Three Monkeys, Ten Minutes

A few years back, I was fan guest at the NZ natcon. That honour comes with the obligation to give a speech. I did a presentation of my life as a series of books - illustrated with images of the covers. This blog is a kind of continuation of that. I mark my life by recording the books that I read. Entries are not reviews, they are signposts along my life. I mention this because at the end of that presentation a chap came up and introduced himself as Russell Kirkpatrick. Luckily we had something to talk about because I had quite recently read his first novel and even better I had liked the fantasy adventure story told across a really stunning work of world building.

Fast forward to the present and I have just finished Path of Revenge, Russell's fourth novel and the first in his new Husk series. A book tantalisingly dedicated "To the Down-under speculative fiction community." Like the first and intervening books it tells its story as the characters traverse the landscape. This time three story streams from the three lobes of the landmass of Russell's world. Where you see a real difference from the first book is the development of his general writing skills. The characters are more vividly drawn while plot structure and pacing are tighter and more polished. In fact the whole thing just seems more detailed and polished - and remember that I liked the first one. It is pretty compelling stuff. I just want to read the next one. Russell, I know you are reading this - come on where is it - I want to read it now.

Oh and for those of you out there who know Russell and haven't read this book yet, I offer you this quote "Phemanderac had been commissioned to write an official history of the Falthian War, but in sixty years had not finished it. Afraid to insult or belittle any of his friends, he'd spent far too long on the maps."

Why put links to scientific announcements in my personal blog? The information is already out there for people seriously interested. But what it does is let me keep track and let you know just what I think is cool. I think this development in microscopy is very cool. A significant advance over scanning tunnelling techniques. Why is it cool? I have always wanted to see what atoms really look like. Not sure about the false colour image though - great for astronomy pictures but...

There is a cabinet minister who lives just up the road from me - probably just his Wellington home when he isn't back in his electorate. He has been there for some years but I don't even know who he is which shows you how much I care - I have seen him but I don't recognise him from a distance. Actually it may not be a cabinet minister but it is somebody entitled to a chauffeur driven crown (CR reg) car and the list of such people is very short. The reason why I mention it is that this article talks about the new "greener" cars that are being looked at as limos with Skodas being one of the options along with Chrysler & Peugeot options. That was just over a week ago and I cannot find anything about the decision being made.

( But I took this picture today )

Christopher Fowler and urban fantasy set in London. They just go together. Except that Calabash is set in a small seaside resort town which has a gateway to another universe. It is almost like Fowler wants to write a Charles De Lint novel. The "almost" is that this is one of those stories where the reality of the other world is in question. Is it real or is it a creation in the mind of the map obsessed* main character. It is a pretty good book. I enjoyed it. I just didn't enjoy it as much as other Christopher Fowler novels. The missing element is London. The city has always been a presence in his books. The seaside town is evoked nicely but does not have the impact that London brings.

*The main character is withdrawn and obsessed by ancient civilisation as well as maps but I thought that "map obsessed" might draw russellk's attention. :-)

Are fan funds like FFANZ obsolete? It would appear to be getting harder and harder to get delegates to make the trip. With international travel, particularly across the Tasman, relatively inexpensive it would seem that it is easier to just pay for the tickets than take on the responsibilities of the role. Those responsibilities basically being to do some fund raising to pay for the next delegate.

Having said that, if any of you Aussies are interested in coming to New Zealand for Conspiracy 2 then the possibility is there. I can point you in the right direction.

I just thought I would let y'all know that nominations for DUFF close in a little over a week. The winning delegate gets to go to Illinois in August. Norman tells me that right now there isn't much competition (for very small values of "isn't much").

I was thinking about running for it myself, but a) I don't want to spend that much time on a plane (which in turn leads to deeper issues) and 2) it really should be an Aussie this time (although don't let that put any Kiwis off because it is just my opinion).

In any case the DUFF info page is worth a read. It contains this gem of accurate exchange rate info: "Ballots must be signed and accompanied by a donation of at least $4 US or $6 Australian or $8 New Zealand.". It also contains a rather strange FAQ - a virtual chocolate fish if you can figure out where Norman lifted it from.

I just read Timescoop by John Brunner. It is a good solid, albeit minor Brunner work basing an amusing story around the way attitudes have changed in society through history. But what I noticed was just how many Brunner titles have the word "time" in them in some form. A quick look at a bibliography suggests that he wrote nine books with "time" in the title. That is rather a lot especially when they aren't part of one of those series that have confusingly similar names. I guess he, or his editors, really like time. More in terms of the duration of time and historical perspective than time travel. The best of them, in my opinion, is The Crucible of Time. Apart from the two really famous titles*, I actually think it is best work and is the one I recommend to first time Brunner readers even to the exclusion of those two.

*Does anybody not know what two I mean? If you don't then shame on you.

Next week at the Phoenix club meeting we plan to look at the year ahead including the publications to look forward to. I'm doing this bit and am structuring it in an "Amazon says...", "Dymocks say" structure with stuff taken from web sites or local book sellers. But I thought I could have a "My flist says" page. So what do you think I should tell the local sf fans about. Give me some authors/titles etc. Don't be afraid to promote your own work or the work of friends. Don't assume I already know. Make the scope as wide as you like - books, zines, webzines, comics, plays, musicals and so on. Go on, don't be shy.

I'm not alone in having liked Chris Moriarity's Spin State. It has won a lot of critical acclaim for its blend of thriller style with post-human politics and hard science. ( But I didn't like Spin Control )

Using a Bose-Einstein condensate as a transistor. Doesn't that just make your technology spider sense tingle. The implications are immense in terms of making very small very high density computers. The sort of computer that could ride a nanobot. Of course there are a few physical problems to solve - Bose-Einstein condensates only exist at temperatures described in nano-Kelvin temperature units. All I can say is "cool".

At Conflux 3, Bill Congreve persuaded me to buy three books from him from the MirrorDanse offerings. Two of them, by Mark Lawson and Chuck McKenzie, were superb. However I had a bit more trepidation about the third - Year's Best Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy volume 2 edited by Bill and Michelle Marquardt. The reason for my misgivings were based around vol 1 which despite having many good stories didn't really work as a collection for me. However Bill and others assured me that vol 2 is a better work. So it proved.

( inevatably, there is a but... )

Another day, another engrossing book. I could get used to this again. There is only one problem - the book is clearly meant to be the first in a series. Don't you hate that feeling when you know that you are going to have to wait until the next book comes out to continue the story. How much worse when you know that there will not be a next book. Fledgling was the last book written by Octavia Butler.

Butler's books were all about community and family. In many cases how such community and family can be formed after a catastrophe. As has been noted by others more clever than me, she also incorporated race, gender, politics, religion and sexuality into something that was also a well told story. This time she did it with vampires. Yes vampires, although inevitably, I guess, not the standard vampire lore. These vampires live in family clans in a symbiotic relationship with humans. What happens when a young vampire loses her family, her memory and her human symbiotes and has to rebuild her life. This is the story of Fledgling. The story was clearly meant to continue to more volumes but it is self contained enough to read without the added anguish of a cliff-hanger ending.

For those who have read Butler before, Fledgling is quite close to the nature and issues explored in the Xenogenesis trilogy* except that I think it is actually better. For those who have not read Butler then it is hard to describe just how good her work is. If you think that powerful, disturbing, thought provoking and entertaining are important adjectives to describe your taste in books then you really should try reading this book or any of her other work for that matter.


*I note that the Xenogenesis trilogy has just been re-released in a single volume edition.

...I did it again. I bought and read another Larry Niven book. Before thoatherder comes around and whacks me for gross stupidity, let me justify myself. Way back in the dark and distant reaches of the past when I was a teenager, one of the very first books I bought with my own money was Neutron Star, a collection of Niven short stories. Back then his work just blew me away. He wrote stories based around great seemingly original ideas and he wrote about the most alien of aliens. They sparkled and for a while he was the brightest star in the sf universe. Since then he has become sloppy and lazy and spent way too much time with Jerry Pournelle. But back then he was the best. His best known works are set in his "known space" universe but he has used other settings too. One which he has kept coming back to is The Draco Tavern and that is the title of the book I just read. It is a collection of all the Draco tavern stories which have been written over a span of about 30 years at a rate of nearly one a year. Surprisingly there were a lot that I hadn't read before.

Some of the stories are brilliant. They are built around interesting little notions of science and philosophy together with the very strange aliens. It is possible to trace the decline of Niven's writing as you work through them although interestingly the most recent stories show some of the sharpness of the earlier ones although with much more politics. I should also say that even at his sloppiest Niven still designs the coolest aliens. These short idea based stories are and always have been Niven's strength. I was engrossed all the way through this collection.

It is another day of complete cloud cover so my chances of seeing the comet today don't look good. To compensate I have been doing a more thorough than usual look around the science news sites.

So, a question for the science nerds. Which is more exciting:
A feathered dinosaur that may have flown like a biplane.
A walking molecule which can carry a load.

Your answer may reveal something about yourself. Personally, I'm going with "both are cool".