A word about Hugo 2014 slate reviews

So I broke down and purchased a WorldCon  supporting membership. Which means that I get to vote for Hugos!   And I might as well try to share as I work through the ballot.

(Lots more Hugo related nathering below the cut.)

Onward, with tentive steps...

So, with a foundation down - not fully settled, not without a few cracks, but the road is clear, though rough in places. And if the rocks get thick, I have a staff to hand.

***

Via The Anchoress:

The Reapers Are The Angels. Zombies, which are at least not vampires.

Ron Rolheiser writes about crowds.

***

Walked to Mass this week. The number of joys and blessings wrapt up in that - that I can walk; that I will; that I found a house close to the church; that the weather was beautiful; that I have decent and yet practical clothes; that I have the time; that the world continues on as it has...too many to count.

Links, Books,

Links:

DaTechguy's Blog - Catholic blog, a bit more political than I like, but with some interesting SF commentary also.

Interview with Farah Mendlesohn - who has complied an book of crit on Joanna Russ. Most interesting to me for the commentary on different types of feminism - [those] who have grown up thinking of themselves as equal, and taking the rhetoric for granted, and then slowly realising that they've been sold London Bridge. (Which is...not the conclusion I've come to.)

The Black Hole Case - okay, not life science, but still v. interesting.

Books: (all as of yet unread)

The Book of Genesis, illustrated by R. Crumb.

Between God and Allah: What Christians Can Learn from Muslims - an examination of the points of alinement and divergence between the younger peoples of the Book.

Multicultural Medicine and Health Disparities by Satcher and Pamies

***

Had the course PT test this morning, and (contrary to what I expected) managed to score over 90% in all three events. Which, honestly, is much easier when you're an old gal.

It can be iffy, meeting a bunch of new people, esp if you're not great with people. So far in my group, there are a couple of people with a Russian language background, a gal who climbs, and a couple of SF geeks. (In amongst a wide spectrum of backgrounds and experiences.) It's actually looking very promising.

***

The day after Christmas, my family had the tv on a NCIS marathon, which I had been avoiding watching for no particular reason. This evening, I'm on my third hour in a row. Gibbs is particularly interesting, but all the characters have their moments. The action/details are occasionally...off (f'xample, the airborne jump scene had about a 100% deficiency in wind noise and turbulence inside the aircraft.) But so far, I can over look those.

...I really don't need a new show to watch.

Another list of books; Noah's Ark

Still on the road, this time stopping in the great state of Texas.

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From Amazon: Top ten editor's picks for 2009 in fantasy/SF - also links to top customer picks.

The editor's picks have less fantasy and far more short story collections.

***

Via Anchoress - Noah's Ark was Circular.

The ark story is a perpetual favorite among the Christian veterinarians that I know - with the occasional debates over the effects of genetic bottlenecks and how long one could have only two rabbits. (Time typically measured in seconds...) The idea of an ark also shows up repeatedly in SF, although my mind's blanking on all of them except Bulter's Clay's Ark.

The 'circular' ark of the article above reminds me of round buffalo hide boats used by American Indians of the plains for short distance river passage.

Saint of the Day: St Basil and St Gregory

Back (Top Ten Heroes List)

So. Back. (I think.)

From Alexander Field's post here:

Top Ten Fictional Characters I'd Like to Be

1. Torin Kerr. Excuse me, that should be Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr. From Tanya Huff's excellent Valor series (now complete, I think, in 4 books, and which I love like little else I've loved in SF ever.) Kicks @$$, but takes no names, because she isn't going to need to remember you, punk. Perfectly capable of winning an intergalatic war singlehandly in her underwear.

2. Rowan, from Rosemary Kirsten's Steerswoman series. Adventurer, chronicler, scientist. I don't remember another series that celebrates the scientific method nearly as much.

3. Ista Dy Baocia of Louis McMaster Bujould's Chalion series. An older woman in the service of God, and struggling with the position. Ista takes on the challenges thrown her way with grace and humor and preserverance.

4. Zoe Washburn, of Serenity. Laconic. Deadly. Strong right arm to her captain, devoted wife to another (demonstrating a remarkable ability to separate her day job from the rest of her life) stubborn and lovely.

5. Ardeth Bey of The Mummy series - cool face tattoos, beautiful horse, and doesn't have to support the girl after the credits roll.

6. Storm (aka Ororro Munroe) of the X-Men. (But only if I didn't have to wear the spike heels.) (And only if it's the version where Storm is played by, oh, Angela Bassett and not Halley Berry.)

7. Cordelia Vorkorsagan, nee Naismith - Bujold again, this time for her Naismith/Vorkorsagan novels. (And speaking of people that Angela Bassett should play in the movie version...) Cordelia is just a hair *too* awesome to be real (it doesn't help that the bulk of the series is told from her son's pov, and Miles really does think his mother walks on water) but she has been one of those fantastic swashbuckling/thinking characters for me for, oh, decades now.

8. Ellen Ripley - of Aliens. I'm hoping I won't have to explain this one. Long before Buffy, there was Ripley, slayer of demons.

9. Strongbow, from Elfquest - strong, silent, deadly, stubborn like the bones of the earth are stubborn.

10. Optimus Prime (from the recent movies) - I honestly don't remember all that much of the kid cartoon, so I'm going mostly off the movies. In which Optimus is not only awesome in the busting heads category, he also shows himself to be a wise and capable leader (but not all perfect.)

***

Making this list, I'm again reminded that I like to read books with heroes who have adventures and issues that I really don't want to have. Which includes nearly all the CJ Cherryh novels and my favorite SF series Farscape, as well as the Crossroads series by Nick O'Donohoe (the only SF/F series I've seen to feature veterinarians).

***

Yes, back, of sorts. Attempting to apply the butt in chair principle, in rotation with lovingkindness towards Other People On The Internet Who Don't Think Like I Do. (I'm kinda rusty on the last one, I don't think there is supposed to be as much gritted teeth as I'm employing. *sigh*)

News of all sorts

The good news: Starting last Saturday, I suddenly had a couple extra unclaimed hours in the day.

The bad news: I have extra hours because my home internet went out. Doesn't appear to be fixed anytime soon.

Upside: more time to read, reflect, watch Alias re-runs and work out.

Downside: I was just getting back into the blogging thing.

I've got a work-around figured out (local internet cafe and a thumbdrive) but haven't ironned out all the bugs. Plus, there is all this extra time...

***

Daniel Drezner posted a list of Top Ten Books to Read about International Economic History. Given the Pope's recent teaching on Charity (which I am still working through) some background might be helpful.

(I whole heartedly second the recomendation of Guns, Germs and Steel as a noteworthy arguement for why the world looks like it does now. And I find it interesting that Thomas Friedman ("Lexus and the Olive Tree" is not listed. (Perhaps the book is less about economics than I thought.)

Books - read, found, and so forth

Ye gods, that's what I get for nattering about 'omg, back to writing, woot!' -

- work dropping in with a vengence.

***

I love my job, and I'm thankful to have a job that I love. I just wish there had been less of it to love, these past few weeks.

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Books - recently read, and other wise:

Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia by Jo Ann Kay McNamara. Lengthy, indepth history of Catholic female religious. (650 pages not counting the footnotes, not light reading.) And not as indepth as one would think - the scope of McNamara's book means that she skimmed over a great deal of Christian (and world) history. I can't argue against the skimming (650 pages) but I think my understanding of the subject would have been better if there had been more cross-references to secular/mainstream Church history. The sheer scope of the book was daunting, and the scholarly effort that went into it impressive. However, I kept being thrown out by the author's bias...McNamara wrote a book about religious women, but the primary opponent for this 'band of sisters' was men - not the devil, not their own natures, not the temptations of the world. I think I would have gotten more from a book with a less secular author pov and with more focus on the female interpetation of Christianity.

Reluctant Saint: The Life of Francis of Assisi by Donald Spoto. Brief but equally well-footnoted biography of St Francis. Presents the saint as a man undergoing constant conversion and conversation with God, and places him firmly in the context of his time. Manages to wash away the fairy-tale glitter to reveal the stunning stonework underneath the life of my favorite saint.

Now I'm working on The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain by Fernando Cervantes. Dry but fascinating.

Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction by John Rieder. A Marxist treatment of early SF. Intriguing, but the author keeps using words in a manner that I don't quite follow. Being read in bits and drabs.

Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction edited by Jeff Prucher. Fun and educational. Not exactly enlightening, but I like the methodology of using citations.

The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World by Thomas M. Disch. Haven't read all of this yet, but I haven't come across a work cited yet that the author doesn't skewer in some form or other. (Same goes for authors.) Some of the ranting gets pretty brutal - Le Guin's politics are not treated kindly, here. Refreshing for its mostly even handed battering of all types and forms of SF. (I get the impression that the author loves SF, deeply and truely, and too much to not be honest about the genre.)

From the fiction reading pile:

Horizons, by Mary Rosenblum. Near-future LEO multicultural SF. Lots of action, well-fleshed out characters, few-to-none cheap grandstanding of ideals. Don't love the book, but I'm having a good time reading it. Assuming the last third holds up, I'll gladly read more by this author.

Draco Tavern, by Larry Niven. Near-future alien contact. A collection of short stories, which means some of the themes get really short shrift. But the wrting is nearly invisible, the infodumps kept to a minimum, and I keep wanting more.

(Side note: the short story "War Movie" deals with an alien race who visited Earth to make documentary movies of us killing each other. One alien, bitter at the failure of the enterprise (now that peace had mostly broken out across the globe, post-contact) tells his sob story to a human in a bar. A human woman. And I was part way through the story when I realized that in the universe of the story (and possibly the author) there was no way this human woman was military. Which...anyway.)

The Black Company by Glen Cook. Read this one first in a SFBC edition, and I'd forgotten how good it was. (Although I seem to remember later books wandering a bit.) Also - I was talking with some one about military sci-fi, and wondered if there was military fantasy. Which, yes, there is - the Black Company novels, several Turtledove novels, Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History, and others.

Recently found/rediscovered: Dossouye, by Charles Saunders. Published last year (Jan 08) - why don't people tell me about these things?!?!?! Sword & Sorcery, set in Africa, Dossouye is a warrior woman who rides a bull. Short stories first appeared in Amazons years - YEARS - back.

***

And now to try to do some of that writing thing.

The Wonders I've Seen...

In a post here, Alexander Field writes about fictional places he'd like to visit.

(Do check his list out - he has v. nice pics to go with his choices.)

Added later in the day - A few thoughts on what makes a world memorable...I really like sense detail, and that's really important. And if I didn't like the characters in the story, I'm not likely to really enjoy the setting. (There are exceptions!) But what I think I want most from a fictional world is a 'sense of wonder' - something that I associate with, say, the TV series Farscape. Among others. End addition

Here's mine - not an exclusive list, and subject to change tomorrow. (About the only restriction I put on the list is that all the places are from books, not movies/tv/ect. Otherwise, we'd be here all day...)

1) A China That Never Was, But Should Have Been: Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart. Fantasy, set in China, full of delightful characters, wild adventures, and thousands of plot twists. In the voice of Number Ten Ox, Hughart's narrator, the landscape and heavens and history of the world come alive, both eternally foretold and ever new.

2) London Below: Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman. Urban fantasy, set in London. (TV series, novel, and graphic novel - I prefer the novel.) Not a journey to be made lightly, for travelers don't always come back from that place. But the roads and alleys of London Below are like nothing in London Above - except when they are.

3) The Outskirts: The Outskirter's Secret, by Rosemary Kirsten. SF, medieval setting, other planet. Read The Steerswoman first, because otherwise you'll miss the opportunity to figure out the story. The Outskirts are a wild place, as dangerous in their way as London Below. The wandering Outskirters and their herds travel through a wilderness full of demons and armored swamp monsters, and a landscape as deadly as the creatures that inhabit it.

4) The City of Tai-Tastigon: God Stalk, by P.C. Hogan. Fantasy, medieval setting. Another city, one full of warring guilds and fantastic treasures; trembling rooftops and crumbling stone and secret passages - and temples for every God in the world.

5) Omelas: 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", by Ursula K. Le Guin. SF, utopia/thought-experiment. I'd go here just to see how the utopia works, with its public orgies and happy drugs and beautiful trains and cute ponies and soft misty mornings, with no hard labor or untimely floods or shortages of any sort.

6) The Majat Worlds: Serpent's Reach, by CJ Cherryh. SF, future, otherworld. Specifically, the world of the hive-mind Majat, but only if I could see it through their eyes. One of the various reasons I love CJ Cherryh's writing is her ability to craft worlds and cultures. The Majat - jewel-encrusted and many-bodied - have been described as 'the first sympathetic hive-mind in SF'.

7) Ballybran: Crystal Singer, by Anne McCaffery. SF, future, otherworld. Ballybran is the only source of Crystal, a material used to power starships and link worlds together. I am not musically inclined, but I would like to see this world, where light alone can bring forth music from the stones, and gifted musicians drive themselves to madness in the quest for sound.

8) Mirabile: Mirabile, by Janet Kagan. SF, otherworld, colonization Mirable is a colony world, settled by humans who brought all the species of Earth with them - by encoding the genes for, say, a tyrannosaurus rex into the sequence of a sheep. These wild sports - called Dragon's Teeth - are culled and contained by specialists known as Jasons. It is a hazardous world, but there is *always* some new wonder to behold - so long as you see it coming first!

9) The Smoke Ring Integral Trees, by Larry Niven. SF, future, otherworld. A gas world, encircled by a floating ring of enormous trees, in whose branches whole tribes of humans live and die in continuous free fall.

10) The Jungle of the Free People: The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. Another world that never was, but perhaps should have been. Oh, to hear the call look well, ye wolves, to see the kites circling overhead, to feel the little bald spot under Bagheera's chin...

...and I'll stop there. This was fun!

The Guardian SF book Meme

A meme, stolen borrowed from Biology in Science Fiction.

Bold indicates books I have read.
* means I've heard of this book
# means I've seen the movie



1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) - I read this within a decade of publishing, and it is still one of those that will turn my mood from 'sour and grumpy' to 'rolling on the floor laughing'.
2. Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
*3. Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951) - No, I haven't read it.
4. Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
*5. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
6. Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
7. J.G. Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)
8. J.G. Ballard: Crash (1973)
9. J.G. Ballard: Millennium People (2003)
10. Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
11. Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
12. Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
13. Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
14. Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
*15. Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)
16. William Beckford: Vathek (1786)
17. Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
18. Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953) - I dunno if it's fair to put high school required reading books on the list
19. Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
20. Charles Brockden Brown: Wieland (1798)
21. Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
*22. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966) I own this, from a SFBC edition way back in the day. Never finished it.
23. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
*24. Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
25. Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
*26. Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912) A gazillion Tarzan books - yes. Barsoom - no.
27. William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
28. Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979) - I would not have picked this fairly staid cross-time translocation novel to represent what Butler is capable of.
29. Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
30. Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
31. Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
32. Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) - parts
33. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) ditto
34. Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
35. Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
*36. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
37. Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
38. GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
*39. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004) I own this - and have started the first chapter. Eight months ago.
40. Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
41. Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
42. Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
43. Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
44. Samuel R Delany: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
*45. Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
*46. Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
47. Thomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)
48. Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)
49. Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
50. John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
51. Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001) - On my rec list for, oh, *everyone*.
52. Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
*53. William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
54. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
55. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
56. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
57. M John Harrison: Light (2002)
58. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
*59. Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
60. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965) - And I quit the series somewhere around 'God-Emperor'
61. Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
62. Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
63. James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
64. Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
*65. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
66. Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
67. Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
*68. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898) But you couldn't get me to read another Henry James novel for all the gold in the world, with love thrown in besides.
69. PD James: The Children of Men (1992) - Not a bad SF novel for a mystery writer who never read much SF. The movie, btw, was awesome.
70. Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
71. Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
72. Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
73. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966) - Again with the high school required reading list.
*74. Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
75. Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
76. CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56) - again on the highly reccommended list
77. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
*78. Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961) - Didn't see the George Clooney movie, either, which I'm still a bit surprised about
79. Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990) - Actually, I didn't read the 1st and 3rd novels.
80. Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) - an old favorite, a great journey novel
81. Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
82. MG Lewis: The Monk (1796)
83. David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
84. Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
85. Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
86. Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
87. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954) - The Will Smith movie was, in many ways, much better.
88. Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
89. Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
90. Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006) - Brillant prose, lousy science/world building, and in an alternative, hyper-politically-correct world, banned due to sucicide-inducing-tendencies.
91. Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
92. China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
93. Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
94. Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) - classic, and worth the read, even if you're not into post-apoc novels
95. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
96. Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
97. William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
*98. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987) - I slogged my way through 'Sula'. Not reading more Morrison.
99. Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
100. Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
101. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)
*102. Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970) - I keep getting this one, Farmer's 'Riverworld' novels, and 'The Integral Trees' confused.
103. Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
104. Flann O'Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
105. Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
#106. George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
107. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
108. Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
*109. Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946) I own the trilogy. One day I shall use it for something other than propping up other books.
110. Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)
111. John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
*112. Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- ) Everyone wants me to read these
113. Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
*#114. Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000) Very iffy on this one, based on the anti-Catholism mutterings and the movie.
115. François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
116. Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
117. Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
118. Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002) - Extremely cool idea, that broke down into exposition at the end.
119. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997) - And I quit reading then.
120. Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)
121. Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
122. Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)
123. Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943) - I have no clue why this one is on the list, but I loved that book. "It has done me good," the fox said, "because of the color of the wheat fields."
*124. José Saramago: Blindness (1995) - own. In Spanish. Trying to finish the Alf collection first.
125. Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
*126. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
*127. Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
128. Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
*129. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992) Own
*130. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)-don't think working as crew for a small town theater adaption counts as actually reading the book
*131. Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
132. Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
133. JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)
134. JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) - yes, both. yes, before the movies came out.
135. Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889) - And if Twain wrote SF, there's dang little 'weird' about it.
136. Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
137. Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)
138. Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
139. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
140. Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
*#141. HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895) - Think I started this one, once.
#142. HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898) - The Tom Cruise movie was...disapointing.
*143. TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
144. Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)
*145. Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83) Started the first book.
*#146. Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)
147. John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951) - but so long ago I couldn't tell you anything about it.
148. John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
149. Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

So, out of 149, I've read 27, (and have read something by 37 of 135 authors) and have heard of other 31 novels.

The list is...odd - UK heavy, naturally, given the source, but so many are borderline SSF. Very many of the authors listed are mainstream authors represented by their one venture into spec lit. The part of me that likes things tidy and in the proper boxes is...disquieted.

...and now I want to go buy books. Botheration.

JK Rowlings's Harvard Address, WSJ War Poetry

Via Instapundit - the text of Rowling's commencement address at Harvard.

My first thought was along the lines of "wow, that's *cool*." I'm not sure who it was cooler for - Rowling's, giving the send-off speech for 'the' premier American college, or Harvard, having a world-wide icon talking for them.

Probably cooler for Rowling. I imagine Harvard can get pretty interesting people most years.

What I found notable about the speech was the outward focus of it. I suppose that one might have guessed at this (would a British citizen really come to America and urge a group of graduates to ignore the rest of the world?). But Rowling did not stop there - she explicitly urged the graduates to "imagine" the lives of other people living under oppressive regimes. Granted, she framed this within the context of being exposed to first-hand accounts of oppression, but still - the idea that we can (and should) make assessments of the lives of people in other cultures (and, where applicable, judge those lives wanting) was refreshing.

Equally interesting was the supposition that those Harvard grads had not yet failed at much of anything. Which...might well be in the eye of the beholder. No matter how successful those students might appear to the rest of the population, I reckon there are more than a few who count their losses as legion.

As satisfying as it is to imagine the verbal smack-down to a group of over-wealthied, hyper-attaining, well-positioned Ivy League graduates - you have been blessed all of your lives, no matter if you admit it or not - I think it's not quite right to sneer at these kids for 'not failing like the rest of us have.'

I don't think world is not often changed by those who use an ordinary standard for 'good enough'.

***

Via Bookslut: Wall Street Journal's pick of war poetry.

Any list that includes Kipling is, I think, on the right track. Owens is another good choice.

I have noted a tendency in the poetry readings that I have attended these last few years - bright earnest college kids, college-bound kids, and a handful old enough to be grandparents to me. A few veterans. A few whose work - even when I disagree with the argument - is break-taking in impact.

Most though - most single a single note at the microphone.

The poet says , war is bad.

Really, say I. For I have heard this: war is bad, water wet, fire hot, and gravity makes things fall down. There's an insufficiency of poetry in that, and a paucity of fact. Even worse, though, is war poetry which states there is nothing worse than war, combining a grievous lack of imagination with the lesser sin of falsehood.

War is bad, the kids say. Very, very bad.

Indeed, I say. Tell me more.