Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Roche turned and looked at Kivrin. "Are these the last days," he asked, "the end of the world that God's apostles foretold?"
Yes, Kivrin thought. "No," she said. "No, it's only a bad time. A terrible time, but not everyone will die. And there will be wonderful times after this. The Renaissance and class reforms and music. Wonderful times. There will be new medicines, and people won't have to die from this or smallpox or pneumonia. And everyone will have enough to eat, and their houses will be warm even in the winter." She thought of Oxford, decorated for Christmas, the streets and shops lit. "There will be lights everywhere, and bells that you don't have to ring."

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Book Review: The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison

This is arguably the first book in the "high fantasy" genre, although fantasy fans may find it basically unrecognizable were it not for the similarity to The Lord of the Rings. And that seems to be the work that this book always gets compared to, so it bears emphasizing that The Worm Ouroboros predates The Lord of the Rings by decades and probably influenced it a great deal. It's also reminiscent of Icelandic sagas. Actually "The Lord of the Rings + Icelandic sagas" is, in one line, practically the best description I can think of. There are some baffling quirks that such a description doesn't cover. The setting is specifically stated to be the planet Mercury, even though Eddison completely ignores scientific knowledge about Mercury, which did exist even back in 1926. He introduces the world and some of the characters through a random man on Earth who is taken there in what would seem to be a dream except that his guide (a swift, although I had to look "martlet" up on the internet because no one calls swifts martlets anymore and I don't think I'd ever encountered the term before in my life) tells him that he is totally not dreaming. It's all very weird.

I know I'm against popular opinion on this one, but here are some rather obvious reasons that this book is better than The Lord of the Rings.
  • In The Lord of the Rings, a midget with no claim to fame other than that his uncle is famous among midgets goes on a long journey to a fiery mountain in order to dispose of a piece of jewelry. His companion is his best friend who happens to be another midget. In The Worm Ouroboros, the king of the Demons goes on a long journey to a fiery mountain in order to rescue his brother, the greatest warrior in the world. His companion is his best friend who happens to be the second greatest warrior in the world.
  • In The Lord of the Rings, the main villain is some being that never actually appears in the books themselves, but who is like, totally an evil tyrant or something. In order to even understand what he's about, you have to read a completely different book. In The Worm Ouroboros, the main villain is the king of the Witches. His hobbies include conjuring hellspawn to whisk his enemies off to fiery mountains, falconry, sex, and sending armies to conquer every place on the planet, even the really lame ones.
  • The Lord of the Rings has a deranged monster that used to be a midget and is obsessed with a piece of jewelry. The Worm Ouroboros has a goblin philosopher/alchemist/explorer/lord who seems to have a case of chronic backstabbing disorder.
  • E.R. Eddison is a better writer than J.R.R. Tolkien.
  • The Lord of the Rings interrupts the story with a song or poem that some character recites and that Tolkien made up. The Worm Ouroboros interrupts the story with a song or poem that some character recites and that is from LITERATURE! Classy.
  • Passage up some dangerous mountain is made even more dangerous in The Lord of the Rings by a spider. Passage up some dangerous mountain is made even more dangerous in The Worm Ouroboros by manticores.
  • At the end of The Lord of the Rings a wizard villain who wasn't dealt with earlier prolongs the story with his boring takeover of one insignificant settlement that is thwarted anticlimactically. Possibly the worst part of the whole story. At the end of The Worm Ouroboros, the main characters, having killed all of their enemies and essentially conquered the world, decide that peace sucks and arrange for the gods to bring their enemies back so that they can do it all again. They got the idea because the gods seem to like them and the gods gave another character that they liked eternal youth and peace, so they figure eternal youth and war might be doable. I truly believe that this point alone is sufficient to make the case that The Worm Ouroboros is the superior book.

Monday, June 14, 2010

I wrote this whole post and then forgot to put a title on it. Oops.

I am done with this quarter. Once I leave the campus this afternoon, I shan't be returning for the foreseeable future. It's an odd feeling to be leaving again, although, I think, not nearly so odd as returning was. In all, I suppose the experience was—satisfactory. Oh, and I guess I won't be using the wireless internet here. At home everything is all cumbersome wires. I should do something about that. Maybe I will.

On my other blog, the one that someone might actually read (the chemistry one), I caved in and turned on comment moderation. The spam was too annoying and now I can at least console myself that other people won't see it if I don't catch it first. I would have preferred murdering the spammers with an axe, but this solution will have to do. Also, the unintended hiatus is over. Yesterday I made a new post. And it won't be an anomaly. I will write at least two more posts this month. Maybe more. No, really.

So now that I'm out of school again and have like, totally massive amounts of free time (or not) I am resolving to get some crap done that I should have been doing all along.

Most importantly, I need to re-apply at the University of Washington. I have plenty of time, but let's just get it out of the way now.

I should also get a passport. Fesler was harassing me about this. And it's something I might as well do. He was also harassing me about completing a FAFSA thing, but my rebuttal to that was totally sound, so there. But the passport thing, yeah, that makes sense.

More posts on the chemistry blog. For real.

I'm not going to forget all about German just because I finished the two stupid quarters of it here. And man, they were disappointing, but bitching about that is a subject for another entry entirely. I have plenty of resources for progressing in my proficiency with German and I'm going to make that a goal or whatever.

Calculus. I will attack that monstrosity anew. Not sure how yet. Any suggestions? It's important to me, but it's also sort of overwhelming.

I'll get back into the swing of Legacy and help Nick build more decks, hopefully going to some tournaments at some point.

And while we're on the subject of games, I still need to get strong enough in go to beat a computer opponent, even if it's a relatively easy one.

And while we're still on the subject of games, I'm working on finishing another Diablo 2 character. We'll see how the demons like it when they have to face down thirteen skeletal warriors, thirteen skeletal mages, a clay golem, a dude with big trident or something, and up to a dozen revived monsters, all while I'm cursing them and turning the corpses of their fallen comrades into firebombs.

And let's finish my Oblivion character already. He's already completed virtually every quest except for the main questline.

There will be more writing, and not just on this blog or the chemistry one or Traversing Sinnoh, but some actual fiction. Because I've been reading and now that I've stopped to think about it, I'm totally a better writer than some apparent professionals. I might as well at least make a hobby of it. I have some fun stories that I've thought of over the years. If I think they're good enough, you may see them.

Speaking of Traversing Sinnoh, I'll finish that too.

Once this knee injury recovers, I want to get in better shape for judo and do some more judo tournaments. I think I'm seriously improving.

Is that too much? Should I say that I'll do even more stuff? I think I should.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

It looks like someone beat the crap out of me, which is only true if my floor is "someone."

Hey there, what's up? I just wanted to say that this morning, I got out of bed, put on my slippers and my glasses, and then promptly tripped over nothing and fell right on my face. Yeah. Just wanted to share that. Also, this quarter of school is almost over. So that's cool. I don't really have anything else to say right now except that my lips hurt and that I'll try to post something more interesting next time than, "I totally fell on my face." Not saying that I'll succeed. But I'll try. Well, I have to go to class pretty soon (my finals are basically over though, so I'm not even sure why I'm bothering).