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_The Royal Treatment_, MaryJanice Davidson
_The Culture Code_, Clotaire Rapaille
_Abandon in Place_, Jerry Oltion
Today we have an odd mix: AH SF billed as romance, a short story, and a nonfiction book.
I read the Oltion on the bus this morning. (This is the novella version; apparently a novel has been extended out of it.) I was utterly entranced. The sense-of-wonder cranked up to 11. That's a little odd for a book which focuses on 1960s technology... if you want to understand why the people at Scaled Composites and the other new-space-race companies are doing what they're doing, I think this story will let you feel it too.
_The Culture Code_ has a long and ridiculous subtitle, as is currently the mode for nonfiction. Basically, the author researches emotional resonances between a culture and [concept foo] and then tries to distill that into a single equivalence. Example: for America, he announces that alcohol's code is "gun". That is, we treat alcohol like a gun: capable of making fast, powerful changes; suitable for defense and destruction, reserved for adults but immensely attractive to adolescents. For an advertiser trying to sell alcohol, his prescription would be to either go "on code" and show your alcohol as a gun (i.e. Colt .45, beer ads that feature hunting and "the great outdoors") or go completely off-code (Corona: associate your product with tropical island vacations). It would be disastrous to go against the code and portray beer in an anti-gun environment.
Finally, Davidson's book is the story of the newest Queen of Alaska -- apparently Seward failed to purchase his Folly, and Russia gave it up to independence with a minimal fight. The Alaskan royalty behave much like SCA royalty...
_The Culture Code_, Clotaire Rapaille
_Abandon in Place_, Jerry Oltion
Today we have an odd mix: AH SF billed as romance, a short story, and a nonfiction book.
I read the Oltion on the bus this morning. (This is the novella version; apparently a novel has been extended out of it.) I was utterly entranced. The sense-of-wonder cranked up to 11. That's a little odd for a book which focuses on 1960s technology... if you want to understand why the people at Scaled Composites and the other new-space-race companies are doing what they're doing, I think this story will let you feel it too.
_The Culture Code_ has a long and ridiculous subtitle, as is currently the mode for nonfiction. Basically, the author researches emotional resonances between a culture and [concept foo] and then tries to distill that into a single equivalence. Example: for America, he announces that alcohol's code is "gun". That is, we treat alcohol like a gun: capable of making fast, powerful changes; suitable for defense and destruction, reserved for adults but immensely attractive to adolescents. For an advertiser trying to sell alcohol, his prescription would be to either go "on code" and show your alcohol as a gun (i.e. Colt .45, beer ads that feature hunting and "the great outdoors") or go completely off-code (Corona: associate your product with tropical island vacations). It would be disastrous to go against the code and portray beer in an anti-gun environment.
Finally, Davidson's book is the story of the newest Queen of Alaska -- apparently Seward failed to purchase his Folly, and Russia gave it up to independence with a minimal fight. The Alaskan royalty behave much like SCA royalty...
