Well, let me know if you like it…

I think I’m gonna pass on this one.

Let’s see, you spend your entire life defining yourself in terms of your relationship to another person, and when you finally realize this leaves you completely unfulfilled…it’s somehow *his* fault.  Next!

Drive-by pass-along

Growing Boy:

Han Solo, PI

And in the news this week, SCIENCE! indicates that we laugh at stuff like this because, well, we’re wired to.

Substituting for actual content

Total Eclipse of the Heart, the literal version:

The I Can Read Movies! series of book covers

And, for something completely different: Everything I know I learned from Dungeons & Dragons

Because I hate you all…

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

OK, someone please explain to me how Neal Stephenson is a best selling author in America.  The man writes these huge, complex, meandering thought experiment novels, that require good foundations in scientific thinking in order to be parsed and understood; like Stephen King writing XKCD.  This is a criticism, yes, but still, I quite like his books.  Usually (still haven’t managed to get all the way through Cryptonomicon.)  But I seriously don’t get how it’s possible that it’s not just me.   America’s been telling me for years that I’m a freak for liking stuff like this, that she likes it too just boggles me.

Not that you SHOULDN’T like Mr. Stephenson’s work, because you should.  And I have said so, so please start liking it now.  Thank you.  In all honesty, I’m glad that so many people DO like his books.  There’s a lot to like about them, and some of them are important books.  Anathem, in particular, is up for a Hugo this year.  (For the record, my Hugo prediction for best novel is Saturn’s Children, since three of the other four nominees are books I adore and the fourth is a book by a writer I quite like.  The Hugos have a long and distinguished career of being awarded to books I don’t like and don’t quite get.  Except when it gets awarded to books I like, in which case it’s perfectly valid for me to use it as justification of the books’ quality.)

(Seriously, I’m glad I’m not responsible for choosing between Anathem, The Graveyard Book and Zoe’s Tale as the best book of the year.  ’Cause I won’t, man, I just won’t.  They’re ALL good.)

Confession, I haven’t actually read Anathem.  Remembering my failure to finish Cryptonomicon (after three tries, no less), I figured I’d give it a whirl as an audiobook. Do you know what Anathem comes to as an audiobook?  Twenty-eight freaking CD’s, that’s what it comes to. Thirty-four freaking hours.  To contrast, I just looked up Cryptonomicon, which has a similar page count (918, to Anathem’s 937) and it comes up as almost 9 hours according to Audible. Which makes me wonder if the guy from the Jimmy John’s radio ads is reading it, but that’s neither here nor there.  The point is, this is a really long book.

Click here to see a trailer for the book.

Come back after you’ve read (or listened) to the book. 

When evaluating speculative fiction, I think it’s important to keep two things in mind.  One is what is being conveyed, the other is how well it is being conveyed.  Speculative fiction is the fiction of ideas, and as such should be evaluated primarily on the ideas presented; the ability of the book to communicate those ideas is secondary, but still vital.  Anathem is a book that succeeds in both criteria; it is both interesting and entertaining.

In Anathem, Mr. Stephenson posits a world in which those who are capable of sustained discourse on mathematics, science and reason are gathered up and fostered in concents where they spend their lives isolated from the saecular world and are carefully, mindfully trained to use their powers to the utmost. It is revealed that the ultimate result of this training is people capable of communicating across the multiverse, yet who are incapable of interacting with the majority of people on their own planet.

Interestingly, most of the people living in the concents appear to have some degree of Asperger syndrome (or, as Mr. Stephenson would have it, Attention Surplus Disorder); the core group’s “mascot,” Barb, being described in detail to convey that idea.  This personality trait, as it is perceived in Anathem’s universe, is not seen as a disability or a disorder; it is instead an asset to concent community. The concents are viewed, by the saeculars, as the proper fostering houses of (or dumping ground for) children with this personality trait. Given a culture that encourages their strengths and does not needlessly penalize their weaknesses, the children of the concents grow into strong, intelligent, integrated adults.

In the world of Anathem, the concents have been destroyed and rebuilt three times in the past, and the story of Anathem is the story of the fourth rebuilding.  The three prior rebuilds have all come at the insistence of the saecular world, who have sacked the concents out of fear of the developments made within their confines. The third sack occurred 3000 years before the beginning of the novel, and resulted in the greatest restrictions imposed on the concents by the saeculars.

To most of the people of the world of Arbre, what happens in Anathem is that some aliens show up, threaten Arbre, and a select group of the avout, including the protagonist, get shot into space, blow up the aliens’ biggest weapon, and then instigate peaceful negotiations with them.  Ironically, it is revealed that what happened may not be as clear-cut as all that, that in fact, the aliens were drawn to Arbre by actions taken 3000 years ago, during the third sack by the avout themselves.  The aliens are akin to Alan Moore’s squid monster in Watchmen, they are an outside threat brought in to disrupt the argumentative status quo of a contentious planet and foster a sense of unity between distrustful factions.  The initial appearance of the aliens causes a large contingent of the avout to be allowed to leave their various concents to join with saecular leaders to discuss what to do with about the aliens.  The discovery of purpose of this meeting (the convox) by the aliens leads to the creation of the antiswarm. All steps along the way involve the careful, peaceful insertion of the avout into the saecular world, and the end of the book describes the new style of consent, in which the mathic gates that once opened each year, decade, century and millennium are simply left open.

I find it intriguing that a novel that describes in great detail the benefits of creating a separate “thinking” culture concludes with the reintegration of that and the “active” culture into a new society. Presumably the assumption is that after 3000 years, the Mathic Society culture is strong enough to withstand the influence of the saecular culture. The Mathics are not convinced that the reintegration will last, they are preparing for the eventuality that it will not last, but ultimately, everything that happens in the book is set in motion to bring the reintegration about.

To return, for a moment, to the squid monster analogy, I find it interesting that Mr. Stephenson’s protagonists choose to employ this kind of deception to further their goals.  Is their cause just?  Are they more right to do so than Ozymandias, since they aren’t trying to save their world from imminent nuclear devastation, they are simply trying to free themselves of unreasonable oppression?  Or are they, in fact, planning on maintaining the deception?  The book is written in the first person, and the narrator specifically states at one point that he is writing the book with the possibility of it being read by aliens in mind.  And the avout themselves are not temperamentally inclined toward deception; frankly, it annoys them.  So, ultimately, who is Fraa Erasmus writing the book for?  The saeculars, to let them know how they have been deceived into accepting the avout as heroes?  The avout, to make sure that a large group of people who have difficulty engaging in deception are aware of how their new rights and responsibilities have been secured through deception?  Or the aliens, to let them know that they have been used for political gains by the people who encouraged them to leave their worlds in search of some mathematical heavenly ideal?

Also, if aliens show up in Earth space, and the only recognizable markings on the outside of their ships are a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, and they ask to speak to a representative of our planet, please don’t let anyone send the pope. Especially if we turn out to be living in a Neal Stephenson novel.

Philosophical quibbling over the morality of the ending aside, I really enjoyed this book.

It’s OK! We have SCIENCE!

Physicists prove that vampires could not exist.

I don’t know about you, but I’m relieved.

In regards to the Etsy store:

If anyone is interested in the link, email me at lowrentvalkyrie@hotmail.com and I’ll forward it to you.

The Etsy store is under my “real” identity, which I want to keep as separate from my “eris esoteric” identity as possible, since, well, I’m likely to post stuff under my “eris esoteric” identity that I don’t necessarily want people who know me in real life to read. ‘Cause I’m like that.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

 

 

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, byJunot Díaz

Let me start by stating that I have made a wonderful new discovery. In my personal hierarchy, I have four great loves: my goob, my cats, my books, and my jewelry. And I have found a great new way to combine two of them! That’s right, little jeweled collars for the cats! 

Oh, wait, that’s a different post. No, I’ve figured out how to combine books and jewelry making. Audiobooks! I have to admit that I was extremely reluctant to try audiobooks initially, because my hearing, or my auditory comprehension, I’m not sure which, isn’t always the greatest. (Seriously, if there’s such a thing as auditory dyslexia, I have a touch of it, to go with the large basket of other dyses I’ve been handed.) But one of the women at my book club constantly raves about how much she likes them, so I figured that, since I’m always looking for a something to occupy my brain while I’m beading, I’d give them a shot. I have to say, the experiment has been successful.

I picked up The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao on, as usual for me, a recommendation from Amazon (there is something extremely satisfying about having a computer program tell me what science fiction books I should read, there really is.) It was recommended as a companion to Nick Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World. I’m not really sure why, other than the fact that the two books are narrated by men almost reluctant to enter their own story. It’s a good book, an interesting book. It is not a speculative fiction book, it’s proper genre is ethnic fiction. It explores, in excruciating and loving detail, the culture of the Dominican Republic and the culture of the American male geek. If you’re a geek, read it for the geek culture. If you aren’t a geek, read it for the history.

To me, the book read as a treatise on the psychology of escapism. Each of the characters whose lives are explored spend a good portion of honestly unpleasant lives desperately trying to get to be somewhere else, somewhere better purely by the mechanism of wishing to be there.

Interestingly, in a book about two such very male-dominated cultures, it is the women in the book who both learn and teach that change, real change, is an action, and not a reaction.

 

The post standing between me and writing anymore.

This post is probably going to end up being whiny and depressing, but it’s chock full of crud I need to expunge before I can continue writing, so bear with me. Or skip it, whatever.

First, I’m currently unemployed. I actually have been since March. The post about working 13 shifts in 12 days? Yeah, that had some bad effects. Like the fact that I was taking medication that made me irrational and uninhibited when my sleep cycle got disrupted. Yeah, that went over real well. 

I’d rather not dwell on the whole thing. In short it started as something in which I was in the right, but I handled it badly and things got out of hand. And I no longer work at a job that I was really, intensely starting to hate. 

Nevertheless, hate the job or no, this is the second time I’ve been fired for what boils down to one reason: the medication I was taking. Yes, I said “was.” I have spent the last 2 months weaning myself off the stuff. It helped me in a lot of ways for a long time, but it also had a lot of bad effects, and the bad effects have been interfering with my life. For those wondering, the medication I was taking was Elavil, and Iwas taking it for anxiety and depression. 

Which has made the last two months a fun, fun time, let me tell you. I’m just glad that I was able to actually take the time to do this without having to worry about dealing with working. Because, oh, yeah, I bought myself some time. I cashed out my retirement fund. 

Oh yeah, I’ve lost my mind. I’ve cashed out my retirement fund and gone off my meds. Yep, I’m gone. Outta here. Bang.

Because, of course, my retirement fund was in such BETTER hands before, I tell you what. I’m not even going to get started on the futility of ranting about being required to invest in a system I don’t believe in and then watching that system crumble before my eyes because the sorts of people running it don’t have the brains God gave a hamster, because, as I mentioned, I’m off my meds and so I’m really trying to avoid the whole spirally-toxic-bad-mood-causing thinking these days. Hang on.

OK, I don’t know about you, but I feel better now.

Joking aside, I actually do. Yesterday was the first time in months that I woke up feeling GOOD. Like I’m GETTING somewhere. I even went out and did some clothes shopping, not because I like spending money indiscriminately when I’m unemployed, but because I’m going to start hitting the job market next week and desperately need something professional to wear. Desperately. Today’s task is to go get the ink cartridge for my printer refilled. 

And I haven’t been completely idle on my time off. I opened an Etsy store, that was fun. It’ll be even more fun if I sell anything. I actually have further plans to start a jewelry blog and engage in some social networking interactions that way, but those plans are being put on hold until I actually get some money coming in. In the meantime, I’ve been making lots of new pieces. It’s been helping me stay sane.

I’m in tears

I just woke up, had a cup of coffee, and read in the news that Vermont has, again, legalized gay marriage. I’m so proud of my chosen home state I could just burst right now. 

I don’t have any more words. But that’s OK, because the Burlington Free Press has some nice ones.