I'm supposed to arrive at Indy at 9:54pm tomorrow (Tuesday the 21st.) Anyone want to pick me up, assuming I leave Charlotte (don't ask) on time? (Or more pointedly, if I don't -- shuttle at least still leaves at 10:40pm, but if I miss that...)

Moon landing, Daniel Abraham's An Autumn War with spoilers, Ambiguity in Fantasy, Helen Wright's A Matter of Oaths available for free download, Daniel Abraham's A Betrayal in Winter.

Bill Whittle celebrated the Apollo XI anniversary by dropping politics for a bit and visiting XCOR Aerospace to look at their rocket-powered aircraft. Part One of the video looks at XCOR's success in converting conventional aircraft to fly under rocket power. Part Two looks at their Lynx suborbital design. I'm a serious fan of XCOR. I'd met Jeff Greason before he started doing professional rocketry and got a chance to present to his crew in Mojave once. They're taking the best approach to developing new technology--incremental steps, getting a working system they can test and operate at each step. The next step is a custom-built vehicle that'll actually exit the atmosphere. I'm looking forward to seeing it fly.

( Jewelry )
( WIG )

( Dinner )

And then we listened to Armstrong land on the moon and I cried a little.

Sometimes the bestest, most perfect thing in the world is a Super Big Gulp, and a couple of cheeseburgers from White Castle.

Yuuuuum.

Blindsight (2006)
Written by: Peter Watts
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 384 (Trade Paperback)

The premise: Earth was heading towards a happy utopian future until sixty-five thousand alien objects appeared in the sky and quickly burned to ash. All anyone knew about the encounter was that he aliens had just taken pictures. Now, in order to get more information on the interstellar neighbors spying on us, Earth scrambles together to prepare a crew for first contact, and the crew just might be stranger than the aliens they're getting ready to meet: a linguist with multiple personalities carved into her brain, a pacifist warrior whose career defining moment was an act of treason, a biologist who's so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound, a synthesist whose mind is literally half-gone, meant to observe the entire mission and report back to Earth, and a vampire, resurrected from the past using junk DNA and the blood of sociopaths, to command them all. It's part hard SF and part philosophical treatise.

My Rating

Worth the Cash: but with a warning: I feel this is a niche read, and it's certainly NOT for the SF newbie, not by a longshot. If I'd read this book when it first came out a couple of years ago, I think I would've been turned off at the time. But if you're a reader who's ready for this kind of text--which is certainly enjoyable with all of its ingredients, though not perfect--then I think you'll really enjoy this book. I'll happily read it again, which is a good and bad thing. Good because hey, I enjoyed it enough to WANT to read it again to catch what I missed the first time. Bad because, well, I missed stuff the first time that I need to catch the second. But in the end, I'm a very happy reader. How happy you will be might depend on the following:

1) If you're entertained by the notion of vampires in space, and not the magical, sexy kind populating so much urban fantasy, check out Watts's little mockumentary here to get a taste of not just Watts's voice (it's what you'll be reading, folks), but also so you can get a solid grasp on his vampires, which I feel is necessary to get BEFORE reading the book, rather than trying to piece it together WHILE reading the book. At least, it would've been nice for me. One warning, run-time is around 35-40 minutes or so, but the pause button and arrow functions prove to be quite useful if you have to stop the player and come back to it later. If you enjoy this video, if you enjoy the biology behind the vampires (and the snarky, tongue-in-cheek voice-over), then you've got a solid chance of enjoying the book.

2) Why not sample it for free? Admittedly, the whole darn thing is available online if you just can't afford to buy anything now, but if buying is an option, sample it first. I suggest the prologue and the first chapter at least (if not a little more), because it gives the reader a clear sense of how Watts's style varies, from very personal to more scientific passages. The link to the whole thing is here.

I enjoyed this a lot, but it should be known that I'm partial to dark, somewhat cynical views of the future and the human race, so this book makes me delightfully happy. I definitely plan on attacking Watts's backlist, and I'm very glad I finally gave this author a shot. However, I'm also glad I waited until I was ready. As I mentioned before, if I'd read him when the book first came out, I think I would've had more trouble than necessary. But still, for anyone truly interested in this, I'd say, give it a go. Sure, it's a first contact story, but it's also much more than that.

Review style: Two sections, what I liked and what I didn't. Expect spoilers in both, simply because it's difficult for me to talk about this book without talking specifics. However, bear in mind that this is the kind of book that knowing the spoilers really shouldn't affect how you read it, in fact, it may help. Yet, if spoilers bother the snot out of you, just skip the jump to my LJ.

As always, comments and discussion are most welcome.

REVIEW: Peter Watts's BLINDSIGHT

Happy Reading!

I have a lot of random, not very deep thoughts about the 40 year anniversary of us reaching the moon.

First and foremost, for some odd reason, I think of my Uncle Charles. He went to his grave positive it was a conspiracy, that we never reached the moon. His reasoning? It says somewhere in the Bible that man can never reach the stars. We had a lot of religious nuts in the family. Especially given that my grandfather was a faith healer. Oh well.

Secondly, I had a job when I was in college, a summer job, working at a plant that made parts used by the Apollo missions. So it was pretty close to home when all that was happening, so we were doubly glued to the TV.

Also, when we nearly lost Apollo 13, I was working for Pratt and Whitney at their Research Lab outside of Hartford, CT. We were involved in helping NASA figure a way to get them home. Again, we were all massively personally involved and felt as if it were us who were up there, and as if we had a stake in actually getting them home. We did, I suppose, to a tiny degree anyway.

It's a shame, really, that today we have no - zero - massive and seemingly impossible dreams we're working toward. We're so poor in that department that we think we can't even manage to see that everyone gets health care. Hard to see us believing we can conquer the Universe, or even Mars, given that.

So sad.

After many months of working close to home, I am now driving at least 1-2 hours a day. So, in order to pass the time, I dragged my ipod- shuffle out and added some audiobooks. Today, I tried to listen. Fail. Got home and did some sewing, laundry etc. Just before going to bed, I decided to check the Apple web site for help. Seems I'm too stupid for a shuffle- it helps if you push the centre button to start it! Off to bed.

...well, minus the beer, that is.

One day to see some sights....

Hotel shuttle to O'Hare to CTA's Blue Line to downtown....about 90 minutes of travel
Get oriented (trans: wander a little before starting to move with purpose)
Bus to the Field Museum of Natural History, where I saw Sue the T. rex, the excellent special exhibit on water, lots of dead animals, some minerals (the main mineral exhibit is closed for renovation), jade, etc.
Walked out towards the Shedd aquarium, then set off walking up the waterfront
Cut over to Grant Park and admired the large fountain in Georgia marble
Lunch at a Corner Cafe on Michigan
Walk on to Millennium Park, admire the 'bean', the wall of water fountains, and the Great Lawn and its concert shell
Admire the intrepid bassonist busker on a corner while headed for a bus stop
Catch a bus north headed to the Water Tower...gee, the stop for Chicago Ave. lets me off at the door of the Apple Store. Spend a few minutes communing with toys.
On to the Water Tower, a limestone castle of a standpipe that survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Now used for art exhibits, and had a set of photos from the fire on display
Across the street to the old pumping station (same design as the standpipe), now a tourist information office. Collect literature and directions to the Post Office in the John Hancock Building
Mail postcard of Sue to nephew at his summer camp
Wander through bits of Water Tower Place, a mall. American Girl store is....interesting, to one who never found dolls to be fun even at the 'right' age.
Macys on State Street has a Moonstruck Chocolates shipment, including dark chocolate lab truffles (in the shape of puppy dogs, you see). Despite the fact that I'll be in Portland with a full Moonstruck store (or two) nearby in just 2 weeks, I buy truffles. And sample a Frango mint, just for the experience. Not my weakness...
Borders on State Street has no chairs for foot-sore, book-hungry shoppers, so I don't stay long
Bus back down to the Loop, rode the Brown Line El around the Loop, just to do it. Spot the Chicago Board of Trade, and admire the library--it takes up a full city block
Wander back through Millennium Park, stop in the same Corner Cafe for a sandwich to go, then find the Blue Line in its downtown subway and head to O'Hare
Call for hotel shuttle pickup, and return to hotel
(Somewhere in there was a stop in the old Marshall Fields flagship store, now a Macys, to admire the Tiffany glass mosaic ceiling...thought of you, coalboy)

Elapsed time: about 12 hours...maybe 11-1/2. Now I'm taking one of my Lush bath bombs and headed for a nice soak in a hot bath....and someone else will clean the tub for me tomorrow. <g>

MILESTONE
Today I turned in the final draft of my doctoral dissertation.

Wow, I really failed at serious nonfiction this month.

To Visit the Queen (Diane Duane): I am officially to old to read this novel. ( The flaws are more prominent than the entertaining bits. ) This particular novel seemed below Duane's usual standard, and I may be trying to see something more interesting than exists.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X (as told to Alex Haley) (Alex Haley, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz): The reinvention of a man, and the names he used in those reinventions: Malcolm Little, Detroit Red, Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. I picked this up because I was curious, and stayed because the two men - X and Haley - told a fascinating story. I am not sure I believe all of it, but I think it's a narrative told by a very smart survivor, and wish I'd read it when I was younger, preferably with a reading group who'd help tear apart the truth from the glosses.

The Book of Night with Moon (Diane Duane): Grand Central Terminal is a NYC hub for trains... and other means of transit. The wizardly team of cats that maintains the worldgates of Grand Central troubleshoot at a deeper level than their norm. Entertaining and coherent; the themes and plot are well aligned.

Zahrah the Windseeker (Nnedi Okorafor): YA novel; teenage girl with special powers braves the Forbidden Forest to find a fabled cure for her dying friend.

Adorable coming of age story. Light, entertaining, predictable (think fast! Will Zahrah's quest fail and her friend die?), and oh, on another planet with magic (magic?) and lots of plant-based tech. It's a straightforward and not particularly subtle story about exploring and growing into the unknown; I'd recommend it for people looking for YA.

I first ran into Nnedi Okorafor's writing in a short story collection a couple of years ago, and thought the story interesting enough that I wanted more, but my library failed me. Eventually, I remembered ILL. So here is a takeaway thought: explore your own environment, and use ILL early and often.

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee): Childhood classic, which I don't really remember reading. I am now old enough to appreciate Lee's dry sense of humor, but I think I am missing the point, because I don't see what makes this book, above many other books, a literary gem.

Overcoming Underearning: Overcome Your Money Fears and Earn What You Deserve (Barbara Stanny): The phrase "throw the book against a wall" is a custom I generally honor in the breach, especially with library books. This is the second book in all of my 26 years which I have closed, contemplated, and deliberately hurled across the room. I really question financial books which promise to raise your income and lower your weight, and I only regret not throwing this across the room sooner.

Numbers: 5 (+ 1 thrown across the room) total. 2 new, 3 rereads; 4 fiction, 1 (mostly?) nonfiction.

There've been so many good stories about where people were and what they remember about the first moon landing.

Mine is that I didn't get to see it, in spite of having been ten years old at the time. We were on a camping trip, in the Columbia Gorge in Oregon, at a state park not far from Multnomah Falls.

I did hear the landing on the car radio, though.

Oh, and for something almost as good as sitting around the campfire, commodorified has a wonderful "family legends" post going at http://commodorified.livejournal.com/304532.html.

The Thirteen Best Things in Torchwood Children of Earth

Not to be read if you don't want spoilers.

( Day One... )

Z walks and climbs stairs!

You all know the BEST stories.

This is just to say that I crosspost between DW and LJ and generally let the comments fall where they may, but on this occasion I ought to point out that if you read the Family Legends thread only on Dreamwidth you are missing a story about a house, several stories about a variety of wars, one assassination, true love, and families divided and reunited under fascinating circumstances, and if you are reading only on LJ you are missing gangsters, shipwrecks, airplanes, and the one about the goose.