Three Things

Three things about books, sort of:

I recently finished Naomi Novik’s Uprooted.  I loved it.  I loved it so much that I was kind of clutching it like a security blanket on a first read-through during a mad con weekend, drinking the prose in little sips, and as a result I’m not sure how much I trust myself to have made an accurate appraisal of the book, which is great because the only way to make a more accurate appraisal is to re-read it.  Here are some books I hold close to my heart and you should too:

Robin McKinley, especially The Hero and the Crown
Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina and Shadow Scale
The Wizard of Earthsea
If you like those books, read this one.
If you don’t know any of those books, read them. And read this one too.
Actually Robin McKinley’s Sunshine may be the closest point of comparison, even though that’s a lot less of a fairy tale; anyway just, you know, read.


I’m almost done with Hannu Rajaniemi’s Collected Short Fiction.  One of the last tales, “Skywalker of Earth,” is tremendous high-octane fun—and one of the few cases of the SF genre reading itself back to itself, in the Warren Ellis tradition, that I can call to mind.  What I mean by this: Ellis, in, say, Planetary, responds to and refigures previous works of popular culture, by capturing those works within his own vision so as to attack, confront, or analyze them.  Any given issue of Planetary refigures another genre within the Planetary universe—so we find out what HK gangster cinema looks like in the Planetary universe, who Doc Savage is in the Planetary Universe, what’s up with the Fantastic Four etc. etc.  SF does this much less, in my opinion.  It seems to me that while we engage with the conceptual frameworks of previous stories, we rarely engage with their character archetypes or story structures.  When we [SPOILERS for Anathem] reach the multiversal spaceship at the end of Anathem, we don’t expect to meet Corwin coming the other direction.[/SPOILERS]  “Skywalker of Earth” hinges on a modern SF protagonist encountering, basically, Doc Smith characters; to win, she has to reinvent SF for a modern age.  It’s pretty cool stuff.  (Other examples of “reading back” that spring to mind: John Varley’s Steel Beach, which reads Heinlein into itself, and Chip Delany’s Dhalgren, which reads science fictional rhetoric as a whole.)  Anyway, if you miss Planetary, find a chance to give “Skywalker of Earth” a read.  Unfortunately it’s only in Rajaniemi’s Collected Fiction as far as I know, so that might be a touch difficult if you can’t find a copy.  No, you can’t have mine.
So, they’re making a movie of The Martian.



I haven’t read the book yet. I know that amounts to science fiction heresy for a subset of fans at this point, but, hell, what isn’t? I know I have to read it. I will! But for the most part I retain my undeservedly proprietary joy that the guy who wrote Casey and Andy, this goofy, geeky MS Paint-esque webcomic I read back in the day starring two mad scientists, their friend, a quantum police officer, Satan, a pint-sized planet-devouring critter, Grover Cleveland, and King Karl Gustaf (many of those commas should be semicolons probably) is now a mega-bestselling SF author with a movie due out starring Matt Damon.

That’s all I have for you this week, though, sadly.  I have books to write.