday AND Sunday
Two days in one post -- I'm conserving!

I know one of our bookgroup members sometimes skims my LJ (which is fine), but that was why I didn't tell about getting "triffids" -- lucky bamboo -- to take to bookgroup. When I realized they were being used as wedding favors, I figured they were cheap enough for me to make a good joke, and they are. I bought plastic glasses for them at the grocery Monday and when I got home, they were in the parcel locker, shipped Priority Mail. I put them in my quart measure for the night and the thing I was looking for on Tuesday while Shiva had his teeth pulled were the "river rocks." I sat one night this week and made up the cups and they had already started growing a good bit by Friday night when I packed them into my rolling crate (with a bit of crumpled paper) and put it into the workroom.

Saturday, I towed the crate and carried my bag with my usual stuff in it out to the car. I stopped for this coming week's money (the credit union is on the way to the library) and then when I pulled into the parking lot, I saw the boy scout of the evening getting out of their car and I asked him to come carry something for me. So he carried the bag (then his dad took it from him) and I towed the "triffids" in. Unfortunately, I had to tell them they were triffids, but they still seemed pleased to have them. I'd printed out instructions for everybody. I have five here at home in a single big vase. I'll talk about the book in the next post.

After meeting, we went to the boy scout spaghetti dinner and auction. I was making jokes about how they didn't know which sides to serve to and remove from, but seriously, they need a lot more training and coordination. Some folks got their first serving 90 minutes after the event started. The only reason I did anything with boy scouts was because of our boy scout (his folks go to bookgroup and he goes to dinner with us), but I'm really tempted to tell them how to run it next year anyway.

The pieces I'd donated went for quite reasonable amounts, considering the event. I had dressed in a black blouse with round neckline and black pants wearing Melissa's collar and after I walked around the auction items (most donated by stores and restaurants) and bid on one I didn't get, I sat down on a padded bench to wait for the rest of our group to finish looking. A woman came over and asked if I was with the boy scout family and I said yes and she asked if I'd made the beaded pieces and I said yes and she said she thought so because I looked artistic. (!) I told her not to worry, that I didn't have any ego in this and whatever they went for was money for them and she relaxed and said she was worried about that because so many artists get upset if they don't get enough for their donations.

Then her mother came over and hugged me and we had an interesting talk on how much she liked the necklace I donated and how she was determined to win. I explained what dichroic was and that it was developed for the space shuttle and so forth. Lots of other women asked me if I'd made those pieces and when I said yes, said how much they liked them. That was nice, it was just a lot of being "up" after being "up" for bookgroup. And then the tables had the folding metal chairs. But I got up from mine twice fairly easily -- I really am getting stronger.

By the time I got home I was just worn out and I hurt a lot so I read email and put in the daily post and then slept in the recliner from 9pm to 3:30am. I read about three hours and then slept in the bed (without Shiva under the covers) for eight hours. Today I'm washing bed linens. I squirted Shiva's pain meds (two more to go) in his more-solid-than-liquid AD slurry and he licked it right up. Spirit thought she should get more food than she did, so I furminated her (which is unnecessary, but she likes it) and then went and got a handful of hair off the side of Shiva he presented to me on the heating pad. Now online and probably an early evening.

Tags: auction, books, boy scouts, cats, laundry, triffids

07:55 pm: Asimov's July 2008
This was a strange issue. A lot of the stories seemed less SF and more absurdist. I admit that I didn't read the Brian Stableford novella The Philosopher's Stone because the lead-in said it was the third story about an alternate universe and I had to plow through the first two and didn't feel like plowing through this one. The only story I really liked:

The Woman Under the World by Steven Utley - what happens when a transdimensional portal has a little blip and something that thinks it's the transported person shows up?

Tags: books

06:16 pm: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
The other pieces I've read by Cory have been full of good tech ideas but a little short on story and plot. This one has story and plot.

It's a YA about what happens to San Francisco after terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge. DHS descends and secretly incarcerates all the people they find on the street (and probably more) on Treasure Island*. Our 17-year-old protagonist, Marcus, tells the story in first person and when he manages to get out, he starts fighting back. An Xbox network, cloning RFIDs, giving counsel in a blog. His life becomes more and more dangerous and he draws a new girlfriend into it.

The story is pretty good, but my two big problems with it are the language (it's a lot like I write here and I know I don't write well anymore) and the constant infodumps on the technology. I'm 53, I know all this tech, shouldn't teens?

He says there are suicide fences on the Golden Gate Bridge and there aren't. A year ago tomorrow, the 17-year-old son of a friend jumped off. They're going back tomorrow for a brief memorial. In fact, many San Franciscans are against suicide prevention because it will make the bridge look less pretty and cost a lot. They also say that those people will kill themselves anyway, so why not the bridge? The last is definitely not true, this WashPost article includes references to the study. The book is set in the near future, and I suppose they could have them up by then, but it seems unlikely.

He also says that computers are good because they do exactly what you tell them to do. From a tester's standpoint, that is not always a good thing. I've seen a lot of programmers tell them to do things that weren't intended.

This is the best of Cory's work I've read, but it feels like an adult telling a teen story; it should feel more like a teen telling the story. Almost everybody else who's read it has loved it, so you should probably go by their enthusiasm.

*We were at Treasure Island for six weeks in 1961 because my smallpox vaccination wouldn't take. They tried over and over and finally sent us to Guam anyway. We had planned to be there six days and it was definitely an adventure in improvisation.

Tags: books

05:10 pm: Asimov's June 2008
Sheila's editorial talks more about what she likes in stories and Agberg talked about how we're using up metals. I found a number of the stories satisfying, but only one really interesting:

Call Back Yesterday by Nancy Kress -- juveniles in a mental health facility without windows suspect things are not as they look.

I would have liked Ian R. MacLeod's The Hob Carpet except, dear reader, for the florid and protracted descriptions in a prolonged narrative missive which invoked a manifest termination. (Okay, I frequently know the ends of stories near the beginning, but I think a six-year-old would get this. It would have been better as a pointed short story.)

A new author, Derek Kunsken, made a good beginning with Beneath Sunlit Shallows. I'll be looking for his next.

Tags: books

04:55 pm: Two More Doses!
Thank Ghu. I had to catch Shiva twice last night to give him the whole dose and came away with a claw hole and bruise at the base of my throat. This morning was not so exciting, but we'll both be glad when we're done with the amoxicillin. I called the clinic today and left a message for the vet -- telling her that he's gained all the weight back and is eating and elminating like crazy, and that his mouth looks fine to me. We'll see if she wants another week of meds.

I headed up to Kaiser Fair Oaks to get the screw back in my reading glasses -- I was there less than three minutes and round trip took more than 10 times that. I stopped at that Red Robin on the way back, though, and they no longer have pot roast burgers. :::sob::: The bacon guacamole burger was pretty good and I hear their other stuff is good, too. And it turns out the manager up there is right -- we are getting a RR near Davis Ford Crossing plus the one I stopped by. There's only about six miles between them, so I guess they think Manassas is a good demographic for them.

I stopped by the library to pick up Little Brother to start tonight. Shiva let me touch his head when I came back, but scooted back in the chair so I couldn't touch more of him.

Tags: books, cats, food, glasses

03:35 pm: An Alchemy of Mind by Diane Ackerman -- only read 1/3 through
Yes, the same author as the last book, and entirely by accident. The Zookeeper's Wife was widely recommended and I went on the library queue at 48 a few months ago. An Alchemy of Mind had been read by the husband of a friend and he liked it and since I like reading about the mind, I put in a request for it (to get it to my library -- both copies were at the opposite ends of the county) and it came in a couple days after the other and I picked them up at the same time. I hadn't even realized they were the same author until I got into the car and I checked the back flap copy to be sure -- same picture.

This is a popular science book and I don't read a lot of those. It's divided into ways the brain/mind works and includes science (from 2004, since it was published in 2005) and anecdotes and allegories. My problems with it were 1) that I keep up with brain science so I actually knew more in some areas than the book included, and b) the anecdotes and allegories were all about her. I don't mind good first person and she writes it well, but the anecdotes and allegories all felt too personal. Too intimate. More than I wanted to know about her. And then she believes in ESP and that humans probably had telepathy earlier and most of us lost it.

I went to read it more last night and realized I wasn't looking forward to it, so I put it back and started on the current Asimov's. I'm clearly not the customer for this book, but others may be.

Tags: books

05:35 pm: The Carpet Makers Redux
We discussed this last Saturday in bookgroup and I reviewed it here.

Well, I can't believe I was so stupid -- there's even cards with pictures of the Emperor hanging upside down in the book -- but I realized last night that the major characters might all match the Tarot Major Arcana. I printed a list of all the Tarot face cards and today I went to the library and pulled the book. I skimmed through it and indeed, the characters are based on Tarot. That doesn't actually make the book any better for me, but I emailed the others about it.

I wonder if Scott Card would have pushed Tor to publish it and then written an enthusiastic introduction if he knew it had to do with pagan stuff.

Tags: books

05:49 pm: The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
I've had more unsettling dreams and I'm pretty sure it's because I was reading this WWII book before bed. Diane Ackerman uses Antonina Zabinski's memoirs as well as interviews and many other references to tell us Antonina's story when Warsaw was taken by the Nazis through the Uprising and the end of their war.

Jan Zabinski was the zookeeper of the major European zoo in Warsaw. His wife Antonina was not only spouse and mother, but cared for sick and young animals. Jan had made a zoo with different environments for set of animals and things were wonderful until the Nazis entered the city. Jan, Antonina, and their son Rys were Polish Christians but Jan worked in the underground and they hid more than 300 Guests in their villa and zoo houses during the war. They had a lot of help from other Christians -- many wanted the Jews to escape -- but the Nazis had more weapons.

The book tells this horrible tale from Antonina's view in the villa, the zoo, and near the end of the war, in exile. We learn about not only the Guests (who frequently acquired animal names) and the animals, but the long numbers that the Nazis lined up and sent to death camps. My heart sank over and over. I knew this intellectually, but Ackerman gave me a story that grabbed me -- both in intensity and desolation. There's no actual blood in the book, but the tension and the massive numbers of the dead walking in front of you is devastating. Still highly recommended.

Tags: books

05:11 pm: The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach
This was the bookgroup book yesterday and we were quite divided about it. It was a lovely spring Saturday with days of rain in the future, so we only had six adults (years since we had so few) and two teens who mostly slept (usually we don't allow teens and these two read in the library itself during group). Of the six, two hated it, two loved it, two thought it was okay. I was in the hate group.

The structure of the book is that each chapter tells a small story without much plot. We meet a person or a place in each chapter and may have mention of them later, but you never really get a character to care about. If I wasn't reading it for group, it would have gotten The Eight Deadly Words.

Most of the chapters are about people on a planet that has had some kind of apocalypse and the society is strongly feudal. The people at the top of the planet's hierarchy are the hair carpet makers. Each man takes a lifetime to knot a hair carpet from the hair of his wives and daughters. If more than one son is born, the newer one dies (usually) because the income from the father's carpet will support only one son who then makes a carpet from his wives' and daughter's hair.

Everybody on the planet believes that the carpets are bought by the God-Emperor and used in his palace. People who question anything are killed. Everybody has a subsistence-level living. So into this, comes a scout ship -- the Emperor (who was not God) has been killed and the rebels have won -- and one of the soldiers landed. He goes missing quickly. Even shown pictures, the people don't believe that the Emperor is dead (after all, he's God) and they kill the people who speak heresy.

There's a lot of working up to why the Emperor died and how, and where the carpets go, and the book ends in a way that reminded me of "The Gifts of the Magi." You could read the first chapter and then the last two and get the entire plot. It would have made a nice short story. But what about all you learn about the people in the story-chapters? Well, I think a good author could have put that in a short story.

Before the stroke, I liked deep sociological and political plots, but when my brain rewired, it wired me to like stories where things happen. Nothing happens in this book.

Tags: books

04:52 pm: Zombieland
I feel like I'm not quite connected today, which is unusual because although I have new pain (the left side of my left foot -- the rheumatologist says this happens because I don't have enough flesh under my bones), I haven't taken pain meds.

I did, however, get the BFAC auctions up. There's a wonderful "Spam Guard" beaded doll, a great collar with cabochon, a lovely bead-embellished mermaid tapestry, a spectacular sunburst necklace, an amazing beaded bead necklace, a striking abstract necklace, and a flowery lampwork and bead bracelet.

I used the bathrobe protection to dose Shiva last night and this morning. Last night he slept snuggled up to the side of my legs, but today he's a little scared of me. He hasn't eaten a lot in the last day, and he hasn't pooped for two days. I'm debating calling the internal medicine vet tomorrow and seeing if they can see him and thus pay for two sets of bloodwork.

I'm reading The Carpetmakers for next Saturday's bookgroup. I'm a third of the way in, and nothing very interesting has happened yet. I should have known -- OSC "found" the author.

Tags: bfac, books, cats, health

11:13 pm: Asimov's April/May 2008
This is one of their double issues and I didn't find as many, proportionally, that I liked. I usually just talk about the ones I like, but there were some odd stories and I want to mention them:

Memory Dog by Kathleen Ann Goonan - a man realizes he has failed his wife and moves his engram into a dog and maneuvers to be her dog. This is written in an odd first-person style that really put me off.

An Almanac for the Alien Invaders by Merrie Haskill -- each para starts with omni and moves to first-person. If the omni was set off somehow -- space or font -- it would have been less jarring.

The stories I liked were:

Slidin' by Neal Barrett, Jr. - some time fissures open in places all over the world -- the one our protagonist works is in Canada -- and prefugees come through from awful times in the past. Our guy is in charge of greeting them and following up with them over time.

An Art, Like Everything Else by Nick Wolven - we have moved to using sims all the time, being in places without leaving our homes. A gay man's partner dies, but he still keeps appearing in the man's life via sim and the man has to figure out how to handle it.

Strangers When We Meet by Kate Wilhelm - this is another of her excellent stories, but it does have a lot in common with some recent movies. A girl has been in a car accident and her memory remains only for a day. It's determined that the best thing for her is to take part in a brain study because she can be protected there and the study will get a fresh mind every day. Turns out the military is interested in the brain study and her amnesia, too.

The Room of Lost Souls by Kristine Kathryn Rusch - this is a follow-up to Diving Into the Wreck which was in Asimov's December 2005. I liked the first story and liked this one, too. It was easily the best in the mag. A woman who used to "dive" into spacewrecks stopped when she lost too many divers. She's offered an odd commission -- to retrieve someone's father from the Room of Lost Souls, which is on an unusual space station. In general, everybody who goes into the Room doesn't come back, but she did, when she was a child. She decides to take the job, but the rules about it and the reason for it change disastrously. This needs a third novella and then Rusch has an excellent novel.

Tags: books

07:41 pm: Mirabile by Janet Kagen
I picked this for my memorial rereading. By the end of the book I was really sad that we won't have more stories from her.

This is a series of slightly-linked stories. They take place on a planet called Mirabile that's been settled by Earth colonists, but some of the animal embryo bank data was lost on the ship. Our protagonist is Annie Jason Masmajean -- all the colonists have their occupation as their middle name -- and she's the head Jason in her area. The Earth embryos have other animals hidden in their genes and may "chain up" to those. These are stories about what happens with both Earth stock and Mirabilan stock. There's also a wonderful family and love story.

Kagen was a biologist, and brings a very natural feeling to these unusual changes -- new animals and plants, interactions, and how they figure them out. Highly recommended.

Tags: books

08:09 pm: The Clan Corporate by Charles Stross
This is the third book in the Merchant Princes Saga (I've probably got the word arrangement wrong). Here are my reviews of The Family Trade and Hidden Family.

Miriam feels trapped and does something really stupid, which makes her really trapped. A prisoner, in fact, in world one. The other plot line happens in world two, our world, where an FBI agent, who happens to know Miriam, catches Matthias the traitor. Matthias planned on Witness Protection, not being turned over to the NSA. Most of the excitement occurs with Matthias and our FBI agent Matt in this book where we see just what levels of torture and mistreatment our government will go to. Back with Miriam, she learns she is to either marry the King's idiot son or her mother will be killed. Nice blackmail. She tries to figure out what to do when things do themselves, quite explosively. Another book where I kept wanting to read more than my eyes would stay open. Highly recommended.

Tags: books

10:14 pm: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
This was the book for today's bookgroup and we all agreed that the message from 1959 is still immediate.

The book is divided into three parts -- each six centuries after the last -- that show Father, Son, and then Spirit. Much of the book is about science vs. religion. Miller converted to Catholicism and he was strongly in favor of the religion side.

The book starts six centuries post-apocalyptic with a novice named Francis in an abbey of the Order of Leibowitz. It's clear to us that Leibowitz was part of the military/scientific group that provided weapons for the apocalypse. To the monks, he was someone who became a monk and tried to save paper and was hanged for his beliefs. The abbey has kept close guard over pieces of paper for many years when all papers were to be burned and they are also looking for proof that Leibowitz was a saint. Francis is led to find proof of Leibowitz's sainthood by a man clearly meant to be the Wandering Jew.

The second part starts at the capital of Texarkana and is strongly political -- New Rome (in the US) against Texarkana against nomadic tribes. A brilliant scholar comes to the abbey in case some of Leibowitz's (and other scientist's) equations actually have value. He is angry to find out that he is not the inventor, but the rediscoverer of some science. The monks greet him with a rudimentary generator and arc light -- devised by one of the monks -- and he is more gracious to them because of that. As he gets ready to go home, he finds out that the ruler of Texarkana is coming to take the abbey and all the small governments.

The third part takes place at the abbey in a time where apocalypse is imminent and is strongly religious. Many Catholic beliefs are pushed by the current abbot. The abbey receives fallout victims and initiates the secret plan. It's no accident that many of the monks have been spacemen and it turns out that the church has its own spaceship. The men, some scientists, women, and children, plus enough Catholic officials to assure continuation of the faith, and copies of the papers will go to make a new colony and never come back. The last spaceman on board taps Earth dust off his shoes before he closes the door.

There are many many religious clues and symbols throughout the book and if you don't read Latin, you might want this study guide which includes Latin translations.

I had the hardest part with the third section, of course, because choices made by the last abbot cause pain to innocent people. I suppose if you believe in souls, maybe the pain is worth it so you get to heaven, but it's always seemed like torture to me.

There is a sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, that was mostly written by Miller and finished by Terry Bisson, but it's not very good.

Tags: books

06:58 pm: Asimov's March 2008
James Patrick Kelly covers the new Mundane movement in his column, and Sheila wants us to be sure we know she's open to new writers in hers.

The stories I liked this time:

1. Shoggoths in Bloom by Elizabeth Bear -- a black man in a white Northeast tries to learn about the giant jelly-like shoggoths. The Lovecraftian mystery of the jellies is good, but the way she portrays the time and people is excellent.

2. This Is How It Feels by Ian Creasey -- in this future England, people who commit crimes are punished with implants from people related to a similar crime. In this case, a man who sped too often has the implant of a father whose daughter died after being struck by a car. It comes close to paralyzing him and when he thinks he's found a way, it may not really be what he wants.

3. Sepoy Fidelities by Tom Purdom -- he had an earlier story in Asimov's in the same universe -- people inhabit other people's bodies for many reasons -- in this case, to be a decoy for assassination. Interesting tech, but great characterization.

4. Master of the Road to Nowhere by Carol Emshwiller -- we find ourselves in a tribe of outsiders -- not any kind we know -- and follow one man's attempt to leave. Emshwiller always has lyrical language, and this time it rides on the outside language, too. They've used typography to separate three types of speaking/narrating and I wish the fonts/sizes had been more different.

Ruth Berman's Snow Angels is a crisp bit of wishful poetry that I liked.

Tags: books

11:54 pm: The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
This is an alternate universe novella with Queen Elizabeth II as the star. At least that's what I thought. I wondered why it wasn't as funny for me as it was for the WashPost reviewer, and having read the people's reviews on Amazon, I realized that they are looking at it as picking at Elizabeth and that made it funny.

The book never names the queen, but the chronology, corgis, and mention of Diana and other people make it clear that it's her. The story starts when she's out with the corgis and they go bounding into a mobile library near the kitchen. Once she's got them out, she feels she must borrow a book -- bound by duty. She asks for recommendations from the two inside -- the librarian and a worker from her kitchen named Norman -- and takes a book with her. She dutifully reads it but finds it dull. She takes the book back, sees Norman again, and he recommends a book by a gay author (being gay himself, that's his preference in books). She also gets to keep the first book because it was on a Free shelf. She likes the new book and soon enough Norman is installed as a special page who may sit and read in a chair outside her office when she doesn't need him.

They read many books, hers mostly non-fiction, and talk about them and as this happens, she becomes less dutiful. Her reading is occupying time when she should be opening factories and going to concerts. Her secretary arranges to send Norman to a distant university, all expenses paid, and then the queen starts using the lady-in-waiting to get her books. (The queen is not sufficiently interested in what happened to Norman -- still too dutiful.) The queen starts making notes in notebooks, not just of what she's reading, but what she thinks about them. She's surprised when the prime minister doesn't know the history of the Middle East, because she's been reading about that, and surely it's part of his job. She lacks a book one day and rereads the free one from the mobile library. Now it's fresh, funny, interesting! She realizes that she has learned to appreciate and understand books.

Since she's still reading, the secretary goes to find an ancient servant of hers and gets him to talk to her about not reading. The servant is so old he keeps going to sleep and leaking a bit, but when she talks to him about the memoirs he's writing, he perks up and suggests Her Majesty write! His mission fulfilled, he's taken back to a little cottage and his dotage. The queen had already thought about writing, but this kicked her over into doing it. She hides her notebooks from the staff. The staff believes that because she isn't as careful about not wearing specific clothes too frequently (one has a large wardrobe), she's becoming senile.

During a dutiful visit to a college, she's served by Norman. She finds out that he's a graduate student, and what her secretary did to get rid of him. Norman is back as an assistant and the secretary is gone. She assembles the privy council for tea and talks to them about things that worry them and then utters the line that made me crow a bit. It's the last para of the book, and I'll put it in rot-13. If you're not used to rot-13, go to http://www.rot-13.com and copy the below in and it will translate.

Fur noqvpngrf.

I rather like that it's an alternate universe story instead of it being a way to make fun of the queen and her duties. If you're likely to read it for the pinches at Elizabeth, you'll probably find it more funny than I did. If you're likely to read it as an alternate universe, well, it seems quite reasonable.

Tags: books

08:23 pm: Winds, Errands, and a Dream
It was so windy today that you had to watch car doors to keep them from amputating your leg. The birdfeeder was swinging wildly on its line and the evergreen at the corner of the building was rubbing the building so hard, you'd think it was working through the siding.

After mentioning ABC in yesterday's post, and linking to the Amazon page, I scrolled down and read the Amazon reviews. They all agreed with me. The newspaper reviews were big on discovering alphabets and what they meant, but the book is big on telling every single thought that went through the protagonist's head. I gave it another chapter last night, and that was it.

I took recycling out, took the book back to the library and picked up the new one they had on hold for me -- Uncommon Reader, fiction about what might happen if Queen Elizabeth took to the library -- and then mailed stuff. Now that I have new glasses, the recent glasses are the backup and the old backups went off to the Lions Club for their recycling program. I don't know how likely it is they'll find someone as blind as I am, but maybe there'll be someone close.

I don't want the fresh Greek Salad stuff to get weird, so I may try chunking cucumbers and bisecting grape tomatoes in the recliner tonight.

I had a very odd dream last night. I was with my father in a place sort of like a seaside carnival -- lots of music, neon, excitement -- but instead of rides, people were watching other people being hurt and tortured. It made me sick. I kept trying to find a way out but it was sort of endless and there were steward-like people who would insist you turn back in. Then I remembered I had the plane tickets and maybe I could change the ticket to go back home sooner. It was when I was on a payphone -- nothing obvious about it -- that I realized that I was in my father's view of heaven and he was trying to convince me how wonderful it was. That's when I made myself wake up.

Tags: books, dreams, errands, food, weather

08:48 pm: Nice Glasses!
After Lucila cleaned, I headed up to the Vision Center at Kaiser Fair Oaks. I didn't even have time to sit down in the waiting area before I was at an optician's desk. She adjusted them and they don't hurt anymore. The traffic home wasn't as bad as I thought and after I got home, Luke came down to give me his proxy for the homeowners' meeting next month. Then he asked me about Giorgio's bill and he insisted on giving me some money. He's such a nice man.

The cats can't seem to get settled down today -- they keep ending up at opposite ends of the condo and yelling for the other.

I had the rest of the stew/soup and maybe I'll try to make the Greek Salad tomorrow. My joint is better today and I hope it will be even better tomorrow.

I read the first chapters of ABC last night and so far, he spends an awful lot of time telling and not showing. I'm going to give him another chance tonight but if it doesn't get better, I'm taking it to the library tomorrow and picking up the second one I put on hold, which is available now.

Tags: books, cats, food, glasses

10:31 pm: The Hidden Family by Charles Stross
My review of the first book, The Family Trade is here.

Charlie said these two had been one big book, which is probably why a lot of unanswered plot lines in the first were answered in the second. Miriam starts setting up business in the third world, runs into a Leveller who helps her, and buys herself a mansion. She's attacked by the lost thread of the Clan -- the original son was sent West and lost everything he had and had to remake the knotwork and got it wrong so his descendants walk between world one (the medieval world) and world three. They don't know about our world (world two). Also, her uncle has called an extraordinary meeting of the Clan, on her request, and that brings forth more that's been hidden. At the same time, a trusted non-walker employee decides to tell the DEA and CIA about the Clan, booby-traps the world one stronghold, and escapes. The Clan manages to get together and tries to save non-walkers who are in our world from the feds.

This was a breathless book -- things are always happening and happening wrong. There's betrayal, assassination, discovery, and prejudice. I enjoyed it greatly and am sorry it will be a couple weeks before I can start the next: Clan Corporate.

You can't read this first, but why would you want to when the first book is also excellent? Highly recommended.

Tags: books

03:03 am: Family Trade by Charles Stross
This was our bookgroup book for today and even though Charlie had warned me that it was just half a book -- Tor had published his one book in two, the second being Hidden Family -- and I had warned the bookgroup, people were really unhappy that the book doesn't have an ending. Three of the members had already started Hidden Family and one of the bookgroup members also acquired most of Charlie's book in the meantime. Most of us liked the half-story we had, but one of the guys kept insisting that Miriam could not possibly be that smart and know that much. I very carefully kept from saying that I would have, before the stroke.

The book starts with the protagonist, Miriam, and her assistant, Paulette, getting fired when they find a big business story for their industry paper. Drug laundering is involved and they quickly come to realize that the newspaper's owner is part of it. When Miriam visits her disabled mother to tell her, Iris gives her a box of her biological mother's belongings. Six-month-old Miriam had been found next to a dead woman's body and had been adopted, and she had avoided thinking about her biological parents most of her life and here was a shoebox full of stuff.

She went home and started through the stuff -- newspaper clippings and such -- and found a locket. She opened it, expecting pictures, but found an intricate knotwork. It grabbed her and made her feel awful and then she found herself in woods. Woods with machine-gun-armed horsemen within hearing. She tries the locket to get home, and does, but in a different place than she had been because she'd moved while in the woods.

Things happen where she is kidnapped to the other world and learns she's a high-ranked noble woman of a significant Clan. This is where she finds out that her mother had been traveling on the less-technological side of the rift when she was set upon and killed and transported herself and Miriam to our world at the last minute. (This is where I wondered if Miriam had read or watched anything in the last 10 years, since until she's told, she never guesses that her mother was from the other side.)

The other side is still at a medieval point, except for what the world-walkers of her Clan have brought in. It turns out they're buying all this stuff by carrying drugs across to the other side of the med continent using the rift as a transfer point. The drugs are brought to our world via the transfer, sent via a corrupted Fedex agent to California, where the Clan there takes them back to the other side. The interior of what would be the US is still wild and drugs wouldn't make it from one coast to the other, but the our-world Fedex solves all that.

Miriam has figured out that she can't get away from the Clan, so her businesswoman mind is trying to figure out how else to use the world-walking to make money. (I had an idea, but the folks who have gotten into the next book already said no.) She also wants to change things incrementally so there isn't the gap between nobility and peasants.

The book does an excellent job showing us how awful medieval life really was, and in one case, how surprising our world is to someone from the med side. There's a lot of intrigue and assassination -- both from unhappy Clan members who won't have their shares once Miriam is confirmed as her mother's heir and from the drug folks on our side -- and a romance. I had dreams of being confined every night I read this book, so clearly Miriam's problem got to me. I really liked this -- highly recommended -- and I'll start the next tonight.

Tags: books

09:25 pm: Probability Space by Nancy Kress
We read the first book in the trilogy for bookgroup and I reviewed it here and reviewed the middle book here.

When I emailed David Hartwell about the idea that this was a single book, cut into three parts for publication, he responded that they were separate and had been published as they came in. He said he thought Kress had had a change of mind partway through and that the end was written while her husband, Charles Sheffield, was dying. I can see that's part of the reason for the lack of connection between books, but isn't that part of what editors are for? (To be fair, Hartwell edited the first and second books only.)

The first book, Probability Moon, was spent on a planet called World and in orbit above it. We learned society, rituals, even some language, and a number of native people. The second book, Probability Sun, had an entirely new cast of characters except for two from the first book. They spent some time on World, most away. This third book had the same characters as the previous one, but spent one short section on World and the plot could have been slightly adjusted to not include that, so I think it was adjusted just to include World since it was the primary focus of the first book.

This book follows on well from the second one, but again, you'd have to read the first book to really get it. We start the book with the tetchy physicist being captured, his older daughter accidentally home, and she runs away. She and her father, plus the primary characters from the second book have harrowing adventures that include growing up, being caught in a revolution, and the end of the world. It's not a bad story. There's just no real flow through the trilogy. I still feel a little cheated. I usually like Kress' books, but I think this series is going to the Friends of the Library.

Tags: books

06:38 pm: Probability Sun by Nancy Kress
We read Probability Moon for this month's bookgroup and were not very pleased with it. This sequel is at least a full book. There's another sequel, but this one has a decent ending.

A mostly different batch of folks return to World, one being a really annoying very smart physicist, and they excavate the artifact in the holy mountains. It turns out to have settings that are alternately shield or weapon and they decide to take it back to Sol System for safety. When they leave, two of the original scientists stay on World to help the natives deal with the loss of shared-reality (moving back to feudal level). Up on the ship, secret from almost everybody, is one of the enemy Fallers and a Sensitive (gene-mod) is trying to talk to him. The final ship scenes are the most interesting part of the book, and the military matters will be familiar and funny to anybody with military knowledge or experience.

I don't think you can read this book without the first, but it's not a bad sequel and it's a much better book. I'm going to start Probability Space tonight.

Tags: books

07:30 pm: The End of the Game by Sheri S. Tepper
This is the last trilogy of the True Game series by Tepper. We reread the first for bookgroup and I decided to reread the two others. My reviews for The True Game and The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped.

This trilogy is mostly about Jinian, who becomes lover/wife to Peter, the protagonist of the first trilogy. Her story skips most of the part where she's in his books, although she corrects some things he remembers wrong.

It's an interesting story, tied into the earlier six books, but with a different aspect of life in that time. Jinian learns a lot from many people, including the original intelligent beings on the planet, and at the end learns something that enables her to defeat the immediate evil. There's a mostly happy ending, but the moral of what she learns is pushed a bit. I still think the fifth book of the nine is the best, but it can't be read without the others.

This is nominally SF, but there's no doubt that the SF is trappings and it's really fantasy.

Tags: books

03:42 am: Probability Moon by Nancy Kress
This was our bookgroup book for the month and we had one of those very uneven divides about it. I liked it, and so did someone who had time to read the other two. The others were upset that a lengthy prologue had characters that never showed up again. I looked at it as a first act, and told them that, and offered to email David Hartwell to find out. After all, our next book, Family Trade, is only half a book -- Tor decided to publish the original book in two halves, so maybe this one got published in thirds.

In the future, there are two primary states on Earth, plus others on Mars, Luna, and the Belt. We've found a star tunnel from an alien race that has interesting properties. We've met a lot of other humanoid races -- differing from us by very small amounts -- and one of them, rather than saying "hi," is trying to kill us. We've never spoken to the Fallers (no idea where that name comes from) or seen them, but they're trying to kill us.

We're sending anthropological teams to the planets with people like us and the prologue starts with the all-powerful military guy for Earthspace getting some kind of notice about one particular planet. Another team is sent, but along with them is a retired scientist and staff because the first team found that one of the moons is a manufactured item, made of materials like the space tunnels.

The book has two stories -- what happens down on the planet as the team struggles to seem welcome to a race that has "shared-reality," and what happens in space as the moon is investigated. All the action is in the last part of the book and while it reaches a sufficient ending, it's not a very satisfying one. I suspect you should plan on reading all three books to really get the story.

Tags: books

03:28 am: The Arrival by Shaun Tan
I finally got to the top of the queue and picked this up at the library. I suppose this is technically a graphic novel, but it's a lot more like a book without words.

Tan tells the story of a man who leaves a dangerous city to cross an ocean and come to a new land. A wonderful odd confusing new land. He doesn't know the language or how appliances operate or anything. As he meets people, he learns, and he also learns how they came to this land.

He tells it not just in pictures, but in type of pictures -- small, large, opening up, closing down. It's amazingly lyrical and yet it's just pictures. Highly recommended.

Tags: books

05:45 pm: Asimov's February 2008
Sheila Williams has a nice story on being told SF stories as bedtime stories in her editorial.

I particularly liked two stories this time:

1. From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled... by Michael Swanwick -- humans on another planet desperately need land there and a violent situation with the natives gives a diplomat the chance to make that happen.

2. The Egg Man by Mary Rosenblum -- this is part of her Drylands universe and a man is traversing the unregulated desert (formerly part of California) to give eggs with biological vaccines, etc., to folks who need them. He has a second, personal reason to be out there, though, and this time, he may find the answer.

This issue ends the serialization of Allen M. Steele's Galaxy Blues which is in his Coyote universe. I didn't like it as much as I have the other books -- I didn't like the protagonist and that really colored the story for me. This serialization has been 160 pages and books are rarely that short. I wonder if he'll beef it up for publication. It is a good book to read if you read the Coyote universe, though, because it is a semi-sequel to Spindrift and you learn more about the aliens.

Tags: books

05:03 pm: Reading on Fumes
I want to finish the last True Game book this week plus read the current Asimov's because next Saturday I have to start Probability Moon for the bookgroup. But it's taking me an amazing amount of time to read just a few pages -- about three minutes a page -- and I think this is because the books are really fantasy, even though they pretend to be SF. Generally, even hard thinking SF I can read a page a minute (I was a lot faster before the stroke, but it had a lot of affect on my words). I'm about 150 pages from the end and that would take five days at the rate I'm going. It's an interesting story, but I'm just not reading fast enough. I think I may start the Asimov's tonight (so I'll have it to pass on to the group on Saturday, plus I want to finish Allen's Galaxy Blues) and if there's time at the end of the week, read more on this last book of the series.

Tags: books

07:54 pm: The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped by Sherri Tepper
This is the second trilogy in the True Game series. I reviewed the first trilogy here.

I enjoyed reading this more mostly because it's in third person and the writing is much better. The shape of the trilogy is odd. The first trilogy, The True Game, is sequential. This one isn't. The first and third books have to do with the overall story, but the second book is an odd visit to another country.

Mavin is a shifter and as she gets older in her Shifter house, she learns that female Shifters might as well be in brothels and she decides to get out. Shifters are supposed to be able to change to one or two other shapes, but Mavin practices and changes not only to many other shapes, but to imagined shapes. She finds a way to make her older sister, Handbright, leave, and Shifts to Handbright's shape and kills the worst of the rapers in the house. She immediately leaves the house with her younger brother, Mertyn, who we know from the first trilogy will become a King and important in that story. During their travels they meet many people, including Himaggery (in the first trilogy, which is set later, we learn he's her mate) and Windlow, also active in the first trilogy. Mavin has a critical part to play in cleansing plague from Mertyn and everybody else in the city and in the process, meets aliens.

The second book starts with a different character on another continent. The animals have become giant and the people have moved into a chasm, living on bridges made of the roots of giant trees. This is a fascinating culture and I would have liked to have more of it. Mavin saves the first character, finds Handbright is stuck mindless on one of the bridges and is pregnant, and helps save the bridges from creatures deep in the chasm. Handbright dies in the pregnancy and her lover was earlier changed into a non-human form, so Mavin takes the twin boys back to Shifter land. She names them, so we know them as young adults in the first trilogy.

The third book spends a short amount of time giving an idea of Mavin's exploring. This is something she can do more safely than anybody else because of her Shifter ability. In the first book, Windlow says he Sees Mavin and Himaggery back in that city in 20 years. So she changes to herself, cleans up, and waits on the balcony and he doesn't come. She finds a note from Windlow -- Himaggery set off eight years ago to find the answer to a mystery and hadn't replied or returned. Her search for Himaggery is harrowing. This is a tenser book than the others and held me closer to the story.

I liked this trilogy a lot, but I don't think you should read it without reading The True Game first, and that's not very well written.

Tags: books

07:23 pm: Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett
This was our book for bookgroup this month and I went on to read the other two in the trilogy: Johnny and the Dead and Johnny and the Bomb.

Johnny, an English boy in 1992, starts playing a "kill the aliens" game when suddenly the aliens start talking to him. They want to surrender. They want safe escort across the border. Is this really happening? Is he mental? Can he get the aliens across the border when other humans are still showing up to fight? He and his friends and a girl they meet work on the problems.

This is clearly written for the first Gulf War and is very well done. There's no real reason you can't think of it for the present war, either. Pratchett uses his typical humor and engaging characters to make the book very enjoyable. If you read this one, read the others, too.

Tags: books

05:42 pm: Children and Christmas
I went to Tony's for lunch today (a slice of rustica and iced tea) and they had had the windows painted. A big Christmas tree on the left, bells under their name, and a Santa Claus on the right. While I was eating, two families came in, one with a little Chinese girl and an older girl who looked Thai. The Chinese girl wouldn't come in -- she kept patting Santa and saying something I couldn't hear. Finally, one of the guys picked her up and she kissed Santa on his cheek and then she came in. I guess she didn't watch the Monk special last night!

When I was done, I went to the ATM for next week's money, since I was near it already and came home to find no mail yet at 4pm. I haven't seen a mail truck, so I have no idea what's going on. I'm expecting some books and a CD from Amazon.

Last night I started the book for bookgroup next Saturday: Only You Can Save Mankind. I'm going to read the whole trilogy again before Saturday. I tell you, that's a story that shows what makes us human.

Tags: books, christmas, errands

06:11 pm: Hunter's Run - Survival Is the Only Law by George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, Daniel Abraham
This was an ARC that came to the library system. The SFF ARCs always end up with our bookgroup and I took this one to read. The top of the back cover blurb sets what they want it to say:

...a riveting, emotionally compelling morality tale set in an unforgiving alien world that ponders the perennial question: What makes us human?

Humans are manning a colony planet for a superior alien species and our protagonist, Ramon Espejo, lives in Diegotown when he isn't out mining. The book opens with an "overture" showing us a scene from later in the book, then starts the story. Ramon finds a likely mountain (he's out of communcation range), and when he sets a coring charge, the front of the mountain falls down. His (flying) van is destroyed and he barely survives. Now there's a metal front to the mountain and a door irises. He's trapped by a different kind of alien in a flying box. The new aliens force him to hunt another human.

The plot elements in this book are well-used: emotional human vs. computer-like alien, cloning, and human forced to hunt other humans. They're fairly well mixed up in this, but nothing really new. I have to wonder if they took a part-Mexican colonist as their protagonist in order to make him more likely to drink, fight, and kill. It seems pretty stereotypical and it gives them someone who can change. But will he? What does make us human? I don't think the book comes close to answering that.

My rating for the ARC: Ehn.

Tags: books

06:28 pm: We Band of Angels by Elizabeth M. Norman
This book is the story of the Army and Navy nurses who were trapped on Bataan and imprisoned on Corrigedor and in the Manila area by the Japanese during the beginning of WWII in the Pacific. The author is a nursing professor and she talks a bit at the end about why she calls them "angels" rather than "heroes." What bothers me the most is how she calls them "soldiers." It's true that these days we have field medics and lots of support staff all called soldiers because they're trained that way, but in those days there was a big difference between soldiers and nurses and while these nurses worked in really awful jungle conditions and were imprisoned with 350 calories daily, they still didn't use guns or plan raids or work out strategies.

There are really sad and horrible stories in this book and we learn a lot about a few of the nurses, but I found a lot of contradictions within the book. First, she used "(sic)" when there were errors in the written pieces from the nurses (and once when there wasn't), but there were several misspellings* and misuse of words in her part (formerly instead of formally, epicenter instead of center, diurnal instead of daily, wove instead of knit, etc.) as well as a lack of the serial comma which added confusion. She also misused "less" for "fewer."

Secondly, she constantly bounces back and forth between saying men were wrong for treating the nurses special or as the "fairer sex" and saying the nurses didn't get enough attention. She also talked about how bad it was the nurses were used as a propaganda machine after they were freed but were forgotten when the war ended. She talks about how wonderful the nurses were because they were nurses, but then makes some sound worse than others.

Thirdly, she clearly dislikes the military, in just about every possible way (it is not possible to predict exactly how another country will attack and you prepare the best way you can), and she hates the Navy more than the Army. But the nurses were all right because they were, you know, nurses.

And at the end, she writes "[the women] prized their affiliation, their sorority, their womanhood because, as women, they were more naturally comrades than men." I think that's crap.

A bit about the organization of the book: the chapters are in narrative mode with endnotes marked all through. There are inadequate maps at the front of the book and there's 45 pages of resources at the end of the book: a timeline, a list of the nurses and other women who were imprisoned, a bibliography, the endnotes, and an index. She's clearly researched this quite well, but put her own spin on it. There are two sections of glossy page photos where it is striking to see how the women change over the years. She interviewed several of the women who were still living and would talk to her, and admits at the end of the book that she came to have a personal link to one, which was so obvious through the book that I'd been taking notes about it.

As much as I wanted to feel more for the story, I kept being pulled out by the errors, contradictions, dislike of the military, and favoritism. Here's rivka's review which is what pushed me to get it out of the library. rivka loved it and maybe you will, too.

*(sic) for "Waikii" but the book soon says "Siapan"



(Thank Ghu I read SF tonight.)

Tags: books

04:51 pm: She Ate Turkey!
I diced the rest of the thawed turkey leg meat last night and this morning, zapped it a few seconds so it was steaming, and then poured the packet stuff over it. Spirit not only ate turkey, she left packet stuff right in front of her while she reached out for the turkey. I'm pretty sure it was both the heat and the size, so since I was only going to buy stuff for her at the grocery store tomorow and I have 16 more days-worth of frozen leg-meat, I think I'll try the cold cuts and baby food meat Monday week.

The book I'm reading, We Band of Angels, is supposed to be about how wonderful the nurses were who were trapped on Bataan and then Corrigedor by the Japanese. And it's about that, but I've been taking notes about the apparent dislike by the author (who is a nursing instructor) of everybody else. Last night, she finally said it right out, so I wrote down the page number. I'm sure my different take on this from Rivka is that I grew up and mostly worked for the military so I know they can't do impossible things. I think the review will be difficult.

Tags: books, cats

03:56 pm: Asimov's January 2008
Sheila has an interesting editorial on "Harry Potter and the Future of Reading" in this issue.

I also liked:

1. Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonder by Mike Resnick -- two guys have been business partners until they go into a retirement home, is it okay to become young again?

2. "The Beautiful and the Damned" by F. Scott Fitzgerald by Tanith Lee -- there's a new plague out and cities are being domed to keep it in, but it's not the kind of plague you expect.

Tags: books

08:52 pm: The True Game by Sheri Tepper
This was the bookgroup trilogy for the month. There was some complaining about reading the trilogy instead of the first one, but if you don't at least get partway through the second, you don't find out it's really SF. One of the younger guys (getting married in two weeks!) and I recommended this for Tepper, and the guy we thought would hate it really liked it. You never know.

We meet the first person protagonist, Peter, in a school for Gamesmen. Vaguely similar to chess, these games are played with psi powers and end in death. The Gamesmen use pawns (no talent) and other gamesmen with lesser talents like fodder. Peter has been violating a rule by sleeping with a teacher/Prince (for rewards) and that teacher throws him away on a game. When he heals, Peter finds some odd small gamesmen that give him powers and he learns to use some of them at need. There is much evil in the world and Peter goes to find it. He also meets his mother, Mavin Manyshaped (a Shifter), and his father, a wizard. Eventually, they work through the immediate evil to save the world.

There's two more trilogies: The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped and The End of the Game that fill in more, but The True Game is the basic story. I first read it and the other trilogies in the mid-80s when they originally came out and rereading this now made me notice how bad the writing is. I blame rasfc for teaching me more about the mechanics of writing. I think I'll still re-read the other two trilogies, but first I'm going to read We Band of Angels recommended by Rivka Wald.

Tags: books

05:09 pm: Asimov's December 2007
This has a fabulous story that I talked about when I first read it: Connie Willis' All Seated On the Ground.

Other stories I liked:

The Lonesome Planet Travelers' Advisory by Tim McDaniel -- this is a short but funny farce applying Earthside travel guide ideas to other planets.

Do(This) by Stephen Graham Jones -- a teenager with family problems finds himself helping a computer.

Tags: books

06:26 pm: Asimov's October/November 2007
I'm so late in reviewing this because I had to read all the Coyote books before I read the part of Galaxy Blues that's being serialized.

There's an interesting conceit in this double issue -- Sheila had an homage to Asimov's Nightfall by Robert Reed, plus another celestial story, Leonid Skies by Carl Frederick, and put Asimov's Nightfall right in the middle. I'm normally quite fond of Reed's stories, but while this one was obviously an homage, it didn't quite ring true. Leonid Skies, however, was very good -- a father and son camping trip under a dome where the dome prefers to show movies on the inside rather than watch the Leonids.

Other stories I liked:

Dark Integers by Greg Egan -- some computer scientists stumble onto another world in a computer and must work to keep it from taking over.

Skull Valley by Michael Cassutt -- a rural law officer is required by the feds to chase a fugitive. When he finds out who the fugitive is, he makes his own decisions.

I loved PMF Johnson's poem "Endangered."

Jim Kelly's column takes on the Pixel-Stained Technopeasants, with the timelag of magazines.

Tags: books