Books

_Owner Space_, Neal Asher (short story)
_Beholder's Eye_, Julie Czerneda


Does Asher have a particular nightmare or fetish about mind control? It keeps popping up as a major theme. In this short story, apparently set in the Polity universe by drive technology, we discover that pissing off weakly godlike entities is not a good idea.

A novel with a shapeshifting protagonist and no romance, no interspecies sex, no sex at all -- is Czerneda the only recent author to do that? We also get a first contact scenario on an alien planet, a travelogue of a dozen planets and space stations, and a nasty implacable Enemy. It would have been better if (a) only the unwarned victims of the Enemy had died -- each of the others should have been able to kill it, and (b) my WSOD hadn't failed on the biology of the shapeshifting species.

Books

_Owner Space_, Neal Asher (short story)
_Beholder's Eye_, Julie Czerneda


Does Asher have a particular nightmare or fetish about mind control? It keeps popping up as a major theme. In this short story, apparently set in the Polity universe by drive technology, we discover that pissing off weakly godlike entities is not a good idea.

A novel with a shapeshifting protagonist and no romance, no interspecies sex, no sex at all -- is Czerneda the only recent author to do that? We also get a first contact scenario on an alien planet, a travelogue of a dozen planets and space stations, and a nasty implacable Enemy. It would have been better if (a) only the unwarned victims of the Enemy had died -- each of the others should have been able to kill it, and (b) my WSOD hadn't failed on the biology of the shapeshifting species.

This is very close to canonical chutzpah.

http://consumerist.com/5134413/spirit-airlines-tries-to-charge-cancellation-fees-on-passengers-it-put-on-flight-1549

(URL contains the gist of it.)

This is very close to canonical chutzpah.

http://consumerist.com/5134413/spirit-airlines-tries-to-charge-cancellation-fees-on-passengers-it-put-on-flight-1549

(URL contains the gist of it.)

Health, or lack thereof.

Last week I was feeling poor on Wednesday. Thursday and Friday I worked from home -- and if I hadn't had a conference call with a vendor on Friday, it would have been a sick day.

Saturday I got worse, much worse.
Sunday I was hoping for death as a release, metaphorically.

Today, I'm still not good -- maybe 50% health.

It's not con crud -- I didn't go to Arisia. It's not from the kids -- they don't have it (although E vomited twice today, so he's not great).
Bleh.

I'm hoping to be well enough to get to work tomorrow, but it doesn't seem especially likely. Really, I'm hoping to be well enough to work from home tomorrow.

Health, or lack thereof.

Last week I was feeling poor on Wednesday. Thursday and Friday I worked from home -- and if I hadn't had a conference call with a vendor on Friday, it would have been a sick day.

Saturday I got worse, much worse.
Sunday I was hoping for death as a release, metaphorically.

Today, I'm still not good -- maybe 50% health.

It's not con crud -- I didn't go to Arisia. It's not from the kids -- they don't have it (although E vomited twice today, so he's not great).
Bleh.

I'm hoping to be well enough to get to work tomorrow, but it doesn't seem especially likely. Really, I'm hoping to be well enough to work from home tomorrow.