Marilee J. Layman

06:30 pm: Trashy!
The renters finished moving out last night with a party and today there's trash all over the front lawn. I can't see most of the back lawn. I emailed the board president because the two of us in our section who would be willing to pick it up, Luke and me, can't. Plus, the lamp next to my van is on during the day. It needs the light sensor adjusted or replaced.

In a review of his memoir, we find that Clarence Thomas compares himself to Tom Robinson from To Kill A Mockingbird." That makes Anita Hill white. I wonder if she's noticed.

Tomorrow, Comicmix.com will start new free comics! Okay, most are not my kind of thing, but they may be yours. I'm curious about The Adventures of Simone & Ajax! which is about a time-traveling young woman and intelligent green dinosaur.

10:12 pm: Coyote by Allen Steele
I had planned to read this and the following books when I got to this one in the piles, but Asimov's is serializing the fourth book which has some of the same characters as the third and is in the same universe, so I'm reading them now.

I originally read this story, more or less, in Asimov's as a series of novellas. I'm glad I read the copyright page first, where Allen notes that some of the stories have been slightly or significantly changed. A series of scenes from near the beginning that were etched on my mind are no longer in the book. On the other end, some info is repeated in each story and probably should have been edited out.

Coyote starts from a time not too far from now when the Republicans have taken over the country and Pacifica and New England have seceded. People in the Republic dress like people did in Civil War time, and the rules are chilling. Robert E. Lee is the captain of the first spaceship and will be taking colonists to an inhabitable moon called Coyote. Lee is disaffected and manages to replace most of the specially-picked Republican colonists with "Dissident Intellectuals" (I think I need a DI patch) and get away. When they get to Coyote, things are more difficult than expected, and some teenagers are, well, teenagers. I like it even more all together, with Allen's changes. Highly recommended.

Tags: books