The Reading Corner.

[Buster's Uncle]

Empire by Orson Scott Card.

Card still pisses me off, not least for a hypocritical afterword from a man too smart to be such a hypocrite and not know it, but gosh, when he's good, he's the best.  Recommended if you think you can stomach the politics - he clearly bent over backwards to try to be fair, and just as clearly doesn't know how badly he failed.  But still, I already finished it, because it worked so well as a story that my need to throw the book across the room in discust lost out to my need to turn the page and read more 355 times in a row.

/.../

But yes, not very science-fictiony, and no one less conservative than me, let alone less American, will understand the book at all.  It's still really good. Caveat emptor.

Hey, I've read that book and I think I understood it, in spite of being considerably less American and, well, maybe equally non-conservative. It was fascinating to see how little of the world Card understands, though. And while it's a good yarn (Card is an amazing story-teller - in that way he's probably the most worthy successor of Heinlein) I wouldn't really recommend it, if only because there are so many other books that are more rewarding, not the least many of Card's other books; even the shadow novels, the ones that retell the Ender story from another perspective, are a lot better.

I wonder what you mean when you say that Card is a hypocrite. In my view, the scary thing about him has always been that he seems to believe in what he says. 

That's precisely the point, though - a man to whom truth is so important, who has long written about finding truth, has cast his lot in with the murderous, fascistic, liars of the right.  That afterward is false premises and false moral equivalence from beginning to end - being slightly more even-handed in his portrayal of the political climate than Rush Limbaugh is not the same as being even-handed, and anyone who thinks criticizing  Bush Jr. is bad has lost all acquaintance with truth, indeed, the American Way.

He was a hypocrite for making himself out to be fair in writing a book where liberals are the bad guys.  Do that, fine -the right is so far gone into fantasy that they just well write them up as stories- but don't pretend you're being fair.  Don't pretend that the most rapaciously, nakedly, evil administration of my entire life -and I'm old enough to remember Nixon- is headed by a decent person who is only criticized by fools and liars.

Card was never a liberal, but used to be reasonable, and mostly made a lot of sense.  It's painful to see yet another good man (and remember, I know him a little in real life; he was always enormously more angry than ever shows in his work, but mostly still sensible) ruined by that thing that happened in New York in 2001.  It just makes me sick and angry and sad.

[Buster's Uncle]

... Back to the Dune books, I think God Emperor of Dune is very, very good - notwithstanding that it has roughly 100 pages worth of plot spread out over closer to 400.  I suspect it's boring partly on purpose.

Anyone care to discuss?

[Geo]

Finished Heart of the Comet (blame the rain  ) and started on 2 Battletech novels: Far Country and what I think is the first Battletech novel.


It's too long since I read the fourth Dune book. Had to look up if it was the one that caused the Scattering.

[Buster's Uncle]

It was - the Scattering was central to Leto's plan all along.

...

Chrysalis 4 edited by Roy Torgeson.

It's a fantasy anthology from 1979 - and if I couldn't look that up on the copyright page, I'd have guessed it was supposed to be New Wave science fiction from about ten years earlier - back when pointless stories without plots were getting published a lot. 

I cannot recommend this book as of roughly halfway through.

[Buster's Uncle]

Out of ten stories in the aforementioned anthology, Chrysalis 4, three have endings - the rest sorta just stop before any satisfactory conclusion, or sense on my part that I understood what was going on.  I not only cannot recommend the book, I'm going to try to remember Roy Torgeson, so that in the future I can avoid collections he put together.

...

The Infinity Concerto by Greg Bear.

-So far, this seems very good, notwithstanding a title that sounds like a Marvel Comics crossover event about Thanos taking up classical music.

I hope Vishniac sees that joke.  I remember when Jim Starlin used to write comics that weren't stupid.

[Geo]

Infinity Concerto - Earth boy who ends up in an alternative universe and must learn from 3 sort-of alien witches?

[Buster's Uncle]

Yes, that's the one.

[Geo]

Don't think I ever finished that one. Must've been still a adolescent when I tried to read it.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm 115 pages in after two bedtimes reading, for what that's worth - with Chrysalis 4, I usually fell asleep before I got 10 pages read.

[Buster's Uncle]

A good read.  Now I gotta track down the rest of the story in Serpent Mage.

...

I read the collection of the first six issues of Astro City by Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson last night.  It was good, but I dunno, I'm not sure it deserves as high a reputation as it has in comics circles.

...

Now on to The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

[Geo]

Finished both Battletech novels I started reading yesterday. If the others are very similar, they're kinda me(c )h if you ask me.

[Buster's Uncle]

What did you expect from Battletech novels in the first place?  Franchise novels like that are hardly the place to look for top-quality fiction, no matter the virtues of the particular franchise -- and we ARE talking Battletech, besides.

[JarlWolf]

Anyone here ever read the short story I have no mouth but I must scream?

Was written back in the 70's if I recall.

[Buster's Uncle]

Sure.  By Harlan Ellison.  I was way too young when I first read that.

[Sigma]

... Back to the Dune books, I think God Emperor of Dune is very, very good - notwithstanding that it has roughly 100 pages worth of plot spread out over closer to 400.  I suspect it's boring partly on purpose.

Anyone care to discuss?

God Emperor of Dune is monumentally better than the dull slog that is Children of Dune, but it is tragically the novel that marks Herbert's descent into Dirty Old Man Syndrome that a lot of science fiction authors are plagued with (see also: Robert Heinlein), a condition that only gets worse in the subsequent two novels.