Dreamer Easy

Alfred Bester. The Rat Race.
Ray Bradbury. Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Minister Faust. The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad.
Jack Repcheck. Copernicus' Secret.

( Books borrowed )

Magnus Mills. Explorers of the New Century.

( Books bought and borrowed )

Emma Bull. Bone Dance.
William S. Burroughs. Junky.

( Books borrowed and bought )

Tomorrow at Gally I'm on a panel titled "Expanding Your Horizons: SF Literature From the Pros". For reference, here's a list of some of the books I mean to pimp:

Classic feminist SF:

SUZETTE HADEN ELGIN
The "Native Tongue" trilogy - Native Tongue, Judas Rose, Earthsong

SUZY MCKEE CHARNAS
The "Holdfast Chronicles" - Walk to the End of the World, Motherlines, The F*ries, The Conqueror's Child


Stuff I'm currently reading:

EMMA BULL
Bone Dance

MINISTER FAUST
The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad


I'll expand on this over at dreamer_easy when I get the chance!

Discovered the term "woo" at a particularly smug militant atheist blog this morning. Can't quite work out if it refers to falsifiable superstition and/or divisive OTWism, or to all forms of spirituality. These things are always confusing when you're a naturalist freethinker up to your elbows in gods. Require advice.

(Also need advice on an alternative term for "militant atheists" so as not to piss off majority of atheists who are not ignorant evangelising twerps. In the meantime here's something we can both enjoy: Fred Nile nosedives after distributing Islamophobic "survey". OWAG.)

ETA: By a circuitous route, however, that annoying blog did lead me to Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers About the Heathen.

Here's an entry from my proto-blog, "Kate Almanac", dated 9 July 2000.

In June this year, I visited relatives in Washington DC. I packed my passport, my swimsuit - and a list of references to look up at the Library of Congress. Despite plundering university and local libraries around the world, there were still a handful of citations I hadn't been able to track down. I got the call numbers from the LC's Web page. But what I didn't get was an idea of just how difficult it was going to be to get my paws on that short list of research goodies.

One of my targets: a copy of Lenore Walker's 1979 classic, The Battered Woman. Surprisingly, I hadn't been able to find it anywhere. And all I wanted was to check one reference, a supposedly man-hating remark much quoted on the net. Here it is, as it appeared on the Men's Issues Page:

One of Lenore Walker's examples from her classic book The Battered Woman(NY: Harper Colophon Books, 1979, p. 98) says

"There is also no doubt that she began to assault Paul physically before he assaulted her. However, it is also clear from the rest of her story that Paul had been battering her by ignoring her and working late, in order to move up the corporate ladder, for the entire five years of their marriage."

So, the message Walker gives to women is: if your husband is working late, trying to support his dependents, just SLUG HIM if you don't like this. You're the victim, not him, and we will back you up 100%.

What a shocking thing for Walker say! In fact, it's so shocking that I've always suspected that her meaning had been distorted - in order to make anti-domestic violence activists look like villains who trivialise violence against men. You won't be surprised to hear that my suspicion was right. But first, I had to get my hands on that book.

( The story continues... )

Warts and all, I'm really enjoying re-reading The Mote in God's Eye. It's crisply written, although I think it takes us too long to get to the Moties, who are the best-drawn characters. And that moment when Bury sees the spacesuit with three sets of eyes? Priceless!

However: the Moties have genetic engineers. Here collapseth the entire premise of the story. Whoops.

(And while I'm kvetching: how did the Moties test their Crazy Eddie Drive?)

ETA: ( But wait! There's more... )

"Perhaps my middle brow is showing but this novel, and the criticisms of it, make me wonder about the way we think about what is literary, as if plot is gauche. As if literary fiction should be about creating a mood. As if creating a story with twists and turns should be left to popular fiction. Reflecting this division, it seems to me that the adjectives applied to literary fiction are unduly stationary - 'haunting', 'spare', 'beautiful', 'bleak' - while adjectives implying pace and movement are reserved for potboilers - 'rollicking', 'page turning', 'sweeping'."

- Lisa Pyror, reviewing The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas in the SMH

The doctor says Morgan's foot will be fine; we just have to keep the cut clean.

The receptionist, however, looks altogether more grave.

"The visit's normally covered under National Health," she says apologetically, "but since you aren't residents..."

"Yes?"

We once made an emergency visit to a doctor in Oregon to get a large splinter out of Morgan's foot, and the clinic tried to bill us five hundred dollars. And that was without any blood or swelling.

Jennifer and I brace ourselves.

"... it will be twenty pounds."

We gape.

"What?"

"I'm sorry!" the receptionist pleads. "It's terrible, isn't it?"

"You... think..."

"Is it different in your country?"

We stare uncomprehendingly at her.

"Yes," I finally say. "It is different in our country."

- Paul Collins, Sixpence House, 2003

(Two years after Collins wrote that, Jon and I would both have similar NHS experiences on a UK visit. :)

Anne Donovan. Buddha Da.
Frederick Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth. Before the Universe.
Lloyd Rose. The Algebra of Ice.

( Books bought and borrowed )