Fred's Reading Report (January 200

So, 31 days have January, so at this point (day isn't over):

Four books.

Thirty short works.

Currently being read...relatively actively...

Poul Anderson: The Earth Book of Stormgate. Trader to the Stars. The Trouble Twisters. more...

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Mechanical animals and more!

I wonder if future models will allow us to look for giant squid...

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The list can now be viewed here.

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CNN talks about nine bookstores that are worth visiting for books and as a tourist destination. A friend adds a tenth. I've been to the Strand and City Lights and have shopped (online) at Powells and Tattered Cover.

The wallet cringes...

Addendum: How about the best bookstores world-wide? (Odd...no overlap!)

Addendum: Another suggestion...the Book Mill of Monatague, Massachusetts.

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This posting can now be viewed here.

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I've been doing some Lewis Carroll reading and related reading. Not only have I picked up the annotated Alice and Looking Glass again, but have found an annotated version of The Hunting of the Snark, several collections of Carroll's puzzles and a book on Carroll by Martin Gardner.

That last made me haul down a CD-ROM I bought a few years ago: Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games—The Entire Collection of His Scientific American Columns.

What a buy this was! On one compact bit of storage you have not one, not two, but fifteen collections previously available in separately published books.

If you like puzzles...this has got to be the bargain of the century!

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Why charge more for less? Here's an audiobook of Spider Robinson's The Callahan Chronicals from Blackstone Audio. Its runs $24.95 for the MP3CD version.

Now...you would think this would be cheaper. Here's the same book from Audible. For a download, since you are paying for the connection and you are paying for storage (either on your hard drive, your MP3 device or the cost of a blank CD), you would think the price would be lower. So why does Audible charge...$31.47? (O.K., you can get it if you join their "club" for $7.49. But there are terms and conditions that you might not want.)

I'm obviously "missing something obvious" (and yes, I'm being sarcastic).

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Now here's somebody with a lot of free time on their hands. From J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, a reconstruction of The Battle of Helms Deep and The Battle of Pelennor Fields...using licorice, gummy bears, chocolate pretzels...

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So having a iPod (finally, I buy a gadet before it is obsolete!) and having had some "downtime" at the firehouse last night, I downloaded a bunch of these "podcast" things I've been hearing about. Still having a dial-up connection at home, large downloads are not really an option there.

The new revolution? A way of knocking old media off of the pedestal? Maybe, but probably not. There's an interesting contrast in the podcasts...and the better podcasts are those with money, talent and quality behind them.

Here's an example: William Gibson did a book tour to support his latest novel, Spook Country (still on my personal Mount Toberead). During the course of the book tour he gave probably a couple of thousand talks, interviews, readings and what not (or, it felt like that). I know I've read one of the key phrases he's been using this go round—how if you walked into a publisher in the 1970's and pitched a SF novel with a global pandemic (AIDS) and a climate problem (AGW), you'd be shown the door and they'd call security—several times now. Most of the interviews have hit that highlight a few others.

BoingBoing had Gibson on for one in their short-lived podcasting series (they then moved on to doing short video webcasts but I think that has died as well). It was short. Gibson seemed to be talking to them over a cellphone while outside, so you could hear wind. One of the people from the BoingBoing end of things was dialed in on something (internet telephone?) that had latency problems. Two of the others also had audio quality problems. They kept tripping over each other, and their guest, in asking questions and interjecting useless noise.

Contrast that with this interview done by Rick Kleffel at The Agony Column. The interview runs quite long so you get more than soundbites on how we're living in the future. The interviewer allows Gibson to speak, only interjecting himself when necessary to get things moving again. Gibson even contributes two readings from two novels.

Podcasting may be the radio of the future, but quality will show. I'll be returning to hear more from The Agony Column; on the other hand, I won't be sad about the demise of the BoingBoing effort for long.

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When Syme went out into the starlit street, he found it for the moment empty. Then he realized (in some odd way) that the silence was rather a living silence than a dead one. Directly outside the door stood a street lamp, whose gleam gilded the leaves of the tree that bent out over the fence behind him. About a foot from the lamp-post stood a figure almost as rigid and motionless as the lamp-post itself. The tall hat and long frock-coat were black; the face, in an abrupt shadow, was almost as dark. Only a fringe of fiery hair against the light, and also something aggressive in the attitude, proclaimed that it was the poet Gregory. He had something of the look of a masked bravo waiting sword in hand for his foe. more...

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I don't have rafters from my house, otherwise I think this would be a great solution to my sprawling book collection!

(Via BoingBoing)

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One night, while we were in these tropics, I went out to the end of the flying-jib-boom, upon some duty, and, having finished it, turned round, and lay over the boom for a long time, admiring the beauty of the sight before me. Being so far out from the deck, I could look at the ship, as at a separate vessel;-and there rose up from the water, supported only by the small black hull, a pyramid of canvas, spreading out far beyond the hull, and towering up almost, as it seemed in the indistinct night air, to the clouds. The sea was as still as an inland lake; the light trade-wind was gently and steadily breathing from astern; the dark blue sky was studded with the tropical stars; there was no sound but the rippling of the water under the stem; and the sails were spread out, wide and high;-the two lower studding-sails stretching, on each side, far beyond the deck; the topmast studding-sails, like wings to the topsails; the top-gallant studding-sails spreading fearlessly out above them; still higher, the two royal studding-sails, looking like two kites flying from the same string; and, highest of all, the little skysail, the apex of the pyramid, seeming actually to touch the stars, and to be out of reach of human hand. So quiet, too, was the sea, and so steady the breeze, that if these sails had been sculptured marble, they could not have been more motionless. Not a ripple upon the surface of the canvas; not even a quivering of the extreme edges of the sail-so perfectly were they distended by the breeze. I was so lost in the sight, that I forgot the presence of the man who came out with me, until he said, (for he, too, rough old man-of-war's-man as he was, had been gazing at the show,) half to himself, still looking at the marble sails—"How quietly they do their work!"

(Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana, Jr.)

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Via Baen Books...Get writing!

Announcing the 2nd annual Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest!

Since its early days, science fiction has played a unique role in human civilization. It removes the limits of what "is" and shows us a boundless vista of what "might be." Its fearless heroes, spectacular technologies and wondrous futures have inspired many people to make science, technology and space flight a real part of their lives and in doing so, have often transformed these fictions into reality. The National Space Society and Baen Books applaud the role that science fiction plays in advancing real science and have teamed up to sponsor this short fiction contest in memory of Jim Baen. more...

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Something to look forward to! Baen Books is bringing more of Poul Anderson's works back into print.

Volume I: The Van Rijn Method (September 200
“The Saturn Game” (novella)
“Wings of Victory” (short story)
“The Problem of Pain” (short story)
“Margin of Profit” (novella)
“How to be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson” (short story)
“The Three-Cornered Wheel” (novella)
“A Sun Invisible”(novella )
The Man Who Counts (novel, a.k.a. War of the Wing Men)
“Esau” (short story)
“Hiding Place ” (novella)
Total wordage: about 190,000 words.

Volume II: David Falkayn: Star Trader
“Territory” (novella)
“The Trouble Twisters” (novella)
“Day of Burning” (novella)
“The Master Key” (novella)
SatanÂ’s World (novel)
“A Little Knowledge” (short story)
“The Season of Forgiveness” (short story)
“Lodestar” (novella)
Total wordage: about 188,000 words.

Now...if they also do the independents and the Flandry tales, we'll be sitting pretty. And I wonder if they'll include the one short story in The Canon that has, as far as I've been able to determine, been collected, a short work called "Sargasso of Lost Spaceships" (Whoops! See comments for correction information! I was thinking of a classic Andre Norton book, Sargasso of Space!). I finally bought it in the original magazine appearance (Planet Stories), but would like it in something a little less...pulpy.

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"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."

(G.K. Chesterton)

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Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.

(Robert E. Howard)

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Way back at the dawn of time (1977), Spider and Jeanne Robinson co-wrote (first) a award-winning novella and (then) a series of novels about life in space. The tales centered around a ballet dancer.

We've gotten a little bit closer to making that a reality!

Main site here. Samples of the books here.

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Wil McCarthy has a "wiki" where you can contribute to one of three collaborative tales. Will this be a bold new writing frontier? Or a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth?

Boundary Condition

Plant

Release Notes

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Via the recently-launched io9 site, tips for organizing your living space...in space!

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Late again! Hope to be better in the coming year.

Here's what I've read since my last report:

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is one of those three people I would invite to dinner, although I think I would lock up the liquor ahead of time. His style is engaging and entertaining, but I think this polemic sometimes preaches a bit too much to the atheist choir. I don't think it would really change the minds of the religious (and to be fair, I don't think that is the goal here). Recommended whether you're faithful, faithless, or somewhere in between.

The current issues of Architectural Digest, Dwell, National Geographic, and one month of Analog magazine.

In progress:

Consciousness Explained, Daniel C. Dennett.

Still on deck:

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter.

Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World, Carl Zimmer.

Still about five months' worth of Analog magazine.

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