HSU IT Department

Oh look! I can finally log in again. The LJ gremlins have been hard at work on my account (no matter how many times I logged in successfully, when I went to any entry in my OWN journal, it showed me as not logged in -- very weird) but apparently they're all sleeping it off now and I can get in. Yay! So I have a book recommendation and a funny video to share.

First the book: Idlewild by Nick Sagan, son of Carl "billyuns and billyuns" Sagan. Intriguing and highly original: braids together AI, virtual reality, post-plague-apocalypse, adolescent rebellion and more into a strange and unusual tale that keeps you guessing, wondering what's real and what isn't. In some ways it previews ideas played out in the movie Inception, in that there are layers within layers of things going on. Although you're uncertain what's happening a lot of the time, the author doles out information at a proper pace so you're intrigued and drawn on, rather than frustrated, and some of the small details (the mail bag of letters, for example) are very powerful. I didn't find the ending completely satisfying -- it was fitting and appropriate, by no means bad or wrong, it's just that I wasn't done with the characters and wanted to know what happened next. Fortunately, it turns out there are two sequels, Edenborn and Everfree, so I shall have to get right on them. Three cheers for not having to wait for sequels!!

Now for the video. Meet Amy Walker, accent artist extraordinaire. She can do any accent on the planet (her YouTube channel, amiablewalker has lots more) but this is one of my personal faves:

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So I read One Second After over the past weekend and have to admit I was totally freaked out by it. I'd really like to know whether the US government is doing anything to address this issue -- a Google on "EMP hardened" or "EMP hardening" turns up a bunch of survivalist sites and not much else. I'd like to grab my local gov and police by the collar, wave this in their face and shout, "Have you thought about this?!?!?" but I suspect it would be counterproductive.

Returning to literary rather than emotional analysis, however, the book was very well-written (but the dogs! why must dogs always die? why???) and definitely gripping - I started it around 8pm and was up until 3am. I thought the juxtaposition of a Christian school having to turn into soldiers was an interesting choice.

Above all, it made me ponder how incredibly vital the mere fact of communication is, and how disorienting the lack of information can be in an emergency. Much of what happens in the book is not due to direct damage (very little is actually destroyed) but rather to indirect damage -- individuals are cut adrift from accustomed structures of law enforcement and society and therefore run wild. For example, if police can't communicate, they can't be called on at need, they can't enforce the law. If people don't know what's going on, they assume the worst and act accordingly.

At bottom, all that happens in the book is...the power goes out. This happens all the time (well, in my neighborhood it does, anyway). But it goes out everywhere, all at once, and in every conceivable place including car radios. Because so much of what we are/do/need relies on that one simple utility, when it happens nationwide things spiral out of control. Like scientists isolating a germ, the novel isolates a single taken-for-granted feature of our day-to-day lives -- electricity -- and explores what happens when that one thing is removed. It's engrossing and distinctly thought-provoking. Two thumbs up.

Oh, and your microwave is a Faraday cage so store a radio in there.

OK, I'm VASTLY behind on book reviews so will have to sum up ("Let me explain...No, there is no time -- let me sum up"). So: four tonight and (if all goes well and the goddess of motivation smiles on me) four tomorrow.

Nightlights, a Twilight parody. Meh. Hilarious bit at the beginning spoofing Bella's klutziness -- which was a major gripe of mine in the first book, it was made such a major deal I assumed that at a minimum she would turn out to have some degenerative neurological condition -- and a very funny bit where she thinks she's meeting Edvart's parents but he turns out have some kind of address dyslexia and went to the wrong house. Other than that, not very clever.

No Blade of Grass (U.S. title), a revisit but just as good on the fourth or fifth re-read as the first. A British (therefore stiff-upper-lippy) post-apocalypse novel, in which the Chung-Li virus destroys all grasses on the planet and a small band of friends and family must fight their way from London to an idyllic (defensible) valley in Wales. Not quite so I'm-the-man-and-I-will-save-you as Alas Babylon, but more intense in that the effects are immediate rather than remote. Alas, Babylon has a very unrealistic view of survivable nuclear war; Grass gives us a world that's truly dead, no arguments, no way to stop it, and very impersonally since it's a virus. I can't believe they haven't made this into a movie yet, it has all the elements of a fantastic high-concept SF flick. They'd have to do something to update the female roles but other than that all the pieces are in place.

Bible Stories for Adults by James Morrow. Not bad but didn't wow me. The first story (unless I've missed something) seems to suggest that the Chinese are descended from a diseased whore who escaped the Biblical Deluge. I can only hope I've misread that one. The rest are quite fun -- quirky, irreverent, pointed critiques of religion which I always love (being a pagan or possibly an atheist, depending on the news). Asimov would like them, I think, as several of them employ robots to prove the essential inhumanity of mankind. I especially liked 'Spelling God with the Wrong Blocks," in which a bunch of Creationist robots burn Darwinian heretics at the stake and await the Great Genital Coming (no pun intended, I'm sure). Morrow also wrote Towing Jehovah, in which God dies and his body gets towed south by a barge, and Only Begotten Daughter, in which Jesus has a sister, both of which I highly recommend.

Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint. Sadly, this disappointed me. Not entirely -- not in the writing or characters (Grace the grease monkey, love her!) which are both elegant as always, and the resolution (involving Mexican bruja traditions and faith in the saints) was appropriate and well done, as I've come to expect from Monsieur de Lint. I liked the idea that Grace and John (not to mention the evil witch in the penthouse) have to learn to let go of some things, but the fact that Grace had no interest in moving on until ( spoilers ) It feels like a cheat, almost. So it's OK, but not his best.

Wow. I'm tired now.

oops, bad coding...better now...

So last week I took Friday off (trying desperately to use up all my vacation before it vanishes, courtesy of the Evil HR Dept). We drove over to Ithaca, checked out the Falls, had lunch at Moosewood (salmon chowder, nom nom nom), and stopped at The Phoenix used book barn on the way back. I love shopping at used bookstores, especially ones that are a) so huge they have no idea what they have, e.g. The Strand in NYC or b) so off the beaten path that they don't feel compelled to keep on hand ten copies of "A is for Alibi" and three of everything Jodi Picoult ever wrote. The Phoenix, happily, is both. (It's so off the beaten path it doesn't even have a website, and so huge that I got lost in it. Twice.)

So. Among other gems, I found a book by a long-time favorite author that I didn't know existed, a book on the Midrash (which I've been curious about since I read The Red Tent last week) and an FSF short story collection by an author I never heard of but which turned out to be tremendous: Speaking in Tongues, by Ian McDonald. Unusual, powerful, intriguing, and every story very different from the others. Among them was one with the odd title "Floating Dogs," which is possibly the most heart-wrenching -- and damning -- post-apocalypse story I've ever read. Well OK, it's a tie with "People of Sand and Slag" from this anthology. If you can read these two stories and not get at least a little choked up, I don't wanna know you.

Still plodding through the run-up to World War II with Churchill & Co., but have to take these little breaks every so often to recover from the repeated idiocies (how could Chamberlain have thought giving Czechoslovakia to Hitler was a good idea? How???)

Another dystopia but this one lives up to its name :) YA, which means it was a quick read without a lot of subtlety and left me wanting longer, richer, deeper, just plain more, of course, but "a good effort" as Franz Joseph said to Mozart. Given the behavior of huge corporations, particularly those in the pharmaceutical industry, the power of the Longevity corporations was all too believable; their ideal world is full of happy little immortal (human) sheep and they do whatever it takes to ensure it stays that way, an eerily credible scenario. I can believe that they'd, um, "encourage" everyone to sign The Declaration. The ending was a mix of powerful (Anna's parents' attempt to save her and Ben) and fairy-dust-easy (no way the soldiers would just stand down). I wanted more about several of the characters, notably Miss Pincent and her loser husband and father (where did she learn how to do this mind-f**k on the kids??) but also Anna's parents, and the whole underground movement.

I also wish she'd explored some of the larger questions of what would happen if everyone was immortal. Would everyone be, or only the ones with the money? How often do people do the "A life for a life" exchange? Is it considered noble or shameful? Who's raising the food? Nobody would want to be a farmer for eternity. If it's automatically produced then do people bother to go to work or do they just sit around playing bridge and comparing their latest face lifts? What about this black market in childrens' stem cells? Without the influx of new people, is there a slowdown in innovation, ideas, inventions, etc? What's the impact of that on society, science, etc? Is the whole world just some big stagnant pond? Like I said, I wanted more!

All things considered I give it two thumbs up. Not as good as Genesis but better than the Lessing book :)