The Towering Irrelevance

bookavore:

We are featuring sci-fi in the library for the next couple of months and I have asked the readers’ advisory staff to each read a sci-fi book. In order to be fair, I also asked myself to read a sci-fi book that I wouldn’t normally read, something heavier on the science than the fiction. (I generally prefer what I believe we are now calling speculative fiction, although to be honest the subgenres of sci-fi intimidate me so I’m sure that’s wrong.) A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge was recommended to me as a classic. It co-won the Hugo for Best Novel in 1993, which is a good sign. I’m not sure what kind of classic it is—hard sci-fi? space opera?—but I loved it, in a really bizarre way.

There’s no way I can sum up the plot of this book in a short post. Here are some of the main things that surprised me: an alien race that is composed entirely of dogs that can only function as miniature packs. The galaxy is divided into zones that determine how fast you can travel and think. Another alien race is basically sentient plants with wheels and they are really good at flying spaceships. The ultimate goal of most civilizations is to transcend their current state and achieve Godhood. It made my brain hurt. It took me way too many pages to trust that Vinge was really, truly, describing an alien race composed of dogs that can only function in packs, because it seemed too insane. They do wear jackets, though. Too cute, right? Except that they’ve all been inbred for generations and are about to have a civil war! It is a difficult book as Vinge has no interest in making you comfortable or easing you into its universe. I have been dreadfully spoiled by literary and speculative fiction in this way; it has made me weak-minded. 

While I was actually reading it, I think I was too busy being confused and startled by turns to like the book. But I found I loved it when I wasn’t actively reading it. This might also be due to the fact that the prose is much sharper and workaday than I’m accustomed to and occasionally highly technical, which was not as pleasant to read as it was to sit back and think about the many ideas the book had forwarded. It was so unlike anything I’ve ever read that I can’t be analytical about whether I liked it, because I can’t explain it. It was like an alien race of its own. But I enjoyed being surprised and confused and challenged by a novel in a new way. It expanded my ideas of what’s possible in a book, in the same way that pictures of Earth from space remind me how small and impossible my life is, and that hasn’t happened to me in a long time. 

Stephanie is just choosing books to goad me into doing a podcast or whatever now.

I wrote some Jeff Bezos slash for the work blog. I was going to use this illustration but decided against it at the last moment. They were just meant to be sort of nuzzling but, um …

Hot summer Jamz.

Us.

“convicted of obtaining oats by false pretence”

jennirl:

also i am just going to leave this here in case anyone needs it.

Toby Ziegler knows all too well what happens if you do.

You guys.

How to get me to buy your poetry book:
1. Name it after the most accurate external analog of my heart: deep but sterile
2. Be Wave Books

How to get me to buy your poetry book:
1. Make the title an utterly un-cute play on a comic book clusterfuck.
2. Be Dana Ward

Conversely, this is how I would like everything to look: mostly out of focus, with terrifying branches, an unclear relationship to the camera, and just a general over-emphasis on texture.

This ad for paper plates is a shockingly accurate depiction of how Meaghan would like everything around her to look, up to and including that terrifying guy and the weird preponderance of paper products.

next »