Ravenweb Blog

We closed on our home last Friday (6/8) and are now property owners! Now the fun begins as we prepare to replace all the flooring, paint, clean, and cram in a kitchen remodel in three months before our baby arrives. Wish us luck!

Oryx and Crake is an elegantly crafted vision of a bleak, near future in which humanity has all but succumbed to an engineered mutagenic virus. Here humanity is survived by Snowman, who scavenges and sleeps in trees, and watches over a group of bioengineered humans (the Crakers), who were created to succeed humanity and thrive in the new world of modified species and radical climate change. Through flashbacks, we eventually learn that Snowman was once a man named Jimmy, and that the world before the cataclysmic event was characterized by social inequity, genetic technology, and climate change. We also learn about the two people who figured most prominently in Jimmy's life: Crake, Jimmy's oldest friend, who is brilliant and egotistic and has plans for a better world; and Oryx, who Snowman loves and who serves as agent and muse to Crake. I liked Oryx and Crake a lot and thought Atwood did a good job of melding a standard apocalyptic SF setup with a literary story about flaw...

The Last Colony is the concluding novel in Scalzi's loosely-connected SF trilogy that began with Old Man's War and continued with The Ghost Brigades . From the start, the novel is fast-paced and fun, and fans of the series will be pleased that the new book focuses on two of the main characters from the previous books -- John Perry and Jane Sagan. The premise of The Last Colony revolves around Perry and Sagan agreeing to run a new colony for the Colonial Union, in defiance of an alien confederation called the Conclave that has forbidden the creation of any new unauthorized colonies. Political subtext and many twists follow as Perry and Sagan discover that the Colonial Union has not told them the truth about their colony, the alien Conclave, or their chances for survival. As a big Scalzi fan, I was happy for another book in this series. I'm not sure how this book ranks with the first two or even how well it stands on its own. I know I didn't like it as much as the othe...

You are my root movie and have been a seminal influence. Thank you. See also: Young Jedi .

I met up with a friend of mine last night. We've known each for a long time, and we try and get together two or three times year. We have a few beers, provide updates on our jobs and lives, and talk about any number of topics, including books and authors, current events, politics, and local sports teams. Last night we spent some time considering the upcoming 2008 presidential election and the prospect of the Democrats winning. It turned into a hard realization for both of us that the Democrats face an uphill battle and may likely lose the election, even with the support of crossover voters abandoning the Republicans because of the many blunders and disasters of the current administration. The reason, we purported, is that the top democratic candidates, for one reason or another, are all unelectable and would not beat Rudy Giuliani or John MCain. This notion was hard to swallow but, as we discussed each of the likely candidates, also hard to deny. Barack Obama, with the best message...

So, I'm rereading Old Man's War now (I also plan to reread The Ghost Brigades after I finish it) in preparation for Scalzi's concluding novel in the series, The Last Colony , which I recently ordered and should arrive for my consumption soon. I've already praised Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades in previous posts, but as I was reading Old Man's War a second time, I started thinking more of the military SF sub-genre and wondered what other readers consider to be the best books in this category. For my part, though my reading of SF is by no means exhaustive, along with Old Man's War , I would list Heinlein's Starship Troopers , Haldeman's The Forever War , and Card's Ender's Game . What do the rest of you think?

Those familiar with the HBO show Real Time already know about Bill Maher's funny and biting collection of "New Rules".||For those who don't of for those who want a written sampling of the material, the text New Rules collects some of Maher's best "New Rules" rants and also includes new material, including a few some longer form editorials. Like most texts collecting funny short-bit stand up material, New Rules is a very fast (too fast) and fun read.

The Greatest Story Ever Sold is a damning, step-by-step chronicle of the Bush administration's many propaganda campaigns to manipulate and distort truth. Laboriously researched, the text covers the administration's Iraqi WMD claims, Bush's "Mission Accomplished" triumph, the intimidation of the press, the Swift-boating of John Kerry, and much more.

The Audacity of Hope is an accessible and expressive exploration of some of the major problems facing America today and Senator Obama's thoughts about possible solutions. While this is clearly a positioning piece in which Obama works hard to speak to a large cross section of Americans (including Republicans and others who may have never heard of him), the book doesn't descend into safe answers and campaign stumping. On the contrary, throughout Obama maintains a sincere voice, speaking as a father and husband as often as a politician, and providing honest answers about his beliefs to a wide range of political questions.

I saw Al Gore on Friday (4/29). Gore was in Buffalo as part of SUNY Buffalo's Distinguished Speaker series and he delivered, with some modifications and updates, his global warming lecture that was featured in An Inconvenient Truth . Seeing Gore live was interesting. He projects so much more humor, earnestness, and passion in person than I ever picked up before from his televised speeches or interviews. I guess this shouldn't be too surprising given how much spin and character assassination, there is in politics today. Still, you could literally feel Gore's outrage from the 40th row when he referenced the current administration's poor tract record on the environment or when he cycled through some slides he and Tipper took during a recent visit to New Orleans -- pictured that showed a New Orleans still sagging and anything but recovered from Katrina. I'm glad UB invited Gore to speak and very pleased I was able to attend the event.

Excession is set in author Iain Banks' multi-volume Culture series and tells of a mysterious black-body alien artifact. The novel turns out to be less about the titular alien excession than the responses the artifact provokes, especially from the Culture's Minds and a sadistic species, the Affront. Stylistically, the novel is dense at times, with alternating narratives and facsimile electronic correspondence from many different Minds and the principal human characters. Still, Excession comes together and, in a sense, the novel's elusiveness fits well with Banks' signature theme of ambiguity (moral and otherwise).

It looks like a Hulk sequel is in the works , with Edward Norton to play Bruce Banner! I'm not sure how I feel about the casting of Norton yet, but I'm thrilled that director Ang Lee and writer James Schamus will not be involved with the new movie. What a disaster their imagining of The Hulk was, with a plodding story, too much deviation from the source origin story, and an unforgivable over-reliance on CGI. Good luck to Louis Leterrier and the new creative team on the sequel. Get it right, or Hulk will smash!

I saw Grindhouse last weekend. From the start, I enjoyed the double-feature setup with fake trailers and celluloid cigarette burns that led into a full-bore, over-the-top pastiche of 70s action/horror schlock. I especially liked the Rodriguez's "Planet Terror", which came first, and featured an insane mutant-zombie attack fest. The Tarantino feature, "Death Proof", was good too, but this was more of an ode to gearheads and muscle cars, and is not a genre I enjoy quite as much as the first one. Grindhouse is worth seeing in the theaters, and I recommend the film, but there are some caveats: You really have to buy into the premise of the film, that the features are both cheerfully imitating and mocking their pulp predecessors. Humorous or not, the film is gory, and if you've been turned off by the violence in previous Rodriguez or Tarantino films, you likely will feel the same about Grindhouse. You'll need some movie theater stamina, as, combined, the...

We took some pictures of our new house during the home inspection last week. Enjoy! Some pictures of the front. Trees! The attached garage: Two views of our yard:

As I mentioned a few days ago, we bought a house. The property is in West Seneca, NY (a suburb of Buffalo, NY), just a few blocks from where we live now. The house is a 1700 square feet raised ranch, with three bedrooms and two and a half baths on a nice over-sized corner lot. I'll post some pictures soon.

Details to follow.

Phoenix is the fifth book in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series and centers around Vlad receiving an assassination job from his patron goddess, and the consequences that follow after Vlad commits the act. I enjoyed the novel and the familiar humor, characters, and fast-paced action that have been present throughout the series. I also enjoyed that Brust was willing to move the series along, with Vlad's renunciation of his position and role in the House of Jhereg and departure from his wife and the city of Adrilankha at the end of the novel.

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.