association-list

Unan­nounced vaca­tion. I went on RAGBRAI with some friends, so I was gone for a week. This has taught me a couple of things:

• I need better sun block. The crap that I was using has left me cov­ered in pim­ples and rashes and supremely unhappy, plus I still got burnt a little, though it’s not as bad as it could be.

• For any­thing above 20 miles, I really need to do some­thing about my han­dle­bars. I think that I’m going to have to get a new stem to raise them up a little and move them closer. A lot of hand pain was experienced.

• I think that I’m going to pony up for a Brooks B.17 leather saddle. People were singing their praises, and my saddle isn’t all that com­fort­able past 30 miles or so.

• I need some new pedals, again for the greater dis­tances. I think that I’m going to get a new com­muter bike and trans­fer the egg beat­ers to that one and then get some quat­tros to go on the road bike.

• I need better bike lug­gage. I think that I’m going to put a rack on both bikes and get some pan­niers (some­thing big enough at least to take my laptop and a change of clothes and shoes). It’s all well and good to haul stuff to work in my bag, but there’s really some­thing to be said for real lug­gage for any­thing longer than a couple of miles.

Anyway, enough bike dork­ery. I did do some read­ing on the trip, and I thought that I’d spend some time going over that. I took a lot more things along than I was able to get through, but then, I thought that I was going to be able to read at night and there just wasn’t the time or the energy for that. On the plane to and from, I got through Mr. Dozois’ 23^rd annual col­lec­tion of the year’s best sci­ence fic­tion short sto­ries. I really do love short fic­tion, though I don’t really read enough of it. I need to catch up on all of the stuff that I haven’t read, but then, I have some­thing like 30 unread novels wait­ing as well, so we’ll see what kind of time I can make for all of it. In any case, a few com­ments on each of the sto­ries con­tained (those that I’ve read, at least), to give you a bit of the flavor so that you go out and buy it now like you already should have.

Actu­ally, after about half an hour of writ­ing a little bit about each one, I find that I’m bored with the project. Here’s a short list of the really, really good sto­ries from it that you really shouldn’t miss (because I am a painfully lazy slackass):

• “Cam­ou­flage”, by Robert Reed.
  A Great Ship story. I really like Reed’s stuff.

• “A Case of Con­silience”, by Ken MacLeod.

• “Little Faces”, by Vonda McIn­tyre.
  Quite weird. Grace­fully estab­lishes a very strange set­ting with char­ac­ters who aren’t really any­thing like human, but gets you emo­tion­ally involved in any case.

• “Deus Ex Homine”, by Hannu Rajaniemi.
  I’d never heard of the author before I picked up the Nova Scotia anthol­ogy ear­lier this year. I really liked this one. Look­ing for­ward to hear­ing more from the author.

• “Softly Spoke the Gab­ble­duck”, by Neal Asher.
  A Polity short story, with a gab­ble­duck far from home. Every time I read an Asher novel, I keep read­ing the word gab­ber­duck, which gives me the mental image of some coked out late 90s Eng­lish raver type wear­ing a duck hat. I think that this damp­ens some of the terror, at least for me, some of the terror that Mr. Asher means the gab­ble­duck to inspire.

• “Beyond the Aquila Rift” & “Zima Blue”, by Alas­tair Reynolds.
  Both of his short sto­ries in this col­lec­tion are, to me, indi­ca­tions that Reynolds might be push­ing to hard with the novels. He’s still really good at the short form, which makes me think that if he focused on writ­ing shorter, more eco­nom­i­cal novels, instead of the mas­sive tomes that he’s been push­ing out once per year lately (I’m sure that’s pub­lisher pres­sure more than choice, though), he’d be writ­ing books that I’d be more inter­ested in reading.

• “The Clock­work Atom Bomb”, by Dominic Green.
  Never heard of the author before, but this is an inter­est­ing one, about weapons inspector/​disarmament expert type han­dling some really nasty relic weapons.

• “Gold Moun­tain”, by Chris Rober­son.
  Another entry in his series of sto­ries (lead­ing to a novel, I think) about a world where China never turns inwards, but becomes the leader of the civ­i­lized world, about the con­struc­tion of a space ele­va­tor using Amer­i­can and other for­eign labor around the same time that in our world the rail­roads were get­ting built. All about the human aspects, though as what they’re build­ing really wouldn’t have mat­tered all that much. Affecting.

• “The Ful­crum”, by Gwyneth Jones.
  Jones is almost chan­nel­ing M. John Har­ri­son here, but doing so in her own inim­itable style. Mayhem, weird­ness, hate­ful char­ac­ters and utter despair in the outer reaches of the solar system.

• “Two Dreams on Trains”, by Eliz­a­beth Bear.
  An really great far future snip­pet about art and the lengths to which we’ll go to express ourselves.

• “Burn”, by James Patrick Kelly.
  I bought this a while ago as a stand alone novella. It has its weak­nesses, but it’s a very good story about the choice to remain human in a uni­verse that has def­i­nitely moved right on.

Also read Warpath by Tony Daniel. I really like his short sto­ries and the two other novels of his that I’ve read, Meta­plan­e­tary and Super­lu­mi­nal. This is his first novel, and it shows in a lot of ways. I doesn’t have a lot of the con­fi­dence and panache that he devel­oped later on, and the pacing is quite uneven. Still, enter­tain­ing if you’re a fan. The cover and back copy (and the title! I think that the one word title fad has done on long enough [as an aside, Haldeman’s Cam­ou­flage was orig­i­nally called Sea Change, and was changed for the same rea­sons. I think that was less­ened a little by that alter­ation, but then, I’m one of those weird people who think that titles matter]) are pretty dire. Ahh, the late 80s and early 90s. Things are get­ting better, but it’s very, very slow. Anyway, if you’re a Daniel fan, pick it up, although you’re unlikely to find it unless you have a really good used book­store or you look online. If you’re Tony Daniel, write some more stuff! Look­ing on the inter­net, it seems that all of his projects are stalled at the moment, which is assy. I really liked the first two, and would love to see at least some short fic­tion, but it seems like the man dropped off the face of the Earth in 2003 or so. I hope that he makes a tri­umphant return at some point. It’d be kinda sad if he didn’t, as he was one of the more inter­est­ing up and comers of the last few years.

In other news, it looks like Eliz­a­beth Bear saw my little cap­sule review of her last couple of books. Again, I really should write some­thing longer, at least about Blood & Iron. It really is quite good.