Ravings of a Textual Deviant

The Good:

1. Started Ravings of a Textual Deviant on Yahoo!, which Dorothea has kindly turned into a genuine blog.

2. Ran the Grand Ellipse to a successful finish.

3. Read many, many wonderful books including William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, Judith Tarr’s Devil’s Bargain, Robert J. Sawyer’s Humans and Hybrids, Nalo Hopkinson’s Skin Folk, Ashok Banner’sPrince of Ayodhya, Robin McKinley’s Sunshine, and Napoleon’s Buttons.

4. Ed’s shot at teaching an A+ Certification class

5. Discovered Gaelic Storm, a kick-ass band.

6. Satori at the car wash

7. The removal of my extremely dead rosebush

8. The tour of artist’s studios at the Stutz buiding

9. Getting to play the voice of the computer for Mark Racop’s new movie

10. My new employer

11. Lots of blueberries. Some of which are still in my freezer.

12. TorCon III, the Canadian National Exhibition, and seeing my assorted cousins in Toronto

13. Anne & Evan’s baby girl, Annalise

14. My two newest cousins, twins Hunter and Kira

15. Wedding anniversary #5…already

16. A very happy holiday with my family and Ed’s

17. Ed’s new job and my new project

18. Finishing David and Dorothea’s quilt after far too many delays

19. Lost almost 20 pounds, the hard way

20. Meeting Sarah, Karen, and Andy

The Bad:

1. Hit the neighbor’s dog with my car on New Year’s Day

2. Getting Kathy’s stuff packed up and moved to Pennsylvania

3. General crazy busy-ness

4. The Maple Leafs’ performance in Stanley Cup Finals

5. Hyperfix traffic

6. The untimely demise of the water heater

7. Coming back from Toronto to find the neighborhood flooded

8. Missing the family Thanksgiving

9. Ed’s bouncing paychecks

10. The even more untimely demise of the washer

11. More colds and assorted unwellness than I care to count

The Ugly:

1. The Project of Elemental Evil, its associated nervous breakdown, lingering depression, and a month of unemployment

2. Legends of the Superheroes. And its sequel.

3. Getting kicked out of Doug’s gaming group

4. Ed’s old employer

5. 40-some pounds left to lose, the hard way

And that’s just in my own little world. I hope that your 2004 is better than my 2003. Happy New Year, everyone.

“Why trade a headache for an upset stomach when you can have both?”–my Dad, on Alka-Seltzer.

The Year the Cloud fell is the first book in Kurt Giambastiani’s Fallen Cloud Saga. It’s set in an alternate Western Expansion, in which the topolgy and natural history are quite different from the ones we know. With a Gulf of Mexico that has moved well up the Mississippi and a landscape full of dinosaurs, President George Armstrong Custer is a fairly minor departure. In a nutshell, the United States finds itself in conflict with the unincorporated Cheyenne nation–a nomadic culture that is based on domesticated dinosaurs. President Custer’s son, Army Captain George Jr., finds himself in the middle of the conflict when his exerimental reconaissance zeppelin crashes in Cheyenne territory.

Giambastiani has done loads of research into Cheyenne culture and paleozoology. His dinosaurs incorporate some of the most recent developments in the field, and there’s not a noble savage in sight. The characters develop believably, and there’s plenty of excellent detail without too much overt exposition. My sole complaint is that the story obviously ends with a sequel in mind. There’s nothing wrong with writing a series, but I prefer each book to be self contained, even if all the loose ends aren’t wrapped up. The Year the Cloud Fell is very much a first act, but it’s a good one that left me wanting more.

Wen Spencer’s Tinker reads a lot like the Borderlands novels by Emma Bull or Will Shetterly, in that we have a mix of elven magic and human technology messing up someone’s life. Tinker is a very ambitious novel, in that it packs a lot into what might be only 1/3 of a Robert Jordan or Terry Goodkind novel. Now, normally, I think that a book should go for as long as it takes to tell the story, and no longer, but in this case, it has the feel of a movie in which a lot was left out of the screen version, with the intent of adding it to the special-edition DVD. The characters tend to come off as shallow, while the plot seems to jerk us hither, thither, and yon. In short, it lacks depth, despite the intricacies of the setting. It’s OK, but I don’t think it’s as good as Spencer’s Ukiah Oregon series, and I didn’t enjoy it as much. If you’re looking for something light to take to the beach, Tinker fits the bill. If you’re looking for urban fantasy with teeth, go get War for the Oaks or anything by Charles de Lint.

My washing machine is officially kaput–the transmission is blown. I wouldn’t mind so much if, two months ago, I hadn’t spent a couple of hundred dollars on a new timer and waited two weeks to get it fixed.

The Salt Roads, by Nalo Hopkinson:
Nalo Hopkinson is one of the authors I discovered at TorCon III, earlier this year. My impression of her as a person is that she’s both smart and pragmatic, a rare combination for which I have a lot of respect. In fact, I think I can safely say that sheer force of personality convinced me to read her work, starting with Skin Folk. The Salt Roads is well constructed, entertaining, and makes me wish I knew more about the life of Charles Beaudelaire. The novel is an exploration of the lives of Africans (mostly women) in various times and places, through the eyes of a spirit. Hopkinson toys with typestyles a bit to get the point across, but the stylization doesn’t detract from the text…probably because she hasn’t overused it. I’d love to see her claw her way out of the midlist, and nab some shelf space for her fresh perspective and competent prose.

Don’t Panic: The Official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Companion, by Neil Gaiman:
This is probably Neil Gaiman’s least well known work. However, if you wanted to teach a literature course on the works of Douglas Adams, it would be an invaluable, though not comprehensive, resource. It’s full of quotes and interviews from Adams, as well as many of the people involved in production of the Hitchhiker’s radio series, TV series, stage shows, and books. There’s a good amount about Adams’s Dr. Who work, a great deal about The Meaning of Liff, a snippet about what would eventually become Last Chance to See, and not enough about Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. (As the book was written in 1988, there’s nothing about The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul (and I do wonder how much Teatime influenced Gaiman’s Hugo-Award-winning American Gods; there’s a comparative literature paper for you!) or Mostly Harmless, but I can’t blame Neil for not being able to travel in time.) Gaiman has done a great job of letting Adams speak about his own work, filling us in on the various goings-on around Adams’s activities as he goes. One of the few things that Gaiman utterly fails to explain is how Adams managed to break his nose on his own knee, while standing up–a quintessentially Adams-y thing to do, in that it boggles but it nonetheless entirely true.

Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett:
With Terry Pratchett, you always know what you’re getting; it’s just a question of quality. Monstrous Regiment is not his best, but it’s fairly good–better as it gets closer to the end–and gives us a lot of new characters. It’s a parody of the girl-disguises-herself-and-joins-the-army storyline. We see a new part of Discworld, get a heavy-handed skewering of the arbitrariness of religion, a dollop of Joan of Arc, vampires coping with addiction, and cameos by Sam Vines and Angua the werewolf.

Next in line are Wen Spencer’s Tinker and Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver.

“I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.”

Poul Anderson

Yesterday’s Big Event was writing three new scenes for the Morris Butler House’s Halloween play, Dark Pages. As it happens, I know the person who may well end up directing it next year, and I have a vested interest in keeping her happy.

Naturally, I’m not going to tell you about it, because I want you to come to Indianapolis and see the play yourself. However, I think I can safely say that anyone who knows me would probably be able to pick out the material I wrote without much difficulty.

After reading this, I doubt I’ll ever want to eat again. (Skip to the bottom of the first page; the first few paragraphs are the sales pitch.)

Yesterday was a “wintry mix” of rain and snow–mostly rain. (Wintry mix always makes me think of the packages of red and green M&Ms, which would be far more festive, I think.) Right now, it’s snowing…so, when it gets warmer and sunny tomorrow, we’ll have lots of slush. All of which means I am past due for a new, leak-free pair of boots.

Happy Holidays to all, whatever your form of precipitation.