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Still sorting through stuff in my old room. The good news is that I’ve been finding books that were misplaced/buried in the clutter.
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- me: *has 10 books to read*
- me: *buys 3 more*
- me: another 5 won't hurt
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This book is from 1977, so it’s been laying around my aunt’s house since before I was born. She used to babysit me as a kid, so I used to flip through this all the time. I was fascinated. The cover is actually this neat pearlescent silvery color that I guess was associated with futuristic spaceflight in the 70s. I didn’t know it was still sitting on the shelf it in the downstairs playroom.
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we heard someone around here is using an e-reader *flicks switchblade* has anyone told you about what books smell like
Source: riseofthecommonwoodpile
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Finished reading Empty Space last night. I’m still kinda digesting it (and, I guess, by extension, the whole trilogy). It’s a lot to interpret. I think.
Started re-reading Soon I Will Be Invincible. Gods damn, I forgot how good it was. Wasn’t he gonna write a sequel, supposedly? Whatever happened to that?
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It really says something about this series that the books have positive blurbs from both Neil Gaiman and Stephen Baxter on/inside the cover.
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They were arrant newcomers, driven by the nouveau enthusiasms of a cowboy economy. They had no idea what they had come for, or how to get it: they only knew they would. They had no idea how to comport themselves. They sensed there was money to be made. They dived right in. They started wars. They stunned into passivity five of the alien races they found in possession of the galaxy and fought the sixth […] to a wary truce. After that they fought one another.
Behind all this bad behaviour was an insecurity magnificent in scope, metaphysical in nature. Space was big, and the boys from Earth were awed despite themselves by the things they found there: but worse, their science was a mess. Every race they met on their way to the Core had a star drive based on a different theory. All those theories worked, even when they ruled out one another’s basic assumptions. You could travel between the stars, it began to seem, by assuming anything. If your theory gave you a foamy space to work with — if you had to catch a wave — that didn’t preclude some other engine, running on a perfectly smooth Einsteinian surface, from surfing the same tranche of empty space. It was even possible to build drives on the basis of superstring-style theories, which, despite their promise four hundred years ago, had never really worked at all.
It was affronting to discover that.
M John Harrison,
Light
Redshirts ended on a surprisingly serious note (in a good way), for something that started out with such a silly premise. Recommended.
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thereyouarewhereveryougo said: I haven’t gotten to that one yet, I read the Expanse books and now I’m reading Wool.
I haven’t read the Expanse novels, but I keep eying them whenever I’m at the bookstore. Wool sounds interesting, too (I hadn’t heard of it before, but I just looked it up online to see what it was about).
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Redshirts is good, so far. I’ve already had to put down the book several times, just to lol. I’m probably gonna end up finishing reading it pretty quickly, either tonight or tomorrow.
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Finished re-reading River Of Gods and Cyberabad Days. I still have a month or so before Empty Space is released in the US, so I’ll probably have time to read Redshirts before I have to start re-reading Light and Nova Swing to get ready.
Blargh. For the first time I can recall, Barnes & Noble let me order a book, and then despite their “best efforts” they couldn’t get it for me. This is a recent book, too. Like, 2011. Published in the US, as far as I know. Get your shit together, B&N.
Started re-reading River Of Gods. After that will be Cyberabad Days (the related collection of short stories).
I just found out that apparently Ian McDonald has also been working on a YA series called “Everness” that already has two books, so I’m probably gonna check that out (if I can find the first book). I’m interested to see how it’ll differ from his regular writing.
rainyfuture said: Speaking of which, was River of Gods great or what?
Sooo good. I’m a big fan of his work in general, but I’m really hoping he revisits the River Of Gods / Cyberabad Days universe at some point (even if it’s just more related novellas/shorts).
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contentkiller said: That’s kinda creepy that you mentioned the soundtrack thing. If I ever get my book off the ground, I was planning on putting a tracklist in it somewhere.
Oooh, what kind of stuff? I mean, an actual “soundtrack” for the book? Or the music that inspired you while you were writing?
Ian McDonald’s River Of Gods had a note (after the end of the book) listing the music he was listening to a lot while he wrote it — not a track-by-track playlist, but the names of the artists. Coincidentally (although perhaps I was just really good at getting the “feel” of the book), about 80% of them were artists I regularly like to listen to while reading his stuff.
Also, while I haven’t actually heard any of it, somebody apparently (officially?) composed a score for James Morrow’s Towing Jehovah. I have no idea what that would sound like.
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