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Absence disturbs the mental processes - you get that dislocated feeling so aptly called lost. A lost tooth creates a gap which your tongue is always poking at and taking your mind from other things. It is Sunday and there is no new Dr Who to watch. It doesn't matter that the season finale was a pile of garbage*, I still really want another episode to watch today. It just isn't the same without it.

So to Axis by Robert Charles Wilson. You probably know by now that I'm a big fan of Wilson's work. He writes hard SF novels in settings of physical dislocation and populates those settings with an interesting bunch of characters. That was certainly a description of Spin, the book to which Axis is a sequel. The first book was excellent and quite deservedly won a Hugo. This followup is not bad, but it seems to be lacking something compared to the previous work and other earlier novels.

There are two reasons for this I think. One is a problem common to sequels of books where the strangeness of the setting is fundamental to the setting. That strangeness just isn't as strange the second time around. The second reason why this book lags behind others by this author is that one of his signature characteristics is missing - the aforementioned physical dislocation. Usually, in Wilson's books, people are cut off by some cosmically mysterious barrier or dislocation. This time it is just the more mundane story of people travelling to an isolated settlement and travelling in an underpopulated area. Sure, he is a good author and it is a pretty decent science fictional read, but it just isn't the same.

( * )

Its almost film festival time. It used to be that I would throw myself into this event with great abandon. You know the drill, take time off and watch a whole pile of films. But these days I've pretty much given up on it. My interest started to decline when my eyesight started to go and I couldn't read the subtitles so easily. I got contact lenses and was able to go again, but found that I had lost interest. However I am slightly interested in a couple of films this year.

1) A Turkish film called Three Monkeys for tediously obvious reasons although it is the sort of thing I used to seek actively.

2) A Swedish film called Let the Right One In. Why? Because I have just read the book it is based on by John Ajvide Lindqvist (who also wrote the screenplay). It isn't coincidence. The book only turned up on the local booksellers shelves because the film was coming to the festival. I bought it because I'm still looking for good modern fantasy and of the vast numbers of Vampire books around, it looked the most interesting.

Actually, it is a pretty interesting and readable book even if I never really got totally enthralled by it. It is a Vampire book and it has creature with a fairly standard set of superpowered characteristics and weaknesses and a bunch of the expected sexual associations. But it does not really read like the usual novels. I think, in broad style terms, it is because it has not been approached as the usual fantasy/horror combined with romance genre production. Instead it is more a modern literature work with touches of crime thriller writing in it. That means a focus on the miniature of life to set the scene and tell the story - its an approach that works well here. If only the multi-threaded approach had achieved greater consistency, it would have been very good indeed. As it was, one thread was much more engaging than the others and that makes reading a bit frustrating.

There is also a comparison to be made with the Lukyanenko books I read recently to try to fill the same need for modern fantasy. The Russian books had a sense of strangeness about them that came from the alien nature of Russia. Even though Let The Right One In is every bit as Swedish as the *Watch books are Russian, it does not feel as alien. It probably is that Sweden isn't as different from here as Russia, or it could be that the members of my flist resident in Sweden help me keep in touch with the place, but I have to think that a big factor in the feeling of familiarity is all those Swedish films I have seen at film festivals over the years.

Another collection of short stories. The little pile of novels that I have started and couldn't get into may point to the reason. Short story collections aren't that easy to come by these days. The local booksellers are very careful about how many they get in as they just don't sell well enough to justify having many on their shelves. I've talked to a number of the buyers from these shops and they would all like to have more short story volumes on their shelves but they can't justify it. Luckily Matt at Arty Bees keeps a box of some secondhand short story titles out in the back room for those few customers who he knows are interested. Unfortunately for me

littenz had picked through the current offering a few days before I did so all I came away with was Path Into the Unknown - The Best of Soviet S.F. that was published in 1966.

There isn't much to say about these stories. They are really rather ordinary. The strange alien Russia that I saw in Night Watch and Day Watch is missing. I don't ascribe this to the authors though. I think this is a result of the translators. It really seems to me that the language of the originals has been massaged in order to make them more acceptable to western tastes. At least I think so. Without reference to the originals it is hard to tell. Conversely, they could just be ordinary.

I'm getting deja vu about this topic, so apologies if I have covered it before. See a couple of days ago I wrote about how aspects of Robert Sheckley's work has not dated so well. So now I'm looking at a collection of John Brunner stories written about 10 years before the Sheckley stories. Interestingly it is called No Future In It. More interestingly it has held up better over time. See there are some obvious things relating to the time the stories were written - man landing on the moon is still in the future and covered by a couple of the tales. But it does not seem to stand out so much. It isn't really Brunner's best work - the collection is quite uneven. But even the weaker stories don't feel all that dated.

I think part of it is that it is actually the little everyday things that catch the attention more. Sheckley's work is full of the specifics of such little things while Brunner tends to gloss over them. Brunner is more interested in the interaction of people rather than the detail of physical situation (absurd situations in Sheckley's case). The way people interact with each other and the way they react to situations is something that changes more slowly over time. I think this is part of the key to understanding why the work stands up well. There is something else about Brunner. He writes about fundamental social issues - often in allegory. So many of those issues are still with us over 40 years later. Some are much worse now than they were then.

I'm struggling to say anything original about Janet Evanovich's Fearless Fourteen. I mean what can you say about the 14th (not counting a few specials) book in the same setting with the same characters. But that just prompts the question as how the heck Evanovich can keep turning out the books themselves. More importantly, how she keeps them fresh and funny and not fall into stale formula. Its well documented that there as a bit of a slump on that front but then a return to form which is continued and then some with this one. Don't look to me to the answer of how she does it - I just enjoy the result.

I've always loved the wit that Robert Sheckley displays in his short stories. The Robot Who Looked Like Me is a collection of such stories. Even if the punchlines are predictable and the references are quite dated, it is still great fun.

Still, the dated thing bugs me a bit. Writing is a product of its time - the early 70s in this case. You cannot escape that. But if you are trying to write outside your time, it probably pays not to be too specific about stuff. The thing Sheckley keeps doing is putting specific monetary values into his stories. People take high paying jobs in the far future in his stories for amounts that actually seem pretty puny by todays standards. Surely it isn't that hard to change the currency name ("Credits" used to be popular) or just talk in more general terms about the big money. It isn't a big deal and it doesn't stop me from enjoying the stories but it does bug me because it just seems so fixable.

Carob is pretty much the most evil food in the universe. First because some misguided people are inclined to use it as a replacement for chocolate - just how twisted is that, nothing can replace chocolate. Second because I am really sensitive to it. So to the person at the bakery in my local supermarket who thought that supplementing the chocolate brownies with carob was a good idea, I wish all my migraine-like symptoms on you (I don't get real migraines but the symptom list for my reaction to carob is very similar).

As the symptoms started to subside and my eyes were able to focus again, I thought I'd do a bit of reading. I figured short stories were the order of the day and among the best anthologists in the business are David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. Their Year's Best SF collections are always top notch, so I read the latest - #13.

But what a morbid collection it is this time around. Well written stories as usual, but there are quite a few dealing with death and a bunch more dedicated to bleak and hopeless visions of the near future. It isn't all like that but the trend is there. Actually last year's was rather bleak too, but without all the death stuff as well. Hartwell & Kramer claim to be sampling and giving a representative view of the Science Fiction short story scene. What a sad lot. Alternatively it may reflect their mental state - the editorial contains a few comments about the state of the world which give a hint or two. Also, what happy person dedicates a book to somebody why tries to steal money from you through cheque fraud.

Of course, there is another theory - perhaps its a reflection of my state of mind. Carob poisoning can do that to you.

Chocolate brownies should not have carob in them. Nothing should ever have carob in it.

Two days of pain and sickness because somebody broke that rule.

Dave Freer sent me a link to Darwin's Evolutions an online short fiction magazine. Its of the funded by sponsorship and donations model which means you can look for free.

Did I hear somebody groan "not another one" and a plaintive "I don't like reading online". It may even have been me. Yet, I have no doubt that this is the way more and more good quality work will be published and we better get used to it. Stories want to be set free to be read. This is one of the ways that happens. In any case, I am getting quite used to reading online (thanks

girliejones for making the case and therefore making me persist).

Besides which, it has a story by Dirk Flinthart, so it has gotta be good.

You ever get a hankerin' for something. Something fairly specific. For example you might get the urge for some toast and Marmite*. Only there is no bread or Marmite in the house. Vegemite on a rice cracker just isn't going to cut it. The other day I just felt the urge to read some modern fantasy. I don't know why that was, but the more I thought about it, the stronger the urge became. Some Tim Powers or maybe Jonathan Carroll would have done the job nicely I think. The thing is, I didn't have anything unread like that in the house and I didn't think re-reading would do the trick.

The nearest, Vegemite on a rice cracker, I could find was The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. For reasons not well remembered I bought all three of this series from a bargain bin. When I read the first volume, Night Watch, I initially thought I'd wasted even the small amount paid for the books, but I persisted and it started to grow on me. This volume continued that trend - the more I read, the more engaged with it I became. It never really got to the core of the craving, but it kept it quiet for a while.

The key thing that kept me interested I think is the sense of strangeness. Here we have our modern world, except that it is a strange and magical place that we don't know at all. But here is the interesting thing - it isn't really all the magicians, vampires etc going at each other that is what is so unfamiliar. In fact, I have been reading fantasy far too long to think of that as strange. What is most disorienting about these books is Russia and Moscow in particular. The Author is Russian and as far as I can tell these books are a genuine product of the culture. A culture that is not like any one I'm familiar with. Some of it is the obvious things like the way Taxis work on Russia, but some of it is more subtle like the implicit attitude towards hierarchies or personal destiny that the characters display. Yet I wouldn't be satisfied as well by a straight non-fantasy story set in Russia. The two go well together - like toast and Marmite.

*The New Zealand kind - the "real" Brit stuff is vile (despite the protestations of those raised on it that the reverse is true). The local stuff is actually quite similar to Vegemite - just not the same.

It is worth the time to get to know your local booksellers. When one of them gives you a call and tells you that you should really come in to see a new shipment, then you know that it is going to be worth the effort. Matt at Arty Bees called me about a set of second hand books that had come in which included a bunch of short story anthologies I might be interested in. I bought a little stack of books including three collections of Australian works. Older collections of Australian works that is. Distant Worlds Vol 4 edited by Paul Collins was published in 1981. It really is a distant world. The style of stories and even the names of the authors almost unrecognisable compared to what is coming out of the West Island these days.

It isn't unrecognisable in general though. Apart from a couple of mentions of Aussie cities, these 1980 Australian stories could have been written by American authors. American authors of the 1950s or 60s that is. Its as if the New Wave never happened down under. (Although perhaps it did in the late 90s). However before I draw any final conclusions about this, I'll read the other collections - perhaps a different editor may draw a different picture.

I while back I reported that I had been spending a lot of time watching Farscape. At that time I was about half way through season 2 and I had got there pretty rapidly. Now I'm finally finished. As the series went on it took up less and less of my time. This was simply because I was growing less and less interested and therefore not watching shows as often. Season 4 was more about making it to the end than any actual enjoyment.

I wish I had kept records, because I have the distinct impression that each series took about twice as long as the previous one to get through.

Another entry from local fans in the 48 hour film competition

I read the third volume of Year's Best Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy edited by Bill Congreve & Michelle Marquardt. I was curious to see how knowing the editors changes how I react to a book. See I hadn't met either Bill or Michelle before I read the first one. I'd met Bill and briefly discussed his editing philosophy before reading the second one. But between then and now I've had number of conversations (and a few drinks) with both Bill & Michelle and I'd read fiction written by both of them. Would it change my opinion of the work?

But there was a problem. Turns out I have read most of the stories before. That colours opinions much more than knowing the editors. Still I was able to nod and smile and say - "oh yes I can see why they like this one" a lot. Actually I liked most of them too. But it probably wasn't exactly the same set that I would have chosen and even if I had picked exactly the same ones I wouldn't have put them in the same order. But that's what personal taste will do for you.

Comebacks happen. In artistic endeavour it might not happen quite as often as on the sports field but they are pretty common. For an author of a once vibrant popular series of books time, ennui and publisher pressure may mean that at some point the term "pot boiler" gets applied. The audience starts to drift away. But as elsewhere, the author can shake themselves off and regain that earlier spark. The only problem is that it may be too late - your audience may have gone.

I had resolved to stop buying Carl Hiaasen books. The last 2 or 3 I read had become very formulaic with little of the humour of earlier work. However I did get Nature Girl. It was in a pile of trade size remaindered titles where there was a 5 for the price of 4 deal. It was the 5th book I chose and therefore effectively the "free" one. That is how much I thought of it. So I am happy to report that it actually a good return to form - not quite back to peak but getting up there. Its a subtle thing - if you look at the story, then it has all the usual Hiaasen elements - Florida, wildlife, dysfunctional idiot bad guys, a wild swamp man and other assorted losers. Yet somehow it is funnier and more engrossing than the predecessors - it is all in the telling. Welcome back Carl.

...I can't be bothered writing about the books I've read at the moment
...I never embed video and I thought I'd try
...Peter & Alicia would like their work distributed
...its a laugh
...I can...

*happily hums "give it a boot Robbie"*

Current Mood: happy

Another in the occasional series on the nature of Petone. There is a shop called Village Beads. They just sell beads and bead related paraphernalia and nothing else. Well nothing else until recently that is. Now they have a small counter down the back (past all the beads) that sells fudge. Delicious, creamy, home-made fudge (they have samples). A number of places in Petone are like that - two shops in one. Like the kebab shop that looks more like a Turkish fabric shop or the cat ornament shop that also sells used books.

Actually, it took me a while to catch on about the fudge in the bead shop. I assumed they were advertising the hair care range of the same name - I mean beads and hair can go together right? Pictures didn't help because I have fudge like objects associated with soap in my mind at the moment. One of my colleagues has a basket of soaps she is selling for school fundraising. The soaps are all molded to look like confectionery - fudge, jellies, chocolate powder, marshmallow and even chocolate fish made out of soap. Another of the team bought a package and left it lying around on the table where he often has chocolate etc lying about. When his kids paid him a visit the other day, his plan fell into shape in just the hilarious manner you would expect.

I read Joanne Harris' Chocolat a few years back. I remember thinking that it was a pleasant read but that I wouldn't bother reading any more of her work. Thing is, I can't remember what it was that brought me to that somewhat contradictory conclusion. Anyway, I read her Gentlemen & Players the other day. Again it was an entertaining pleasant read, yet at the end of it there was nothing. Its like I had no engagement with it. To give you an idea, when I read most books where violence is being done, careers destroyed and people being killed there is a sense of threat. Here there was no feeling of threat at all - it was just stuff happening. Pleasant entertaining stuff but nothing else. It's like drinking caffeine free diet coke - taste and bubbles but what does it actually give you.

Following on from the last post about cancelled shows, I'm amused to read about this campaign to save Dollhouse before it has even aired. I think I'm in the camp of the commentators who think this might prove to be counter-productive.

Don't know about Dollhouse? Its facebook page is over here. Sounds silly but then I thought the same about that strange idea of a western in space called Firefly.

Check out the userpic I used today. It is from Wonderfalls - a TV series cancelled after just 4 episodes were screened in the States and 13 made in all. As far as I'm concerned, it is one of the most wonderful pieces of television made ever. I raise this because some keen person has assembled a list shows of cancelled during the season just coming to an end. I've sampled about 20% of this list at some point, but nothing stood out as worth a lament or even a sigh. I have only watched one of them all the way through and that was more bloody mindedness knowing that it was coming to an end. Can you guess which one?

Did I miss anything? Is there some other Wonderfalls or Firefly level gem that I have missed?

( Cut because its long )

No? I didn't think so.

I was reading House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds and enjoying it but something about it was nagging at me - something familiar. Then a couple of comments exchanged with

random_alex made it click. Robots, galaxy spanning action and a story told mainly with dialogue - its like an Isaac Asimov novel. Not a pastiche or anything so obvious - it just seems to be borrowing some things. A quiet homage perhaps. Except that it isn't just an Asimov style book. While not typical of Reynolds, it is still recognisably within his style too. I think if you look there may be other authors present there too. Its retro - it invokes a feeling of the 50s while still being a modern tale.

If it is a homage, you have got to give Reynolds a lot of credit for recognising an aspect of the writing of the likes of Asimov that I think gets missed by many - the clarity of the prose. Asimov never obscured his message - his prose was always clean and clear and by the end of a book everything was explained. This clarity was characteristic of writers of the period. They weren't trying to be clever or tricky with their writing style - they were just trying to tell a story. I don't mean simple either - you can tell a complicated story and have properly drawn characters while being clear.

It is an interesting thing this clarity issue. It seems that as science has become a more complex and fuzzy discipline, then the forms that align closely with it have become complex and fuzzy too (and why this discussion does not apply to fantasy and other forms that are further removed). Obviously I'm talking generally here and there is variation - I think Peter F Hamilton tells a clean story for example. Clarity of style isn't an indicator of quality either - in some respects I thought that this Reynolds book was lacking some of the pace and sparkle that shows up in some of his other work. Despite that qualification, I still think a bit more precision and a bit less tricky cleverness would benefit the science fiction end of the genre a bit.

I got to thinking about de-facto standards yesterday. The sort of industry standards that defines how something should work and which comes about without the intervention of an outside standards body or government legislation. There was a time when car manufacturers each came out with their own ways of operating the throttle, gear change and brake. Then at some point, somebody started using the three pedal accelerator, brake, clutch arrangement that is still used now. Something similar happened in the world of dialup modems where in the early days there were all sorts of control command systems. Then a company called Hayes came up with a product and control system that was so successful that everybody came to use it even after Hayes disappeared. To be effective, a standard has to be flexible. When evolutionary changes like automatic transmission or higher modem speeds and error checking came along these were accommodated within the existing structures.

By now regular readers will be expecting some sort of book review or a comment about the sf genre. But instead all I can relate to you is that I bought a cheap clock radio alarm. See I have noticed that over the years a standardisation in the controls of such bedside alarms has taken place. It is probably as a result of a standard underlying chip set but it seems to me that the controls of these devices seems to pretty much always be the same regardless of the hundreds of brands and case designs that are out there. It wasn’t always so. But it is complicated by the fact that a lot of other devices have alarms in them – phones, TVs etc. There is no standardisation of operation for those – just in the basic bedside clock radio.

The thing is that there is a feature of some of these other non-standardised devices that I have always wanted in a clock radio. I have wanted two alarm times – one for week days and one for weekends. It seems a simple request but it never came along – the standard design didn’t have it so it never appeared. But now I have a cheap clock radio that does have two alarm time settings and yet all the other controls are just like the standard. It is an evolutionary extension to the standard. I am happy.

I suppose I should note why this didn’t, as usual, become mostly about sf despite my best intentions of finding a parallel. The genre does not have standards. There are many de-facto guidelines, trends, components, tropes or whatever in the genre, but they are not standards. For everybody who tries to lay down a set of standards there is somebody who is determined to subvert the form and break the rules. I am happy about that too.

Man dressed as Darth Vader attacked Jedis - I'm not sure what disturbs me most about this report. The attack and its motivation or the fact that somebody has seen fit to actually establish a Jedi church ("Church of Jediism").

Yes I know it could just be a bit of fun like the census returns but y'know I suspect that they may be serious.

I've had a bit of a cough as an after effect of being sick. Nothing too nasty - just some aggressive throat clearing. Except that I was coughing yesterday morning and felt a crunch and a stab of pain from my ribs - just above the stomach area on the left. Really quite painful. The doctor says I've strained a cartilage in my rib cage - well where two join in fact. I was feeling a bit silly injuring myself coughing but the doc explained that he has treated people who have actually fractured ribs by coughing so it isn't that unusual. It should take 2-4 weeks to come right. In the meantime pain when I cough, pain when I bend and pain when I laugh. Especially the last - I had to stop watching Top Gear because it hurt too much.

While not without some wry humour there aren't many laugh out loud moments in Ken MacLeod's Learning the World. I enjoyed it a great deal. It is a first contact story which helps - I've always liked that type of story. I think its because there is always a puzzle solving aspect to such stories as well as being an examination of a different society. Actually two different societies. It is hard to say which was the more alien - the far future humans or the non humans. Being a MacLeod book there is lots of examination of the political and economic mechanics of the societies. It's what he does best and this is him at his best.

One other point about this book is that it looks like another one-off (after Newton's Wake). In the two big series that MacLeod did, I felt that the quality of the story construction fell away badly in the second and subsequent books to the detriment of the overall quality. The first books of both series were by far the best. By writing one-offs then this problem does not arise. Its a good move - I'm really looking forward to the next one-off much more than I would a sequel.

The final short story collection in my illness recovery programme is not a set of stories from a larger universe. It is a slim volume of miscellaneous stories by Neil Gaiman called M is for Magic. I have read or heard all these stories before. More heard than read actually because many have been published as part of audio books already or in one case I heard it live from Neil. Yet that didn't matter at all - every one of the stories is worth repeating.

It is a small book with big print but it isn't just a matter of trying to stretch a small offering. The format is one used for younger audiences. If you were ever looking for the perfect example of a book "for the young of all ages" or some such cliché then this is the one. It really does the whole sense of wonder with a sense of humour really well. Just magic.

Another collection of short stories filling the gaps between the novels in an author's universe. This time it was Galactic North by Alastair Reynolds. Enjoyable with for the same sorts of reasons as the Baker collection the other day. Freed from the confines of progressing the big story arcs the author can have a bit of fun with the ideas. Perhaps not as entertaining as the Baker collection but Reynolds was better in one respect. This volume has a good afterword where Reynolds discusses the stories and even more interestingly talks about his literary influences. Turns out Reynolds has read and admired many of the authors that I like too. In particular he cites Larry Niven's Known Space stories as the inspiration to create a common universe to set his stories in - one where telling good stories was more important than consistency and adherence to some future history scholarship. I get that - those earlier Niven stories really did catch the imagination.

Continuing on the reading while sick theme although since I'm writing this clearly I'm on the mend. Thinking of writing, it occurs to me that I've probably written more entries on Kage Baker than any other author. A reflection of her productivity I suppose but also how much I like the work. Except that I wasn't so impressed by the last work.

Back to reading while sick. Shorter stories are a good idea when sick. It is easier to focus when the works are shorter and you have to get plenty of sleep. Putting all this together I read Gods and Pawns by Kage Baker - a collection of shorter stories set in The Company universe.

The stories cover happenings in the gaps between the big events in the novels. As such, you probably need some grounding in the univers of The Company. They may advance the big picture a tiny bit here and there too but mostly they are just interesting pieces for their own sakes. Perhaps that is why I enjoyed them so much. This is Baker at her very best. Engaging, witty stories that deal with interesting situations people by great characters. They are so much fun - just like the earlier novels. A great tonic when one is feeling poorly.

Some basic life lessons. When sick, stay home until you are recovered, don't struggle back. When you do have a relapse don't do repeat the mistake and struggle back too soon. Why yes I am sick and if I had been sensible the first time I would be recovered by now. Stupid life lessons. How often do I have to keep repeating them before I actually take notice.

Still I do get some reading done. Its about the only thing I can do that does not cause me pain. Earlier in the week I started with Count Belisarius by Robert Graves - the story of one of the greatest military commanders ever. I first read this book many many years ago while doing the great thesis procrastination exercise. I remember loving it. I remember reading my way through a whole bunch of Graves' works and thinking it was the best of them.

Funny thing memory. It was interesting enough but no I Claudius. This time through I found too many boring bits between the fascinating Roman politics There was also the whole - which bits are real and which bits are invented. By real, of course, I mean taken from historical sources. That is what Graves did - followed the historical works where he could and filled in with interpolation. With I Claudius, I have read* quite a few of the source works and I think that helps with the enjoyment of the fiction. But with Count Belisarius it is harder to tell. But in the introduction, Graves insists that the politics of the time is as real as he can make it. Perhaps that is why it interested me the most.

*In translation - duh. The only latin I know is Veni Vidi Visa - I came, I saw, I did a little shopping.

I read Daikaiju! 3 edited by Robert Hood and Robin Pen and I can only repeat what I said about the other two. Stories about giant monsters stomping stuff - there can be no bad here. Although I should perhaps point out that it isn't all about stomping. Within the general impossibly giant monster theme there is plenty of scope for different takes on things. It really is a lot of fun.

One other point, this volume has several stories where the monsters attack Sydney. Sydney - the new Tokyo. It makes sense. I mean who hasn't dreamed about how great it would be to see Sydney stomped by some huge reptilianoid which rises from the harbour and scratches its butt on the opera house.