Ravenweb Blog

As much as I like our new 2007 Volkswagen GTI , I was surprised and bemused to see that the GTI and VW brand have inspired a PC racing game GTI Racer . Too funny!

Taltos is the fourth volume in the Vlad Taltos series but is chronologically the earliest in sequence. This is a simple novel that details a very young Vlad and his first encounters with many of the recurring characters in the series. The text alternates between vignettes that precede each chapter, the main narrative about Vlad's journey to the Paths of the Dead, and anecdotal stories about Vlad's first forays as an employee in the (criminal) "organization" arm of House Jhereg. The three narratives come together by the end of the text. By this point in the series, you'll likely only find yourself reading (and enjoying) Taltos if you've read the other books in the series. If you are a fan of the Vlad books, you'll find this a light but enjoyable addition that nicely fills in many of the gaps in Vlad's backstory.

Charles Stross's The Atrocity Archives collects his short novel The Atrocity Archive and the Hugo Award winning novella, The Concrete Jungle . Both stories provide a fun blend of nerdboy tech and supernatural espionage. In addition to the Lovecraftian elements like mathematically brewed gates to other dimensions and transmutative security cameras fitted with gorgon-harnessed firmware, Stross also mixes in very funny asides, mostly in satire of federal and office bureaucracy.

Eastern Standard Tribe is an entertaining but flawed near-future novel about online "tribes", the convergence of new technologies, and a corporate conspiracy. The book's strong points are its ideas and extrapolation, which come through despite a conventional and rushed plot. The entire text of Eastern Standard Tribe was released under a Creative Commons license on Doctorow's website and is free to be read without the publisher's permission.

As many of you know, my wife and are looking to purchase a house. In the interest of choosing wisely, I wanted to reach out to those of you who own a home and ask for your suggestions and tribal insight. We know the basics, but we were wondering about the lesser known truths, for example, anything you learned about your home or the purchasing process after you bought your home, but that you wished you knew beforehand.

As comic book movie adaptations go, Ghost Rider was a middling effort, with good action sequences but a weak plot, uneven pacing, and forgettable villains. The CGI was imaginative but not as good as it needed to be to really sell the flaming skull and bike scenes. I did think the penance stare was pretty cool. The actors did the best they could with the material and the film fortunately didn't take itself seriously. It even featured a number of intentional camp humor bits where it seemed to be making fun of its own schlock.

Teckla is the third novel in the popular Vlad Taltos fantasy series, and much darker in mood and style than its predecessors, Jhereg and Yendi . The novel begins as Vlad learns that his wife Cawti has joined a group of reformists, who are actively pushing for greater rights for the underclasses in Dragaera. Vlad struggles greatly with Cawti's new affiliation, as he does not share her political ideals, and the two argue bitterly and drift apart through the course of the narrative. Their dissolving relationship is paralleled against the rising reform movement that threatens to become an all-out insurgency. Atypical themes (for fantasy) of personal dissolution and political unrest combine to make this a very memorable novel, with genuine emotion and verisimilitude not characteristically found in books of the genre.

I had an opportunity to see Kathy Griffin live last week (on February 12th, actually) at Shea's Performing Arts Center in Buffalo. I must say, her stand up is even more snarky and irreverent as her television routines. Maybe it's a guilty pleasure, but I enjoyed her riffs at Paula Abdul, Donald Trump, Star Jones, and others and succumbed to many delightful paroxysms of laughter. I also liked when she showed her serious social political side, and skewered George Bush and Mel Gibson. All proceeds from the show went to a local Buffalo AIDS clinic. Say what you want about Kathy Griffin's style and celebrity-baiting humor, but that was a very cool move on her part.

Though released after Jhereg , Yendi is a actually a prequel and recalls a younger Vlad in a turf war with a rival crime boss. Like its predecessor, Yendi is a lot of fun, with rich characters, witty dialogue, and an enthralling fantasy world.

Jhereg is an entertaining, fast-paced fantasy that introduces Vlad Taltos and his constant companion, a leathery-winged jhereg. I recently reread Jhereg , and though I hardly read any fantasy anymore, I was pleased that I still enjoy Brust, and his humorous, anti-epic, wry blend of fantasy. I'm looking forward to finally reading the rest of the series.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is a superb, captivating novel about Christopher Boone, an autistic boy, and his quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog. What makes this novel so amazing is its narration. Told completely from the point of view of Christopher, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time illuminates and makes real a complex mind that knows geography, math, and science exceptionally well but that cannot relate well to people or understand human emotions. If you haven't read this yet, go read it right now.

Rainbows End is a near future SF novel about a dawning virtual age and the threat of a deadly biological weapon. I had mixed reactions to the book. While I liked the main character Robert Gu (a former Alzheimer's patient now cured and younger thanks to breakthroughs in medicine) and his attempts to assimilate to a new world where people interface directly with computers and silent message each other, I found myself wondering at times if the novel's setting, circa 2025, was far enough in the future for the kind of deep medical and software innovation present in the book. I also thought Vinge's use of markup to denote silent messaging was awkward. I know what he was trying to do, but markup is for web geeks and programs to process it, not prose! Still, you could do far worse than reading this novel. The story is engaging and the technological extrapolation is always interesting though unlikely to happen in the next twenty years.

I recently saw The Last Kiss . I'd wanted to see this when it was released, mostly because I like Zach Braff in Scrubs and enjoyed his performance in Garden State but also because I knew Paul Haggis wrote the screenplay, and his work in Crash speaks for itself. Mostly, I feel lukewarm about the film. On the one hand, while I appreciated the honest look at issues of relationships and commitment, I thought most of the characters were too unlikeable, with little to contrast or balance out the negativity and emptiness they felt in their lives and relationships.

I'd wanted to check out some of Cory Doctorow's fiction for a while and finally did so, picking up and reading Overclocked last week. It's a good collection. I liked the stories and Doctorow's hipster-meets-techno-nerd style that's a lot of fun and really energetic. The stories in Overclocked recall old SF tropes and current and near-future technology concerns. "When Sysadmins Ruled the World" pivots around the traditional SF apocalyptic story and focuses on two sysadmins and their efforts to keep the servers online as the world goes dark. "Anda's Game" deftly shows how a shrinking, flat world will likely extend to computer game virtual sweatshops, and "I, Robot" and "I, Row-Boat" are interesting Asimov-inspired robot stories.

Congratulations to former Bills running back Thurman Thomas for being elected today to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Thomas was a consummate Bill and the linchpin of the great Buffalo teams from the late 80s and early 90s that won four straight AFC titles before losing in each Super Bowl. Though Thomas had some tough moments in big games, including when he misplaced his helmet in Super Bowl XXVI and when he fumbled in Super Bowl XXVIII, he had a great career, amassing 12,074 yards rushing and 16,532 yards from scrimmage. He always played hard and gave everything he had. The Pro Football Hall of Fame is richer for his inclusion.

Ravenweb visitors know that I have been a fan of U.S. tennis pro Serena Williams for years. With all of her past accomplishments, though, it was nice to see her rise up from the unseeded ranks this year to beat Sharapova to win the Australian Open . This -- an eighth Grand Slam tennis title -- after she recently announced that she is planning to make a movie about the life of trailblazing black tennis player Althea Gibson . Very cool. Congratulations to Serena Williams.

Big props to Scrubs for going with a musical episode ( "My Musical" ) last night. The episode was hilarious and provided an irreverent pastiche of Broadway musicals while staying within the familiar tone of the show. "Guy Love" and "Everything Comes Down to Poo" were the best songs, with the latter number going to show that fart and crap jokes are always funny if done right. Let's hope this musical episode is a sign of better things to come for Scrubs this year. Season six prior to this episode has been a disappointment with too much focus on the baby story lines and not enough crazy stuff like this. See also: Scrubs' takes a turn for the better with musical by Matthew Gilbert (The Boston Globe) Why You Must "Tune" In to the Scrubs Musical! by Matt Mitovich (TV Guide)

Ted Chiang is one of those writers who's so good and whose stories are so well-crafted and compelling that you find trying yourself to prolong and savor the reading experience. As a speculative fiction writer, Chiang is particularly effective at melding accessible and cogent scientific extrapolation with seamless prose. But you don't need to be an SF fan to enjoy Chiang's fiction. Anyone who enjoys good writing and thoughtful stories should find something in Chiang's fiction to satisfy. All of the stories in Chiang's collection Stories of Your Life and Others are good, and some are great. I especially enjoyed "Hell Is the Absence of God", a fantasy novella about a world where angels and God exist and intervene in the mortal world; "Understand", a fun SF story about heightened intelligence in the tradition of Daniel Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon"; "Story of Your Life", a poignant story about a linguist trying to learn an al...

Well, actually (and fortunately), no -- but I have finally gotten around to playing Oblivion , after having received it as a Christmas gift from my wife. For those of you who don't play computer games, Oblivion is a popular fantasy-themed role playing game that was developed last year by Bethesda Softworks . It is the fourth installment in Bethesda's continuing Elder Scrolls series of games, and its predecessors include Daggerfall and Morrowind . Before I detail my observations of Oblivion, I should point out that of the previous Elder Scrolls games, I've only played Morrowind, which I loaded up shortly after it was released in May 2002. I remember being initially thrilled and very impressed with Morrowind for many days and weeks, perhaps too many of both as it turned out. I was struck by the spectacular visuals and the then state of the art character facial animations, draw distance, and water rendering. I also liked the game's first person view that was reminiscent ...

Adverbs is a series of interconnected short stories or vignettes all of which are titled after an adverb. It becomes pretty clear soon after beginning the novel that love is intended to be the overarching theme. The problems here are the prose and plot devices the author uses to keep his notion of love in the subtext. For example, many of the stories feature characters with similar names, but it's not often apparent whether these characters are supposed to be the same people or different people with the same names. Similarly, though intentionally done I'm sure, the character dialogue is purposely exaggerated and full of strange connections and phrasing, and hard to follow at times. The use of adverbs themselves is tightly controlled and reserved for specific instances of important characters development. Now, Adverbs as a complete text may work well for some readers who will enjoy that the characters, pieces, and themes introduced in the novel never come together, paralleling...