Bruce Sterling’s The Caryatids: How much you’ll enjoy reading The Caryatids depends on how much you’d enjoy listening to Bruce Sterling talk to himself. Because that’s basically what The Caryatids is about. (This is not necessarily selling it short; Bruce’s monologues are endlessly fascinating, both in person and on the printed page.) It’s certainly an improvement over The Zenith Angle, in which, despite the usual array of cool Sterling stuff, it was obvious that his heart wasn’t into the technothriller form. He’s designed the mid-21st century post-disaster setting as a way to explore his core religious belief in Anthropogenic Global Warming, as well as his fascination with ubiquitous computing, Hollywood celebrity, the decay of the nation-state, post-national politics, etc. Unfortunately, the titular characters don’t drive the plot so much as have it acted upon them; they’re viewpoints rather than plot drivers. (This is not a new issue for Bruce: the protagonists of Islands in the Net and Holy Fire (to name but two) function in much the same manner.) If you haven’t already read Distraction and Holy Fire, I’d read those first, but there’s certainly enough here for the average Sterling fan to enjoy. I also find it interesting that the character that sounds and acts the most like Bruce ends up, at novel’s end, hooked up with the most obviously evil character…
Books Read: Bruce Sterling’s The Caryatids
December 2nd, 2009Top Ten Movies of the Last 30 Years
December 1st, 2009So Dwight pointed out this list of the top five films of the last 30 years to me. I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain, but the rest of the list is at least credible. In trying to come up with one myself, I found myself unable to limit it to just five, so here’s the more traditional Top Ten List:
- Brazil
- Schindler’s List
- Heavenly Creatures
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- This is Spinal Tap
- The Incredibles
- The Lord of the Rings (Yeah, I’m counting them as one movie. You got a problem with that, wise guy?)
- The Killing Fields
- The Lives of Others
- Fresh
Honorable mention: Goodfellas, Black Hawk Down, Fargo, Hot Fuzz, The Prestige, Hamlet (the Branagh version), Hard-Boiled, Dead Alive (AKA Braindead), Police Story III: Supercop, Juno, The Empire Strikes Back, Shall We Dance? (original Japanese version), Unforgiven, Blade Runner
Disclaimer: These are all at this particular moment in time, and I’m sure right after I put it up I’ll remember something I forgot to include. Shameless Amazon filthy lucre linkage above (generally to the edition I would get, unless it’s not in print, like some Criterion editions). Some settling may occur. Some body parts may not exist. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
So what are your top ten?
Texas 49, Texas A&M 39
November 26th, 2009Texas survives a shootout against A&M. Rivalry games are frequently closer than the betting line, but Will Muschamp can’t be pleased with a 6-5 (now 6-6) team lighting up his defense for more than 500 yards. Give the Ags credit: they weren’t given a chance going in, but they made a very close game of it. They have some players, especially Jerrod Johnson at QB. But A&M simply gave Colt McCoy too much time to work his magic, and Marquis Goodwin’s 95-yard kickoff return broke the Aggie’s back.
This was only one game, but Texas can’t expect to win a National Championship with defense like that. They have to do a better job against a more dangerous Nebraska team in the Big XII Championship, and then hope they don’t face another mobile quarterback in the National Championship. (Gee, I wonder who that might be?)
On the other hand, Colt McCoy only had a middling good night for him, and the Horns still put up 49 points.
You’ve got to hand it to the Aggies. They’re a young, aggressive team with some real players among their Freshmen and Sophmores. Next year they could be pretty dangerous, especially with Colt going off to whichever NFL team is smart enough to draft him. (God help him if it’s the Raiders.)
The Big XII South could be very interesting next year…
As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly
November 26th, 2009The classic “Turkey Drop” episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, in its entirety, via Hulu.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
The Top Ten Books on my “Books Wanted” List
November 25th, 2009I may have mentioned that I have a large library. I started out collecting “hypermodern” (which in my case meant “post-Neuromancer“) science fiction (with some fantasy and horror works and authors thrown in for good measure), and once I had collected everything I wanted there, I started going after every important post-World War II SF work. That collection is by no means complete, but I’ve made considerable progress toward it.
With that in mind, I recently compiled a list of the top ten hardback first editions on my (considerably larger) want list that I was most interested in picking up. Here it is:
James Blish’s A Case of Conscience (Faber & Faber)Robert E. Howard’s The Sword of Conan (Gnome Press)Robert E. Howard’s The Coming of Conan (Gnome Press)Alfred Bester’s Tiger! Tiger! (Sidgwick & Jackson)- Philip K. Dick’s Dr. Bloodmoney (Gregg Press)
R. A. Lafferty’s With Horns on Their Head (Pendragon Press HB)R. A. Lafferty’s Funnyfingers & Cabrito (Pendragon Press HB)Jack Vance’s Book of Dreams (Underwood/Miller)Manly Wade Wellman’s Giants from Eternity (Avalon)Richard Matheson’s Born of Man and Woman (Chamberline Press)
These are all books that I not only want, but think I have a reasonable shot at picking up at a price I can afford. There are lots of first editions priced like Unobtanium (Stanley G. Weinbaum’s Dawn of Flame, H. P. Lovecraft’s The Outsider and Others, the Unwin-Hyman true firsts of all three books in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, etc.) that i would pick up if I saw cheap, but don’t expect to come across.
Anyway, if you have nice copies any of the above, and if you’re willing to sell it to me considerably cheaper than can be found on Bookfinder.com, drop me an email at lawrenceperson@gmail.com and I’ll consider it.
Today’s Firefox Irritation
November 24th, 2009Opening every window at maximum sizes after I already re-sized every previous one and quit.
Version 3.0.15. (And don’t tell me to go to 3.5.x; I tried that, it was ten times as annoying and it broke FireFTP, which I need, to say nothing of the default restore madness… )
Megan McArdle on Dave Ramsey on Personal Finance
November 23rd, 2009Here’s an interesting article on Dave Ramsey by Megan McArdle. I actually hadn’t heard of Ramsey until fairly recently, but I’ve been following a lot of his ideas (have an emergency fund, pay off debts, etc.) for quite a while. I would say I’m about 70% there, for good or ill. I have a much larger emergency fund, I have a 30-year rather than 15 year fixed mortgage, I have a car loan (though mostly paid off), I pay by credit card and pay off the balance at the end of the month for most purchases rather than paying cash, and I don’t give anywhere near 10% for charity. But over all, this is pretty sound financial advice, especially if you’ve had trouble with debt in the past. I had a little, but less than 1/10th the $100,000 the author racked up in student loans…
Houston Texans vs. Tennessee Titans on MNF
November 22nd, 2009I have been known to watch football upon occasion. (I know, rooting for laundry.) Like most sports fans, I root for my hometown team, in this case Houston, and my alma mater team, the Texas Longhorns. (Who are doing very well indeed behind Colt McCoy this year. Thanks for asking.)
Of course the team I used to root for, the Houston Oilers, doesn’t exist anymore. The Oilers were a hard-nose, blue-collar team whose misfortune it was to have their heyday (late 70s/early-80s) during the reign of another hard-nose, blue-collar team in their division, the Pittsburg Steelers, who would win four Superbowls while the Oilers won squat. And the reason the Oilers never won anything, or made it to the Superbowl is (at least we bitter ex-Oilers fans like to think) due to owner Bud Adams.
After firing the winningest coach in team history and trading football legend Earl Campbell to New Orleans for a sack of doorknobs, Bud wasn’t done tormenting Houston football fans. After getting Houston taxpayers to pony up $67 million for upgrades to the Astrodome, Adams turned around and said that wasn’t enough, and Houston had to build a new football stadium for him. Houston told him where he could stick it. So Adams took his team (and carpetbag) away to Tennessee, where they became the Titans. (Or, as we in Texas like to call them, the Tennessee Traitors). The Titans promptly got to the Superbowl…and lost. The old Bud Adams magic was still alive!
In fact, I wrote a little song to celebrate the occasion:
The Ballad of the Tennessee Titans
(to the tune of “The Beverly Hillbillies”)
Come listen to a story about a man named Bud
Orneriest football owner ever chewed a wad of cud
His Houston Oilers were as bad as they could be
So he loaded up the team and moved out to Tennessee
Nashville that is. Country music. Grand Ole Opry.
In their Houston days the Oilers were a disgrace
When they weren’t breakin’ hearts they just stunk up the place
To con the Nashville rubes, Bud had to change his game
So he sucked in his pride, and gave them a new name.
Titans, that is. Evil giants. Greek myth.
Well come Y2K, and they’re in the title game.
Reverting back to form, the Ex-Oilers come up lame.
Hey Bud, the Superbowl just ain’t where you oughta be!
Next season they’ll be back to mediocrity.
Don’t come back now, ya hear?
Not long after this, Houston gets an expansion franchise, the Houston Texans, who proceed to suck much of the decade. (They’re in the same division as the Indianapolis Colts, the Jacksonville jaguars and, yes, the Titans.) However, after ditching the inconsistent David Carr for Matt Schaub, and firing Dom Capers and putting Gary Kubiak in his place as coach, the Texans have been on the upswing. Meanwhile, the Titans went from having the best record in 2008 to starting the season with six straight losses in 2009.
Which brings up to the present, when the Texans will be playing the Titans on Monday Night Football. This is by no means a slam dunk (pardon the mixed-sport metaphors) for the Texans, since the Titans have won three straight after putting former Longhorn Vince Young in as quarterback. (“Hey, our team is winless and we have an inhumanly gifted quarterback sitting on the bench. Do you think we should play him?”)
It should be a great game…and another chance to humiliate Bud Adams. (Once he gets over the sting of that $250,000 fine for, ah, digital manipulation.)
And Nashville? Bud is YOUR problem now. No backsies…
If you happen to run a Worldcon…
November 19th, 2009…maybe you should consider, oh, I don’t know, actually paying artists the money you owe them? (I know, radical idea. That’s me, clumsily stepping all over fannish tradition…) Because artists, much like writers, really like getting paid the money you owe them. In a timely manner, even.
Just a crazy thought…