Books – Page 6 – Into the West

Field Notes from My Retro Utopian Adventure

I’m in the final phase of my Hugo finalist reading, concentrating on the Best Novel category. In the right-hand panel of my blog, you’ll find my “Currently Reading” widget which is just the RSS feed for my GoodReads status updates. Three of the four books I’m currently actively reading are finalists. I’m listening, or attempting to listen despite major shortcomings of the Axis 360 app, to Ann Leckie’s Provenance. When I get too frustrated with listening, I switch to the ebook edition. Last night and this morning, I’ve been powering through the middle of Raven Stratagem. Earlier this week and most of last weekend, I immersed myself in the 1943 Best Novel finalist Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright.

I wish there existed a well researched biography of Mr. Wright, aside from the few paragraphs found in his Wikipedia entry. His immediate family alone would make for an interesting read as well: “He was the son of classical scholar John Henry Wright and novelist Mary Tappan Wright, the brother of geographer John Kirtland Wright, and the grandfather of editor Tappan Wright King.” (Wikipedia). Continue reading “Field Notes from My Retro Utopian Adventure”

Unexpected Heart-Pounding Action-Adventure in Under 7,500 Words

I seem to have left the best for last in my Retro Hugo short fiction reading. This morning, I started reading and could not stop reading “The Sunken Land” by Fritz Leiber. His writing took me back to the days when I immersed myself in the writings of Robert E. Howard. And once I reviewed his mini-biography at Wikipedia, I understood why I felt that affinity: “With writers such as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, Leiber can be regarded as one of the fathers of sword and sorcery fantasy, having coined the term.”

“The Sunken Land” pulled me along for a ride with Fafhrd, leaving the Grey Mouser as a bookend to the story. Leiber used a very active voice that left you no time to catch your breath from the first inhalation to the last gasp.

This leaves me with something of a dilemma in deciding which 1942 short story gets my top vote for the Retro Hugo Award. I haven’t yet reread Asimov’s “Runaround” but I remember it being very good. I will listen to it next week as an audiobook. Before I read “The Sunken Land” by Leiber, I had planned on ranking “Runaround” as my first choice. Then there’s also Clement’s hard science-fiction story “Proof,” which I read yesterday and ranked second after Asimov’s entry. Both Asimov and Clement are the traditional science fiction types that are most often associated with a Hugo Award. But my first love is fantasy and Leiber knows how to write a gripping tale. I will have to ponder my vote and you will have to wait and find out until after I re-read the classic robot logic problem that is “Runaround.”

Reading the Best Novelette Finalists (2018 & 1943)

I predict it will take me longer to get through the Best Novelette category than any of the other short fiction categories. Most modern novellas and some of the short stories are available in audio format. Thanks to Heinlein’s continued popularity, most of his fiction is still in print and some of it, including “Goldfish Bowl,” has been re-released in an anthology that is also available as an audiobook. The same can be said for Asimov’s Foundation fiction, which I own in ebook format but have requested the audio CD from my local library.

Another of my interlibrary loan requests arrived last week so I have everything I need to finish reading the finalists for Best Novelette. I’m especially looking forward to reading the lone female author from 1942, C.L. Moore and do plan on reading the entire anthology žMiracle in Three Dimensions, which contains the nominated “There Shall Be Darkness” novelette (see original cover from Astounding Science Fiction below).

Update 4/17/2018: Finished reading ‘Extracurricular Activities’ over breakfast this morning.
Update 4/27/2018: This week I finished “The Secret Life of Bots” and “The Weapon Shop” and I’m reading “Star-Mouse” sporadically.
Update 4/28/2018: Finished “Star-Mouse” which leaves one modern and one retro novelette to read.
Update 5/6/2018: Finished “There Shall Be Darkness” and on of the two Asimov Foundation novelettes.
Update 5/25/2018: Finished the last 2018 novelette last week.

Continue reading “Reading the Best Novelette Finalists (2018 & 1943)”

Reading the Best Novella Finalists (2018 & 1943)

I desperately desire to reread All Systems Red, but I’m saving it for last. And I don’t just want to re-read it, I want to experience it differently. I also plan to do the same thing with Binti: Home, which is available via Hoopla. None of my local libraries have purchased the audiobook edition of All Systems Red, so I found it available at a very reasonable cost through the Downpour site. I like their philosophy (see quote below), so I immediately signed up, not with a monthly membership, but just an account that will allow me to purchase DRM-free audiobooks.

We love books, and we believe that you should be able to enjoy your favorite book whenever, wherever, or whatever you are doing. Audiobooks allow that freedom.

— Downpour

Only two of the finalists for the 2018 Best Novella category are not available in audio format – And Then There Were (N-One) and The Black Tides of Haven – so I’ll be reading those via my tablet. The other four I will listen to via Hoopla or Overdrive.

For the 1943 Retro Hugo finalists, I’ve now obtained all the necessary print edition anthologies and will work my way through them as carefully as I can (some of these books are quite old, held together with what looks like a book friendly duct tape but the bindings are nearly shot). As of the writing of this post, I’ve already returned one of the two interlibrary loans I requested.

Update 4/19/2018: Finished Lester del Rey’s “Nerves” no thanks to a torn/missing/damaged page (p. 90 to be specific) in the anthology Adventures in Time and Space, published in 1946 and being held together with library binding tap.
Update 4/27/2018: Listened to All Systems Red and started reading The Black Tides of Heaven. Also read The Compleat Werewolf which was much better than I anticipated.
Update 5/6/2018: Read “Asylm” the week of 4/30/2018 which just leaves the two Heinlein novellas to read for the Retros. I’m still slowly and sporadically reading “The Black Tides of Heaven.”
Update 5/11/2018: Finished reading “Black Tides of Heaven” this morning. Last one is the 2018 finalists is “Down Among the Sticks and Bones” which I will listen to while travelling next week.
Update 5/25/2018: Finished reading Down Among the Sticks and Bones earlier this week. Also finished both Heinlein novellas – Waldo is forgettable but he made up for it with The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag.

Continue reading “Reading the Best Novella Finalists (2018 & 1943)”

Reading the Hugo Best Short Story Finalists (2018 & 1943)

While I’m waiting on my interlibrary loan requests to be fulfilled for the 1943 Retro Hugo short fiction finalists, I’ve begun reading the current Hugo short fiction finalists, starting with the short stories. These are easily completed during my lunch break or during half of my daily commute, if an audio edition is available. As of Sunday morning, April 9th, I’ve only got one short story left to read. I didn’t want to wait to post though so you’ll need to come back to this post to see how I rated it and what my preliminary voting order will be for my final ballot later this summer. When I update this post, and the others like it that are forthcoming, I will make a brief update post linking back to the updated original post.

Update 4/9/2018: Read two of the 1943 Retro Hugo finalists and added comments below.
Update 4/14/2018: Added links to my GoodReads mini-reviews.
Update 4/19/2018: Read the last of the 2018 Hugo Finalists (see list below)
Update 4/28/2018: The final ILL arrived and I was able to read Clement’s “Proof,” which was surprisingly good (for early hard SF) and reminded me of one of my essay‘s from last semester’s Intro to Astronomy class. DAW’s “Mimic” was to entomological for my tastes. That leaves just one 1942 short story left to read.
Update 5/3/2018: Finished off the short story finalists today by listening to Asimov’s “Runaround” through the audiobook edition of I, Robot.

Note on formatting of this post and those that will follow: You’ll see a nested list with the first level being the title/author/publication/date published of the finalist entry. The second level will be my comments, reviews and ratings. The third level will be my preliminary ranked vote. Here’s an explanation of the Hugo Voting System:

Many people find the Hugo voting system (called “Instant Runoff Voting“) very complicated. While the process is indeed involved, the basic idea is simple and the intention is laudable. Basically the idea is to make sure that the winner has majority support. In ordinary governmental elections it is possible for the winner to be someone that 40% of the people like and 60% of the people hate, because that 60% could not agree among themselves on a candidate. The Hugo voting system is designed to avoid results like that.

— The Voting System, The Hugo Awards

Continue reading “Reading the Hugo Best Short Story Finalists (2018 & 1943)”

Annual Hugo Reading Bonanza Times Two

Last Saturday, the finalists for this year’s Hugo Awards were announced, along with the companion Retro Hugo Award finalists. So I get double the fun again this year, like I had two years ago. I already have read, borrowed or will son buy or borrow the finalists for the current awards. Finding the reading material for the Retro Hugos can often be challenging. To that end, I’ve requested five anthologies via interlibrary loans and have already placed on hold and borrowed two anthologies and two novels containing works originally published in 1942. My thanks to Auxiliary Memory‘s fantastic research in his post just one day after the announcement “Where to Read the 1943 Retro Hugo Short Fiction Nominees?”

The biggest shock came when I retrieved my holds from the Kansas City Public Library Plaza Branch earlier this week. Two of the 1942 novels had arrived and I wished I brought a tote or backpack to help carry them. I really don’t mind reading tomes – epic fantasy is my bread and butter – but I’ve switched to ebooks which are infinitely less heavy physically speaking. When I went to the Holds shelf I groaned to see that Islandia by Wright was at least two inches thick and over a thousand pages long. Good thing I decided to start early on my Hugo finalist reading! Continue reading “Annual Hugo Reading Bonanza Times Two”

Just the Stats, Please

Yes, I’m still here. Sort of. I’ve been so busy since the first of the year, I just now came up for air, and only because I realized it had been nearly a month since I’d posted to my blog. A new year at work means a new budget cycle and all the projects that were on hold now have been given the green light and of course should have been completed yesterday. The ringing in my ears can be directly correlated to the number of hours per day I spend on conference calls. I spend so much time in fact on conference calls that the only time I have to accomplish actual work is at home during the evenings.

And for some reason, I thought it was a good idea, to take another online course, this time in Statistics. I needed one more course to finish my Associates Degree and I wanted to do something related to my core goal – Mathematics. Ironically, as I learned while reading and studying the first chapter of my textbook, Statistics is not technically considered a course in Mathematics. Math results in one right answer if you solve the problem correctly – and this is repeatable for anyone anytime. One problem = one right answer. This is not the case for Statistics.

For my commutes to and from work I switched from listening to audiobooks (for now) to following various podcasts as a sort of New Year’s resolution. Some of them are audio dramas, some of them are non-fiction, some are current tech news, some are short fiction (mostly fantasy and science fiction from various magazines) and some are just pure fun. Most of them I can complete in one day (two commutes = approximately 90 minutes) so I don’t have to worry about losing my place or losing track of the story in a long audiobook.

To prepare for last night’s Tolkien Society of Kansas City discussion of The Children of Hurin, I listened to nearly seven hours of amazing depth and insight on Chapter 21 of the Silmarillion thanks to the trilogy of episodes broadcast by the Prancing Pony Podcast. I plan a more in-depth post on my tumble down Tolkien’s tragic Turin tale. Our next group read at TSoKC is Unfinished Tales, but thankfully we’re skipping Part One (which would be yet another reading of Turin), but will start with Part Two and also read Letters 50-89 in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Check our Facebook page for the date of our next meeting in February and join us if you’re so inclined. All are welcome.

This weekend will be all too short between obligatory after-hours work (ah, the joys of information technology support and maintenance), volunteering at the library (now that is pure joy) and tonight’s General Meeting of the Astronomical Society of Kansas City.

It’s the 27th day of January, 2018. I’ve flown through 7.4 percent of the year in days, nearly 8.3 percent of the months and 11 percent of the first quarter.

Tepus fugit. Vita brevis.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

My final astronomy discussion topic attempts to answer “Why are some wavelengths of radio emission better than others in searching for extraterrestrial civilizations?”

Radio waves can travel immense distances without being significantly altered by interstellar medium. They penetrate dust and gas and are the logical choice for interstellar communication. Astronomers have been listening for signs of extraterrestrial life using the radio spectrum since the 1950s and 60s – long before scientists had discovered the means of detecting exoplanets. But the sheer number of both radio frequencies and directions to search proved daunting and raised question like “Which frequencies should be used to maximize the odds of detecting an alien signal?”

Continue reading “Do You Hear What I Hear?”

Universal Song Remains the Same and Beyond All the Light We Cannot See

For such a small chapter, this week’s topic on Cosmology has some large and deep concepts. I’m attempting to delve into “How did the period of inflation cause the universe to become homogeneous and isotropic?”

Definitions

Big Bang ~ Universe began as an extraordinarily hot, dense primordial atom of energy and caused expansion, just like an explosion. Before that moment, nothing existed, not even space and time. Rather, the explosion created spacetime, which continues to expand. (Comins, 446)

Inflationary Epoch ~ During this epoch, the universe became so large that today we can only see a tiny portion of it and that is limited by the speed of light. The growth and size of the observable universe occurred in a very brief time. (Comins, 451)

Cosmic microwave background (CMB) ~ If the universe began with a hot Big Bang, then calculations indicated the energy remnants should still fill all of space today. The entire universe’s temperature should be only a few kelvins above absolute zero. This radiation’s blackbody spectrum peak should lie in the microwave section of the radio spectrum. (Comins, 446)

Isotropy of CMB ~ The cosmic microwave background radiation is almost perfectly isotropic – the intensity is nearly the same in every observable direction. Isotropy isn’t just limited to observed blackbody radiation, but is also found on a large scale when exploring the number of galaxies found in different directions. (Comins, 448)

Homogeneity ~ The uniformity with distance (the numbers of galaxies stays roughly constant with respect to both distance and direction) of the universe is homogeneous. (Comins, 449)

Fine-Tuning Big Bang

Any viable theory of cosmology, including the Big Bang, must explain the isotropy and homogeneity of the universe. Numerous refinements have been posited and as a result the theory now provides an accurate scenario for the evolution of universe from a tiny fraction of a second after it formed and onward to today. (Comins, 449) Continue reading “Universal Song Remains the Same and Beyond All the Light We Cannot See”

Just A Sun-Day Drive Around the Galactic Neighborhood

This week I’m tackling the subject of our Sun’s motion through the Milky Way Galaxy and approximately how long one orbit is.

The Milky Way Galaxy has two major spiral arms, named the Perseus Arm and the Scutum-Centaurus Arm. There are also smaller less pronounced arms, including the Sagittarius Arm, the Norma Arm, The Local Arm (aka the Orion Spur) and the Outer Arm. Our solar system resides in the Orion Spur (Local Arm), branching off from the larger Perseus Arm. During the summer months in the northern hemisphere, we predominantly observe the Sagittarius Arm, including the galactic center, which appears as steam from the Tea Pot asterism in the constellation Sagittarius. (Gaherty, 2016) Over the winter, we’re looking away from the galactic center and through the Perseus Arm. (Comins, 396)

Artist’s concept of what astronomers now believe is the overall structure of the spiral arms in our Milky Way galaxy. The sun resides within a minor spiral arm of the galaxy, called the Orion Arm. Image via NASA and Wikimedia Commons.

Continue reading “Just A Sun-Day Drive Around the Galactic Neighborhood”