25 Things Meme

This is not a return to blogging, just reposting the Facebook meme here.

25 Things You May Not Know About Me

1. I like listening to Country music. Commercial country, old country, whatever. The cheesier the better. Hank Williams, Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw, Loretta Lynn, Brooks & Dunn, Carrie Underwood, Charlie Daniels – all on my iPod right now.

2. I am an Eagle Scout, and it is the one thing I have on my resume / CV from before college. It is also the oldest thing I have on my CV that isn’t my name, as I first put it on there when applying for a job in high school.

3. Although a flaming liberal in almost all of my opinions (by American standards, anyway) I believe strongly in the 2nd Amendment and the right to bear arms. Part of this comes from the belief that if there is a populist, communist or anarchist revolution, we stand a much better chance of success if we’re armed with fully automatic weapons.

4.I have suffered from (and been treated for) depression on and off for my adult life. In the last six months, I’m doing better than I have been since I was in my late teens. The prior six months were probably the worst in my life in this regard. If you’re depressed, seek counselling. It will help. I promise.

5. I thought Grand Theft Auto 4 was an unfun piece of shit. I thought Grand Theft Auto 3 was an unfun piece of shit. On the other hand, I thought Vice City and San Andreas were awesome. Go figure.

6. I called the last of the Final Five Cylons a year ago. I also used to infer from clues what mythical creatures or pulpy homages Mulder and Scully were facing on the X-Files before they were revealed. Often during the opening teaser.

7. I’ve been bungee jumping, and it was the closest thing I’ve had to a religious experience.

8. Speaking of, I envy people who have strong religious convictions as I have none whatsoever. It’s not that I disbelieve in a higher power (an atheist I am not), but I have seen no compelling argument for belief in one either – even though sometimes I desperately want to. One of my friends is a very devout Jew and many of my family members are devout Christians, and I look at their experiences and faith and wish I could believe something so strongly as well.

9. I enjoy playing through old classic adventure games from my youth. I play through Hero’s Quest and King’s Quest 6 at least once a year.

10. I was terrible with math in school. Algebra II was my worst subject (and as far as I made it down the Great Highway o’ Math), and was my only D in high school. The one exception to this was the semester in Geometry that focused entirely on proofs and theorems; during that time, I scored higher than 100% with all the extra credit. To this day I’m not sure why I was much better with Geometry.

11. I cannot abide working with people who I feel have nothing to offer me, especially when they are in positions of authority. I want to work with people from whom I can learn, or with whom I can be creative. When someone is neither, they’re wasting my time.

12. There was a point in my life when I watched Jerry Springer daily.

13. I own a full-on (and about 90% authentic, in terms of the materials and clothing patterns) pirate costume for cosplaying, but have never used it for cosplay – yet.

14. I have purchased more pairs of shoes for myself in the last year than I have in the previous seven.

15. My favourite superhero is either Captain America or Hellboy, and I like them both for many of the same reasons.

16. As a kid, I had strep throat a lot. I’m not sure how many times but if I had to hazard a guess it was thirty or so. I have never had it since I was about 13, despite having been exposed to it several times. I secretly believe this is because I am now immune to every strain of strep on the planet.

17. I have a recurring nightmare where my friends or family are in trouble, typically from some massive threat (zombies, war, etc.) and I’m trying to tell them to run or prepare and they ignore me until it’s too late. Yes, I’ve told my shrink about this nightmare.

18. My ideal video game is a sandbox-style Jurassic Park game, where you could play as a variety of dinosaurs as well as a human. Why someone hasn’t made this yet I don’t know. Dinosaurs! Guns! Vehicles! Missions! Come ON, people!!

19. I am an optimist, almost to a fault. My optimism has only increased since moving to London and seeing some of the incredibly nice things people have done for total strangers in such a large city.

20. The very first ‘adult’ (i.e., not intended for a younger audience) novel I read was either The Lord of the Rings or The Hunt For Red October – I cannot remember which, and I read them right around the same time.

21. I love watching horror movies but cannot watch them alone as I get genuinely terrified.

22. Although I’ve never made a secret about this, I don’t actively talk about it either. So a lot of people don’t know that I interned for Michael Moore on the second season of his TV show “The Awful Truth.”

23. Which is because it was my dream to become a filmmaker. I made my first movie when I was about 8 or so. I made movies throughout high school. Now, I’m in PR and occasionally I do PR for other people’s movies. Sigh.

24. Similar to #1, I also enjoy hardcore gangster rap, but only when it’s political in nature. I think Eminem’s political rhymes are some of the best rap of the past 10 years.

25. I enjoy memes like this and I was secretly hoping someone would send it to me so I could do it. In fact, I was probably going to do it anyway just for the hell of it.

The Only Thing I Want For Christmas

I've already told the most important person, but I should note this for the rest of you Puppeteers: one of the formative experiences in my life, Free to Be... You and Me is being re-released for its 35th anniversary. I wouldn't have known except for Cory Doctorow's post on BoingBoing about it.

Free to Be... You and Me taught me a lot about tolerance, understanding and being yourself. I am not kidding when I say that it had a profound impact on my life and who I am as a person.

Here's a bit from the movie adaptation, which is one of the few bits I can still recite large parts of even though the last time I saw it was more than twenty years ago.

Yeah, it's that good.

Adapting Tradition

London has taken on that particular smell I associate with autumn. The air is crisper, somehow cleaner, and fallen leaves crackle as I walk through the park. It's a hint of the oncoming winter, but there's enough nice weather that I don't need my thick coat yet. It's that back-to-school, raking leaves, harvested corn, pumpkins-on-the-porch time I remember from being a kid. Trick-or-treating isn't far off and the last desperate days of playing outside before winter fill afternoons.

Autumn is my favorite season. It's the time when I feel most alive, and I love the world around me more.

It's also the time for one of the few personal traditions I actually follow: my yearly reading of Washington Irving's short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I'm not sure how long I've done this, but I have a distinct memory of reading it in the autumn in the 9th grade, and I know I bought my current copy in 1995, so it's been about 15 years or so. There's just one problem: my current copy is in a storage unit about 9000 miles away from my flat.

So like other traditions, I have to adapt it a bit. This evening the Beautiful Competition made a gorgeous pumpkin pie because she happened to find canned pumpkin one day at the store; she had not seen it there before, and has not seen it since. It may not taste exactly the same, but it's as close as we can get.

And it's not going to be my well-worn Classics copy, but there are at least two different free versions online, so it looks like I'll be able to read my favorite seasonal story - even if it is on a printout or a computer screen.

In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.

Ah, autumn.

Live, Crowdsourced Content Creation

Stephen Sullivan, author of dozens of novels and the Origins Award-winning Podo and the Magic Shield, is hard at work on a project called Tournament of Death, a 'live-novel' written entirely during the Olympics. He's also relying heavily on user input and feedback to develop the story. For example, there's a poll on the Tournament of Death blog asking 'Things [you] want to see killed in the Tournament of Death are:' Of course I voted 'everybody' because it's a tournament of death!

Stephen's project combines two really interesting things in a way I'm not exactly sure has been done before: crowdsourcing plot points by asking community members and readers what they want to see happen and allowing them to have a real effect on the events in the novel; and a restrictive writing environment. In this case, writing only during the 2008 Olympics. It's a fabulous little experiment and the first post is pretty awesome.

Also, Stephen wrote a hell of a press release for this, which I'm going to simply copy and paste here because it's so great. I wish my clients would let me write press releases like this for them. It's a short story in and of itself.

Tournament of Death is a special writing challenge conceived and executed by award-winning fantasy author Stephen D. Sullivan.

The writing of the story will take place over the 16 days of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

"I was looking at my schedule and wondering what kind of work I'd get done during those two weeks," Sullivan said. "The Olympics is kind of a holiday in our house. We love it, and we try to watch as much coverage as we can. Then it hit me: what if my work for those two weeks became connected to the games?"

Sullivan came up with the idea of writing as he watched the Olympics and letting his work be inspired by both the games and by interaction with fans during that two-week period.

"I haven't done any actual writing yet," Sullivan said, "though I may work on the prologue before the games begin. After that, I'll be doing one chapter of the story each day. Each chapter will be at least 1000 words long, so, at the end of the Olympiad, I'll have — at minimum — a decent-sized novella."

The episodes will be published on Sullivan's site, www.stephendsullivan.com, and on his blog — stephendsullivan.blogspot.com, and on his author page at GoodReads.com.

"I have an idea of where I'm going with the story," he said, "and I have a few characters in mind, but there's nothing set in stone. Inspiration for writing can come from a lot of places. I know watching the Olympics will really get the creative juices flowing. I'm also interested in feedback on the concept from my readers. They'll be able to comment on my blog and send messages through my email. Once the story gets running, I'll have some lists of characters for people to vote on, too."

Because the project will be the majority of Sullivan's work for those two weeks, he will also have a donation form set up on PayPal.

"I'm a professional freelance writer," he said. "If I don't work, I don't get paid. So it's risky for me to devote a couple of weeks to something like this. I'm hoping the readers will support me in this experiment. And if they do, I'll write them into the story."

Sullivan plans to have a list — a "banzuke," he called it — of people supporting the project. "There will be Bronze, Silver, and Gold levels of participation. There will be a spectator level, too, for small donations, with participants listed on the web site. Finally, there will be a Champion level, where the donor will actually be written into the story as a contestant — though I won't promise that anyone written into the story will survive."

However, "dead" contributors will live on, when the online project becomes a printed book.

"Though I have a small publishing house of my own, Walkabout Publishing, I will be pursuing all printing options," Sullivan said. "One way or another, Tournament of Death will be available in print and at Amazon after it's done. It'd be nice if a big publisher picks it up. We'll just have to see what the reaction is."

Either way, Sullivan hopes to have the book out by the end of 2008.

"Assuming I don't crash and burn," he said wryly. "There's always that possibility. Since this is a live event, it's going to be like walking a tightrope — not a lot of room for error. I hope people will tune in and see how I do."

The live, online version of Tournament of Death will run from August 8th to 17th, 2008.

Full Disclosure: Stephen is a member of my writing group, the Alliterates, and is the editor of the Blue Kingdoms anthologies in which some of my fiction has appeared.

Oops

I just restarted my account for the book social network Goodreads, and while I thought I was only connecting with the 10 people from my Gmail account who were already on the site, apparently I spammed all 492 people in my contact book.

If you're one of those (many, many) people, I'm very sorry. I blame Goodreads' shitty UI and not-very-transparent 'invite' system.

Update: Jesus, I spammed DeepDiscount's help system, Best Buy, everyone. Good fucking God I hate systems like that.

Note: If anyone out there is a programmer, add a fucking warning box when you want people to import their entire Goddamned address book or at least make it DAMN clear that's what you're doing.

Fucking assholes.

On Marketing

From the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.

Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."

Paper

There's something about the texture and feel of paper that I like. I don't feel the need to read things on paper - I'm fine with the movement of fiction to digital forms - but paper itself, the pulp beneath the ink, is something irreplaceable. My favorites are heavier and grainier varieties; construction paper, comic book paper, the stuff they made paperback novels out of in the 1980s. It has a certain dry feel to it like nothing else and makes a strange and chilling noise when you rub two sheets of it together. In my memory it is forever associated with reading in the back of the classroom in grade school, in stuffing a copy of Jurassic Park in my earth science book in junior high, or in buying copies of Groo before it changed to the higher-quality glossy format.

I also remember my mother taking me to COSI in Columbus and showing me the papermaking exhibit on the Street of Yesteryear, which is another vault of great memory all on its own.

For all my digital knowledge and my daily use of computers and the sheer volume of text I read online each day, I suppose there is a reason I've never read a novel on the Internet before and have no plans to do so.

It Finally Arrived!

It's not often I anticipate a book, but I've been waiting patiently for the Hobby Games: The 100 Best since it debuted at GenCon and there was a package waiting for me when I got home with my copy neatly tucked inside. I haven't opened it yet, but it's waiting for me by my bed when I finally turn in tonight. I'm cleaning, and cleaning, and cleaning getting ready to sell this stupid house. I don't think I'll ever be done but in less than 48 hours, I have to be.

But I digress. Hobby Games is shipping, so if you haven't ordered your copy, why don't you try the link in this post. It's good karma.

Potterweekend!

Friday at midnight, I met Angela and several of her co-workers downtown for the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We hit Elliot Bay, a charming independent bookstore between Seattle's meatmarket-club district and Seattle's largest concentration of homeless people. Both groups were represented en masse, but a good time was had before we retreated to the comfort of our quiet neighborhood, a place where you won't be insulted for your race and hit up for money every twenty feet by people who smell like they've been drinking rubbing alcohol.

I digress, but experiences like that make me glad I'm both married and comfortably established and my worries at home include watering my lawn rather than who (or what) is looking in my windows at night.

At any rate, I celebrated Potterweekend by watching the entire Lord of the Rings: Extended Edition trilogy. Why wasn't I reading the book? Well, claimed it first (and she finished around 3 AM this morning) and I read a pirated copy off the Internet.

Seth pointed me towards the story on Tuesday, and although none of the downloads were working anymore, someone posted a link in a comments section and that did work. So I grabbed it. It sat on my desktop, and while I was tempted, I didn't give in.

For about 24 hours. Then I told myself, "I just want to read the end. I'm going to read the end of the book first anyway, so let's just find out who lives and who dies and whether Snape really is evil." So I read the last thirty pages or so.

Then I told myself, "I'll just read the first chapter."

Yeah right.

So I read the whole thing.

I rationalized this (and I'm not saying I'm right) by reminding myself that I had preordered not one, but two copies, one of which was not discounted at all and would be going to support a major Seattle institution/indie bookstore.

The book was good. Very good. Not "great," but very good. The body count wasn't as high as I expected, but it is a children's book after all. Most importantly, it was an extremely satisfying end to a series that I really loved reading. I was a bit of a latecomer to Potter, and say what you will about the literary merits (or not) of the books, reading them was like stepping back into a childhood sitting on beanbags or in my room at home with my nose stuck in a good book.

These are the kinds of books that help kids realize what good stories are and can be, the kind that inspire the next generation of writers. The magic in Harry Potter is not all in wands and spells, it's in the series' ability to help readers see possibilities. As a writer, that's pretty damned awesome.

Pottertime

Time to go buy the final book in a series I have truly enjoyed reading.

Spain Part Five: Gibraltar and Driving North

Gibraltar is hard to find on Spanish roads. That's because Spain really wants Gibraltar back, so there are no signs for it until you get right on top of it. Literally. So if you're looking for Gibraltar, drive towards the giant rock or go to the town of La Liena.

Gibraltar, one of the two "pillars of Hercules," stands at the "mouth" of the Mediterranean. As its name suggests, it's a giant goddamned rock, and there's an almost-identical giant goddamned rock across the sea on Africa - and I have to admit, it's pretty impressive.

Gibraltar has been owned in the past by Greeks, Iberians, Romans, Pirates, Moors, and most recently the British, who came under the pretenses of stopping Napoleon and decided to make it a colony. As such, it's one of the last British colonies on the planet. It also makes a dandy place to stock up on English-language reading material when you're in a country that is a little low on Barnes & Noble outlets.

We planned a stop by Gibraltar as a break from the monotony of cured ham, Spanish tortillas, and people who don't speak English. This was about the midpoint of the trip, so we were looking forward to hearing English again (at least, I was.) And eating fish and chips. All the good things about British life. Or at least two of them.

So we drove down to La Liena and promptly got lost, which is quite a feat considering the town is pretty small, even for a European town. We ended up in a roundabout going in circles around the bullring while I was reading a map, and ended up asking for directions several times. Eventually we parked our car in an underground parking garage and traversed a good portion of the city before we located our hotel, which (like some of the other places we stayed) was above a restaurant. Imagine, Seattleites, if Beth's cafe had four floors of rooms above it, and you have what these Hostales are like. Cigarette smoke and all.

La Liena was founded by the Spanish as a response to British occupation of Gibraltar, and it's possibly the most un-interesting place we ended up in Spain. The road there is littered with resorts and signs in English, because the southern part of Spain - the Costa del Sol - is full of Brits and Germans who go there to retire. In other words, it's Europe's answer to Florida.

After ditching our bags in our room, we walked into Gibraltar. It's the only time, aside from a trip to Niagra falls, that I've walked into another country, and I suspect it's one of the last places you can do that. Gibraltar itself is really small, and you can walk from one end to the other in a couple of hours. Customs glanced at our passports and waved us through; we actually had to request the stamp, and the guard just looked amused. The next step was running across the airport's runway; the street and sidewalk goes right over it, which is a bit of a trip.

And then we were in Gibraltar, where prices were in pounds and the swears were in good old English. We took some money out of the bank and did what any good American would do in a British colony: honed in on the nearest pub, ordered Guinness and fish and chips. And boy was it good.

Gibraltar is also a tax haven, so a lot of Spanish people go down there to shop. Gibraltar Town crams as many stores into a half-kilometer that you can, so our time there consisted primarily of wandering from shop to shop (and pub to pub.) We bought some touristy things, pints of beer, some pie, and postcards to send home. Yes, they had red mailboxes. And we stocked up on books for the plane ride home.

Gibraltar's funny because it really has no place in the modern world. I don't mean that in a negative way, just that it's a remnant of colonialism that just won't die. You still have to walk through a massive wall to get into town. It's so different from Spain not a kilometer away it's uncanny. But somehow, it survives. It's like an English town with tropical temperatures. The whole thing is remarkable.

We managed to "do" Gibraltar and be back for a late-night snack and sleep, ready to head out the day after. Our plan was to see Cordoba, home of the Mezquita mosque, and we started calling hotels before we left La Liena. Oddly, none of them had rooms. We drove north, and called more hotels. No vacancies. About noon, we panicked: we had no place to stay that night. We looked at the map and assessed other options. We had planned to go to La Mancha and see Quixote country before heading to Madrid. Maybe we should do that early, turn the car in early, and stay longer in Madrid?

It turns out that's exactly what we did. And it was one of the best decisions we made.

Book: Newton's Cannon by J. Gregory Keyes

And then there's Newton's Cannon. Rarely do I read a book without skipping parts - usually only paragraphs - here and there, or glancing at the last few pages to see how it turns out. Newton's Cannon is the first book in a long time that captured my interest enough so that I just didn't want to do that. Rather than tearing right through, I put it down in places just so I could savor the last third.

Premise: Sir Issac Newton discovers alchemy - or rather, the applications of it. Alchemy is kind of a mixture of magic and quantum mechanics - in the context of the book, it's all scientific, but there are certain aspects of it that aren't really covered by our modern scientific understanding. Newton's discovery touches off an age of invention that brings the world into a kind of steampunk age, with pistols that shoot lightning, machines that communicate over enormous distances, and more. England and France have squared off against each other, both trying to find an advantage, and France might just have that advantage, with the unwitting help of one young Ben Franklin. Oh, and Blackbeard the pirate makes an appearance.

Newton's Cannon is the first of a series of four books collectively called The Age of Unreason. Keyes' work is one of those rare treats where the execution of a cool premise is just as good as, if not better than, the premise itself. I've already purchased the second book in the series, A Calculus of Angels, and frankly I can't wait to read it, too.

Book: The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson

The last Kim Stanley Robinson book I tried to read was The Years of Rice and Salt, which I couldn't finish. In the same Amazon order as the post below, I grabbed The Wild Shore, a post-apocalyptic tale by Robinson, and couldn't put it down.

Part of a triptych (trilogy) of similar books about three vastly different futures for Orange County, California, The Wild Shore takes place in an America about fifty years after a nuclear attack destroyed major cities. Bombs were detonated from ground-level, inside trucks and buildings, so the devastation isn't as complete as it could have been if they were launched from ICBMs, but it was still complete enough. The UN has decided that the United States should be cut off from the rest of the world for 100 years as punishment for its imperialism (at least, that's the explanation given in the book, but the narrator does show that there is a good reason to question whether or not that's true.) So anyone who tries to leave, is killed by one of the battleships that patrols the shore. Additionally, if any settlement makes too much progress towards reunification - such as building a railroad track - a space-based satellite destroys the structure.

A blurb on the back describes The Wild Shore as a cross between Huck Finn and Our Town, and that's as apt a description as any. The action centers around one small village of survivors, who have built a community based on fishing and agriculture. They battle with the "scavengers" who inhabit the ruins of Orange County, people who have chosen to simply live off the scraps of the old civilization rather than trying to make a new life. The book clearly comes down on the side of the farmers, and in an interesting twist for the genre, the calls to action for resistance, revolution, and reunification and rebuilding the old United States are less important than the personal lessons the main character learns as he instead grows up in his village and his decisions and perspectives start influencing the lives of those around him, for better or worse.

The Wild Shore is not a rollicking action-adventure, but it's a hell of a read regardless. It's an interesting contrast to David Brin's The Postman, which released about the same time (early 1980s) and embraced the spirit of reclamation and reunification rather than the spirit of community and family that The Wild Shore ultimately concerns itself with. Amazon sells The Wild Shore too.

Book: Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling

Fair warning: this is going to be less a book review than a confessional.

I typically try to keep a very open mind when reading books, especially when I'm reading a post-apocalyptic adventure novel - my favorite SF genre. So I grabbed Dies the Fire from an online recommendaton with a bevy of other books using a birthday gift certificate, because it was post-apocalyptic and sounded like an interesting premise: some sort of electrical disturbance basically puts everyone back a few hundred years, before electricity and steam. Breakdown of society, people coming together, evil enemy army, and so forth. Sure, sounds like a decent read.

The plot breaks into two arcs: rugged bush pilot flying wealthy family to remote Idaho, and Wiccan acoustic guitar playing single mother in small Oregon college town.

The pilot plot was OK I guess. But boy howdy, the other character's plotline was awful.

Maybe it's just because I've spent so much time around those folks, but in the first twenty pages the Wiccan was casting spells, remarking about how her friend who fought in the SCA and made fine weapons for Ren Faires would always stand by her side, and just generally reminded me of the worst parts of some GenCon attention whore, I put the book aside.

OK, I didn't. I skipped around. I read the end (a habit most people would cruicify me for if offered the chance, but fuck 'em, the journey is more important than the destination for me.) And the samples I found were an annoying and shitty as the first twenty pages. So this one landed on the pile that's going to Half Price the next time I'm taking a load down there.

Does that make me a bigot? Maybe. I tried to think how I would respond if the character were, say, a Muslim or a Christian. Would I be equally as annoyed by a Christian character making signs of the cross and quoting scripture? As much as I wish I could say "yes, that would equally annoy me," I know the answer is "no, not really." I have some personal feelings about Wicca and some - not all, but some - people who choose to practice that faith that color my personal judgement in this regard. But even that is a counterfeit argument - I have feelings about Christians as well, and not all of them very positive. But why my personal negative - and somewhat irrational - response to this character?

I guess the answer is, "I don't know." Maybe it is a little bit of bigotry, because it seems based largely on my personal disdain for some practitioners of the faith rather than the religion itself (as far as I'm concerned, religions are pretty much equal, with the exception of Scientology.) It's hard to explain. And maybe I don't have to.

I wish I could have kept reading, because Stirling penned some really tight prose. The pilot's plotline especially just rocked and rolled along, and I wanted to read more, just to see what happened next - not a bad thing. Seth mentioned that Stirling wrote some historical fiction, so I might try to track down a copy of that, just to give the author another shot.

If you really want to read Dies the Fire, there's a link to Amazon.com. I can't really recommend it though.

Book: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Amazon.com offered me 5% more off my order if I ordered Cormac McCarthy's The Road with World War Z, so I said "why the hell not" and added it to the cart. It's a good book. It's a very fast read. And it's one of those simple-but-difficult books, just because of the subject matter.

The book follows an unnamed protagonist and his son as they trek south towards some unknown and esoteric goal. The goal, whatever it is, acts as a MacGuffin to provide the two with a need to move. They push an old shopping cart that contains their worldly possessions, and avoid human contact whenever possible - in no small part because many of the the other humans in the ash-covered, burned-out wasteland have resorted to cannibalism to survive.

The book is heavy. It's barely 200 pages, but it's heavy all the same, because while it has the normal survivialist masturbatory fantasies post-apocalyptic books they play second fiddle to the relationship between the father and son. The father's goal is to basically survive long enough to teach his kid how to survive, and as the story progresses he becomes more and more desperate in his drive to do this. It is clear at some points that the father isn't willing to take the kinds of risks that might actually provide a better life for his son, and his descent into paranoia is equally heartbreaking for its utter lack of hope as it is for it inevitable conclusion.

I recommend The Road, but don't expect something lighthearted. Sleep will not be an easy time coming after you finish this book.

Book: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

World War Z: The Oral History of the Zombie War is Max Brooks' successor to his pseudo-comedy book The Zombie Survivial Guide, although Z is very much a serious piece of literature that not only curb-stomps the brains out of anything else in the genre I've read, it blows it into a pulp with a shotgun blast. Yeah, it's good.

Z is a series of vignettes, each an "interview" with someone associated with a worldwide outbreak known as the "zombie war," or "World War Z." It has taken the world twelve years to push the zombie threat back to managable levels, and not without great loss; it's an apocalyptic scenario, but not a total one, as there are still millions of people as well as some infrastructure left.

What's fascinating about Brooks' Z is the same spirit that encapsulates all post-apocalyptic literature - the posed question "how would people react in this, the most extreme of circumstances?" Brooks' answer is certainly more hopeful than most, and reminds me in no small part of David Brin's take on civilization - that despite its shortcomings, it's something worth fighting for. Brooks also manages to work in some good social commentary as well without resorting to cliches or jaded and tired criticism; his details of Israel's response and the reactions in the Middle East are especially telling.

I cannot recommend World War Z enough, as the top of the zombie novel genre, a great piece of post-apoc. fiction, and just a great read.

Book: Autumn by David Moody

Autumn came in a batch of Amazon.com recommendations while I was checking out World War Z from The Zombie Survival Guide scribe Max Brooks. Autumn is another example of zombie fiction, which seems to have taken off in the last five years seemingly on its own, and like Monster Island, Autumn was published online first and then self-published into the physical world. Its rawness shows; I counted a few editing mistakes and Moody's writing just flowed like something you'd read online, when the author is more concerned about getting thoughts down than in the structure of what he writes, and hasn't gone back to look it over.

Autumn is really a setup to the rest of Moody's novels, which are not avialable for free online; it's character introduction and development leading to a climax that is anti-climactic in the greater scheme of the world. It's Night of the Living Dead when you know there several more movies coming - which isn't to say it isn't a satisfying read. Moody could have stood to edit out his characters' bickering a little bit, not because it was unrealistic but simply because it got repetitive. But Autumn certainly accomplishes its goal of making you want to know what's happening next in the series. Next order I make from Amazon, I'll have to drop another of Moody's books in there.