I'm on duty.
This is not at all a bad thing, because
a) I'm not the partying type, so I'd probably just stay home and surf the internet;
b) My internet connection at home is down. (Grrr!)
So this affords me the chance to sit back, relatively free of distractions, and think about the past year.
It's been a good year. It went by too quickly (good grief, that makes me sound old!) but many good things happened, and the bad things were all weathered without too much trouble.
I hope y'all have a Happy New Year.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
Christmas Eve
Merry Christmas, everyone! From the always-helpful Christian Quotation of the Day email server:
Come worship the King,
That little dear thing,
Asleep on His Mother's soft breast.
Ye bright stars, bow down,
Weave for Him a crown,
Christ Jesus by angels confessed.
Come, children, and peep,
But hush ye, and creep
On tiptoe to where the Babe lies;
Then whisper His Name
And lo! like a flame
The glory light shines in His eyes.
Come strong men, and see
This high mystery,
Tread firm where the shepherds have trod,
And watch, `mid the hair
Of the Maiden so fair,
The five little fingers of God.
Come, old men and grey,
The star leads the way,
It halts and your wanderings cease;
Look down on His Face
Then, filled with His Grace,
Depart ye, God's servants, in Peace.
... G. A. Studdert Kennedy
Come worship the King,
That little dear thing,
Asleep on His Mother's soft breast.
Ye bright stars, bow down,
Weave for Him a crown,
Christ Jesus by angels confessed.
Come, children, and peep,
But hush ye, and creep
On tiptoe to where the Babe lies;
Then whisper His Name
And lo! like a flame
The glory light shines in His eyes.
Come strong men, and see
This high mystery,
Tread firm where the shepherds have trod,
And watch, `mid the hair
Of the Maiden so fair,
The five little fingers of God.
Come, old men and grey,
The star leads the way,
It halts and your wanderings cease;
Look down on His Face
Then, filled with His Grace,
Depart ye, God's servants, in Peace.
... G. A. Studdert Kennedy
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Baxter's Ambiguous Alternate
So, after picking it up and putting it down several times, I finished Stephen Baxter's Conquerer.
It's the second book in his "Time's Tapestry" series, about a prophecy delivered (apparently by time travel) to ancient Britain; and the way it affects the many generations of people who encounter it.
The prophecy is a complicated work of Latin poetry which describes the history of Britain by intervals, with dates linked by the regular return of Halley's Comet. As the series progresses, it becomes obvious that the prophecy is accurate- though its meaning is sometimes unclear until it comes to pass.
The legend surrounding the prophecy says that it was written by "The Weaver," a manipulator from the future who is trying to bring some historical incident to pass. It's unclear where this legend came from, or why people would preserve it since it makes the prophecy heretical; though of course as science fiction readers we understand its meaning at once.
Which comes to the odd part (or, I guess, the interesting part): it's unclear if the Prophecy is working. It undoubtedly changes individual lives; many people live or die because of its influence. But every historical incident it impinges on seems to work out in just the way it did in our actual historical record. Either it's very subtle, or it's not working, or else our history is the one it's trying to bring about.
This second book strongly suggests the second possibility; things haven't worked out as expected. But, of course, that's all a matter of perspective.
It's the second book in his "Time's Tapestry" series, about a prophecy delivered (apparently by time travel) to ancient Britain; and the way it affects the many generations of people who encounter it.
The prophecy is a complicated work of Latin poetry which describes the history of Britain by intervals, with dates linked by the regular return of Halley's Comet. As the series progresses, it becomes obvious that the prophecy is accurate- though its meaning is sometimes unclear until it comes to pass.
The legend surrounding the prophecy says that it was written by "The Weaver," a manipulator from the future who is trying to bring some historical incident to pass. It's unclear where this legend came from, or why people would preserve it since it makes the prophecy heretical; though of course as science fiction readers we understand its meaning at once.
Which comes to the odd part (or, I guess, the interesting part): it's unclear if the Prophecy is working. It undoubtedly changes individual lives; many people live or die because of its influence. But every historical incident it impinges on seems to work out in just the way it did in our actual historical record. Either it's very subtle, or it's not working, or else our history is the one it's trying to bring about.
This second book strongly suggests the second possibility; things haven't worked out as expected. But, of course, that's all a matter of perspective.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Mustang by Moonlight!
I haven't posted much this month; for most of it I was at sea with touch-and-go internet access, and then I discovered the same problem when I got home.
But! I am on Christmas leave, which means that I've rented a car to take the trip home to South Carolina. It turned out that my car was a Mustang.
I've never driven one of these before. It was funny how all the rental attendants kept telling me, "Watch your speed!"
And then I got in and took off. And it all became much clearer. A Mustang is a fun car to drive; especially when you've got a long highway trip that lasts all night.
But! I am on Christmas leave, which means that I've rented a car to take the trip home to South Carolina. It turned out that my car was a Mustang.
I've never driven one of these before. It was funny how all the rental attendants kept telling me, "Watch your speed!"
And then I got in and took off. And it all became much clearer. A Mustang is a fun car to drive; especially when you've got a long highway trip that lasts all night.
The Wolves of Chernobyl
From the Independent:
Chernobyl: Lost world
Two decades after disaster struck, Chernobyl's wastelands are now teeming with wildlife. Should they become a nature reserve?
On 26 April 1986, the worst nuclear accident in history occurred at the Chernobyl power station in the former Soviet Union. More than 135,000 people – and 35,000 cattle – living within 30 kilometres (19 miles) of the stricken nuclear reactor were evacuated and an unprecedented "zone of exclusion" was established around the site, close to the border between the Ukraine and Belarus...
Scientists have had access to limited data when it comes to assessing the true facts within the 4,000 square kilometres of the "zone of alienation". Photographs of the abandoned city of Pripyat, near Chernobyl, reveal that trees and shrubs have started to sprout through the roads and buildings. Nature has begun to reclaim what was originally lost to urban development and agriculture.
Scientists from the International Radioecology Laboratory in Slavutych have documented an increase in sightings of large animals that were rare or absent before the disaster. Several packs of wolves have appeared and they seem to have made easy meals of any stray dogs left behind by their owners. (Wolves Eat Dogs is the title of a novel based on the exclusion zone by Gorky Park author Martin Cruz Smith.)
The rare Przewalski's horse from the Russian steppe has been reintroduced, along with European bison. Beavers and boars are beginning to reshape the forest ecosystems, European lynx have been sighted and many rare birds, such as the black stork and white-tailed eagle, have returned, along with many swans and owls.
For some scientists, the sight of wildflowers growing through the cracks in the concrete roads of Pripyat and the many and varied species of larger animals within the zone are signs that something positive has come out of the disaster. These researchers believe that the detrimental effects of the radioactive fallout have been exaggerated, while the true impact of human activity has been overlooked.
"The benefit of excluding humans from this highly contaminated ecosystem appears to outweigh significantly any negative cost associated with Chernobyl radiation," said Robert Baker, a biologist at Texas Tech University, who has made more than a dozen scientific excursions into the zone. Baker believes that the diversity of animals and plants within the zone is what could be reasonably expected to be seen in a nature park dedicated to conservation. Indeed, there have been calls to turn the Chernobyl exclusion zone into what would become Europe's largest nature reserve...
--------------------------
There's a lot more to the article at the link. But it amuses me that nature can handle a nuclear accident a lot more easily than it can handle the ongoing presence of human beings.
(Or, alternately, there's a lot of hidden mutation going on; and in a few years the animal-men from Kamandi will erupt from their hidden lairs to take over the world. This is also possible.)
Chernobyl: Lost world
Two decades after disaster struck, Chernobyl's wastelands are now teeming with wildlife. Should they become a nature reserve?
On 26 April 1986, the worst nuclear accident in history occurred at the Chernobyl power station in the former Soviet Union. More than 135,000 people – and 35,000 cattle – living within 30 kilometres (19 miles) of the stricken nuclear reactor were evacuated and an unprecedented "zone of exclusion" was established around the site, close to the border between the Ukraine and Belarus...
Scientists have had access to limited data when it comes to assessing the true facts within the 4,000 square kilometres of the "zone of alienation". Photographs of the abandoned city of Pripyat, near Chernobyl, reveal that trees and shrubs have started to sprout through the roads and buildings. Nature has begun to reclaim what was originally lost to urban development and agriculture.
Scientists from the International Radioecology Laboratory in Slavutych have documented an increase in sightings of large animals that were rare or absent before the disaster. Several packs of wolves have appeared and they seem to have made easy meals of any stray dogs left behind by their owners. (Wolves Eat Dogs is the title of a novel based on the exclusion zone by Gorky Park author Martin Cruz Smith.)
The rare Przewalski's horse from the Russian steppe has been reintroduced, along with European bison. Beavers and boars are beginning to reshape the forest ecosystems, European lynx have been sighted and many rare birds, such as the black stork and white-tailed eagle, have returned, along with many swans and owls.
For some scientists, the sight of wildflowers growing through the cracks in the concrete roads of Pripyat and the many and varied species of larger animals within the zone are signs that something positive has come out of the disaster. These researchers believe that the detrimental effects of the radioactive fallout have been exaggerated, while the true impact of human activity has been overlooked.
"The benefit of excluding humans from this highly contaminated ecosystem appears to outweigh significantly any negative cost associated with Chernobyl radiation," said Robert Baker, a biologist at Texas Tech University, who has made more than a dozen scientific excursions into the zone. Baker believes that the diversity of animals and plants within the zone is what could be reasonably expected to be seen in a nature park dedicated to conservation. Indeed, there have been calls to turn the Chernobyl exclusion zone into what would become Europe's largest nature reserve...
--------------------------
There's a lot more to the article at the link. But it amuses me that nature can handle a nuclear accident a lot more easily than it can handle the ongoing presence of human beings.
(Or, alternately, there's a lot of hidden mutation going on; and in a few years the animal-men from Kamandi will erupt from their hidden lairs to take over the world. This is also possible.)
Monday, December 10, 2007
The Heat of Fusion
The Heat of Fusion is a collection of John M. Ford's short stories and poetry. It's marvellous, though (as is usual for Ford) the writing is dense and often ambiguous in meaning.
Ford seems to like a sort of political-psychological story; many of his works are about revolutionary psychology and its darker, more Orwellian elements.
In "Chromatic Aberration," one of the best works in the book, the revolt has succeeded; and part of the new regime's cultural revolution is the invention of new colors. The author claims, with all sincerity, that the revolution has changed human psychology and perception so completely that people can now see real colors; whereas the colors we saw before were just reactionary illusions. The story is creepy in its understatement; Ford creates the impression of a nightmare society without ever actually "breaking character" and telling us about the horrors that may be going on in it.
More lightly, here's one of his sonnets:
------
Janus: Sonnet
Sufficient time for faith and miracles
We find we cannot fit into our days;
And nothing's left at all that joyous dwells
Inside the heart. The spark of spirit stays
Too small for dreamburst, and all earth may prove
Inadequate for art. No human is
This potent all alone, and fear kills love...
Love kills fear, and alone; all-potent, this.
No human is inadequate for art,
For dreamburst; and all earth may prove too small.
The spark of spirit stays inside the heart
That joyous dwells, and nothing's left at all
We cannot fit into our days. we find
For faith and miracles, sufficient time.
------
It's a sort of sonnet palindrome: everything in the second half is perfectly reversed to achieve a meaning the exactly opposite to the first half.
Ford's work is terribly underrated; he was one of the most literate and capable science fiction writers to ever work in the field.
Ford seems to like a sort of political-psychological story; many of his works are about revolutionary psychology and its darker, more Orwellian elements.
In "Chromatic Aberration," one of the best works in the book, the revolt has succeeded; and part of the new regime's cultural revolution is the invention of new colors. The author claims, with all sincerity, that the revolution has changed human psychology and perception so completely that people can now see real colors; whereas the colors we saw before were just reactionary illusions. The story is creepy in its understatement; Ford creates the impression of a nightmare society without ever actually "breaking character" and telling us about the horrors that may be going on in it.
More lightly, here's one of his sonnets:
------
Janus: Sonnet
Sufficient time for faith and miracles
We find we cannot fit into our days;
And nothing's left at all that joyous dwells
Inside the heart. The spark of spirit stays
Too small for dreamburst, and all earth may prove
Inadequate for art. No human is
This potent all alone, and fear kills love...
Love kills fear, and alone; all-potent, this.
No human is inadequate for art,
For dreamburst; and all earth may prove too small.
The spark of spirit stays inside the heart
That joyous dwells, and nothing's left at all
We cannot fit into our days. we find
For faith and miracles, sufficient time.
------
It's a sort of sonnet palindrome: everything in the second half is perfectly reversed to achieve a meaning the exactly opposite to the first half.
Ford's work is terribly underrated; he was one of the most literate and capable science fiction writers to ever work in the field.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Fatal Revenant
It's the second book in the last Thomas Covenant trilogy!
Good grief.
Fatal Revenant suffers from the normal second-book-in-a-trilogy problems (i.e. you have to remember what happened in the first one, which is important since Donaldson keeps referring back to it; and you don't really get any resolution yet.)
Against that, you get some genuinely-interesting historical stuff. (Some!) We find out more about Berek, Demondim, the Forests, and so forth. Donaldson doesn't mind retconning his previous writing for the sake of moving the present story forward; sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't.
The notion that no one knew about the Despiser until Kevin's reign is a little jarring; but it mostly works. The Insequent are another matter; they're so prominent that you have to wonder where they've been before this trilogy.
Decent, but not marvellous. On the other hand, I'll definitely read the last book.
Good grief.
Fatal Revenant suffers from the normal second-book-in-a-trilogy problems (i.e. you have to remember what happened in the first one, which is important since Donaldson keeps referring back to it; and you don't really get any resolution yet.)
Against that, you get some genuinely-interesting historical stuff. (Some!) We find out more about Berek, Demondim, the Forests, and so forth. Donaldson doesn't mind retconning his previous writing for the sake of moving the present story forward; sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't.
The notion that no one knew about the Despiser until Kevin's reign is a little jarring; but it mostly works. The Insequent are another matter; they're so prominent that you have to wonder where they've been before this trilogy.
Decent, but not marvellous. On the other hand, I'll definitely read the last book.
War and Peace (Not Tolstoy!)
Donald Kagan's On the Origins of War (and the Preservation of Peace) is one of those books that I've been meaning to read for several months. Now that we're out at sea, with a tenuous internet connection that leaves me little opportunity for time-wasting, I've finally gotten around to it.
It's a series of case studies- not of wars themselves, but of several situations that led to wars. Kagan jumps from the ancient world (the Pelopennesian War between Athens and Sparta, and the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage) to the 20th century with both World Wars. He finishes, optimistically (?) with the Cuban Missle Crisis.
(Well, it's optimistic in the sense that war didn't break out. Though Kagan's picture of the crisis is very different from what I've read before.)
Kagan's points are clear and pretty well-established in his work here. We think of war as an interruption of the natural state of things; but it's not. War historically is much more common than times of peace. We are prone to conflict.
Peace, Kagan says, doesn't exist without someone making an effort to maintain it. It requires proactive behavior, diplomatic skill, and political will; and even then it may fail.
It fails because all nations pursue three things: honor, interests, and security. These are unstable, insatiable pursuits; no matter how much you have, you can never really be done with them. And they often conflict with other nations' pursuits; so it comes to war to resolve them.
Kagan's study of honor was perhaps the most interesting part of the book. He uses the term to cover prestige, respect, reputation; these psychological forces are a real form of power, and nations will fight to keep them. (Paradoxically, if they don't, the result may also be war: because a nation that loses the respect of others will have to fight to prove its strength. Its diplomacy won't be taken seriously on its own merits.)
There's a lot here I still have to digest. But Kagan has shaped and reshaped a lot of how I view international relations.
It's a series of case studies- not of wars themselves, but of several situations that led to wars. Kagan jumps from the ancient world (the Pelopennesian War between Athens and Sparta, and the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage) to the 20th century with both World Wars. He finishes, optimistically (?) with the Cuban Missle Crisis.
(Well, it's optimistic in the sense that war didn't break out. Though Kagan's picture of the crisis is very different from what I've read before.)
Kagan's points are clear and pretty well-established in his work here. We think of war as an interruption of the natural state of things; but it's not. War historically is much more common than times of peace. We are prone to conflict.
Peace, Kagan says, doesn't exist without someone making an effort to maintain it. It requires proactive behavior, diplomatic skill, and political will; and even then it may fail.
It fails because all nations pursue three things: honor, interests, and security. These are unstable, insatiable pursuits; no matter how much you have, you can never really be done with them. And they often conflict with other nations' pursuits; so it comes to war to resolve them.
Kagan's study of honor was perhaps the most interesting part of the book. He uses the term to cover prestige, respect, reputation; these psychological forces are a real form of power, and nations will fight to keep them. (Paradoxically, if they don't, the result may also be war: because a nation that loses the respect of others will have to fight to prove its strength. Its diplomacy won't be taken seriously on its own merits.)
There's a lot here I still have to digest. But Kagan has shaped and reshaped a lot of how I view international relations.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
The Accidental Time Machine
Joe Haldeman's latest novel, The Accidental Time Machine, is a book perfectly described by its title. Graduate student Matt Fuller accidentally builds a graviton meter that also functions as a time machine, with two major limitations:
1) It only goes forward, not backward;
2) Each jump through time is twelve times longer than the last.
The machine starts out jumping a few seconds into the future; by the time Fuller's ready to try a full-fledged experiment, with himself along for the ride, it takes him a month forward.
The machine isn't really controllable, or navigatable. The only thing it's indisputably good for is escaping your present time; which is good, because Fuller has a knack for getting into trouble.
This is my first Haldeman novel. It's readable (and it helps that I'm a total sucker for time-travel stories.) Some of the entries are weak: the future period ruled by a fundamentalist theocracy (complete with a holographic Jesus Christ) reminded me intensely of Heinlein's Revolt in 2100.
(Hey, I'm linking myself! That's a triumph of blog depth! Or self-indulgence. Don't answer that.)
The ending is disappointingly incoherent; I have no clear understanding of what happened, and I'm not sure that I'm meant to. It may just be a mystery of unthinkably-advanced science and time-travel weirdness. But I'd at least like to be clear on my unclarity, if that makes any sense.
Come to think of it, the entire plot- invent forward-going time machine, explore the future, get into trouble, keep moving farther ahead- was Poul Anderson's novella "Flight to Forever." Which was, frankly, done a lot better.
But this wasn't too bad. Like I said, I'm a sucker for time-travel.
1) It only goes forward, not backward;
2) Each jump through time is twelve times longer than the last.
The machine starts out jumping a few seconds into the future; by the time Fuller's ready to try a full-fledged experiment, with himself along for the ride, it takes him a month forward.
The machine isn't really controllable, or navigatable. The only thing it's indisputably good for is escaping your present time; which is good, because Fuller has a knack for getting into trouble.
This is my first Haldeman novel. It's readable (and it helps that I'm a total sucker for time-travel stories.) Some of the entries are weak: the future period ruled by a fundamentalist theocracy (complete with a holographic Jesus Christ) reminded me intensely of Heinlein's Revolt in 2100.
(Hey, I'm linking myself! That's a triumph of blog depth! Or self-indulgence. Don't answer that.)
The ending is disappointingly incoherent; I have no clear understanding of what happened, and I'm not sure that I'm meant to. It may just be a mystery of unthinkably-advanced science and time-travel weirdness. But I'd at least like to be clear on my unclarity, if that makes any sense.
Come to think of it, the entire plot- invent forward-going time machine, explore the future, get into trouble, keep moving farther ahead- was Poul Anderson's novella "Flight to Forever." Which was, frankly, done a lot better.
But this wasn't too bad. Like I said, I'm a sucker for time-travel.
Dogs and Robots and Mutants, Oh My!
My room was getting its semiannual cleaning this weekend (blech!) and I happened on a long-lost book that had been buried under my winter clothes: Clifford D. Simak's City.
It's a collection of short stories detailing Simak's future history of the decline of the human race. They're framed as myths that the intelligent dogs of the future tell each other about long-departed humanity- though educated dogs doubt that any such creature ever existed.
Humanity in Simak's future doesn't go out with a bang. It fails quietly, through social isolation and a lack of anything to strive for. It is replaced by dogs, who are made intelligent by means of surgery (today we'd say genetic engineering, but it amounts to the same thing) robots, and mutants- superintelligent, amoral beings whose purposes are never entirely clear.
Simak's writing is wistful: peaceful, sad, and ultimately resigned to the extinction of things. He seems to be an evolutionary writer, in the sense that H.G. Wells was; but where Wells triumphantly wrote of the dawn of new races, Simak writes eulogies for the fall of the old ones.
One surprise, in passing, is how much Isaac Asimov borrowed from Simak. His Solaria, with its agoraphobic isolationists, is directly taken from Simak; and Daneel Olivaw is clearly based on Jenkins, the immortal telepathic robot who discreetly guides humanity (and caninity) through history.
It's a collection of short stories detailing Simak's future history of the decline of the human race. They're framed as myths that the intelligent dogs of the future tell each other about long-departed humanity- though educated dogs doubt that any such creature ever existed.
Humanity in Simak's future doesn't go out with a bang. It fails quietly, through social isolation and a lack of anything to strive for. It is replaced by dogs, who are made intelligent by means of surgery (today we'd say genetic engineering, but it amounts to the same thing) robots, and mutants- superintelligent, amoral beings whose purposes are never entirely clear.
Simak's writing is wistful: peaceful, sad, and ultimately resigned to the extinction of things. He seems to be an evolutionary writer, in the sense that H.G. Wells was; but where Wells triumphantly wrote of the dawn of new races, Simak writes eulogies for the fall of the old ones.
One surprise, in passing, is how much Isaac Asimov borrowed from Simak. His Solaria, with its agoraphobic isolationists, is directly taken from Simak; and Daneel Olivaw is clearly based on Jenkins, the immortal telepathic robot who discreetly guides humanity (and caninity) through history.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Scharr on Patriotism
The first thing that comes to mind (and is easily accessible, since I have it bookmarked) is John Scharr's essay The Case for Patriotism, which says:
To be a patriot is to have a patrimony; or, perhaps more ac-
curately, the patriot is one who is grateful for a legacy and
recognizes that the legacy makes him a debtor. There is a whole
way of being in the world, captured best by the word reverence,
which defines life by its debts: one is what one owes, what one
acknowledges as a rightful debt: or obligation. The patriot moves
within that mentality. The gift of land, people, language, gods,
memories, and customs, which is the patrimony of the patriot,
defines what he or she is. Patrimony is mixed with person; the
two are barely separable. The very tone and rhythm of a life,
the shapes of perception, the texture of its homes and fears
come from membership in a territorially rooted group. The con-
scious patriot is one who feels deeply indebted for these gifts,
grateful to the people and places through which they come, and
determined to defend the legacy against enemies and pass it un-
spoiled to those who will come after.
Scharr goes on to say lots of other things- most importantly, how difficult it is for us to be patriots in this sense- but this struck me as being especially relevant. Patriotism is gratitude about one's country; how much happiness we will miss if we cannot feel it!
To be a patriot is to have a patrimony; or, perhaps more ac-
curately, the patriot is one who is grateful for a legacy and
recognizes that the legacy makes him a debtor. There is a whole
way of being in the world, captured best by the word reverence,
which defines life by its debts: one is what one owes, what one
acknowledges as a rightful debt: or obligation. The patriot moves
within that mentality. The gift of land, people, language, gods,
memories, and customs, which is the patrimony of the patriot,
defines what he or she is. Patrimony is mixed with person; the
two are barely separable. The very tone and rhythm of a life,
the shapes of perception, the texture of its homes and fears
come from membership in a territorially rooted group. The con-
scious patriot is one who feels deeply indebted for these gifts,
grateful to the people and places through which they come, and
determined to defend the legacy against enemies and pass it un-
spoiled to those who will come after.
Scharr goes on to say lots of other things- most importantly, how difficult it is for us to be patriots in this sense- but this struck me as being especially relevant. Patriotism is gratitude about one's country; how much happiness we will miss if we cannot feel it!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Today is a day of gratitude. A day to specifically think of all the things that are good in life. Which is a pretty long list.
I think that this is important because, for most of us, gratitude is not a natural emotion. It is far more natural for us to take things for granted, and just assume that "normal life" includes all the good stuff we've got.
So gratitude doesn't always come to us automatically. We have to work at it; we have to deliberately take a moment, or a day, and remember all the things we should be grateful for.
I'm going to try and think carefully on this subject today. Because I suspect that joy and gratitude are, if not identical twins, then very close brothers.
I think that this is important because, for most of us, gratitude is not a natural emotion. It is far more natural for us to take things for granted, and just assume that "normal life" includes all the good stuff we've got.
So gratitude doesn't always come to us automatically. We have to work at it; we have to deliberately take a moment, or a day, and remember all the things we should be grateful for.
I'm going to try and think carefully on this subject today. Because I suspect that joy and gratitude are, if not identical twins, then very close brothers.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Two Short Poems
Two short, dark poems about love by women.
Unfortunate Coincidence
By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
- Dorothy Parker
---------------------------
Humoresque
"Heaven bless the babe!" they said.
"What queer books she must have read!"
(Love, by whom I was beguiled,
Grant I may not bear a child.)
"Little does she guess to-day
What the world may be!" they say.
(Snow, drift deep and cover
Till the spring my murdered lover.)
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
Unfortunate Coincidence
By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
- Dorothy Parker
---------------------------
Humoresque
"Heaven bless the babe!" they said.
"What queer books she must have read!"
(Love, by whom I was beguiled,
Grant I may not bear a child.)
"Little does she guess to-day
What the world may be!" they say.
(Snow, drift deep and cover
Till the spring my murdered lover.)
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Deficit Made Me Do It!
I've been playing a game called Democracy. Its premise is that you've just been elected President; you can pass laws, revoke laws, adjust taxes, and so forth. (Yeah, I know, the President doesn't automatically have the power to do all that. But if you couldn't do these things, there wouldn't be much of a game.)
So you can basically reshape the country's laws into whatever you think would work best; and see then how that works out. It's like a political version of Sim City.
There are two conditions. First of all, obviously, voters may not approve of your changes; and if you're voted out of office, no matter how well things are going, you lose. Secondly, you have the national debt to worry about.
The national debt is by far the harder problem to cope with. You can win people's votes pretty easily, by setting up federal programs that are targeted to their interests; the game's structure is set up to make this pretty clear and easy.
But almost every good idea seems to be expensive! And raising taxes will kill you, politically. And there's already a mountain of national debt to work your way out of. Trying to reduce the national debt changes you from a confident social reformer to a hag-ridden penny-pincher who ends every policy discussion with "We can't afford that."
Into this desperate situation comes a thought: the Flag-Burning Amendment doesn't cost anything. It boosts my popularity with certain groups in a cheap and easy way, so that I can either cut these programs or raise those taxes, which normally would send them into a fury and guarantee my loss next election...
That's just an example. There are lots of free, horrible-idea programs whose only purpose is to please some interest group. And I would never have considered them under normal circumstances. But the fascination of the game is how its logic forces you to consider passing them; not because you like them, but just because it gets you some breathing space to get the real job done.
I don't know if that's even passingly comparable to real-life politics. But it wouldn't surprise me at all.
So you can basically reshape the country's laws into whatever you think would work best; and see then how that works out. It's like a political version of Sim City.
There are two conditions. First of all, obviously, voters may not approve of your changes; and if you're voted out of office, no matter how well things are going, you lose. Secondly, you have the national debt to worry about.
The national debt is by far the harder problem to cope with. You can win people's votes pretty easily, by setting up federal programs that are targeted to their interests; the game's structure is set up to make this pretty clear and easy.
But almost every good idea seems to be expensive! And raising taxes will kill you, politically. And there's already a mountain of national debt to work your way out of. Trying to reduce the national debt changes you from a confident social reformer to a hag-ridden penny-pincher who ends every policy discussion with "We can't afford that."
Into this desperate situation comes a thought: the Flag-Burning Amendment doesn't cost anything. It boosts my popularity with certain groups in a cheap and easy way, so that I can either cut these programs or raise those taxes, which normally would send them into a fury and guarantee my loss next election...
That's just an example. There are lots of free, horrible-idea programs whose only purpose is to please some interest group. And I would never have considered them under normal circumstances. But the fascination of the game is how its logic forces you to consider passing them; not because you like them, but just because it gets you some breathing space to get the real job done.
I don't know if that's even passingly comparable to real-life politics. But it wouldn't surprise me at all.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Reenlistment!
Yesterday was the day. My parents came up for the occaision, which was cool; they've never really had a chance to tour the ship.
The oath was administered by my division officer:
I, Fenris Wolf, do solemnly swear:
That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;
And that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
So help me God.
Four more years!
(It's like being President! Except that it pays less. And nobody votes for it. And it's probably more fun. Okay, it's probably nothing at all like being the President.)
The oath was administered by my division officer:
I, Fenris Wolf, do solemnly swear:
That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;
And that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
So help me God.
Four more years!
(It's like being President! Except that it pays less. And nobody votes for it. And it's probably more fun. Okay, it's probably nothing at all like being the President.)
Monday, November 12, 2007
Yeats on the Great War
At the end of World War I, November 11th was established as Armistice Day, in recognition of all that had gone before, and our relief that it was finally ended. So this is a day late, but hopefully not a dollar short:
Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen
I
Many ingenious lovely things are gone
That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,
protected from the circle of the moon
That pitches common things about. There stood
Amid the ornamental bronze and stone
An ancient image made of olive wood -
And gone are phidias' famous ivories
And all the golden grasshoppers and bees.
We too had many pretty toys when young:
A law indifferent to blame or praise,
To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong
Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays;
Public opinion ripening for so long
We thought it would outlive all future days.
O what fine thought we had because we thought
That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned,
And a great army but a showy thing;
What matter that no cannon had been turned
Into a ploughshare? Parliament and king
Thought that unless a little powder burned
The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting
And yet it lack all glory; and perchance
The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance.
Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;
The night can sweat with terror as before
We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
And planned to bring the world under a rule,
Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
He who can read the signs nor sink unmanned
Into the half-deceit of some intoxicant
From shallow wits; who knows no work can stand,
Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were spent
On master-work of intellect or hand,
No honour leave its mighty monument,
Has but one comfort left: all triumph would
But break upon his ghostly solitude.
But is there any comfort to be found?
Man is in love and loves what vanishes,
What more is there to say? That country round
None dared admit, if Such a thought were his,
Incendiary or bigot could be found
To burn that stump on the Acropolis,
Or break in bits the famous ivories
Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees.
II
When Loie Fuller's Chinese dancers enwound
A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth,
It seemed that a dragon of air
Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round
Or hurried them off on its own furious path;
So the platonic Year
Whirls out new right and wrong,
Whirls in the old instead;
All men are dancers and their tread
Goes to the barbarous clangour of a gong.
III
Some moralist or mythological poet
Compares the solitary soul to a swan;
I am satisfied with that,
Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,
Before that brief gleam of its life be gone,
An image of its state;
The wings half spread for flight,
The breast thrust out in pride
Whether to play, or to ride
Those winds that clamour of approaching night.
A man in his own secret meditation
Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made
In art or politics;
Some platonist affirms that in the station
Where we should cast off body and trade
The ancient habit sticks,
And that if our works could
But vanish with our breath
That were a lucky death,
For triumph can but mar our solitude.
The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven:
That image can bring wildness, bring a rage
To end all things, to end
What my laborious life imagined, even
The half-imagined, the half-written page;
O but we dreamed to mend
Whatever mischief seemed
To afflict mankind, but now
That winds of winter blow
Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.
IV
We, who seven years ago
Talked of honour and of truth,
Shriek with pleasure if we show
The weasel's twist, the weasel's tooth.
V
Come let us mock at the great
That had such burdens on the mind
And toiled so hard and late
To leave some monument behind,
Nor thought of the levelling wind.
Come let us mock at the wise;
With all those calendars whereon
They fixed old aching eyes,
They never saw how seasons run,
And now but gape at the sun.
Come let us mock at the good
That fancied goodness might be gay,
And sick of solitude
Might proclaim a holiday:
Wind shrieked - and where are they?
Mock mockers after that
That would not lift a hand maybe
To help good, wise or great
To bar that foul storm out, for we
Traffic in mockery.
VI
Violence upon the roads: violence of horses;
Some few have handsome riders, are garlanded
On delicate sensitive ear or tossing mane,
But wearied running round and round in their courses
All break and vanish, and evil gathers head:
Herodias' daughters have returned again,
A sudden blast of dusty wind and after
Thunder of feet, tumult of images,
Their purpose in the labyrinth of the wind;
And should some crazy hand dare touch a daughter
All turn with amorous cries, or angry cries,
According to the wind, for all are blind.
But now wind drops, dust settles; thereupon
There lurches past, his great eyes without thought
Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks,
That insolent fiend Robert Artisson
To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought
Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks.
Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen
I
Many ingenious lovely things are gone
That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,
protected from the circle of the moon
That pitches common things about. There stood
Amid the ornamental bronze and stone
An ancient image made of olive wood -
And gone are phidias' famous ivories
And all the golden grasshoppers and bees.
We too had many pretty toys when young:
A law indifferent to blame or praise,
To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong
Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays;
Public opinion ripening for so long
We thought it would outlive all future days.
O what fine thought we had because we thought
That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned,
And a great army but a showy thing;
What matter that no cannon had been turned
Into a ploughshare? Parliament and king
Thought that unless a little powder burned
The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting
And yet it lack all glory; and perchance
The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance.
Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;
The night can sweat with terror as before
We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
And planned to bring the world under a rule,
Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
He who can read the signs nor sink unmanned
Into the half-deceit of some intoxicant
From shallow wits; who knows no work can stand,
Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were spent
On master-work of intellect or hand,
No honour leave its mighty monument,
Has but one comfort left: all triumph would
But break upon his ghostly solitude.
But is there any comfort to be found?
Man is in love and loves what vanishes,
What more is there to say? That country round
None dared admit, if Such a thought were his,
Incendiary or bigot could be found
To burn that stump on the Acropolis,
Or break in bits the famous ivories
Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees.
II
When Loie Fuller's Chinese dancers enwound
A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth,
It seemed that a dragon of air
Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round
Or hurried them off on its own furious path;
So the platonic Year
Whirls out new right and wrong,
Whirls in the old instead;
All men are dancers and their tread
Goes to the barbarous clangour of a gong.
III
Some moralist or mythological poet
Compares the solitary soul to a swan;
I am satisfied with that,
Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,
Before that brief gleam of its life be gone,
An image of its state;
The wings half spread for flight,
The breast thrust out in pride
Whether to play, or to ride
Those winds that clamour of approaching night.
A man in his own secret meditation
Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made
In art or politics;
Some platonist affirms that in the station
Where we should cast off body and trade
The ancient habit sticks,
And that if our works could
But vanish with our breath
That were a lucky death,
For triumph can but mar our solitude.
The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven:
That image can bring wildness, bring a rage
To end all things, to end
What my laborious life imagined, even
The half-imagined, the half-written page;
O but we dreamed to mend
Whatever mischief seemed
To afflict mankind, but now
That winds of winter blow
Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.
IV
We, who seven years ago
Talked of honour and of truth,
Shriek with pleasure if we show
The weasel's twist, the weasel's tooth.
V
Come let us mock at the great
That had such burdens on the mind
And toiled so hard and late
To leave some monument behind,
Nor thought of the levelling wind.
Come let us mock at the wise;
With all those calendars whereon
They fixed old aching eyes,
They never saw how seasons run,
And now but gape at the sun.
Come let us mock at the good
That fancied goodness might be gay,
And sick of solitude
Might proclaim a holiday:
Wind shrieked - and where are they?
Mock mockers after that
That would not lift a hand maybe
To help good, wise or great
To bar that foul storm out, for we
Traffic in mockery.
VI
Violence upon the roads: violence of horses;
Some few have handsome riders, are garlanded
On delicate sensitive ear or tossing mane,
But wearied running round and round in their courses
All break and vanish, and evil gathers head:
Herodias' daughters have returned again,
A sudden blast of dusty wind and after
Thunder of feet, tumult of images,
Their purpose in the labyrinth of the wind;
And should some crazy hand dare touch a daughter
All turn with amorous cries, or angry cries,
According to the wind, for all are blind.
But now wind drops, dust settles; thereupon
There lurches past, his great eyes without thought
Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks,
That insolent fiend Robert Artisson
To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought
Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks.
Friday, November 9, 2007
True North Strong and Free!
After a dramatic and treacherous voyage through the icy northern waters, we have at last made port in the hallowed land of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada!
I was too late getting off the ship to do more than a brief reconnaisance. However, I did successfully locate a mall, complete with food court!
(Canadian mall food, it turns out, is very much like US mall food. Who'd have thought it?)
More details tomorrow; I am taking a tour in the morning and shall have learned much of this strange land and its people.
I was too late getting off the ship to do more than a brief reconnaisance. However, I did successfully locate a mall, complete with food court!
(Canadian mall food, it turns out, is very much like US mall food. Who'd have thought it?)
More details tomorrow; I am taking a tour in the morning and shall have learned much of this strange land and its people.
Being Garrulous About "Garrulous"
This may not really make sense, but: garrulous sounds like it should mean something else.
dictionary.com defines it as "excessively talkative in a rambling, roundabout manner, esp. about trivial matters." All right. But it doesn't sound like that!
I have a sort of intuition (based on lots of reading, I guess) that I use to evaluate words. It normally works pretty well: I can guess what a word means even if I've never seen it before.
But "garrulous" trips me up. It sounds like it should mean "argumentative," or some such synonym of "hostile." Why? Probably I'm associating it with "garrison," a military outpost, and "queruluous", which means complaining.
But beyond that: the sound of the word itself suggests it. Gar-yuh-lus: the syllables lurch from one to the next ungracefully, and generally sound kind of miserable.
Compare "chatty" or "gabby": they're both short words that suggest idle, casual talk. "Longwinded," with its long "o," suggests a politician who goes on and on in a pompous way. "Babbling" sounds like a repetition of nonsense sounds, which is why it's commonly applied to babies and brooks.
But "garrulous"? Where did that come from?
dictionary.com defines it as "excessively talkative in a rambling, roundabout manner, esp. about trivial matters." All right. But it doesn't sound like that!
I have a sort of intuition (based on lots of reading, I guess) that I use to evaluate words. It normally works pretty well: I can guess what a word means even if I've never seen it before.
But "garrulous" trips me up. It sounds like it should mean "argumentative," or some such synonym of "hostile." Why? Probably I'm associating it with "garrison," a military outpost, and "queruluous", which means complaining.
But beyond that: the sound of the word itself suggests it. Gar-yuh-lus: the syllables lurch from one to the next ungracefully, and generally sound kind of miserable.
Compare "chatty" or "gabby": they're both short words that suggest idle, casual talk. "Longwinded," with its long "o," suggests a politician who goes on and on in a pompous way. "Babbling" sounds like a repetition of nonsense sounds, which is why it's commonly applied to babies and brooks.
But "garrulous"? Where did that come from?
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Salome's Dancing Lesson
I can't believe I haven't done any Dorothy Parker yet. Well, better late than never:
Salome's Dancing-Lesson
She that begs a little boon
(Heel and toe! Heel and toe!)
Little gets- and nothing, soon.
(No, no, no! No, no, no!)
She that calls for costly things
Priceless finds her offerings-
What's impossible to kings?
(Heel and toe! Heel and toe!)
Kings are shaped as other men.
(Step and turn! Step and turn!)
Ask what none may ask again.
(Will you learn? Will you learn?)
Lovers whine, and kisses pall,
Jewels tarnish, kingdoms fall-
Death's the rarest prize of all!
(Step and turn! Step and turn!)
Veils are woven to be dropped.
(One, two, three! One, two, three!)
Aging eyes are slowest stopped.
(Quietly! Quietly!)
She whose body's young and cool
Has no need of dancing-school-
Scratch a king and find a fool!
(One, two, three! One, two, three!)
... A Dorothy Parker Bible study would be either horrifying or brilliant. I can't quite decide which.
Salome's Dancing-Lesson
She that begs a little boon
(Heel and toe! Heel and toe!)
Little gets- and nothing, soon.
(No, no, no! No, no, no!)
She that calls for costly things
Priceless finds her offerings-
What's impossible to kings?
(Heel and toe! Heel and toe!)
Kings are shaped as other men.
(Step and turn! Step and turn!)
Ask what none may ask again.
(Will you learn? Will you learn?)
Lovers whine, and kisses pall,
Jewels tarnish, kingdoms fall-
Death's the rarest prize of all!
(Step and turn! Step and turn!)
Veils are woven to be dropped.
(One, two, three! One, two, three!)
Aging eyes are slowest stopped.
(Quietly! Quietly!)
She whose body's young and cool
Has no need of dancing-school-
Scratch a king and find a fool!
(One, two, three! One, two, three!)
... A Dorothy Parker Bible study would be either horrifying or brilliant. I can't quite decide which.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
The Garfield Sampler
This is probably a lot more fun than it should be. It takes panels from the comic strip "Garfield" and posts three of them at random, as if they were a regular strip.
Most of them almost make sense, and some of them are actually funny. (At least, funny in the Far Side sense of "What does that mean?") And this is perhaps what makes it semi-compulsive: they make sense just often enough to tempt you to try again.
Most of them almost make sense, and some of them are actually funny. (At least, funny in the Far Side sense of "What does that mean?") And this is perhaps what makes it semi-compulsive: they make sense just often enough to tempt you to try again.
The Misenchanted Sword
The Misenchanted Sword is Lawrence Watt-Evans' all-time bestseller. (As witness the name of his homepage.) And no wonder: it's a clever, well-told light fantasy novel.
Valder is a scout for the army of Ethshar, which is fighting an endless war with the Evil Empire of the north. He gets cut off behind enemy lines, hides in the shack of a hermit who turns out to be an eccentric wizard, and gets his sword enchanted by the grumpy old man so that he stands a chance of making it back home.
The fact that the hermit is grumpy, and arguable insane, and working with secondhand components, leads to the misenchantment of the title. Valder is left with a magic sword, "Wirikidor," that cannot lose a fight, which is obviously useful (indeed, he does make it home); but there are drawbacks.
Wirikidor is enchanted to protect his life, so he's basically unkillable by anything else. He's not immune to pain, disease, disfigurement, etc.: he just can't die until the spell is used up. And that will happen on the one hundredth killing- at that point, the sword will turn on Valder and kill him.
The first charm of the book is probably Valder- he's a likeable low fantasy hero, which is to say that he's not much of a hero at all. He just wants to survive the war, retire to find a civilian career and have a happy, uneventful life. When Wirikidor falls into his life, he doesn't want to become a war hero, he just wonders how he can be rid of it. (He can't.)
The second part of the book's appeal is its clear approach to magic. We're given pocket summaries that seem to make sense and delineate what's possible, which is essential since the whole plot is about Valder's dilemma with the sword. It approaches the status of a pure logic puzzle: if the unbreakable spell makes him unkillable, but still prone to the degenerations of extreme old age, then what can he do about it?
The ending, in terms of logic, is a copout; but by the time I got there I liked Valder enough that it didn't bother me.
Valder is a scout for the army of Ethshar, which is fighting an endless war with the Evil Empire of the north. He gets cut off behind enemy lines, hides in the shack of a hermit who turns out to be an eccentric wizard, and gets his sword enchanted by the grumpy old man so that he stands a chance of making it back home.
The fact that the hermit is grumpy, and arguable insane, and working with secondhand components, leads to the misenchantment of the title. Valder is left with a magic sword, "Wirikidor," that cannot lose a fight, which is obviously useful (indeed, he does make it home); but there are drawbacks.
Wirikidor is enchanted to protect his life, so he's basically unkillable by anything else. He's not immune to pain, disease, disfigurement, etc.: he just can't die until the spell is used up. And that will happen on the one hundredth killing- at that point, the sword will turn on Valder and kill him.
The first charm of the book is probably Valder- he's a likeable low fantasy hero, which is to say that he's not much of a hero at all. He just wants to survive the war, retire to find a civilian career and have a happy, uneventful life. When Wirikidor falls into his life, he doesn't want to become a war hero, he just wonders how he can be rid of it. (He can't.)
The second part of the book's appeal is its clear approach to magic. We're given pocket summaries that seem to make sense and delineate what's possible, which is essential since the whole plot is about Valder's dilemma with the sword. It approaches the status of a pure logic puzzle: if the unbreakable spell makes him unkillable, but still prone to the degenerations of extreme old age, then what can he do about it?
The ending, in terms of logic, is a copout; but by the time I got there I liked Valder enough that it didn't bother me.
Well, the Ship Didn't Sink
... Which is to say: as far as I know, the drills went pretty well. We won't officially know until Monday, but if we'd failed catastrophically I probably would have heard about it.
(Rumor has it that we did fail the swimmer-saboteur exercise; but like the entrenched-invader scenario, this scenario has a high expected failure rate. So hopefully that won't fail us for the whole thing.)
(Rumor has it that we did fail the swimmer-saboteur exercise; but like the entrenched-invader scenario, this scenario has a high expected failure rate. So hopefully that won't fail us for the whole thing.)
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Recessional
Something important for military people to bear in mind:
Recessional
by Rudyard Kipling
1897
God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Recessional
by Rudyard Kipling
1897
God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Yaah! Terrorists!
So it's another duty day. Today is special, though, because it's the start of our Force Protection Training Exercises, a 36-hour process where the ship faces one threat after another and we try not to get killed.
(I really wish I'd gotten more sleep last night. Grrrrr!)
We've had a bomb left by the pier gate, an intruder trying to gain access to the ship, and a team of intruders who successfully got on board and had to be rooted out of their entrenched position.
(That last drill is one of the worst, in that it's almost guaranteed to cause casualties. But we passed, which is to say that our casualties weren't horrendously high and our technique didn't have anything especially wrong with it; and so the drilling continues...)
My part varies from drill to drill; but it generally involves me and one other sailor running around with plastic guns, taking cover behind convenient large objects, and guarding whatever space we're assigned to.
It's going to be interesting to see how sleep-deprivation-incoherent I get by tomorrow afternoon.
(I really wish I'd gotten more sleep last night. Grrrrr!)
We've had a bomb left by the pier gate, an intruder trying to gain access to the ship, and a team of intruders who successfully got on board and had to be rooted out of their entrenched position.
(That last drill is one of the worst, in that it's almost guaranteed to cause casualties. But we passed, which is to say that our casualties weren't horrendously high and our technique didn't have anything especially wrong with it; and so the drilling continues...)
My part varies from drill to drill; but it generally involves me and one other sailor running around with plastic guns, taking cover behind convenient large objects, and guarding whatever space we're assigned to.
It's going to be interesting to see how sleep-deprivation-incoherent I get by tomorrow afternoon.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Interworld
A while ago, I complained about books that reduce the multiverse to a subplot. And now comes Neil Gaiman's new book, which does nothing of the sort. Huzzah!
Interworld, actually coauthored by Gaiman and Michael Reaves, is a young adult novel about a young man who discovers his power to travel between parallel universes. This immediately sweeps him up into the power politics of two interdimensional empires; and of a resistance movement composed entirely of parallel versions of himself.
The cosmology is well-developed and interesting. The concept of an organization made up entirely of alternate selves is fun, but doesn't get as much development as it deserves.
(It's easy enough to see a parallel in close cases: "He's what I would be if I'd grown up in Georgia," for example. But what does it mean to say, "He's what I would be if the human race had evolved from birds"? Can that person be considered a parallel self, or just a person that coincidentally resembles you?)
The book is fun, and you can see bits of Gaimanesque thinking throughout it.
Interworld, actually coauthored by Gaiman and Michael Reaves, is a young adult novel about a young man who discovers his power to travel between parallel universes. This immediately sweeps him up into the power politics of two interdimensional empires; and of a resistance movement composed entirely of parallel versions of himself.
The cosmology is well-developed and interesting. The concept of an organization made up entirely of alternate selves is fun, but doesn't get as much development as it deserves.
(It's easy enough to see a parallel in close cases: "He's what I would be if I'd grown up in Georgia," for example. But what does it mean to say, "He's what I would be if the human race had evolved from birds"? Can that person be considered a parallel self, or just a person that coincidentally resembles you?)
The book is fun, and you can see bits of Gaimanesque thinking throughout it.
Startling Campaign News
My perennial dark-horse Republican candidate, Mike Huckabee, has just been endorsed by Chuck Norris.
We might as well just move him into the Oval Office right now.
We might as well just move him into the Oval Office right now.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Space... The Final Frontier...
From The Guardian:
'Second Earth' found, 20 light years away
Scientists have discovered a warm and rocky "second Earth" circling a star, a find they believe dramatically boosts the prospects that we are not alone.
The planet is the most Earth-like ever spotted and is thought to have perfect conditions for water, an essential ingredient for life. Researchers detected the planet orbiting one of Earth's nearest stars, a cool red dwarf called Gliese 581, 20 light years away in the constellation of Libra.
Measurements of the planet's celestial path suggest it is 1½ times the size of our home planet, and orbits close to its sun, with a year of just 13 days. The planet's orbit brings it 14 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. But Gliese 581 burns at only 3,000C, half the temperature of our own sun, making conditions on the planet comfortable for life, with average ground temperatures estimated at 0 to 40C. Researchers claim the planet is likely to have an atmosphere. The discovery follows a three-year search for habitable planets by the European Southern Observatory at La Silla in Chile...
So how cool is that?
I vaguely remember Isaac Asimov, in his nonfiction book Extraterrestrial Civilizations, laying out some problems with a planet being close to even a cooler sun. I'll have to go look it up to be sure.
But even so, it's remarkable news.
'Second Earth' found, 20 light years away
Scientists have discovered a warm and rocky "second Earth" circling a star, a find they believe dramatically boosts the prospects that we are not alone.
The planet is the most Earth-like ever spotted and is thought to have perfect conditions for water, an essential ingredient for life. Researchers detected the planet orbiting one of Earth's nearest stars, a cool red dwarf called Gliese 581, 20 light years away in the constellation of Libra.
Measurements of the planet's celestial path suggest it is 1½ times the size of our home planet, and orbits close to its sun, with a year of just 13 days. The planet's orbit brings it 14 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. But Gliese 581 burns at only 3,000C, half the temperature of our own sun, making conditions on the planet comfortable for life, with average ground temperatures estimated at 0 to 40C. Researchers claim the planet is likely to have an atmosphere. The discovery follows a three-year search for habitable planets by the European Southern Observatory at La Silla in Chile...
So how cool is that?
I vaguely remember Isaac Asimov, in his nonfiction book Extraterrestrial Civilizations, laying out some problems with a planet being close to even a cooler sun. I'll have to go look it up to be sure.
But even so, it's remarkable news.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
It's Atropecious!
(But not as much my pun.)
The Television Tropes & Idioms wiki has taken up most of my reading time today. I can't easily account for its fascination; something about the combination of amusement and recognition I get from reading all these entries?
The Television Tropes & Idioms wiki has taken up most of my reading time today. I can't easily account for its fascination; something about the combination of amusement and recognition I get from reading all these entries?
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
The Multiverse Isn't a Subplot!
Today's book of consideration is James P. Hogan's The Proteus Operation; there will be some minor spoilage, I'm afraid. (But only minor!)
The novel begins in an alternate history where the Axis had a very successful World War II. It's now 1975, and America and Australia are the only non-Axis nations left in the world; but it's only a matter of time for them.
So they develop time-travel, planning to go back to the early 1940s and change a few things; and make their world, in the process, very much like the one we live in today. But things are much more complicated than they first appear.
(Here go my minor spoilers!)
The Americans actually stole time-travel from the Nazis; or rather, from the 21st-century renegades who decided they'd prefer a Nazi world to their original history. So ours isn't the first history, or the second, but the third; the original course of history is an idyllic world where Europe reached a better ending to WWI, and averted the bloody course of the late 20th century altogether.
So far, so good. I love time-travel stories. And while I'm skeptical of utopias (something I've been seeing a lot of in Hogan) the neatness of the history-behind-a-history-behind-a-history appealed to my juvenile sense of wonder.
But then things get annoying.
It turns out that changing history doesn't scale forward: the Utopia world and the Nazi world keep going on, regardless of what changes occur in 1940. That's a standard trope of time-travel stories, and it seems to resolve some paradoxes.
But these parallel worlds aren't related to the time-travel changes. They're borne of the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, in which every possible position of an electron manifests in an entirely different universe. So the time-travellers are never really interacting with their own history at all (I think. But, really, who can tell?)
I don't mind the Many-Worlds Hypothesis; it can certainly be the basis for some fascinating science fiction. But it makes a lousy subplot. It's too big; not just in size, but in implications. It affects everything. Any fair treatment of it will tend to overwhelm any other story the author's trying to tell.
Greg Egan's done some good work with the concept: particularly his brilliant Permutation City, which I hope to review someday soon. But he does this good work by acknowledging the way the multiverse has a radical impact on the basic ideas that we take for granted.
Proteus wasn't a bad novel; and I'm still a sucker for time travel. But this treatment removes the logical paradoxes that are the mainstay of time-travelling fun. With that taken away, it's more like a period piece.
The novel begins in an alternate history where the Axis had a very successful World War II. It's now 1975, and America and Australia are the only non-Axis nations left in the world; but it's only a matter of time for them.
So they develop time-travel, planning to go back to the early 1940s and change a few things; and make their world, in the process, very much like the one we live in today. But things are much more complicated than they first appear.
(Here go my minor spoilers!)
The Americans actually stole time-travel from the Nazis; or rather, from the 21st-century renegades who decided they'd prefer a Nazi world to their original history. So ours isn't the first history, or the second, but the third; the original course of history is an idyllic world where Europe reached a better ending to WWI, and averted the bloody course of the late 20th century altogether.
So far, so good. I love time-travel stories. And while I'm skeptical of utopias (something I've been seeing a lot of in Hogan) the neatness of the history-behind-a-history-behind-a-history appealed to my juvenile sense of wonder.
But then things get annoying.
It turns out that changing history doesn't scale forward: the Utopia world and the Nazi world keep going on, regardless of what changes occur in 1940. That's a standard trope of time-travel stories, and it seems to resolve some paradoxes.
But these parallel worlds aren't related to the time-travel changes. They're borne of the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, in which every possible position of an electron manifests in an entirely different universe. So the time-travellers are never really interacting with their own history at all (I think. But, really, who can tell?)
I don't mind the Many-Worlds Hypothesis; it can certainly be the basis for some fascinating science fiction. But it makes a lousy subplot. It's too big; not just in size, but in implications. It affects everything. Any fair treatment of it will tend to overwhelm any other story the author's trying to tell.
Greg Egan's done some good work with the concept: particularly his brilliant Permutation City, which I hope to review someday soon. But he does this good work by acknowledging the way the multiverse has a radical impact on the basic ideas that we take for granted.
Proteus wasn't a bad novel; and I'm still a sucker for time travel. But this treatment removes the logical paradoxes that are the mainstay of time-travelling fun. With that taken away, it's more like a period piece.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Tonight's Geek Pleasure
Fantasy Bedtime Hour, a public access show in which two nude women lie in bed discussing Stephen R. Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane. They're completely clueless, and it's hilarious watching them try to interpret Donaldson's overpurple prose.
They also have action sequences!
They also have action sequences!
I Have No Comment...
... About the report that Mitt Romney's favorite novel is Battlefield Earth.
Well, maybe just one.
BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Well, maybe just one.
BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHA!
The Law of the Jungle
From The Jungle Book,
by Rudyard Kipling
Now this is the Law of the Jungle --
as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper,
but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk
the Law runneth forward and back --
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf,
and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip;
drink deeply, but never too deep;
And remember the night is for hunting,
and forget not the day is for sleep.
The Jackal may follow the Tiger,
but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown,
Remember the Wolf is a Hunter --
go forth and get food of thine own.
Keep peace withe Lords of the Jungle --
the Tiger, the Panther, and Bear.
And trouble not Hathi the Silent,
and mock not the Boar in his lair.
When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle,
and neither will go from the trail,
Lie down till the leaders have spoken --
it may be fair words shall prevail.
When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack,
ye must fight him alone and afar,
Lest others take part in the quarrel,
and the Pack be diminished by war.
The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge,
and where he has made him his home,
Not even the Head Wolf may enter,
not even the Council may come.
The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge,
but where he has digged it too plain,
The Council shall send him a message,
and so he shall change it again.
If ye kill before midnight, be silent,
and wake not the woods with your bay,
Lest ye frighten the deer from the crop,
and your brothers go empty away.
Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates,
and your cubs as they need, and ye can;
But kill not for pleasure of killing,
and seven times never kill Man!
If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker,
devour not all in thy pride;
Pack-Right is the right of the meanest;
so leave him the head and the hide.
The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack.
Ye must eat where it lies;
And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair,
or he dies.
The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf.
He may do what he will;
But, till he has given permission,
the Pack may not eat of that Kill.
Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling.
From all of his Pack he may claim
Full-gorge when the killer has eaten;
and none may refuse him the same.
Lair-Right is the right of the Mother.
From all of her year she may claim
One haunch of each kill for her litter,
and none may deny her the same.
Cave-Right is the right of the Father --
to hunt by himself for his own:
He is freed of all calls to the Pack;
he is judged by the Council alone.
Because of his age and his cunning,
because of his gripe and his paw,
In all that the Law leaveth open,
the word of your Head Wolf is Law.
Now these are the Laws of the Jungle,
and many and mighty are they;
But the head and the hoof of the Law
and the haunch and the hump is -- Obey!
by Rudyard Kipling
Now this is the Law of the Jungle --
as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper,
but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk
the Law runneth forward and back --
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf,
and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip;
drink deeply, but never too deep;
And remember the night is for hunting,
and forget not the day is for sleep.
The Jackal may follow the Tiger,
but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown,
Remember the Wolf is a Hunter --
go forth and get food of thine own.
Keep peace withe Lords of the Jungle --
the Tiger, the Panther, and Bear.
And trouble not Hathi the Silent,
and mock not the Boar in his lair.
When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle,
and neither will go from the trail,
Lie down till the leaders have spoken --
it may be fair words shall prevail.
When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack,
ye must fight him alone and afar,
Lest others take part in the quarrel,
and the Pack be diminished by war.
The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge,
and where he has made him his home,
Not even the Head Wolf may enter,
not even the Council may come.
The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge,
but where he has digged it too plain,
The Council shall send him a message,
and so he shall change it again.
If ye kill before midnight, be silent,
and wake not the woods with your bay,
Lest ye frighten the deer from the crop,
and your brothers go empty away.
Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates,
and your cubs as they need, and ye can;
But kill not for pleasure of killing,
and seven times never kill Man!
If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker,
devour not all in thy pride;
Pack-Right is the right of the meanest;
so leave him the head and the hide.
The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack.
Ye must eat where it lies;
And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair,
or he dies.
The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf.
He may do what he will;
But, till he has given permission,
the Pack may not eat of that Kill.
Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling.
From all of his Pack he may claim
Full-gorge when the killer has eaten;
and none may refuse him the same.
Lair-Right is the right of the Mother.
From all of her year she may claim
One haunch of each kill for her litter,
and none may deny her the same.
Cave-Right is the right of the Father --
to hunt by himself for his own:
He is freed of all calls to the Pack;
he is judged by the Council alone.
Because of his age and his cunning,
because of his gripe and his paw,
In all that the Law leaveth open,
the word of your Head Wolf is Law.
Now these are the Laws of the Jungle,
and many and mighty are they;
But the head and the hoof of the Law
and the haunch and the hump is -- Obey!
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Donaldson's Next Book
Fatal Revenant, the new Thomas Covenant book, is out on Amazon. It's officially coming out on October 9th. From the Booklist review snippet:
I'm not sure what I think of that. One of the most jarring and novel things about Runes of the Earth was that Linden Avery really seemed to have her head together. That set her apart from virtually every other protagonist Donaldson's ever written; and it was both refreshing and humorous to see her shrug off Lord Foul's manipulations by simply refusing to listen to him.
From the sound of it, she's going back into a slough of self-doubt and angst. Which could be really annoying; though I doubt that she'll get anywhere near Covenant's exasperating qualities in the first trilogy.
But of course all this is vapor. There's nothing to do but wait, read, and see.
The second volume (after The Runes of the Earth, 2004) of the final Thomas Covenant tetralogy takes place entirely in the Land, to which Linden Avery has gone in search of her missing autistic son, whom she finds, completely cured and even outspokenly brash, in the company of a hale and hearty Thomas Covenant. The hitch, however, is that they now must find a hidden store of Earthpower, after which Linden may have to choose between using it to return herself and her companions to Earth, health, and happiness or to save the Land from its enemies. Donaldson maintains his propensity for forcing his female characters to jump through flaming hoops, but here the women are more modest, at least physically. Linden's dilemmas and choices are less athletic and more of the ethical variety. Should saving her son, now of sound though rebellious mind, override her duties to the still direly periled Land? The time it takes her, with some counsel from Thomas, to reach a compromise solution and to attempt to carry it out involves much pace-slowing angst, even if it further develops Linden's status as the new saga's real protagonist. The ending is the kind of cliff-hanger that should have readers returning to see how it and the remaining adventures play out. Green, Roland
I'm not sure what I think of that. One of the most jarring and novel things about Runes of the Earth was that Linden Avery really seemed to have her head together. That set her apart from virtually every other protagonist Donaldson's ever written; and it was both refreshing and humorous to see her shrug off Lord Foul's manipulations by simply refusing to listen to him.
From the sound of it, she's going back into a slough of self-doubt and angst. Which could be really annoying; though I doubt that she'll get anywhere near Covenant's exasperating qualities in the first trilogy.
But of course all this is vapor. There's nothing to do but wait, read, and see.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
A Top Ten Resolution
I pretty much review books as I finish reading them. Which is natural: that's when they're fresh in my mind, after all, and inspiration is most likely to strike.
But this leaves out pretty much all of my favorite books. And, in between book-finishings, it leaves me a little dry of blog topics.
So it occurred to me yesterday, as I was sitting here trying to think of something to post about, that I could make up a list of bloggable books; something halfway between a promise and a self-reminder, so that I wouldn't be at a loss for topics in the future.
Here we go (Warning! The following list is off the top of my head, and probably forgets a few items that will make me slap my forehead later.)
The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom
Shakespeare: Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom
Young Miles, Lois McMaster Bujold
The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton
Permutation City, Greg Egan
The Final Reflection, John M. Ford
Modern Times, Paul Johnson
Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis
Cryptonomicon, Neil Stephenson
Distraction, Bruce Sterling
Some of these made a major impact on my life; some of them changed my thinking; some of them were just really fun to read. Hopefully I'll have something interesting to say about them.
(Heck, hopefully I'll get around to blogging more! Hope hope hope...)
But this leaves out pretty much all of my favorite books. And, in between book-finishings, it leaves me a little dry of blog topics.
So it occurred to me yesterday, as I was sitting here trying to think of something to post about, that I could make up a list of bloggable books; something halfway between a promise and a self-reminder, so that I wouldn't be at a loss for topics in the future.
Here we go (Warning! The following list is off the top of my head, and probably forgets a few items that will make me slap my forehead later.)
The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom
Shakespeare: Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom
Young Miles, Lois McMaster Bujold
The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton
Permutation City, Greg Egan
The Final Reflection, John M. Ford
Modern Times, Paul Johnson
Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis
Cryptonomicon, Neil Stephenson
Distraction, Bruce Sterling
Some of these made a major impact on my life; some of them changed my thinking; some of them were just really fun to read. Hopefully I'll have something interesting to say about them.
(Heck, hopefully I'll get around to blogging more! Hope hope hope...)
A Song of Swords
From A Utopia of Userers, by G.K. Chesterton's collectiona of essays on capitalism and its dubious accomodation with Christian morality:
A SONG OF SWORDS
"A drove of cattle came into a village called Swords;
and was stopped by the rioters."--Daily Paper.
In the place called Swords on the Irish road
It is told for a new renown
How we held the horns of the cattle, and how
We will hold the horns of the devils now
Ere the lord of hell with the horn on his brow
Is crowned in Dublin town.
Light in the East and light in the West,
And light on the cruel lords,
On the souls that suddenly all men knew,
And the green flag flew and the red flag flew,
And many a wheel of the world stopped, too,
When the cattle were stopped at Swords.
Be they sinners or less than saints
That smite in the street for rage,
We know where the shame shines bright; we know
You that they smite at, you their foe,
Lords of the lawless wage and low,
This is your lawful wage.
You pinched a child to a torture price
That you dared not name in words;
So black a jest was the silver bit
That your own speech shook for the shame of it,
And the coward was plain as a cow they hit
When the cattle have strayed at Swords.
The wheel of the torrent of wives went round
To break men's brotherhood;
You gave the good Irish blood to grease
The clubs of your country's enemies;
you saw the brave man beat to the knees:
And you saw that it was good.
The rope of the rich is long and long--
The longest of hangmen's cords;
But the kings and crowds are holding their breath,
In a giant shadow o'er all beneath
Where God stands holding the scales of Death
Between the cattle and Swords.
Haply the lords that hire and lend
The lowest of all men's lords,
Who sell their kind like kine at a fair,
Will find no head of their cattle there;
But faces of men where cattle were:
Faces of men--and Swords.
A SONG OF SWORDS
"A drove of cattle came into a village called Swords;
and was stopped by the rioters."--Daily Paper.
In the place called Swords on the Irish road
It is told for a new renown
How we held the horns of the cattle, and how
We will hold the horns of the devils now
Ere the lord of hell with the horn on his brow
Is crowned in Dublin town.
Light in the East and light in the West,
And light on the cruel lords,
On the souls that suddenly all men knew,
And the green flag flew and the red flag flew,
And many a wheel of the world stopped, too,
When the cattle were stopped at Swords.
Be they sinners or less than saints
That smite in the street for rage,
We know where the shame shines bright; we know
You that they smite at, you their foe,
Lords of the lawless wage and low,
This is your lawful wage.
You pinched a child to a torture price
That you dared not name in words;
So black a jest was the silver bit
That your own speech shook for the shame of it,
And the coward was plain as a cow they hit
When the cattle have strayed at Swords.
The wheel of the torrent of wives went round
To break men's brotherhood;
You gave the good Irish blood to grease
The clubs of your country's enemies;
you saw the brave man beat to the knees:
And you saw that it was good.
The rope of the rich is long and long--
The longest of hangmen's cords;
But the kings and crowds are holding their breath,
In a giant shadow o'er all beneath
Where God stands holding the scales of Death
Between the cattle and Swords.
Haply the lords that hire and lend
The lowest of all men's lords,
Who sell their kind like kine at a fair,
Will find no head of their cattle there;
But faces of men where cattle were:
Faces of men--and Swords.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Paths to Utopia
We're underway this week, so I visited the used bookstore and found several James P. Hogan novels. Regular WaW readers (ha!) may recall that I read his Inherit the Stars last month; happily, one of the books I've found is the sequel, The Gentle Giants of Ganymede.
But this post is about Paths to Otherwhere, a novel about geopolitics and parallel Earths.
Scientists dealing with the Many-Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics are being brought together in Los Alamos for a secretive government project to draw information from parallel realities. Things become much more complicated when the researchers start crossing over into these realities, by... well, it's never really understood, but it's sort of like astral projection. For brief periods, they find their consciousness transferred into the body of their alternate self on other worlds.
The military- which is desperately seeking means to deal with an impending world war- sees this as being even more of an intelligence boon than they were expecting. The scientists use the technique to explore the vast realm of human possibility, and end up discovering a world without war.
The good parts: the characters are better-drawn than in Inherit the Stars. Hogan resists the urge to make military people into cardboard cutouts, in spite of the fact that the military is basically the villain of the story. He has fun with parallel-reality computation, especially at the start of the book; I almost wish he'd stuck with examining the implications of these.
The bad parts: the assassination subplot doesn't make much sense. There's less conceptual ping-pong than there was in Inherit the Stars (although this isn't necessarily a bad thing.) And the utopia world is, well, utopia; and Hogan doesn't do enough to make me believe it could work.
Come to think of it: the big problem is that it's set into a historical context. Their world is one where WWI ended early, in a fairer negotiated settlement; and this allowed human progress throughout the 20th century ending in a better place for everyone. That's not unbelievable, in itself; but it becomes jarring when we read that the economy is based on people giving money away. Because it's set so clearly in history, it's hard to suspend disbelief as I would with a pure-fantasy utopia.
But I'm going into some depth on that point because the novel made me think about it; which is fun and worthwhile on its own merits.
But this post is about Paths to Otherwhere, a novel about geopolitics and parallel Earths.
Scientists dealing with the Many-Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics are being brought together in Los Alamos for a secretive government project to draw information from parallel realities. Things become much more complicated when the researchers start crossing over into these realities, by... well, it's never really understood, but it's sort of like astral projection. For brief periods, they find their consciousness transferred into the body of their alternate self on other worlds.
The military- which is desperately seeking means to deal with an impending world war- sees this as being even more of an intelligence boon than they were expecting. The scientists use the technique to explore the vast realm of human possibility, and end up discovering a world without war.
The good parts: the characters are better-drawn than in Inherit the Stars. Hogan resists the urge to make military people into cardboard cutouts, in spite of the fact that the military is basically the villain of the story. He has fun with parallel-reality computation, especially at the start of the book; I almost wish he'd stuck with examining the implications of these.
The bad parts: the assassination subplot doesn't make much sense. There's less conceptual ping-pong than there was in Inherit the Stars (although this isn't necessarily a bad thing.) And the utopia world is, well, utopia; and Hogan doesn't do enough to make me believe it could work.
Come to think of it: the big problem is that it's set into a historical context. Their world is one where WWI ended early, in a fairer negotiated settlement; and this allowed human progress throughout the 20th century ending in a better place for everyone. That's not unbelievable, in itself; but it becomes jarring when we read that the economy is based on people giving money away. Because it's set so clearly in history, it's hard to suspend disbelief as I would with a pure-fantasy utopia.
But I'm going into some depth on that point because the novel made me think about it; which is fun and worthwhile on its own merits.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
The Improbable Libertarian Revolt
Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a classic sf novel about libertarians revolting against oppressive authority.
The libertarians in question are moon colonists, most of whom were sent there as political criminals (or, I guess, actual criminals) several generations back. So it's a sort of American Revolution parable set in Australia's frontier culture.
The oppressive authority is the Warden, appointed by Earth's government, and accountable only to them. This becomes an intolerable problem when the protagonists learn that the Moon is facing disaster in the coming years, and that (being governed by Earth) the Warden has no incentive to take the hard steps needed to stop it.
The most important revolutionary is a supercomputer named Mike; unknown to anyone but his repairman, Mike has spontaneously gained sentience and a personality. When the repairman joins the revolutionary movement, Mike is carried along with him, and ends up taking charge.
The characters are likeable, and I can see several popular sf concepts being laid out here- most notably, the idea of a national leader who's nothing but a TV simulation.
But what's really interesting in the book is something similar to Asimov's Foundation novels- practical politics is presented as an elaborate intellectual shell game, with brilliant people secretly controlling the course of society through their own cleverness.
In Asimov it was enthralling; but of course I read Asimov years ago. Now, it just seems implausible.
The rebel leaders spend some time talking about the importance of a cell network, since betrayal is inevitable and is the undoing of rebel movements; but once things start happening, nothing seems to come of it. Everyone does what's expected of them, and the only problem is that some of the low-ranking rebels think they should also have a chance at power once the revolution is over. They are shunted harmlessly into a fake government body where they can't get in the way of the real leaders, and they all buy it.
The book is described as "libertarian," which is true in a way; but a very odd way. The Moon colonists aren't libertarian out of any specific doctrine or political principle, but more as a matter of culture. Libertarianism is simply the way things are done up there.
Perhaps that's how libertarianism works best; as a political movement, it will always be prone to the contradictions of power.
The libertarians in question are moon colonists, most of whom were sent there as political criminals (or, I guess, actual criminals) several generations back. So it's a sort of American Revolution parable set in Australia's frontier culture.
The oppressive authority is the Warden, appointed by Earth's government, and accountable only to them. This becomes an intolerable problem when the protagonists learn that the Moon is facing disaster in the coming years, and that (being governed by Earth) the Warden has no incentive to take the hard steps needed to stop it.
The most important revolutionary is a supercomputer named Mike; unknown to anyone but his repairman, Mike has spontaneously gained sentience and a personality. When the repairman joins the revolutionary movement, Mike is carried along with him, and ends up taking charge.
The characters are likeable, and I can see several popular sf concepts being laid out here- most notably, the idea of a national leader who's nothing but a TV simulation.
But what's really interesting in the book is something similar to Asimov's Foundation novels- practical politics is presented as an elaborate intellectual shell game, with brilliant people secretly controlling the course of society through their own cleverness.
In Asimov it was enthralling; but of course I read Asimov years ago. Now, it just seems implausible.
The rebel leaders spend some time talking about the importance of a cell network, since betrayal is inevitable and is the undoing of rebel movements; but once things start happening, nothing seems to come of it. Everyone does what's expected of them, and the only problem is that some of the low-ranking rebels think they should also have a chance at power once the revolution is over. They are shunted harmlessly into a fake government body where they can't get in the way of the real leaders, and they all buy it.
The book is described as "libertarian," which is true in a way; but a very odd way. The Moon colonists aren't libertarian out of any specific doctrine or political principle, but more as a matter of culture. Libertarianism is simply the way things are done up there.
Perhaps that's how libertarianism works best; as a political movement, it will always be prone to the contradictions of power.
Today's Geek Pleasure
It's Draco and the Malfoys, a two-man group that does Harry Potter songs from the perspective of Draco Malfoy.
"My Dad is Rich (And Your Dad is Dead)" is funny in a kind of appalling way. "Potions Yesterday" is probably the most listenable, along with "99 Death Eaters," which is based on the melody from "99 Luftballons."
"My Dad is Rich (And Your Dad is Dead)" is funny in a kind of appalling way. "Potions Yesterday" is probably the most listenable, along with "99 Death Eaters," which is based on the melody from "99 Luftballons."
Sunday, September 9, 2007
I Heart Huckabee
This isn't a political blog, and I don't intend for it to become one.
But this left me moonstruck.
I don't know if Huckabee will get the nomination (okay, I'm pretty sure he won't; every poll I've seen says he's in single-digit territory) but I loved him at that moment. I loved the audacity of telling Republicans, in a Republican debate, that there are things more important than winning; things more important than the entire party.
But this left me moonstruck.
PAUL: No, we’ve dug a hole for ourselves and for our party. We’re losing elections and we’re going down next year if we don’t change it. It has all to do with foreign policy and we have to wake up to this fact.
HUCKABEE: Even if we lose elections we should not lose our honor and that is more important than the Republican party.
I don't know if Huckabee will get the nomination (okay, I'm pretty sure he won't; every poll I've seen says he's in single-digit territory) but I loved him at that moment. I loved the audacity of telling Republicans, in a Republican debate, that there are things more important than winning; things more important than the entire party.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Bad Fiction of the Apocalypse
James F. David's Judgement Day is a recent entry in the Left Behind subgenre: fictional treatments of the Book of Revelations. It has some good points, and many bad ones.
God has inspired a Christian scientist (um, a scientist who's a Christian, not a member of the Christian Scientist denomination) with the designs for faster-than-light antigravity spaceships. He and his church movement build the ships, explore space, and find an unspoiled new planet to move to. So (as one Amazon reviewer put it) they provide their own Rapture; which is good, because God keeps a very low profile in this novel.
Most of this novel's good points are, similarly, its innovations, which lend its characters a very human and fallible tone. Given this wondrous new technology, the Christians spend most of their time making money off of it. They're uncomfortable when black Christians ask to be part of their modern Exodus. And the Antichrist, far from being omnipotent, is clueless and rather inept for most of the novel.
The bad points: um. Well. Most of the characters are flat. The author sets up emotional, dramatic situations and then plods through them with astonishing clunkiness. Several of the names are pseudo-clever, reminding me of license plates: "Ira Breitling," for example.
This is apparently the first novel of a series; which is good, because the ending is appalling in its implications. (And if I could find a way of explaining this that wasn't totally spoilerish, I would.)
But I doubt I'll buy the second book. There's more Heinlein to be read!
God has inspired a Christian scientist (um, a scientist who's a Christian, not a member of the Christian Scientist denomination) with the designs for faster-than-light antigravity spaceships. He and his church movement build the ships, explore space, and find an unspoiled new planet to move to. So (as one Amazon reviewer put it) they provide their own Rapture; which is good, because God keeps a very low profile in this novel.
Most of this novel's good points are, similarly, its innovations, which lend its characters a very human and fallible tone. Given this wondrous new technology, the Christians spend most of their time making money off of it. They're uncomfortable when black Christians ask to be part of their modern Exodus. And the Antichrist, far from being omnipotent, is clueless and rather inept for most of the novel.
The bad points: um. Well. Most of the characters are flat. The author sets up emotional, dramatic situations and then plods through them with astonishing clunkiness. Several of the names are pseudo-clever, reminding me of license plates: "Ira Breitling," for example.
This is apparently the first novel of a series; which is good, because the ending is appalling in its implications. (And if I could find a way of explaining this that wasn't totally spoilerish, I would.)
But I doubt I'll buy the second book. There's more Heinlein to be read!
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Borges and Destiny's Library
One of the things I'm reading is Jorge Borges' Labyrinths, a collection of short stories. An internet friend lent me this as his part of a mutual book-swap, years ago, and I've always wanted to go back and reread it.
It rereads very well, unsurprisingly; Borges' ideas aren't compelling because of novelty, or surprise endings, but simply in their own intrinsic selves. It's as mindboggling as it was the first time around.
One of the most compelling stories- for a book-lover like myself- is "The Library of Babel." The Library of the title is a seemingly-infinite series of rooms, each filled with shelves, each shelf filled with books. Each book is 410 pages long, and contains a random arrangement of letters, commas, periods, and spaces.
Of course, this means that almost all the books are pure gibberish. But the implication is made that the library is a complete collection- every possible combination of letters is there, somewhere. So all of Shakespeare is there, as are the collected works of Plato, or the printed form of Warp and Wolf- you just have to find them.
It is a fantasy that appeals very much to my book-greed.
But further along, I came upon Borges' essay "A Note on (toward) George Bernard Shaw." And here he says:
Suddenly, my whole understanding of The Library of Babel turned upside down, and I realized: it is a library of soulless books. The whole point of writing- of art in general- is for one human being to communicate a feeling or insight to another, and there is no author for the Library's books. They're just the mechanical iteration of every possible combination of letters.
At this point (Warning! The geek quotient of this post is about rise) I remembered another near-infinite library, the one run by Lucien in Neil Gaiman's Sandman. The premise of Lucien's library is that it not only contains normal books, it also contains books that authors have dreamed of writing. (The only one that I can remember offhand was C.S. Lewis' The Emperor Over the Sea, an eighth Narnia book. But Gaiman showed us many examples.)
The appeal of Lucien's library is the idea that authors had a chance, if only in dreams, to write the perfect books they wished for (and we wish to read.) It is a dream of a consummated literary relationship; the books have meaning precisely because of their authors.
And that is the difference in the two. Dream's world is all about meaning- all the human understandings and implications we bring to life inside our heads, in our stories. It is both free and ambiguous because of this.
His older brother is Destiny, and he is Dream's polar opposite- his world is all about irrevocability, undeniable fact, immutable causalty. It's the world of things which must be what they are. And Borges' library fits there perfectly: its only meaning is in its necessary completeness, which has no relevance to any human need or creative act.
It rereads very well, unsurprisingly; Borges' ideas aren't compelling because of novelty, or surprise endings, but simply in their own intrinsic selves. It's as mindboggling as it was the first time around.
One of the most compelling stories- for a book-lover like myself- is "The Library of Babel." The Library of the title is a seemingly-infinite series of rooms, each filled with shelves, each shelf filled with books. Each book is 410 pages long, and contains a random arrangement of letters, commas, periods, and spaces.
Of course, this means that almost all the books are pure gibberish. But the implication is made that the library is a complete collection- every possible combination of letters is there, somewhere. So all of Shakespeare is there, as are the collected works of Plato, or the printed form of Warp and Wolf- you just have to find them.
It is a fantasy that appeals very much to my book-greed.
But further along, I came upon Borges' essay "A Note on (toward) George Bernard Shaw." And here he says:
Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being; it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships... If literature were nothing more than verbal algebra, anyone could produce any book by essaying variations.
Suddenly, my whole understanding of The Library of Babel turned upside down, and I realized: it is a library of soulless books. The whole point of writing- of art in general- is for one human being to communicate a feeling or insight to another, and there is no author for the Library's books. They're just the mechanical iteration of every possible combination of letters.
At this point (Warning! The geek quotient of this post is about rise) I remembered another near-infinite library, the one run by Lucien in Neil Gaiman's Sandman. The premise of Lucien's library is that it not only contains normal books, it also contains books that authors have dreamed of writing. (The only one that I can remember offhand was C.S. Lewis' The Emperor Over the Sea, an eighth Narnia book. But Gaiman showed us many examples.)
The appeal of Lucien's library is the idea that authors had a chance, if only in dreams, to write the perfect books they wished for (and we wish to read.) It is a dream of a consummated literary relationship; the books have meaning precisely because of their authors.
And that is the difference in the two. Dream's world is all about meaning- all the human understandings and implications we bring to life inside our heads, in our stories. It is both free and ambiguous because of this.
His older brother is Destiny, and he is Dream's polar opposite- his world is all about irrevocability, undeniable fact, immutable causalty. It's the world of things which must be what they are. And Borges' library fits there perfectly: its only meaning is in its necessary completeness, which has no relevance to any human need or creative act.
My Latest Geek Pleasure
It's Evil Dead: The Musical!
Okay, first point: this is not as good as Fellowship, my last geeky-pleasure-turned-soundtrack. It's not even close, actually.
But there are moments of real gold here. "All the Men in my Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons" is a wonderful Grease homage. The moose in "Join Us" has Bullwinkle's voice. And "Evil Puns"... well, they are.
Okay, first point: this is not as good as Fellowship, my last geeky-pleasure-turned-soundtrack. It's not even close, actually.
But there are moments of real gold here. "All the Men in my Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons" is a wonderful Grease homage. The moose in "Join Us" has Bullwinkle's voice. And "Evil Puns"... well, they are.
Meanwhile, Back on the Internet...
Whew! INSURV came, and went, and I slept for a week afterward. (That's the short version.)
But now it's over, thank goodness, and I can try to catch up on my reading, and my posting, and my posting about my reading.
But now it's over, thank goodness, and I can try to catch up on my reading, and my posting, and my posting about my reading.
Monday, August 27, 2007
INSURV Has Come...
Dum dum dum!
After weeks and weeks of preparing (and oh so much painting) it's finally time for INSURV. The odd thing is that this gives me a tiny bit of down time, since there's nothing much I can do while waiting.
They're downstairs right now in radio, checking all the communications equipment. And I'm up here in my radar shop, waiting for the monster to arrive.
It's going to be a long week. But then it'll be done, and I can catch up on my reading list!
After weeks and weeks of preparing (and oh so much painting) it's finally time for INSURV. The odd thing is that this gives me a tiny bit of down time, since there's nothing much I can do while waiting.
They're downstairs right now in radio, checking all the communications equipment. And I'm up here in my radar shop, waiting for the monster to arrive.
It's going to be a long week. But then it'll be done, and I can catch up on my reading list!
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
The Belated Berserkers
Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series- a space opera about ancient, automated warships that relentlessly seek to destroy all life- would make a lot more sense if its characters didn't have faster-than-light travel. The death machines are 50,000 years old; they range around the galaxy at FTL speed; they've never been stopped.
They should have found us a long time ago. After all, they have automated factories making new Berserkers, so it's not like their numbers are limited. It really shouldn't take that many centuries to survey the entire galaxy, especially since some stars are much better life-targets than others.
By the time they discover humanity, we haven't just achieved spaceflight, we've spread out so far that there are entire space kingdoms and empires. I guess this is possible- the galaxy is a really, really big place- but it would be a lot more plausible if there were no FTL travel, and it took thousands of years to cross space.
It's not like hyperdrive is necessary to the plot- quite the contrary, most of the stories involve an isolated world or colony facing the Berserker threat. I can't think of a single reason to use it. Except, I suppose, the fact that it's an sf staple; and those things are hard to get rid of.
They should have found us a long time ago. After all, they have automated factories making new Berserkers, so it's not like their numbers are limited. It really shouldn't take that many centuries to survey the entire galaxy, especially since some stars are much better life-targets than others.
By the time they discover humanity, we haven't just achieved spaceflight, we've spread out so far that there are entire space kingdoms and empires. I guess this is possible- the galaxy is a really, really big place- but it would be a lot more plausible if there were no FTL travel, and it took thousands of years to cross space.
It's not like hyperdrive is necessary to the plot- quite the contrary, most of the stories involve an isolated world or colony facing the Berserker threat. I can't think of a single reason to use it. Except, I suppose, the fact that it's an sf staple; and those things are hard to get rid of.
Nostalgia For Freezing
I've got a cold, and I'm really congested. What's peculiar is this: at odd moments, it gives me flashbacks to boot camp.
Maybe that takes some explanation. Boot camp is a kind of accidental paradise for germs: you bring people from all over the country (i.e. with all their regional germs) to one central location, where they live together in an enclosed space under high-stress conditions that lower their immune systems. The result is a little-mentioned fact of life about boot camp: you're always sick. Everyone is sick. It's just one more unhappy detail.
So being severely congested keeps giving me vivid little reminders of boot camp: what particular buildings looked like, what the food tasted like, how cold Chicago can get in the winter.
(That last is particularly funny, since it's murderously hot right now, and those memories are paradoxically refreshing. Ahh, trying to get to sleep in a room whose open windows allow the snow to come in!)
Maybe that takes some explanation. Boot camp is a kind of accidental paradise for germs: you bring people from all over the country (i.e. with all their regional germs) to one central location, where they live together in an enclosed space under high-stress conditions that lower their immune systems. The result is a little-mentioned fact of life about boot camp: you're always sick. Everyone is sick. It's just one more unhappy detail.
So being severely congested keeps giving me vivid little reminders of boot camp: what particular buildings looked like, what the food tasted like, how cold Chicago can get in the winter.
(That last is particularly funny, since it's murderously hot right now, and those memories are paradoxically refreshing. Ahh, trying to get to sleep in a room whose open windows allow the snow to come in!)
The Space Gods, (Not) Revisited
As I mentioned a little while back, I haven't had much reading time lately. But I had to make time for a recent Amazon arrival, Neil Gaiman's Eternals.
Gaiman is one of my favorite comics writers; he reintroduced me to comics with his landmark work on Sandman. And I have a love of Kirby's Eternals from way back. So I delved into this with great eagerness.
I can't say that I really liked it.
I'm trying to figure out the nature of my dissatisfaction. I now notice something that I never picked up on before: Kirby's Eternals may have been the title characters, but the comic wasn't thematically about them. It was about the Space Gods, the Celestials, and the mysterious Space God things they were doing on Earth. All the really interesting and awesome moments were about them; which is why it doesn't surprise me to read that Kirby got the idea from Erich Von Daniken's fantasy-archeology bestseller Chariots of the Gods.
The Eternals and Deviants were just a sort of clunky interface with the conventions of superhero comics- good handsome superpeople vs. bad ugly superpeople. They were necessary in the practical sense that all comics were superhero comics, but I can't recall either race being that important to the plot. The Space Gods had come back, and were going to do whatever they were going to do; this was the real thrust of the series.
I suspect that if Kirby had done the series a few decades earlier, when there were still other options for comics, the Eternals and Deviants might not have appeared at all.
So- to work my way very roundabout to the point- my problem with Gaiman's work is that it's all about the Eternals. And they were actually the least interesting part of the book. It's not especially Gaiman's fault, I guess: the whole Celestial thing was wrapped up in Thor, around issue #300, which didn't leave that much more to do.
But if you're going to give up the appeal of Kirby's title- the images of awesome unstoppable giants, the mystery, the sense of impending cosmic judgement- you need something really good to put in their place. And while the writing is decent, there's... just not that much here.
Gaiman is one of my favorite comics writers; he reintroduced me to comics with his landmark work on Sandman. And I have a love of Kirby's Eternals from way back. So I delved into this with great eagerness.
I can't say that I really liked it.
I'm trying to figure out the nature of my dissatisfaction. I now notice something that I never picked up on before: Kirby's Eternals may have been the title characters, but the comic wasn't thematically about them. It was about the Space Gods, the Celestials, and the mysterious Space God things they were doing on Earth. All the really interesting and awesome moments were about them; which is why it doesn't surprise me to read that Kirby got the idea from Erich Von Daniken's fantasy-archeology bestseller Chariots of the Gods.
The Eternals and Deviants were just a sort of clunky interface with the conventions of superhero comics- good handsome superpeople vs. bad ugly superpeople. They were necessary in the practical sense that all comics were superhero comics, but I can't recall either race being that important to the plot. The Space Gods had come back, and were going to do whatever they were going to do; this was the real thrust of the series.
I suspect that if Kirby had done the series a few decades earlier, when there were still other options for comics, the Eternals and Deviants might not have appeared at all.
So- to work my way very roundabout to the point- my problem with Gaiman's work is that it's all about the Eternals. And they were actually the least interesting part of the book. It's not especially Gaiman's fault, I guess: the whole Celestial thing was wrapped up in Thor, around issue #300, which didn't leave that much more to do.
But if you're going to give up the appeal of Kirby's title- the images of awesome unstoppable giants, the mystery, the sense of impending cosmic judgement- you need something really good to put in their place. And while the writing is decent, there's... just not that much here.
Monday, July 30, 2007
The Last Hero
The Last Hero
by G.K.Chesterton
The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day,
There was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away,
And drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide,
Spewed out of house and stable, beggared of flag and bride.
The heavens are bowed about my head, shouting like seraph wars,
With rains that might put out the sun and clean the sky of stars,
Rains like the fall of ruined seas from secret worlds above,
The roaring of the rains of God none but the lonely love.
Feast in my hall, O foemen, and eat and drink and drain,
You never loved the sun in heaven as I have loved the rain.
The chance of battle changes -- so may all battle be;
I stole my lady bride from them, they stole her back from me.
I rent her from her red-roofed hall, I rode and saw arise,
More lovely than the living flowers the hatred in her eyes.
She never loved me, never bent, never was less divine;
The sunset never loved me, the wind was never mine.
Was it all nothing that she stood imperial in duresse?
Silence itself made softer with the sweeping of her dress.
O you who drain the cup of life, O you who wear the crown,
You never loved a woman's smile as I have loved her frown.
The wind blew out from Bergen to the dawning of the day,
They ride and run with fifty spears to break and bar my way,
I shall not die alone, alone, but kin to all the powers,
As merry as the ancient sun and fighting like the flowers.
How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,
Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.
Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,
When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.
The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, --
You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.
Know you what earth shall lose to-night, what rich uncounted loans,
What heavy gold of tales untold you bury with my bones?
My loves in deep dim meadows, my ships that rode at ease,
Ruffling the purple plumage of strange and secret seas.
To see this fair earth as it is to me alone was given,
The blow that breaks my brow to-night shall break the dome of heaven.
The skies I saw, the trees I saw after no eyes shall see,
To-night I die the death of God; the stars shall die with me;
One sound shall sunder all the spears and break the trumpet's breath:
You never laughed in all your life as I shall laugh in death.
by G.K.Chesterton
The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day,
There was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away,
And drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide,
Spewed out of house and stable, beggared of flag and bride.
The heavens are bowed about my head, shouting like seraph wars,
With rains that might put out the sun and clean the sky of stars,
Rains like the fall of ruined seas from secret worlds above,
The roaring of the rains of God none but the lonely love.
Feast in my hall, O foemen, and eat and drink and drain,
You never loved the sun in heaven as I have loved the rain.
The chance of battle changes -- so may all battle be;
I stole my lady bride from them, they stole her back from me.
I rent her from her red-roofed hall, I rode and saw arise,
More lovely than the living flowers the hatred in her eyes.
She never loved me, never bent, never was less divine;
The sunset never loved me, the wind was never mine.
Was it all nothing that she stood imperial in duresse?
Silence itself made softer with the sweeping of her dress.
O you who drain the cup of life, O you who wear the crown,
You never loved a woman's smile as I have loved her frown.
The wind blew out from Bergen to the dawning of the day,
They ride and run with fifty spears to break and bar my way,
I shall not die alone, alone, but kin to all the powers,
As merry as the ancient sun and fighting like the flowers.
How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,
Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.
Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,
When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.
The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, --
You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.
Know you what earth shall lose to-night, what rich uncounted loans,
What heavy gold of tales untold you bury with my bones?
My loves in deep dim meadows, my ships that rode at ease,
Ruffling the purple plumage of strange and secret seas.
To see this fair earth as it is to me alone was given,
The blow that breaks my brow to-night shall break the dome of heaven.
The skies I saw, the trees I saw after no eyes shall see,
To-night I die the death of God; the stars shall die with me;
One sound shall sunder all the spears and break the trumpet's breath:
You never laughed in all your life as I shall laugh in death.
A Real-Life Update
"Update" may not be right word, though, since I haven't done any real-life details here yet.
Short version: I'm in the Navy. In about a month, my ship is going to have an INSURV inspection. This is an extremely important five-year inspection that determines whether the ship is seaworthy or not. Inspectors come aboard and spend days examining just about everything. (And everyone.)
So everyone here has gone a bit insane. We're running around trying to correct flaws in the ship, major and minor; and going over our maintenance routines, which are a critical part of INSURV and which have to be done with nitpicking exactness.
(There are always flaws on a ship. There's never enough time to get everything fixed perfectly; it's like running a household with a large family. Most of the time, it's sufficient to fix major flaws, and guesstimate what's about to wear out next. Most of the time, when we're not looking down the gunbarrel of INSURV.)
My part in this controlled chaos is normally to be an Electonics Technician for one of our radars. It's a good job, and it's not hard. But for the duration of our crisis, I've been reassigned to a new and dramatic mission:
The Watertight Door Team!
Ships are divided into watertight sections; the idea is that even if one section develops a leak, we can just close it off. All the other sections can carry it, and so the ship will stay afloat.
The system depends on a whole bunch of doors being thoroughly watertight; and my new duties are to go from door to door, checking each one, and fixing any faults that show up. (There are a lot.)
I may not blog that much for the next month, even by my undemanding average. This is keeping us really busy; and, alas, it's really cutting into both my internet time and my reading schedule.
Short version: I'm in the Navy. In about a month, my ship is going to have an INSURV inspection. This is an extremely important five-year inspection that determines whether the ship is seaworthy or not. Inspectors come aboard and spend days examining just about everything. (And everyone.)
So everyone here has gone a bit insane. We're running around trying to correct flaws in the ship, major and minor; and going over our maintenance routines, which are a critical part of INSURV and which have to be done with nitpicking exactness.
(There are always flaws on a ship. There's never enough time to get everything fixed perfectly; it's like running a household with a large family. Most of the time, it's sufficient to fix major flaws, and guesstimate what's about to wear out next. Most of the time, when we're not looking down the gunbarrel of INSURV.)
My part in this controlled chaos is normally to be an Electonics Technician for one of our radars. It's a good job, and it's not hard. But for the duration of our crisis, I've been reassigned to a new and dramatic mission:
Ships are divided into watertight sections; the idea is that even if one section develops a leak, we can just close it off. All the other sections can carry it, and so the ship will stay afloat.
The system depends on a whole bunch of doors being thoroughly watertight; and my new duties are to go from door to door, checking each one, and fixing any faults that show up. (There are a lot.)
I may not blog that much for the next month, even by my undemanding average. This is keeping us really busy; and, alas, it's really cutting into both my internet time and my reading schedule.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Wind Will Blow It All Away
One of my all-time favorite religious poems, translated by Robert Bly in his book The Sibling Society:
If someone insults you,
Go on, with light heart;
If they all do it, pay
No heed to what they say.
There's no new art
In talk of that kind.
Wind will blow it all away.
If someone praises Devotion
Implying of course it's OK,
But says of course the works
Of the Law are much greater,
It's weird dogma,
Pass by, don't bother.
Wind will blow it all away.
And if they next, to make
You less open to God,
Say (to flatter you)
That you are truly great:
Turn your back
To talk of that sort.
Wind will blow it all away.
And if the world itself
Should come, money, castles,
Great sweets in its hand, just say,
"I have enough today."
For worldly things
Return whence they came.
Wind will blow it all away.
And if people name a place
(Not God's) where all sorrow
Will be settled, all be saved,
They have an evil aim.
Be strong, say no
To these odd people.
Wind will blow it all away.
-Margaret of Navarre (trans. by Robert Bly.)
If someone insults you,
Go on, with light heart;
If they all do it, pay
No heed to what they say.
There's no new art
In talk of that kind.
Wind will blow it all away.
If someone praises Devotion
Implying of course it's OK,
But says of course the works
Of the Law are much greater,
It's weird dogma,
Pass by, don't bother.
Wind will blow it all away.
And if they next, to make
You less open to God,
Say (to flatter you)
That you are truly great:
Turn your back
To talk of that sort.
Wind will blow it all away.
And if the world itself
Should come, money, castles,
Great sweets in its hand, just say,
"I have enough today."
For worldly things
Return whence they came.
Wind will blow it all away.
And if people name a place
(Not God's) where all sorrow
Will be settled, all be saved,
They have an evil aim.
Be strong, say no
To these odd people.
Wind will blow it all away.
-Margaret of Navarre (trans. by Robert Bly.)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
No, I didn't go to the bookstore at midnight to get it. I must be getting old. I was tempted, though.
It breezes right along; whatever you want to say about Rowling, her prose is readable to the point of absorbing you completely.
(I'm trying to avoid spoilers, although that implies some laughable assumptions about this blog's readership level.)
I have duty tomorrow, so it'll probably be finished up on board the ship. And then we're out to sea again!
It breezes right along; whatever you want to say about Rowling, her prose is readable to the point of absorbing you completely.
(I'm trying to avoid spoilers, although that implies some laughable assumptions about this blog's readership level.)
I have duty tomorrow, so it'll probably be finished up on board the ship. And then we're out to sea again!
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
"Cleared"
"Cleared"
(In Memory of a Commission)
Help for a patriot distressed, a spotless spirit hurt,
Help for an honourable clan sore trampled in the dirt!
From Queenstown Bay to Donegal, oh, listen to my song,
The honourable gentlemen have suffered grievous wrong.
Their noble names were mentioned -- oh, the burning black disgrace! --
By a brutal Saxon paper in an Irish shooting-case;
They sat upon it for a year, then steeled their heart to brave it,
And "coruscating innocence" the learned Judges gave it.
Bear witness, Heaven, of that grim crime beneath the surgeon's knife,
The "honourable gentlemen" deplored the loss of life!
Bear witness of those chanting choirs that burke and shirk and snigger,
No man laid hand upon the knife or finger to the trigger!
Cleared in the face of all mankind beneath the winking skies,
Like phœnixes from Phœnix Park (and what lay there) they rise!
Go shout it to the emerald seas -- give word to Erin now,
Her honourable gentlemen are cleared -- and this is how: --
They only paid the Moonlighter his cattle-hocking price,
They only helped the murderer with counsel's best advice,
But -- sure it keeps their honour white -- the learned Court believes
They never give a piece of plate to murderers and thieves.
They never told the ramping crowd to card a woman's hide,
They never marked a man for death -- what fault of theirs he died? --
They only said "intimidate," and talked and went away --
By God, the boys that did the work were braver men than they!
Their sin it was that fed the fire -- small blame to them that heard --
The boys get drunk on rhetoric, and madden at a word --
They knew whom they were talking at, if they were Irish too,
The gentlemen that lied in Court, they knew, and well they knew!
They only took the Judas-gold from Fenians out of jail,
They only fawned for dollars on the blood-dyed Clan-na-Gael.
If black is black or white is white, in black and white it's down,
They're only traitors to the Queen and rebels to the Crown.
"Cleared", honourable gentlemen! Be thankful it's no more: --
The widow's curse is on your house, the dead are at your door.
On you the shame of open shame; on you from North to South
The hand of every honest man flat-heeled across your mouth.
"Less black than we were painted"? -- Faith, no word of black was said;
The lightest touch was human blood, and that, you know, runs red.
It's sticking to your fist to-day for all your sneer and scoff,
And by the Judge's well-weighed word you cannot wipe it off.
Hold up those hands of innocence -- go, scare your sheep together,
The blundering, tripping tups that bleat behind the old bell-wether;
And if they snuff the taint and break to find another pen,
Tell them it's tar that glistens so, and daub them yours again!
"The charge is old"? -- As old as Cain -- as fresh as yesterday;
Old as the Ten Commandments -- have ye talked those laws away?
If words are words, or death is death, or powder sends the ball,
You spoke the words that sped the shot -- the curse be on you all!
"Our friends believe"? -- Of course they do -- as sheltered women may;
But have they seen the shrieking soul ripped from the quivering clay?
They! -- If their own front door is shut,
they'll swear the whole world's warm;
What do they know of dread of death or hanging fear of harm?
The secret half a county keeps, the whisper in the lane,
The shriek that tells the shot went home behind the broken pane,
The dry blood crisping in the sun that scares the honest bees,
And shows the boys have heard your talk -- what do they know of these?
But you -- you know -- ay, ten times more; the secrets of the dead,
Black terror on the country-side by word and whisper bred,
The mangled stallion's scream at night, the tail-cropped heifer's low.
Who set the whisper going first? You know, and well you know!
My soul! I'd sooner lie in jail for murder plain and straight,
Pure crime I'd done with my own hand for money, lust, or hate,
Than take a seat in Parliament by fellow-felons cheered,
While one of those "not provens" proved me cleared as you are cleared.
Cleared -- you that "lost" the League accounts -- go, guard our honour still,
Go, help to make our country's laws that broke God's law at will --
One hand stuck out behind the back, to signal "strike again";
The other on your dress-shirt-front to show your heart is clane.
If black is black or white is white, in black and white it's down,
You're only traitors to the Queen and rebels to the Crown.
If print is print or words are words, the learned Court perpends: --
We are not ruled by murderers, but only -- by their friends.
-Rudyard Kipling
(In Memory of a Commission)
Help for a patriot distressed, a spotless spirit hurt,
Help for an honourable clan sore trampled in the dirt!
From Queenstown Bay to Donegal, oh, listen to my song,
The honourable gentlemen have suffered grievous wrong.
Their noble names were mentioned -- oh, the burning black disgrace! --
By a brutal Saxon paper in an Irish shooting-case;
They sat upon it for a year, then steeled their heart to brave it,
And "coruscating innocence" the learned Judges gave it.
Bear witness, Heaven, of that grim crime beneath the surgeon's knife,
The "honourable gentlemen" deplored the loss of life!
Bear witness of those chanting choirs that burke and shirk and snigger,
No man laid hand upon the knife or finger to the trigger!
Cleared in the face of all mankind beneath the winking skies,
Like phœnixes from Phœnix Park (and what lay there) they rise!
Go shout it to the emerald seas -- give word to Erin now,
Her honourable gentlemen are cleared -- and this is how: --
They only paid the Moonlighter his cattle-hocking price,
They only helped the murderer with counsel's best advice,
But -- sure it keeps their honour white -- the learned Court believes
They never give a piece of plate to murderers and thieves.
They never told the ramping crowd to card a woman's hide,
They never marked a man for death -- what fault of theirs he died? --
They only said "intimidate," and talked and went away --
By God, the boys that did the work were braver men than they!
Their sin it was that fed the fire -- small blame to them that heard --
The boys get drunk on rhetoric, and madden at a word --
They knew whom they were talking at, if they were Irish too,
The gentlemen that lied in Court, they knew, and well they knew!
They only took the Judas-gold from Fenians out of jail,
They only fawned for dollars on the blood-dyed Clan-na-Gael.
If black is black or white is white, in black and white it's down,
They're only traitors to the Queen and rebels to the Crown.
"Cleared", honourable gentlemen! Be thankful it's no more: --
The widow's curse is on your house, the dead are at your door.
On you the shame of open shame; on you from North to South
The hand of every honest man flat-heeled across your mouth.
"Less black than we were painted"? -- Faith, no word of black was said;
The lightest touch was human blood, and that, you know, runs red.
It's sticking to your fist to-day for all your sneer and scoff,
And by the Judge's well-weighed word you cannot wipe it off.
Hold up those hands of innocence -- go, scare your sheep together,
The blundering, tripping tups that bleat behind the old bell-wether;
And if they snuff the taint and break to find another pen,
Tell them it's tar that glistens so, and daub them yours again!
"The charge is old"? -- As old as Cain -- as fresh as yesterday;
Old as the Ten Commandments -- have ye talked those laws away?
If words are words, or death is death, or powder sends the ball,
You spoke the words that sped the shot -- the curse be on you all!
"Our friends believe"? -- Of course they do -- as sheltered women may;
But have they seen the shrieking soul ripped from the quivering clay?
They! -- If their own front door is shut,
they'll swear the whole world's warm;
What do they know of dread of death or hanging fear of harm?
The secret half a county keeps, the whisper in the lane,
The shriek that tells the shot went home behind the broken pane,
The dry blood crisping in the sun that scares the honest bees,
And shows the boys have heard your talk -- what do they know of these?
But you -- you know -- ay, ten times more; the secrets of the dead,
Black terror on the country-side by word and whisper bred,
The mangled stallion's scream at night, the tail-cropped heifer's low.
Who set the whisper going first? You know, and well you know!
My soul! I'd sooner lie in jail for murder plain and straight,
Pure crime I'd done with my own hand for money, lust, or hate,
Than take a seat in Parliament by fellow-felons cheered,
While one of those "not provens" proved me cleared as you are cleared.
Cleared -- you that "lost" the League accounts -- go, guard our honour still,
Go, help to make our country's laws that broke God's law at will --
One hand stuck out behind the back, to signal "strike again";
The other on your dress-shirt-front to show your heart is clane.
If black is black or white is white, in black and white it's down,
You're only traitors to the Queen and rebels to the Crown.
If print is print or words are words, the learned Court perpends: --
We are not ruled by murderers, but only -- by their friends.
-Rudyard Kipling
Timescales in Science Fiction
Today I finished Robert J. Sawyer's early novel Starplex. It's reminiscent of Star Trek, in that a coalition of aliens and humans has joined together on a starship to explore space, and seek out new life and new civilizations...
(Cue theme music.)
Halfway through the novel, time travel comes up; and we discover that one of the characters will apparently live to be ten billion years old.
Ten billion. Working on this kind of timescale takes a certain kind of bald-faced audacity on the author's part, both because the number itself is staggering and because you can't really do any kind of story over that length of time. All you can do is pick out episodes; or, as in this case, go to the end and see what's there.
Orson Scott Card did this, in his Homecoming series; it's generally understood that the Oversoul has been active for tens of millions of years since the founding of the planet Harmony. Card handles this by confronting it head-on: by having one of the characters talk about the impossibility of any kind of history handling that enormous duration. Even if there were some mega-library with the history all written down, who could live long enough to read it?
On the other hand, you have Isaac Asimov; his Galactic Empire was originally written to be fifty thousand years into the future, but Asimov retconned this into twenty thousand years later on. Why? A feeling that fifty thousand years is too long, somehow?
(Cue theme music.)
Halfway through the novel, time travel comes up; and we discover that one of the characters will apparently live to be ten billion years old.
Ten billion. Working on this kind of timescale takes a certain kind of bald-faced audacity on the author's part, both because the number itself is staggering and because you can't really do any kind of story over that length of time. All you can do is pick out episodes; or, as in this case, go to the end and see what's there.
Orson Scott Card did this, in his Homecoming series; it's generally understood that the Oversoul has been active for tens of millions of years since the founding of the planet Harmony. Card handles this by confronting it head-on: by having one of the characters talk about the impossibility of any kind of history handling that enormous duration. Even if there were some mega-library with the history all written down, who could live long enough to read it?
On the other hand, you have Isaac Asimov; his Galactic Empire was originally written to be fifty thousand years into the future, but Asimov retconned this into twenty thousand years later on. Why? A feeling that fifty thousand years is too long, somehow?
Monday, July 16, 2007
Saturday, July 14, 2007
And Now I'm Back.
It was a good week underway- lots of engineering drills, which don't affect me directly.
(I should probably do some kind of biography post, shouldn't I, so this makes some kind of sense. Oh, well. Maybe later.)
The important thing about this underway week is that I had time to finish my latest Heinlein, Revolt in 2100. The revolt is against the theocratic government that's taken hold of the USA, backed by advanced psychology and sociology (and rebelled against by means of the same sciences.)
Not as good as my last two Heinlein novels, but a pretty decent science fiction adventure.
(I should probably do some kind of biography post, shouldn't I, so this makes some kind of sense. Oh, well. Maybe later.)
The important thing about this underway week is that I had time to finish my latest Heinlein, Revolt in 2100. The revolt is against the theocratic government that's taken hold of the USA, backed by advanced psychology and sociology (and rebelled against by means of the same sciences.)
Not as good as my last two Heinlein novels, but a pretty decent science fiction adventure.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Off Again...
Well, tomorrow we set off to sea once more. I'm not sure if we'll have any kind of internet access (here's hoping!) so I may not be able to post again for a bit.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Your Semi-Random Life Soundtrack
From the Asymmetrical Information blog, we have a neat game.
Here’s how it works:
1. open your library (iTunes, winamp, media player, iPod)
2. put it on shuffle
3. press play
4. for every question, type the song that’s playing
5. new question– press the next button
6. don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool
One of the options, given that itunes is sometimes less than random, is to veto any second appearance of an artist (or, of course, a song.) I've done this in one case.
So here we go:
Opening Credits
Get Ready For This- 2 Unlimited
Waking Up
Higher- Creed
First Day at School
Heavy- Collective Soul
Falling in Love
Give a Little Bit- Supertramp
Breaking Up
Itsy Bitsy Spider- Carly Simon
Prom
Send in the Clowns- Barbara Streisand
Life's Okay
Loverboy- Billy Ocean
Mental Breakdown
Tarzan Boy- Baltimora
Driving
The Chemicals Between Us- Bush
Flashback
Safety Dance- Men Without Hats
Getting back together
Election Day- Arcadia
Wedding
The Planet of the Apes Musical (from the Simpsons)
Birth of a child
Alive- P.O.D.
Final Battle
O Fortuna- Carmina Burana
Death Scene
Numb- Linkin Park
Funeral Song
Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow- Fleetwood Mac
End Credits
Desperado- The Eagles
------------------
It's interesting how many of the songs at least vaguely fit into the categories presented- or, when they don't fit, their failure to fit is comical.
Here’s how it works:
1. open your library (iTunes, winamp, media player, iPod)
2. put it on shuffle
3. press play
4. for every question, type the song that’s playing
5. new question– press the next button
6. don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool
One of the options, given that itunes is sometimes less than random, is to veto any second appearance of an artist (or, of course, a song.) I've done this in one case.
So here we go:
Opening Credits
Get Ready For This- 2 Unlimited
Waking Up
Higher- Creed
First Day at School
Heavy- Collective Soul
Falling in Love
Give a Little Bit- Supertramp
Breaking Up
Itsy Bitsy Spider- Carly Simon
Prom
Send in the Clowns- Barbara Streisand
Life's Okay
Loverboy- Billy Ocean
Mental Breakdown
Tarzan Boy- Baltimora
Driving
The Chemicals Between Us- Bush
Flashback
Safety Dance- Men Without Hats
Getting back together
Election Day- Arcadia
Wedding
The Planet of the Apes Musical (from the Simpsons)
Birth of a child
Alive- P.O.D.
Final Battle
O Fortuna- Carmina Burana
Death Scene
Numb- Linkin Park
Funeral Song
Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow- Fleetwood Mac
End Credits
Desperado- The Eagles
------------------
It's interesting how many of the songs at least vaguely fit into the categories presented- or, when they don't fit, their failure to fit is comical.
Inherit the Plot
I just finished James P. Hogan's Inherit the Stars, a 1977 science fiction novel. Astronauts find a 50,000-year-old human corpse on the Moon, and scientists struggle with the mysteries it raises.
Did he come from Earth? (Then why isn't there any evidence of this ancient super-civilization?)
Did he come from another planet? (Then why is his anatomy so exactly human?)
The tension between these two mutually-impossible problems drives the plot. It reminded me a lot of Asimov's writing style: set up a problem, and then make up and disprove one hypothesis after another. Kind of a narrative version of the scientific method.
The characters are weak, (as they usually are in Asimov) but characters aren't the point. The puzzle-work of ideas is the point, and I'm glad to say that my personal hypothesis was completely off the mark.
With that said: the weakest part of the novel is definitely the ending, which concludes with two dramatic new hypotheses- both of which are audacious, both of which have serious logical/evidential holes, but neither of which is questioned or debated by anyone. It's like Hogan was still going strong, and he suddenly ran out of novel.
But I give it a high ranking, regardless. I don't get an Asimov feeling from too many authors, and I treasure it when it happens.
Did he come from Earth? (Then why isn't there any evidence of this ancient super-civilization?)
Did he come from another planet? (Then why is his anatomy so exactly human?)
The tension between these two mutually-impossible problems drives the plot. It reminded me a lot of Asimov's writing style: set up a problem, and then make up and disprove one hypothesis after another. Kind of a narrative version of the scientific method.
The characters are weak, (as they usually are in Asimov) but characters aren't the point. The puzzle-work of ideas is the point, and I'm glad to say that my personal hypothesis was completely off the mark.
With that said: the weakest part of the novel is definitely the ending, which concludes with two dramatic new hypotheses- both of which are audacious, both of which have serious logical/evidential holes, but neither of which is questioned or debated by anyone. It's like Hogan was still going strong, and he suddenly ran out of novel.
But I give it a high ranking, regardless. I don't get an Asimov feeling from too many authors, and I treasure it when it happens.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Happy Fifth of July!
Because I'm late for the 4th (rassinfrassin...)
I haven't posted because I've been off at sea, where internet connections are intermittent at best. But now we're back!
I had duty today, unfortunately, which meant that I missed the fireworks. But that's all right. We're the Navy; explosions are our business!
I haven't posted because I've been off at sea, where internet connections are intermittent at best. But now we're back!
I had duty today, unfortunately, which meant that I missed the fireworks. But that's all right. We're the Navy; explosions are our business!
Sunday, June 24, 2007
The Spoiler That Wasn't
One of the big holes in my science-fiction reading is Robert Heinlein. I don't know why; somehow I just never got around to reading him. So I'm trying to make up for lost time.
This week's Heinlein book was The Door Into Summer, an intriguing tale of cats, cryogenic freezing, time travel, and business fraud. I picked it because I love time travel; I'm a total sucker for almost any time travel story.
"The Spoiler That Wasn't" is the cover- which shows a cat, a female, a cryogenic freezer and a bush. Halfway through the book, I looked back at the cover and realized that it had just spoiled the entire plot for me. Grrrrrrr!
... And then I got to the end of the book, and discovered that it hadn't. That the cover, in fact, had no direct relation to the plot at all; it simply pictured several elements in the novel.
(The female, cat, and cryogenic chamber, that is. I have no clue why the bush is there.)
Something similar happened to me when I went to see The Sixth Sense. Someone on an online message board commented that the surprise ending was that the kid's mom had murdered his dad- and that's what prompted his uncanny connection with the dead.
I was really annoyed that the ending had been spoiled for me, went in, watched it- and was taken completely by surprise when the real ending hit. The guy on the message board had been joking, and his spoiler was actually an anti-spoiler: if I hadn't thought that I knew the ending, I would have been trying to figure it out, and I might have succeeded.
This week's Heinlein book was The Door Into Summer, an intriguing tale of cats, cryogenic freezing, time travel, and business fraud. I picked it because I love time travel; I'm a total sucker for almost any time travel story.
"The Spoiler That Wasn't" is the cover- which shows a cat, a female, a cryogenic freezer and a bush. Halfway through the book, I looked back at the cover and realized that it had just spoiled the entire plot for me. Grrrrrrr!
... And then I got to the end of the book, and discovered that it hadn't. That the cover, in fact, had no direct relation to the plot at all; it simply pictured several elements in the novel.
(The female, cat, and cryogenic chamber, that is. I have no clue why the bush is there.)
Something similar happened to me when I went to see The Sixth Sense. Someone on an online message board commented that the surprise ending was that the kid's mom had murdered his dad- and that's what prompted his uncanny connection with the dead.
I was really annoyed that the ending had been spoiled for me, went in, watched it- and was taken completely by surprise when the real ending hit. The guy on the message board had been joking, and his spoiler was actually an anti-spoiler: if I hadn't thought that I knew the ending, I would have been trying to figure it out, and I might have succeeded.
Remember Dudley Moore?
Last night I watched Unfaithfully Yours, a 1984 comedy with Dudley Moore and Nastassja Kinski.
Moore becomes convinced that his wife (Kinski) is cheating on him; and comes up with an absurd Rube-Goldberg plot to murder her and pin the blame on her lover. There are Halloween masks, multiple tape recorders, drugged drinks, and walks along high building precipices in the middle of the night.
The first part of the movie sets up the situation; the second is Moore's daydream scenario of the murder; the third is what actually happens. Of course, things don't work out perfectly.
I love this movie. It's a comedic response to movies like The Italian Job or Ocean's Latest Number, in which the most overelaborate plans seem to go off perfectly.
(Well, all right. Maybe "response" isn't the right word, since it preceded those movies by decades; but the point is still there.)
Moore becomes convinced that his wife (Kinski) is cheating on him; and comes up with an absurd Rube-Goldberg plot to murder her and pin the blame on her lover. There are Halloween masks, multiple tape recorders, drugged drinks, and walks along high building precipices in the middle of the night.
The first part of the movie sets up the situation; the second is Moore's daydream scenario of the murder; the third is what actually happens. Of course, things don't work out perfectly.
I love this movie. It's a comedic response to movies like The Italian Job or Ocean's Latest Number, in which the most overelaborate plans seem to go off perfectly.
(Well, all right. Maybe "response" isn't the right word, since it preceded those movies by decades; but the point is still there.)
Thursday, June 21, 2007
What I Got From Amazon Recently...
Two things.
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare- which I read in the library, a long time ago, and only vaguely remembered. I wanted to compare it to Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.
Asimov focuses much more on historical background than Bloom does; especially in the history plays, he often neglects the plays themselves to discuss what really happened, and how Shakespeare got it wrong or right. This can get frustrating; but it's very informative, and after all, with Bloom I've already got an in-depth look at the plays from a literary perspective.
That arrived yesterday. Today's arrival was Illegal Alien, an early Robert J. Sawyer novel about a first alien contact turned into a murder mystery.
I'm a big Sawyer fan, so I'm going to have to delve into it.
Embarrassing Non-Arrival of the Day: I misread a banner advertisement for the latest Harry Potter novel, and wandered around for ten minutes looking for copies. So it's due out in July. Hmmph.
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare- which I read in the library, a long time ago, and only vaguely remembered. I wanted to compare it to Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.
Asimov focuses much more on historical background than Bloom does; especially in the history plays, he often neglects the plays themselves to discuss what really happened, and how Shakespeare got it wrong or right. This can get frustrating; but it's very informative, and after all, with Bloom I've already got an in-depth look at the plays from a literary perspective.
That arrived yesterday. Today's arrival was Illegal Alien, an early Robert J. Sawyer novel about a first alien contact turned into a murder mystery.
I'm a big Sawyer fan, so I'm going to have to delve into it.
Embarrassing Non-Arrival of the Day: I misread a banner advertisement for the latest Harry Potter novel, and wandered around for ten minutes looking for copies. So it's due out in July. Hmmph.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Another Little Geek Moment
So I'm reading a collection of Jorge Luis Borges essays; and one of these is a discussion of the various translations of The Arabian Nights. One of the translators he talks about is a "Dr. Mardrus."
Forget the Arabian Nights for a moment (I did.) Forget Borges. It's DOCTOR MARDRUS!
Has there ever been a better supervillain name? I don't think so.
Forget the Arabian Nights for a moment (I did.) Forget Borges. It's DOCTOR MARDRUS!
Has there ever been a better supervillain name? I don't think so.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Kipling: An American
The American Spirit speaks:
If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, My Avatar.
Through many roads, by me possessed,
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.
The Celt is in his heart and hand,
The Gaul is in his brain and nerve;
Where, cosmopolitanly planned,
He guards the Redskin's dry reserve
His easy unswept hearth he lends
From Labrador to Guadeloupe;
Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,
He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.
Calm-eyed he scoffs at Sword and Crown,
Or, panic-blinded, stabs and slays:
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
Or cringing begs a crust of praise;
Or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart,
He dubs his dreary brethren Kings.
His hands are black with blood -- his heart
Leaps, as a babe's, at little things.
But, through the shift of mood and mood,
Mine ancient humour saves him whole --
The cynic devil in his blood
That bids him mock his hurrying soul;
That bids him flout the Law he makes,
That bids him make the Law he flouts,
Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes
The drumming guns that -- have no doubts;
That checks him foolish-hot and fond,
That chuckles through his deepest ire,
That gilds the slough of his despond
But dims the goal of his desire;
Inopportune, shrill-accented,
The acrid Asiatic mirth
That leaves him, careless 'mid his dead,
The scandal of the elder earth.
How shall he clear himself, how reach
Your bar or weighed defence prefer --
A brother hedged with alien speech
And lacking all interpreter?
Which knowledge vexes him a space;
But, while Reproof around him rings,
He turns a keen untroubled face
Home, to the instant need of things.
Enslaved, illogical, elate,
He greets the embarrassed Gods, nor fears
To shake the iron hand of Fate
Or match with Destiny for beers.
Lo, imperturbable he rules,
Unkempt, desreputable, vast --
And, in the teeth of all the schools,
I -- I shall save him at the last!
-Rudyard Kipling
If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, My Avatar.
Through many roads, by me possessed,
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.
The Celt is in his heart and hand,
The Gaul is in his brain and nerve;
Where, cosmopolitanly planned,
He guards the Redskin's dry reserve
His easy unswept hearth he lends
From Labrador to Guadeloupe;
Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,
He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.
Calm-eyed he scoffs at Sword and Crown,
Or, panic-blinded, stabs and slays:
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
Or cringing begs a crust of praise;
Or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart,
He dubs his dreary brethren Kings.
His hands are black with blood -- his heart
Leaps, as a babe's, at little things.
But, through the shift of mood and mood,
Mine ancient humour saves him whole --
The cynic devil in his blood
That bids him mock his hurrying soul;
That bids him flout the Law he makes,
That bids him make the Law he flouts,
Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes
The drumming guns that -- have no doubts;
That checks him foolish-hot and fond,
That chuckles through his deepest ire,
That gilds the slough of his despond
But dims the goal of his desire;
Inopportune, shrill-accented,
The acrid Asiatic mirth
That leaves him, careless 'mid his dead,
The scandal of the elder earth.
How shall he clear himself, how reach
Your bar or weighed defence prefer --
A brother hedged with alien speech
And lacking all interpreter?
Which knowledge vexes him a space;
But, while Reproof around him rings,
He turns a keen untroubled face
Home, to the instant need of things.
Enslaved, illogical, elate,
He greets the embarrassed Gods, nor fears
To shake the iron hand of Fate
Or match with Destiny for beers.
Lo, imperturbable he rules,
Unkempt, desreputable, vast --
And, in the teeth of all the schools,
I -- I shall save him at the last!
-Rudyard Kipling
Saturday, June 9, 2007
My Current Geek Pleasure
Entirely by accident, one of my music searches came up with Fellowship!, a musical parody of Fellowship of the Ring.
The website has some music samples under the "Merchandise" section; unfortunately, they don't include "Galadriel Explains It All" or "The Lament of the Ring," which are the two funniest songs on the soundtrack. Trust me, it's very good.
(Well, it's very good if you like musical parodies of movies based on epic fantasy trilogies. And doesn't everyone?)
The website has some music samples under the "Merchandise" section; unfortunately, they don't include "Galadriel Explains It All" or "The Lament of the Ring," which are the two funniest songs on the soundtrack. Trust me, it's very good.
(Well, it's very good if you like musical parodies of movies based on epic fantasy trilogies. And doesn't everyone?)
So Here We Go.
Hello, everyone! I'm Fenris.
This blog is going to be a rambling commentary on whatever book I'm reading, or whatever news I've just seen, or whatever odd thought passes through my mind (probably quite a lot of the latter.)
We'll see where I go with it.
This blog is going to be a rambling commentary on whatever book I'm reading, or whatever news I've just seen, or whatever odd thought passes through my mind (probably quite a lot of the latter.)
We'll see where I go with it.
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