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Posts tagged "I like books they are my friends"

Blog about Hay: check!

I have made a to-do list and am attempting to structure my life now there is no more school to do it for me.

Last weekend, Tim and I went to Hay-on-Wye to celebrate handing in my dissertation. It's a tiny village in a lovely countryside, and filled to the brim with bookstores. So basically heaven on Earth. I'd love to come back for a week sometime and mix the browsing with some hiking around the Welsh countryside, but for now I had an amazing time wandering from store to store.





I thought I was being relatively sensible with my book-buying, until it came to packing up everything for the bus and train ride home. Here's my pile of loot:



Including some that sounded cool, some I'd heard of and been meaning to buy, some which had pretty covers or interesting titles, and a few that sounded too hilarious to pass up. Like Less than Human by Charles Platt, featuring a cover illustration of a floating, glowing man in an Elvis-esque outfit, and the following blurb (in part):
HE WAS MANKIND'S LAST CHANCE. AND THEY WERE GOING TO KILL HIM FOR IT. Burt is a trillion dollars worth of robot — with a ten-minute gap in his programming that renders him virtually useless to his creators. Still, since coming to Earth, he was managed to find a snappy new set of clothes, a cure for cancer, and a sixteen-year-old girlfriend.
How could I not give that book a loving new home.

I also picked up a few pick-your-own-adventure books, what appears to be a prehistoric fiction novel that isn't the Earth's Children series (always on the lookout for more of those), and a very intreseting-looking volume of literary theory/criticism called Strategies of Fantasy. I didn't intentionally stick only to SFF — I was looking for more non-fiction of various kinds, too — but somehow it worked out that way.

Well, I've been procrastinating on writing a cover-letter for an application to an archaeology fieldwork job... so I'll probably go do something else from my to do list.

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2. 10. 2011 1:30 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , | Comment

Dissertation progress continues apace.


Tim got me a little whiteboard and it calms my troubled mind.

I decided the other day that when I've handed in my dissertation, we're going to Hay-on-Wye for a weekend in celebration. Yeah, this place. It's going to be amazing.

I also finally saved up enough to buy my own 3DS, and this awesome decal so we can distinguish between the two that exist in this flat:


(I had this gif here, but looking at it makes my head hurt.)


Just one bossfight away from beating Ocarina of Time! And then I'm going to get A Link To The Past Link's Awakening (EDIT: I can't be expected to remember names at 1am after a day of dissertationing) from the download store, and I won't stop until I have all the Zeldas.

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27. 8. 2011 12:59 am | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , | Comment

"Wazizu, son of Akkul-enni, the merchant, took as an interest-bearing loan 2 male asses 3 years old"

Didn't do hourly comics today. I was too busy reading about Bronze Age trade, something I could probably do all day long. ♥ Oh yeah, too cool for school.

I made a LibraryThing accont last month to keep track of the (pitifully small number of) books I read this year. Are any of you guys on there? We should be friends!

At the moment I'm reading The Knife of Never Letting Go which is incredibly addictive, holy shit. I had to leave it at home today because yesterday I took it with me to read on the tube and got absolutely no work done all day.

I have a 9am lecture tomorrow, so it's probably about time I went to bed. I still have a bunch of draft posts I haven't finished (I predict my thoughts on Tron: Legacy will be posted around the time it comes out on DVD.) but this will have to do for now. Slightly more alive on the Twitter, as usual. See you guys later.

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2. 2. 2011 12:10 am | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , | Comment

I Shall Wear Midnight launch.

The internet at the flat has been fixed, and I've got a small backlog of entries to post.

First of all: on Wednesday, I went to the midnight launch of Terry Pratchett's new book, I Shall Wear Midnight, at the Waterstone's in Piccadilly Circus.



The queue in front of the store was longer than I expected. Oh hey, I guess Terry Pratchett is pretty popular. ¬______¬




The bag the book came in. I see what they did there.




There was a Q&A/"In Conversation" bit with Tony Robinson, and then we all lined up to get our books signed. You can see a bit of the person dressed up in a witch's outfit! I tried to get a better picture of her, but the queue was too quick for me and swallowed her up.




I didn't manage to get a proper picture of Terry Pratchett himself, but here's one from his Facebook page:



I would've liked to shake his hand or at least thank him for signing my book, but it was all kind of quick and assembly-line-ish. Well, there were a lot of people there, so it's understandable.




The book~




Officially signed with an official signature.




And there's a print of the cover art inside. :3



I got the book around 11pm Wednesday night, and I finished it last night at 2am. I didn't mean to stay up that long, but it's hard going to sleep when you're near the end of a good book. And this book was really good; I wasn't that impressed by Unseen Academicals, but I Shall Wear Midnight defiitely made up for that one's deficits.

I always forget how much I love witches books until I read one; they invariably have great characters and a wonderful atmosphere. I've also missed out on some of the Tiffany Aching novels... I guess I dismissed them because they were meant to be for kids. So that's an oversight I'm going to have to go remedy as soon as possible, because she is a total badass.

Also without spoiling anything, a Discworld character I adored when I was younger and had given up any hope of ever seeing again is in this book, and it makes me really happy. :D


That's it for tonight, tomorrow I'll get on with finally posting my Austria pictures.
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4. 9. 2010 10:19 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , | Comment

Books, pictures, pianos on the ceiling, &c.

I finished rereading Cloud Atlas today, and it's proved itself to be as good as I remember. Always slightly risky to read books you really loved as a teenager. I don't think I was as aware of the depth and the overarching themes of the various section the first time around, but the things I did remember — the way it moves through different times and styles and how the language changes to fit each story — are still just as great. When do you get two different flavours of speculative futuristic sci-fi, historical fiction from different periods, and contemporary stories (one of them a detective story/thriller) in the same novel? It's almost everything I love in one delicious bundle.

I'd also forgotten most of the stories' endings, which was nice. (Oh man, the end of the Orison of Sonmi. ;_; I don't even know why that surprised me, it was pretty obvious.)

I really need to read more of David Mtchell's work.

Next I'm reading Geschichte einer Liebe, a non-fiction book about the love affair between Adele Schopenhauer (who was the sister of an apparently famous philosopher who I have never heard of, because I am poorly read XD) and Sibylle Mertens (who according to wiki was an archaeologist! Awesome.) And neither of them have English wiki pages; sorry guys.

--

On Sunday my dad and I went to see The Surreal House at the Barbican. I recommend it! I didn't necessarily like or relate to all the pieces, but it was interesting and thought-provoking and taught me a bit about the surrealist movement. My favourite was a piano suspended from the ceiling. I don't really want to describe it further because that would probably be spoilers in case anyone who reads this does go see the exhibition.

--

We made an offer for Flat 2 from my last entry, by the way! Maybe possibly hopefully finally a place to live!

Train to Paris tomorrow evening. Shall I pack now or tomorrow? Maybe I'll just make a pile of clothes now.


PS: Just some links to myself so I remember to have a look at them later/when I get back from Paris
http://singularityhub.com/2010/06/19/robotics-industries-association-were-creating-jobs-helping-the-economy/
http://www.youtube.com/abbrobotics
http://www.societyofrobots.com/robot_arm_tutorial.shtml
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21. 6. 2010 10:53 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , | Comment

It’s a blogpost.

I am actually kind of nervous about the election tomorrow. :/ Don't fuck it up, ok guys?

Anyway.


I borrowed Tim's USB barcode scanner and scanned all of my books into Book Collector this weekend. (Well all of them that aren't in boxes in the attic, anyway.)

Two things I learned doing this:
1. I actually have more books that I ahven't read yet than I thought
2. German publishers have some kind of aversion to putting a barcode on their covers. Instead, they prefer to write out the ISBN in numbers. I'm pretty sure they do this only to be difficult.

The latest book I've started reading was one of the freebies from Eastercon, but it wasn't really pulling me in at all, so I'm re-reading Monstrous Regiment instead. Because there's never a bad time for that. Consequently I haven't really gotten anything done today.


So, here's some art:


When Tim saw the camel of the rainforest lizard (which I should probably give a name soemtime), he apparently thought its eye was actually a nostril. So I drew a thing with a similar shape that actually had a nostril there. The creative process in action.

Some sketches from the Natural History museum:


Elephant ancestors are just cool.


I decided recently I should practice drawing people more, so here's a person.



Her name is Marielle, she's French, has robot legs, and lives in space. Like the cool kids do.



THis owl is not a person, but it is the forest king's spy master, so you should be careful what you tell it, because that dude will fuck you up.

Also, some Pokemon fanart.



Drew this as a thank-you to Tim for giving me his spare copy of Pokemon HeartGold. One day in the far future I might grow out of Pokemon like a normal boring person, but I highly doubt it. I'm thinking of importing a Japanese version of Black/White when they come out over there; the original Pokemon games helped me learn English, so there's no reason I shouldn't harness their power again! After all "It hurt itself in its confusion" is a vital part of any vocabulary.

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5. 5. 2010 11:40 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , | Comment

Mainly robots.

Well, my brother admonished me on Skype earlier that I don't blog enough, so I guess I'd better post something.

I love finding evidence that ridiculous and impossible to please nerds have always been ridiculous and impossible to please, even before the internet. Like in this article about Doctor Who.

"Once a brilliant but eccentric scientist, he now comes over as a half-witted clown," said one viewer.

In the 60s.

Anyway, sorry internet, but I think Matt Smith is pretty good-looking. More so when he is in motion than in pictures, but nonetheless. I also don't think it matters much one way or the other to the quality of the show.

He also seems to be a pretty go actor. Which does.

I usually give shows three episodes before I make a judgement on them, but I am pretty convinced this season's going to be awesome already. I mean, I didn't watch half of Tennant's run because I just... got bored, but last Saturday I was glued to the screen. I'll concede that some of that might still be left-over enthusiasm from Eastercon, but still. I think it's gonna be pretty awesome.

I dunno if it's Matt Smith's acting or the writing or both or what, but I thought the Doctor was being more alien and strange than I remember, which is totally great. Alien and strange is the way to go. And I like Amy, too! I love how at the start of the episode the Doctor was all "do what I say or go back to your boring life", but then she saved the day and proved her right to be a main character.

Alright, I was just planning to write a sentence to the effect of 'pretty good so far', so MOVING ON.

My mum framed the tea robot ("auTEAmaton" 8D) drawing I did for her birthday. I think it turned out pretty cool.

  


A propos, I bought Saturn's Children on Friday and (perhaps predictably — it's about robots and written by Charles Stross) it's rapidly becoming one of my favourite books. At first I was intrigued, then I was entertained, then I was even more intrigued, then I was briefly sceptical, then I was convinced, and then I continued to be entertained, thought-provoked, and increasingly enamoured. And now I only have a handful of pages left. ;____; GOOD BOOKS: ALWAYS TOO SHORT.

And in a final piece of robot (sort of) news, Tim got us tickets to see the re-imagined Evangelion films, and I am totally prepared to be charmed by these fuckers. I will put aside all of my preconceptions (mainly: "this makes no fucking sense, where did the plot go" and "I must either be really dense or missing something, because I just don't get what's so amazing about this"), watch them with a brain now more attuned to the visual language of anime, and if I still don't "get it" I refuse to beat myself up about it. (Again.*) But like I say. Open mind. I will do my best not to let anything bias me towards either outcome. It has a good chance of being the kind of thing I like.

(Also, I don't remember too many of the details, so NO SPOILERS.)

Aaaaand I was planing to round this off with a comic I sketched out last week that also has robots in it, but then I sat in the sunshine reading instead of finishing it. OH WELL. :)


*It's Tim's favourite thing ever, and he showed it to me pretty soon after we started going out. I was insecure, ok? :/
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13. 4. 2010 11:27 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , , | Comment

Easterconnnn

Why am I incapable of not taking notes or doodling? And why did I say I would scan them all? (I don't mind, really.) Anyway.
Eastercon01


I totally uploaded all my notes onto my website and formatted this post nicely with thumbnails, and then I remembered I have a flickr account, where people can click 'next' and 'previous' and other useful things like that. Click on the link for each day to get the beginning of my notes form it in the flickr set.

Friday: I went to the Time Travel & Alternative History talk, which was pretty good — picked up lots of book recs.

The highlight of the day was a talk titled "Homer's Odyssey - The World's First Fantasy Novel". It was less about fantasy novels and more a quick run-through of the themes of the Odyssey (quite a few of which are shared by fantasy novels), and it made me want to read it so bad. I mean, it was on my list vaguely, anyway, but now it's moved a lot closer to the top.

Then a talk on allergies, the first of many interesting science talks (I haven't counted, but I think I might've gone to more science talks than actual SF and fantasy ones), one on Arthurian legends, and a Writing Video Games panel that didn't mention any games I didn't already know, but made me iritated at myself for not playing those games. Also panels on gender and alternative sexuality in SF, which were pretty good but not as cool as they could've been, I think.

Saturday: Highlights... Saturday was sort of all highlights. I really wanted to go to the talk on whether immortality is a good thing in the morning, but my hotel bed was really warm and comfortable, ok? Anyway, I started my day with "Quantum Computing for Beginners", which was super interesting, but so packed with people that I could only see the top three lines of every slide form where I was sitting. D: I wanted to copy the diagrams! (As a slightly related aside, I am getting increasingly fond of mathematics, even though I've forgotten everything I learned in IB Maths. I have some websites bookmarked that will hopefully remedy that.)

Then I went to Ben Goldacre's talk, which was super fun and full of swearing, and should probably have been twice as long. And now he is even more one of my favourite people. *fangirl*

I also made a Dalek cake with [info]lullula and her mum. IS IT NOT A THING OF BEAUTY? The Victorian Self-Defense talk/demonstration was lots of fun, watching the Dr Who special as part of a massive audience was a pretty amazing experience, "Non-Euclidean Geometry" was excellent (again with the maths), basically, the whole day was excellent. Oh, except for the the previously mentioned slash panel, which was better than I expected it to be in some ways, but bad in different and exciting ways. BUT at least I met some cool people through that. :3 Ah, I really want to stay in the con hotel next time I go to one, so I can stay up as late as I want talking to people and then just collapse into bed.

Sunday: Sunday was a little empty, but the Big Biology talk was very cool, and I learned how to knit socks! Though I foresee myself not doing much knitting in my daily life, if I'm honest. I could do it while watching TV, but I draw when I watch TV! It's just not gonna work out. I also sort of forgot to eat lunch and dinner that day, which put me in a really bad mood towards the evening.

Monday: Things that were supercool on Monday: basically everything. Lots of interesting discussions, despite the fact that I was pretty exhausted by that time. "Novels: A Product Their Time?" (historiography! Except with novels. Er... literarography. Literary analysis? It was very good, anyway), Researching Fantasy (I love worldbuilding) and Alien Invasions (colonial analogues!), especially. Also The Eastercon version of Just A Minute was brilliant.

I really wanted to mention "An Almanac for the Alien Invaders" in the Alien Invasions talk, but I was just too slow and the conversation'd moved on. But I will recommend it to you now! It's one of my favourite Escape Pod stories, and not just because it has archaeologists in it. (Though I admit that is a part of it. Hey, it addresses issues that interest me, but with aliens - what else is science fiction for? Besides badass space explosions, I mean.)

Eastercon30


I also came home with a lot of books, considering my strained finances. There's the usual freebies, which... I will probably... read eventually? Last years are still sitting in my shelf, too. ¬_¬

I also got Redclaw by Philip Palmer, which I was immediately attracted to because the beginning of the blurb made me thing of Archaeology (it's about some researchers who have to record and entire alien ecosystem before it's destroyed to make the planet fit for human habitation), and The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories, because alt history is well known to be for cool kids. I was agonising about which of them to buy, and [info]lullula took them both off me and bought them for me as a belated birthday present, making her my favourite person for the day.

I bought Fun With Rainbows a collection of short, concepty stories by Gareth Owens, basically on the basis of it having a nice cover and interestingly-titled stories. It's pretty good. In one or two of the stories the timing seemed a bit off — in "Tempus Fugit" I figured out what was going on before the narrator did, for example — but most of them are pretty delightful, and the creepy ones are really creepy. Especially the one with the eyes, oh man.

I also got this incredibly beautiful thing, which was meant to be £30, but I went back for it half an hour before the Dealers' Room was set to close on the last day, and convinced the dealer to give it to me for £10. Pretty much my proudest achievement of the weekend. And at the same time I picked up a bunch of free/super-cheap volumes of SF short story magazines. The moral of the story: Go to the Dealers' Room as late as you can and you will get stuff fer cheap.

Oh, and [info]lullula also lent me Mr Dacy, Vampire. Pride & Prejudice & Zombies was pretty disappointing, let's see if this one's better.
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8. 4. 2010 10:58 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments

俺たちには見えてるものがある！ きっと~

God. The last two weeks seem to have been entirely me thinking about doing things and then not doing them. What the hell. Lack of mental energy and inexplicable loss of ability to kick myself in the arse and get on with it. Ridiculous.

Anyway.

Anime.
Durarara!!, my current favourite anime in the world ever*, has a really rocking opening theme. See how rocking it is?


The rockingest.


I may or may not have been listening to it on repeat endlessly for the last few days.

Durararararararara is a great show, and it has completely captured my heart. Every time I start a new episode I feel like I'm getting a super delicious special treat. They had better keep it up, though, because now I have expectations.

It's one of those stories that's more about a place and the interactions of the people who live in it than about any one character and their mission. Which I like, because people interacting is interesting. I guess it's an... *spins the genre wheel* urban fantasy? It's almost the real world, one or the other urban legend just happens to be true. There's a headless Irish fairie** looking for her head, a guy who can throw around vending machines when he gets angry (my favourite, but I might just be biased because the latest episode focused on him), some internet gangs, and some mysterious mad scientists, because what would life be without those? I presume they will eventually provide the plot that brings all the strands together in the grand finale, as you can't go on telling anecdotes about a vaguely connected group of people forever, unfortunately.The pacing and general storytelling is great, too. You constantly feel like there is a huge, colourful world going on that you're only seeing a small slice of, which is one of my number one things in a story that makes me cream my metaphorical pants.

Yes.

Oh, and the art is really nice, too, though it does suffer from obligatory improbable breast syndrome sometimes.

You can also watch it in a shockingly legal manner (I actually mean that this time) and for free at Crunchyroll, which I still think is a wonderful website. I do quite enjoy giving people their due when I've enjoyed the fruits of their efforts. That is sort of how society functions. I'm trying very hard not to turn this into a rant about the annoying attitudes of internet pirates, especially as that would be a little hypocritical, since I'm evidently still selfish enough to download some things — though I honestly plan to buy DVDs of things like Star Trek or BSG when I can — so I'll shut up now.

Also I can't actually afford a Crunchyroll account at the moment anyway, so I steal Tim's.

Also books.
I borrowed The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold from my mum last week, and read it through in one go.

It wasn't very good.

The basic plot is: girl is raped and murdered gruesomely, and watches her family try to cope with it from the afterlife. Woo!

The first half really captivated me, hence deciding to read it all in one go; there were atmospheric and creepy and sad things going on, and it was all quite engrossing. But then after the halfway point it just completely lost it's drive. I was ready for something exciting to happen, and it just... didn't. It continued to be a series of stuff that didn't really flow or seem to signify anything. And when the tragic and creepy atmosphere dissipated, the characters started revealing themselves for the flat clichés they were, and after a while I found myself increasingly tempted to skim forward to the end so I could be done with it.

And when I finally got there, the end turned out to be the worst part of the entire book. -_- First of all there is the utter wtf-ery of the dead girl stealing the body of the gay goth girl who can see ghosts, and using it to have sex with her old crush from before she was killed. Because raping someone else is totally the way to get over being raped, amirite? Apparently neither the goth girl or the crush really mind, either, which is the main thing that makes it as wtf as it is. This is apparently the last thing the dead girl needed to do before she could let go of the world of the living and move on to the permanent afterlife (which is... full of pillows? Something like that. If I had the book with me right now I'd look it up). And then there's a ridiculously saccharine last scene in which her parents have gotten back together despite never actually resolving any of their issues, and her sister is getting married to her middle school crush, and her little brother gets a set of drums for Christmas, which don't actually seem to have any significance at all as far as I can tell, and everyone is happy.

It would have made a pretty good short story, I think, if it was about half as long.


Speaking of disappointing books, I have totally let the internet down re: Colony reviews. I haven't actually finished it yet; I was on the last chapter just before we left for the States, and it was just so boring, even at its climax, that I could not bring myself to go on. It got worse at it went on, not better. Occasionally, at high points, it worked itself up to about as exciting as the baseline of a normal book.

I was trying to figure out why this was, and I think it's the characters. Everyone is so simple. They all have one or two simple motivations, and the book keeps telling us exactly what they are, FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. The same goes for the political factions. In any case, the only things you missed was the sheik ordering someone to be raped to death as a punishment (in case we still hadn't realised he was the bad guy), and all of the "black, brown, and yellow" people in the US mounting a violent pseudo-communist revolution against all of the white people in the US. I don't know what the outcome of that was, because even armed revolution was interesting enough to hold my attention.


There are some good books in my life, too, though! I don't remember if I mentioned it here, but Friendly Fire by Alaa al Aswany was amazing, and at the moment I'm reading an anthology of Sci-Fi and Fantasy stories that my parents got for me in the States, which has yielded nothing but good stories so far. ♥ I might talk about some of my favourites — if I can pick favourites — when I'm finished.


*Though I have just downloaded the first episode of the brilliantly named Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn subtitle: Just When You Thought We Couldn't Get Any Sillier, so we will see.

**I hope if her head ever shows up, it really is like mouldy cheese with a hideous grin and gigantic, darting eyes. XD
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24. 2. 2010 11:19 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , , | Comment

Together they fight crime! (Colony Chapter 8)

It's a Colony recap! Previous chapters. Wow, this one ended up looooong.

Chapter 8, in which David has some growing up to do.

Yay, this chapter's back on Island One! I am growing really really fond of Evelyn and David. Maybe it's just because I've seen more of them than a few pages of introduction, but I just... like them. I really enjoy their interaction in this chapter, too.

I don't remember if David's age is ever stated, but even if he's an adult, he's pretty much got the mind of a teenager, in my opinion. This is his puberty chapter.

It starts with them at the holo!ballet.

Yes, the holo!ballet. Because on Island One, they stream ballet performances from Moscow in hologram form, and then transmit the audience's reaction back for "emotional feedback". I bet the dancers and the Moscow audience really hate that: there's bound to be lag, and imagine the irritation of a bunch of disembodied clapping halfway through the next section.

Also, David is jealous of the dancers, because he's too self-conscious for dancing. He "decided that ballet was not for him, emotionally." See, he totally has weaknesses and everything, despite being a perfectly engineered test-tube human! Well, the self-consciousness, and the fact that he's really pretty thick.

Anyway, they go to a café (with robot waiters!) and Evelyn tells him about breaking in to Cylinder B and finding it empty except for rainforest. He tells her that she should be careful, as people have been thrown out of the colony for less, and she finally tells him that she's not planning to stay on Island One for any length of time, but actually just went there to write a story about him to sell back on Earth.

He is not very happy about that.
"Well, you got your story the first night. I hope you enjoyed it. Everything you always wanted to know about the manufactured man, including his sex life. Was I any good? Do you want me to pose for photos?"

N'aww, someone needs a hug.

Evelyn tells him that she isn't going to leave yet, because he's really hot she realised he was a real, feeling human being, and her conscience won out, so she's trying to find an even better story in Colony B. And David can help her find out what's going on!
"Now I understand. If I help you to unravel this mystery, then you'll have a story about Island One bigger than the test-tube baby story. Right?"

"I'm sure of it!" She nodded excitedly.

"And if I don't help you, you've still got my story. You can go back to Earth and sell my story to your bosses."

An unhappy frown creased her brow. "I don't want to do that, David."

"But you will if you have to."

"If I have to... I don't know what I'll do."

But I know, David said to himself.

Well, what's wrong with using your initiative and some implied blackmail to get a good story and keep the guy?

I love these kids.


~*CHANGE OF SCENE*~


The mysterious Board of Directors is having a meeting. Via holograms, again. (Sent by laser via privately-owned satellites, naturally.) Holograms are all the rage this chapter. Here's the members of The Board (cf. World Government):

T. Hunter Garrison: "[W]ispy white hair fringing a bald dome, narrow-eyed hawkish face with skin like badly wrinkled parchment, liver-spotted hands that would have been gnarled with arthritis if they didn't possess so much money and power." Lives on the top floor of his office-building in Houston and never leaves because the world comes to him.

Hideki Tanaka: Bluff industrialist with eyes "as cold as those of a professional killer". Lives somewhere with a view of Mt Fuji.

Wilbur St. George: Lives in Sydney, smokes a pipe, "beefy face" with a "no-nonsense scowl"

Kurt Morgenstern: Lives in Cologne, "wary-eyed [...], pasty-faced and flabby-looking", controls most of central Europe's industry.

And my second favourite character (Ev and Dave get joint first), the evil Sheik himself, al-Hashimi.

They discuss their funding of El Libertador! (he just feels like he should have an exclamation mark in his name) and how to stop him from causing too much trouble for them while destroying the World Government, and the ways they've been manipulating the weather to make things easier for him. Because it's important for the reader of a novel to always know the plans and objectives of every single character or group of characters, lest they strain their brains with speculation and uncertainty for more than a chapter or two.

Other points the book wants us to know about:

- Al-Hashimi has contacts with a member of the PRU who he gives money and advice to.
- Some of the Board members feel a bit guilty about killing people and/or endangering their profits, but their computer predictions show that the World Government will bankrupt them all if they don't do something. (Where "doing something" = fucking over most of the world's economy through disasters and wars. Go go gadget self-fulfilling prophecy?)
- They have a thing called Operation Proxy that will combine all the revolutionary movements around the world to cause a global civil war, and which somehow involves Island One
- Garrison controls Dr Cobb. He's very sure about this. He uses italics, and everything.

Oh, and St. George, the Australian member, owns the newspaper Evelyn works for, and is using her as a spy without her knowledge! Well, unless he has a different "snoop" who "[t]hinks she's digging up a scandal for the International News".

From now on, I'm imagining Evelyn with an Australian accent. Even if it is the International News.


~*TWO SCENE CHANGES IN ONE CHAPTER HOLY SHIT*~


Ok, exciting things: we finally get to meet Dr Cobb, head scientist of Island One, and David's father figure.

Aaaaaand now I have George Michael stuck in my head. :|

Anyway, Cobb has banned organised team sports from Colony One, because he doesn't approve of "vicarious violence" or competition of any kind, apparently. Good luck with that, doctor. He does have a 0g sports complex, so he can play ball games while having fatherly talks with his after-school projects, like we're suddenly in an American family movie.

So, there they are playing 0g-handball, which is apparently a very hazardous game and can cause a lot of injuries. This is hardcore handball, guys. Believe it.

David asks him about Cylinder B, and Cobb, who has the same exposition disease as everyone else, goes all "oh yes, she asked you about it, didn't she, I watched her break in the other day through the security cameras I SEE EVERYTHING." He reveals he threw David and Evelyn together when she first got there to give him an opportunity to learn how to deal with people from the real world. So, that went well.

He also reveal the plans for Cylinder B. (He's just looking out for us readers, really. Do you want to risk brain-strain?) The members of the Board has requested five mansions to be built in it.
"But why... what do they..."

Arching an eyebrow, the old man asked, "Do you see any statistical correlation between the fact that the Board has ordered five mansions and the fact that there are five—count them, five—members of the aforesaid Board of Directors of the island One Corporation, Limited?"

David blinked at him.

Are you sure you engineered this guy with a superior brain, Dr Cobb? I'm just asking, purely out of interest.

The Board want the mansions on the colony to retreat to once the Earth collapses into chaos and civil war, obviously:
"And they'll let the world collapse around them?"

"There's nothing they can do to prevent it, even if they wanted to."

"I don't believe that!"

"Well... there is one thing," Cobb said. "After the Board comes here to love, we can shoot anybody else out of the sky when they try to come up here and invade us!"


DUN DUN DUUUUUN.

And with that, we get to the end of Book One (of five). Pray to the gods of the five-act structure that now things will begin to happen. Prediction: David and Evelyn team up to save the world.


Sometimes reading books, you think about whether they would make good films or not. I think Colony would make a neat anime. I'm not sure why it makes me think of that rather than live-action, maybe it's the politics and the great silliness.

Also, I'm still hoping for a Colony Drop (TV Tropes, click at your own risk.).
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22. 12. 2009 2:20 am | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , | Comment