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Well, my colleagues voted in my favor on tenure, though the university still has to weigh in, which may take until June. Still, modified rapture!
Some review backlog, of the sf variety:
Joss Whedon et al., Firefly: The Official Companion vol. 1: Interviews with cast and crew, art, photos of props and stuff, and scripts from Serenity (the pilot) to Our Mrs. Reynolds. The art is somewhat less gorgeous and the interviews less extensive than those for the Serenity “official visual companion,” but it’s still worth owning. If they don’t publish unfilmed scripts, I guess we are in for one more volume after this. But I’d buy unfilmed scripts too!
Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Dreamspy: I loved the Sime/Gen series when I was a kid. I will still buy the next one, if it ever comes out. This, however, is a different version of the “multiple types of humanity exist in the future” story, and it was really uninteresting. There are vampire-types and psychic types and, apparently, original types now regarded as variants because they can dream. This all gets mixed up with contending political factions, including one that’s using certain psychic powers to travel quickly through space, which just happens to cause big disruptions and might destroy the universe. Which I think I saw on ST:TNG once. Also, there’s instant romantic attraction between the protagonist and the dreaming/dreamy human she needs to save the world, except that he’s already a creature of her evil cousin’s, the leader of aforesaid universe-threatening faction. There’s some philosophy about opposites and complements in there somewhere, and I’m sure Tarot is involved, but I just didn’t care.
Jerry Pournelle, King David's Spaceship: Things your POV character -- who's never left his own world and never talked to offworlders -- can't say: "The man was broad and short, typical of the people of Prince Samual's World ...." If he's typical, he's of average size and height. Your POV character may note that offworlders are freakishly skinny and tall; if you must, your POV character may even learn that, compared to most planetary populations, his typical is broad and short. But if you don't believe your characters are really born and bred on another planet, how am I supposed to? Anyway, this book is set during the resurgence of an interstellar empire, reconnecting lost colonies, including Prince Samual’s World. Except that PSW is poor and low-tech and will come in as an oppressed colony unless it can somehow develop spaceflight on the cheap, leading to a desperate scheme to do so. Probably the most interesting thing for me was the gender assumptions of both the PSW and the supposedly by-contrast “enlightened” imperials. But it’s not really worth reading unless you have a yen for Pournelle completism.
John Birmingham, Final Impact: This book apparently concludes a trilogy of alternate history, centered around the question: what if a 21st-century battle group was accidentally transported into the midst of WWII? I loved the first book, Weapons of Choice, and I think Birmingham’s done a pretty good job of playing out the implications here, though it’s a little funny to watch him patch the events that have taken place in our world since he published the first book into his future history in book three. This volume takes us to the end of the conflict between Axis and Allies, though matters proceed rather differently than they did in original history. Knowing one future, what can and will Hitler, Roosevelt, Stalin, etc. do about it? If nuclear weapons exist, must they be used? Are we so vicious a species that the slaughter of millions is inevitable in any large-scale conflict? Must America go straight from fighting the Nazis to fighting Communism? Birmingham doesn’t often pose these questions directly, focusing instead on the individual choices made by contemporary and from-the-future characters. He also delivers plenty of military action. While there’s an inevitable letdown in shutting down all the amazing possibilities of the initial premise, this was certainly worth reading.
Some review backlog, of the sf variety:
Joss Whedon et al., Firefly: The Official Companion vol. 1: Interviews with cast and crew, art, photos of props and stuff, and scripts from Serenity (the pilot) to Our Mrs. Reynolds. The art is somewhat less gorgeous and the interviews less extensive than those for the Serenity “official visual companion,” but it’s still worth owning. If they don’t publish unfilmed scripts, I guess we are in for one more volume after this. But I’d buy unfilmed scripts too!
Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Dreamspy: I loved the Sime/Gen series when I was a kid. I will still buy the next one, if it ever comes out. This, however, is a different version of the “multiple types of humanity exist in the future” story, and it was really uninteresting. There are vampire-types and psychic types and, apparently, original types now regarded as variants because they can dream. This all gets mixed up with contending political factions, including one that’s using certain psychic powers to travel quickly through space, which just happens to cause big disruptions and might destroy the universe. Which I think I saw on ST:TNG once. Also, there’s instant romantic attraction between the protagonist and the dreaming/dreamy human she needs to save the world, except that he’s already a creature of her evil cousin’s, the leader of aforesaid universe-threatening faction. There’s some philosophy about opposites and complements in there somewhere, and I’m sure Tarot is involved, but I just didn’t care.
Jerry Pournelle, King David's Spaceship: Things your POV character -- who's never left his own world and never talked to offworlders -- can't say: "The man was broad and short, typical of the people of Prince Samual's World ...." If he's typical, he's of average size and height. Your POV character may note that offworlders are freakishly skinny and tall; if you must, your POV character may even learn that, compared to most planetary populations, his typical is broad and short. But if you don't believe your characters are really born and bred on another planet, how am I supposed to? Anyway, this book is set during the resurgence of an interstellar empire, reconnecting lost colonies, including Prince Samual’s World. Except that PSW is poor and low-tech and will come in as an oppressed colony unless it can somehow develop spaceflight on the cheap, leading to a desperate scheme to do so. Probably the most interesting thing for me was the gender assumptions of both the PSW and the supposedly by-contrast “enlightened” imperials. But it’s not really worth reading unless you have a yen for Pournelle completism.
John Birmingham, Final Impact: This book apparently concludes a trilogy of alternate history, centered around the question: what if a 21st-century battle group was accidentally transported into the midst of WWII? I loved the first book, Weapons of Choice, and I think Birmingham’s done a pretty good job of playing out the implications here, though it’s a little funny to watch him patch the events that have taken place in our world since he published the first book into his future history in book three. This volume takes us to the end of the conflict between Axis and Allies, though matters proceed rather differently than they did in original history. Knowing one future, what can and will Hitler, Roosevelt, Stalin, etc. do about it? If nuclear weapons exist, must they be used? Are we so vicious a species that the slaughter of millions is inevitable in any large-scale conflict? Must America go straight from fighting the Nazis to fighting Communism? Birmingham doesn’t often pose these questions directly, focusing instead on the individual choices made by contemporary and from-the-future characters. He also delivers plenty of military action. While there’s an inevitable letdown in shutting down all the amazing possibilities of the initial premise, this was certainly worth reading.
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2007 looks like it's shaping up to be a great year in Rivkaland. Go you!
And (modified) congtratulations!!!
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Let's cross fingers for the smooth way through June.
:-)
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\o/
rah rah!
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I saw my dissertation director a few days ago at a conference. She may have me talked into returning to finish, but I just don't know. Went through all kinds of agony in my program, and my life has somewhat smoothed since I started teaching community college. Otoh, I don't have time to write with this ridiculous 5 course load, so I dream of finishing and finding a university job.
*mulls*
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It's different in the humanities, of course, but most of the people I know don't regret finishing, despite the possible horrors along the way. And time to write is so wonderful. But the academic job market is so screwed up that it is a crapshoot. (Is that 5-5? Because, damn. My husband's tenure-track job is 3-2, which is already pretty brutal.)
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Also, congrats on the tenure vote! WooHoo!
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And thanks!
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