Is but a wile
So, I’m here. I’m going to do a little combined book/travel update here and it’s gonna be real long and super dull, so nobody will read it and I will put it behind a cut.
July 12: Movers arrive at 8am, pack and load my stuff until about 3pm. Despite the fact that all I did during this was stand around and watch them work, I’m completely exhausted by the end of the process. After they leave, I hit the road, spending the night in Maumee, OH. There is nothing in Maumee, OH.
July 13: Depart Maumee in the morning, arrive Madison, WI later in the day. This is a short drive day, because I was stopped dead in traffic for about 45 minutes, just north of the WI-IL border. Once things finally got moving again, I eventually passed evidence of the cause of the stoppage: the blackened and burned out husk of an RV. I hope nobody was hurt. This night I finished reading Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead:
Speaker for the Dead: This book was not entirely terrible. The plot was pretty cool, just your basic alien/human communication issue that’s been done better (and worse) in many other books. The use of Ender and his omniscient computer friend was kind of unnecessary, and I think just took away from the rest of the story. I also didn’t like that fact that much of the conflict in the book comes from the basic fact that the humans interacting with the aliens are really quite incredibly stupid. Maybe it’s because I’ve read so many first contact stories, but the mistakes they were making were very obvious to me. Anyways, it was ok, but shouldn’t have been a sequel.
July 14: Depart Madison in the morning, arrive Valley City, ND at night. This is by far the least pleasant city I stayed in on my trip. For dinner I was able to find 4 restaurants — 2 of them were located in gas stations, so I avoided those, the other 2 were a Burger King and a Pizza Hut. I went to Pizza Hut.
July 15: Depart Valley City in the morning and arrive Butte, MT in the afternoon. My car had some problems going up some of the slopes in the rockies, but otherwise an uneventful day. This night I finished The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made.
The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made: Kind of interesting — mostly just stories of the studio bickering and political silliness behind famously failed projects. Most interesting were the ways he showed how, after a project has been battling around for long enough, concepts from it leak into other movies, and eventually the film becomes unmarketable, despite how good it may have been originally.
July 16: Depart Butte in the morning and arrive Ellensburg, WA in the evening. I probably could have pushed it to Seattle this day, but there was no real point, as I didn’t have anywhere to stay until Monday (the 18th).
July 17: Depart Ellensburg in the late morning, arrive Seattle (yay) 2 hours or so later. I went to visit my grandmother, who lives in Vashon Island out here, and then found a hotel in Federal Way, which is near one of the apartments I was interested in. This night I finished Xenocide.
Xenocide: The less said about this book, the better.
July 18: Monday. I went to see the first apartment on my list, and frankly it was just what I wanted, for just the right price, so I signed up on the spot. Then I went and moved into a temporary housing apartment thing. That was about it. This night I finished Zelazny’s Isle of the Dead.
Isle of the Dead: Zelazny is such a great author.In this novel he manages to combine science fiction themes such as longevity through time dilation, planet building, alien society and sort of a general futurism with fantasy themes like demonic possession and a war between gods. The cool things is that these things don’t clash at all; in fact, they combine together in very interesting and unique ways.
July 19: Nothing of note.
July 20: My application was accepted and I signed a bunch of papers. Since I now had an address, I was able to get going on calling 100 million different people to update information. This was a pain in the ass.
July 21 – July 23: Sat around, waiting for the movers to come. During this period, I finished Children of the Mind.
Children of the Mind: See the above note for Xenocide, multiplied by 3.
July 24: The movers arrived, dropped off all my stuff. At this point the move is completed and so I end the tale here. Since then, I have finished these 3 books:
Microserfs: For some reason, before reading this, I’d thought it was non-fiction. I figured out that I was wrong pretty quickly though. Overall I enjoyed it, although it’s somewhat dated and the author shows his non-geek nature a few times which is a little bit jarring — for example, at one point the geeks are told that any multiple of 6, minus 1 is a prime number and all scurry off to try to prove it themselves. Of course, no scurrying is required — a counterexample presents itself with only a few seconds’ thought. Overall though, I enjoyed the book.
Ender’s Shadow: This book isn’t bad, in that it is more or less exactly the same plot as Ender’s Game, only told from a different view. Card has learned that if you take a good book, and write it again, you end up with an OK book. I will not be reading anything else by him.
Kiln People: This is the latest novel by David Brin, and it’s great. I’ve enjoyed most of this work and this was no exception. It’s about a future society where people have become able to copy their selves into temporary clay bodies, who can then do about 24 hours’ worth of work and then come home and load their memories back into the original person. In the novel he fully explores the different implications of this technology, while weaving a very interesting mystery into the story, and throwing in some interesting metaphysics at the end. I loved this book — I wish Brin would write more.
I’m now reading Route 666, a collection of short stories set in Games Workshop’s “Dark Future” universe. It’s ok.
Isle of the Dead was an excellent story. The fact that Orson Scott Card still lives and can get published, while Zelazny is dead and buried, is proof that there cannot exist a loving God.
Well, OK, maybe not *that* dramatic. Still, sounds like a fun road trip. Glad you’re there safe.
It might have more to do with the fact that Zelazny was born 14 years before Card.
What does “Thirty-Five” mean?
A multiple of six, minus one, which is not a prime number.
Jeez. I can’t believe Coupland didn’t even rate a copy editor who would catch such a bogus factoid.
I find it amusing that for once, your and my opinions on a series are the same. The only book in the Ender series worth reading was the first. The rest were a waste of time. I shudder at the though of reading anything else he has written.