30 September 2001: Indian Summer

Gazing into the Abyss: Michael Rawdon's Journal

Bookshelf:

Recently finished:

Barry Hughart, The Story of the Stone

Currently reading:

Barry Hughart, Eight Skilled Gentlemen

Next up:

Indian Summer

Even though we had our first rain of the year last week (along with a big lightning storm, with more lightning strikes than in something like the last five years' worth of storms put together), it's been warm and sunny and even a bit humid this weekend, and will be for the next few days.

Debbi and I decided yesterday to take advantage of it by driving to the coast, where we drove through downtown Half Moon Bay (where after three-plus years I finally found the little grill where John took me on my vacation three years ago), and walked around the Moss Beach tide pools at low tide, and wrapped things up by sitting and reading on the beach south of Pacifica, enjoying the big waves rolling in. A lovely day!

Afterwards we drove into Redwood City where we drove past a few homes I might look at. Redwood City has its advantages as a place to live for me: I have a few friends who live there, it's not too far from work, it's closer to San Francisco and to Lucy, and there are some detached houses available, as opposed to Mountain View where there are only townhomes. However, Mountain View really makes more sense for me when factoring in closeness to work, and to many of the things I do, and the fact that I have even more friends who live in that area. So probably I won't look seriously at Redwood City until and unless it's clear that I just can't find what I want in Mountain View.

That said, one of the homes looked nice and had a large yard. A second looked large but was listed as being a fixer-upper. A third looked okay, but I suspect its neighborhood is not as nice as it seems cosmetically. And the fourth was a townhouse which I wasn't taken by in terms of the complex or the neighborhood.

Anyway, we went to City Pub for dinner where we enjoyed their good hamburgers and excellent buffalo wings. Then we went and did a little shopping and ended up lounging around at Debbi's place for the evening.

Today was even more low-key: We each picked up some food and spent the day watching football and baseball and reading in her apartment. It got stiflingly hot at one point, but opening her door to get a cross-breeze made things much better. A nice, lazy afternoon.

I'm thinking of changing how I write my journal, mainly because I want to free up some time for some other projects I want to work on.

One is to have some time to start writing fiction, a bleat I utter every couple of years, but which I probably won't act on as long as I devote as much time to this journal as I do.

Another is to start a baseball site, which would be a combination Weblog and site for me to do some statistical analysis. I enjoy talking about and analyzing baseball, and would like to spend some time doing more serious analysis a la what you see at the Baseball Prospectus. I even have a title for the site picked out! I figure during the offseason I'll get together the fundamentals of a site and some analysis programs and look forward to writing stuff regularly next season.

Meantime, if I actually pursue these projects, I'll probably cut down on, for instance, the amount of effort I spend writing reviews in this journal. But perhaps that, too, might be a good thing: I could spend more time being introspective and writing about myself and people around me, rather than so much my activities and interests. Well, maybe it would just be a "thing", neither good nor bad. Who knows?

Anyway, that's something rattling around in my head lately.

Speaking of which, another long-term project I've decided to embark upon is to read all of the novels which have won the Hugo Award or Nebula Award for science fiction and fantasy. I decided to do this when I was looking over a list of winners and realized that I've read quite a few of them already, and that many of the remaining ones look like good SF as well. It ought to give me a good look at a variety of SF, and perhaps introduce me to some new favorite authors.

So I've been looking for copies of the novels in various used bookstores over the last month, and have had a surprising amount of success, even though I've set my standard for the conditions of the books pretty high.

So, completely departing from any shadow of writing less about my interests or devoting less time to this journal, here's how I'm doing with my collection:

Hugo Award-winning Novels:

Year	Author	Title	Status	Comments
1953	Alfred Bester	The Demolished Man	Read	A terrific novel, one which holds up very well even 50 years later.
1954	(No award given)
1955	Mark Clifton and Frank Riley	They'd Rather be Right a.k.a. The Forever Machine	Owned
1956	Robert A. Heinlein	Double Star	Unowned
1957	(No award given)
1958	Fritz Leiber	The Big Time	Owned
1959	James Blish	A Case of Conscience	Owned
1960	Robert A. Heinlein	Starship Troopers	Read	A pretty good book; easily my favorite Heinlein novel, because it feels more genuine than his others in its political outlook.
1961	Walter M. Miller Jr.	A Canticle for Leibowitz	Read	A fantastic novel. Must reading.
1962	Robert A. Heinlein	Stranger in a Strange Land	Read	A mediocre novel, showing many of Heinlein's greatest excesses. Don't bother.
1963	Philip K. Dick	The Man in the High Castle	Read	It's been years since I've read this. My recollection is that the plot is nearly nonexistent, and the alternate world background is of only academic interest. It's impressive, but not enjoyable.
1964	Clifford D. Simak	Way Station	Owned
1965	Fritz Leiber	The Wanderer	Owned
1966	Roger Zelazny	...And Call Me Conrad a.k.a. This Immortal	Read	A pretty good book about an immortal in the far future.
1966	Frank Herbert	Dune	Read	Also a pretty good book, although I didn't enjoy it as much as it's reputation suggests. It tied with Zelazny's book for the award.
1967	Robert A. Heinlein	The Moon is a Harsh Mistress	Read	A so-so novel. The first half is enjoyable from the standpoint of how to run a conspiracy, but it gets rather silly after that.
1968	Roger Zelazny	Lord of Light	Read	It's been so long since I read it I don't really remember it. I recall that it was a tough read, though.
1969	John Brunner	Stand on Zanzibar	Read	A monstrous tome, I didn't find it very rewarding. The plot is very fragmentary, and the characters not especially likeable.
1970	Ursula K. LeGuin	The Left Hand of Darkness	Read	So-so. It has a long section in the middle where not much really happens, and I didn't find the sexual politics all that interesting. I don't think it's held up well. Arguably I wasn't its target audience, however.
1971	Larry Niven	Ringworld	Owned	Interestingly, I've never read this.
1972	Philip Jose Farmer	To Your Scattered Bodies Go	Unowned
1973	Isaac Asimov	The Gods Themselves	Read	A solid Asimov novel, worth a read if you've enjoyed his other work.
1974	Arthur C. Clarke	Rendezvous With Rama	Read	A sterling example of how strange the universe might be, and how we might go about exploring its strangeness. No character or plot to speak of, so you'll either like what it shows you, or you'll hate the absence of a real story. The first sequel, Rama II, is crap.
1975	Ursula K. LeGuin	The Dispossessed	Owned
1976	Joe Haldeman	The Forever War	Read	I can see what Haldeman was aiming for, but I wasn't interested in a Vietnam parable; I was interested in the cultural aspects of living through centuries through time dilation, and that element is given the short shrift in the story. Very disappointing.
1977	Kate Wilhelm	Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang	Owned
1978	Frederick Pohl	Gateway	Read	This novel of humanity trying to explore the universe using alien ships they don't really understand is one of my favorite SF novels.
1979	Vonda McIntyre	Dreamsnake	Unowned
1980	Arthur C. Clarke	The Fountains of Paradise	Owned
1981	Joan D. Vinge	The Snow Queen	Owned
1982	C. J. Cherryh	Downbelow Station	Read	Seminal for its time, I found it rather mechanical and colorless in its writing style.
1983	Isaac Asimov	Foundation's Edge	Read	I hated this book. It shattered everything cool about the Foundation novels, as I'd been hoping to finally see the thousand-year plan come to fruition. Don't bother.
1984	David Brin	Startide Rising	Read	I didn't like this one, either. It's only a fragment of a story, which continues in his later Uplift books, but which I understand hasn't really ended yet. I nearly threw the book across the room when I finished it.
1985	William Gibson	Neuromancer	Read	It's been years since I read this. I didn't care much for it, as the cool cyberpunky stuff and quasi-noir colorings left me cold. It seemed like a decent adventure yarn, but not much more. I might re-read it sometime.
1986	Orson Scott Card	Ender's Game	Owned	Amazingly, I've never read this one, either.
1987	Orson Scott Card	Speaker for the Dead	Owned
1988	David Brin	The Uplift War	Read	More fun than Startide Rising, mainly because the monkeys are more fun than the dolphins. The story doesn't conclude here, either, so I didn't keep reading after this. The Postman is a far superior novel to either of these.
1989	C. J. Cherryh	Cyteen	Read	A tour de force, examining in detail how one might clone a human being to grow up to be as similar as possible to her predecessor. The ending is a bit rushed, but it's a fine novel, and Cherryh's writing style is much more sophisticated and polished than in her earlier work.
1990	Dan Simmons	Hyperion	Read	An excellent novel, comprised of several shorter stories each told in a different science fictional style. Be aware that this is only half the story, and it concludes in The Fall of Hyperion.
1991	Lois McMaster Bujold	The Vor Game	Read	One of Bujold's weaker novels, it feels like two or three novels stuck awkwardly together.
1992	Lois McMaster Bujold	Barrayar	Read	My least-favorite of Bujold's Vorkosigan series, it feels very by-the-numbers and doesn't really add much to Miles' background that isn't told elsewhere.
1993	Vernor Vinge	A Fire Upon the Deep	Read	A stellar novel by one of my favorite authors
1993	Connie Willis	Doomsday Book	Read	A decent novel of time travel to the days of the Black Plague, but suffers mortally from two disjoint plot threads and a lack of overall thematic unity. Tied with Vinge's novel for the award.
1994	Kim Stanley Robinson	Green Mars	Owned	I wasn't too impressed with Red Mars, so I haven't gotten around to this one.
1995	Lois McMaster Bujold	Mirror Dance	Read	My favorite Bujold novel. But you should read the whole series in order, since this one will lose a lot of its power otherwise.
1996	Neal Stephenson	The Diamond Age	Owned
1997	Kim Stanley Robinson	Blue Mars	Owned
1998	Joe Haldeman	Forever Peace	Read	I found this to be a rather nondescript near-future novel with utopian overtones.
1999	Connie Willis	To Say Nothing of the Dog	Unowned
2000	Vernor Vinge	A Deepness in the Sky	Read	Enjoyable, but not as good as A Fire Upon the Deep. Suffered partly from being constrained by its technology.
2001	J. K. Rowling	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	Read	It's an okay novel, but not as good as two of its predecessors, and it seems self-consciously designed to be successful.

Totals: 30 Read, 15 Unread but owned, 4 Unowned

Nebula Award-winning Novels:

Year	Author	Title	Status	Comments
1965	Frank Herbert	Dune	Read	(See comments in Hugos list)
1966	Samuel R. Delany	Babel-17	Owned
1966	Daniel Keyes	Flowers for Algernon	Owned	Tied with Delany's novel for the award.
1967	Samuel R. Delany	The Einstein Intersection	Unowned
1968	Alexei Panshin	Rite of Passage	Owned
1969	Ursula K. LeGuin	The Left Hand of Darkness	Read	(See comments in Hugos list)
1970	Larry Niven	Ringworld	Owned
1971	Robert Silverberg	A Time of Changes	Owned
1972	Isaac Asimov	The Gods Themselves	Read	(See comments in Hugos list)
1973	Arthur C. Clarke	Rendezvous With Rama	Read	(See comments in Hugos list)
1974	Ursula K. LeGuin	The Dispossessed	Owned
1975	Joe Haldeman	The Forever War	Read	(See comments in Hugos list)
1976	Frederick Pohl	Man Plus	Owned
1977	Frederick Pohl	Gateway	Read	(See comments in Hugos list)
1978	Vonda McIntyre	Dreamsnake	Unowned
1979	Arthur C. Clarke	The Fountains of Paradise	Owned
1980	Gregory Benford	Timescape	Unowned
1981	Gene Wolfe	The Claw of the Conciliator	Unowned
1982	Michael Bishop	No Enemy But Time	Unowned
1983	David Brin	Startide Rising	Read	(See comments in Hugos list)
1984	William Gibson	Neuromancer	Read	(See comments in Hugos list)
1985	Orson Scott Card	Ender's Game	Owned
1986	Orson Scott Card	Speaker for the Dead	Owned
1987	Pat Murphy	The Falling Woman	Read	Although I only read it three years ago, this one has mostly fallen out of my memory. I recall thinking it was okay, but unsatisfying in some essential way.
1988	Lois McMaster Bujold	Falling Free	Read	Why do my least-favorite Bujold novels mostly win the awards? This is a footnote to the Vorkosigan series whose themes and resolution seem too blatant and obvious throughout the story.
1989	Elizabeth Ann Scarborough	The Healer's War	Unowned
1990	Ursula K. LeGuin	Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea	Owned
1991	Michael Swanwick	Stations of the Tide	Read	A book which is long on Swanwick's lush style, but whose story left me rather befuddled.
1992	Connie Willis	Doomsday Book	Read	(See comments in Hugos list)
1993	Kim Stanley Robinson	Red Mars	Read	Although it had some stunning scenes, it was undermined by the astonishingly weak characterization, and the long, self-indulgent descriptions of life on Mars which stalled the plot for often dozens of pages. Needed to be edited by about 30% to be really good.
1994	Greg Bear	Moving Mars	Unowned
1995	Robert J. Sawyer	The Terminal Experiment	Unowned
1996	Nicola Griffith	Slow River	Unowned
1997	Vonda McIntyre	The Moon and the Sun	Read	I didn't care for this book. I couldn't care at all about her depiction of historical French culture, or the relatively uninspired fantastic elements introduced into that culture.
1998	Joe Haldeman	Forever Peace	Read	(See comments in Hugos list)
1999	Octavia E. Butler	Parable of the Talents	Unowned
2000	Greg Bear	Darwin's Radio	Unowned

Totals: 15 Read, 11 Unread but owned, 11 Unowned

Was that exciting or what?