October 2012 reading

Leviathan Wakes or bust!

I'm currently reading Existence by David Brin.

War and space was very weak as a collection. Now reading The testament of Jessie Lamb, the Arthur C. Clarke Award winner.

Just read Adrift on the Sea of Rains by Ian Sales and it was a great short story! I liked the detail of the technical aspects of an earth lunar flight, with the math and chemistry {unable to corroborate the authenticity of either but it sounds good!}. It would have made a great episode of the Twilight Zone with its lesson about impulsiveness.

I am also reading the Game of Thrones books which says it is sf on the cover somewhere. It is nice world building but can also be described as a collage of other works such as Tolkien's Ring series which he explains was an inspiration. I have yet to see the film version but that could go on forever considering the plots and subplots of the books so far.

Still reading Use of Weapons by Ian Banks. I'm finding it a bit scattered, due to the approach of simultaneously followed several different threads at different time periods in the same character's life, interwoven chapter by chapter. It's a neat trick, but I'm not sure how effective it's been and I'm still 3/4 of the way into it. It's starting to feel more like Consider Phlebas and less like The Player of Games. Maybe the ending will make turn it around.

>5 brightcopy: the ending is a doozy.

Reading Dark Currents courtesy of Member Giveaways.

Just started The Food of the Gods.

Reading Broken Angels, I enjoyed Altered Carbon for the most part so I'm giving the sequel a shot

The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis, part 2 in the Milkweed Tryptich. Just finished it - a terrific second act in the series.

#4 Glad you liked it :-) And the maths and physics are definitely accurate - I spent months researching them to make sure. (Some might think that reading The Apollo Guidance Computer just so I can figure out which program the Lunar Module would need to launch from the lunar surface as described in Adrift on the Sea of Rains is taking research too far... but I'm sad like that.)

Currently reading Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock....

>8 artturnerjr:: Oh. I could only manage meatballs and pasta last night.

(Sorry.)

I just finished Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews, and have picked up The Corpse-Rat King by Lee Battersby to read next.

>13 RobertDay:

If you keep that up, you'll soon be known as the Henny Youngman of Science Fiction Fans. :D

I've reviewed a novella, Seven for a Secret by Elizabeth Bear, in my thread...post #205.

It's the sequel to a short-story collection set in an alternative reality where the Prussian Empire controls 1938 London, and the future freedom of England depends on an elderly forensic sorceress and an even older wampyr.

#11 Iansales

The PDF version of Adrift on the Sea of Rains was a bit awkward for me because of how the words are sometimes out of sight and have to be scrolled to on a seemingly blank page {I have no e reader} but I really liked being able to highlight a word, right click on it and then click for the definition and an audio pronunciation of the word popping up on a separate screen. If e readers do that I might keep an eye open for a used one at some time.

#17 by @DugsBooks> I don't know about "separate screen", but I know the Kindle has a standard highlight for definition feature built-in. No pronunciations, though. The new Kindle has a feature called "X-ray", which is described here as: "The new X-ray feature takes things a step further. Clicking on it will bring up a list of proper names, including characters, historical figures and places. It brings up a timeline illustration letting you know how often the name appears in the book viewable by page, chapter and the full text. Clicking on a character name will offer up a biography. Clicking on, say, the name of a historical figure, however, will pull up its Wikipedia entry. The entries, interestingly, aren't accessible over wireless, but are instead located in a side file that's downloads when you buy the book."

Being a separate file has its pluses and minuses. I would think that would make it pretty limiting to old books that were published before the feature or new ones that aren't Kindle-specific or don't bother with the file. No idea if it has any functionality in those cases.

From a publisher's perspective, I like PDF because it fixes my design - my page layout and my choice of typeface. Ereader files allow the reader to size and resize the font, and usually only have fixed number of common typefaces. They're basically just really long scrollable webpages from about ten years ago.

I put in for the members giveaway for Adrift on the Sea of Rains. It sounds very good, and something that I would probably like. I don't have an ereader although I can read epubs and pdf's on the laptop.

Still working on Under the Moons of Mars and heading towards the finish. Mixed bag. Some of the authors get it and some don't. I'm speculating, but some of the authors have appeared in editor John Joseph Adams other anthologies and they may not have been the best candidates for pastiche and whatever with Barsoom. Several of the stories are quite enjoyable however. Even the weaker ones have their moments with the exception of Peter Beagle's epic fail.

#19 by @iansales> As someone who reads on an e-reader occasionally, I have to disagree on just about every point. Your choice of typeface as an author is much less important to me as my choice of typeface as a reader. Also, PDFs can not be easily reformatted for better flowing.

I received At the Mouth of the River of Bees as an ER e-book. I still have barely read it because dealing with the pdf on an e-reader is just so awful. Tiny font, black on white background which can't be changed and thus makes it unusable for reading in bed with a spouse/child trying to sleep. One pdf page won't all fit on one page of the iPad so I get to pan around it like I'm on some PC. Can't read it at all on the Kindle Touch (tried the PDF conversion but it came out garbage).

Yes, e-reader files are basically like webpages. But that's a good thing. HTML was primarily about a flexible markup format that adjusted to different types of displays and could be changed by the end-user to fit their needs and disabilities. To readers this stuff really only substantially matters in a tiny subset of cases like Bester's The Demolished Man.

On the other hand, PDF for an e-book is much like making your website a Flash app.

>3 AlanPoulter:

Finished The testament of Jessie Lamb in record time. A brattish narrator, 'Dad' being used for info dumps on the state of the global 'crisis', which always over-stretches belief, and a general lack of any decent prose made this a total dud for me. Next up is The highest frontier which hopefully will keep me reading longer...

As the designer of the book, I chose typefaces for a particular effect. I lay out the page in a particular way for the same reason. Ereaders undo those. It's like making a colour picture black-and-white. You lose some of the significance. In Adrift on the Sea of Rains, I used layout to distinguish the sections, but on a Kindle that distinction is lost. Luckily I didn't use any typographical tricks, or I'd have been in real trouble.

Incidentally, Rocket Science had footnotes in several of its pieces, but ebooks can't handle that - they can only put footnotes at the end of the entire document. Useless.

Oh, I understand the limitations, all right. But everything has limitations and making them PDFs is one of the most limiting choices you can make for e-readers. It's also the most limiting choice you can make in terms of sales or readership. I know I'll never bother entering an ER again for a PDF e-book. I'll also never buy one if there's no choice for a true e-reader version.

I don't think I specified in my giveaway a particular format. The book's available as PDF, mobi and epub. Dug asked for PDF. It's just that as the creator of the book, I prefer the control I get over the finished product that a PDF file gives me. And until ereaders allow me that level of control, I won't consider the technology mature.

#25 by @iansales> Well, as long as you're providing mobi and epub I think you're doing the right thing. It's not that I don't understand your point, it's just that I think you have to pick the right format for the situation. As Dug's experience shows, PDFs can be a poor experience even when not on e-readers.

I think eventually e-book formats will catch up on some things like footnotes. But I never want them to "catch up" by forcing an author's/publisher's typeface and layout (margins, column width, etc.) over what I the reader find to be better for reading.

Ian, I requested your story on the members giveaway as well. Just to put my own two cents in, based on very limited exposure, physical books are much superior to Kindles and Nooks, but I was pretty sure you didn't want to ship a book to me in the US (if I were to be chosen) so ebooks do have a few advantages.

Being able to carry hundreds of books in your hand is the other advantage I can think of. I have carried hundreds of books before but it was in boxes and they weren't light. :-)

In an attempt to clarify a bit; the words I clicked on in the pdf generated another screen, while connected to the internet, to umm... webster.com or some such which had a definition and an audio pronunciation when you mashed the button. I found the type face very legible with the fonts bold faced etc. for flashbacks & thoughts quickly understandable. I read on a desktop computer but I think it would work as well for my laptop.

I own a small amount of apple stock so I recommend two ipads side by side to enhance the experience. ;-)

Just started Rule 34 and I wish that I had seen the review posted here on 9/16/12 before I bought it. I was looking for a quick easy read for a change of pace. Multiple characters all using the 2nd person in British/Scottish vernacular is not at all what I was looking for. I hope that I enjoy it anyway.

#28 Yes please buy more iPads. Although I also own a small amount of Apple stock I can't afford to buy one. However if my retirement plan works out (which is to wait until Apple stock hits $20,00 a share, then sell) I might be able to. So, keep buying please.

>29 vwinsloe: It took me about 1/4 of the way through the book to deal with the 2nd person POV. While I think that the story would have been better in a more "conventional" style, I got used to it. (Same with the Scottish slang/accents). Pretty good book.

Started The Algebraist, Iain M. Banks. Been a little while since I read any of his work (Matter was the last one). I forgot how intentionall wordy the guy is, especially with titles.

#32 LOL

Thanks #31, I'm about 60 pages in now and it is maybe just starting to work for me. I'll keep going.

Actually liked Algebraist quite a bit myself...

I enjoyed The Algebraist a lot, but I'm keeping quiet about that lest I influence Goran's thoughts on the book.

Not fiction but I did finish up From the Pen of Paul (B+).

Just started The Ascendant Stars. It opens with a recap of the first two books, a dramatis personae, a glossary and a prologue. Way to go, Mike.

Does it have a pronunciation key? I think Banks should be forced to start including them.

The thing to remember is that in all sf novels the apostrophe should be pronounced like a raspberry.

:D

#40 Nice one, Ian.

Victor Borge and phoenetic punctuation!

Along the same line, an exclamation point should be a "pop" sound when used in names...

>44 johnnyapollo:: As in the Joe Haldeman short, 'A !tangled web", which is all about interstellar translators and a race called the !tang. It can be found the the collection Dealing in futures and Haldeman talks about the glottal stop in the afterword to the story.

To move away from the pops and whistles of recent messages I'm currently reading Hide Me Among The Graves by Tim Powers

I have started reading Fear Index. It will be a quick read because I have just received The Hydrogen Sonata and I want to get on to that as soon as possible.

I'm finding Anathem slow-going, although I can't say I wasn't warned. I'm only about 70 pages in, though, and I hear that it speeds up after page 100-ish. The made up words are making my head hurt.

The made up words were the best part for me because they gave me a new look at familiar concepts, without all the conceptual baggage of the words I know.

Unfortunately for you, I don't think that part gets better :)

#48

The this I enjoyed about Anathem were:

- the irony of a monastic treatment of secular knowledge
- Dax's rake

and some of the other concepts Stephenson explores.

Finished Helliconia Spring now onto The Hydrogen Sonata.

Finished The Use of Weapons. Here's my review:

http://www.librarything.com/work/141/reviews/89435744

While the ending is quite a payoff, I felt that a lot of the story leading up to it is a bit too scattershot. The book tells the story of the main character by alternating between several different time periods in his life. I took less than a month to read the book; if I had read it over a longer period of time I feel like I might have easily lost the various threads. And this would be a shame due to the ending. These threads also effected the pacing. They made it difficult to really feel much of a plot building as the book progressed. I can understand the effect the author was going for, but I don't think it was completely successful. That said, persevering to the end makes up for a lot of these shortcomings. (3.5 stars)

Reading The Forever war in the "definitive" edition which has a different (the original) middle in the story and adds perhaps 25% to the length of the novel. It is better than I thought it would be.

FYI to those who have an audible account: Brandon Sanderson's new novella Legion which is just out from Subterranean Press is currently available as a free audible audiobook.

Finished Spin and really enjoyed it. I'm now reading Implied Spaces and listening to Angelmaker.

#54

Hi, bj. Who is the reader on Angelmaker?

The Quiet War by Paul McAuley.

Started The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross. Needed some humor.

#55 - the reader is Daniel Weyman and I'm really enjoying his reading. The story is pretty good too! I have no idea what genre I would put this book in, though.

#58 I haven't come across Daniel Weyman before, but he seems to have won awards for his book reading and has appeared in several well thought of shows. I must keep an eye out for him.

I'm not surprised you are having difficulty slotting the book into a particular genre. I would suggest you stop trying and just enjoy the ride.

Reading Shockball by S. L. Viehl...

I've reviewed Elizabeth Bear's short wampyr novel, The White City, over in my thread...post #142.

This series might be the best modern vampire books I've read.

Now reading Venus of Dreams by Pamela Sargent from the look of it a colonization of Venus book.

I picked up the Humble ebook Bundle group of DRM free pay-what-you-like ebooks. One of my favorites and a couple from my wish list on there!

Humble eBook Bundle

I got:

Signal to Noise by Neil Gaiman
Old Man's War by John Scalzi
Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow
Pump Six by Paolo Bacigalupi
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
Invasion: Book One of the Secret World Chronicle by Mercedes Lackey
Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

I finished Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds. I now see why many compared this book with 2312. And like 2312, this book had a lot of the same problems and weaknesses. Ultimately, I felt both books were rather sophomoric efforts.

>64 beniowa: sophomoric efforts...

Can you recommend some masterful efforts of writing in this sub-sub-genre to give me some perspective? Thanks!

#64

Whilst Blue Remembered Earth has weaknesses I think these are different weaknesses to 2312.

Blue Remembered Earth is the first of a series, and a number of its weaknesses are due to that. It is quite clearly setting the stage for what is to follow, and a lot of the book is an entertaining romp, almost a combination sightseeing tour / history lesson. It has in essence quite a simplistic structure.

2312 on the other hand is the reverse of that. It's structure is more complex and for much of it the plot doesn't seem as if will ever coalesce, although I didn't care much as the backdrop and characters were so stunning.

Yes, in both cases the main plot strand is somewhat weak, however I think in both cases that plot strand is merely an enabler for the real ideas that the authors wanted explore.

I just started reading Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds, the Kindle edition. I'm reading it on a Nook Color, that I modified so that its basically a generic Android tablet. Alastair Reynolds is one of my favorite authors, but I'm a bit skeptical about this book, given the comments above. Thanks @beniowa and @andyl for the info!

I liked Blue Remembered Earth, not as much as I liked 2312, but I liked its plausibility and the Solar System Al describes. The plot is a bit of a by-the-numbers quest, which is a bit of a lazy way of getting your protagonist to all the places you want to describe, and one section brings back bad memories of Terminal World, but there's still a lot to like in the book. Btw., keep an eye open for the This Island Earth homage.

Just finished The Ascendant Stars, the final book in Mike Cobley's Humanity's Fire trilogy. I have to admit the trilogy started better than it ended. There was so much going on that great chunks of plot were dismissed in a single page. One character had a tendency to tell itself what was going on, for which the author needs to be slapped (but at least he didn't use "youngling" again). I think the book suffered from the decision to make the conflict which had driven the previous two books a feint for the Really Big Battle, which meant things got too compressed in order to get everything set up in time.

I am 44 pages into The Hydrogen Sonata and am enjoying it so far.

Although I posted in last month's thread that I was starting The Golden Globe by John Varley, I didn't actually start it after all. So a month later, I will definitely start reading it on the train home from work.

I am rereading Altered Carbon after finding a paperback copy for less than $1.00 Does anyone else keep getting flashes of The Big Sleep movie with Bogart and Carmen {Martha Vickers} from the characters of Kovacs and the rich guys wife in Carbon? In the Big Sleep Carmen is in a tennis outfit when they first meet as in Carbon.



On the way in, he meets one of the General's two alluring and sexy daughters, the younger, troubled, errant, thumb-biting, frequently doped-up nymphomaniacal heiress Carmen (Martha Vickers), wearing a white polka-dot miniskirt. He notices her legs after she descends the stairs. Capriciously, she tells him:

Carmen: You're not very tall, are you?
Marlowe: Well, I, uh, I try to be.
Carmen: Not bad looking. Oh you probably know it. (while twirling and biting a lock of her hair)
Marlowe: Thank you.
Carmen: What's your name?
Marlowe: Reilly. Doghouse Reilly.
Carmen: That's a funny kind of name.
Marlowe: You think so.
Carmen: Uh, uh. What are you? A prizefighter?
Marlowe: No, I'm a shamus.
Carmen: What's a shamus?
Marlowe: It's a private detective.
Carmen: You're making fun of me.
Marlowe: Uh, uh.
Carmen (she leans back and falls into his arms, throwing herself at him): You're cute.

::edit:: oops! above quote from : http://www.filmsite.org/bigs.html

> #65, psybre

I just meant that it didn't feel as either author was bringing their A-game.

> #66, andyl

Yeah, you are right about that. I guess I was mainly referring to the fact that both books disappointed me.

>71 DugsBooks:

Martha Vickers is ridiculously sexy in that movie.

***

I started reading "The Repairer of Reputations" by Robert W. Chambers for our Weird Tradition discussion group (http://www.librarything.com/groups/theweirdtradition). I was under the impresssion that it was a more-or-less standard late-19th-century weird/horror story, but it actually starts out like a "set-in-the future-which-is-now-the past" SF tale (think 2001: A Space Odyssey (is there a word or term for that sort of story?)). Anyway, very much intrigued at this point.

finished up We all Died at Breakaway Station as a followup to my Forever War read. Did not live up to my hopes for it. Excellent story but the writing is pretty dated and weak at times.

Now reading Alexei Panshin's Rite of Passage. This is one of those books I heard about decades ago as a great book but never read until now.

Hmmm. ........Can Little Nemo be classified as SF? Google has a nice tribute to the author, Winsor McCay today 10/15/12

https://www.google.com/


After today you can probably track it down at "Googles Doodles" http://www.google.com/doodles/finder/2012/All%20doodles

#75 by @DugsBooks> Is that part of your October reading? ;)

Even though I'm still working my way through it, Little Nemo in Slumberland - So Many Splendid Sundays is still one of my favorite books in my library. I really need to put more time into it.

I wish I had read Nemo's adventures when I was a kid- I would have flipped out over the stories I am sure. The illustrations are superb, I wonder if they were influenced by the era or defined it, and the concept of making it all a dream creates a safe zone for kids I guess. Was he ever guilty of racism or sexism I wonder.

Reminds me of Peter Max for some reason.

I read a lot of Nemo (and really old Peanuts) when I was in elementary school. My brothers and I would hang out at the public library after school for a couple of hours until my mom got off work. I spent the days roaming the stacks. A Nemo collection was one of the many treasures I would get lost in.

And yes, there was quite a bit of racism. It's one of those "he was a product of his times" kind of thing, which is just a polite way of saying "he was just as racist as everyone else." I can't really say much in the way of sexism but it's probably there as well. It's a little harder to say since it's all in the context of dreams.

I just finished Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children by Greg Bear. Since I'm an infectious disease researcher, the epidemiological aspects kept me interested but I didn't really have strong positive or negative feelings about either one. They really read more like medical thrillers which was a turn-off for me.

I am going to start Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? tonight.

I give up on The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross. I just can't get into his writing style. I was really interested in it based on the summary, though. But then I started reading it and he packs in stuff like "palm pilot", "treo" "tablet PC", "screensaver", etc. about every other sentence. It felt both really dated and even if it wasn't I feel like it would still have taken me a bit out of the story. The writing just felt cramped and forced. I see it has an average of about 4 stars, so maybe he's just not my style. Or maybe it's because people like me who drop out so early won't be writing a review or rating it...

Moving on to Heretics of Dune.

>80 brightcopy:. I agree with you about Stross. I just finished Rule 34 and I really disliked the writing style. Love his plot and character ideas, but his books don't live up to their promise for me.

80>. It was published 6 years ago so the tech is authentic. For me the series is tired and needs ending.

#82 by @AlanPoulter> Oh, I'm not quibbling about the tech being authentic at the time. My point was that it became quickly dated. And it was doomed to become so from the moment the words were written. There's just no reason to go into that level of specificity. Why say "I pulled out my Treo" and not just say "I pulled out my smartphone"? And "she had a palm pilot two revisions out of date" when you can say "she had a PDA two revisions out of date"? Though I guess you could even say the term "PDA" is a bit dated, too, but not as much as the others. It's funny that the "tablet PC" reference is so dated that some people may not even realize it and think it's a reference to an iPad!

83>

I just reread it a couple months ago, actually, and didn't have a problem. For me, the tech dates it so specifically that it was very easy to read it as "This is set explicitly and specifically in 2006" rather than "This is set in the amorphous Now and is showing its age".

#84 by @lorax> Yeah, I can see that. I'm still trying to put my finger on why it bugs me so much. I think it may just be the sheer amount he crams in there. It's not just a reference here or there, it's entire paragraphs chocked full of stuff I still have in a box downstairs because I never throw stuff away.

Of course, maybe it helps that it's a reread. When did you originally read it?

I've found some of Charles Stross's books really good and others not so good. The last one I read was The Jennifer Morgue and I struggled to finish it but I really enjoyed Glasshouse.

I finished listening to Angelmaker and loved it and also finished reading Implied Spaces but thought it was just ok.

I've started reading Freehold and I don't know if I'm going to be able to go the distance with this one. It's not very interesting at the moment, doesn't seem to be going anywhere and it's 400 pages long.

I've only read Glasshouse and I thought the first half was interesting... and then it turned into a dull and unoriginal action/adventure.

I do have Singularity Sky and Halting State on the TBR, but I've never been a big fan of his fiction, even back before he got his first novel contract...

85>

It was a SantaThing gift in 2007, so I would have read it for the first time in early 2008.

Reading Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear. Definately a different spin on the SciFi I've been reading the last few months. Very refreshing!

Picked up The Twelve, Justin Cronin's sequel to The Passage.

The beginning is a little rough and pretty pointed exposition, but it picks up from there. Cronin is the sort of author who's engaging enough in his writing that I get quite caught up in it in the moment.

Finishing up Eternity Row by S.L. Viehl (she's really, really starting to get irritating to me) and probably won't read any more in this series - I'm something of a completist (aren't we all?) and wanted to strike this series (Stardoc) off the list. I got Justin Cronin's The Twelve yesterday and will start that one next.

Wrapped up Redshirts (B+) yesterday evening; not quite as good as anything in the "Old Man's War" books, but the codas make up for this.

Finished Rapture, the third book in the Bel Dame Apocrypha by Kameron Hurley. Thought it had a few pacing issues so I didn't like it quite as much as Infidel, but it was still quite good. I don't think there are any more books planned for this universe for now. Nevertheless, I'll definitely be picking up whatever the author writes next.

I gave up on Freehold when I realised it was 500 pages not 400. I moved on to The Player of Games by Iain Banks and it's much better, unsurprisingly.

I have managed to start The Golden Globe and my latest challenge from the Go Review That Book! group is to read and review The Darfsteller and Other Stories so I am reading that too. The Golden Globe and The Darfsteller have a theatrical theme in common.

#80 brightcopy & others aka The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross. Do you think there is any chance all that name brand specific chatter was product placement? Has anyone "monetized" their work in this manner that you know of? {I have not read any of his work to my knowledge}

96>

That's rather a horrific conclusion to leap to based on zero evidence, I think.

#97 I stand corrected Lorax, I will just sip my Starbucks coffee and finish my Krispy Kreme doughnut in quiet admonishment . ;-)

#96 Hi, Dug.

I know Charlie and he is an incurable geek. He is what the marketeers would describe as an "early adaptor" and he buys the newest gadget as soon as it appears (if he can afford it at the time). He also likes to include his latest technology in his writing.

While he earns his money from his writing he would never go along the path of product placement. He's very geekish and he will often blog about his latest purchases and how he has succeeded or failed in achieving some technical endeavour. Given that his blog and his livejournal contain many curses and damnations about the technology he uses (stemming from the "failed" endeavours) it would not be consistent with his receiving payment for product placement.

I think he's just trying to keep his stories up-to-date with the latest technology which, given the recent rapid pace of technological innovation and advancement, leaves his stories dated in a relatively short period of time. There would be nothing more sinister than that.

#96

It wasn't product placement. It is the same technique that Fleming used for his Bond novels. Similarly Stieg Larsson obsesses over Apple products in The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo.

There have been a few cases of product placement. I think that very few SF authors have enough of a market to be attractive enough for real product placement (involving money) - that would be reserved for big name thriller writers or chick-lit.

Cathy's Book by Sean Stewart was changed to include a reference to a particular brand (after galley stage) in exchange for promotion on a website targeted at the book's core audience - teen girls.

#98 I see what you did there. How much did you get for mentioning Lorax's name?

;)

>96 DugsBooks: et al.

Stephen King uses brand names all the time in his fiction, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't need any extra bread he would get from product placement. :)

#99 and others, Glad to hear that paid product placement is rare in writing. On TV, for example, in Kiefer Sutherland's new series Touch, the product placement is as painful as I have ever witnessed. Prolonged scene freezes on stuff etc which leave little to doubt about its intent. Kiefer is a great actor who can still make series work but it detracts from the experience.

If it wasn't for product placement diamonds would not have acquired the perceived value they have. In the early days of movies when the hero gave the heroine a diamond necklace or bracelet they were generally donated to the producer by de Biers. It was generally the producer or director got to keep them after the filming.

To this day the value of diamonds is controlled by the producers limiting or relaxing the supply.

Well, not just product placement. The diamond story involves that and a lot more marketing and advertising strategies (plus their (now former) monopoly control of the diamond market).

Trivia: The "Rhodes" in "Rhodes scolar" is Cecil Rhodes, founder of De Beers.

I remember watching a documentary about the diamond trade and how GE Super Abrasives was supposed to break the de Beers monopoly. It concluded by showing the prices released by the two companies on the same day. They were identical.

#105 Also Cecil Rhodes was the inspiration for the name Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

You're bringing me back to my years as a child watching the news and hearing about the Rhodesian UDI and then the civil war, etc...

The diamond trade was also the plot of one of my favorite Clive Cussler novels, whose title escapes me now. Someone cornered the market on other precious gems, which are much rarer than diamonds and then flooded the market with diamonds destroying their value. I'm sure there was a plot for either world domination or destruction involved as well, but it was fun and actually semi-educational on precious gems.

Nibbling away at The New Space Opera anthology by Dozois and Strahan from a few years ago. Only read the first six storiies so far and I'm under-impressed.

Here's a bit of trivia ... Ken MacLeod's short story "Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" is in here (haven't read it yet) and in this proof edition the page headers for the story show it as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf 359?"

Now reading The Twelve by Justin Cronin

Sadly, in spite of high hopes fading as the pages turned and in the teeth of my own increasing sense of doom, I went on to finish a debut space opera, Leviathan Wakes, though in many ways I wish I hadn't. Go see my review in my thread...post #221.

I hated Leviathan Wakes too, because it was regressive. It read like something written in the 1970s, with a white male US future, bog-standard sf spaceships, and a plot that depended on an executive behaving like the biggest mass murderer in history.

Which, of course, no executive would ever do.

Well, no. Not even a VP of Goldman-Sachs would murder 1.5 million people just to see if there were any profit to be made in it. And this is not in a political system or society in which such a decision might be seen as acceptable - eg, Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany. This is in a twenty-second century colonised Solar System.

Can't we just reference the last discussion on this and call it good? ;)

I've certainly had enough of the book. It was shit. Moving on...

"It is not true that we were planning to give all staff lobotomies." ("At least, not at the price we were offered.") (Scott Adams)

I'm rereading The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

Finished The Rapture of the Nerds (A) over lunch.

Just crossed the halfway point with Anathem, and I'm finally getting into the swing of it. In a way, the first couple hundred pages needed to be there - you need to spend some time exploring this world and culture (and learning the damn language) before you can really appreciate the plot (which is still not altogether clear...)

Reading Ian Sales' Adrift on the Sea of Rains and enjoying it so far.

Just finished Cards of Grief by Jane Yolen. I bought it a while ago, thinking it was one of her fantasies due to the title and cover art, but it turns out to be a first-contact SF with a strong mythology/anthropology element. Although it's an early work of hers, it reads well. A complex narrative structure, from different characters' viewpoints and at different times, pulls together well; the myth & anthropological aspects enrich it (one of Yolen's specialties); and the ending is powerful. Short but very good.
Interesting premise too, of a culture where grieving and death (more or less taboo in our culture) are central & open, while areas open in ours are suppressed.

>120 drmamm:

I'm at the one-third point in Anathem. It's been a nice journey so far, though with not much in the way of story as you say. I'm not feeling the slightest hint of boredom, and I can just feel the pace picking up.

>122 rshart3:

That puts me in mind of a short story (probably in the Out of This World anthology series) I read some forty years ago where the act of eating was taboo and excreting was public.

123 Noisy where the act of eating was taboo and excreting was public.

Which put me in mind of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin in which all apartments were built with transparent walls to ensure not secrets.

I have finished The Darfsteller and Other Stories and I'm nearly half-way through The Golden Globe. Surprisingly, I'm not enjoying the last book in the Eight Worlds series very much. It must be because I don't like the main characters, Sparky Valentine and (in the flashbacks) his father John B. Valentine. But I'm still hoping that Sparky will redeem himself so I'm not going to give up.

Pushed Children of the Sky to read Dodger

Reading Kij Johnson's At the Mouth of the River of Bees as an earlier reviewer book.