Books
drorzel | June 1, 2007As a sort of companion to the previous post:
What's the last book you read because it connected to your job in some way?
I'm being a little more restrictive in the phrasing of this one, because I don't want to get a whole bunch of journal articles and arxiv links in the comments, so let's keep this to published books.
I've been doing more work-related reading of late, for a variety of reasons. Why the Sky Is Blue was work-related, in the sense that I was sent a review copy because of this blog. My other recent work-related read was Jennifer Ouellette's Black Bodies and Quantum Cats, which I…
drorzel | June 1, 2007I'm kind of fried this morning-- it's been a long week full of after-work events associated with the end of the year-- so I'm not up to doing weighty posts about physics, so here's a lighter discussion topic:
What's the last non-Internet thing you read for fun?
Blogging and work have cut into my pleasure reading recently, but the most recent thing I read just for amusement was Vol. 7 of Bill Willingham's Fables comic book series, titled Wolves. The last regular book I read was Kenneth Oppel's Skybreaker, a sequel to Airborn, his YA novel about a quasi-Victorian world full of giant world-…
drorzel | May 19, 2007Eductaion reform is a contentious topic, and everybody has their own ideas about the best ways to improve the teaching of basic skills. Some people favor a "whole language" approach, others think we should go back to teaching phonics and memorizing grammar rules. I've heard people speak of "diagramming sentences" as absolutely the worst idea ever, while others think it's the key element missing from our students' preparation.
It take a real outside-the-box thinker like Ann Althouse to suggest that the silver bulet is to eliminate fiction reading from schools:
And why does reading even need to…
drorzel | May 10, 2007Noted author Walter Mosley spoke on campus last night, and a spot opened up at the last minute for the dinner beforehand, so I got to spend an hour or so listening to him talk off-the-cuff in a small group. He's a very charming guy, and had a lot of interesting things to say about writing, politics, literature, and other subjects. Miscellaneous comments, in no particular order:
Asked about working with Hollywood (a couple of movies have been made of his books, and three more are in the works), he said "As long as you don't go in expecting to make money, it's fun." Really, that strikes me as…
drorzel | May 5, 2007Having disagreed (somewhat) with Tobias Buckell in the previous post, let me follow that up with something positive: He's got a new book, Ragamuffin coming out soon, and he's putting excerpts up on the official Ragamuffin page. You can get RTF files of the first two chapters, and he's promised a chapter a week leading up to the release.
So, if you like steampunk space opera with Aztecs, or open-source literary distribution, go check it out.
drorzel | May 5, 2007Earlier this week, while I was buried in work, Tobias Buckell pointed to a post at the Guardian blog in which China Mieville calls for more kid-lit agitprop. It's a nice example of why I have a hard time with Mieville. Or, quoting Toby because he puts it more concisely:
I'm left of two minds. One, I'd hate to see it become a war zone.
On the other hand, how cool was Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials?
The answer is: "For the first two books, very. The third book, not so much."
The Golden Compass is a wonderful piece of work-- richly detailed, deeply imaginative, full of lovely images (I…
drorzel | April 7, 2007There's been a fair bit of discussion of this year's Hugo nominees around the Internets, most of it centering around the gender of the nominees (that link goes to a fairly civilized discussion, which includes links to a rather more heated argument). For those who haven't been following the controversy, only one of the twenty nominated works in fiction categories was by a woman.
What follows will be rambling and discursive and probably not terribly productive, but I've become accustomed to thinking by typing, so there you go. If you're not fascinated by squabbling over SF awards, scroll down…
drorzel | March 14, 2007The BBC has done a poll about unread books, and found some results that at first might appear surprising:
Some 35% of those who bought or borrowed Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre's story of a US high school massacre, admitted not finishing it.
The figure was 32% for the fourth instalment in the Harry Potter series, while 28% said the same for James Joyce's Ulysses, third on the list.
In reality, though, I think this isn't terribly surprising, because it's a variant of what I think of as the Labrador Retriever Problem. It's got that name because when I went to buy homeowner's insurance before…
drorzel | March 14, 2007Posting has been basketball-heavy of late because, well, there isn't much else going on that I find all that interesting at the moment. More importantly, though, it's the Season of the Bracket...
I'm not the only one affected, of course, though many people who don't care about hoops have to find other outlets for the impulse to construct match-ups between various concepts, and arrange them in a single elimination tournament:
Locally, there's the Science Spring Showdown. I'll be announcing the first-round winners in the "Orbit" bracket on Friday, and while my decisions are final, they are…
drorzel | March 11, 2007Everybody and their brother is doing the "which Significant SF books have you read?" thing today, so I might as well play along. The list is below, and just because I'm lazy, I've opted to strike out the ones I haven't read, rather than bolding the ones I have. It's less typing that way.
There are two things about this that are sort of striking: First, that while I may be the only ScienceBlogs person who regularly attends SF conventions, and yet, I've read fewer of these books than most of the other people who have responded. Second, that there really aren't any books on the unread list that…
drorzel | March 5, 2007James Nicoll is soliciting recommendations for a series of novels about the planets of the Solar System. His first pass:
Mercury:
Venus:
Earth: Imperial Earth, Arthur C. Clarke
Mars:
Jupiter: Jupiter Fred and Carol Pohl (ed)
Saturn:
Uranus:
Neptune: Triton, Samuel R. Delany
As you can see, there are some gaps...
Suggestions are welcome, bearing in mind of course that James's definition of SF pretty much demands MilSpec certification for the bolts holding the rockets together, so it's a little tough to come up with books that meet his standards. I'm a little more forgiving of dodgy science…
drorzel | February 24, 2007Speaking (as we were) of the glamourour life of writers, Bookslut points to an interview with Iain Banks. If you're not familiar with Banks, he's a prolific author who alternates "mainstream" literary novels (as "Iain Banks") with genre SF novels (as "Iain M. Banks"). With a very few exceptions, his books are very smart, fairly bloody, and darkly comic.
He apparently sells very well in the UK, but hasn't really managed to crack the US market, to the point where his most recent SF novel (The Algebraist) is only available from a small press. It's a shame, because he's written some absolutely…
drorzel | February 24, 2007OVer at the Whatever, Senor BaconCat has two long posts on the glamorous life of a successful SF writer: one breaking down his income from SF writing in detail, and the other talking about why he's talking about money. The comment threads are also lively and interesting in their own right. It's particularly funny to see the number of people who are shocked at how low the income is-- $67,000 is a pretty respectable salary in the world of people who don't play around on the Internet all that often, and it's probably in the ninety-somethingth percentile for fiction writers.
Of course, I'm amused…
drorzel | February 21, 2007John Scalzi is being railroaded into heading a new movement in SF: The New Comprehensible. He disdains manifestoes ("people who issue literary manifestos should be thrown into jet engines"), but does offer a set of precepts for people seeking to write in the New Comprehensible:
1. Think of an actual person you know, of reasonable intelligence, who likes to read but does not read science fiction.
2. Write with that person in mind.
He goes on to note that these same rules apply to other genres of fiction. He does not, however, make the point that this is also excellent advice for non-fiction…
drorzel | February 20, 2007As Kate and I are planning to attend the Worldcon this year, we're eligible to nominate for the Hugo Awards, which are sort of SF's version of the Oscars, or maybe the Golden Globes (the Nebula Awards being the other). This is only the third time I've had this opportunity, and it's always kind of difficult, given that I end up having basically no opinion in so many of the categories.
I do have a few ideas about works to nominate, but I'd like to hear suggestions from other people. So, what should I be putting on my nominating ballot this year? I'll put the list of categories below, with my…
drorzel | February 17, 2007Over in LiveJournal land, Kate has an open letter to Daniel Keys Moran:
As someone who very nearly cries at the idea of a completed Trent novel languishing on your hard drive, may I introduce you to Lulu or Cafe Press? Both will print books from uploaded files, as they are ordered, for the price of their cost plus whatever profit you like (meaning no money up front for the author, though I understand some services are extra); both have you retain your copyright; and both are very easy. I've seen Lulu books myself and the quality is quite good.
If you don't know Moran, he's the author of a…
drorzel | February 5, 2007Cognitive Daily proves it scientifically.
I love it when life imitates Brust.
drorzel | February 5, 2007The new issue of Locus arrived just before we left, so I spent some time reading reviews and commentary on the SF field over the weekend. It's actually a pretty good issue-- the retro-review of Isaac Asimov is interesting, and while the John Barnes interview doesn't ask the important question ("How can the same person write Mother of Storms and One for the Morning Glory?"), he says some interesting things about his other books. There's also a recommended reading list, that I'll probably comment on elsewhere.
I do want to mention, though, the review column by Gary K. Wolfe, in which he reads a…
drorzel | January 20, 2007I'm going to be on a few program items at Boskone again this year. The highly preliminary schedule I received a couple of days ago includes a Saturday afternoon talk on "Spooky Action at a Distance," which will be a sort of popular-audience explanation of the EPR Paradox and Bell's Theorem. "Weird Quantum Phenomena" was a hit last year, so I'm looking forward to this one.
Also on the list is "SF and the History of Science," described thusly:
Let's look at SF (or historical fantasy) involving the development of science: something that's interested writers in our genre from DeCamp to…
drorzel | January 8, 2007Paul Davies's forthcoming book Cosmic Jackpot is subtitled "Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life," so you know that he's not going after small questions, here. The book is a lengthy and detailed discussion of what he terms the "Goldilocks Enigma," and what others refer to as "fine-tuning"-- basically, how do you account for the fact that the universe allows us to exist? A small change in the values of any of the constants of nature would very likely make it impossible for life as we know it to exist. And yet, here we are-- so how did that happen?
Though this book won't be released for a…