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Men and women seem to use P2P at the same rates.
Ah, nothin’ like doing a work-related search for “Winchester Mystery House.”
Terry Pratchett, Dodger: Dodger, an artful sort, accidentally becomes a hero, rescues a beautiful young woman in trouble, and meets a sharp reporter named Charlie Dickens. So, Discworld set in fantastical (but not fantasy) London, where a barber named Sweeney is also in a bad way, and various other historical personages appear. I like Discworld better, but it’s not much different from Pratchett’s usual hijinks and compassion.
Jacqueline Carey, In the Matter of Fallen Angels: Short story (via Kindle) in which an angel falls to earth in a small Texas town, and the reactions this engenders. Magical realism doesn’t seem quite right, but it’s a gentle story about the ways humans behave in the presence of the incomprehensible.
Joan Slonczewski, The Highest Frontier: Jennifer Ramos Kennedy, from a family with two presidents to its name, goes to space college to escape her family, their security guards, and the memory of her dead twin brother. Earth is near collapse because of global warming and the invasion of ultraphytes, alien lifeforms that excrete cyanide, and America’s two political parties are busy fighting over how aggressive to be in exerting control over the Antarctic breadbasket and whether there are really stars and planets other than Earth or only a Firmament. The political stuff seems both extrapolative and to-the-minute, given how much of it focuses on manipulating voting both through carefully poll-tested positions and through making it hard for the “wrong” people to vote. It’s a big, ambitious novel, not really if-this-goes-on but ‘what will it be like to be an idealistic, influential young person if this goes on?’ I can’t say I loved it, but I thought it wove together various strands of scientific and political speculation with real flair and imagination.
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin, Vol. 2, Outer Space, Inner Lands: Free LibraryThing Early Reviewer book. A collection of Le Guin’s fantasy/sf stories (though she criticizes and complicates this definition in the introduction, it’ll do for a summary), including “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” This passage from that story struck me this time around: “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” Stories about alternate gender relations – some reversals (almost), some more egalitarian, some less so. The stories also return again and again to the theme of difficulty of interpretation and communications across cultures, perhaps especially when those cultures are closely linked. My favorite was probably “The Rule of Names,” in which the truism “two wizards, one town, trouble” is entertainingly demonstrated, and the last line reminds me of Billy Collins’ “Flames.” Also, there were two very nice zeugmas in “Sur”: “the next long, hard days were spent in unloading our supplies and setting up our camp on the ice, a half kilometer in from the edge: a task in which the Yelcho’s crew lent us invaluable aid and interminable advice. We took all the aid gratefully, and most of the advice with salt.”
Ah, nothin’ like doing a work-related search for “Winchester Mystery House.”
Terry Pratchett, Dodger: Dodger, an artful sort, accidentally becomes a hero, rescues a beautiful young woman in trouble, and meets a sharp reporter named Charlie Dickens. So, Discworld set in fantastical (but not fantasy) London, where a barber named Sweeney is also in a bad way, and various other historical personages appear. I like Discworld better, but it’s not much different from Pratchett’s usual hijinks and compassion.
Jacqueline Carey, In the Matter of Fallen Angels: Short story (via Kindle) in which an angel falls to earth in a small Texas town, and the reactions this engenders. Magical realism doesn’t seem quite right, but it’s a gentle story about the ways humans behave in the presence of the incomprehensible.
Joan Slonczewski, The Highest Frontier: Jennifer Ramos Kennedy, from a family with two presidents to its name, goes to space college to escape her family, their security guards, and the memory of her dead twin brother. Earth is near collapse because of global warming and the invasion of ultraphytes, alien lifeforms that excrete cyanide, and America’s two political parties are busy fighting over how aggressive to be in exerting control over the Antarctic breadbasket and whether there are really stars and planets other than Earth or only a Firmament. The political stuff seems both extrapolative and to-the-minute, given how much of it focuses on manipulating voting both through carefully poll-tested positions and through making it hard for the “wrong” people to vote. It’s a big, ambitious novel, not really if-this-goes-on but ‘what will it be like to be an idealistic, influential young person if this goes on?’ I can’t say I loved it, but I thought it wove together various strands of scientific and political speculation with real flair and imagination.
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin, Vol. 2, Outer Space, Inner Lands: Free LibraryThing Early Reviewer book. A collection of Le Guin’s fantasy/sf stories (though she criticizes and complicates this definition in the introduction, it’ll do for a summary), including “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” This passage from that story struck me this time around: “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” Stories about alternate gender relations – some reversals (almost), some more egalitarian, some less so. The stories also return again and again to the theme of difficulty of interpretation and communications across cultures, perhaps especially when those cultures are closely linked. My favorite was probably “The Rule of Names,” in which the truism “two wizards, one town, trouble” is entertainingly demonstrated, and the last line reminds me of Billy Collins’ “Flames.” Also, there were two very nice zeugmas in “Sur”: “the next long, hard days were spent in unloading our supplies and setting up our camp on the ice, a half kilometer in from the edge: a task in which the Yelcho’s crew lent us invaluable aid and interminable advice. We took all the aid gratefully, and most of the advice with salt.”
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