Black Gate

Do you think the undead are more interesting when:

a) beautiful
b) grotesque
c) both

Can’t do a real poll here, unfortunately.

My parents owned a book from the first King Tut exhibit to come to the US that held a fearful fascination for me. As a kid I loved reading about the discovery of the tomb and the contents and the strange family of Akhenaten, the heretic, and oh, those beautiful gods and divine animals made of gold, lapis, and cornelian… but I had to turn the pages very carefully to avoid the photo of Ay’s mummy’s head, which gave me nightmares every time my gaze fell on it.

In graduate school, part of the core curriculum was a human osteology practicum. Among other things we had to learn how to distinguish human from animal bone fragments. That and other physical anthropology classes were held in “the bone lab,” where shelves of skulls gazed down from three sides and a human brain sat behind you on the lab bench in a covered beaker of formaldehyde. Along the bench were drawers labeled “Quakers,” mixed fragments from an old Philadelphia graveyard that had been removed (IIRC) from one of the downtown parks. It was all pretty creepy at first, but I got desensitized. One of my classmates took bones home sometimes to study. I mean, a freakin’ human femur sticking out of his book bag, and the guards never said anything.

Then, a few years later, I started working in the Penn Museum’s collections. Between American ethnographic storage (in the basement of the now-old new wing), and the bulk of American archaeological storage (in a sub-basement that could only be reached from an elevator in the old building) lay the Mummy Corridor. …

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Well, I’m now about halfway through Neal Stepehenson’s Anathem and, while I’m enjoying it, the going is slow.  When I was in graduate school, my 18th century British Lit class had as required  reading a 1500 page epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson called Clarissa which recounts the seduction, rape and subsequent suffering of said title character.  Correctly suspecting that perhaps not everyone would read it thoroughly, the professor assigned the students sections that we would each summarize and present to the class as we worked through the reading.  My section was some 500 pages into the story, and I remember starting my presentation by saying, “I was fortunate to be assigned the part of the book where something actually starts to happen.”  Which is sort of how I feel about Anathem about now.

I’m not overly obsessive, let alone concerned, about world-building.  I don’t look at the maps, or the etymology of a sword’s name, or get overly concerned about any of that stuff. I don’t get upset if there’s some inconsistency in the imagined world; hell, the real world is inconsistent enough for my taste.  I’m more interested in metaphor, or even just whether it’s a good read.  In Antathem, Stephenson is poking fun at the world-building fetish (I think) but, at the same time, is a practicing adherent.  A dangerous thing for an author known to never hesitate to let the reader just how much he knows.

Certain sections of the book begin with definitions of the Earth-like society’s terms, sociological classifications, and historical events.  Here’s Stephenson reading these definitions.  If you like this sort of thing, you’ll love the book for this alone.

More snarking and snarling at the expense of the stories nominated for this year’s Nebula Awards, this time directed at those in the “novelette” category.

One point, which may not be terribly original but seems worth making anyway: the stories tend to look backward. The best one on the list is a pastiche of two 19th C. novels. The worst one is at least talking about a social change that seems to be underway in the western world (but has nothing to say about said change but “Aauugh!”). Another is a historical fantasy and the other two are retakes of ideas that have been done before. Where’s the future? Where are the stars? Where’s the talking squid in outer space?

I think we need the talking squid in space.

Anyway: onward and backward.

…

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One of the advantages of living near a college town is The Virginia Festival of the Book.  The two things that persuaded me to move to Charlottesville were the extensive music scene  — the hometown of Dave Matthews with venues for just about any major artist from Dylan and Springsteen to Bill Frissel and Jane Siberry to locals such as Devon Sproule ( just this past week I saw Joan Baez and Ani DiFranco); and the home of WTJU, one of the last remaining noncommercial free form terrestrial radio stations where they even let someone like me spin discs on a Saturday night —  and the fact that in the downtown there are literally a half dozen used and independent book stores  all within strolling distance.  This year’s book festival has Mary Doria Russell, though she’s assigned to historical fiction which has been her genre of choice lately, but it also has some comics, fantasy, SF discussions that I’ll probably attend, though I’m not overly familiar with most of these authors. The danger, of course, is the likelihood of adding even more books to the already overweighted “to be read” shelves.

Check it out, if you’re in the neighborhood.