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I’ve blogged before about the TBR (“to be read”) pile that seems to sporadically take over the bedside bookshelf. Part of the problem is I am a binge buyer, an event set off not only by some sort of pent-up quest for books but out-of-state travel. My “hobby” when I’m out of state is to check out the local bookstores. A trip this last week to look at potential colleges for middle daughter led to coming home with 6-7 books I didn’t have when I left.
So, I figure it can’t hurt to create an anchor post to update as items are added to and removed from the TBR stack. Books are listed alphabetically as there is no particular pecking order. Their priority depends on such things as official release dates for advance copies, any review obligations and what strikes my fancy at the time I finish one book and am ready to start another.
That said, here’s the current list:
- A Writer at War
 , Vasily Grossman
Death in Slow Motion  , Eleanor Cooney
Edenborn  , Nick Sagan
In the Bin , Lloyd Freeberg
In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs , Christopher de Bellaigue
Johnny U: The Life and Times of John Unitas , Tom Callahan
Koba the Dread , Martin Amis
Nothing’s Sacred , Lewis Black
Old Twentieth , Joe Haldeman
The Aquariums of Pyongyang , Kang Chol-Hwan
The Code , Ross Bernstein
We , Yevgeny Zamyatin
What If Our World Is Their Heaven? , Gwen Lee (ed.)
NOTE: In light of the change of cyberspace address, the TBR list now has its own page.
An ordinary man can … surround himself with [2,000] books … and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.
“Book-Buying,” The Collected Essays and Addresses of Augustine Birrell
What is it that makes a person like one book and dislike a similar one? That imponderable arose when I read Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End.
I recently praised how Charlie Stross explored the Singularity in Glasshouse. Well, Vernor Vinge is not only credited with popularizing the concept, it has been a common theme in his own science fiction. That holds true for Rainbows End, although it actually focuses on a transition period between today and the Singularity. Yet while I liked Glasshouse‘s exploration of a potential post-Singularity universe, I can’t really say the same for Vinge’s look at a potential route there.
Robert Gu is a focal point of most of the plotlines in Rainbows End, set in 2025, Gu is 75 and suffered from Alzheimer’s. He is among those with a form of the disease for which a “cure” exists. Moreover, he is lucky enough that his other physical ailments are also treatable, leaving him not only looking far younger but with much younger physical abilities. As he recovers, he lives with his son’s family in San Diego. But despite regaining his faculties, Gu, a world-renowned poet, seems to have lost his muse.
And Gu is regaining his senses in an entirely different world. Virtually everyone “wears” — their clothes are filled with microprocessors and software that gives them high bandwidth connections to the digital information stream, information they view with the contacts in their eyes. People can tailor how and from what perspective they see things and even send digital versions of themselves to other parts of the globe to meet and interact with others or simply observe.
Yet this doesn’t mean the world is a utopia. Chicago was destroyed in a war and the world has survived a bioterror plague. Security and military services throughout the world — of which both Gu’s son and daughter-in-law are members — focus on trying to prevent the next “Great Terror,” be it state-sponsored or terrorists. The same cameras that make different viewpoints available to everyone also means surveillance is ubiquitous. And every computer chip has something built in by the security services. All this sets the scene for Vinge to pursue a variety of plotlines.
One of his main themes is the generational impact of technological change. Much like today, youngsters like Gu’s 13-year-old granddaughter, Miri, are particularly adept with wearables and using and manipulating digital data because they grew up doing so. Their parents’ generation knows how to use the equipment, although they may not always be quite as proficient or innovative. Finally, Gu’s generation struggles just to adapt. He, like others, is sent to school for remedial courses in how to interface with, act and interact in this digital data world.
Vinge explores both the benefits and disadvantages to society from this technological change. Wearables and authentication procedures can be corrupted, allowing someone to assume control of the digital version of another person. As result, the risk exists that the digital version of the person with whom you are dealing may not actually be that person. Or they may have assumed an entirely different persona, not revealing who they really are. Likewise, wearables give users instant access to masses of information without moving a finger. Yet this has led to an effort to digitize all the world’s libraries and shred the books so the knowledge in them will be instantaneously available. Underlying the entire story is the potential threat of biotechnology. Someone is working to modify a biological virus which makes infected persons unwittingly respond to a stimulus transmitted electronically, whether that response be buying something or killing someone.
Rainbows End interweaves and examines each of these ideas and more. Perhaps that is the problem. There may be just too much going on around Gu’s efforts to adjust to his medical and technological resurrection. The efforts to digitize the libraries ties in to the bioterror plotline. The ideas of societal change range from how it affects one-on-one relationships to “belief circles,” networks of individuals who share common ideas or beliefs, including some that create and interact via creatures reminiscent of Pokemon. The library and bioterror plots also introduce the potential of a self-sufficient artificial intelligence.
Undoubtedly, Vinge has painted a potential route to the Singularity that is full of both promise and dread. Yet I, for one, tended to get lost sorting out the mundane from the significant and the purpose of certain characters or plotlines. Moreover, key plotlines appear to have been left intentionally unresolved to leave the door open for a sequel or more. As a result, Rainbows End ultimately left me dissatisfied.
In the modern world, success [as a nation] came from having the largest possible educated population and providing those hundreds of millions of creative people with credible freedom.
Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End
George W. Bush: Messiah? (And the author certainly seems to want to imitate traditional renditions of the entity that sent GWB on that mission.)
Added to the web site/blogroll are The Negelected Books Page: “Where forgotten books are remembered,” and Lost Book Archives, which focuses on speculative fiction. (Via Eos Books blog.)
On a somewhat related note, the SF Site has a list of Ten Overlooked Odd Speculative Fiction Classics. (Via SF Signal.)
I don’t remember this being true in the 1970s. (Via Blog of a Bookslut.)
A great reader seldom recognizes his solitude.
Mason Cooley, City Aphorisms
South Dakota’s J.A.I.L.ers have released their letter to Attorney General Larry Long asking him to rewrite his ballot explanation for the measure. The letter is so full of varying doses of sarcasm, nonsense and extremist stream of consciousness that it will take several posts to address. Let me first give a hint to the J.A.I.L.ers: If you’re going to invoke the dissenting opinion of a South Dakota Supreme Court justice, try to spell his name right.
To get to the substance, though, let’s start with the J.A.I.L.ers’ first complaint. J.A.I.L.er-in-Chief Bill Stegmeier complains the AG was wrong in saying J.A.I.L. applies to more than the judiciary. He asks Long, “Please explain in writing, on what basis did you conclude that Amendment E concerns and covers anyone other than judges?” (Emphasis added.) He then asserts:
Nowhere in the language of Amendment E does it state or invoke jurisdiction over juries, school boards, city councils, county commissions or prosecutors. That is an invention by our opponents which you have adopted as your own, Attorney General Long. . . . . Amendment E clearly speaks only of judges, yet you perversely concoct an unfounded interpretation that wants to include “every person.”
(Emphasis in original.)
The fact is Amendment E defines the term “judge” to include “all other persons claiming to be shielded by judicial immunity.” (Emphasis added.) But Stegmeier says — in a footnote — “The term ‘judge’ is clearly and simply defined here and it does not mention, and thereby does not include juries, school boards, city councils, county commissions or prosecutors. Attorney General Long, why do you lawyers always seem to make the simple – complicated, the clear – muddy [sic]?” (Emphasis added.) This BS is what is making the simple and clear the opposite.
There must be some meaning to the phrase “all other persons claiming to be shielded by judicial immunity.” Why else is it there? And, while I know this is repetitious (see, e.g., here, here or here), each and every one of the entities mentioned by Stegmeier and in the ballot explanation are entitled to be shielded by judicial immunity when acting in that capacity. If the last phrase in the definition of “judge” has any meaning, then it must, of necessity, encompass those and similar entities.
In other footnotes, Stegmeier actually supports that fact. He says terms like case, order and judgment are “terms of art usually related to the judiciary.” Usually is the key word there. That’s because those terms also apply to administrative agencies, school boards and the like because when they act in a judicial capacity they hear cases and issue orders and judgments. The bottom line is plain and simple. These entities and individuals do occasionally act in a judicial capacity, making them among those “claiming to be shielded by judicial immunity” and bringing them within the scope of J.A.I.L.
It is also audacious for Stegemeier to claim the assertion that J.A.I.L. applies to more than the judiciary is an “invention” of J.A.I.L.’s opponents. After all, he’s the one who told residents of Madison that “with the passage of SD J.A.I.L., any governmental employee (of any stripe, shape, or flavor) previously accustomed to violating the rights of South Dakota citizens while hiding behind the bogus doctrine of ‘judicial immunity’, will now have to shape up or ship out.” (Emphasis added.)
Stegmeier claims to have “authored” Amendment E. Yet now he not only ignores or plays dumb about what it actually says, he runs from what he himself has said in the past. Guess you gotta fit the lie to the occasion, even if you are writing to the Attorney General.
Lies and perfidy are the refuge of fools and cowards.
Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield’s Letters
Not really being that dumb, Big Dumb Object discovers some “cybercasts” of SF authors (and others) from the 2004 Library of Congress National Book Festival.
Wikipedia lists the current selections for SF Masterworks. (Also via Big Dumb Object.) Thanks in part to a fairly heavy dosage of Philip K. Dick, I’ve read about half of them.
SF fan complaints with which I generally agree.
I found it interesting that the same day I posted my review of Glasshouse, in which I comment about Charlie Stross blending what might be called “hard” and “soft” SF, I came across a recent interview where he doesn’t buy the distinction. Charlie also says “there’s very little new in SF today.” (Via SF Signal.)
Somewhat related to the last point, Lou Anders, editorial director of Prometheus Books’ science fiction imprint Pyr, has prompted an interesting discussion with two posts on his blog on the state of science fiction. Even some notable authors have chimed in.
Reading SF is probably a bad way to learn physics, however, reading it can and should be a good way to learn about what it means to be human.
Robert Sawyer, “Escapism and SF“
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