books

This was Friday

I caught the seven o’clock train this morning, and I have to admit it didn’t occur to me until I was almost out the door that it would still be dark at that hour. I’ve been getting another train, about an hour later, recently, so it was a novel experience to be up and about before the sunrise. And then to be coming back home before the sun had set. Those of you with longer commutes, or with earlier starts to your work day, or who are just more often more punctual than I am, won’t think there’s anything so amazing about that. And it’s not like I’ve never been gone to work in the dark. Just not in recent memory.

And, really, that’s the most exciting thing that happened all day, so…

I did finish reading Michael Swanwick’s Stations of the Tide. I liked it, mostly. I think it has a lot of good, and weird, ideas floating around in a feverish mix, but I’m not convinced it ever quite comes together. Still, it won a Nebula when it was published, and it did leave me kind of wanting to read his earlier book Vacuum Flowers, which I understand is very loosely connected.

That was Friday.

Snow? In October?!

It snowed today, the first time this season, and supposedly the snowiest October on record in New York. We had no real accumulation, just a heavy white dusting on the lawn and disgusting and cold slush in the streets. It really did turn brutishly nasty almost overnight, right from very early fall — or even late summer; most of the trees still have green leaves on them — straight into winter.

I spent the day almost entirely inside. I finished reading Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, which was okay, I guess, although I don’t think it’s her best work. Maybe her best character development; she spends an awful long time introducing us to people before anything really nefarious gets underway. But as a fun whodunit? I guessed who the killer was relatively early — well, as early as you can when the murder doesn’t happen until halfway through the book — but I didn’t do so on any evidence in the book. And, in the end, it seemed like that’s how Hercule Poirot solved the mystery too, unfortunately. Still, it was entertaining enough.

I also re-watched The Silence of the Lambs, which a recent episode of Judge John Hodgman (and last night’s brief capping of it) made me want to see again. It really holds up remarkably well for a twenty-year-old thriller I’ve seen more than once. (The book’s not terrible either, although Red Dragon is better. I never made it more than a couple of chapters into Hannibal.)

I watched a few episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise and the most recent episode of The Walking Dead.

I updated the Kaleidotrope website. Check it out: the cover art for the new fall issue, the last one in print, is up now, along with a quick taste of each of the twenty — count ’em, twenty! — stories contained within.

And this evening, I watched the 1972 horror anthology Asylum. It’s got a great cast, that includes such stars as Peter Cushing, Charlotte Rampling, and Britt Ekland. And some of the stories — written by horror legend Robert Bloch — aren’t bad. But ultimately the movie’s more than a little silly. Some good fun, but not remotely scary.

Well, that more or less was my Saturday, such as it was.

Wednesday various

  • Mike Daisey remembers Steve Jobs:

    Mr. Jobs’s magic has its costs. We can admire the design perfection and business acumen while acknowledging the truth: with Apple’s immense resources at his command he could have revolutionized the industry to make devices more humanely and more openly, and chose not to. If we view him unsparingly, without nostalgia, we would see a great man whose genius in design, showmanship and stewardship of the tech world will not be seen again in our lifetime. We would also see a man who in the end failed to “think different,” in the deepest way, about the human needs of both his users and his workers.

  • Actress sues IMDb for revealing that she’s totally old and gross. It’s an interesting case, although I don’t think IMDB has a responsibility to lie in order to combat Hollywood’s unfortunate age- and sexism.
  • Mysterious paper sculptures [via]
  • I’m sure by now you’ve heard this, but it’s still pretty remarkable: Online Gamers Make Discovery in HIV Battle
  • And finally, learning the wrong lesson from 127 Hours.

Tuesday various

  • Wonder Woman: Who Needs A Father Figure?

    The issue goes to the very heart of Wonder Woman’s character and the nature of her message. Diana has been presented as an Amazon, beholden to no man from birth and therefore unbound from the question of patriarchal control. Though she has often worked for (with?) the gods in the stories — even joined them temporarily as the goddess of truth — Wonder Woman is presented as a woman of her own identity independent of boyfriend, husband, or father figure. Despite years of the old ’will she/won’t she’ with male characters like Steve Trevor, Superman, Nemesis and even Batman, Wonder Woman has remained a woman devoid of close male ties outside of friendship. She has provided readers with a portrayal of a woman outside of the boundaries of the patriarchy that she speaks out against. By including a male parent with as powerful a hand and presence as Zeus — not to mention with such a history of philandering — the story has shifted to add a new familial dynamic and a new, powerful patriarch to Diana’s life.

    I don’t have any great familiarity with the character, although I read (and was a little confused by) the first issue of the new reboot. But I’m not sure boiling everything down to daddy issues is really the best way to go. It seems like they’re grafting Clash of the Titans onto the mythos, and that’s not good for anybody.

  • More on fixing comics’ “women problem”: Female Super-Hero Characters and Sex: Creators Explain How Comics Can Do Better. I think Kieron Gillen says it well:

    If you treat your characters as objects instead of characters you are, by definition, objectifying them, and if you constantly objectify your female characters you come across as sexist. [via]

  • Global warming was all fun and games, but now it’s affecting peanut butter and chocolate, and it’s serious. [via]
  • Starbucks concerned world coffee supply is threatened by climate change. It’s possible the world’s ecological problems will only be solved when it’s in industry’s best interests to do so. [via]
  • And finally, The Electronic Publishing Bingo Card

Sneezing like a madman

What yesterday was still the distant rumblings of a cold is today a full-on assault, sneezing and coughing and a runny nose. I’ve kept the worst of it at bay through the generous application of cough drops (more than a few cadged from the office first aid stations), tissues, and chamomile tea, but I’ve still felt better.

This evening, rather than do the sensible thing and go home after work, I stayed on in the city for yet another event at the Center for Fiction, this one on “Outsiders in/of Science Fiction and the Fantastic.” The panel was moderated by Ellen Kushner, and featured writers Steve Berman, Samuel R. Delany, Andrea Hairston, Carlos Hernandez, and Alaya Dawn Johnson. It was interesting, overall, and I’m sure at some point the discussion will be up on their YouTube channel. Two things I noted:

  • Berman joked (seriously) that one of the benefits of writing YA from an outsider’s perspective is that every YA reader — at least the intended actually teenage audience — every one of them feels that he or she is the outsider, even if that’s not the case.
  • Hairston said that what science fiction does is rehearse the possible and the impossible.

I snuck out a little early, since they started a little late and ran a little long, and now I’m home, sneezing like a madman.