Yearly Archives: 2009

The Raw Shark Texts (Steven Hall)

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The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall There are two types of people in the world, Eric. There are the people who understand instinctively that the story of The Flood and the story of The Tower of Babel are the same thing, and those who don’t. — Trey Fidorous (285) Fidorous’s binary distinction sums up reader reaction to this book. Those who don’t instinctively understand the equality between the two stories, such as a previous reviewer for Strange Horizons, declare that "at its best, it is an entertaining adventure yarn with a plot that doesn’t bear scrutiny too well, not […]

Spaceports & Spidersilk, “Smoke & Mirrors”

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Belatedly, I realized that my children’s story "Smoke and Mirrors" is up at Spaceports & Spidersilk for their Fall 2009 issue. As a kid I always loved the stories that didn’t dumb things down for me–Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain (that’s The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, etc.) are the best example–so I was going for simplicity without condescension.

Piracy: Fiction as a Public Good

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On Patricia Briggs’s site, her husband Mike has put up a great section about copyright and internet piracy. I can’t even read to the end because the arguments in blue (which represent the piracy viewpoints that he’s refuting) are so painful. Clearly, the people who are arguing the economic justification for piracy have never taken an economics course, or read Charles Wheelan’s wonderfully simple book Naked Economics.

IBARW: Underdog Complex 4

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It’s International Blog Against Racism Week. Links are being collected at . I wrote a longer piece on this that’s currently under submission, so I’ll just paraphrase here–based on my experiences with discussions of race, I think white Americans have a severe underdog complex. Our society glorifies the underdog fighting against impossible odds to get to the top, to "make it", to jump from nobody to superstar in the land of opportunity. Everyone wants to be the underdog; no one wants to be the Man, the Establishment, the Authorities, whatever. Discussions of race tend to bring white people face to […]

Review Links 2

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Somewhat off-topic, Clint Harris has a review of the Necronomicon (yes, that Necronomicon) up at Fantasy Magazine: Though essentially lacking pathos, a central protagonist, or a comprehensive notations guide to the strange terms and Escher-esque illustrations that boggled the mind, I found the book to be a triumph of the spirit. It’s clever and quite funny; you should read it. ETA: Read the comments too. You can clearly hear the swishing sound as the joke passes over some people’s heads.

Valhalla Rising (Clive Cussler)

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Valhalla RisingClive Cussler I’ve never read Clive Cussler before, but a relative of mine kept referencing him as writing fun stories (if not entirely realistic or profound), so I thought I’d check it out. It’s always nice to have a common ground of reading material–that’s one topic that skips right over all the awkward small talk. Her evaluation was pretty much spot-on, although I think I was expecting more in the way of obstacles. There’s really no point in the book where you have serious doubts about the outcome; it’s a blatantly vicarious story (more about that in a bit) […]