Anders Monsen

Lost worlds and ports of call

Author: Anders Monsen (Page 48 of 82)

Traipsing through olden times

August 19, 2008 /

I used to average reading 100-150 books a year. A middling amount, maybe, as some people never read a book and others read probably far more than this number of volumes. Though that number dipped for a while, I’ve probably ready between 1000 and 2000 books in the past two decades. Far from all are science fiction. Still, I’d be the first to admit there are far more sf books out there that I have NOT read, so I try to catch up on some of these every year.

Not sure if 1987 can be considered olden times, but 1965 predates me and so I say it qualifies.

I just finished reading David Brin’s The Uplift War, which is the third volume in his Uplift series. I read some other Brin novels in the 1980s, early 1990s, but none of the Uplift books. I do have the tendency to pick up new series in the middle or end, and then work my way backwards, so now I need to check if I have the first two books in the series and seek them out. There were times I skipped ahead, but overall I enjoyed the book.

I’m in the early stages of H. Beam Piper’s Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, which is another book that’s been in my shelves for many, many years. I keep meaning to read it, but never get around to it. Already in the first 50 pages, hell, the first 10 pages, I can see that this book deeply influenced L. Neil Smith’s novel, The Probability Broach. Good stuff also so far, but of a different cut altogether from the Brin book.

Blaylock interview

August 13, 2008 /

I discovered the fiction of James P. Blaylock back in 1989 around the time of my first science fiction convention, ArmadilloCon, which is held in Austin, Texas every year. Along with Blaylock, that year I started reading books by Tim Powers, K.W. Jeter, Charles de Lint, Lewis Shiner, Joe Lansdale, Bruce Sterling, and Dan Simmons. Twenty years later some of these writers are fairly established and famous, others not so much, but Blaylock and Powers stand above the rest in my eyes.

I liked the early Blaylock more so than his later fiction. While he started off quirky and light-hearted, his later books seemed darker and far more introspective. I am eagerly awaiting his latest novel, which will appear in Demember 2008. Meanwhile, the sf review site Fantasy BookSpot has posted a brief interview with Blaylock, which fans of his fiction, or people unaware of his books, may find interesting.

Half a loaf of WorldCon

August 11, 2008 /


I’ve attended three full WorldCon’s, but I don’t think I can count last week’s Denvention as my fourth, since I was at the con for only a few hours. I had never been to Colorado aside from layovers at the Denver airport, so the plan was to remedy that with a few days in Colorado Springs followed by some time in Denver. Along the way I would attend the LFS Prometheus Awards at the World Science Fiction Convention, and meet up with some people I had not seen in a decade or more. In the Springs we did a little bit of sightseeing, including climbing two sets of stairs at Seven Falls. I thought I was in decent shape, but after step number 40 out of 185, I could feel the burn in my legs, along with being out of breath and panting from the accelerated heart rate. Perhaps it was the altitude… I then failed to learn my lesson and climbed the other sets of stairs (in the photo), which went higher and followed the seven small falls. I did not see any bears or mountain lions aside from in the news and at the zoo, but was impressed by the wonderful scenery.

We drove back to Denver on Wednesday, and I rode over to the convention center. A large blue bear stood outside, gazing in at the tasty humans inside. After a long walk to find the registration table, I signed up for a one day membership, which granted me the right to see stuff for that day, plus a photo copy of the program for that week. I was not sure about the usefulness of seeing what was happening Thursday through Sunday, aside from telling me what I would miss. I noted the room and time for the Prometheus Awards, and headed up to the dealer’s room. There I ran into L. Neil Smith and Scott Bieser, manning the Big Head Press table. After chatting with them briefly I wandered around the anemic room for a while before heading to the location for the awards. I attended DragonCon in 1995, and the WorldCons from 1996 through 1998, and the number of dealers as well as selection has declined considerably since then. Most tables featured dealers who sold new books, which sad to say I can get cheaper online. It was rare to find dealers with a good selection of out of print books, and I walked out without making a single purchase, which is rare for me.

Initially I sat far in the back of the room, as the panel prior still had a few aisle-talkers. Once they cleared out I moved up, and then over some more for a better camera angle. Jo Walton appeared, followed by Harry Turtledove. Fred Moulton from LFS and Fran Van Cleave arrived and started setting up, then with little preamble launched into the presentation. Cheryl Morgan (formerly of the Emerald City fanzine) was there to take pictures for the awards web-site she co-manages. A funny moment occurred after the presentation. Morgan requested that the winners stand by a side wall, to which Turtledove quipped that “the libertarians are lining us up against the wall.” Morgan replied, “I am not a libertarian.” I suppose libertarians do not line people up against walls after all. Both the winners thanked the LFS and mentioned the reasons for their works, which dealt with people rebelling in various ways against variants of communism and fascism. A full convention report will appear in the Fall issue of Prometheus, as the Summer issue currently is at the printer, after getting some last minute photos dropped into the second page.

I chatted briefly with a couple of the LFS people, met a few people for the first time, and enjoyed being in the audience instead of presenting or organizing. I then headed back upstairs for another round through the dealers’ room, and another long chat with Smith and Bieser. I could not make the LFS dinner that night, but did enjoy a small dinner the following night with a handful of people. I ended up spending only half a day at the WorldCon, as I was in town with the family and wanted to see more of the area. I hope to return to Colorado and spend more time there, as it’s a great place and I know there is far more I want to see of that area.

I used to enjoy going to panels and listening to sf people talk, but this year I did not see one panel, and I felt somewhat removed from the whole experience. I would like to visit Montreal, but the kids are still too young to enjoy that place, and I find it difficult to split time between the conference and family. Perhaps the next time the WorldCon is in America it might be different. I believe that might not be until 2011, as 2010 is in Australia.

Wrapped up Prometheus content

August 2, 2008 /

Thursday night I finished writing the first draft of my final review for the Summer Prometheus issue. There’s a lot of good stuff from other contributors, but I had one last obligation that needed to get written.

I was hoping to get this done a week ago, but other things interfered. As I’m heading to Colorado next week, I won’t have time to finish the final edits before WorldCon, but the newsletter will be in the mail the week after WorldCon.

As always, I am looking for reviews, essays, letters, etc. for Prometheus so please feel free to contact me if you are interested.

Mucking about in Drupal Again

July 26, 2008 /

I’m exciting about new potential project dealing with sf reviews online. The structure will be based on Drupal, an open source CMS driven site that uses PHP and MySQL. I looked into Drupal a little over a year ago, built a small site and test-drove the application. Nothing came out of that effort, but now I have some incentive to take another look. I download version 6.3 (it was 5.x when I last tried), installed it and now I need to a refresher on all the aspects of Drupal. Time to stretch the brain.

WALL-E

July 26, 2008 /

I finally saw the movie WALL-E. I like almost everything Pixar has made, even their older short films. I regret they are so tightly connected to the Disney corp, which is an entity that has forgotten how to make good movies. Much has been made of WALL-E‘s attack on consumerism, and the irony that WALL-E and EVE merchandise is everywhere – buy, buy, buy! I went with my five year old daughter, so I tried to watch it from her perspective as well. The lack of dialog, which I thought would be problematic, did not hinder the story.

There were some sf inside jokes that she didn’t get (ie. the auto-pilot’s resemblance to HAL), but the movie snagged her on an emotional level since she expressed great concern for the fate of WALL-E, asking fearfully if he would be restored to his “old self” again after being crushed on the Axiom. She also asked about all the garbage on the planet and why the people were so fat, but whether the director and writer was trying to make a political point, or just contrasting humans with robots, I’m not sure. Life in space does alter bone structure, but the humans 700 years later certainly looked and acted a lot like American tourists at DisneyWorld. (News stories about over-weight people in other countries usually terms this an American-like problem.)

I did wonder about Andrew Stanton’s lack of understand of economic reality and theory, if he thought that one company – Buy n Large – could take over the world through consumerism. Was this a veiled attack on Wal-Mart? Success does not always sustain a company, and who knows if Wal-Mart will exist some years from now. Also, not every individual is a slave to trinkets, though they are often shiny and tempting.

I also wondered how the humans could be surprised when their screens vanished, and yet still procreate. Did the space ship artificially implant the women and deliver the babies without anyone catching on? Still, it was an entertaining film, very touching, and certainly one of Pixar’s better efforts. I always wonder how they pull it off. When I watched the previews for Finding Nemo and Cars, I thought, “Who could make a movie about fish or talking race cars?” But it worked. I ought to know; I watched Finding Nemo 200 times or more after my daughter got hooked on it, and we thought DVDs were better options than TV shows.

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