Month: September 2008

Gene Wolfe makes me feel…dense.

Not stupid, per se. I find that his prose is always clear, if sometimes antiquarian, and eminently readable. This is in contrast to, say, Pynchon, who often seems to revel in obscurity.

No, I just end up feeling like I am not smart enough to ferret out the subtext in his writing. I know it’s in there, but I’ll be damned if I can see it clearly.

I’m sure I’ll get around to re-reading _An Evil Guest_ at some point–his books always seem to warrant returning to–but right now, I’m still uncertain if I even liked it: the turn-of-the-last-century, stilted-feeling prose, the odd juxtaposition of futuristic elements into this old-feeling milieu, and finally, a sense of just not being entirely certain what the fuck is going on all left me a little ambivialent right now.

But it does have Cthulu in it, at least off-stage.

I ran across Robert Charles Wilson’s _Spin_ right about the time I ran across Charlie Stross’ _Accelerando_–in thinking about it, I suspect I heard about both of them at “Making Light”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/. I know that’s where I heard about “Spin”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007262.html.

Having read the first book, I picked up its sequel, _Axis_, though not before it was in paperback.

On the one hand, it’s not badly done, but on the other…I just can’t recommend it.

I “discovered” “Charlie Stross”:http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/index.html about, oh, 2 years ago. The first book I picked up was [“_Accelerando_”:http://www.accelerando.org/book/]. I judged it to be well-written, but not entirely to my taste.

“_Iron Sunrise_”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sunrise I liked somewhat better. Not one of my favorite books of all time or anything, but a solid story, actual characters, you know, all the stuff that a good book should have.

Then I found “_The Atrocity Achives_”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atrocity_Archives, which amused me greatly. Lovecraft meets computer geek, complete with Linux, Palm Pilots and bureaucracy. Ah, joy.

So last week, in a fit of actual book buying–I do this at a much slower pace than I used to–I picked up “_Glasshouse_”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasshouse. Like _Iron Sunrise_, it’s definitely more in the sci-fi thriller category, but it also does it well.

I will note that, this novel has an amusing interaction with Charlie’s “public embrace of the Bechdel Test”:http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/08/bechdel_test_roundup.html.