What I've been reading and viewing
Just a bunch of random stuff I've read or watched lately.
Books
The Magicians, Lew Grossman
This is sort of Harry Potter done in the style of Donna Tartt's The Secret History. So, Hogwarts (in this book, a US college named Brakebills) through the eyes of anomie filled preppies who would otherwise be headed to Princeton, rather than jolly English schoolkids at a privileged psuedo-Eton. Very metatextual, obviously a book about books, about in particular Harry Potter and Narnia (here called Fillory), and in parts D&D and LOTR, and generally about escapist fantasy in general. I thought this was a wonderful, engrossing, but often somewhat miserable, book. It of course will appeal to literary inclined fantasy fans, especially those with a childhood love of the sources it references, but ultimately is fairly harsh in its assessment of why escapist fantasy holds its appeal to us. I liked its version of a magical education. I liked the way it was a fast moving book, covering years of the characters lives quickly, and I thought the characterisation was good if not cheerful. A general theme is that magic won't save us from angst, from addiction, from having to face adulthood, for our own personal failings - and it is a flaw to hope too much that it will. Highly recommended, but not necessarily a comfortable read.
Boneshaker, Cherie Priest
I'd heard a lot about this book, and it has got a lot of acclaim (it is up for a Hugo), and it seems to be the steampunk book getting the most attention of the current crop. I was actually really quite disappointed with it. It has a great setting (though most of the background information is delivered in a giant info-dump at the start, rather than revealed in a more natural way), but a great setting, even coupled with very solid prose, isn't enough for a great book. I didn't care much about the characters, none of whom were terribly likable or fascinating, and there didn't really seem anything more interesting to learn about the characters or the setting after about half way through the book - the big reveals of the climax and dénouement largely concern characters we don't care about or don't even meet, and were very hard to get enthused about. This book started with promise, and mostly failed to deliver on it. I'll be quite disappointed if this wins the Hugo (I've only read one of the other books on the Hugo ballot, The City and the City, but I liked that a lot more)
Buried Deep Kristine Kathryn Rusch
I sort of picked this one up super-cheap on a discount pile, and I'm quite glad I did. This is one in the Retrieval Artist series (it was obvious that it was part of a series -- I didn't need to read the others to understand the plot, though it might have helped with some of the characters), and I'm now interested in grabbing the others. A pretty solid blend of good SF with police procedural and legal and political drama. The basic themes of the books might be described as extreme multiculturalism, and social identity - it is set in an interstellar civilisation, in which various races can find themselves committing serious crimes by the standards of the others. Largely because of this humanity has reacted by creating a not-really-legal but tolerated (humans often find alien justice quite arbitrary and harsh) industry in changing identities and relocating to a new life, 'disappearing', and there are then professional experts (including the Retrieval Artists of the title) who specialise in finding those who have disappeared. The story in this one centred around aliens called the Disty, who have an incredibly strong cultural fear of death, and find simply being near a corpse terribly contaminating, sometimes to the point of inducing panic reactions, contamination that can only be cleansed with complex rituals that can seem barbaric (and can be fatal) to humans. I didn't think this was brilliant, but I thought it was very solid, and I enjoy police procedurals and political drama, so I quite liked it.
Pandora's Star Peter F. Hamilton
I kept having Hamilton recommended to me as another good space opera author to read, so I thought I'd try one. Not bad, but not great either. I found the biggest problem with this book was that it was just too big and sprawling, and seemed like it could have been written a lot shorter. Entire sub-plots occur, some that could have been spun out for an entire book, essentially just as character background, so that when the character(s) involved join in the main plot we know a bit more about them (which seems a very long winded and unnecessary way of accomplishing that). Few of these are engrossing enough, as the characterisation generally isn't great, to really make it interesting. It takes at least half the book before I really felt the main plot had started, and we had moved on from extended scene setting, and it was a nearly 900 page book. It's reasonable enough once the action really starts to happen, if you enjoy hard SF with a fair amount of explosions and violence and technology and action on a really big scale. It hasn't really convinced me that I should track down a lot more Hamilton, though I'll probably read the sequel just for closure.
Burning Man Live: 13 Years of Piss Clear, Black Rock City's alternative newspaper Adrian Roberts
This is a book that is mostly just what it says on the tin, all 13 years worth of (now defunct) Piss Clear, compiled by the editor. There is a little bit of comment for context, but its mostly the issues themselves, reproduce in full (issues usually around 6-8 pags, generally 2-4 issues a year), roughly full size (or for all I know, possible exactly). But as Adrian says in the introduction, its effectively an alternative cultural history of Burning Man, the stuff that the (quite controlling of its image) official Burning Man Organisation would really rather don't get talked about too much (like sex and drugs, or various controversies regarding censorship, or the often tense relationship with law enforcement). Plus plenty of details about what is cool and what isn't, and all the little details of what goes into a true sub-culture - slang dictionaries, fashion critiques, rants on what constitutes politeness in the extremely permissive culture of Burning Man. I really loved Piss Clear when I was on the playa. A really nifty companion to other (often quite starry eyed and laudatory) books about the Burning Man experience, and something I think would be great to give to people who really want an idea of what the big Burn is like. The title of newspaper comes from a valuable bit of survival advice for Burning Man - you know you are drinking enough to stave off dehydration when you piss clear.
Viewing
The Venture Brothers
I only discovered this show a few weeks ago, and I'm loving it. A parody of adventure cartoons (particularly Johnny Quest), and superhero culture. Funny in a cynical and often pretty savage way, but also quite sympathetic to its (generally quite broken) characters. I tend to like the characters from the 'villain' side of the show more, especially Dr. Girlfriend (smart, beautiful, very competent, with only one great problem in life - being in love with a guy that often acts like a complete idiot), and in later seasons the ongoing development of Henchman 21. A lot of the charm of the show is the contrast between the exciting life of superheroes and adventurers, and shiny optimism of 1960s fictional 'super science', and the ongoing theme of the show, which is according to the creators, "Beautiful sublime failure." The characters may be adventurers, super scientists, and often superpowered, but all are vulnerable to everyday human flaws and failure. An interesting aspect of the show (and one that mostly distinguishes it from its source material) is that the show is actually quite continuity heavy, a lot of episodes either leave lasting changes to the lives of the characters, or reference various ongoing minor characters and historical back story. This probably makes it a bit difficult to pick up later seasons, between the various in-jokes of the show and the many (often obscure) pop culture references (for example, one minor character is a combination of Henry Kissinger and Mary Poppins), this is a definitely a genuine cult show. The pop-culture parody bricollage style resembles The Tick (which one of the creators worked on) and The Middle Man, but the humour is a little more cynical. I'm loving it. Aging goth friends may be interested to note the music is supplied by J.G. Thirlwell, better known back in the day as Foetus/Clint Ruin/etc.
I know I'm very late to this show, as friends like sorscha and squasher have been sporting their membership of the Team Venture T-shirt club for years, but now I've caught up with it, it's a firm favourite.
The Inbetweeners
This UK comedy series is about a group of high school kids that aren't cool, but aren't nerds, just in-between. It is a sort of British comedy that I often find hard to watch, with a lot of the humour coming from the lead characters put in situations of extreme embarrassment. This one is funny and clever enough I'm watching it anyway. Very sex obsessed -which certainly accords with my memories of what it was like to be a high school aged boy. The dialogue is both funny, and appropriately high school.
Books
The Magicians, Lew Grossman
This is sort of Harry Potter done in the style of Donna Tartt's The Secret History. So, Hogwarts (in this book, a US college named Brakebills) through the eyes of anomie filled preppies who would otherwise be headed to Princeton, rather than jolly English schoolkids at a privileged psuedo-Eton. Very metatextual, obviously a book about books, about in particular Harry Potter and Narnia (here called Fillory), and in parts D&D and LOTR, and generally about escapist fantasy in general. I thought this was a wonderful, engrossing, but often somewhat miserable, book. It of course will appeal to literary inclined fantasy fans, especially those with a childhood love of the sources it references, but ultimately is fairly harsh in its assessment of why escapist fantasy holds its appeal to us. I liked its version of a magical education. I liked the way it was a fast moving book, covering years of the characters lives quickly, and I thought the characterisation was good if not cheerful. A general theme is that magic won't save us from angst, from addiction, from having to face adulthood, for our own personal failings - and it is a flaw to hope too much that it will. Highly recommended, but not necessarily a comfortable read.
Boneshaker, Cherie Priest
I'd heard a lot about this book, and it has got a lot of acclaim (it is up for a Hugo), and it seems to be the steampunk book getting the most attention of the current crop. I was actually really quite disappointed with it. It has a great setting (though most of the background information is delivered in a giant info-dump at the start, rather than revealed in a more natural way), but a great setting, even coupled with very solid prose, isn't enough for a great book. I didn't care much about the characters, none of whom were terribly likable or fascinating, and there didn't really seem anything more interesting to learn about the characters or the setting after about half way through the book - the big reveals of the climax and dénouement largely concern characters we don't care about or don't even meet, and were very hard to get enthused about. This book started with promise, and mostly failed to deliver on it. I'll be quite disappointed if this wins the Hugo (I've only read one of the other books on the Hugo ballot, The City and the City, but I liked that a lot more)
Buried Deep Kristine Kathryn Rusch
I sort of picked this one up super-cheap on a discount pile, and I'm quite glad I did. This is one in the Retrieval Artist series (it was obvious that it was part of a series -- I didn't need to read the others to understand the plot, though it might have helped with some of the characters), and I'm now interested in grabbing the others. A pretty solid blend of good SF with police procedural and legal and political drama. The basic themes of the books might be described as extreme multiculturalism, and social identity - it is set in an interstellar civilisation, in which various races can find themselves committing serious crimes by the standards of the others. Largely because of this humanity has reacted by creating a not-really-legal but tolerated (humans often find alien justice quite arbitrary and harsh) industry in changing identities and relocating to a new life, 'disappearing', and there are then professional experts (including the Retrieval Artists of the title) who specialise in finding those who have disappeared. The story in this one centred around aliens called the Disty, who have an incredibly strong cultural fear of death, and find simply being near a corpse terribly contaminating, sometimes to the point of inducing panic reactions, contamination that can only be cleansed with complex rituals that can seem barbaric (and can be fatal) to humans. I didn't think this was brilliant, but I thought it was very solid, and I enjoy police procedurals and political drama, so I quite liked it.
Pandora's Star Peter F. Hamilton
I kept having Hamilton recommended to me as another good space opera author to read, so I thought I'd try one. Not bad, but not great either. I found the biggest problem with this book was that it was just too big and sprawling, and seemed like it could have been written a lot shorter. Entire sub-plots occur, some that could have been spun out for an entire book, essentially just as character background, so that when the character(s) involved join in the main plot we know a bit more about them (which seems a very long winded and unnecessary way of accomplishing that). Few of these are engrossing enough, as the characterisation generally isn't great, to really make it interesting. It takes at least half the book before I really felt the main plot had started, and we had moved on from extended scene setting, and it was a nearly 900 page book. It's reasonable enough once the action really starts to happen, if you enjoy hard SF with a fair amount of explosions and violence and technology and action on a really big scale. It hasn't really convinced me that I should track down a lot more Hamilton, though I'll probably read the sequel just for closure.
Burning Man Live: 13 Years of Piss Clear, Black Rock City's alternative newspaper Adrian Roberts
This is a book that is mostly just what it says on the tin, all 13 years worth of (now defunct) Piss Clear, compiled by the editor. There is a little bit of comment for context, but its mostly the issues themselves, reproduce in full (issues usually around 6-8 pags, generally 2-4 issues a year), roughly full size (or for all I know, possible exactly). But as Adrian says in the introduction, its effectively an alternative cultural history of Burning Man, the stuff that the (quite controlling of its image) official Burning Man Organisation would really rather don't get talked about too much (like sex and drugs, or various controversies regarding censorship, or the often tense relationship with law enforcement). Plus plenty of details about what is cool and what isn't, and all the little details of what goes into a true sub-culture - slang dictionaries, fashion critiques, rants on what constitutes politeness in the extremely permissive culture of Burning Man. I really loved Piss Clear when I was on the playa. A really nifty companion to other (often quite starry eyed and laudatory) books about the Burning Man experience, and something I think would be great to give to people who really want an idea of what the big Burn is like. The title of newspaper comes from a valuable bit of survival advice for Burning Man - you know you are drinking enough to stave off dehydration when you piss clear.
Viewing
The Venture Brothers
I only discovered this show a few weeks ago, and I'm loving it. A parody of adventure cartoons (particularly Johnny Quest), and superhero culture. Funny in a cynical and often pretty savage way, but also quite sympathetic to its (generally quite broken) characters. I tend to like the characters from the 'villain' side of the show more, especially Dr. Girlfriend (smart, beautiful, very competent, with only one great problem in life - being in love with a guy that often acts like a complete idiot), and in later seasons the ongoing development of Henchman 21. A lot of the charm of the show is the contrast between the exciting life of superheroes and adventurers, and shiny optimism of 1960s fictional 'super science', and the ongoing theme of the show, which is according to the creators, "Beautiful sublime failure." The characters may be adventurers, super scientists, and often superpowered, but all are vulnerable to everyday human flaws and failure. An interesting aspect of the show (and one that mostly distinguishes it from its source material) is that the show is actually quite continuity heavy, a lot of episodes either leave lasting changes to the lives of the characters, or reference various ongoing minor characters and historical back story. This probably makes it a bit difficult to pick up later seasons, between the various in-jokes of the show and the many (often obscure) pop culture references (for example, one minor character is a combination of Henry Kissinger and Mary Poppins), this is a definitely a genuine cult show. The pop-culture parody bricollage style resembles The Tick (which one of the creators worked on) and The Middle Man, but the humour is a little more cynical. I'm loving it. Aging goth friends may be interested to note the music is supplied by J.G. Thirlwell, better known back in the day as Foetus/Clint Ruin/etc.
I know I'm very late to this show, as friends like sorscha and squasher have been sporting their membership of the Team Venture T-shirt club for years, but now I've caught up with it, it's a firm favourite.
The Inbetweeners
This UK comedy series is about a group of high school kids that aren't cool, but aren't nerds, just in-between. It is a sort of British comedy that I often find hard to watch, with a lot of the humour coming from the lead characters put in situations of extreme embarrassment. This one is funny and clever enough I'm watching it anyway. Very sex obsessed -which certainly accords with my memories of what it was like to be a high school aged boy. The dialogue is both funny, and appropriately high school.