Speed (pictures I like)

Hunter (pictures I like)

Say "Hi" (pictures I like)

Anger (pictures I like)

You Can't Touch This (pictures I like)

A Fire Upon the Deep (a book review post)

Sometimes, there are those books that you really just expect to love. Or, at least, to like a lot. They have all the things that you generally like in books. Or, at least, for that type of book. By all accounts, I should have really liked A Fire Upon the Deep, but it never really took off for me. You could say that it got stuck in the slow zone, especially considering it took me something like six months to read.

It's not that I hated the book, but it never achieved likability. It was like one of those foods you're willing to eat to be polite but, really, you'd just rather not. Like asparagus.

The first issue was the characters. Not that they were the first issue, exactly, but you can forgive a lot of stupid stuff in books (or on TV or whatever) if the characters are good. Good meaning that you can relate to them in some way and empathize with their situation. Or negatively empathize (as with an antagonist). But this book had zero characters with whom I could connect, so I never came to care about what happened to any of them. The only character I came even close to liking got killed not long after he was introduced.

And it was difficult to actually dislike the "villain," since it amounted to no more than a program.

So not only did I not have anyone to root for, I also didn't have anyone to root against, so there was nothing really compelling within the story to keep me wanting to read it.

Some would say the book is about the world building, which is extensive, but I didn't find that appealing, either. There were too many things that I found, well, just dumb. Like the galaxy having "zones." Not zones like you'd have on a map, but zones like the layers of a rain forest: floor, understory, canopy, emergent. The problem with these zones in the book (unthinking depths, slow, beyond, transcend) is that they were represented somewhat like evolutionary stages. Earth is in the slow zone but, once man had evolved enough, he moved up to the beyond, except it's the technology that's evolving, not man.

The problem with all of that is that the technology cannot actually physically exist (work) in an incorrect zone. Imagine it like this: You grow up in a kind of rundown neighborhood and all you have is a bike, but you work hard and save and, eventually, move to a better neighborhood and buy a house and a car. Let's say that one day you want to visit your old home, so you decide to drive by and see it just for the sake of nostalgia. The only problem is that when your car enters the old neighborhood, it quits working. It just shuts off. You could still put it in neutral and push it around the streets, but that would take a very long time and be a lot of hard work. Or you could build a bicycle mechanism into your car that you could switch to when your engine cut off.

I don't find this kind of thing fascinating to ponder, not in any way. It's a ridiculous approach to physics and the universe.

And not to spoil the ending, and I'm not actually going to tell you what happens, but you shouldn't read the next bit if you want to remain in the unawares:

It has a totally deus ex machina ending. That's not a problem in-and-of itself, because you know from the beginning, basically, that that's what they're looking for. However, when it happens, it goes all in and offers absolutely no explanation. The ending just happens. They show up and everything that is going to happen happens without them doing anything other than being there. And that, also, doesn't quite make sense, but there is no explanation offered. It was unsatisfying, to say the least.

And that was after the six-month slog to read it.

Probably, I will go ahead and read the next one, A Deepness in the Sky, but that's because I already have it. If I didn't, I wouldn't bother. And when I say I'm going to read it, I only mean that I'm going to start it. If it's not better, I'm not going to force myself through it like I did this one.

Note: This is one of the author's I decided to explore several years ago when I was doing the fiction to science thing for a-to-z. Vernor Vinge came up with the idea of the technological singularity, and these books deal with that. So, yeah, sometimes I read a book I'm not enjoying so that I can understand the impact of it (like Snow Crash, which was horrible, but, after reading it, I understand why people became so enthralled with it (hint: It wasn't the writing)). Trust me, it's not some weird sadomasochistic reading urge. I just want to understand the cultural significance of the thing.

Reflections on a Week

We sat around at the fairgrounds waiting for the fireworks to start. We got there a little too early this year, so it was a long wait. However, between rounds of Uno and other card games, it gave me plenty of time to observe people.

The people were divided into two main groups: families (like us) and young people. Mostly, the families are uninteresting. I mean, they're busy corralling their kids just like we are. Or not corralling them, as was the case for most of them. I spend a fair amount of time trying to prevent my children from running amok, so there's not much interest for me in watching other people's children do so. Still, it was mildly amusing when the 4ish year old boy a few plots over grabbed a miniature lightsaber with both hands and attached it to his crotch and proceeded to act like he was peeing with it. Not that that in and of itself was amusing, but his mother started laughing uncontrollably and pointing the behavior out to everyone (strangers) around her. Of course, the positive feedback from his mother spurred him on to spin and dance around while holding the lightsaber in place. (I'm just not thinking the same behavior from a little girl would have been tolerated, much less encouraged.) This lasted until he spun himself so out of control that he could no longer stand.

When I say the other group was made of young people, that's not entirely accurate. I should say that the other category of people was made up of roving bands of young girls. Like packs of wild dogs roaming the streets in some post-apocalyptic world. Generally, 5 or 6 of them. Never fewer than 3. Hunting. Aged anywhere from 12 to 25. Mostly in short shorts and low cut shirts with artificial assistance to display their... assets. (Well, except for the 1 girl in a thin, white tank top with nothing beneath it except herself. There was nothing artificial there.) Roaming the crowd looking for stray boys. The problem being that there were no stray boys. And this is the part I find interesting. These kinds of events always attract groups of girls. Girls out to snag guys. But the guys don't show up for them.

Not that there were no guys. But the guys that were there were very obviously already attached. Like the guy behind us. He was there with his girl and 4 of her friends. I know this, because they had me take a group picture of them. The guy sat in his spot all night except for one foraging trip to the concession stands. Accompanied trip. Because it would be too dangerous for his girl to let him go off alone with so many predators around. No groups of guys wandering around looking for like-sized groups of girls, though. None.

Somewhere in there something is wrong. It's certainly not like the malls back in the 80s. Yes, there were the same packs of girls, but there were also guys. Mostly huddled in the gloom of the arcade hypnotized by flashing lights and the sounds of Donkey Kong. Or the food court. Of course, if you were in the book store, like me, you were safe. Completely safe. Better than hiding under a rock.

My daughter eats a lot. When I say a lot, I mean constantly. Like a hummingbird. We think she has a black hole in her stomach. I spend hours everyday trying to keep her in food. Which is in direct opposition to her desire to play. There was a watermelon eating contest for kids at the fairgrounds. I'm not exactly sure how they were defining kids, though. My daughter desperately wanted a snow cone. A $5 snow cone. Which I refused to buy. $5 for a cup of ice? What the heck is that about? The prize for the watermelon eating contest was a free snow cone, and the entry fee for the contest was only $1. So we let her enter. At this point, I'd like to point out that my daughter is 8. She was the youngest kid to enter at the time she was doing it. All girls and except for one other, all over 12. Did I mention the fact that it was all girls? One of those roving packs of girls, one other girl (with her father), and my daughter. She was upset because of all the big girls in the contest and feared she couldn't win. At the last moment, they split it into two groups: all the over 12s and all the under 12s. That just left one girl against my daughter, so it was a pretty easy win for her. However, she came in second out of the whole group. Pretty amazing. And she got her snow cone.

They have this thing here on Wednesday nights during  the summer called, in all originality, Wednesday Night Market. It's what it sounds like. Local businesses and farmers set up stalls and sell stuff in the streets of down town. We bought some great peaches. My kids got to hold some snakes and a newt at a booth being run by the local herpetological society. My daughter, who is pretty fearless, adamantly refused to touch the snakes. Until her brother did. He's a cautious lad. Perhaps overly cautious. His first reaction was also no. Which is what I expected from him (but not from his sister). After looking at all the snakes in boxes, though, and watching all the other people hold them (and wear them), he finally piped up, "I want to hold one." As soon as he had it in his hands, his sister had to do it, too. No, she's not competitive.

Although the crowd at the market is a bit more eclectic than the crowd for the fireworks (which I'm going to blame on the farmers' market section), there were still those densely knotted groups of girls wandering through the crowds looking for the non-existent guys. Again, any guys there were definitely already owned.

There was also a trip to the Academy of Sciences museum in San Francisco. We just renewed our family plan with them, so there should be, at least, a few more trips there within the next year. The albino alligator was doing well after a recent algae cleaning. My daughter was completely engrossed in trying to count the number of moray eels. And she made a friend in the rain forest:

Of course, then, my younger son also wanted to hold a butterfly, so he spent the rest of his time walking around with his finger out (Although my daughter hadn't been trying. It just landed on her). And trying to watch the frogs mate, which he also missed seeing. It was a fun day other than my daughter trying to constantly rush us on to the next thing before anyone else was finished with the thing we were on. That's just how she is.

That's most of the week. There will be reviews coming as soon as I can write them about Cars 2 and Super 8. I just want to point out (because I find it very (very) curious) that Pixar slams big oil in this movie, and it's the first of the Pixar movies to get bad reviews. Or less good reviews. Non-stellar reviews. But I'll talk more about that later.