poukledden

A fun find at Bookman's sometime ago: The Amazing Dr. Darwin, a collection of stories by the late, and sorely missed, Charles Sheffield. The stories follow the exploits of Erasmus Darwin, the remarkable grandfather of that other vaguely famous Darwin. Imagine an Age of Reason Sherlock Holmes, and you have the basic tenor of the stories. Also a bit of Scooby Doo in the mix, minus the kids, the dog, and the Scooby Snacks. If it weren't for that meddlin' Darwin!

I've only ever read Sheffield's far future science fiction -- the Convergence series and a few others. So this is a nice discovery, another side of a writer that I've long loved. Good rollicking fun, which is about where I'm at with the reading at the moment. I've always had a fondness for ol' Erasmus, and a love for fantastic stories set in that era, whether it's over the top Holmesian stuff like this, or out and out fantasy like Susanna Clarke or Gregory Keyes.

Recommended, especially if you're looking for some good, diversionary fun to fill a few hours.

And yes, I've been rather quiet lo these many moons. There are reasons, and plans, and things. Stay tuned. For now, though, I'm still suffering from a "ouch but it hurts to type a lot" problem brought on by a nasty bite of eczema/whatever you want to call it. It's getting better, but slowly, and in the meantime I am a sore and uncomfortable Gregory, prone to sleeplessness when I'm not being knocked out cold by doses of allergy medicine. Pity the poor Gregory!

For fun, I've changed my journal appearance. And I'm not doing the paid account thang anymore, opting for a plus one instead, to save money. And plans, for what it's worth, means that there's going to be a new Wordpress blog soon. Stay tuned!

You'd think -- oh, you'd think -- that having done this before, I'd know not to do it again:

To wit, one should not, not, never ever ever, read Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House late at night. Especially when, say, you're just getting to that part when Eleanor and Theodora experience the knocking on the door -- you know, the knocking so hard that it seems like the door will shatter? The knocking that the men don't hear because they've been chasing a mysterious beast?

Seriously had things crawling over at least 20 different spines, and the room suddenly seemed very small, and my cat a very inadequate method of defense (since, you know, he'd just cower under the futon or in the bathroom if some Big Nasty Spooky Thing came a knock knock knockin' at my door).

So, yeah. It's late, I'm very alone in my little apartment, and something is going to eat me. Eeep.

In other news, I am now the very happy owner of the Frankenstein legacy collection. All 5 Universal movies! I really, really want to get the Wolfman one, too.

This week, having completed The What Hulu Has of Buffy Marathon, I'm finally watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Hoping to get the 9 eps of season 1 watched this week so I can watch the first episode of season 2 and then be in the groove.

I'm liking it very much. And not just because of all the Summer Glau Hot Spooky Chickness going on.

Of course, I was a tad disappointed to see an episode called "Dungeons and Dragons" that didn't feature a single twenty-sided die. Not a one.

In other news, I spent a good chunk of the day off reading -- a combination of Jung (The Undiscovered Self) and Caitlin Kiernan (Murder of Angels). Murder of Angels is beautiful. And disturbing and creepy and complex and odd and wonderful. And Jung has me thinky thinky.

And just to end on a TV note, I also watched, courtesy of Netflix, the Doctor Who story The Remembrance of the Daleks, from the Sylvester McCoy era. It was amusing fun, but mostly reminded me that: 1)Sylvester McCoy was a great Doctor; 2)Ace was kickass; and 3)sadly, they had almost nothing to work with, script wise. There are 7th Doctor stories that amuse me -- Pecs lives! -- but the stories, really, are pale echoes of earlier years. This last appearance of the Daleks is kind of sad, with rickety Daleks that look like they are going to Jeep Samurai at any moment, fighting their way through a plot with more holes than a whiffle ball. The special effects, at this point, were getting desperate. Not only were the Daleks some of the most badly constructed ever, but we also get treated to a static lightning ball being used as a prop (it's a time travel controller!), the revelation that fairy lights figure prominently in Dalek machinery, and a Dalek spaceship that is apparently several crates stuck together.

Ah well, it was still fun. But I really wish we had gotten to see a really solid McCoy Doctor story. It would have been grand.

Dearellen_kushner,

Today, work sucked. We were understaffed, I worked my ass off essentially nonstop for 8 hours. Finally, at 7pm, I got to collapse in a chair and sit down to my free meal before heading home. So I sat there, eating, and happy as a clam, because not only did I have food (at long last!), but I also had some old friends with me. Which is to say that I'm rereading The Privilege of the Sword, and it is making me very, very happy to do so, because I love this book -- and Swordspoint and The Fall of the Kings -- with a mad, giddy passion.

So, you know, thank you. And be warned that if ever I get to meet you in person, you are going to be enveloped in a massive bear hug. I'm just sayin'. And yes, my inclusion of The Fall of the Kings means deliasherman may also face this fate :).

Love in fandom,

Gregory

At last, finally, I got through the almost 700 pages of Redemption Ark by  Alastair Reynolds. It took me almost a month. It's not that I wasn't enjoying it -- it was more like it was the kind of book that, at that moment, I would have been better off putting off. It took too much attention, and wasn't well suited to, say, snatches of reading here and there, which various things were turning my reading schedule into over the past 2 months or so.

But I got through  it, and I liked it, and will be hunting down a copy of Absolution Gap to finish up the trilogy. But, but, but...oh man, the end of this one. How do I explain?

Try this:

You're in bed with a great lover. A fucking amazing lover, the kind who knows what buttons to push, and in what order. A lover who takes the time to linger and tease, keeps bringing you right up to the brink and then back down, delaying the moment, intensifying the feeling. It's amazing, blow out sex, and the orgasm you're going to have is going to set off car alarms. Then, just as you can feel it building to a final climax, your lover punches you in the face and you black out. When you come to, your lover whispers in your ear: "It was the best orgasm you ever had, my love..."

It was a bit like that.

(I mean, seriously.  660 or so pages into the  novel, and he tries to cram in another novel's worth of action by having a character go into cold sleep, wake up and have someone tell him about what happened, cliffnotes version. Talk about deflating...)

I may be the only person in the world who could find deep points of convergence in the movie Wristcutters and Kim Stanley Robinson's Fifty Degrees Below, or would even think of trying*, but there you are. (short form: Kneller's happy camp, Frank, ferals, top down vs bottom up, individual connection vs mass community).

It could all be summed up in the thought that keeps coming at me from different directions, literature and art and movies and random encounters and conversations, that the radical revolution takes place in the meeting of hearts.

See Wristcutters. A quirky, dark comedy about the afterlife of suicides, with a soundtrack composed of Gogol Bordello, Tom Waits and a bunch of artists who commited suicide (Joy Division! Christian Death! That guy who wrote Gloomy Sunday!). And it has Tom Waits playing that type of Tom Waits character that he plays so, so well. And it also proves that Gogol Bordello is the Cure for All Woes, which explains why the first thing I did after watching the movie was firing up Emusic and putting their album Mutli Contra Culti, which has at least 2 of the songs from the movie, on my saved for later list. Come August 5th or so, that sucker is mine.

(*well, actually, I didn't try. These things just happen in my brain.)

If you want a truly amazing experience, get yourself the audiobook version of Lolita, read by Jeremy Irons.

I'm still speechless. The full emotional impact of the book hits you like a sledgehammer when he reads it. He captures the full complexity of Humbert in all his misery and evil and final, painful awareness. There's that one point near the end of the book, after the murder, when Humbert remembers a day soon after Lolita had run from him. He was in Colorado still, and looking out over a small mountain town. The men all gone, off to work, a town of just women and children, and he's listening to the sound, trying to figure out what is missing. It's children that he hears, out playing and whatever, and he realizes that what he can't hear is her, Lolita -- can never hear, because he stole her childhood from her. I wish I had a physical copy of the book, because it's a beautiful passage, one of those stark moments when someone who has commited a vile crime truly realizes what they have done. And when Irons reads it, you feel it like a gut punch, and weep for Dolly and all she had ripped from her, and you weep for Humbert, too, because of what he could have been.

via Alternative Reel. What the subject line sez. Definitely depressing, definitely a reminder of the brilliance of the book, and shared in no small part because of the pictures of various editions of the book over the years.