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Those Gentle Voices, George Alec Effinger - After Effinger's excellent Budayeen trilogy (When Gravity Fails, et al), I've been picking up and reading other pieces by him over the years. Those Gentle Voices is not quite exactly a time travel romp, or perhaps more a cautionary tale against colonization - the civilization you destroy may be your own! - but unfortunately this book was among the late 70s equivalent of pulp SF, and it has not stood up well over the years.
You Suck, Christopher Moore - This just came out, and was one of the few bright spots in the last two months of being under the weather much, much too often. I absolutely love Moore's work, this is to some degree the long-hoped-for sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends, which you should go read without delay, unless you can't stand light-hearted vaguely magical realism fiction. Then you can read Island of the Sequined Love Nun, and after that you'll be hooked, or loathe the stuff with a passion. Either way, you should give me (and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jedusor) a lime. It's the only thing you can really depend on.
Sin of Origin, John Barnes - With One for the Morning Glory, Mr Barnes became one of my favorite authors (as well as an all around nice guy). Over the last couple of years, I've been collecting his works from before Morning Glory and his other breakout book, Mother of Storms. Sadly, Sin of Origin has not stood the test of having been published in the late 80s well, and has gotten quite long in the tooth along the way. Although it's conceit is interesting (Why is there DNA in outer space?), I'm not sure that it's worth the entire 253 pages of the book. I would recommend it only to another Barnes completist.
The Disappointment Artist, Jonathan Lethem - After a recent conversation withdr_memory, I pulled this off the to-read shelf yesterday morning, where it's been sitting for at least a year. It's a collection of Mr Lethem's shorter articles, and something of an autobiography of how he came to be a writer. I found much of it resonated quite a lot, particularly passages about how one feels after the loss of an important relationship and the costs and mechanics of pretense. Oddly enough, the general theme of the loss of his mother in his teenage years, the slowly breaking up home, and his attempts to deal with that loss by feigning having grown up much more quickly did not hit home - I can sympathize, but only from a distance. I did quite appreciate the hooks into 70s pop culture and the tales of growing up in a Bohemian world, and also I've always liked Lethem's turns of phrase. I probably need to give in and go pick up Motherless Brooklyn. If you are not yet a Lethem fan, you should read Gun, With Occasional Music, a surrealist near-future work with strong overtones of Philip K Dick - well, a Philip K Dick without the rampant drug use, paranoia, and despair. For that matter, if you're a sub-atomic particle physicist and not yet a fan of Lethem, you should read As She Climbed Across The Table. If you're a sub-atomic particle physicist who already is a fan of Lethem, go read John Cramer's Einstein's Bridge and somewhat less even Twistor.
Best American Science Writing 2006 - This was a present from my family this year, and it was quite good. I plan to separately post about a few of the articles, they were quite interesting. Not everything we know is wrong, but as usual the world is a more varied and interesting place than anyone really expects.
Six Degrees of Separation, John Guare - I first saw the film in the mid-90s, and picked up a copy of the original play recently to compare notes. The film was played exceptionally straight, and it was nice to realize that Stockard Channing had played the role in the West End before playing it in the film. The one significant difference, which makes the story much less challenging, is the ending - in the original play, the conflicts that are resolved in the last few minutes of the movie are all presented, but not resolved, while the movie almost seems to have had an afterword added just to tie resolve those questions (instead of forcing the viewer to resolve them for themselves). Nonetheless, quite compelling in either format. Now if only someone would put together a stage production for me to go see...
As always, this post has been made entirely with recycled bits. No Bogons were harmed in the making of this article.
You Suck, Christopher Moore - This just came out, and was one of the few bright spots in the last two months of being under the weather much, much too often. I absolutely love Moore's work, this is to some degree the long-hoped-for sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends, which you should go read without delay, unless you can't stand light-hearted vaguely magical realism fiction. Then you can read Island of the Sequined Love Nun, and after that you'll be hooked, or loathe the stuff with a passion. Either way, you should give me (and
jedusor) a lime. It's the only thing you can really depend on.Sin of Origin, John Barnes - With One for the Morning Glory, Mr Barnes became one of my favorite authors (as well as an all around nice guy). Over the last couple of years, I've been collecting his works from before Morning Glory and his other breakout book, Mother of Storms. Sadly, Sin of Origin has not stood the test of having been published in the late 80s well, and has gotten quite long in the tooth along the way. Although it's conceit is interesting (Why is there DNA in outer space?), I'm not sure that it's worth the entire 253 pages of the book. I would recommend it only to another Barnes completist.
The Disappointment Artist, Jonathan Lethem - After a recent conversation with
dr_memory, I pulled this off the to-read shelf yesterday morning, where it's been sitting for at least a year. It's a collection of Mr Lethem's shorter articles, and something of an autobiography of how he came to be a writer. I found much of it resonated quite a lot, particularly passages about how one feels after the loss of an important relationship and the costs and mechanics of pretense. Oddly enough, the general theme of the loss of his mother in his teenage years, the slowly breaking up home, and his attempts to deal with that loss by feigning having grown up much more quickly did not hit home - I can sympathize, but only from a distance. I did quite appreciate the hooks into 70s pop culture and the tales of growing up in a Bohemian world, and also I've always liked Lethem's turns of phrase. I probably need to give in and go pick up Motherless Brooklyn. If you are not yet a Lethem fan, you should read Gun, With Occasional Music, a surrealist near-future work with strong overtones of Philip K Dick - well, a Philip K Dick without the rampant drug use, paranoia, and despair. For that matter, if you're a sub-atomic particle physicist and not yet a fan of Lethem, you should read As She Climbed Across The Table. If you're a sub-atomic particle physicist who already is a fan of Lethem, go read John Cramer's Einstein's Bridge and somewhat less even Twistor.Best American Science Writing 2006 - This was a present from my family this year, and it was quite good. I plan to separately post about a few of the articles, they were quite interesting. Not everything we know is wrong, but as usual the world is a more varied and interesting place than anyone really expects.
Six Degrees of Separation, John Guare - I first saw the film in the mid-90s, and picked up a copy of the original play recently to compare notes. The film was played exceptionally straight, and it was nice to realize that Stockard Channing had played the role in the West End before playing it in the film. The one significant difference, which makes the story much less challenging, is the ending - in the original play, the conflicts that are resolved in the last few minutes of the movie are all presented, but not resolved, while the movie almost seems to have had an afterword added just to tie resolve those questions (instead of forcing the viewer to resolve them for themselves). Nonetheless, quite compelling in either format. Now if only someone would put together a stage production for me to go see...
As always, this post has been made entirely with recycled bits. No Bogons were harmed in the making of this article.
