Another shotgun post

Lots of short takes, to get rid of a bunch of things I have bookmarked in my “to blog” folder.

* Ken Macleod is one of the most recent wave of bright lights of British science fiction. He’s also possibly even further left than I am. He keeps a blog (named, I might add, for an Oysterband lyric, whether that’s where Ken got the name or not) that’s usually quite fun to read. A couple of weeks ago he had an entry that dealt with the untold stories of Fallujah, that points to some articles everyone should read. “You may think you know what happened in Fallujah. But the truth is worse than you could possibly have imagined.” Bear in mind that they are sourced from the Socialist Worker, but even adjusting for any bias, the stories are still stunning.

* Another post of Ken’s that’s worth a quick read is the one he did on Britain’s drift to the right. Given the extended nightmare in the States, and the fact that people here are treating Steven Harper like his position might actually have merit–and not just people in Alberta–the fact that the same thing is happening in the U.K. shouldn’t be a surprise, I guess. How do we stop this?

* After the depressing drift-to-the-right thoughts, you know what cheers me up immensely? The idea of a triumphant orchestra of worms.

* Now that the worms have cheered me, I can probably face the results of the Feb 18th Harris poll. I’m not sure which conclusion to draw from this: either Karl Rove is certified evil genius, or else the vast majority of U.S. adults are complete and utter morons.

* Of course, how can we expect U.S. adults to discern facts from fiction when they are taught as teenagers that there is no distinction between a story and an action. Why do I have to keep seeing these stories about kids getting punished for writing stories? (Link from John Scalizi— blogging SF writer.)

* Time for another happy. Did I mention that my hard copy of Atlanta Nights arrived last week. It is impressively, even unbelievably, execrable. You know the story, right? (Production values are pretty good for a print-on-demand book too. Maybe Lulu can be my vanity press when it’s time to publish my book of dreams about the angry platypus.)

* I have lots of acquaintances in academe, and sometimes the stories about students just kill me. For instance check out this quick post from a university instructor whose students have driven her to tears. (I did undergrad in engineering, a faculty not known for the communication skills of its undergrads, and I can say with empirical certainty that this is not a bizarre corner case. Weep for me–I had to do group work with people who, despite how fluent they were in Math, were functionally illiterate in English.)

* Great book news: Pyr is a new SF imprint, and one of their launch books is a reprinting of Star of Gypsies. This is one of the books I have reread most over the years, possibly the most reread book in my collection that isn’t a John D. MacDonald. If I had to give the Hollywood pitch for this book it’s “A Jack Vance universe and plot skeleton, with a viewpoint character that has a Steven Brust voice, written with the skills of a master“.

* I love a mystery in the real world. For example, I thought the suicide was pretty much the end of the Hunter S. Thompson story, but what does ‘counselor’ mean? Another example, a little more exotic, is the Voynich manuscript. That’s something that should be in a Tim Powers book.

* You know what’s sad? Under the guise of security from terrorists, America is morphing from Fortress Amerika into a Panopticon nation. Sticking electronic monitoring on immigrants, which strikes me as disgusting, is just another step on the road. Watch your irony meter when you realize that a lot of these are people seeking asylum from oppressive regimes.

* Even sadder: How Torture Became Acceptable. (Link via Will Shetterly.)

Bones?