Sat, 30 Dec 2006

Liberty, Equality, Dramacity

Hey, guess what I did in 2006. I read a novel. Then I did it again forty-nine more times. Not the same novel, obviously, as one of my self-set constraints was that they must be novels I hadn't previously read.

I just read the fiftieth and it was Drama City. This was out of my usual reading genres, a modern crime drama. Usually reading sf with the occasional fantasy, this book was a shift in reading styles. The first half of the novel was just character building and gradually warming heat under the stewplot.

Then somebody dies.

Until I hit that midway point, this book wasn't really grabbing me. We spend a lot of time understanding the central characters and their histories and it felt to me like it wasn't going anywhere until it abruptly dropped the story into gear and took off at a flash. The latter half benefits from the structure of the first half but I could have used a faster acceleration in the beginning.

So it's set in [as I guess I'm supposed to guess from the name] the District of Columbia and it's got ex-cons and criminals and some people on the other side of the law enforcement line but not very many. It ended satisfyingly and became a much more interesting book to me at just about the midpoint.

What I liked about this book

  • once things started to unravel, it takes off like a rocket in brisk pacing
  • the characters felt real, partly because of the use of repetition to establish the patterns and cycles of their lives
  • the dialog sounded natural to my reading ear
  • it's got a brief but torrid sex scene

What I didn't like about it

  • slow slow start; I prefer stories which start when something changes in the lives of the central characters
  • there's some minor graphic violence
  • in the first three pages, it already seemed the author was talking down to reader, through unsubtle repetition

Who might like this book

  • people running gritty modern role-playing games [Dark Champions, Unknown Armies, Esoterrorists, Delta Green]
  • people who already read crime fiction and like it
  • people who don't read crime fiction and want to read something solid and conclusive

Thanks for reading, it's been fun to have a reason to blab at you through 2006.

posted at 19:07 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Wed, 27 Dec 2006

All This for a Shrubbery?

Forty-ninth novel of the year I hadn't previously read, Silver on the Tree, is now read.

This book is the payoff for all which came before it. It is a culmination of the story, the climax of the fight between the Dark and the Light, and has a rather nice epilogue. It's once again set mostly in Wales, roughly current and substantially earlier.

It has many references to mythology, familiar and otherwise, which drove me to search engines to get a grip on some of the subtext and context not made manifestly clear through this story but only hinted at.

What I liked

  • great smash-up climactic ending
  • some nice bits with Jane actually getting a personality
  • lots of echoes of earlier mythic ages
  • King Arthur
  • the sad king / maker

What I didn't

  • the whole Also the White Rider bit, which seemed a bit unanticipated
  • the traditional issue I have with stories of destiny and prophecy, which is, how can they fail?
  • substantially longer than many of the previous books in this sequence which made them seem a bit thin in retrospect

Who will like this book [and by implication, the whole sequence]

  • fans of the King Arthur stories
  • fans of Wales
  • writers of slash fiction looking for a space less trampled than His Publishedness
  • kids who feel different and want to feel special and magical
  • people who want to get back a sense of the wonder of Yule, like it was before Shopping Christ peed all over it

OK, almost to the finishing line. Can't talk. Reading.

posted at 20:42 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Mon, 25 Dec 2006

Oh, Sure, the Grey Guy is the Villain

Fourth of the Dark is Rising sequence, The Grey King, is all about Will, the youngest of the Old, again.

He goes off to Wales to convalesce, meets a freaky albino boy with a freaky albino dog and has some freaky albino adventure.

Also, there's a harp, an evil fog bank, and some uppity foxes. Also some food which sounds interesting and I'd have liked an appendix of recipes. Oh, and some lessons in Welsh pronunciation, which might come in handy for someone working on the Linux kernel in the footsteps of a famous developer.

It's good. It's not too short. It has more pieces of Welsh myths than I recognize and some Arthurian stuff which I do.

The end is nigh!

posted at 09:55 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sat, 23 Dec 2006

Lock Up Your Daughters

It's coming.

ObOb: Hosting for this site is provided by a member of Beatnik Turtle.

posted at 20:51 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Thu, 21 Dec 2006

Remove the Water, Carry the Water

Hey, I read Greenwitch by Susan Cooper and it was short short SHORT.

It brings the various heroes from books one and two in this sequence together and tells an incredibly brief story of yet another fight against an agent of the Dark.

There's a nice court scene and it's really short. Did I mention it's short? So I read it in three BART rides.

posted at 17:18 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Tue, 19 Dec 2006

The Vector of Dark

Predictably, I read the second book in the sequence, The Dark is Rising and it was pretty good. I can see where it would appeal particularly to people with a childlike sense of wonder about Christmas, and those who have December birthdays.

It reminded me quite a bit of the Christmas Revels which Vy and I attended in 2005 and which Vy tells me borrow quite heavily from this book or perhaps some common source material. You may recall I didn't really care for the revels because, well, I am a no-fun grinch.

Also, I don't like audience participation type stuff.

But this book, it's all right. There's unexplained magic and deep symbolic portent and a character from the first book plays an even more major part here than in the first book in the sequence.

So if you like the idea of Britain being a magical land guarded by beings of Light and fighting off an onslaught by the Dark then, yeah, you'll dig this book, too, because More of the Same. Some nice characterization of one of the villains this time out.

posted at 17:56 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Fri, 08 Dec 2006

Dark In Here, Isn't It?

Welcome to the Catching Shannon Up Show wherein I read a young adult series ... excuse me, sequence, which all the rest of you read twenty or thirty years ago.

It's Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising Sequence, and it starts with Over Sea, Under Stone. Now go ahead and open that link in another tab. Look at the cover. See that dude? He is very, very bad. Also, he has a hypnotic voice.

He's awesome. But he doesn't get much screen time. This book is about three delightful, wonderful, rambunctious, cheerful, brave and beautiful children finding adventure under the protection of a powerful family friend. Man, that must be nice. Don't get me wrong. This is a fun book. It's cheery and fresh and precious. But it didn't really hit on any of my spaceships.

What I liked:

  • Arthurian bits
  • there was an evil girl and in the movie in my mind, she's played by Jennifer Blaire
  • a riddle which can be answered hundreds of years later, reminding me of these guys

What I didn't:

  • the menace was never very menacing
  • the kids sometimes behaved in a way which maybe kids behaved in the 1970s but, now? no way
  • no retribution!

If you mysteriously haven't yet read this sequence which everyone has read and you think you might like to read some young adult fantasy which is neither patronizing nor boring, this is a pretty good read. It moves briskly, which always helps.

posted at 21:15 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Tue, 05 Dec 2006

Now It's Over, I'm Dead, and I Haven't Done Anything

Third novel in the Faded Sun trilogy by C.J. Cherryh, The Faded Sun: Kutath, already? That's awesome!

This was the best of the trilogy. It was the thematic and action climax of the story arc and it even had a nice denouement.

That's really all there is to say about this. If you buy this book, skip the first two hundred pages, and read the rest of it, you'll probably dig it, if you're anything like me. It's a character story, it's got some good intrigue and politics, it has several bloody catastrophes. Good stuff.

posted at 19:43 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sat, 02 Dec 2006

Now Leaving Lair 1.0

We've moved to a new location and if you didn't get the updated address and should have, email me.

If you mailed me and it came back with permanent failure, well, try again. I screwed up the DNS in two different ways and both should now be fixed. Likewise, and more importantly, if you sent email to Vy, and she didn't respond, send again.

If you need an unsolicited recommendation for a moving company in the San Francisco Bay Area, the people at Shamrock Moving & Storage did great by us and we're quite happy with their timeliness, accuracy, courtesy, skills, and adaptability.

posted at 13:03 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Tue, 28 Nov 2006

Posted to the Dark Side of the Moon

Second novel in the Faded Sun trilogy by C.J. Cherryh, The Faded Sun: Shon'jir, I liked much more than the first novel in this trilogy. This is a close study of a handful of characters set at the endpoint of an epic length time-line.

Well worth having read the first book to get to this, it's about some of the characters who survived the first novel and what happens to them in the wake of the peace between the humans and the aliens which kicked off the series. It seems to me to bear a lot of similarity to Lawrence of Arabia but some of that is surely the desert setting which [again!] dominates the narrative, even when the characters are on a ship in space.

This one has actual story events, hints at big doings, and has character development arcs which engaged me. Also, there's an action scene! With real conflict! And shooting! Sort of. Near the end. If you read closely.

This is another sf novel aimed squarely at people not me but I enjoyed it more than the first.

posted at 16:08 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Fri, 17 Nov 2006

Just Here to Report an Accident

You know what book I really didn't like?

Deathwatch.

Good thing that isn't the book I just read.

Instead, I read Faded Sun: Kesrith. It's better than Deathwatch was but reminded me a lot of it. Also, a lot of the journey to Mordor parts of that other book by that one guy. The one with all the slash fanfic fans. Which I also didn't like either of the times I read it.

But this book, about Kesrith, is allegedly a standalone story. I guess it is. The problem I had with it is that that story is all in the last fifty pages. So what happens in the first 205 pages? Well, there's a whiny alien kid forced to live with old people who oppress him and there's a desert. A big honking huge desert planet with weird weather and some kind of bearish totem animals. Oh, and there's another alien species living on the planet with them and somewhere off in space there are humans who are dirty and don't understand honor.

It's all exposition for the actual events. Not to spoil this for anyone but, really, the first 200 pages or so of this book could have read "Niun lived for an almost unbearably long time with elders of his kind who were actually preparing him for his destiny. Then the first humans landed on their home-world."

But. This book is the first in a trilogy. If I hadn't known that, I wouldn't have finished it. But I did know that so I did finish it.

What I liked about this book

  • the two alien cultures both seemed genuinely alien
  • there was some good politicking and partial information negotiations
  • I liked the human governor's assistant

What I didn't like about this book

  • long, unbroken streaks of nothing happening
  • incessant whining from one of the point of view characters
  • an entire culture choosing death before compromise
  • not finding out, as a reader, what the big secret of the novel-ending quest is
  • the feeling that if this book had been forced to stand alone, I couldn't have gotten to the interesting parts

Who might like this book

  • aliens who miss their home-world
  • fans of CJ Cherryh who want to read one of her favorite of her own books
  • humans wanting to think about alien mindsets
  • people expecting to have to survive in an alien desert
  • fans of samurai mindsets
posted at 08:01 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Wed, 08 Nov 2006

A Quorum of Queens

I finished reading the Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction. The last novella is a Nancy Kress called And Wild for to Hold and it's about Anne Boleyn, wife of King Henry the Eighth. You'll have heard of him and probably her, as well.

This is a good story for someone not me. The protagonist is more passive and more of a spectator than I enjoy. The trope is the clever figure of power which asserts control regardless of circumstance and there's some stuff about how rejection works as an aphrodisiac.

Didn't really care for it, but I wouldn't tell other people not to read it. So there we go, a book of novellas finished and nine more novels to read before year's end. Striking distance.

posted at 22:53 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Tue, 07 Nov 2006

Coming of Rage

I read a James Patrick Kelly story. It was called Mr. Boy. I think this is the first JPK story I've read but it certainly won't be the last. Man! This story was awesome.

It's got extreme body modification, dire caste and class divisions, and language and culture and fashion forecasting in a delightful "if this goes on" vein. It is, I think, a story fundamentally about Peter Pan growing up, twisted.

It's in Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction, of course.

One more novella left in this book! ONWARD

posted at 10:51 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sat, 04 Nov 2006

Future Intense

I read a Robert Silverberg story, Sailing to Byzantium.

But wait! I hear those of you who've had their paws on a copy of Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction cry. What happened in between the Russ and the Silverberg?

Oh, all right. I skipped a novella. Because I'd already read it and recognized it two pages in. So you don't get to know my thoughts about Lucius Shepard's novella because I'm only reading new novels in 2006 and this one I read in late 2005.

Then I read the Silverberg. I've read a bunch of his longer stuff previously and while it's been enjoyable it hasn't been memorable for me. There was the one about the guy who's a juggler. And. Um. A Gypsy king? Something like that, anyway. Which is not to say that there's anything wrong with his writing. I have a hypothesis that some writing hits me right in my retention lobes, that of Roger Zelazny, for example, while other writing misses the part of my brain which makes new memories.

Robert Silverberg's writing takes the form of perfectly fine sentences which pass in my eyes and fall out of the back of my head.

So did I like this story? Yes.

What is this story about? I didn't remember until I referred back to it for this write up.

It's in the future and it has a group of lovely brown physically similar people and a vast horde of temporary humanoids and a protagonist who is neither. It's got some ruminations on what makes a person real, a bit like PKD stories and it's got some epic contemplations of sentiment, a bit like Zelazny, but overall is a whole lot of Silverberg and will remind you of other Silverberg you have read, assuming you are not me and can remember it. At least I think so. It might be nothing like any other Silverberg story other than its ability to evade my memory, in which case, I apologize in advance for potentially misleading you.

So is this meandering a response in kind to this story, a critique which takes on some of the characteristics of the story to convey impressionistic-ally the effect of the story?

Don't ask me, man. I'm just a visitor to this story.

posted at 12:01 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Thu, 26 Oct 2006

Left Ahead

I dreamed that the atheists, the progressives, the secular humanists, the socialists, the environmentalists, the anarchists disappeared from the Earth during the night. All of the people accused of being in a vast conspiracy to disrupt business and spoil politics and corrupt morals. The only people left on Earth were the people who identify as persons of faith, who worry most that someone else somewhere is having fun, that value money above all things, that howl for violent revenge upon anyone who disagrees with them.

Some countries were more changed than others. America was virtually unchanged in the visible places. The news still appeared as normal and the same editorials were still written blaming failures upon those vanished millions, disowning all responsibility. The corporations still issued press releases and managers still met. Many of them had fewer employees, though few of the managers noticed other than to bring in consultants to sit in the now empty cubes. Few of the temporary agencies were able to dispatch any employees, as many of them were gone. The Federal and State governments were at full strength and still tended to the important business of letting lobbyists buy them lunch.

The Midwest was emptier, but no one noticed. The coastal cities were emptied, but no one cared.

Then the President declared himself President Elect for Life. The congress passed law after law, making every action a crime but providing exemptions for those above certain income levels or those entities recognized by the courts as corporations. The air became brown, the oceans became red, the earth glowed by night, as pollution was unregulated. People with less power were preyed upon by those with more and it was legally sanctioned. Newspapers and television reported that the rapes and murders were the work of the God-less Left, who had never left but were in hiding, lurking behind every corner, lying in wait. They kept the uninformed in a state of panic and rage. The ones in power lived like decadent emperors until someone with more power came and took it away from them.

Soon there was widespread bloodshed as heavily armed militias shot it out with one another, squabbling over sordid deals gone awry. The warfare escalated all over the world. Then nuclear weapons were deployed, tactically. Not between nations, for many of them had already fractured into fiefdoms, but between faiths. In the US, the Mormons and the Dominionists and the Catholics had a three way nuclear exchange. Other countries had more complicated fights and feuds and there were many more attempts to use nuclear weapons than there were successes, as some were second hand, sold from ancient American stockpiles by the corporations which controlled the American lands.

Eventually, it was quiet, as the few survivors developed terminal illnesses from the pollutants in the wrecked environment. Almost every animal had been wiped out, through hunting or clumsiness. Almost every human had died from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or being too greedy, or by believing in a lie. Not one of them went to Heaven or anything like it. They just lay where they were and their heart stopped and their brain stopped.

Then those who had disappeared were brought back. They had seen it all happen. They saw the wreck and ruin of life on Earth as it stood. They all cried out, "Let us fix it! Let us help! Let us undo the damage!" Because it's what they'd always feared. It's what they had tried to fight when they were on Earth. It was their worst nightmare.

So they were put back on Earth, at the same place and time they had been taken away. They knew all that would happen if they let things develop without them. They remembered how it would all end in death and desolation. They knew that would spend lifetimes and be rewarded with the contempt and disdain of the selfish, the foolish, the evil and the merely banal. But they remembered how much more awful the alternative was.

What a freaking nightmare.

posted at 08:17 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Tue, 24 Oct 2006

Space Saint

I read the Joanna Russ story, Souls.

It's completely awesome, despite the unreliable narrator.

It's an historical science fiction story with an unrevealed force and some sharp characterization and insightful treatments of human relationships. So it's not the kind of story I normally don't like; yet, I like this one a lot.

It's from Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction.
Of course. It's short and it involves a German monastery and some vikings. And maybe some space elves with no hair. I think.

posted at 19:32 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Mon, 23 Oct 2006

A Comic Unread is a Couple Bucks Saved

In the interest of trimming my spending, I dropped my pull list at the local comic shop. Here's what the last visit held:

  • Shadowpact #6. It's okay. Start of a new story arc. It's got a flipper baby telekinetic. That's fine.
  • CheckMate #7. Awesome. Death! Plotting! More plotting! Definitely one I'll pick up in trade paper down the road.
  • Desolation Jones #7. Great story. Art hurts my eyes.
  • WildCats #1. Grant. Fucking. Morrison. This issue is nearly enough to get me to run back to the comic shop and uncancel my pull list. Nearly.
  • 52 #23 & #24. Yeah. I've been reading 52. It's a mixed bag, as with any multiple creator work. Each them had a scene which had me chortling out loud [23, Osiris gets imbued with power; 24, the citizens of Metropolis yelling out their hero names]
  • Martian Manhunter #3 with a cover featuring the same rictus as 52 #23. Some nice tragedy if you like that kind of thing and plans are put in motion to make J'onn's life even more worser than it already is, HOORAY.
  • Hellblazer #225. Pretty to look at. Still not really understanding the whole animosity / empathy thing but I guess now I'll get to wait until it's trade-bound to figure it all out.
  • Creeper #3. I like it and I don't have to justify that to anybody.
  • Deadman #3. Um. I don't get it. I mean, I really don't get it. I understand the theoretical physics they claim to be drawing on here and I still don't get it. This book should be the comic version of an instrumental. Just use liquid paper on all the word balloons so they stop distracting you and enjoy the boobies.
  • Ramayan 3392AD #2. If blood does not bother you, this would be a good comic book to look at while high. The art is dream like. The story is ... there. It's okay.
  • Devi #4. Another beautiful book with transparent characterization and a story wavering between clever and stupid.
  • John Woo's 7 Brothers #1. This is the best damned book in the pile. Thirty seconds ago, you started reading it. Remember?

OK, that's it on comics for a while.

posted at 23:06 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  
Sing Tit-willow, Tit-willow, Tit-willow

Who doesn't like Frankenstein stories? This one also has incest but not the kind you might expect and a dystopian societal collapse background. Good stuff! It's a real downer kind of story with one door closing as another more weird door opens.

It's called Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang and it's by Kate Wilhelm who I had the joy of hearing speak at Wiscon 30 but whose writing I had not previously read. It's out of that book, you know, the one I'm reading to catch up on the fifty novel project.

Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction. This book, I should belatedly mention, is one Vy recommended to me and this story is one of her favorites from this book, which is more evidence that we like different kinds of sf, since I enjoyed it but less so than some others so far in this collection.

posted at 19:25 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Wed, 18 Oct 2006

Ten Little Metaphors

My friend Cat sold the only piece I've had the pleasure to hear her read. It's an awesome piece which perhaps only a person who MUDs could have written. Look for it when it hits the stands.

posted at 11:56 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  
Is It Because of Fuck You, Eliza that You Have Come to See Me?

I read The Death of Doctor Island by Gene Wolfe. It's got some haunting imagery and a pair of clever perspective pivots, most notably where the character who we've been following turns out to be just a walk-on in somebody else's story. Also, there are monkeys.

It's another tale from Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction, short and punchy, simultaneously brisk in pacing and lyrical in prose. I guess someone made a movie of it, which would probably be worth watching. Reading Gene Wolfe is a guilty pleasure somewhat close to that of reading Robert Heinlein for me; despite the sometimes jarring intrusions of disagreeable ethos, it's often a pretty fun read.

No links to other stuff by or about Wolfe; any search engine you choose to use will have much, much more about him. He's prolific.

posted at 08:31 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sat, 14 Oct 2006

Two Kilos of Flesh

I read Merchants of Venus which is not exactly Merchants of Venus nor Merchants of Venus nor Merchant of Venice and so on. There are a lot of things of similar name which is not, all of them inspired at a minimum and in some cases directly translated from this Merchant of Venice.

The one I just read is another novella in Modern Classic Short Novels of SF and it's a satisfyingly complete story with nicely woven exposition and context. Not of the here's an extraordinarily long and inappropriate brain-dump style of world-background but more naturally unfolding in a way which doesn't feel forced or artificial to me as a reader.

So that part I really liked. The lack of ultimate explanation for what's afoot with the Heechee and their tunnels, that's great, too. I even liked the protagonist's mild sexism given how his expectation is refuted by the narrative. This story is a gem that shines on its own.

posted at 09:55 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Tue, 10 Oct 2006

The King of Walnut Space

Brian Aldiss wrote a bunch of stuff, not very much of which I can remember having read. But I read Total Environment in the Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction and it was pretty okay. It's a micro-story of a micro-environment of a micro-cosmic importance.

It touches on some themes of suffering and humanity and inhumanity and the greater good and perspective. So it's some capital letter themes writ small. There's a lot of good material here for someone who wanted to run a story in a modernistic setting, twenty minutes into the future.

There were some slightly wince-worthy race and culture biases but they contributed to the claustrophobic narrative and probably enhanced the experience of reading this story.

posted at 19:02 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  
The Breative Urge

Now I read The Star Pit by Samuel R. Delany from Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction and it was the meatiest of the stories so far, by far. It gave me the strongest sensations that there was a plausible world looming ahead of us in the future with real people, real aspirations, real failures, real wins and real tragedies. It follows a narrator who starts by telling us a story within his story and then follows him through a short story arc with tightly-woven strands of exposition which support and propel the narrative.

It's some astounding craftsmanship from one of the deservedly renowned writers of our time.

After you read it, you may want to immediately re-read it to see it develop from the first words to the last, one more time. Unless, that is, you still have 17 more novels to read before year end.

posted at 10:00 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sun, 08 Oct 2006

How Nice to Hear From You OH YOU NEED MONEY AGAIN?

I realize that the kinds of entities which accept donations of money are caught in a cycle where the humans who decide things there believe that they must send out frequent ever-more-strident solicitations for money. But I think they're wrong. I'm sick of feeling like a chump because I was once moved to donate money and continue to pay for it in pounds of junk mail requests for even more money.

Organizations Which Continue to Hassle Me and Thus Get No More Money

  • ACLU
  • Amnesty International
  • the Democratic National Committee
  • Habitat for Humanity
  • National Public Radio
  • the Sierra Club

Organizations Which Rarely or Never Hassle Me and Thus Could Get More Money

I guess I'm not sorry about any of the donations I've made but I do regret that every single communication from some of the entities is another solicitation for yet more money and that I hear from them so frequently. My ideal experience would be to receive maybe twenty or so communications from an entity I've donated money to in a year's time and have one of them ask me for more money with nineteen being about what they did with the money people gave them.

If they've got nothing to say to me other than "Spare Change? Spare Change?" I'd prefer they not show up every week.

posted at 10:59 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sat, 07 Oct 2006

They're All Around Us, Man!

My friend Tim has a brief confession about his new-found fondness for Google. I'm probably reading too much into it by noticing that his blog is hosted at Blogger, aren't I? That's how they get to you! I say we take off and nuke the whole codepus from orbit.

So in the interest of full-disclosure, nutrients I receive regularly from the Google teats, other than the obvious searches:

  • Gmail account used for
    • Google news alerts
    • Google group membership
    • a dusty old Orkut account
  • Maps, which reminds me to mention my home town. Evidently there is a misspelled name on that map. Twice.
  • sometimes I eat nan which Evan leaves at the Lair after gaming. He probably buys it with money paid to him by Google.

I tend to look briefly at each new Google beta or lab service as it gets buzz around it and then not use it very much, not go back to give it a second trial. It's a big web. I have a lot more links I need to be clicking on. I can't wait around for a second chance.

But I'm not ready to jump on the Google-is-secretly-evil bandwagon. I think I'm just glad to see someone else excited about something I have been excited about before.

posted at 09:16 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Mon, 02 Oct 2006

It Kind of Blows

I like Cordwainer Smith stories, in the abstract.

They're the kind of richly detailed setting I should like.

They're the intricate contextual unfolding of characterization and story which I rave about.

And yet.

I read On the Storm Planet from the Modern Classic Short Novels book I'm using to catch up on my novel reading goal. It should have been my cup of tea.

It's allegedly a revenge story. Sort of. It involves enigmatic characters, re-contextualized religion and myth, space opera. All those things I dig on. The planet it's mostly set on, Henriada, has attractively extreme weather and seems to have references to Alabama.

And yet.

This is a fine story for people who like Cordwainer Smith. For people like me who keep wanting to like Cordwainer Smith, it probably won't shift you into the fan column.

posted at 20:46 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  
It's Only an Addiction if it Costs Money

I buy comic books.

Sometimes I buy a few. Sometimes a lot. Sometimes I read them. Sometimes I don't. I'm probably part of what's wrong with the comic book industry today; I am inconsistent in my habits, fickle in my devotion and create a weak secondary market by giving comic books away to people who might otherwise buy books.

But today I want to mention three comic books which are ongoing titles. They're probably also announced in trade-bound editions but since I picked these up as part of my current trend of having a stack to read through in order of anticipated enjoyment fortnightly, that's not how I read them.

The first one is a title I've stopped reading. It's the Blue Beetle. I have fond memories of a character of that name dating back to the early seventies, thanks to The Electric Company.

I'd read some comic books with appearances by a character of that name over the years and probably the most satisfying was a character of a very different name, Nite Owl 2. But, still, fundamentally the things I liked about the character were present. Similar to Batman but less deranged.

So I picked up the new Blue Beetle title and read it. For four issues. I'm not sure if it's the feeling that ethnicity is simultaneously ubiquitous and irrelevant or that the cultural mores seem questionable or if I'm hitting an overdose of magic-based characters but it's just boring me.

So that's one I'm not reading anymore.

Another one is Elephantmen. It's a title from Image Comics which, yes, I know better. I learned years ago [roughly, at the company creation] to not expect plausible artwork, interesting characters or plausible story from them. But this time I let the clerk at the counter convince me to give it a try.

I made it to issue #2, which has text entirely constructed of quotes from the Bible super-imposed over a fight as clearly presented as if it had been directed by Michael Bay. The other serial narrative in the book is a parody of Howard Stern. Only, with less class.

But I said I'd talk about three titles. The third one is going to seem odd. It's a title from Marvel. It's yet another retread of a character from thirty years ago. It's Moon Knight. And it's awesome.

Here's why

  • it is a revenge story
  • it preserves the entire fucked up canonical Moon Knight back-story
  • including the parts which were already self-contradictory
  • did I mention it's a revenge story?
  • revealing new depth and complexity to canonical characters
  • fabulous [new?] villain, The Profiler
  • it's totally a revenge story

Moon Knight, along with Baron Winter, Ghost Rider and Iron Fist are my guilty childhood comic book pleasures. So I was nervous about how this new series would hold up to my memories. I even made it worse for myself by picking up the Essential Moon Knight phone-book and reading through it.

This new incarnation of Moon Knight not only does my memories justice, it enhances the whole experience in retrospect and makes me eager for more.

posted at 09:49 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Tue, 26 Sep 2006

Begins With a Single Boom

Second modern classic short novel down. This one is from Poul Anderson, 1960. It's the moving story of a fallen colony of Earth-spawned civilization and the pride of one ship's captain. Contrasted with the lack of pride by the de facto captain of another ship.

It's got a more interesting narrative voice than the Vance story I read before if, arguably. But the story itself didn't move me as much.

Well worth the honor bestowed it by Dozois's selection of it here, though a story which I perceive as being most enjoyable to me because I'm a guy and it's a story about guys doing stuff and making tough guy decisions and tougher guy sacrifices. Life sucks when you're in charge.

Oh, it's called The Longest Voyage. But you probably already knew that.

posted at 23:00 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Mon, 25 Sep 2006

Old is the New New

Time to make up for lost time in the pursuit of reading fifty novels. I'm tackling Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction and I'm counting each novella as a novel. This will more than offset my counting the five Demon Princes novels as two books.

First up: The Miracle Workers.

It's a Jack Vance story. That's all I have to say about it.

Well, no. It's a great Jack Vance story. In fact, it's a great Jack Vance story about the common acceptance of scientific wonders and the adulation piled upon antiquated traditions. Maybe that's what it's about. That's what I took away from it, anyway.

It's a future other world story where humans contend with the aboriginal inhabitants and are disdainful of such superstitions as the scientific method.

There'll be a dozen more like these. Stay tuned.

posted at 20:51 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Wed, 20 Sep 2006

I'm Not Locked Up in Here With All of You...

Do you know who Greg Egan is? You should.

He wrote the book I just read, Quarantine.

I read it when I did because a coworker loaned it to me. I would have read it anyway, in time, because I had already read the book Distress which he also wrote, loaned to me by a friend. But wow.

Wow.

WOW.

Quarantine takes a perspective I would have previously guessed impossible to carry off and manages it with eloquence and resonance. Not to be coy. It's the measurement problem of Quantum Mechanics as a point of view.

It's a tiny bit like the story from Star Diaries where Tichy bunches up his causal stream. It's a lot like the narrativist styled rpgs I've been playing around with lately. It's good. It's really good. Also, short.

What I liked about it

  • the story hooked me four pages in
  • the protagonist is so likable despite his radical personality change midway through
  • it's got credible, plausible, marvelous technology
  • it's got a nicely woven story arc

What I didn't

  • there is nothing to not like about this story

Who may like this book

  • you
  • all of you
  • the uncollapsed waveform of all potential you
  • technoptimists who believe that all humanity needs is more sufficiently advanced technology
posted at 22:32 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sun, 03 Sep 2006

Cool, A Chance to be Misquoted!

My friend Randy gets quoted in an article about the Indie Band Survival Guide he had a hand in writing.

If you are capable of reading these words, you should probably go read the guide or at least visit the Beatnik Turtle site.

Do it! Do it now!

posted at 08:32 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Mon, 28 Aug 2006

What If Jesus Knew Kung-Fu?

A co-worker loaned me Lamb and since it'd already been recommended to me by a friend, I read it. You've probably already heard about this book. Maybe you read it, already.

It's good.

It's probably the second best book about Jesus I've read, after Ken's Guide to the Bible. So what is it? It's a novel from the point of view of Jesus's childhood pal, Levi called Biff. A new spin on a story which has been covered a number of times which happens to be laugh-out-loud funny in parts and snuffly sad in others.

What I liked

  • it's a genuinely warm and funny look at Jesus
  • it's got kung-fu
  • it's got sex and quite a lot of it

What I didn't

  • Nothing, other than the clenching my wallet did when it realized I must now buy all of the books Christopher Moore has written

Who might like this book

  • Jews
  • Gentiles
  • people not possessed by demons
  • pigs not possessed by demons
  • dogs not otherwise distracted by a flank steak
posted at 21:33 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Tue, 15 Aug 2006

Temple Prostitutes

I went to Linuxworld. Or, at least the Exhibit Hall, which is as much of it as one can see without paying money for the privilege. I saw a lot of vendors, some of them in suits. I saw a lot of companies I recognized the products of and one which I had thought had died.

Ingres. That's right. They're around again. Or still. Depending upon how you measure you it. Once upon a time I was an Ingres DBA. The last time I saw it, CA had rushed out some half-assed almost-worked-on-Linux version of the Ingres database engine but I wasn't able to make a case for using it to my boss of the time when Oracle had a less broken engine available to run on Linux.

I also saw a bit of holy war humor. Unfortunately the resolution on my camera-phone wasn't high enough for anyone to read the signs on the booths so you'll just to take my word for who was there.

I came away from the show with some weak schwag [mostly stickers] and only one disturbing moment. I chanced to be near the Debian booth when some visitor asked what the relationship is between Debian and Ubuntu.

The representative of Debian said that the chief differences are

  • Ubuntu focuses more on the desktop presentation
  • Ubuntu configures different default options for the user
  • ... which restricts users unnecessarily
  • Ubuntu doesn't do as much to insure security of the software

I've been a Debian system administrator, personally and professionally, for years. I've been an Ubuntu system administrator for a year, in parallel. I haven't given up my Debian systems. But I don't put Debian on any new systems I install.

Because while the first point might be true, it's done using the task system for bundling packages, inherited from Debian. While the second point is true, it certainly doesn't lead to the third point. The options are still there, still configurable. If a person uses Ubuntu and doesn't like the options they started with, there are a number of sources of information they can use to find out how to change their system.

As for the fourth stated difference, I just don't see how that can be true. The apt repositories of security updates is virtually identical to the system Debian has in place. The source code for changes is all available so it's not as if the Ubuntu developers have to guess what changes were made to a Debian package to secure it. It's not as if there isn't some overlap in the development communities and tools and mailing lists and concerns between the two projects.

So how are they different? Here's what I see as the differences

  • Ubuntu releases every six months
  • Ubuntu airs less of their dirty laundry in public
  • ... but that may be entirely subjective as I used to subscribe to a lot of Debian mailing lists and I only subscribe to Ubuntu announcements and security announcements, currently
  • Ubuntu is more active about supporting commercial applications for end-users

That's it. I can do anything with Debian I can with Ubuntu with almost equal ease. I don't feel notably less secure with either distribution. I could perhaps make a case if I were a more buzzword compliant developer that having new libraries and tools available every six months was somehow better than the less regularly scheduled Debian updates but with my system administrator decoder ring on, I could go either way on it. The things I like in Debian, I like in Ubuntu.

The things I didn't like in Debian have less to do with the software and more with the ceaseless flame-wars. I'm as much a moralist as anyone, probably more. But I still got tuckered out just trying to read past them to the actual technical informations.

posted at 23:12 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  
The Eyes in His Head

I read Matt Ruff's first book, huzzah. He had this published when he was 21 and it's called Fool on the Hill.

So what's it like? It's a first novel. It has a slight case of the kitchen sink. There are a lot of threads, a lot of short passages and chapters, a lot of self-awareness on the part of the characters and the deployment of tropes. Which certainly isn't bad but is something to be aware of when you read it.

This book is a good case of a clever, cute, funny book which is intended for someone not me. Unlike his Public Works Trilogy, which was a clever, cute, funny and conspiracy-laden book, which was intended for me or someone very like me.

Fool on the Hill has:

  • at least one Greek god
  • several other supernatural entities
  • dogs which are telepathic with cats and each other
  • cats which are telepathic with dogs and each other and which can understand spoken and written human languages
  • sprites who can not ordinarily be seen by humans and so live among them
  • Bohemians, which in this usage I translate as Chaos Lords
  • magic spear, no magic helmet in sight
  • several love stories, romance stories and friendship stories
  • a Dragon
  • a college town

It's thick, it's ambitious, and parts of it were genuinely fun to read for me.

What I liked about this book

  • it's a thoroughly upbeat book
  • there's some very clever language
  • it reminded me of my time in a college town

What I didn't

  • it's kind of a scrambled mess of a story with a lot of pieces going into the omelet
  • it has my least favorite tale ending form ever and it even foreshadows it happening through a character who is a plausible author avatar
  • it breaks the fourth wall more than I can enjoy
  • many of the characters don't seem to have much there, there

Who might like this book

  • fans of fantasy in modern settings
  • fans of talking animals
  • readers who enjoy first novels
  • people who lived in the House of Chaos or, really, any larger than life party house
  • people who fly kites
posted at 09:03 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sat, 05 Aug 2006

Nothing's Always Wrong

Some time in 2005 I read a novel called Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem. I read it because a friend recommended it and because it was set in a future Oakland, California. I was extremely glad I'd read it, because the story was fairly fucking awesome. I searched around for other books by the same writer, wish-listed a couple of them, and forgot all about it.

Then a book store I was at spontaneously went out of business while I was there so I got some good deals on books I'd been eying, including As She Climbed Across the Table, another Jonathan Lethem novel. So that's the book I just read.

As She Climbed Across the Table is not a lot like Gun, With Occasional Music.

They're both in the near-time future, sure. They both focus on a male protagonist, more or less. But this book reminded me much less of the first Lethem I read and much more of David Foster Wallace. Only, without the footnotes or the digressions.

But it has the same sense of academic introspection. It's the story of frustrated lovers responding to a technological innovation more than it's the story of that innovation. A fine and valid story and a very quick read for me.

This book is about a man in love with a woman in love with a void. Cue the J. Geils references. It's got some resonance for people who've drank deeply of deconstruction-ism or at least post-modernism. It's got quirky charming characters. It has a surprisingly resolving conclusion.

What I Liked

  • witty prose
  • clear and strong characterizations of the major players
  • fast pacing
  • Garth and Evan, who seem to have arrived in this novel from a David Lynch film
  • a nice almost-sex on drugs scene

What I Didn't

  • the center of this novel is a big nothing; I don't like it in Witch Hunt, and I don't care for it here

I would normally make some jokes here about who should read this book but I really don't know. This book is okay. It's better than many I've read. If you're the kind of person who would like this book, you've probably already read it. It's somewhere in the territory charted by Dr. Excitement's Elixir of Longevity but not as far out as, say, Infinite Jest.

posted at 12:05 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  
It's Usually Only This Hot Here In the Winter

Vy and I had a picnic in mid-July. Randy was kind enough to take some pictures. I did a rough cull and put the ones I felt were most interesting here.

posted at 09:56 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Wed, 02 Aug 2006

It's Big, It's Heavy, It's Good

I read Macrolife and it was sassy.

Here's a book originally published in 1979 with a mildly optimistic view of humanity's ability to transcend tragedy and seek the stars. Republished in 2006, the view is perhaps even more optimistic.

It is, however, a work which challenged me to think new thoughts so it achieved that stated goal. It's a plausibly realistic projection of what the future might hold for a humanity which survives an Earth-devastating disaster.

What I liked

  • technology-driven sf
  • sweeping epic future narrative
  • it's got a little sex and a little slaughter in its tale
  • it's got a sassy introductory essay in this edition by Ian Watson

What I didn't like

  • it's a long book; really, it's a novel, a novella, and a short story

That was all that I really can complain about. It took me longer than a week to get through. That's a lot of time to invest into a Utopian tale of the high-tech future.

Who might like this book

  • fans of so-called hard sf
  • fans of utopia stories
  • people who have survived the death of at least one universe
posted at 20:28 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Thu, 13 Jul 2006

Your Obvious Opera Pun Here

I read Carmen Dog and it took me longer than I was expecting it to take. It's a short book. It's a book about women and animals and opera. It reminds me of the writing of Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez. Which I don't really care for.

Really, it's not the writing. It's me. Because when I read about something not merely improbable but outright impossible, I say to myself "Aha, this is an allegory for something!" and then I try to puzzle out what it might be representing. This tends to ruin a lot of the enjoyment I might otherwise derive from the story.

But don't let that discourage you from reading this book. This book is arguably an important book and certainly a clever book and absolutely a short book.

What I liked about this book

  • it's got a likable protagonist
  • it's got a lot of biting
  • it's very different from most books I read

What I didn't

  • it's got a lot of opera references and lyrics; I didn't get most of them
  • I felt compelled to try to decode metaphors
  • I couldn't get a clear picture in my head of the characters because of the language used to describe them

Who might like this book

  • people who think that women are every bit as human as men are [ you know, feminists ]
  • animals who can read or have it read to them, including people animals
  • Greek sorceresses
  • servants of ship-wrecked magicians named Prospero
  • your mom
  • no, seriously; your mom
  • fans of opera
posted at 19:08 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Thu, 06 Jul 2006

Teenagers To Mars and We Don't Care

Still off tempo from my trip to Wiscon, but another novel knocked out. Another Varley, Red Thunder.

In a word, it's awesome.

Here are some more words. The comparison you might have seen to Heinlein's young adult sf, like Have Spacesuit, Will Travel is apt in that this story manages to make an audacious scheme seem plausible, reinforces the belief that there is a combination of youthful bravado and naivety which makes it possible to set impossible goals and reach them, and got me again excited about the possibility of space travel.

As with some of my favorite science fiction, there are instances of improbable technology and here it really works to free the story to be a high adventure in the local solar system. Good characterizations and I loved having a Cuban American protagonist. Brisk pacing, moving and meaningful climax and a satisfying denouement, pointing at the inevitable sequel.

There is no reason not to like this book unless you dislike reading an author who is described as lower-case libertarian in the Heinlein flavor.

posted at 08:49 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  
A Queen, A Pauper and a Cop Walk Into a Bar

Almost a month later, I finished reading the next book. I'd never heard of it before, but it was published in 1980, the paperback printing here was 1989 and it won a Hugo. It's called The Snow Queen. It's a massively dense book, rich with culture and ideas and conflicted romances. It's got some overtones of polyamory or at least love geometrical solids. It's mostly set on a backwater planet in a post-galactic-empire confederacy of worlds. It's got drugs and sex and murder and gee-whiz science. It's got paganism and masks and suicide attempts.

It's a pretty good read; the tipping point for me on this was about 157 pages in, roughly a third of the way. Someone who identifies more with the protagonist, Moon Dawntreader Summer, would probably have gotten hooked by the story earlier.

What I liked

  • plausible story throughout once you accept the technology behind it
  • some really good knife twists in the obstacles put in front of the characters
  • the Big Secret Behind It All
  • characters accepting responsibility for their own actions

What I didn't

  • we spend an awful lot of time on the emotional inner life of characters who don't communicate with each other
  • we spend an awful lot of time following characters who are only minor players in the story

Who might like this book

posted at 08:48 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sun, 21 May 2006

Toward More Picaresque Speech

In retrospect, I can reconstruct why it took me so long to read the book The Golden Globe by John Varley. It comes down to a simple, dumb thing. On the cover, there is a positive blurb about the author. A positive blurb from the pen of Tom Clancy. Despite having enormously enjoyed the half a dozen Varley books I'd previously read, that one quote stuck in my craw and so I didn't read The Golden Globe, the first book by him I saw with the blurb, for years.

Recently, I got past the quote.

This book is a picaresque tale and for those who aren't fans of The Decembrists or, perhaps, like me, were unaware they've used that word as an album title, it means that the protagonist is a rogue whose story arc involves the flight from pursuit halted only by the concoction of yet another scheme which will lead to future pursuit. It works smashingly well to tell the story of Kenneth Valentine.

There are links between this story and some of his other works but they're not links of dependency. You can read this standalone and be just fine with it. It's also got riffs on Shakespeare so fans of the Bard will be on firm ground here, at least for a time.

What I liked

  • the protagonist and his little dog, too
  • the universe and the way Varley peels back a layer at a time of it
  • the villain of the present day
  • the revenge subplots

What I didn't

  • the unreliable narrator

So one minor recurring peeve of mine in a pile of good stuff. Briskly paced story, evocations of my time spent among the people of theater, and some gee-whiz space science. Very enjoyable read and positively a good place to start reading John Varley.

posted at 09:10 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sat, 06 May 2006

I'll See Your Art Car, and Raise You an Art City

Hey, it's a book about my new favorite city, San Francisco. It's called The City, Not Long After and it's by Pat Murphy who also wrote The Falling Woman. I enjoyed this one more.

It's a tiny bit like Dhalgren but only when distilled down to a too brief summary. It's a future America where an international plague has winnowed the population tremendously. I can't be sure but I think it's a book about a woman's quest to create an identity for herself or possibly it's about a city forcing an identity on a woman. So it's got touches of Danny the Street insofar as the City, itself, is a character with motives and a story arc. It's also a meditation on the purposes of art and the resolution of the conflict of conflict.

What I Liked

  • the weirdness
  • rich characterizations
  • extremely likable protagonists
  • the art installation descriptions
  • San Francisco geography; I knew some of the places she wrote about

What I Didn't Like

  • the epilogue; I didn't need it, it felt like a The Moral of the Story Is

Who May Like This Story

  • dystopianists
  • people who wanted to read Dhalgren but were unable to arrange a multi-state Greyhound trip which would force them to actually finish it
  • people who don't read the epilogue
  • people who thought The Parable of the Sower was kind of a downer
  • people who want to read about a living city
posted at 22:10 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Tue, 25 Apr 2006

That's a Wrap

So, the third of three, Prophet completes the story arc of the central characters.

This is the strongest of the three. The wicked end badly, the good end unhappily. You'll probably only find this interesting if you read the first two or at least the second one. It hits a couple flat notes but finishes strong so points for that.

What I liked

  • Carlos Mendoza, again
  • Gravedancer
  • the Prophet's Plan

What I didn't

  • The Anointed One
  • The Silicon Kid
  • the infallibility of cranky old men

Essentially, there was a set of throwaway characters and a perfectly good opportunity to add some chaos into the mix which wasn't used, here. So not a great trilogy in retrospect but better than many stories and definitely tackling an interesting problem.

Who might like this book

  • players of any varient of Traveller
  • people who read any of the Santiago stories or earlier books in this series
  • GMs with precogs in their campaigns looking for some effective ways to foil them
posted at 22:38 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  
Do You Like to Waste Time on the Internet?

Coming soon, a great game for people who can maintain the concentration to play a computer game while on drugs, SpongeBob Diner Dash.

posted at 13:37 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sun, 23 Apr 2006

Stuck in the Middle With You

Book two of the trilogy, Oracle is the sequel to Soothsayer, prequel to Prophet. This is the part where some trilogies fall apart, after a strong opening. If you paid attention to my last review, I didn't think it was a very exciting opening.

The good news is, this book is much stronger. You could read this without reading the one before it, and not miss much. In fact, I'd recommend reading this one and then going back to read the first one.

What I liked

  • Carlos Mendoza is more interesting this time out
  • The Whistler's characterization and story arc
  • the Lorhn
  • tells a stand-alone story but which threads into the precursor
  • the ending

What I didn't

  • The Injun, who was a collection of stereotypes, most offensive
  • 32
  • the ending

Yeah, I list "the ending" under both. I have mixed reactions to it. It doesn't resolve anything, which bothers me, but it does twist nicely from where I feared it was going. So on to the third volume.

Who might like this book

  • people who spend a lot of time thinking about free will
  • people who spend a lot of time thinking about predestination
  • people who like the joke: "Of course women are smarter than men. A man on a date with a woman will wonder all evening if they're going to have sex; the woman already knows."
posted at 22:40 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Thu, 20 Apr 2006

On This, the Iceman and I Agree

Hey, Mike Resnick writes books. I read one a long time ago called Santiago and it was awesome. So when I told my friend Drew that, he gave me a bunch of other Resnick books, including the one I just read, Soothsayer. It's the first book of a trilogy, which is good to know, because it ends without a great deal of resolution for the titular character. It's a western of the future, with gunfights and bounty hunters and trading towns and nicknames. It's got the deft touch for dialog that I remember from Santiago and visits a troubling [if improbable] question. It's about a little girl who can see into the future and the lives that are changed and ended by her passage through their lives.

What I liked

  • characters, from nicknames to dialog to motivation; the character back-stories slip in under cover of night
  • the setting; I like Resnick's vision of the future, probably because I'm an American who was raised on westerns
  • fast flowing story
  • dilemma; this is an interesting problem from an authorial point of view, which I sometimes experience as a game-master of role-playing games
  • Carlos Mendoza

What I didn't

  • there's not a lot of meat to this book and it seems to have been written to set up books in this arc; I hope it pays off
  • many of the characters aren't much more than a nickname, which is fine for a fast moving book but I had more questions raised than answered
  • I prefer my trilogies to have each volume more self-contained and free-standing; just personal preference, if you're planning to read the whole trilogy, this won't be a buzz-kill

Who should read this

  • Deadlands players, possibly
  • people who liked The Demon Princes
  • people who liked the start of Dune but thought it got "a little heavy/tedious/dry" in the middle

As a side-effect of walking along under BART tracks reading Soothsayer, I received unsolicited but welcome book recommendations for Welcome Chaos as well as the work of Chester Himes, who I have seen listed as an inspiration for various writers I've enjoyed but not actually read anything by, knowingly. So watch for those down the line. Next book up will be the sequel to Soothsayer, Oracle.

posted at 08:41 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Mon, 17 Apr 2006

Check Out the Big Brain on Bert!

This review probable won't be useful, because it's for a book which is out of print and has been for a while. But one never knows, maybe there will be a revival or it'll be bundled into an omnibus edition. It's called Ability Quotient by Mack Reynolds. You might remember him from a previous review I did. He's an author China Mieville recommends to writers interested in Socialist themes.

The book itself is not a foreign idea. A protagonist is provided means to enhance his intelligence. It's been done many times since this book and several times before. What's different here is that it's starkly sketched in terms of whether the enhancements will be the dominion of a self-defined elite or whether it will be distributed to all. It's a short book, clocking in at 160 pages. I read it in less than twenty-four hours.

What I liked

  • forward momentum the story had; it never dragged or really even paused
  • the protagonist was likable and had more depth revealed over time
  • the core conflict, which presages the current fuss over the Singularity

What I didn't

  • the characters never really rise above being puppets in the shape of socks hastily pulled over animating ideas, with quirky buttons sewed on for personality
  • kind of a rushed ending which makes me think this book either needed to be a short story or a longer book to give the idea time to develop
  • the generic betrayal
  • the generic love-story
  • the generic settings

So, well worth the dollar I paid for it. Probably not anything anyone else would want to read unless they were trying to do a comprehensive study of attitudes toward the idea of humanity creating the next generation of humanity, for better or worse, in fiction.

posted at 20:45 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Thu, 13 Apr 2006

A Lot of French Bastards

This book took me almost two weeks to read. It's The Moon and the Sun by Vonda McIntyre. I've met her, briefly, at a party for Clarion West students. Vy really liked it and recommended it to me.

I didn't really get into it until page 330 of 458. It won a bunch of awards and I still nearly didn't finish it. It's about an alternate history where sea dwelling humanoids interact with [primarily] French nobility. It's the story of a woman at court and her interactions with the rich, powerful, and bitchy.

What I liked about it

  • it did a really good job of capturing the arrogance of the extremely powerful
  • I liked the bits with the portrait of the king

What I didn't like about it

  • there's a lot of blood in this book; other people who've read the book who I say this to are surprised that

    • I think that

      • menstruation anxiety chapter
      • ghastly blood-letting scene
      • farcical hunt of stampeding animals into batteries of gunfire

    • I was bothered by that

    • I'm not bothered by bloody movies
  • is there anybody in this book who isn't secretly the bastard offspring of someone important?
  • a protagonist who spends most of the story powerless and suffering is not my trip
  • too long by half; I'd have cut the subplot with Haleed, if I had edited it

It's not a bad book. It's just not a book for me. People who might enjoy it include

  • women, as all the ones I know who've read it loved it
  • 7th Sea players of Montaigne characters
  • fans of lushly described settings
  • creatures of the sea who are wondering why no one thinks they are real
posted at 23:59 PDT (-0700)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sat, 01 Apr 2006

Even Thugs Get the Blues

I read Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said and it was of the same type of story as many PKD novels I've read.

A protagonist suffers from persecution by hostile forces which may include the universe, itself.

So if you like PKD, you'll like this book. If you don't, it won't change your mind about his stuff. If you've never read any PKD, this is a fine first choice.

What I liked

  • persuasive inner monologue by narrator character
  • mysterious actions have causes which are revealed in the fullness of time
  • the Whatever Happened To denouement
  • the mighty brought low
  • Felix Buckman's bluff
  • Alys Buckman

What I didn't

  • some parts of the story weren't as accessible to me as I might have liked because I didn't recognize most of the quotes
  • I wanted to know more of the history and setting of this world, though I could extrapolate a lot of it, knowing when it had been written
  • totally didn't get the scene at the gas station; it was like a music video for Radiohead or some-such
posted at 11:20 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  
Converting in Place to LVM

I just converted my workhorse system, which was my desktop machine in 1999 and has had a few minor upgrades since then and now is the core of my home network, from using a mix of reiserfs and ext3 file systems to having only ext3 file systems, managed by LVM. I'm documenting the process because I'm about to do it again to another machine and this probably won't be the last time I do it, either.

Why?

  • wanted dynamic control and resizing of file systems
  • had three physical devices
  • wanted to use only file systems with dump/restore capability
  • wanted to be able to take clean, quiescent file system dumps

How?

  • identify a partition to start with

    • not in active use by the running OS
    • as big as another partition
    • small enough used that it can be copied off to another file system

  • copy the data off of the target partition's file system

  • unmount the target partition
  • pvcreate on the target partition
  • vgcreate using the target partition
  • START OF LOOP: lvcreate using all available PE in the volume group; if you know the next partition you'll be working with, name the logical volume appropriately
  • mkfs -t ext3 on the logical volume
  • mount the new file system in a temporary location

  • identify a partition to pivot

    • used space in the file system on the partition must be less than available in new file system
    • smoother if nearly quiescent, so if it's /var or similar, stop as many daemons as you can
    • best choices will be large, mostly unused file systems early on

  • cp -a or rsync from the target partition's file system to the temporary mounted file system of the logical volume

  • diff or re-rsync to verify currency; log files may well have updated during the replication
  • unmount the logical volume from the temporary location
  • edit /etc/fstab to reference the logical volume at its future permanent mount point
  • if it's a file system in use, reboot; otherwise, unmount the target partition, mount the logical volume in its place
  • pvcreate on the target partition
  • vgextend using the target partition
  • return to START OF LOOP until you've converted everything

I left the swap partitions alone as I already had equal priority swap partitions on each of several drives and it's easy enough to change their size without needing to reboot if the system is lightly loaded. So now I'll be using the lvm snapshot capability to take backups of the point in time state of my file systems. I can also respond to changing system needs in terms of space and file system architecture.

posted at 08:20 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Thu, 23 Mar 2006

Something Happens and Mayans Head Over Heels

Hey, I read another book. It was called The Falling Woman. It was written by Pat Murphy, a writer I have never met. But perhaps I will at WisCon because it seems that I heard that she might be there. She taught Clarion West the year my wife attended. Wow, that's a lot of linkage.

Anyway. The book, it's probably science fantasy. There are inexplicable events ... but then again the narrators might be crazy. Or maybe it's Clarke's Law at work. Or maybe it's genuinely supernatural. Or maybe it's a relationship story about a woman and her daughter.

What I liked about this book

  • it's not the kind of thing I usually read; I like to diversify
  • it's got good, plausible dialog
  • the Mayan culture and history bits
  • revolving perspectives to give the story more breadth

What I didn't like about this book

  • the core story is a mother-daughter relationship; couldn't really relate
  • potentially unreliable narrators

So, overall, pretty decent and probably even more enjoyable for female readers who have mothers who are crazy and distant than it was for me.

posted at 22:10 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Thu, 16 Mar 2006

Second-hand Education

Everything I know about T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land I've learned from someone else's reference or homage to it. Which brings me to my most recently read novel, Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks. Reusing the same line from which he took the title of another novel in the same setting provides a potentially deeper context from which to consider this story, if you've read it. While I have read it, it had been so long since doing so that I only remembered enough to feel some vague sense of connection. Perhaps a re-read once I've gotten through the fifty new of 2006 will elucidate.

So for people who know nothing about this author or this setting, it's a post-scarcity galaxy-spanning set of civilizations ruminating upon regret, revenge, ethics and art. With an adequate amount of action. As promised by the back cover blurbs, this was an ideal novel for someone to jump onto the Culture setting, as proved by my almost total lack of memory of the previous two novels I'd read from this setting. This story was still engaging, intriguing, moving and satisfying.

It's about members of societies, and those societies as a whole, feeling regret for their actions, or lack of actions, and the things they do or abstain from doing in response to those feelings. Where the consequences are things like mass murder. So it's epic, and it's thought provoking and it's a bunch of other superlatives but I don't think there's much point to my using more. If you know who this author is and what this setting is like, you'll be glad to know that this book is as strong any other I've read and more accessible than some. If you don't know who this author is or you only know him from his thinly disguised pseudonym, then I can recommend this particular book as a solid introduction to his SF writing and his setting called The Culture.

What I Didn't Like

  • The Epilogue. It illuminates shadowy motives but recasts the entire story. I thought it was quite satisfying without this.
  • The skipping about through time as part of the exposition.
  • The futility attached to the story arc of the perfectly likable scholar.
  • The drone E. H. Tersano. The one character who didn't seem as well developed or needed as all the others.

What I Did

  • The setting. I like the travails of post-Scarcity societies, with the notable exception of Star Trek: the Next Generation which should be a post-Scarcity society and yet people still scrabble for resources. WHY? But here it rings true.
  • The characters. From the sulky bon vivant Cr. Mahrai Ziller to the tormented Masaq' Hub, to the dutiful Praf 974, they seemed to be sitting right across from me in the flash while I read this.
  • The names of ships. It's a small thing, and it's played as a joke in many ways, but I think it well captures the moods of the Minds which are housed in them.
  • The story. I was blown away when the purportedly divine revelation which sets the central story of this novel into motion is revealed. Because suddenly religious fanaticism made sense to me.

If you like science fiction, you will probably like something about this book. It's almost 500 pages in the printing I have and I tore through it in four days. It's fast-paced, engaging and had a momentum which dragged me in its wake. If you're still not convinced you should read it, I've probably got another book in the setting further down in my queue, so look for that.

posted at 09:59 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Fri, 10 Mar 2006

Let This Be An End To Strife

All right! Big finish to the Demon Princes stories with volume two, wrapping up the story with Kirth Gersen's pursuit of the two remaining villains responsible for the murder and enslavement of his family, friends and neighbors. A splendid ending and well worth reading.

What I liked

  • still with the revenge, still cool
  • better characterizations
  • great darkly humorous bits
  • the irony of a villain being out for revenge, himself

What I didn't like

  • Again, nothing! Superior writing, great empathy for the protagonist.

It finishes out the story arc quite nicely and was a satisfying conclusion for me.

posted at 19:46 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sun, 05 Mar 2006

From the Heart of Hell, I Stab at Thee

So, a spaceship for me is revenge. Stories like Jack of Shadows or Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less really work for me far more in excess of how well written they might be or whatever else the story contains. So long as someone is out for vengeance, sign me up.

Another thing I really rather like is Jack Vance. I'd actually read some of his Dying Earth stories before I ever saw the eerily familiar Advanced Dungeons and Dragons magic system. I had been hypnotized by his passion for language and image, drawn in by his clever characters who fought and struggled, armed with blade, poison, spell and bon motte. Good dashing adventure stuff told in lyrical prose.

So you can imagine with what glee I sat down to read The Demon Princes vol 1, a Jack Vance tale about revenge, an omnibus edition collecting tales originally published as three novels.

Let me assuage any trepidation you may feel given this build up. It is a wonderful book. Kirth Gersen is an engaging protagonist, the villains are suitably malicious and cunning, the plots are quick and rich, and the revenge is sweet. It's space opera, meaning that the technology is largely backdrop conveniences to enable aspects of the story and not plausible or unduly impacting the characters. They don't wrestle with the implications of the abilities of their faster than light spaceships, they just use them to shorten the time frame they're cooped up together between star systems.

What I Liked:

  • Revenge! It's awesome. Everyone should have some.
  • Language; it's clear to me that, like Gene Wolfe and China Mieville, Jack Vance loved words and his prose reads like a scholarly paean to the words, themselves.
  • Characters. Well developed or at least glibly captured. Alternately charming and terrifying villains.
  • Knowing that there's more of this story to read, still. There's Volume Two, which collects The Face and The Book of Dreams.

What I Didn't Like:

  • Nothing! This book was a superb recommendation [Thanks, Drew!] and gift [Thanks, dad-in-law!].

If you like English, revenge, space opera or reviling books I enjoy, you'll want to read this one!

1. I picked up this word second hand from the [Clarion West] [cw] class of 2004. One of the critiques, as it was told to me, was biased in the positive direction because an important element of the story was that it was set on a spaceship. In the way that words take on implications through sociological forces, the word spaceship came to symbolize an element of a story which would hold a reader in thrall, regardless of how good the story, itself, was.

posted at 22:39 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Fri, 24 Feb 2006

Islands in the Sky

Right on track, another novel. Lagrange Five is another late-1970s sf novel, covering the brave new world of an Earth in decay, an ascendant cadre of elite space-seeking explorers, with criminal and energy cartel villains, and colonists in near Earth space.

It is, more or less, a detective story with a veneer of social commentary and an optimistic view of how things should have progressed by this point. Which is sort of depressing, to contemplate from this point in time how far we've fallen short of these ideals.

What I liked about this novel

  • space idealism
  • lovable loser detective protagonist
  • plausible rebuttal of a lurking suspicion that this setting was meant to be a utopia

What I didn't like about this novel

  • villains were first and second order stereotypes
  • elitism derived from standardized tests was portrayed as virtuous

This novel is probably only of interest to die-hard space colonization optimists and idealists who can suspend their disbelief long enough to enjoy a fluffy future of humans in space. It will probably grate on modern sensibilities and not appeal outside of the people already on board with the goal of living in space. But a fast read, so if you're needing something to fill in a gap, like a short plane flight, this would do it.

posted at 12:29 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Wed, 22 Feb 2006

Little Scribblings

Continuing the very little momentum we've gained, here's a tiny bit of tag fodder for this blog to see if the pinging plugin does the trick.

I like cats, aliens, and coffee. Let's see if any of that registers or if it's too little signal and too much noise.

posted at 17:52 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  
A Weak Mystery Solved

Additionally, I may have solved something which annoyed since I moved to this server as a host for my blog.

That being the Mystery of the Nonfunctional Blosxom Plugins. Which came down to Habitual Solution #2, permissions.

posted at 16:47 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  
Impermanent Record

It's been a while since I tried out a new plugin for Blosxom but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about them and reading about them. So today's trial is the markdown utility, deployed as a plugin.

Can I Learn a New Syntax?

To tell the truth, I'm not sure, myself.

Yes, I Can!

At least, I hope so.

posted at 16:43 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sat, 18 Feb 2006

Don't You Fucking Look At Me

If only criminals are concerned for their privacy then sign me up for some criminal behavior. I can think of lots of things I do which aren't crimes but which I wouldn't want captured on camera; administrating Windows, for starters. This on top of the already ongoing and illegal spying that's been happening on Americans.

So, feeling antagonized, I responded in typical fashion. I gave money to

And then just to cover all my bases of flight from the panoptic scan, I also gave some money to

posted at 10:36 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  
Opposites Occlude

The Speed of Dark is a straightforward story told through the filter of an autistic point of view. The story isn't overly complicated, the world is largely congruent to America of today, but the perspective makes all of the difference. The edition I read has a short interview with the writer and a set of questions so a discussion group or teacher could use this as a springboard to discussion.

This book is not like most of the books I prefer to read but I'm glad I read it for the way it showed me familiar circumstances through new eyes.

What I liked:

  • I gather that this use of perspective to focus a story is called Voice; it's effective here.
  • It had several of my spaceships in cameo roles
    1. Space travel
    2. Pattern recognition
    3. Computer professionals
    4. Fencing
  • Plausible characters, setting and situation.

What I didn't:

  • There's not a lot of meat to this story, it wasn't a lot of new material for thought for me.
  • I wanted more detail; the perspective was more of an awareness filter than a delving into details of observation.
  • Some of the characters seemed no more than names.

Probably a good read for people who consider themselves to be not science fiction readers but are interested in a literary take on the mindset of an autistic man. Less interesting for people outside of that criteria.

posted at 10:35 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Wed, 15 Feb 2006

Wood Panels

"The Revolution will be Downloaded" [URL may expire shortly] a panel of IGDA with some live blogging by me. Or not.

Kenny Dinkin is the moderator, hooray. Downloadable games are awesome. They will save the industry from

  • sequel-itis
  • random licenses
  • something else; I forget what, but it was bad

Or not.

Casual games have something like 95% growth rate per year [for the last few minutes that casual games have existed, anyway]. Mostly people 35+ years old [cool, I'm not old enough!], mostly women. So that's good. Different market, different challenges. Tech savviness is probably a factor, people used to spending money online [thanks, Amazon!].

Kenny loves DRM, hooray, we time-bomb and ruin the experience! Then they give us money for their next fix.

Now other people get to talk, to disagree with Kenny.

So, WHY should I care?

Mitzi: hardcore game makers should care because otherwise you're missing revenue; casual games are fun [more fun?]

Peter: the iTunes-ization of games is great; having games on the web makes it possible to get players who are not able to be at their console of choice, they can play in Study Hall

Juan: great for developers, sets the bar high because you generally only have sixty minutes to prove yourself to the potential player; your mother will finally understand what you do because she can play your game

Greg: Lots of money to be made here; chance to take risk, explore new areas.

So, WHAT is a casual game?

Greg: Addictive fun game play and ease of use. Popcap developer last week said "no casual game has ever failed because it was too easy to play"

Juan: non-violent game, non-violent theme; user should understand game in a minute and a half, tops; game mechanics should be point, click, execute, not at the same time

Mitzi: accessible, easy to get on your computer, smaller than 15M, fast download, fast install, just work

Peter: a good video game is fun, a great video game can ruin a life [and a family], casual game isn't challenging, just an activity; casual games are revenue sources beyond download, try, and buy

Kenny: does it need to be a dragon, a spaceship? These elements are great for hardcore gamers, alienate casual players

So, WHO is playing (and paying for) these games?

Peter: it's everybody, mass-market

Mitzi: her 72 year old dad, was playing and buying casual games before I was; her daughter, her husband; everybody has 5-10 minutes to devote, if you can draw people in, you can have a winner

Greg: 2/3 women, 1/3 men, it's everybody who plays, purchasing is an even higher percentage of women; games are crossing over to hardcore audience, Xbox Arcade, mobile phones, age is skewing older, not one segment which dominates

Juan: depending on theme, your audience may be different; mah jong style games mostly female, other type games mostly male; college students to 30 year olds are really into multi-player games, many ported from Korean; traditionally, mostly female, formerly 85% purchasers female, now down to 65%

So, HOW do I design for this market?

Greg: the central mechanic is crucial

Mitzi: if you find a game mechanic you like, expand it; coin op games have the mindset of the quarter drop, what do you do to get the player to drop more quarters, apply that lesson to the games

Peter: the goal to get further next time; understand the level progression, so you can expect that your money will be worth spending for the additional levels / experience you'll get

Juan: some risk to pushing a single game mechanic, because it may not scale, might be fun for thirty minutes but fall off therafter, fine for a web game, but not something long term; taking two approaches, video game approach: build universe, hang game play off of it or build mechanic: build game-play around something hopefully fun to do; look at what's out there, look at what's successful, look at the games, themselves, figure out why they're fun, design to be that rich or better

Kenny: a lot of what we did with Diner Dash, Nicole has an article about the difficulty ramp

Greg: it's important to have both competitive and relaxing modes in game play

Mitzi: Big Kahuna Reef does it right, has timed and untimed modes

Juan: wouldn't use competitive or relaxing to label it, label it rewarding, if it's rewarding for the players, if they feel great, that's the way it should be

Peter: there's a web game, AdventureQuest, it's like a MMORPG without other players, just a couple clicks to rewarding experience

Mitzi: tutorial is a great way to get people into a game

Peter: reward with some sort of feedback, not necessarily achieving a goal, don't punish them for clicking around, exploring

Audience question about Fate, it's like Diablo, but distributed through casual game channels, very complicated.

Juan: Fate successful in some channels, with male buyers, surprisingly so, not as popular as Aloha Solitaire, but the developer can consider it a success; as the audience grows in numbers, this changes the challenges involved, can the developers target niche markets

Peter: maybe it would have done even better if it were part of a subscription model, where people could pay to get multiple games, and not feel like they wasted their money on a single game

Audience question, is the casual game market a response to the existing game pressures from the big players, doomed to fail in turn?

Mitzi: no, the resource demands, disk, bandwidth, time, newer computers, means there's a completely different market

Greg: we're seeing the same copycatting stuff happening in the casual game market, but it's early on so we're going to see integration [innovation?]

Kenny pulls up slides showing copycat games from many companies, including Trijinx, hooray. So how do we balance Innovation versus Commercial Success?

Juan: lots of room for innovation, imitation is a natural consequence of success; casual game market is healthy, in terms of number of new ideas, working in it every day, it may not seem that way because we see so many games, but many imitators get filtered out before they're released to the world; doing better than console market at avoiding imitation

Peter: how do we define innovation or imitation? Not every match-three game is created equal; we look at things from a portfolio point of view, try to balance things, have some risks, some sure things, you know there's a demand for a mah jong game, that stability gives you freedom to try experimental games; lots of opportunity to do new stuff, some straight up copycats don't sell, don't succeed, so you need to innovate sometimes; match three is a familiar mechanic but people love it

Mitzi: top selling game last year was a match three, took four months to make, second seller took eighteen months, do the math; again with the portfolio metaphor, have yet another match three with another innovation on the 'clearing out the corners' innovation iWin has

Peter: you need core titles to be bread and butter, once bills are being paid, branch out, but avoid action/arcade/sports because casual games are the wrong space for them

Greg: there are many untapped genres, Tradewinds is a light RTS which is new to this space, adventure platform has a larger female demographic, but much much more to be done here

Audience [Nicole] asks what process is to make a game developer learn and improve their game audience.

Kenny: Playfirst really believes in experimentation, has paid off big for us, big things are to study what went right, what went wrong, learn from that, test the product early and often, focus test, user test, beta test, keep getting feedback, friends and family, respond to it, listen to what the players tell you

Mitzi: we prototype in Flash, because it's amazing, concepts get ten chances to be interesting before the idea is killed, Shockwave is great to go and look for feedback

Kenny asks what the kill rate is for games

Mitzi: about 30% before production, probably 5% after production starts, realizing it wasn't a good idea, many games get tabled because they're taking energy which needs to go into other games, not killed

Juan: prototyping is great, but there's a problem as to how tell whether a user issue is bad prototyping or bad game concept, it's sometimes hard to capture game design via prototype sometimes, other industries have better tools, such as film industry; even with Flash, it takes a long time, larger team to build a prototype than it should, would like to see better prototyping tools

Greg: even though prototyping tools can be rough, it's relatively easy to get to the heart of the mechanic through prototyping, in early stages it's more useful, once working with partners, can get feedback from prototyping, can put tracking tools into the games themselves to get usage pattern stuff back, cool and huge to see how players interact with games

So, WHEN do I need help?

Peter: we're a little different from other companies represented on this panel because many of our games are web games supported by advertising, so the games we get are different from most people; the other day we tracked down a developer because we wanted to publish it, we called and left a message and his dad called back; if I were a developer, it would be daunting to identify all channels and negotiate a deal with each and every one of them, a year ago I wouldn't have seen the value of publishers but now I can see the value they put into the chain

Greg: two parts to the value equation, what the developer believes they need, what the publisher believes they add to the equation; varies widely from developer to developer, some just need funding but most people get value from QA resources, hardware resources, probably the biggest add from iWin is insight into the market, what has been successful, what hasn't, with developers who don't always have the same insight we do; distribute top titles, see what sells, collect user feedback, during beta process, tracking tools and data can go back to developer to shape final game

Mitzi: you need help when you need money, to pay rent on the garage you're doing your development in, a lot of times publishers want games which are complete are nearly complete, don't quit your day job, finish your game, take it a publisher; lots of publishers don't want to do one offs, there are aggregators who will take some of your margin but help you place your games with the publishers

Juan: depends upon game and audience you want to reach, publisher relationship can be great for infrastructure, if you target an audience publisher isn't trying to reach, it's not such a good match; several games do fairly well going it alone, it's getting harder and harder though to get noticed with out a publisher, at the same time the casual game market is growing

Audience questions about whether casual gaming has room for violent gaming with simple interface, second question about Steam.

Juan: games are getting bigger as broadband spreads but it would be really hard for violent gaming to catch on, but maybe multi-player casual maybe has room for violent games, look at the success of Korean multi-player, they don't have time to commit to World of Warcraft, they've got twenty minutes to spend on it so a game they can jump into and do mayhem is good

Mitzi: [disagreeing with Juan] as soon as you cross over the line from family friendly, you have to deal with the ESRB, your site is being monitored, everything is being rated, even if it's just for one game, it's a whole other level of complexity, only if it will make you a bunch of money

Greg: no on violence, this is the wrong market, the people it will appeal to have other platforms which will deliver better for them

Peter: violence doesn't belong in a download-then-purchase market but an ad supported game or some other model like subscription [cites AdventureQuest again] is quite possible

Kenny: think about what mass market means, think about popular television, popular arts, hope what we're looking at in this downloading market is reaching popular mass markets with downloadable entertainment, re-frame the picture and don't reject violence in games out of hand because we're at the start of this and there's going to be a whole range of tastes, there's lots of good TV out [Kenny gives shouts out to BSG, Six Feed Under, Sopranos, Entourage], if you want to do violence, stand it on its head, push it way out to the horizons, so that everyone can experience it, don't just go after the cap turned back Xbox players

Time's Up! Everyone is invited to go drink with panelists, yay.

posted at 21:05 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Mon, 13 Feb 2006

OMGcon

How was your weekend? Great. Mine was better, unless you were where I was, which was CodeCon. It was the first time I've been to a technical conference, so while I did take advantage of the free wifi to dink around on the net and look at web pages related to the projects I heard about, I didn't do anything so ambitious as live-blogging the presentations.

But there was audio captured from the events and you can go listen to that when it gets put up at the site, or follow links from the program of events to read more about something which catches your eye.

My favorite projects, by day:

There were a couple projects which struck me as solutions in search of a problem but every talk gave me something to think about and I came away with pages and pages of project ideas and things to follow up on. Definitely going next year.

posted at 11:33 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Tue, 07 Feb 2006

Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily

First, for the readers who are 14-year-old-boys in perpetuity regardless of physical body or age, this book has girl on girl sex, so you'll like it for that reason alone. For readers looking for something a bit more, it's also got more to it.

Slow River is definitely sf. It happens in the future, it uses gadgets which are extrapolations of existing technology, it postulates social progressions upon existing structures and conflicts. But it's more about the people who live in that future world than it is their toys. It's got a central narrator who has suffered and is wrestling with the question of who she is, having opportunity to be assigned several roles by those she meets and interacts with, as well as choosing some for herself. Which sounds more boring than it actually is to read about.

What I liked about it:

  • The girl on girl sex; that's right, I'm emotionally arrested.
  • The tension arc. The writer did a good job of cranking it tighter and tighter and used verb-tense contexts well to keep the pacing quick.
  • The criminal element. I am a sucker for seamy sf criminal underworlds.
  • Strong opening, no slow slog up the exposition.

What I didn't:

  • I find it hard to empathize with rich people. The Poor Little Rich Girl meme never infected me.
  • The tech wasn't pushed as far as I would have liked to see it. The water remediation stuff was interesting but I wanted to see it taken to greater extremes.

So it's a fine read, especially if you like stories about rich girls with problematic families who fall in with bad company and commit sordid crimes.

posted at 11:28 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Tue, 31 Jan 2006

Show Us to the Maze ... OR DIE!

For roughly the first 150 of the 192 pages of this book, A Maze of Death didn't seem much like a PKD book to me. What I mean is, it seemed like a straightforward murder-horror book. Ominous party or parties are acting offstage to eliminate the central characters. Which might be paranoid in fiction by someone else but for PKD, that's benign.

Then, it all went Dickian.

It feels like I haven't read much PKD; looked at by the numbers, I've read maybe half his novels and a fourth of his short stories. But whenever I talk to people about his writing, I've almost always dwarfed their consumption. I tend to read him in streaks and stop when it starts to feel like the same story over and over. So this was a nice change of pace insofar as the facade of normalcy to the universe holds for three fourths of the novel.

Then, of course, it all falls apart. There's some delicious turns to the worm here, at the tail end, and it's worth sticking with for the ending, but only if you already know you like PKD. This is probably not a good first PKD book for someone who hasn't ready any of his stuff [and, no, seeing film adaptations of his work is nothing like reading his stuff] but readers who enjoyed aspects of The Man in the High Castle or Ubik will find things to enjoy, here.

What I liked:

  • The denouement and epilogue.
  • The Rashomon-like roving viewpoints as we see characters lie to one another.
  • The brevity. This story moves briskly with sparse prose and jagged transitions.
  • The almost-sex scene.

What I didn't like:

  • Copy-editing was rough and some of the glaring errors jarred me out of the story.
  • It didn't show its Dickian colors until late in the story.

Not the strongest PKD I've read, nor the strangest, not the weakest, nor the bleakest. Probably a good third or fourth PKD book for someone just getting started on that path, with minor re-reading potential.

posted at 21:04 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Thu, 26 Jan 2006

Busted!

After leaving it at Cato's Ale House overnight, I got a late start on reading the next book, The End of Fame. Luckily, it was a fast read so I got it done under the wire.

This book is about Evan Larkspur. It's a sequel to an earlier book by the same authors which I'd read last year, The Unwound Way. As is often the case with sequels, I was concerned this story wouldn't stand alone. In brief, no, it doesn't. It's not necessary to have read the earlier book but it does enhance this story so much that it's a strongly suggested course.

But if you have read the first book, this book is intriguing and fun and explores some almost PKD territory concerning identity and self-image. It involves a playwright on the run, concealing his identity, who's pressed into service to spy on someone impersonating his identity. That's more complicated to express than it is to read about.

It's also got some smutty bits, which rules.

What I didn't like about this book:

  • Insufficiently stand-alone; there were recaps of salient details from the previous book but it seemed like it would lack some of the impact if a reader wasn't already familiar with the story.
  • Didn't push the story far enough along the premises.

What I did:

  • The protagonist. He's awesome in a King Mob, James Bolivar DiGriz, James Bond, kind of fashion.
  • The underlying premise, which is not really fleshed out until the very end of the story, but which explicates all the preceding story.
  • The supporting characters. Well conveyed, good distinct personas.
  • Fast-moving. I had no trouble being hooked from the very beginning, but this was probably due to my familiarity with the first book.
posted at 12:26 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sat, 21 Jan 2006

Alchemical Marriage

In stereotypical Californian fashion, having gotten married in December, we'll be having the wedding late July in Tilden Park. It's a smaller space than we'd like so we're not going to be able to invite everyone we might want to have there which is by way of saying: if you don't hear more about this later, don't get mad, get even.

posted at 09:59 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Thu, 19 Jan 2006

Everything This Changes, Changes Everything

The first book of 2006 which I can unqualifiedly recommend, Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. This is a solid tale with robust characters, narrative nuance and engaging premises.

Continuing the streak of authors I've actually met, I spent a few spare minutes in her company at a Clarion West party in 2005 and felt bad because I hadn't read any of her stuff in years and so wasn't able to participate in the conversation about her writing but enjoyed the experience, nonetheless. It gave me the sense of hearing this story in her voice as I read it, which enhanced it.

What I liked about this book:

  • Premises: collapsing civilization, quest for truth and wisdom, strength of community.
  • Characters were sharp and seemed real to me.
  • Language, the phrasing of the poetic passages had the spartan elegance I enjoy in poetry.

What I didn't like: Nothing. There's nothing I didn't like about this book, which is something of a rarity for me.

Even if you've read this book already, I'm still going to recommend you read it. It's that good.

There may be a slight hitch in my schedule, as I need to read a technical book next about Request Tracker but I'm a few days ahead of the necessary novel-a-week schedule so maybe I can stay on target.

posted at 09:56 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Wed, 18 Jan 2006

FirefoX11?

Last night I saw a demonstration of XML11, a protocol to translate Java code into an AJAX web page. It was amazing. Seeing xeyes running, responding to mouse motion, inside a standard Firefox browser, with no extra plug-ins, no extra installed software was revelatory. This is just the surface being scratched. I've already thought of two reasonably interesting applications for this.

  1. Remember the idea of hosted desktops? This makes that feasible.
  2. Massive multi-player mobile gaming; farm out the engine processing to the users so it scales with them, use the server to marshal and redistribute the data to the appropriate subsets.

Doubtlessly there are a ton more ideas here.

posted at 11:56 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sun, 15 Jan 2006

Do You Rock?

Then read this Indie Band Survival Guide for how to avoid getting suckered and abused on your way to musical fame and fortune. My friend Randy had a hand in writing this and showed me an earlier draft; I suggest that you give it a look if you have any interest in the mechanics of making a business out of making music.

posted at 10:31 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sat, 14 Jan 2006

Sing Sing

Third novel of 2006, Archform: Beauty by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. Unlike much of the praise and commentary on this writer you'll be able to find, I actually have never read his Magic of Recluse stuff. I've read about half a dozen of his other books, though. I stopped after I read three in a row where the protagonist was a wearily competent combat-trained guy caught up in a mysterious threat. Like Vonnegut, I found a little Modesitt went a long, long way with me.

Plus there was that whole Mormons of the Future thing which I had my fill of with Orson Scott Card and had to overcome in order to enjoy the new Battlestar Galactica. There's just something about religions which smack of science fiction which reduces their credibility with me. In essence, all of them. [Consider how many tropes the Book of Revelations shares with even the sf not derived from it for further ruminations on this.]

But the last time I'd met him, he'd sold me an autographed copy of this book and it was time to get it read. It's the most interesting book by him I've read. It's constructed with five points of view, each with a distinct voice, each exploring a different take on one theme, that of beauty, what it means, what it's worth, what people do to find and obtain and preserve it.

What I liked:

  • The success in differentiating the tone for each character; good characterization at work there.
  • The resolution. It built to a reasonable conclusion without faltering or becoming muddled.
  • The cover art. The US paperback edition I have shows a woman with bee-hived red hair in a cage-like structure while a shadowy form looms behind a blurring screen. That really captures the tone of the story.
  • The technology. It was plausible and appropriate and didn't dictate the story so much as it allowed it.
  • Completely sympathetic main villain.

What I didn't like:

  • Misogynistic undertones. Despite one of the perspectives being a woman, it felt like she was being given short-shrift and other women in the story had it even worse.
  • Mild racist undertones. Not bad, just enough that I sometimes found myself wondering why I kept reading about who was white and who wasn't in a story where those things shouldn't have been a factor. The bits about genetically attuned physiological effects seemed gratuitous.
  • It took a lot of exposition and stage setting before the action started. Over 1/3 of the way through it before I hit the tipping point where I was hooked on the story and wanted to see how it finished.
posted at 13:04 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Mon, 09 Jan 2006

Regency Regendo

The second book I read in 2006 was Point of Honour by Madeleine E. Robins. I should preface this by saying that I know Ms. Robins socially. She and my wife, Vylar Kaftan were in a writing group together and we've been at the same parties together once or twice. That should serve to disclaim something or other.

The first thing to know about this book is that it's written as hard-boiled Regency. That is, it's a detective story in the tradition of a protagonist who is hired by a liar to do a job which turns out to be the tip of an iceberg of treachery. During the course of the investigation, the protagonist will be pummeled several times, engage in banter, and effect a solution to the central mystery through asking questions until the light cast by conflicting lies illuminates the core truth. This particular incarnation is set during the Regency.

I had no solid idea what that meant when I started reading this book. English royal succession is as interesting to me as it can be given that I grew up with the annual tradition of blowing up a simply enormous quantity of explosive powders in revels celebrating the American triumph over the British tax-men. The most solid understanding I had of the events of that time and place are all derived from Schoolhouse Rock and movies. In essence, not deep at all.

So the changes to actual history used in the setting of this book didn't throw me because I didn't recognize them. The change ups in hard boiled didn't bother me because I'm not a purist for that genre. The end result being, I quite guiltlessly recommend this book to people who meet some subset of this list

  • want a book with a strong female protagonist
  • want some hard boiled fiction with a twist
  • obsess about the Regency and want to see a what-if variant
  • like hookers

What I didn't like about this book:

  1. The first two chapters. It was a real slog for me to get through the hook and the exposition and to get on with the story.
  2. The way characters are said, time and again, to say things neutrally, coolly, placidly, unheatedly and so on. I've been told that is emblematic of the time represented here but I just found it distracting after the first three times.

What I liked most about this book:

  1. Once people started dying, the book really developed momentum for me.
  2. The protagonist. She's awesome. More like this, please!
  3. The bits about Tom Jones. A nice touch which doesn't detract from the flow of the action.
posted at 23:03 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Thu, 05 Jan 2006

Notfunny Floating

Four days to read the first novel, Up the Walls of the World. This was published at the tail end of the 1970s and it has several qualities which remind me of that era of sf:

  • Self-medicating protagonist, questioning own perceptions because of medication intake.
  • Presentation of the United States government as labyrinthine, nearly omnipotent and up to No Good.
  • Revelation that humanity are very powerful compared to other inhabitants of the universe but untrained, oblivious and careless.

I suppose it's possible to spoil a book written twenty-five years ago for someone so I'll try to tread carefully around the plot. I first read Tiptree twenty years ago, a story set in Quintana Roo. I no longer remember much about it, other than a sense of utter wonder at the oddness of the setting and the descriptive powers of the writer.

In the meantime, I became aware of the Tiptree Award and of Tiptree being a pseudonym for a woman, who was a US government spook and died in a assisted suicide-suicide pact. So that brought this book to the top of my queue to read in 2006.

What I did not like:

  1. Unreliable narrator. I did not like having a habitual drug user unable to differentiate drug effect from unexpected sensation.
  2. Overlapping narrative. Seeing the same event from multiple points of view didn't add anything to my understanding.
  3. The Tolkien fan. Several characters were established as sf fans. But one habitually referred to things using Tolkien nomenclature.

What I did like:

  1. The aliens. Well done job having them seem alien to me, physiologically and psychologically.
  2. Realistic seeming characters with legitimately troubling backgrounds. I'm still wondering how many of them are thinly disguised people the author knew and worked with.
  3. Ambiguous backgrounds. Several of the characters had only highlight-sketched background information and that was perfect for me. I was afraid more of them would end up over-detailed.
  4. Resolution. This story had a satisfying closure for me, with most characters happy, some characters sad, and a few characters dead.
  5. Moving climax. There is a point in the story where a terrible tragedy is happening and there is a struggle to overcome it which nearly moved me to tears. Good management of emotional tenor throughout.

So it's available from Powell's for less than five bucks if you want to read it for yourself. Just over 300 pages, good fast read with that late '70s flavor to it.

posted at 09:11 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Mon, 02 Jan 2006

Behold Our Glory

Our ten favorite wedding pictures are bundled as a set on flickr.

posted at 14:10 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  

Sun, 01 Jan 2006

(This Is How I'm) Getting Things Done With Basecamp

Maybe you've heard of David Allen. Smart guy, wrote a couple books. Here are a couple sites with discussion, debate, tips, tricks and amplifications of explanations. That said, these are the tools I've found most useful for implementing my own instance of GTD.

  • Mosuki for calendaring. Friends recommended it and it's OK. Haven't compared it to others [upcoming, eventful, icalshare, et cetera] as it more or less does what I need it to do, it lets me schedule events with varying degrees of privacy and sharing. It may well be obsoleted by reminders from Backpack or my own installation of remind.
  • Backpack pages for my SOMEDAY/MAYBE lists.
  • The core of the system, Basecamp for Projects and Next Actions[*].

It's a sparse implementation, trading the need for web access to use, versus the very few physical components. It's a work in progress, like everything else, but this captures the essence of it at present.

The only part of it which costs me money is the Basecamp part and that was after I'd tried their Free plan for three months, to make sure it would let me manage the data the way I wanted to manage it. The Milestones and Writeboard features haven't come into play, yet.

* Specifically, the Personal level plan. Each of the three active Projects maps to a Scope [Collaborative, Personal and Professional]. Each To-Do list is a Project. Each Task on a To-Do list is a Next Action. Then the mildly clever bit: Each of several Users is a Context. Tasks are assigned to the User representing the execution Context. This means daily checklists by Context is a simple matter of filtering for Tasks owned by each User and the Weekly Review is done on the level of Projects, scanning the To-Do lists for needed Tasks and assigning them to an appropriate User.

posted at 22:39 PST (-0800)     (comments disabled)   permanent link  
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