Kevin's Watch

Posted: **Thu Mar 05, 2009 7:24 am**

Samuel R. Delany's Nova.

Posted: **Thu Mar 05, 2009 10:58 pm**

NONE! I've exhausted my library!
Anyone have any suggestions for one or 2 SF released in the last year or so?
I'm temporarily fantasied out, and looking for good unknown or lesser known authors...feel a need to expand my territory.

Posted: **Fri Mar 06, 2009 2:40 am**

Blindsight by Peter Watts. You can actually read it on-line or download it right here.

Publisher's weekly wrote:Starred Review. Canadian author Watts (Starfish) explores the nature of consciousness in this stimulating hard SF novel, which combines riveting action with a fascinating alien environment. In the late 21st century, when something alien is discovered beyond the edge of the solar system, the spaceship Theseus sets out to make contact. Led by an enigmatic AI and a genetically engineered vampire, the crew includes a biologist who's more machine than human, a linguist with surgically induced multiple personality disorder, a professional soldier who's a pacifist, and Siri Keeton, a man with only half a brain. Keeton is virtually incapable of empathy, but he has a savant's ability to model and predict the actions of others without understanding them. Once the Theseus arrives at the gigantic and hideously dangerous alien artifact (which has tellingly self-named itself Rorschach), the crew must deal with beings who speak English fluently but who may, paradoxically, not even be sentient, at least as we understand the term. Watts puts a terrifying and original spin on the familiar alien contact story.

Posted: **Fri Mar 06, 2009 3:03 pm**

Loremaster wrote:Samuel R. Delany's Nova.

That's one of my faves from that author. You must drop a note saying what you think.

Posted: **Fri Mar 06, 2009 3:16 pm**

wayfriend wrote:
Loremaster wrote:Samuel R. Delany's Nova.
That's one of my faves from that author. You must drop a note saying what you think.

So far, I am very impressed.

Posted: **Fri Mar 13, 2009 6:40 pm**

Damn, Dhalgren is difficult. I'm not a native English speaker but my English is OK, but passages like these, I mean, I just cannot figure them out. This happens a lot in the book; first there's a segment in third person, and at the end of it the narrative switches to first person and there's a kind of stream of consciousness part that I find very difficult. Example:

Dhalgren wrote: Silent in the circuit of the year, speech is in excess of what I want to say, or believe. On the dismal air I sketch my own restraint, waking reflexively, instant to instant. The sensed center, the moment of definition, the point under such pressure it extrudes a future and a past I apprehend only as a chill, extends the overlay of injury with some retentive, tenuous disease, the refuse of brick-and-mortar-grinding violence. How much easier all machination were such polarized perception to produce so gross an ideal.

I had to read the last sentence a couple of times to even understand what it says. But I simply cannot make a connection between sentences in parts like these. It probably requires more work and more knowledge.

Posted: **Fri Mar 13, 2009 8:09 pm**

SJ: Dhalgren does have quite a few passages like that, which are poetry, written out as prose. These are where Kidd, who is only a novice poet, is composing a poem in his head. And the author does not delineate these poems from the main prose ... for a very important reason, which may become apparent over time. (I honestly don't think you can "get" all of Dhalgren on the first read.)

One of the weird things in the story is we never, ever get to see a poem which Kidd actually writes down. But we get to hear how he composes them in his head, which lets us feel what his poems might be like.

So ... I would suggest that you just let these kinds of things flow through you and not worry about it. If it leaves an impression on you, a sensation or a mood, then that's even better. Not understanding the meaning of the poem is, well ... it won't derail the rest of the read.

Remember, Kidd is, well, mentally unbalanced. This comes through in his disjointed poetry.

Posted: **Sat Mar 14, 2009 4:28 am**

Right now, I'm giving Neverness a try.

Posted: **Sat Mar 14, 2009 8:33 pm**

wayfriend wrote: So ... I would suggest that you just let these kinds of things flow through you and not worry about it. If it leaves an impression on you, a sensation or a mood, then that's even better. Not understanding the meaning of the poem is, well ... it won't derail the rest of the read.

Remember, Kidd is, well, mentally unbalanced. This comes through in his disjointed poetry.

This is what I've been doing so far and it doesn't hinder the story (as far as there is one), but it's not often that whole passages just elude me. I thought they might contain some clues as to what's going on, to give some insights. Oh well, I'm plodding on

Posted: **Mon Mar 23, 2009 12:45 am**

Just finished L. E. Modesitt, jr.'s Imager, the first volume in The Imager Portfolio.

I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that this could well be the best and most accessible opening chapter in any of his fantasy series to date.

Check out the blog for the full review.

Cheers,

Patrick
www.fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com

Posted: **Mon Mar 23, 2009 2:32 pm**

pat5150 wrote:Just finished L. E. Modesitt, jr.'s Imager, the first volume in The Imager Portfolio.

Hmm... I wonder what that book's about, it sounds like Mordant's Need.

... When his master patron and his son are killed in an explosion, Rhenn realizes that he is an imager, one who possesses the power to visualize things and make them a reality. Forced to leave his former life behind, he must join the Collegium of Imagisle where he'll be trained as an imager. Soon, Rhenn learns that nothing in the world is as it seems and that being an imager is more perilous than he ever believed.

Oh. It is Mordant's Need.

Posted: **Mon Mar 23, 2009 4:21 pm**

Still struggling through Gardens of the Moon, but it does seem to be picking up finally.

Posted: **Mon Mar 23, 2009 10:20 pm**

I tore through most of Ender's Game in one day last weekend, but I haven't really had chance to finish it since. Once that's done, I'm going to take another stab at Illuminatus! (yes, the exclamation mark is in the title)

Posted: **Fri Mar 27, 2009 12:42 pm**

Good luck with Illuminatus! I love the concept and ideas, but the prose style is tough!

Just started The Dispossessed by Ursula le Guin.

Posted: **Sat Mar 28, 2009 8:03 am**

I'm a big fan of Illuminatus!. The only trick to it is seperating the wheat from the chaff. (Or should that be the flax...

)

Oh, I'm rereading Last Gasp by Trevor Hoyle...Near-future environmental catastrophe story.

--A

Posted: **Sat Mar 28, 2009 10:56 am**

The only trick to it is seperating the wheat from the chaff. (Or should that be the flax... )

Or possibly the D-lysergic acid from the (+)-lysergic acid.....

Posted: **Sat Mar 28, 2009 3:03 pm**

The man who sold me Illuminatus! said he hated it and found it hard to read, but after the first hundred pages he couldn't put it down. When I tried to read it, I reckon I got about fifty pages in. Similarly to Stonemaybe, I was intrigued by the ideas but found the style something of an obstacle. Still, maybe it'll be less troublesome on the second attempt. If I fail at it again, I have some Gene Wolfe to start on.

Posted: **Sat Mar 28, 2009 3:18 pm**

Avatar wrote:I'm a big fan of Illuminatus!. The only trick to it is seperating the wheat from the chaff. (Or should that be the flax... )

uh, yeah...

I too had trouble with Illuminatus!. But because I trust your recommendations, Av, it is one I sold Xar on in the Barnes and Nobles in Manhattan. Whether or not he's gotten around to reading it yet, I have not heard...

Posted: **Wed Apr 08, 2009 4:52 pm**

I am trying to read Ratner's Star by Don DeLillo. Supposed to SF-ish.
I knew it would be a difficult read but I just have to finish it..

Posted: **Wed Apr 08, 2009 5:27 pm**

I'm reading Ilium by Dan Simmons-great start two to big books. Same 'epic' feel as Hyperion (and it also has his signature beginning of the saga dinosaurs-which can only be a good sign LOL.

)

Kevin's Watch

What fantasy/science fiction book are you reading RIGHT NOW?