Arctangential

This photopost goes out to Conrad, who requested the pictures of this wonderful shop that I drive by on a regular basis:

First, the sign out front:

Then two views of the building itself:

On the way back from the trip to photograph this monstrosity of a building, I ran across this car:

And finally, a picture of Puget Sound: (actually taken by Meg some time ago, but I really like it so I am sharing it here)

I finished The Raider today while riding on the ferry to see my grandmother for Thanksgiving. It was pretty good.

The story in this case follows Favian Markham, son of Jehu Markham, who is the brother of Malachi and Joshia Markham. As a recap, that makes him the nephew of Malachi, the hero of the first book, and the cousin of Gabriel, protagonist of the second book. His character lives in the middle ground between Malachi’s brilliance and disdain for societal norms and Gabriel’s fervent faith and great courage — he is a well-adjusted man, serving in the US Navy during the War of 1812. Note that he’s not a privateer this time, which allows the author to go a lot more into the politics and philosophy of the Navy and steer more away from the basic issues of the sailing and privateering that were discussed previously.

I won’ go into the details too much because they’re not incredibly interesting. One reason I enjoy these books is because they’re very realistic — for the most part he describes actual events, merely inserting his fictional characters into them. For example, the book opens with Favian as First Mate to Captain Decatur on the USS United States during its historic battle with the British ship HMS Macedonian. Other parts of the story are more fictionalized, but still utterly realistic — Favian, having been promoted to Captain after the successful battle, is given a small boat to command and sails it into the “Narrow Seas” around England, sinking tens of merchant ships and greatly injuring the British economy. If this really happened or not I don’t know, but it is entirely plausible and thus quite compelling.

I’ve really enjoyed these books and I’d very much recommend them.

I am now reading Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Out of the House of Life, which is about a vampire in ancient Egypt. I do not have high hopes, but it does seem OK so far.

Time for a photopost! Click for bigger! Yay!

First, here is a business card that Meg got while out at lunch. A nice gentleman gave it to her and while she isn’t in need of his services, she did keep it for me to see, bless her heart.

This weekend, we went to the Space Needle and did some other typical Seattle tourist crap. Here’s the Olympias from the Space Needle:

Here’s the Space Needle from below, at night: (also a little bit crooked)

And finally, the Experience Music Project, some kind of crazy music museum. We didn’t go there, but this is a picture of the building.

I finished Rogue Golem at lunch yesterday.

Up until then, I’d been thinking that I was going to write a fairly positive report of this book. I was really enjoying it. But when I sat down to eat my Thai orange chicken and read the last 5 or so chapter of this book, my opinion dramatically changed. First, let me describe the initial 80% of the story.

Josh Billings works for a nonspecific government lab doing nonspecific research into some kind of fluids. He has a family and friends, but he feels somewhat disconnected from his life. More and more he feels like his life is predetermined, that he has no choices. He feels like he’s a robot. This feeling intensifies and becomes more crystallized after a few encounters — for example, at a scientific conference he attends a talk on positronic matrices, which starts him thinking about robotic brains, and at a meeting with some military men, one of them treats him somewhat brusquely for reasons that are unclear — this makes him start thinking about conspiracies against him and other such paranoid thoughts. Eventually, he is sent to an asylum where his delusions, as expected, get worse and in some way are fueled by those around him. Next we get to the bad part of the book, but let me digress first.

I really liked Kenyon’s writing here. He uses some clever literary tricks to really pull you into the mind of the character that really enhanced the read for me. For example, many of the characters are not referred to by name, but rather by descriptive sobriquets invented by Billings — his boss is known as The Great Oaf, and his wife as The Wife. This effectively isolated Billings in his world — he doesn’t have conversation with people, but with nebulous beings, and when those people are referred to by name (generally by other people), you’re confused and you’re not sure who is meant. The other thing he does that I liked was to put quotes in the middle of the text, as an a-narrative way to introduce concepts and influence your thinking without giving anything away for sure. At one point the definition of psychosis from the DSM is inserted into the middle of a scene; you’re not sure if the author is saying that Billings is psychotic, or if he’s just giving us background information, or what. It’s not something I’ve seen used before in this way, and I liked it.

OK, so now the situation is that Billings in a mental hospital. Is he a robot who is being oppressed by some massive conspiracy, or is he just a madman? We don’t know. At least not until the book takes a violent turn to the shitty. In a sudden shift not only in story but also in writing style, we learn in no uncertain terms that Billings is indeed a robot, and so are many people around him, including many of his fellow inmates. They stage a daring and action-filled escape and convene at the robot rebellion’s headquarters, where Billings learns that not only is he a robot, he’s a robot that’s been imprinted with mental engrams found in a Tibetan cave. These mental recordings were left there by aliens in the Earth’s prehistory, and allowed Billings to have super powers. He then proceeds to use these super powers to defeat the anti-robot conspiracy and make the world a better place. The end.

I think that Kenyon originally had a real ending but the publishers hired somebody else to rewrite it or something. It’s really a horrible end to an otherwise very good book. Anyways.

I’m now reading Jon Williams’ The Raider, the third in his “Privateers and Gentlemen” series.

I finished The Yankee the other day, but I’ve been a little too busy to write about it until now.

It was pretty good — the story followed one Gabriel Markham, the nephew of Malachi Markham, born just a year or two before the end of the previous book and Malachi’s death. The book takes place in 1814, so Gabriel is in his early 30s. The structure of the novel is, in many ways, directly the opposite of that of The Privateer, and very refreshingly so. For example, where Malachi was very much not religious and did what he felt was best without adherence to his puritanical family’s beliefs, Gabriel is fervently religious and maintains a very strict ethical code. Each novel had 3 main ship battle set pieces, the structures of which are fairly similar between the books, but which are reversed in order. Another key thing I noticed is that when Malachi dies at the end of the first book, he’s drunk on laudanum, sure he’ll be fine, and in fact not fully aware of the attack being levied against him. At the end of this book, Gabriel enters into a losing battle knowing full well that he will not survive it, even if his side wins, but he does so anyways, to save his friends and family.

There’s actually a lot of clever, subtle details and other interesting aspects of these books that I’d love to be able to discuss with other people who’ve read them, but frankly I’m not sure that anybody else has ever read these, considering how difficult they were to find in the first place. It’s too bad, as I think a lot of people I know would enjoy reading them.

I’m now reading Ernest Kenyon’s Rogue Golem, a book that I bought simply because I kept seeing it over and over again in used bookstores. It’s not bad.