Sundial for a binary star system.

Heaven preserve me from linking to Slate, but this article on the re-printing of John M. Ford's work is news too good not to share.

But I reconnected Ford’s family and editors at Tor, and after a year of delicate back-and-forth spearheaded by Beth Meacham, Tor and the family have reached an agreement that will gradually bring all of his books back into print, plus a new volume of stories, poems, Christmas cards, and other uncollected material. First up, in fall 2020, is the book that introduced me to Ford, The Dragon Waiting. Then, in 2021, Tor will publish—at long last—the unfinished Aspects, with an introduction by Neil Gaiman.

Now if we can see a full re-print of Cordwainer Smith, and if Pamela Dean ever gets that last Secret Country book out....

John C. Wright on H. G. Wells v. C. S. Lewis v. Arthur C. Clarke.

Cheap content from Atomic Nerds! Bold for what I've read (no italics, since the only book I've started and not finished is The Fountainhead--which I have since--sigh--completed. Substance is no substitute for style.)

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Damn straight.

2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. Fuck you, philotes.

4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert. That is, everything by Frank Herbert.

5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin

6. 1984, by George Orwell

7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov. All of them. Even the ones after the trilogy that had incomprehensible telepathy.

9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan

13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell

14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson

15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore

16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov

17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss

19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. The best book about writing and the regret that follows. What, you thought it was about children?

21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick

22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood. Assigned in my junior year of high school. A lot more impressive then.

23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King. Fine, italics. The first and no others.

24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke

25. The Stand, by Stephen King

26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman. Entirely responsible for my goth phase, about which no further information will be given. There are no pictures.

30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein

32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams

33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein

35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller

36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells

37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne

38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys

39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells

40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny

41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings. The worst LotR clone since Terry Brooks.

42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson

44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven

45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin

46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien

47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White

48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke

50. Contact, by Carl Sagan

51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons

52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman

53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson

54. World War Z, by Max Brooks

55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle

56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman

57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett

58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson

59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Worthy of every Nebula they won.

60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

61. The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind

63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. This and not Blood Meridian?

64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist. What's more, I've been to Krondor.

67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks. And the other books beyond the first three. I just don't know why.

68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard. I never saw these as wish fulfillment; rather, as the explication of a peculiarly Texan philosophy of life.

69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb

70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne

73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore. Ha! One nerd-bullet dodged!

74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi

75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson

76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke

77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey

78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin

79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson

82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde. My sister liked this, so I didn't read it.

83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks. Ditto.

84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart

85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson Bad style, and three for eight on interesting ideas.

86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher

87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe

88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn. Not proud of that one.

89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan

90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock

91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. I was pleased to see Sunshine here; it's McKinley at her best, which is very good, and is often under-rated.

93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge

94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov

95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson. I'll just read Genesis, by Fred Turner.

96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville

99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony. Way too many of these, sadly.

100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis. Nice to see these get some recognition.

Two Oddities of the Snake Range

I recently enjoyed an overnight backpack in eastern Nevada's Snake Range (probably better know as Great Basin National Park). Anyone interested in seeing my attempts to capture Nevada's beautiful landscapes would do well to look in on my photoblog (and keep checking, I've got quite a backlog). But two things I've learned since I returned merit mention here on Odious and Peculiar.

What do Neal Stephenson's Anathem and the Snake Range have in common? They're both connected to the 10,000 Year Clock project:

...a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the bells of this buried Clock play a melody. Each time the chimes ring, it’s a melody the Clock has never played before. The Clock’s chimes have been programmed to not repeat themselves for 10,000 years. Most times the Clock rings when a visitor has wound it, but the Clock hoards energy from a different source and occasionally it will ring itself when no one is around to hear it. It’s anyone’s guess how many beautiful songs will never be heard over the Clock’s 10 millennial lifespan.

The Clock is real. It is now being built inside a mountain in western Texas. This Clock is the first of many millennial Clocks the designers hope will be built around the world and throughout time. There is a second site for another Clock already purchased at the top of a mountain in eastern Nevada, a site surrounded by a very large grove of 5,000-year-old bristlecone pines.

Read the whole thing. I don't generally care for people mucking about with the landscape in indulgence of their own obsessions (see Christo and his planned hybrid of nuisance and eyesore which he wants to inflict on the Arkansas River), but this is pretty damn cool:

Carved into the mountain are five room-sized anniversary chambers: 1 year, 10 year, 100 year, 1,000 year, and 10,000 year anniversaries. The one year anniversary chamber is a special orrery. In addition to the planets and the Earth's moon, it includes all of the interplanetary probes launched during the 20th century, humankind's first century in space. Among others, you'll see the Grand Tour: Voyager 2's swing by of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The Clock will activate and run the orrery once a year on a pre-determined date at solar noon.

It's one of the better things I can imagine filthy rich people doing with their money. And in regard to the Nevada site, as much as I love the wilderness of the Snake Range, the area they're talking about is already impacted by mining and attendant road access. This is probably the only time rich outsiders purchasing an old mining claim might be good news. Mount Washington, the planned clock site, is visible below, towards the right, three ridges back and lighter than the other peaks (limestone, not quartzite).



Seems like a good site to me. And the Texas clock will surely be the coolest thing in the state, and may even provide some public access to a region that's mostly off-limits.

For those who haven't read Anathem, the Stephenson connection is that he was asked to imagine such a clock, and those imaginations developed into the central conceit of the novel. (And what's more, I have just learned of the existence of Anathem music.)

Only vaguely apropos, on my recent sojourn in the Snakes I photographed an odd timberline flower which caught my eye, and only later realized that it appears to be Holmgrem's buckwheat (Eriogonum holmgrenii), an endemic unique to the Snake Range:

Very cool graphic presentation of the history of science fiction. I note with pleasure that Kepler's Somnium is included, but will admit to some disappointment at the oversight of Berlioz's Euphonia, or The Musical City. But it's always easy to pick nits with anything aspiring to be comprehensive; still very cool.

Via Strange Maps.

Frederick Turner's sci-fi epic poem The New World is back in print: recommended! Available here.

The Speculative Dinosaur Project. Uneven but enjoyable. (I got there from somewhere on Tet Zoo.)

"He’s been asexually budding and having the younger versions of himself bid for city contracts."

Surprisingly, this is not just another special New Mexico election moment, but rather a civic-minded sci-fi bagatelle from John Scalzi.

Tell me of your home world, Usul.

A reminder why the original will always be the best.

S.M. Stirling's Santa Fe vampire novel is now released! Samples are available. Been looking forward to this one (though it is not the first Santa Fe vampire novel).

Thanks to Chas for the reminder, and for a very pleasant recent visit:

...layers and layers. Ethnic balkanization and people cherishing hatreds and triumphs that go back centuries. Martyrs and massacres. Deep roots in the earth.

That's us! Don't be a stranger!

Update: Can't really recommend this one, alas. S&M Stirling would be an apt moniker in this instance. He really seems rather more interested in the sexual implications of his vampires' abilities than in, say, plot.

Slate has a rather fun article about the problem of communicating the dangers of nuclear waste far, far into the future. There are substantial and interesting linguistic issues, of course, but the crux of the question is how any warning system can possibly avoid being the equivalent of a giant, red, "Do Not Push" button. But the think tanks working on the problem really seem to be enjoying the opportunity to unleash their sci-fi nerditude, and who can blame them? Proposals seem to range from Neal Stephenson's Anathem on one end to H.P. Lovecraft on the other:

...the report proposes a system of redundancy—a fancy way of saying throw everything at the wall and hope that something sticks. Giant, jagged earthwork berms should surround the area. Dozens of granite message walls or kiosks, each 25 feet high, might present graphic images of human faces contorted with horror, terror, or pain (the inspiration here is Edvard Munch's Scream) as well as text in English, Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese, Arabic, and Navajo explaining what's buried. This variety of languages, as Charles Piller remarked in a 2006 Los Angeles Times story, turns the monoliths into quasi-Rosetta stones. Three rooms—one off-site but nearby, one centrally located, and one underground—would serve as information centers with more detailed explanations of nuclear waste and its hazards, maps showing the location of similar sites around the world, and star charts to help intruders calculate the year the site was sealed....

Proposals for the "earthworks" component demonstrate that the whole project of communicating with the future is really a creative assignment, more dependent on the imagination than on expertise. What'll really scare off 210th-century tomb raiders? The report proposes a "Landscape of Thorns" with giant obelisklike stones sticking out of the earth at odd angles. "Menacing Earthworks" has lightning-shaped mounds radiating out of a square. In "Forbidding Blocks," a Lego city gone terribly wrong, black, irregular stones "are set in a grid, defining a square, with 5-foot wide 'streets' running both ways. You can even get 'in' it, but the streets lead nowhere, and they are too narrow to live in, farm in, or even meet in."

I have to admire their restraint in avoiding the words cyclopean and squamous. Navajo, eh? Well, it is New Mexico we're talking about here, so Athabascans really ought to figure into any dystopian scenario under consideration.

Returning to the Anathem angle, I've heard the "nuclear priesthood" idea floated in the past as well. Given the documented history of religious institutions, this strikes me as not being the solution, to say the least (and my concommunicants get no exception here). Besides, can you imagine the types who would volunteer for ordination?

Thinking about such matters on a government salary: nice work if you can get it! Were any of these scenarios actually to come to fruition, they could be a major tourist draw in this century. The Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce ought to be lobbying like mad for the more lurid options.

"Unfortunately, along with all its good effects, the web brings together people who should be isolated, and gives a voice to those who really should remain voiceless."

S.M. Stirling, interviewed by Glenn Reynolds. Looking forward to his forthcoming depiction of contemporary Santa Fe.

Goodness, I've been gone long. I've been immersed in the winding path of modern tax law, et il y a une anguille sous toutes roches, as they say. Possibly.

Peculiar and jack were good enough to remember me with Stephenson's Anathem, and since I have yet to comment on the last book they gave me (Sayings of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Short version: I find your concern for the relations between goats and men disturbing), I thought I would jot down a few thoughts on this latest.

It's not his best. At the center of all his better books is a giant idea--often an idea in the Kantian sense, as something too big really to get a hold of. At this center of this book is a lot of philosophastering. To be fair, the main character and most of the others are all the sort of people who do have conversations about deep philosophical issues and then try to answer their questions with explosives, but there's only so many paraphrases of the Meno you can read before you want to shake the author and say, "I get it."

This is true. Unkind, but true.

And the science is... not good. The basics are acceptable, but his grasp of larger issues in physics seems comfused.

In its favor is the fact that even Stephenson's lesser stuff is more intelligent and engaging than just about anyone else out there. The book also offers the only convincing portrait of an active Temple of Reason I've read.

Anathem also drives home just how rare the ability to follow an argument is, and how much training it requires. The sense of when a point has been proven is a rare one, and needs much cultivation before a taste for truth (which is above all an acquired taste) is identifiable.

Finally: worth one's time, absolutely, but no Diamond Age. Which is praising with faint damns, of course.

"It's a story from long, long ago," continued the old man. "Once upon a time, there was a wise and able king who eagerly sought out capable people. He ordered that his minister find the smartest person in the entire realm, so as to appoint him the teacher of the prince. One day he could assist the prince when he ruled.

"The minister himself was extremely intelligent. He scoured the land, leaving no stone unturned, until he found the three smartest people. The minister thought of every way he could to test the three. But unexpectedly, he was unable to determine which one was smartest. The minister was embarrassed because the king had instructed him to find the single smartest person in the realm. He had to do something to find out who it was.

"After giving the matter much thought, he came up with a solution. He assembled the three people and asked them to look at five jade disks on a table. Then he said, 'Three of these jade disks are blue and two are green. I am going to blindfold you, after which I will place one disk on top of your head. Then I will remove the blindfolds. You will be able to see the disks on top of the others' heads but not the one on top of your own. You cannot speak nor gesture to one another, and anyone who breaks the rules will be put to death on the spot. The first one to guess the color of the disk on his own head will be deemed the smartest person in the land, and will become the prince's teacher. But if you guess incorrectly, you will be executed at once.'

"So saying, he blindfolded the three smart people and placed one jade disk on top of each one's head. Then he removed the blindfolds. The three people looked at one another for some time, but no one said a word. Finally, one of them got it, guessed the color of the disk on top of his head, and became the prince's teacher. Later he himself became minister and enjoyed wealth and a high position his entire life.

"So what color were the disks on top of the people's heads?"

--The City Trilogy, by Chang Hsi-kuo.