The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
I just finished the book pictured herein, and wondered briefly if the title could apply to me…but of course not! As if I could love books too much. Anyway, the title sounds like a 1950s detective movie, hence the black and white.
Look for the sequel, “The Man Who Wore Overalls Too Much”. Coming in 2011 to bookstores near you!
Here’s a list of 100 SF books that apparently everyone needs to read. In accordance with blogging tradition, I shall reproduce the list now, with the titles I’ve read in bold, titles I haven’t read but already own and plan to read in italic, titles which I don’t own but still hope to read in red, and occasional comment along the way.
The Postman – David Brin
The Uplift War – David Brin
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Foundation – Isaac Asimov
Foundation and Empire – Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation – Isaac Asimov
I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
The Long Tomorrow – Leigh Brackett
Rogue Moon – Algis Budrys
The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury
Childhood’s End – Arthur C. Clarke
The City and the Stars – Arthur C. Clarke
2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
Armor – John Steakley
Imperial Stars – E. E. Smith (Never heard of this. But I have read other EE “Doc” Smith, in his more famous Lensmen sequence.)
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
Speaker for the Dead – Orson Scott Card (Won’t be reading these. OSC has revealed himself to be such a jerk that I have no desire to visit his work, no matter how highly regarded it is.)
Dune – Frank Herbert
The Dosadi Experiment – Frank Herbert
Journey Beyond Tomorrow – Robert Sheckley
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
Valis – Philip K. Dick
A Scanner Darkly – Philip K. Dick
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K. Dick (I’ve never read any PKD! What gives?)
1984 – George Orwell
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut (I’ve never read Vonnegut either. What a hole in my literary life.)
The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells
The Time Machine – H. G. Wells
The Island of Doctor Moreau – H. G. Wells
The Invisible Man – H. G. Wells
A Canticle for Leibowitz – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Alas, Babylon – Pat Frank
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
A Journey to the Center of the Earth – Jules Verne
From the Earth to the Moon – Jules Verne
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne
Old Man’s War – John Scalzi (I’m not sure I’d put it in The SF Canon just yet, but it’s a cracking good book.)
Nova Express – William S. Burroughs
Ringworld – Larry Niven (Just raed it! Great ideas in here.)
The Mote in God’s Eye – Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Unreasoning Mask – Philip Jose Farmer
To Your Scattered Bodies Go – Philip Jose Farmer
Eon – Greg Bear
Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
The Andromeda Strain – Michael Crichton
Lightning – Dean Koontz
The Stainless Steel Rat – Harry Harrison
The Fifth Head of Cerebus – Gene Wolfe
Nightside of the Long Sun – Gene Wolfe
A Princess of Mars – Edgar Rice Burroughs
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
The Stars My Destination – Alfred Bester
Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
Doomsday Book – Connie Wills
Beserker – Fred Saberhagen
Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
The Word for World is Forest – Ursula K. LeGuin
The Dispossessed – Ursula K. LeGuin
Babel-17 – Samuel R. Delany
Dhalgren – Samuel R. Delany
Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
The Forever War – Joe Haldeman
Star King – Jack Vance
The Killing Machine – Jack Vance
Trullion: Alastor 2262 – Jack Vance (I have a Vance collection somewhere…need to read it.)
Hyperion – Dan Simmons
Starship Troopers – Robert A. Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert A. Heinlein
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A. Heinlein (I bounced off this book the first time I tried to read it.)
A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
More Than Human – Theodore Sturgeon
A Time of Changes – Robert Silverberg
Gateway – Frederick Pohl (Loved this book.)
Man Plus – Frederick Pohl
The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
Mission of Gravity – Hal Clement
The Execution Channel – Ken Macleod
Last and First Men – W. Olaf Stapledon
Slan – A. E. van Vogt
Out of the Silent Planet – C. S. Lewis
They Shall Have Stars – James Blish
Marooned in Realtime – Vernor Vinge
A Fire Upon the Deep – Vernor Vinge
The People Maker – Damon Knight
The Giver – Lois Lowry
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Contact – Carl Sagan
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand (Dreck. Pure and utter dreck; wretched prose, embarrassing characters, and one of the most sickening worldviews I can think of. And what makes The Fountainhead an SF book? There is nothing SFNal about it.)
Battlefield Earth – L. Ron Hubbard (Oh, come on now. Why should anybody read this?)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – Mark Twain
Little Brother – Cory Doctorow
Invasion of the Body Snatchers – Jack Finney
Planet of the Apes – Pierre Boulle
Just a couple of reactions to last night’s Hell’s Kitchen, written as things happened. Spoilers, so highlight to read:
:: Ben is starting to sink a bit. I’m loving it. As Chef Ramsay noted, “At this point in the competition, the weak start to get exposed.” Ben’s faults are coming through, which is a good thing.
:: Jay spent a day with Holli. Therefore, I must kill him. Pistols at dawn, Jay!
:: Autumn is totally irritating.
:: I still hate Ben, I still love Holli, and Jay’s moves on her must result in his being dropped into a very high elevator shaft. With no elevator. Betrayer most foul!!!
:: Let me be clear on this: Holli’s behavior on this episode makes clear that she has no particular revulsion for guys with unusual hair who are also on the larger side. GAHHH!!!
:: Hmmmm…The Wife may read this. I may be spending tonight on the floor. Luckily, The Wife has also shown no particular revulsion for guys with unusual hair who are also on the larger side!
:: Ben tries to execute some kind of maneuver to make himself look good. Sous-chef Scott has none of it. Best moment of the season!
:: Gone tonight: Ed and Jason. Ben dodged a bullet, sadly enough. But Ben probably showed more outright skill than Jason did. I’m confident that Ben will probably be one of the next to go.
Back next week!
I love food of nearly all varieties, but like a lot of folks, there’s a special place in my heart for breakfast. There’s something awfully nice about a day that starts off with a nice, big, filling breakfast. I’m not partial to any particular item for breakfast: I’ll have my beloved waffles or pancakes with pure maple syrup and a side of some kind of meat, or I’ll have an omelet and homefries, or I’ll go big and get one of those combo breakfast meals that every good breakfast joint has.
The photo above is one of those meals, from one of my absolute favorite breakfast joints: Charlie’s Diner in East Aurora, NY. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a diner, with typical diner grub. Inside there’s seating at a cramped counter and a few tables in the first room, but the place has become so popular over the years that it’s obviously expanded greatly, with additional dining room areas. And best of all is the seating area on the porch out front, where one can sit in shaded fresh air and eat. It’s just a fantastic place. My meal above consisted of two eggs, three sausage links, home fries, toast on homemade bread, and a stack of three pancakes that I couldn’t squeeze into the frame. (The pancakes at the upper left are The Daughter’s.)
I love breakfast because it tends to be the most value-packed of meals. You can get a huge meal, with coffee and OJ, at most places like this for around $10. That’s great, especially when you eat late enough in the morning and you eat enough food to make lunch expendable.
We ate there on a Saturday morning two weeks ago before attending the East Aurora Farmers Market. Farmers markets are some of my favorite things; just wandering around, looking at all the fresh produce and vegetables and plants and flowers and other items is fantastic, and I love being able to hand my money for a head of lettuce to the person who grew it.
Back on the subject of breakfasts, we discovered quite by accident last week a great show on PBS called Breakfast Special. This show spends an hour profiling different kinds of breakfast joints throughout the country, from one of Western New York’s own pancake houses (the Maple Tree Inn, which is only open during maple syrup harvesting season) across the country to a couple of places in Portland, OR. Watching this show made us terribly hungry. If you can find the show on your PBS station, check it out.
Wow, I want to eat some breakfast now…and as I’m writing this, I’ve just finished dinner!
Setting aside the glorious way in which this subject prompted America’s Idiot-In-Chief, Sarah Palin, to live right up to her rep for being the single most empty-headed person in America’s public life, I have to note that I grow tire of a certain style of thinking regarding issues like this. The reasoning basically goes thusly: “Sure, 99.9 percent of the Muslims in the world are not actually terrorists waiting to suicide-bomb you, but for the good of America, we should certainly treat all of ’em as if they are.”
And for the “Build it, but somewhere else” crowd, what is the acceptable distance? Ten blocks? Twenty? A mile? If it’s meant to serve Muslims in Lower Manhattan, where should it go that it won’t be too darn close to the WTC site? Or should they just not build it in Manhattan at all?
Count me among those who think that letting this mosque get built and used without making any fuss whatsoever would put forth a much greater demonstration of America’s ideals than anything I’ve seen in quite some time.
UPDATE: Alan says what I said, but he uses a lot more words to do it. Ha!
So, we picked up Mario Kart a while back. This is, as the title makes clear, is one of the Mario franchise games. It’s a go-kart/race track game, in which you pick your character and your vehicle and navigate at breakneck speeds through various courses that have lots of obstacles.
Of course, this being Mario, you’re pitted against all manner of obstructions: walking bombs, yawning precipices over molten lava, enormous caterpillars that wander back and forth across the path you’re driving, and so on. Sometimes you’re driving on a raceway; other times you’re driving on normal roads that are populated by other cars. There are races on ice, and there’s a maddening race on a narrow track that orbits the Earth. (Go off the road on that one, and you burn up on re-entry. Wheeeee!!!)
Mario Kart is an occasionally maddening game to play. There are ways to pick up items that help you out throughout the game; some of these give you speed bursts, while others are weapons you deploy to slow down the other drivers. The other drivers, though, get to pick up the same kinds of weapons, and sometimes sheer bad luck can convert a first-place running into limping into the finish in 11th place (out of 12). The most maddening ones are when you’re hit with multiple objects, right after the other, so you can’t even get yourself started again before you’re hit.
But like the other Mario game with which I’m deeply familiar, Super Mario Bros., this one is designed for maximum addictiveness. The races are no more than three or four minutes long, with four races being grouped into a “cup”, so there is constant temptation for “just one more race and then I’ll go do some writing, really, I totally promise.” Especially when certain courses prove to be so difficult that all you want to do is come in first, just once! (I have yet to win Wario’s Gold Mine, for example. That one drives me batty.)
The game’s visual invention is amazing. Not just the landscapes, but there are humorous touches all over. I especially love all the little cameo appearances by people, creatures, or other items from Super Mario, like the giant cast-iron ball of teeth that barks like a dog, or the ghosts that jeer at you, or Bowser himself. And there are lots of small jokes in the backgrounds, such as in the race through Coconut Mall, where at one point you have to contend with cars being driven by whichever Mii’s you have created for your system.
I’d write more, but…I need to go play some Mario Kart!
Linkage….
:: In 1998, Krissy decided that we should have a dog. This precipitated a philosophical discussion between the two of us as to what constituted a “dog.” Krissy, whose family had had a number of smaller dogs over the years, was inclined toward something in the shih tzu or maltese direction of things. I, however, steadfastly maintained that if one is going to own a dog, then one should get a dog — a large animal, identifiably related to the wolves whose DNA they shared, who could, if required, drag one’s unconscious ass out of a fire. (It’s a long post about a dog. Which means that by the end of it, your eyes will be producing some kind of odd salty discharge, so be warned. Condolences to the Scalzi family on the loss of Kodi; and I’ve often wondered why the Scalzis only have one child thus far, and this post provides a small answer with which I can relate all too readily.)
:: I’ve been writing professionally for 15 years, and particularly since 9/11 I have tried, when circumstances allow, to make this an underlying theme in my work: that Muslims and Christians can live together, that there is more that unites us than divides us, that it is only the extremists on both sides who want to see a Clash of Civilizations, and not co-existence, rule the day. (Amazing post that relates history to today in a powerfully personal way. Check it out!)
And…I’m going to stop there, actually. I’d like those two to stand out, for obvious reasons. More links next week!
Via Roger:
Rules: Create a non-objective list of your favorite albums of the last 20 years (anything released between 1990 and now), remember, this is your FAVORITES so, if Maroon 5’s Songs about Jane was your favorite album, that should be number 1, even if you feel Nevermind was a more influential album.
Sounds like fun, although I do quibble with the word “non-objective” up there. There is no such thing as an “objective” list of the Top X of anything, but that’s neither here nor there. So, my top albums from the last twenty years? Hmmmmm….
Well, what the hey. Here’s a list, in no particular order:
The Beatles Anthology (Probably cheating here, but it’s my list)
The Village Lanterne, Blackmore’s Night
Santiago, The Chieftains
The complete scores to The Lord of the Rings (all three)
Cleopatra, Alex North (the restoration by Varese Sarabande)
Hymns of the 49th Parallel, k.d. lang
Les Miserables: The Tenth Anniversary Concert from the Albert Hall
The three scores to the Star Wars prequels
Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Ponyo, Joe Hisaishi
Supernatural, Carlos Santana
The Rising, Bruce Springsteen
Live from the Ends of the Earth, Dougie MacLean
Home, Dixie Chicks
Any of Sir Colin Davis’s live recordings of the music of Berlioz, with the London Symphony (particularly Les Troyens and Romeo et Juliette).
What are your favorite albums of the last twenty years?
The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
