What I’ve read this fall

September issue August issue

Okay, it’s been nearly three months since I shared my readings here n the blog, so I’ve got lots to tell you about!

Please note: I will be discussing a plot spoiler for “Childhood’s End”, by Arthur C. Clarke further down in this post. If you don’t want to get spoiled on this fine book, then don’t read past the paragraph on “Castle for Rent.”

“The Gripping Hand,” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I finally finished this in early October. I loved the main thrust of the action within the Mote system, with the Empire expedition running into a new civilization of space-born Moties this time and getting caught in the middle of a war between them. Frankly, the novel could probably have done with less build-up to the point of “OMG a new jump point to Mote system could open up any day now!” and it would have been at least as strong, in my opinion. But I loved reading the build-up anyway.

“Gateway,” by Frederik Pohl. Overall, I really liked this – I liked the concept of humanity discovering strange and temperamental alien ships and heading out to prospect the galaxy in them. I want to read more of the Heechee series by Pohl, and I like a lot of his secondary characters. On the other hand, Robinette Broadhead just pissed me off a lot of the time, and as fun as Sigfrid von Shrink was, I didn’t really feel impressed with the therapy plot thread or Rob’s enormous survivor’s guilt for trying to do the right thing, to sacrifice himself to save his teammates, and getting the timing wrong.

I also had problems with the physics at the end – if you’ve got ships that can somehow circumvent the speed of light, then the event horizon of a black hole isn’t an impassable barrier anymore. I think that the Heechee ships must already cross an event horizon with every trip, so why can’t they get out of the black hole – or if the development of the black hole threw off their targeting, then how could Rob get back home once he passes the event horizon by another means?

Second Campaigner Challenge – Imago? Are you kidding me??

I’m getting tired of challenges with ridiculously obscure requirements.

This is a picture of a cicada imago emerging. Isn’t that really gross? Just looking at it gives me the screaming jeebies.

For thousands of years, people thought that diseases were caused by miasma – foul or unclean air. This theory has been around for longer than we’ve had written records, and only got debunked after John Snow proved that cholera was spread through infected water, not through the air.

Lacuna was a minor character in Piers Anthony’s Xanth series – twin sister of Hiatus, (whose name basically means the same thing, a gap,) with the talent of making print appear. Eventually, she managed to get a major role in ‘Question Quest’, saved Magician Humphrey from Hell, and got her life retroactively changed to include a happy marriage and kids as a reward.

I remember reading an old speculative science fiction short story about what life would be like if the principle of causality in the universe was suddenly replaced with synchronicity – the idea that simmilar things happen at the same time.

So, that’s my answer to the challenge. Isn’t all of this boring? It’s enough to make me oscitate.