threemonkeys | Recent Entries

Perhaps I do have the makings of a real DIY person after all.

My dehumidifier was leaking. It seemed rather pointless to take the moisture out of the air only to have it all reappear in the carpet. So with a healthy dose of "how hard can it be" I set to attempting to fix it. Why do I think this exercise made me like a real DIY person? I offer the following in evidence:
-A couple of the screws holding the case together are not accessible by any tool I have. So I applied brute force and a cutting tool instead to get the case open.
-The leak was mainly due to a design flaw. I fixed it by re-routing the water flow with a glue gun and a power drill. (A hammer was close at hand but I resisted that particular temptation.)
-Two thirds of the way through reassembling the case I found I was doing it in the wrong order and had to start again.
-When I had finished there were a couple of bits left over and yet the machine runs.
-Yes there was some collateral cosmetic damage.
-Total elapsed time for this half hour task - two weeks.

So far, so good on the unwanted puddle front.

The circumstances under which you read a book are important. A couple of weeks back I wrote about how well When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger had aged. In an area of the genre prone to temporal attrition, this book has stood up extremely well and was every bit as enjoyable to read as it was when I first read it.

But When Gravity Fails was the first book of a trilogy. The other two books are A Fire in the Sun and The Exile Kiss. I remembered them as being good but not really at the same level as the first one. A common enough complaint I guess. But this is where circumstance come in. You see I read those books during a weekend at a group outing to a beach house. The organiser of the outing happened to bring them along and I grabbed the chance to read them while they were lying about - I hadn't known they existed until that point. Having a whole bunch of people around with various "weekend away" activities happening is not exactly ideal reading conditions. I re-read those two books yesterday while I was home sick. Lying in bed trying to avoid any sudden movement is brilliant reading time even if you don't feel too great. The quality focus I brought this time reflects in my opinion of the books.

I enjoyed each of the books individually every bit as much as the first one this time. But more than that I realised that as a collected work they are something even better. You can read them as three cyber-noir stories in an interesting setting with a clever protagonist, interesting characters, clever social commentary and good stories. But what I saw this time was the complete character progression across the series. The building of a character and the reforging of a morality that unfolded is perhaps the best thing of all about these books and I just missed out on it all last time because of when and where I read them.

I work for a company that provides outsourcing services for print & mail functions. We print bank statements, power bills, registration forms - that sort of thing. Every month, millions of pages go through our laser printers. So, as you might expect, we talk about paper from time to time - sizes, weights and things like how shiny it is or how many sheets will fit in a maxpop envelope. We talk about paper aesthetics too. Sadly this is one of the more interesting things about my job.

I am relating this to you so that when I say that Elantris by Brandon Sanderson is printed on the cheapest nastiest paper I have come across in a book, you can be confident that I know what I am talking about. The paper is light, low density rubbish. It isn't even all from the same batch as it changes colour part way through. The book is 600 pages (300 sheets) long and yet the paper is so flimsy that it folds more easily than the ASIMs that arrived the other day. The quality of the binding and cover are just as shoddy. The poor quality manufacture is my single strongest impression of this book.

In case you are interested in the other stuff, it is a pretty decent piece of epic fantasy. Strong characters and good writing of political intrigue offset somewhat by a predictable overall story. I'm not necessarily going to actively seek out more work by this author for myself but would recommend it to people who have a particular interest in the "courageous noble fighting to save their kingdom from evil outsiders" corner of the fantasy genre. I wouldn't lend them my copy though - it would probably fall apart.

A present for all those Aussies who ask me to say "fush and chups".

It appears that New Zealanders sound like Neanderthals.

Or at least that is what the article says. As noted in the comments "absolutely no evidence linking the quantal hallmark sound, or lack thereof, with the New Zealand accent." But it makes for a good headline?

I think it must be me. I’m feeling very negative about a lot of stuff. Even more so than usual that is. I mean, look at my reaction to new series of Dr Who & BSG.
( Some spoilers I guess )

The cover of Jonathan Lethem's Gun With Occasional Music has a kangaroo on it. It is one of my favourite book covers ever. The story is pretty cool too. Lethem's You Don't Love Me Yet has a kangaroo on it too. That cover is nothing special - neither is the book. I struggled through it thinking that some twist would transform it away from the boring and banal. Lethem has managed this trick before but not this time. In fact I think the thing is that he has tried too hard this time. The book just never lifts off. Of course it could be the lack of SF elements in it, but I don't think so - Lethem has always flirted around the boundaries of "serious" literature and SF to great advantage in the past. Waste of a perfectly good kangaroo if you ask me.

It seems like ages since I last posted. If I tell you that I won a complete set of Farscape DVDs at Conjunction then you might have a clue why. Of course it could be the change in seasons - things have got chilly all of a sudden.

I have this theory that if you put enough garlic in, you can make anything palatable. For small values of palatable that is.

Co-incidentally after yesterday's post about book titles, I see that the oddest book title awards have been made. Would you buy any of these based on the strangeness of the title? I seem to remember, way back in pre-history, that I have bought music based on the cover art, so buying based just on a cool title does not seem that strange to me.

It seems almost pointless to say it, but the title of a book is very important. It is the big writing on a cover that attracts people to look at the book if they don't know who the author is, which is to say it is a key selling point. They tend to be genre related - a book called Hard Case is likely to be a crime book (even if written by Dan Simmons). I have to say though that a lot of "modern literature" titles seems to get titles that are suggestive of science fiction or fantasy these days (The Tesseract anybody?) Perhaps it is a symptom of the relative strengths of these genres. (btw - how to annoy a literary snob - call modern lit a "genre" - it really bugs them).

Thus when I saw a book called The Book Nobody Read by Owen Gingerich, the contradiction of the title interested me. Of course I saw this in the secondhand shop in Petone which means it was shelved as SF when in fact it really belonged in pop science, history or possibly even biography. That was enough to make me buy it.

It is a book about a personal quest to find out more about Copernicus' De Revolutionibus - the book which famously puts forward the heliocentric view of the solar system. The book is supposed to be well known for never actually having been read - the basic thesis being spread by word of mouth rather than actually being read. Gingerich does a big survey of surviving titles in order to prove otherwise by analysing margin notes written in them.

Boring? Yes, pretty much unless you are deeply interested in that type of literary archaeology, you need the author to really tell the story of the chase well. It takes a rare talent to convey the thrill of discovery. Luckily, the book is intercut with the story of Copernicus and other big figures of the time (Brahe, Galileo etc). That part I found genuinely interesting. I found myself skipping past the stories of yet another first edition in yet another library to read the historical observations and how the results of all that sleuthing influenced the view of that history. Perhaps if somebody does a book describing Gingerich's book they could call it The Book that was Half Read. I don't think it would sell though.

Utopias are boring. From a writing/reading point of view that is. Everybody knows that right? What is there of interest in a world where there is no hardship or conflict?

Perhaps you can fill up a few pages with description of the utopia, but to get any real action you have to step outside it or break it in some way. Iain Banks knows this perfectly well with his "Culture" series. The stories set in this universe aren't really about "The Culture" itself. It is simply the mirror by which other flawed cultures (small c) are judged. The white knights of Special Circumstances go into these other settings to set things right or whatever. The clash has made for plenty of fun reading over the years.

But The Culture has slowed down for Banks. His last story in that setting was pretty awful and his most recent piece of space opera didn't even use that universe even though it could have been easily incorporated. But he is back in the familiar setting with Matter. A member of the Culture's Special Circumstances is off on a journey to a primitive world to sort things out while some of those "primitives" are embarking in a journey of their own. I repeat "journey" because this book is all about the journeys - its a very common Banks scenario. In the end there is another common scenario - a conflict with some old and very strange technology where lots of magical Culture technology is unveiled to deal with it.

Matter feels like a paint by numbers Culture novel. Familiar themes wound together to make a product suitable for the fans. Well, except perhaps right at the end, but I don't want to spoil anything. Of course to get to the end you really have to read through and there is just one other thing to say - this novel is so slow moving that you will be tempted to skip though. Again, another Banks characteristic but taken too far - I know the journey is more important than the destination but really!

Want to feel a bit depressed? Go read this on

gillpolack's blog. Amazon are making life hard for small presses.

I love small presses. They are where the invention and innovation in the genre happens. Without that you get stagnation. Small presses may not make much money for the likes of Amazon, but they are necessary for the long term health of the industry including Amazon. Holding them down is just so short sighted.

Taking shots at sloppy journalism seems a bit pointless, but this one forces me to comment for some reason.

See, Stuff (Fairfax NZ site run out of Wellington) put up this story about plans to build a fake stonehenge, with the line "Nowhere in the world has a complete Stonehenge been built".

But the thing is just over the hill in the Wairarapa is a complete stonehenge replica that you can visit (although you do have to book).

Of course, you shouldn't rule out the possibility that I'm just taking the opportunity to point out attractions so that people will come visit the region.

Finally had a look at the Ditmar & Tin Duck winners list. Oh my, oh my there are a lot of people I know on those lists. Flist members include

catsparx,

punkrocker1991,

girliejones,

benpayne,

random_alex,

cassiphone,

kaaronwarren,

asimmum,

angriest,

ratfan and

dalekboy. Well done & congratulations to all of you. Brilliant.

My friends page is starting to get flooded with Swancon reports, so I should report that I was at Conjunction over the weekend. As is my way, I'll throw random thoughts out there and see what sticks to the wall.
( Warning contains rambling content below cut )

Arthur C Clarke is dead.

We don't all read in the same way. Down at the fundamental pattern matching engine layer of our brain there are differences. Some people parse written language one word at a time, others parse sentence fragments, whole sentences or even paragraphs at once. Your brain picks out meaning from the symbols on the page and translates it into meaning. Sometimes that meaning goes via the speech centres or it may connect directly to consciousness.

This language processing all below your conscious level. The thing is, if you start to think about it, it all breaks down to the simplest/slowest level. Sometimes you come across a manner of writing which causes that breakdown to happen. If you have read Iain Bank's Feersum Endjinn, you will know what I mean. Sometimes it is more subtle. As I started to read Daughter of Hounds by Caitlin R Kiernan, I found my eyes seemed to be sliding off the page. There was just something subtly off in the sentence construction that kept throwing off my full speed reading. I had to keep going back to re-read bits. The brain adapts and after a while, I was able to get back up to speed. But every time I put the book down for a while, I had the same problem when i tried to start again.

So there is a story there too. A modern tale of ghouls, changelings and hidden magics with so many influences that you lose count after a bit. Oh yes and vast amounts swearing and violence just so that you don't mistake the youthful characters trying to find their destiny for a YA novel. So was it worth reading despite the language difficulty and the derivative stuff. Well, yes, I think it was. The key being imagery. There are some excellent dark word pictures. It is almost poetic in places. Hmmm poetry - I wonder if that's why I couldn't parse it properly.

I may have lost an old companion. For half my life, I have had the same lamp beside my bed - many a book has been read by its light. It is certainly the oldest piece of electrical equipment I own. Now the switch has broken. It isn't the first time, but last time I was easily able to buy a replacement switch at Dick Smiths and install it. Now I can't find a switch anywhere that will both fit and handle mains voltage - even jaycar don't seem to have a suitable one. It is going to mean major surgery to adapt a different sort of switch and the surgeon is an incompetent fool. I don't hold out much hope.

ETA: Fixed - thanks to some good advice from

mundens

There is a cartoon graph on the front cover of Banana Wings 33. It plots "SF Content" against time. There are two lines - one for SF and one for real life. The point where the lines intersect is marked as the death of SF. According to the graph that happened a few years ago. It is an interesting thing to debate whether there is much science in science fiction any more - has the real world made the traditional "hard sf" form redundant. Certainly, there is very little of it published. However I would argue that those few who do publish what I would consider hard SF (rather than space opera) have not let the lines intersect and are pushing their fiction into the unknown edges of science and technology. But, to reiterate, they are a rare breed these days - not like back in "the golden age" when fiction writers really cared bout the science and wanted to explain it to you were dominating the field.

Interesting then that I read Rites of Passage by Alexei Panshin today - a piece of important SF that somehow I have neglected to read over all these years. The book won the Nebula award for best novel in 1968. The author just cannot help explaining things while telling the story. The technology of the ship the book is set in is an obvious target, but it extends to other things. For example there is a scene where various inhabitant of the ship are playing soccer - Panshin explains what soccer is and some (very old-fashioned) rudiments of how it is played. It is the explanation of somebody who has never played the game but still the desire to educate is there as there is no plot or thematic reason to do so. It seems to me that it is this desire to educate is mostly missing from SF these day where it used to be the norm. No longer do the authors wish to push the message of the wonderful things that science can do for us, or just the wonder of learning. Actually, much more likely is that the audience don't want to be taught, or the message is not one that they want to listen to.

One other thing about Rites of Passage. It is written in a clean uncomplicated style that is very characteristic of the best work of the time. It also has a teenage protagonist. Anybody reading this book without the historical context would immediately label it as a YA book. I don't know if it was intended that way - I suspect not.

George Alec Effinger seems to be one of SF 's sadder figures with a life dominated by illness. But during that life he managed some remarkable work. Some of it remarkable for being to strange to read - perhaps comprehensible if you took a lot of drugs first. Some if it remarkable for being such ordinary hack work - to pay all those medical bills y'see. But some of the work was remarkable for being powerful and subtle. Three books are remembered by those of us who were keen fans of the heyday of the cyberpunk movement. Those three books have just been reissued and so I have purchased the set and am working on re-reading them - the first one today.

When Gravity Fails has aged well. Some of those cyberpunk books from 20 years ago fail on the technology front - they pick the wrong trends and hang their story on it. Effinger is much more about the characters and the setting and yet the technology is still there. It is a stylish book with the whole Chandler noir thing going but more than that. There are little bursts that come from his more absurdist writing style but never enough to do more than suggest frazzled brain cells. It is a layered book too with cultural messages in there as well as a subtext about innocence lost where there is no innocence to lose.

OK, its a superb book and it stands up well, but it got me thinking about something that was interesting me a few months back. I was interested in the way the whole 911 and "war on terror" social phenomenon has influenced writing in all sorts of obvious and not so obvious ways. When Gravity Fails is so obviously a pre-911 book. No author could write such a sympathetic and comfortable portrayal of a future Arab Muslim society these days. It is a close and friendly portrayal but not blinkered, nationalistic or intending to make a statement - it is just a rich place to tell a story. I find myself keen to re-read those other stories in that same setting.

While on the subject of books by authors coming to Conjunction who happen to have autistic characters in their books, I read Dark Heart by Russell Kirkpatrick yesterday. To say I read it does not do justice to the whole consumed in one go experience, complete with the rejection of all other tasks on favour of it and the lost sleep because I wanted to finish it. That is pretty impressive engagement for a book that is basically a bunch of people bickering amongst themselves interspersed with occasional supernatural attacks. Oh and it has a donkey called Linda - I mean Lindha.

Elizabeth Moon is a guest of honour at Conjunction. In preparation for that, I thought I'd read some of her work. Looking at her available work, I had the choice between one of a whole series of military sf or an atypical one-off book that won a Nebula award and got a bunch of critical acclaim. No choice really - I read The Speed of Dark. The sympathetic and strong portrayal of a man with autism who functions in society is engrossing stuff. Then there is the morality issue when this man is faced with the opportunity of a "cure". It is a story of hardships faced and won by the character with the support of those around him - ultimately a very optimistic story.

The only negative I can identify is a one-dimensionality to the surrounding characters and a certain predictability to the mechanical way the story unfolds. It could be because of the way in which the story is being told from the point of view of someone with autism - it may be subtle and brilliant. On the other hand it is a common characteristic of military sf. I can't comment about Moon's work in that area but you have to have your suspicions.

The only other thing to add is that it may not be a good idea to read a book about autism just a few weeks out from a science fiction convention.

As mentioned in the last post, I have been reading "the new Da Vinci code" or as it also says on the cover The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks. It is an SF story in as much as the "travellers" can travel to other realities. They are opposed by "the brethren", but protected by "harlequins" who were once the Templar knights. The brethren have all the tools of technology surveillance and that is the key - the book is all about paranoia and the real message is that our lives are being controlled by those faceless people behind the cameras. Its an old theme but there is really no doubt that John Twelve hawks does not like to be observed. Nothing else really matters when describing this book.

I had to go to Auckland for work today. Pretty routine except for one observation - I didn't take a book with me to read at the airport/on the plane. The problem is that the book which I am part way through has the words "the next Da Vinci Code" written on the cover. I just couldn't show myself in public with a book displaying those words - almost as bad as appearing in public with the real thing. In my defence, it was a gift and it isn't as bad as that line might indicate. I'll tell you more when (if) I finish it.

Unlike me, some people are quite happy to embarrass themselves in public. Heck I know people who will state in public that the are fans of the old Knight Rider. Amazingly some do so without invoking either "retro kitsch" or "formative childhood years" as justification. I make no such claims - it was on, there was nothing else and it was sort of SF so I watched it. But even then it was pretty damn cheesy. A lot of shows were like that back then - look at Battlestar Galactica. Cheesiness does not have the appeal that it used to in drama - the reality TV market has soaked up all those susceptible eyeballs. So when BSG was resurrected, there is only the faintest odour of a certain milk product and the show is great. Why oh why then when they remade Knight Rider have they made it just as cheesy, just as unlikely, just as stupid as the original - hell, the Hoff even has a cameo. So who out there is going to stand proud and proclaim their love for this new version - I just know one or two of you will.

In related news, no new post-strike episodes of The Bionic Woman will be made. It's dead Jim.

It is better to travel than to arrive. The journey is more important than the destination. Sentiments like that are commonly expressed. When it comes to books I have to agree strongly. I love books that describe a journey. The sort of journey I mean is when a physical journey mirrors the unfolding of another story - a mental journey or the unravelling of a puzzle. The wider speculative fiction genre is full of such stories. It is one of the reasons I have stayed attached to it over the years - despite a lot of very dodgy quest style books there are lots of great journeys that are there.

But journeys usually have to reach a destination. Often that destination is where a book can be let down. I feel a little of that about Nine Layers of Sky by Liz Williams. The physical journey through former Soviet republics and the unfolding mystery of a mysterious artefact starts very strongly. The feel for the characters and the land is strong. But as the book progresses, it feels a little more superficial and you know somewhere about the half way mark that the story will not conclude in a strong way. It does not peter out completely and it did hold my attention but it just seemed to be missing something. Yet saying that, something very good can be glimpsed just out of grasp.

I must have read half a dozen of Williams' books over the last year or two. Until Darkland came along and did the job so well, I got the impression that her career was always going to be one of promise without quite hitting the mark as the books promised much, got close but never quite delivered at the end. Nine layers of Sky is one of the landmarks along a journey. One day it might be worth the exercise of detailing Williams' work in chronological order and charting the satisfaction levels from them. I suspect it would be more rocky than smooth progression, but progression it has been and I think worth travelling the journey.

It seems today is the day assigned for the main celebrations of Chinese new year in Wellington, complete with parade and all that. In the spirit of that, a group of us did yum char. For the new year, there was a dragon dance performed in the restaurant. Loud drums were used to scare away the demons for the upcoming year - fireworks being a no-no these days. It took a few minutes only.

There won't be any demons near the corner of Manners and Cuba streets either. As I approached in on my post-meal way to Arty Bees, I could hear the wail of bagpipes. You could see the streams of people diverting to keep away from the noise. Arty Bees were keeping their doors closed but it didn't help - the noise permeated everywhere. Before running away, I asked Imogen about it. She has 8 pages of reference numbers for all the noise complaints lodged against the piper. All the other businesses around this busy corner have lodged similar numbers of complaints. And yet there the piper remains every weekend. No wonder British regiments included pipers and many still do. What an effective and resilient terror weapon of war.

The SJV awards reminds me that I haven't pimped Conjunction here recently. There are reasons for that. Basically most of my flist are either:
a - local and already know about the con
b - are going to Swancon. Heck, I'd be there if there wasn't a clash but now I've spent the money I would have used on a new TV instead so its too late.
c - live on the other side of the world
d - are on the concom

For the other one or two of you, why not give some thought to attending The New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention at Easter.

A couple of notes - the web site has moved recently, there is a shortage of accommodation in Welly that weekend but apparently the hotel has a few rooms if you approach them directly, Peter F Hamilton isn't coming after all - that does not worry me in the slightest, but I know there will be some disappointed fans.

The Sir Julius Vogel ballot list is out. Congratulations to everybody on the list. It is good to see the ballot looking full for a change.

For the rest of you, if you want some fun, go have a look and see how many names you recognise. For those of you who know the Aussie scene well, see how many people on the list live in or are mainly published in Australia.

I suppose in the great vastness of sf readers out there, there must be quite a few people who have read the works of Stephen Donaldson and come out feeling fairly indifferent to him but they may take a bit of finding. His work does tend to generate strong opinion. I thought I'd read Daughter of Regals - a collection of short stories from around the same time as the first Thomas Covenant books. I was curious to see if his short work had the same characteristics as the novels. They do. There is no doubt in my mind that the guy has huge writing talent, but there is just something off in the attitudes that permeate it all. It even comes through in the little introductions to the stories, so I presume that it is something intrinsic to the author. Then there is that often repeated complaint that you would just like to give the characters a good slapping to knock some sense into them. I guess it shows that you are engaging with them otherwise they wouldn't be so frustrating. But it can't be good for the blood pressure.

Damn, my TV just died. Second time in a year or so and it is the same symptoms as last time - i.e. the main controller chip has fried. I was warned last time that the model I have is prone to this. Given how hard it is to find anybody who will service CRT TVs these days and how much it cost last time to fix and how much prices for LCD TVs have come down, I believe the time has come to look for a new device. I guess a mid-size HD 1080p spec machine should fit in the space available and be as future proof as it is possible to be these days (and match the media hub I'm looking at).

Has anybody out there been through this recently? Or anybody been doing the research? I'm casting the net out for suggestions as to brands, features, other technology tips - you know the sort of thing. Suggestions most welcome.

In the meantime, I'll be glad that my computer has a tuner card in it.