Should be watched...

Gotta love logic

This evening Atty decided he was scared of his skeleton pajamas, since they might attract skeleton ghosts. I informed him that his dogs (he has a small army of plush dogs) would protect him. It reminded me of a similar incident with Dante a while back.

"Daddy, I can't sleep - I'm scared of ghosts"
"D, you know that there's no such thing as ghosts - they're not real"
"But I'm scared of them"
"Don't worry, Brown Bear and your other bears will protect you" (Where Atty has dogs, Dante has bears)
"But they're just toys, Daddy, they're not real"
"That's OK, ghosts aren't real either, which means that your bears can protect you against them"

Dante thinks for a moment, and nods, satisfied, and lies down to go to sleep. Gotta love a kids that's willing to accept logical arguments.

The New Space Opera

The New Space Opera is a collection of short stories by a range of authors, showing the breadth and depth of writing that falls into the "New Space Opera" sub-genre.

It's something I realise I've been reading a lot of in recent years. It's Space Opera, but written in the wake of the Information Revolution; which has transformed how Sci Fi writers envision the future. Notably missing from this collection are two of my favourite authors, Stross and Banks.

There are some great stories in this collection; some will stick with me for ages, and some are the kind where I'll forget the story, but the ideas will be integrated into my brain, and I'll probably read them in the future and wonder why the technologies all seem so familiar.

Some of the high points: Dan Simmons' Muse of Fire melted my brain; Walter Jon Williams' Send them Flowers felt like a Beat Generation road trip in a parallel universe; Alastair Reynolds' Minya's Flowers was food for thought. Note for further investigation: do all good modern Sci Fi authors have names ending in 's'?

So the future is going to be dark and mysterious and complex and textured. We may be the only civilization we ever meet, but otherwise we'll be a minor player in the vast and incomprehensible game of galactic politics. Physics is Einsteinian, but wormholes or a Many Worlds universe may let us get around that to travel the greater universe freely.

I got a lot out of The New Space Opera, even though I don't think it's necessarily the best that the genre has to offer. A lot of the tales in this compilation were really bursting at the seams of the short story format, and were clearly aching to be filled out to novel length, so that the strong characters and huge ideas has space to stretch their legs.

The Tent

The Tent, by Margaret Atwood, is a delight to read. Thirty or forty short stories - some not even stories; merely thoughts a couple of pages in length, hints and suggestions of larger stories and issues. The blurb on the back cover calls them "fictional essays", which doesn't seem quite right.

To be honest, it felt like a Dr Seuss book for grown-ups. There was the same delight in language, the twisted-about twirling dance of words, but much darker, more solemn and filled with the sadnesses and mysteries and compromises of adulthood.

The only other book of Atwood's I've read is Oryx and Crake, which is an amazing piece of science fiction*, and one that mesmerized me.

I must read more of her books; The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid's Tale are sitting on my shelves, waiting patiently.

* she claims it isn't science fiction, since the science in it is merely an extrapolation of current trends in science. Genius though she is, she's completely wrong there, confusing "Science Fiction" with "Fictional Science".

The Steep Approach to Garbadale

Iain Banks (aka. Iain M. Banks) never fails to impress. I started reading his Sci Fi a few years ago when someone said "you should read these Banks' Culture novels - they'd be your sort of thing", and whoever that kind recommender was, was exactly right. I had kind of gone off reading actual Science Fiction for a few years there, concentrating my efforts on History, Horror, and Fantasy, and Banks (and then Stross) dragged me back into the fold.

Banks writes two kinds of books, different enough that he has the slightly different pen names, with and without the M. His Science Fiction, under Iain M Banks, is mind-blisteringly* broad in scope. As I've said before, I've got a background in Math and Science, and bad Science in Sci Fi irritates me. I'm happy with logical science and different laws of physics based on currently-undiscovered scientific principles; but random laws of physics that aren't consistently applied, or stupid applications of real laws irk me. Banks is one of those authors whose physics is spot on.

But that is an aside. The Steep Approach to Garbadale isn't one of his science fiction books. It's the other kind - the well-written fiction novel. A lot of these books steer of at least a little into the fantastical of horrific, but this is a novel clearly set in our world, with real and flawed characters, and reflects on the politics of our time - or at least, our time two years ago; it sits solidly in the Bush era, and the characters reflect on and rail against US imperialism. I found it quite gripping, and on occasions hard to put down. It's a little more normal for me to not put a book down because a stupendously powerful star cruiser is about to chop up an Orbital with billions of people living on it; not being able to put down a book because Alban was about to go fishing with his cousin Sophie and oh my goodness what will transpire between them! was an unusual and pleasant feeling.

So, it's a definite worth-reading book. My problem now is that I can never quite remember which of my Banks non-sci-fi I've read and which I haven't. I've started reading one before on at least one occasion only to discover that I'd red it before. I'll have to go and work it out.

* Oddly enough, my spell-checker is happy with mind-blisteringly, but has an problem with recommender.

Singularity Sky

Singularity Sky, by Charles Stross, is the kind of book that reminds me why I read science fiction. It actually comes before Iron Sunrise, which was the first Stross book I read, and was the one that made me decide to read all his books (not there yet, but well on my way).

The setting is some time after the Singularity, when an artificial super-intelligence has scattered humanity over several thousands of light years, and the various outposts of humanity have settled on various levels of technology, depending on whether they have embraced or rejected technology.

It's a big ol' space opera, a couple of people from Earth are working in/for a backward totalitarian empire, and get involved when that empire ends up fighting a very high-tech invader. The people are well done, though some tend towards caricature. The culture clashes between the various groups are very nicely done; the technology is mind-blowing.

This one is a definite recommended read if you like your science fiction. One of the books I'll recommend down the years, and read again at some point in the future (unless Stross keeps up his current prolific rate of writing, in which case I'll just try keeping up with him).

Byzantium's Crown

I have a rocky relationship with trilogies; I try to avoid reading them unless I've got the whole series, since I hate having read one of a series and not being able to find the others. So this book has been sitting on my shelves for over a decade; probably something closer to 20 years. I finally found the others in the series at a second hand book shop and got them (not too cheaply, of course; it was a Newtown secondhand bookshop), and so I figured it was time to read this one.

Also, historical fiction (and/or historical fantasy; I'm not an expert on the divisions between genres) is always a risk to read. When it's good it's great, but mostly it's awful.

Byzantium's Crown, by Susan Schwartz, fell closer to the awful end of the spectrum than the excellent end. The world is "Antony and Cleopatra won at Actium, and there's magic". Which could be cool, but ends up rather disappointing (possibly not quite all the way to awful, though). It may be because I had looked at it for twenty years and was expecting some awesome after this time; it may be also that I automatically end up comparing it to Gillian Bradshaw's excellent historical fiction. I probably should've read this one when I was fifteen; I think it might have been much better back then.