Weasel Words
A Book Log
August
22,
2010
Wil McCarthy’s Bloom
is hard SF from the ‘90s, and it reads like it. It’s got all the hallmarks of that era, being set in the interior of an outer-system moon, after the Earth and inner planets have been reduced to gray goo by rogue nanotech. It’s not as grim as the setting makes it sound, and it’s got some clever turns to the plot, but fundamentally, it doesn’t transcend its genre. If you like ‘90s-era hard SF, you’ll like this.
Wil McCarthy’s The Collapsium
, though, is something altogether different. It’s set in the Queendom of Sol, a post-scarcity civilization with all sorts of magic tech and a semi-decadent, mannered culture. The protagonist is Bruno de Towaji, a reclusive and eccentric genius, who has to be summoned from his self-built planetoid to solve puzzles and save the solar system.
This doesn’t quite feel like anything else. It’s sort of like a combination of Asimov’s Wendell Urth stories with Jack Vance, but not really. Do you like technology-oriented SF? Do you like fun stories set in magic-tech settings? Do you like puzzle mysteries where the genius protagonist has to figure everything out and save the day? Do you like slightly arch writing combined with any of the above? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’ll probably like this book.
| :::
August
22,
2010
I’m given to understand that the 21st century is when everything changes, and hey, here’s Jim Butcher’s Changes
to apply that maxim to Harry Dresden’s life. Given the title, it’s probably not too spoilery to mention that some things actually do change in this book, which is good, as the reset-to-default aspect of the Dresden Files stories has been getting more untenable as the stakes have continually risen book after book.
This is late Dresden, which means it’s extremely continuity-heavy and that it increasingly is part of a continuing ongoing plot, instead of a self-contained book-length plot. Don’t start reading Dresden here, is I guess what I’m getting at. Also, if you don’t like reading unfinished serieses, Dresden is probably starting to hit your irritation points. I liked the book, but I almost do wish that I could have waited to read it when the next one is available.
| :::
August
22,
2010
So, the characteristics of the Indie Graphic Novel are that it 1) is a black-and-white thing 2) that uses “clever” stylistic tricks to tell a story 3) about a dude who can best be described as not precisely a younger version of the author, and 4) how he meets this girl that changes his life. And sure enough, Dash Shaw’s Bottomless Belly Button
is an Indie Graphic Novel.
And while I began this post intending it to only be about Bottomless Belly Button, it occurs to me that I might as well get maximum value for my effort by noting: Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim vols 1 and 2 are also Indie Graphic Novels. The main difference between O’Malley and Shaw is that the latter would appeal to college-aged art majors and the former to college-aged CS majors. Also, the latter’s protagonist has a frog head, while the former’s has some kind of hideously malformed bobble-head doll head. Other than that, basically the same thing.
| :::
May
22,
2010
Douglas Crockford’s JavaScript: The Good Parts
is the best kind of language tutorial. It is concise, it is opinionated, and it does not condescend.
On the “concise” front, this book weighs in at exactly 100 pages, excluding appendices. In comparison, a generic Beginner’s Guide to Javascript-type book at Amazon might run 500 pages. And it’s not because that 500 page book is “deeper” or has more information; it’s because a lot of tech writers love to pad things out to insane length. I don’t know why, but it’s undeniably true. Fortunately, Crockford wasn’t paid by the pound, and is able to write a short book.
On the opinionated front, boy howdy is he ever. It turns out Crockford has been involved in a number of rows in the Javascript community, and is a contentious, opinionated guy. His opinions are evident in full force here — including, really, the whole concept of the book, which is that he’s only going to talk about the good parts of the language and will only give a few warnings about the bad parts. (Appendix B, though, is all about the Bad Parts. Appendix A is about the Awful Parts.)
As for condescending, the book practically demands that you’re already familiar with functional programming to some degree. If you’re not, the main thing you’ll get out of the book is, “Man, I need to learn something about functional programming.” Crockford spends three pages explaining how closures work in Javascript; he spends a half-page on currying. If your’e familiar with these concepts, this is just about perfect. If not, well, you’ll probably want to get familiar first.
Recommended to people who have been dismissive of JavaScript (though there are fewer of those around these days) and who enjoy functionally-oriented languages like Lisp or modern C#.
| :::
May
22,
2010
Peter Seibel’s Coders at Work
is a series of interviews with famous programmers — Ken Thompson, Donald Knuth, Brendan Eich, Jamie Zawinski, and a bunch of others — wherein Seibel asks them how they think about, and engage in, programming.
As a concept, it’s great. There are all sorts of methodologies and “best practices” that purport to tell you the best way to program, but given that most of them are self-contradictory, it’s useful to see how “great programmers” actually program themselves.
In execution... it’s also great. Seibel is a programmer himself, and knows the right questions to ask. This isn’t biography-fluff like “What did your parents think of your interest in computers?”; it’s about debuggers and designing code and the merits of Lisp, and in general, it’s the conversations that you would want to have with smart programmers if you were yourself a programmer.
If you’re a programmer, highly recommended. If not, I can’t imagine why you’d read it.
| :::
May
22,
2010
So back some years ago, when I was reading the Hornblower books, I got a bit burnt out and left the last three for when I’d appreciate them more. That time arrived with my recent fit of Napoleomania, so C.S. Forester’s Hornblower and the “Atropos”, Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies, and Hornblower During the Crisis
all got read quickly.
Everything I’ve said in the past about the Hornblower books is still true, and these books were great. Of the three, my favorite was Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies, which sees Horatio in command of Britain’s fleet in the Caribbean, and has a sort of nostalgic, nearly elegiac, feel to it. Because sure, Horatio’s reaching the top of his profession, but he’s also an older man who can’t indulge in the simple pleasures of the sea the way he used to; and, what with the war over, his profession is a much diminished one. After a man has matched himself against Napoleon for his whole career, can it be anything other than a coda to deal with pirates and slavers, even if he is an Admiral?
And speaking of codas, I should mention that Hornblower During the Crisis is actually an unfinished book — Forester died during the writing of it, so halfway through it stops, and gives the author’s outline of how the plot was to have progressed. I wasn’t sure if this would prove satisfactory or frustrating, but I ended up appreciating it. It’s unfortunate that we’ll never get to read the complete book, but the bits that are there are fun and tell a story enough in their own right.
Highly recommended, though of course you’ll want to start with Beat to Quarters.
| :::
May
13,
2010
So downblog a ways, Kate Nepveu recommended Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
as a piece of Napoleonic fiction, so of course I instantly read it.
And having done so, I have to say that it doesn’t quite count as Napoleonic to me. I mean, yes, it takes place around the time of Napoleon, but so do romance novels, and that doesn’t make them Napoleonic. And okay, to be fair, a chunk of this book actually takes place on battlefields with the Army, but even so, it doesn’t quite make the Napoleonic genre cut. Not enough foretop mizzenmasts, maybe.
Leaving Napoleon aside, though, this is an excellent fantasy of manners. In fact, an excerpt from it might almost be used as the definition by example of the genre:
“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange.
Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”
My only criticism of the book is that it gets a bet too Faerie-ish, in that Gaiman/Vess way, at some points. But for the most part, it’s a delight. If you like fantasies of manners, you’ll like this. If it’s Napoleon you want, though... well, see my next entry.
| :::
May
5,
2010
Jim C. Hines’ The Stepsister Scheme and The Mermaid’s Madness
sound awful. They’re set in a fairy-tale kingdom, with Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White all teaming up to kick ass and take names, Charlie’s Angels-style! Like in Shrek or something!
But that description does them a disservice, because Hines handles them a lot better than that. His fairy tale kingdom has solid world-building, his characters are individual, complex, and psychologically real. The attitude toward the female protagonists is a lot subtler and more feministy than the sort of Lara Croftian “fighting chicks, fuck yeah!” thing you’d picture, and in general, Hines does an excellent job with these books. There’s very little in them that I could really criticize.
Except for one thing: I found them a bit dull. I don’t know why. Objectively speaking, I shouldn’t’ve. They’re light, fast-paced, well-crafted adventure books. And yet, I found myself plodding through both of them and forcing myself to finish. The first book, I figured I’d just read it at the wrong time. But when the same thing happened with the second book, I had to admit that there was something in these books that was failing to grab me.
So, I dunno. Maybe it’ll grab you and you’ll really like them, or maybe they’re somehow just missing that spark of compelling readability. I can’t really recommend them with any particular strength, but there’s nothing in them to disrecommend them, either.
| :::
May
5,
2010
So some time ago, I heard vague news/rumors that the Ultimate Universe comics were going to be cancelled, and would be going out with a storyline called Ultimatum. After a bit of sadness (because Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man has consistently been one of the best comic books out there, and the other Ultimate books have been pretty decent as well), I decided this was great news.
Mainstream superhero comic books do a lot of things well, but the one thing they’ve never managed to pull off is endings. So now here’s a chance for Bendis to wrap up an entire universe in a big event that can actually change things in big, permanent ways. Sweet! Plus, throughout the Ultimate comics (particularly in Bendis’ somewhat retconny Ultimate Origins) there’s been a lot of hinting about the nature and sudden origin of all these superheroes, and it’d make perfect sense for the big finale to tie that all up and provide a thematic unity to the whole run of the comics, tracing superheroes from their sudden rise to their equally sudden end.
Man, that’d be fucking great. Of course, it’s not what we got.
What we got in Jeph Loeb’s Ultimatum (and a bunch of related books that I’m not going into individually here) is: A tidal wave.
Seriously. A tidal wave. It engulfed New York and “destroyed” it, and the heroes had to respond. And I mean, look, I get the combination 9/11 and Katrina motif they’re going for and all, but fundamentally, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t wrap anything up thematically, it’s just a random event.
Which is just as well, because it also turns out not to be an ending. Because, okay, Marvel canceled the Ultimate line... only to introduce the Ultimate Comics line. And this actually less significant than it sounds. Brian Bendis’ Ultimate Comics Spider-Man
picks up exactly where his Ultimate Spider-Man left off. It says issue #1, but it’s loaded with the previous 100+ issues of continuity, including the Ultimatum stuff.
So my verdict on the Ultimatum event is: Meh. It’s just another big crossover event, but a lame one like House of M, not a cool one like Civil War. And everyone quickly stops talking about it and goes back to status quo, which is weird when New York is allegedly destroyed.
But on the other hand, Bendis’ Spider-Man work, whatever the title, remains very good; and Warren Ellis’ Ultimate Comics Iron Man
is one of the best takes on Iron Man I’ve read, even if it seems to violate the continuity of both the inconsistent Card Ultimate Iron Man and the version that originally appeared in The Ultimates. So basically, keep reading everything the Ultimate (Comics) Universe, but don’t expect much from the big event.
| :::
March
29,
2010
Walter Jon Williams’ This Is Not a Game
is precisely the sort of book that I normally hate. It’s set in a techno-geeky world, and it involves a lot of tech-obsessed people doing things with ARGs (”alternate reality games” — those little promo things like I Love Bees) and botnets and what-not. It’s like the sort of thing Cory Doctorow would write, SF straightline extrapolating today’s trends for like two years.
But I didn’t hate it, for two reasons.
The first reason is that Williams is a vastly better writer than Doctorow. Doctorow writes tooth-grindingly bad prose, and Williams is a fine stylist. So even as he’s telling a Doctorovian story, Williams is doing it better than Doctorow could. I even laughed at some forum post exchanges, where Doctorow’s attempts at that would make me cringe.
But the second reason is that, upon reflection (and despite the tag I stuck on this entry), Williams isn’t writing science fiction at all. The book seems science fictional, and ten years ago it would have been wild-eyed crazy speculation; but as far as I can tell, every single thing in it is basically real today. I mean, the events of the plot haven’t happened, and the companies named in it don’t exist, but they basically could.
(There’s a bit of an exception, in that the book depends on markets behaving in a way that they pretty much don’t behave in the real world. But you can handwave that by noting that lots of people — including lots of highly paid people on Wall Street — believe that markets do work that way. So it’s not necessarily fantastic by intent.)
For whatever reason, looking at this as a mainstream thriller that happens to be set in the modern world makes it a lot better. I don’t know if this is just a weird psychological quirk of mine; if it’s that I’m okay with a novel of the real world dating in real time, in a way that I’m not quite with SF; or if there’s something else to it. (Maybe it’s that it doesn’t imply cult-like devotion to technological advancement? Maybe that it doesn’t make you think the writer is convinced he has his finger on the pulse of change and is an insufferable twit? Maybe these things actually qualify as “weird psychological quirk,” upon reflection?)
So anyway, if you like Cory Doctorow, you’ll probably love this. If you don’t like Doctorow, but have liked other Williams novels (I’ve only read his excellent Aristoi), don’t be scared away by Doctorow-hatred.
| :::
Previous Entries...