skroderider's

Bye Bye Blogspot

2010-06-12T22:56:00.002+05:30

Moved this blog to my own domain - http://talonx.deepinspace.net/. My tech blog was already there - http://code.deepinspace.net. Have imported all Blogger posts there.

Running Plan 2010

2010-04-27T20:08:00.007+05:30

Have been following a getting-back-to-running-and-beyond plan for this year. Here it is
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tYddwvThoWTS_-E-lo2iNCQ&single=true&gid=0&output=html

It does not include the details, just the outline. The initial months are the toughest, and the most fun. That's when you have to go slow to build your aerobic base (A nice writeup on aerobic base building is here). The Garmin Forerunner 305 I bought recently has been helpful in this - beeping faithfully whenever I cross 155 bpm. This is also fun since the runs are slow and easy, and you don't feel worn out or breathless even on the long ones

I've found http://www.dailymile.com/ to be a good site to track progress. It does not have many features like other running log sites, but I like its look and ease of use. And it has Garmin integration.

Yes, I am back to running.

2010-02-27T11:28:00.001+05:30

Running is primal.
Running is elemental.

Running is Tiring.
Running is Exhilarating.

Running is Painful.
Running is Ecstasy.

Running Makes you float.
Running is Part of your being.

Running is Pounding your body.
Running is Controlling your mind.

Running is Getting sweaty and filthy and covered in salt.
Running is Cleansing.

Running is A Solo effort.
Running is Dissolving yourself in the cheers of the crowd at the marathon.

Book Review: River of Gods

2009-08-24T20:44:00.002+05:30

Another guest post at pustakam - http://pustakam.net/?p=1864. This is a book I had bought some years back and finally got around to reading.

2009-07-23T21:40:00.003+05:30

I finally watched the new Star Trek movie last Saturday.

These were my expectations

Less comic relief
Less Hollywood 'science' and heroics
Something along the standards of what Christopher Nolan did in The Dark Knight

I was expecting too much. The less said the better, but these were the things that jarred me (bulletpointing makes things clearer and more concise, so)

A Turbo lift where buttons are pressed (whatever happened to the voice commands?)
Tricorders that look like extra-slim cellphones. This is accentuated when the crew start speaking into the tricorder instead of doing the comm-badge-slap-and-speak thing.
The new look comm badges. They do not look sleek. They look like misshapen blobs when seen from any distance greater than 30 cms.

This is what Carl Sagan had to say about Star Trek (in Broca's Brain) -

'In a future in which interstellar travel is common, the ships officers are embarrassingly Anglo-American.'

This is no longer the case with recent series and this movie, but the latter gets a thumbs down as far as female portrayal is concerned. The sole role of Lt. Uhura in this movie seems to be to fulfill the hot chick routine and kiss Spock from time to time.

Come to think of it, the only Star Trek series starring a female captain is ST:Voyager.

Overall, a distinctly odd Trekexperience.

My first guest post

2009-05-23T22:51:00.005+05:30

My first guest post on another blog -

http://pustakam.net/?p=1021

It's a popular blog about books and bibliophiles - mostly written in Telugu, but sometimes in English also.

An untitled post.

2009-02-11T08:50:00.013+05:30

I just realized that I buy very little science fiction these days, and read even less. Whatever I buy now are books I really want (rather than buy it because 'it's there' and going for a discount!). These are mostly authors like Gibson, Neal Asher, Robert Reed and the rising wave of Indian sf in English represented by works such as Priya Sarukkai Chabria's Generation 14 and Manjula Padmanabhan's Escape. The reason I read less sf is because I read other stuff more now, and there are only 24 hours in a day. I am rereading some of my favourite sf classics, and will probably write about them sometime.

Listened to an audiobook called 'Letting Go of God' by the delightful Julia Sweeney. It's also a TED lecture and available on Google video. She is simple, straightforward, sincere and a joy to listen to as she recounts her early religious upbringing and the events that led her to realize that there is no evidence for a creator, and no need for one.

On the running front, the ITBS is better. As I read that post now, I can't help but laugh at myself. 6 days to fix ITBS? :)). Got diagnosed with a stress fracture last week though, on my left leg, which will take atleast 2 months to heal. Of course - no running till then.

Tagged

2009-01-19T22:01:00.000+05:30

It has been almost a month since my friend Arvind Mishra, an sf writer, tagged me in this post.

The meme is to choose ten sf books of your choice and just scribble down the fifth sentence on page 56 of all of them and then invite your friends in turn to guess the books where these extracts are selected from. And then declare the answers. (You can choose non-sf books also, but I have chosen only sf - these are among my most well-liked sf works of all time).

Warning : Answers are just below the list.

Here goes (some of the sentences are really vague!)

1. With a little skill and care there were few items that could not be tackled safely; the only things banned were hot soups and excessively crumbly pastries.

2. "If this is true, then the Straumers may have a chance."

3. The nervousness that Stormgren had first felt had long since passed away.

4. "I do not quite follow you."

5. "What?", Lvov tried to focus."

6. Their clothes were not particularly revealing, he noted regretfully, and not one had any sign of décolleté, although some dresses seemed to designed to emphasize the buttocks.

7. A quick punch was all it took.

8. "I helped to do it, even."

9. "This way is much better," Leroux said, touching her skin delicately, poking under her cheeks and chin, pulling back her hair to feel her temples.

10. "But that's the point: it's not right, Captain," Renner protested.

......
......
......
......
......

Answers:

1. 2001 A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
2. A Fire upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge
3. Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke
4. Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny
5. Vacuum Diagrams - Stephen Baxter (Short story - Gossamer)
6. Prelude to Foundation - Isaac Asimov
7. Grass - Sherri S. Tepper
8. Distraction - Bruce Sterling
9. The Collected Stories of Greg Bear - Greg Bear (Short story - Sisters)
10. The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Healing

2008-12-07T22:13:00.001+05:30

I want to share a link on why running the Pune international marathon is not a good idea - the author of the original message never says that, but I am saying it based on what he has mentioned.

http://groups.google.com/group/runnersforlife-bangalore/browse_thread/thread/6f78e943a7618f60#

I am undergoing physiotherapy sessions for my shin splint. My target of running 3 half marathons in a month is still unfulfilled, but the glow in which I was after finishing the Ultra is still there. Doctor's orders now are not to run for atleast 6 weeks, and after that "let's see".

It's only ice packs, lower leg exercises, foam rollers now. Feeling the goose pimples while watching running movies. Digging out distance running videos on Youtube. And waiting for the day when I can lace up my running shoes again.

Somebody said the best cure for running injuries is patience.

To Run Or Not To Run

2008-11-23T23:48:00.006+05:30

My running season this year started with the Delhi Half Marathon. It was almost sabotaged by a viral infection. I was on antibiotics till the day of the run. But by then I was feeling much better thanks to the ENT specialist I paid a visit to. Nothing like getting advice from your doctor to 'definitely carry on running'. He wished me luck for the run, which boosted my morale a lot. I'm sure runners who have not been able to run due to injury or illness know what I mean. The weeks before that were sort of depressing, with uncertainty nagging at every point. I was not able to train for a couple of weeks.

The Delhi run went well. I clocked 02:11:28, my best time for 21k. One week after that I had the Bangalore Ultra Marathon. It had 25/50/75/100k editions, and more if you want to run. Yes, it was not the usual marathon (we have so less of them in India). Organized by Runners for Life, it was the most perfectly managed running event I have been in till now. The reason? The organizers were runners themselves. Unlike Mumbai (which is still the best organized among the 'normal' marathons in India) and Delhi, the focus was on runners' needs and fun rather than media attention and keeping the sponsors happy. The RFL guys really understand what running is about. I had a lot of fun, plus it was my longest run till date. I registered for the 25k, and ended up changing it to 50k. I did complete 50k, although I had to completely walk the last lap of 12.5k due to knee pain. Still, 50k - Whoo! The distance is still unfathomable for me. I cannot visualize it like I can for 21 (which is essentially 2 rounds around the Hussain Sagar lake, plus 2 k).

The target this month was (and still is) to complete 3 half marathons. One of them is over, one of turned out to be more, and the last one is next Sunday, here in Hyderabad. The Hyderabad 21k is still not very well organized even after all these years - but I hope this time they will do better. It's like running in your own backyard, so I'm not much bothered.

My problems started today when I went for a run in the morning to see how much I have healed post-Ultra. After 2k both my knees started paining to the point where I had to stop. It was not the usual kneecap pain - it was lateral - along the side of the knee. Some research later, it seems that I have another common running injury - ITBS - Iliotibial Band Syndrome. Have been trying out ice packs and some recommended stretching exercises. Let's see if it gets better in the 6 days left for the half marathon. If it doesn't, well, :(

My mantra right now is a marathon runner's words - Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. (Haruki Murakami quotes this in his book 'What I talk about when I talk about Running'.)

Morgen Ramble

2008-10-28T09:01:00.007+05:30

It's 0903 hours, and the morning's still surprisingly quiet. I'm trying to get some things done before the mindless noise and pollution of Diwali starts hitting the senses. I've been nursing a viral infection for a week now, the worst effect of it being me not being able to run with 2 half marathons scheduled just 10 days from now. The old bod's going to be under some strain getting up to speed. Today morning I am feeling much better, but some new viruses have apparently decided to settle in and give me a runny nose. Considering the thumb rule that it's ok to run if the illness is above the neck, that's an improvement.

If you're into running, and in India, check this out -
http://www.runnersforlife.com/

Update : Paid a visit to an ENT specialist, which resulted in another lineup of antibiotics. He also gave me explicit permission to run (Yay! not that I would not have run anyway), provided it's not in the fog :D

On rewatching a movie

2008-08-09T22:50:00.003+05:30

Every time you watch a seminal movie you have watched earlier, the experience is different. You already know what's coming in a particular scene. That gives you the liberty of focusing on things you never noticed in the earlier viewings.
You finally understand that mumbled dialogue.
You finally see how much attention has been paid to detail in the story. And how much attention has been paid to rendering that detail in the movie.
Or you can just focus on the soundtrack, and notice how it complements the story. Keeps the script on its toes.
You can savour the scenes you like again and again. Brace yourself for the thrill.
You can look forward to feeling the goose pimples again as he gets ready to jump from a Hong Kong highrise, and soar like a, yes, bat.
:D

Seminal (adj): Containing seeds of later development.
That's what it promises.

I won't write a review. I am sure there are a lot of them out there. I would suggest you read Samit Basu's thoughts for a wider perspective.

2008-07-19T21:38:00.000+05:30

I just watched The Dark Knight.
.

Wondering about stuff

2008-06-08T18:02:00.003+05:30

You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment - Anne Dillard.

Anne Dillard is an American writer. This is the first time that I had heard of her, when I came across the above quote in this blog entry about how to write well.

Here are a few things that have made me wonder recently. Not astonished or feeling the sense of wonder that any SF reader would feel, but plain wondering about something. I feel that Anne Dillard meant it in the former sense.

The paper coffee cups in my office have the following printed on the bottom - 'Empty Cup' manufactured by 'Imaginative Flexipacks Ltd, New Delhi'. Why make it explicit that the contents of the cup are not the cup maker's responsibility? So that no liabilities arise for him if the content in the cup is undrinkable? But what if hot coffee spills on your lap - whose fault is it then, yours or 'Imaginative Flexipacks' for not making the cup spill proof?

I got a Holi ecard from a person whose acquaintance I had made over the internet some weeks back. He happens to be a good science fiction writer, among other things. The text on the ecard was this -

May your life be coloured with the colours of joy, friendship, fun, love and happiness.

Its true not only for this card, but when you read these words after removing all biases like 'Yes I've seen this before, its a cliche', and really see what the words mean, its a completely different and wonderful realization. No I am not getting old and sentimental.

Nicholas Boothman, in his book How to Make People like you in 90 Seconds or Less, says that parents the world over hold their child in the same position - on the crook of their left arm, and the right hand covering the child, holding it close to one's heart, which is supposedly on the left side of the body. I wonder what left handed parents do?

Indian SF stories

2008-06-01T18:46:00.003+05:30

Dr. Arvind Mishra writes about the first SF stories in India.

It would be a good idea to construct a timeline for this subject. A database that would have a comprehensive list of such stories in regional Indian languages for those early years. Articles get published every now and then on this - it would be great if the data in them could be aggregated.

The Man from Earth

2008-02-04T22:19:00.000+05:30

Why is the movie 'The Man from Earth' named liked it is? If you can figure it out after watching it you are smarter than I am.

It is about a university professor who claims to be 14000 years old, practically immortal. The movie picks up when he's about to leave his job for another so that people don't start wondering why he does not grow old. The rest of the movie is made up of the conversation between him and his colleagues at his farewell party.

There is no passion, no great revelations, a cliched view of world history, a single attempt at jolting Christian audiences. It's a very short movie. Not in length but in content. Minimalist is the word.

I liked K-Pax better. If you're thinking what these two movies have in common, it's the nature of the ending.

Book Fair acquisitions

2007-12-16T20:13:00.000+05:30

Picked up the following at the annual Hyderabad Book Fair -

The Penguin History of Early India - Romila Thapar
Indian Muslims - Where have they gone wrong? - Rafiq Zakaria
Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
Mostly Magic - A collection of children's stories - yet another of those books which you have to buy just because they are so beautifully made.
Batman - Knightfall - Dennis O'Neil
The John Varley Reader
DAW 30th Anniversary Science Fiction anthology
Early Novels in India - Meenakshi Mukherjee
Intersections - The Sycamore Hill (SF) Anthology
The Martian Tales Trilogy - Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Mind Map Book - Tom and Barry Buzan
Asimov's New Guide to Science
India : Historical Beginnings and the Concept of the Aryan
India by Al-Biruni - Ed Qeyamuddin Ahmed

Fruitful visits, I would say :D.

After watching Star Trek Voyager Seasons 1 - 4 continously over a period of weeks...

2007-12-11T22:03:00.000+05:30

...I've decided that the album I'm going to release if I ever become a DJ would have tracks with the following names

Energize!
How do you know that? We Are Borg!
Akuchi Moya - the midnight remix
Warp 8, Mr Paris.
Modular bipolar cellular protobionic alphanumeric hemispherical cortical encapsulator. In other words, your head.
M-Class (M-Class, M-Class, M-Class goes the chorus)
Ridged forehead fetish

Indian Science Fiction, this week

2007-12-08T13:11:00.000+05:30

To start with, the Indian Association of Science Fiction Studies' annual conference starts tomorrow, 9th and goes on to the next day 10th, in Pondicherry, India.

Tehelka has a story on Indian science fiction in regional languages. The same issue also mentions writer Vandana Singh's upcoming book, The Woman Who Thought She was a Planet.

A snippet from the UK Times Online where Brian Aldiss shares a little bit of history explaining why Salman Rushdie's Grimus was withdrawn from the nominations for a science fiction award (which one, I wonder?).

Personally, I got a copy of an old Hindi movie called 'Wahan Ke Log'. The title literally translates as 'The People from There'. Haven't watched it yet, but the cover says 'Were they really from Mars?', complete with saucer shaped UFOs and a dial-and-button console.

All of you have a nice weekend, too.

Mindmapping Books

2007-10-13T22:00:00.000+05:30

Mind Mapping is a visual modelling concept where related ideas and tasks are arranged around a central idea.

I often come across people talking about using mindmaps for the books they read. It makes more sense for non fiction books of course, and is a great way to summarize the book. The summarization can be done to any level of detail - the more fine grained you are, the more nodes your mind map will have.

I tried it on a book I read recently - Edward Luce's In Spite of the Gods. I did not have the patience to go to a very fine level of detail, so it's very very brief. Nevertheless, creating one is a good way to keep the central ideas of the book in focus.

Update

2007-08-11T18:49:00.000+05:30

Buying books from discarded/used book sales has the drawback of the buyer being at the receiving end of the decision of what he or she can buy, and the advantage of buying a lot of books. Buying new books from bookstores has the drawback of having to shell out quite a lot of money for a book, and the advantage of the grand feeling of possessing a brand, shiny book you want immediately, among other things.

My recent buying trend has seen an increase in buying a lot from bookstores, of course whenever I can spare the money. For certain books the reasons are manifold - I would rather possess and read them now than wait for 5 years in the hope of it turning up in some used book sale. And new books feeeeel good :D

Walden (a well stocked bookstore in Hyderabad) had this anniversary sale recently - the discounts didn't go beyond 15%, but I did pick up

Bollywood - A history - by Mihir Bose. This one saddened and irritated me. It is really well researched, but the loads and loads of spelling and grammar mistakes take your attention off the content. Commas seem to be having a field day, while fullstops are an endangered species. True, books printed in India do look better than they used to 10 years back if you look at the glitzy jackets and binding. What has deteriorated (yes) is the quality of editing. I say this at the risk of being accused of sweeping generalizations. It only takes a few rotten apples. As I mentioned before, even young readers' books suffer.

and, Nyagrodha - by Kalpish Ratna. I always wondered who Kalpish Ratna was, having seen it on some book spine in some bookshop - the name sounded like it could belong to an ancient Indian philosopher.Here's the funda from the back flap of the book jacket -

"Ishrat Syed and Kalpana Swaminathan write together as Kalpish Ratna, a near anagram of their names. The pseudonym translates, in a piquant meld of Persian and Sanskrit, as 'the pleasures of imagination.'"

Bought The Idea of India and India Unbound - both at the Calcutta airport - I bought the second one because the first one got me interested enough in the rise of the Indian economy.

And finally, Shonkushomogro - the complete collection of Professor Shonku stories (in the original Bengali) - the enigmatic scientist character created by Satyajit Ray.

The joys of book shopping in Hyderabad

2007-07-12T23:01:00.000+05:30

Just opposite my office building M.R. Book Stall have set up one of their monthly marathon sales. About twice every day (ok, not so often these days) I go and stand and look out of the darkened glass wall of my office. BOOK SALE. It says in huge red letters.

Let me describe this marathon sale phenomenon in more detail. (Marathon is a term applied by yours truly, perhaps more aptly suited to the way some people go to such sales and buy books rather than to the sale itself). There are some booksellers here in Hyderabad who specialize in old/discarded/surplus/used/new books of all sorts. They have a number of branches throughout the city. The most well known are Best Bookstore and M.R. Book Stall. From time to time they set up camp in some old unfinished building in some corner of the city. Rows and rows of shelves, still unorganized if you land up there on the first week, tarpaulin covered tables of book piles. If you peek under the tarpaulin you'll find more unopened boxes. After it's organized and if you are a bibliophile, you just need to go with a gunny sack, identify your shelves (for me it's sf) and fill your sack.

Prices mostly range from Rs. 30-50 for paperbacks. Rs. 60-120 for hardcovers. If they know something is sought-after (they sometimes do) they'll automatically ramp up the price. Of course old timers get additional discounts :D

These guys also have their permanent stores. After the initial visits to these, during which you'll probably try to soak it all up, you need to be either lucky or be a frequent visitor to pick up that rare first edition or that space opera by the Thai sf author you never thought you'd find so easily. There's no lack of collectors.

It's monsoon now, so the Sunday book market at Abids is a little dampened, but not so much. It's entirely on the footpaths, beginning from the Abid's bus stop till MPM Mall, and the road running perpendicular to it as well. Abids has it's own charm.

Of course apart from these there are the big glitzy bookstores. But that's another story.

Arrival and a doubt

2007-07-07T00:01:00.000+05:30

The Arrival (1996) is a fast paced alien invasion movie.
It does not have presidents preaching patriotic feelgood early in the morning, no laser beams causing widespread mayhem, no tentacled monsters.
It does have conspiracy, complete with men in black (actually gray overalls), black speakers going bdddrrrrrp in an observatory, huge radio antenna arrays, a geeky astronomer not afraid to follow his instincts and a satisfying ending.

It is midway between two extremes.

What would I personally like an alien invasion movie to be like? Quiet real terror mixed with the paranoia of Philip K Dick novels, real hard-sf technology - no blinking-lights-ray-guns, and a potent dose of wonder, all splashed on a canvas of a start studded night sky. A galaxy spanning plot.

Zane Zaminski (played by Charlie Sheen) has this uncanny resemblance to Dr. Freeman of the famed game Half-Life, but the situations don't really match much.

A thought on the aliens' structure. They are humanoid, but their knees bend the other way. Like kangaroos. Like all quadrupeds. The hind legs of a kangaroo or a cheetah are extremely powerful. For running, while catching prey or while avoiding being caught as one. That's how they have evolved. Which brings me to my question. Let's forget about the scientific validity of the movie for a moment. Would any naturally evolved beings develop such hind legs and still be bipeds? and vice versa? Or am I missing something here?

Books I bought over the weekend

2007-07-01T23:18:00.000+05:30

A brand new copy of The Algebraist - Iain M Banks - I was seduced by reading the back cover blurb.
The Third Culture - John Brockman
The Shockwave Rider - John Brunner (at last! and just 20 bucks! AND hardcover! at the Sunday Book Market at Abids - where else?). Update - 06 Jul 2007 - Just discovered it's the first edition. Hm!
Centuries - A A Attanasio
Fire upon the Earth - The Story of the Christian Church - Norman A Langford - bought this on a whim
The West End Horror - Nicholas Meyer
A Light in the Attic - Shel Silverstein - this has been apparently banned from some libraries because it 'encourages bad behaviour' in children.
A well worn copy of Atlas Shrugged.
Dayworld - Philip Jose Farmer
The Dark Beyond the Stars - Frank M Robinson
The Seeds of Time - John Wyndham
Heavy Weather - Bruce Sterling - this looks to be as good as Distraction.
and some pulp.

Apart from this, bought a 4 DVD pack of Rajinikanth movies - I was looking for Baasha - a movie I had watched a long time back in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, when I had gone there with my dad. I quite enjoyed it at that time, and it was the same yesterday. Thanks to Satya for the tip on where to get the DVD.

Finishing A Good Old Fashioned Future (Bruce Sterling) right now. Enjoyable, except for 'Big Jelly'.

Short

2007-06-12T21:41:00.000+05:30

I just remembered that the deadline for the short story competition of IASFS (that's the Indian Association of Science Fiction Studies), in Douglas Adam's words, whooshed bye on June 1st.

The last and first time I wrote a story and won a prize for it was in school - a short detective story contest sponsored by The Assam Tribune. I borrowed part of the hero's name from the hero of Jatayu's books - Jatayu being a fictional character who's himself a writer in Satyajit Ray's superb Feluda series.

Speaking of short stories, last year Wired magazine asked leading writers to come up with the shortest stories they can think of. Some of the best are here.

Then there's the Asimov edited anthology of really short sf stories - not able to find my copy right now. The ones in that were not one-liners, but mostly one-paragraphers and one-pagers.

Coming back to short stories of 'normal' length, my favourite ones in the sf genre remain

One-Face - Larry Niven
Chrysalis - Robert Reed (more like a novella)
Most of ones in Stephen Baxter's Vacuum Diagrams
Most of the ones in The Collected Stories of Greg Bear

Some news, albeit a bit old

2007-05-26T03:11:00.000+05:30

The 9th annual conference of the Indian Association of Science Fiction studies is in Pondicherry, 9-11th November 2007.

Overload

2007-05-20T17:36:00.001+05:30

Have been thinking of getting another bookshelf, or maybe clear out some of the racks I'm currently using for keeping other stuff. And hopefully, with the Dekoh Books app , start a cataloging process :D.

Also need to store them sorted - or atleast, in a reasonably sorted manner, so that I don't end up getting multiple copies of the same book. Wondering when Dekoh books is gonna support barcode scanning.

Some more of my treasury ..hehe..it's good to gloat, sometimes.

Diversity

2007-04-21T13:04:00.000+05:30

Spent my reading time last week reading a juvenile - Payal Dhar's A Shadow in Eternity. (Reading time is whatever I can squeeze out from my day for curling up with a book. Sigh.). Payal Dhar is one of the new breed of Indian fantasy writers, one of the prominent among them being Samit Basu.
Shadow is enjoyable, but what put me off was the shoddy editing - spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes - can't blame the author for them of course, but one would have expected better quality from a brand like Puffin. And children's literature surely deserves more attention to these things, doesn't it?
Other than that, the climax gave me a bout of deja vu - Basu's Simoqin Prophecies has more or less the same concept -

***********Spoiler warning**************
there's a prophecy, that an evil lord will rise, and that in the end the (good) hero/ine finds out s/he is one who's in the prophecy, and is the evil lord.
***********End spoiler*****************

There's a massive book sale in YMCA Secunderabad - not much sf :(. But loads and loads of those big reference books. Reader's Digest. McGrawHill. Yumm! Other than the usual stuff, got a one volume edition of The Golden Bough.
And The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by George Mann. Does not look so mammoth, though.

Filling the last two inches of my bedroom shelf

2007-03-18T17:48:00.000+05:30

Earth - Final Conflict - Heritage
T2 Infiltrator - S M Stirling
Voyage - Stephen Baxter
Chronocules - D G Compton
The Demons at Rainbow Bridge - Jack L Chalker
The Star Trek Encyclopedia (50 bucks :D)
Star Trek Chronology
Star Trek DS9 (peekchure book)
Cemetery World - Clifford D Simak
Earthclan - David Brin
The Day of their Return - Poul Anderson
The Crystal Memory - Stephen Leigh
The World of Tiers - 1 - Philip Jose Farmer (I think I already have that)
A Thunder on Neptune - Gordon Eklund (ditto)
A Touch of Strange - Theodore Sturgeon
The Delikon - H M Hoover

That's the sunday book market stuff. From back home I got (non sf)
In the Meadows of Gold. Not what I expected it to be, with most of the book taken up by the translations of the buranjis (histories).
Atmojibonir Proyax - Dinesh Ch. Goswami - semi-autobiographical work by the writer known as the doyen of Assamese science fiction. (Pronouncing the 'X' in Assamese)
and some others.

The secret revealed

2007-03-18T16:21:00.000+05:30

Just back from the vacation. Finished The Manticore's Secret by Samit Basu. It's the second in the GameWorld trilogy, the first being The Simoqin Prophecies. Some disclaimers before I say anything more

1. I don't read much fantasy

2. Whatever fantasy I choosily, occasionally read I usually like

3. I don't like the terms science fiction and fantasy being clubbed together, viewed as one and the same genre, or works being described as SFF (science fiction/fantasy).

Overall I like the book in a way, because I think it's in a class of it's own. I'm tempted to say that the series was conjured up to bank on the success of the Potter books/LOTR movies, just like Five Point Someone led to a horde of such books. TMS does borrow from wildly dispersed sources, as the back cover blurb itself says, but it does it in a way which is enjoyable and unique. That again does not imply that it's just a goulash of borrowed ideas - but the borrowed ideas are cheekily and enjoyably parodied. Maybe the author could have made it a little less obvious by not having a 'Dark Tower' a la LOTR.

The idea of a "GameWorld" and the justification for the name is actually developed in this volume. Even though the first volume had the trilogy name on the spine but it failed to mention anything which would explain the reasoning behind the name. (Hm on second thoughts better check the first volume again in case I missed it).

The propensity of the author to take well known names from mythology/the current real world and use them reversed to name his characters/locations is such that you'll end up checking every unusual name against this theory even though most of them do not fit this. The gods-in-the-sky routine pops up every few pages towards the end. A little tiresome, that. And evidently the book is bolder in it's treatment of "racy" scenes as compared to Part One.

My favourite aspect, however, remains the alternate world, or should I say the alternate Indian subcontinent. I think that's why I've stuck to the books.

Currently reading The Legends of Pensam, a gift from my cousin. A beautiful book, that's all I can say right now.

2007-03-09T23:45:00.000+05:30

Am off on a weeklong vacation tomorrow - going home, that's Guwahati, and also to drop off my sister there for her exams. The idea of no work for 7 days seems fabulous. Thinking of reading a lot - in fact that's what I do whenever I'm home. Taking along Samit Basu's The Manticore's Secret (second in the trilogy) and The Dreams our Stuff is made of. Will hunt around for some Assamese science fiction works I've been looking for, this time.

Stuff

2007-03-08T22:01:00.000+05:30

The Complete Robot - Asimov
TWG UFO and Alien Encounters
Alien Contact - Timothy Good
Metamagical Themad - Douglas R. Hofstadter
What's become of screwloose - Ron Goulat
Isaac Asimov Presents - Antibodies
The Moon and the Face - Patricia McKillip
The Berkley Showcase - 2
Soulcatcher - Frank Herbert
Downbelow Station - C. J. Cherryh
Winter in Eden - Harry Harrison
The Green Brain - Frank Herbert
Nimisha's Ship - Anne Mc Caffrey
Cold Allies - Patricia Anthony
Pegasus in Space - Anne Mc Caffrey
Lucky Starr and the big sun of Mercury
Tales from the white hart - Clarke
Begone Godmen - Abraham Kovoor (I remember Gods, Demons and Spirits in school - so just picked this up)

Just a few

2007-03-03T23:05:00.000+05:30

P.D. James - Children of Men
Eastern Love
A Little Princess - Frances Hodgson Burnett (One of those books which you buy because it feels so good to hold them in your hands)
Faces of the Future - The Lessons of Science Fiction - Brian Ash

Down the memory wormhole

2007-03-02T14:44:00.000+05:30

When I think about it, my fascination with science fiction began as a fascination with space when I was a 7-8 year old kid. The earliest memories I have are of a scifi series called Space City Sigma, broadcast every Sunday morning back in those days (mid 80s) when the only TV channel you could get in India was Doordarshan. But I was lucky enough to have a dad who was posted in a remote place near the Indo-Bangladesh border (if you can call that lucky) and the Bangladesh tv signals were stronger than Delhi's. Needless to say, BTV was filled with Hollywood movies and tv series.
But I digress. I remember very little of SCS, because what really filled me with that oft-mentioned sense-of-wonder was another series called Indradhanush. Same channel, same day, but later (or was it earlier?) Briefly, it involved a boy who manages to build a computer from scrap and it actually turns out to be an alien intelligence from the Andromeda nebula. Juvenile stuff? Yes, and it was the kind of stuff which inspires, fills a young boy's mind with the vastness of the universe, makes him want to roam the cosmos in a ship of his own.

That boyhood desire of roaming in a ship of my own has still stayed with me - it manifests itself now with my obsession with space/flight simulations, where there is no predetermined objective or path, but you're free to fly around as you wish. Hm...that also explains my occasional dabbling with OpenGL. Self discovery can be revealing :).

A starship command deck, made out of matchboxes and face-cream boxes covered with white paper. The care I lavished upon it! Gluing and regluing, adding consoles, screens for tracing the starship's destination, pasting white paper over the parts where it would get dirty...

My dad had piles and piles of Reader's Digests, dating back from the 70's. Those used to be my staple diet. And there used to be really good articles on space exploration. Banal stuff about the solar system's planets' atmospheres can be of no interest to a 7 year old boy, but the sheer thrill of just reading about it was enough.

2007-01-15T20:53:00.000+05:30

Halfway through watching 'Final Days of Planet Earth'. A lunar mission beings back an alien insect race to earth. That immediately conjures up images of what the movie would be like - but they're off the mark this time. It's wonderfully restrained as far as the giant-monstrous-insects-destroying-cities-killing-people-and-generally-causing havoc angle is concerned. In fact, the story completely focuses on the conspiracy angle - authorities versus a small group of people.
Bought 'The dreams our stuff is made of' - Thomas M. Disch.
Currently reading The Weapon Makers (van Vogt) and The God Delusion (Dawkins).
Gotta get back to the movie.

2007-01-01T08:48:00.000+05:30

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
The Ancestor's Tale - Richard Dawkins
The Manticore's Secret - Samit Basu
Sultana's Dream - Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
and around 60 other sfs. Yeah.

2006-12-11T07:23:00.000+05:30

The ongoing Hyderabad book fair (today happens to be the last day) is a pretty sad story, with hardly any worthwhile stuff - what with every 5th stall either blaring nursery rhymes or playing some animated cartoons on a laptop. Nevertheless I picked up Precipice (Ben Bova), K-Pax (Gene Brewer), one of Dozois's sf anthologies, The Little Minister (J. M. Barrie), two horror anthologies and Contacting Aliens.
K-Pax is the book the movie K-Pax is based on - starring Kevin Spacey.
Also bought this interesting book on ancient India - the main point of the authors being to refute the Aryan invasion theory. I've just started reading it - and so far have detected a little tinge of jingoism in the assertions they've made.

Weekend binge, yet again

2006-12-03T20:09:00.000+05:30

Shameless list of acquisitions yesterday

3 Donald Wollheim annuals, Triplicity (Thomas M. Disch), The Crystal City, The Boat of a Million Years, A King of Infinite Space, 5 other anthologies, 3 mixed (sf/fantasy) anthologies, Neveryona, Triad (A.E. van Vogt), Trap of Perseus (Ludek Pesek), 3 Asimovs, Glide Path (Clarke), a based-on-Asimov's-robot-novel and a fantasy by Ursula K. Le Guin. Apart from these, what I personally consider to be the high points - New Worlds for Old (David Ketterer), An Alien Light (Nancy Kress) (finally!) and The Rediscovery of Man (Cordwainer Smith).

What I am reading now? John Grisham. Am really hooked into his writing. Got two more.

After unpacking all this, looks like a new bookshelf is necessary.

A small piece

2006-11-30T14:04:00.000+05:30

Anushka Ravishankar is a writer of children's books - and pretty well known too, especially as a pioneer of good nonsense verse in English with an Indian touch, for children. I happened to read her science fiction short story 'Travelling Light' online at http://www.writeclique.net/work.php?ID=134. Quite good - was wondering if there's any collection which features only her science fiction stuff, apart from the recent 7 Science Fiction stories.

This and that

2006-06-09T00:54:00.000+05:30

My favourite Roger Zelazny (sf, not fantasy) work remains Lord Of Light - but there was this gem of a story I read recently. 'My Lady of the Diodes' is one of the pieces in his collection 'Unicorn Variations'. It's a reworking of an old theme, of human AI relationships, but I find the title itself fascinating. Fantasy predominates in this book, with a couple of stories displaying a touch of Ray Bradbury, but most of them interesting experiments in story-structure-building, as Zelazny himself acknowledges. The other book am halfway through right now is Mindstar Rising - Peter F Hamilton. Not as hardcore technology driven as Neal Asher, and not so fast paced either.

X Men 3 is a ridiculous movie.
And they should never have made W/G:The Curse of the Were-Rabbit - should have stuck to that minimal-dialog-effect we all know and love in all Gromit episodes. Why do most movies made from TV Series/limited series suck?

Replay

2006-05-07T20:39:00.000+05:30

First suggested by Prashant, I managed to pick up and finish Ken Grimwood's Replay - which is another retake on the idea of intelligent unknown entities controlling our lives on earth to the extent that they actually rewind some lives and watch them again like a taped TV show. The focus in this book is more on the characters and events rather than the unknown force, which is left unnamed.

On a different note, from time to time I get this urge to read these books which are not pure SF, but are too tantalizingly close for me to not buy them. They usually lie on the lowest rack in book sales, are hardcover, the jacket dusty and sometimes tattered, and not thicker than 3 centimeters. They are usually written by sf, horror or occult authors. Surprisingly, I end up enjoying most of them.

Am rereading the Dirk Gently books, for the third time.

Barlowe's guide to ETs

2006-03-11T22:29:00.000+05:30

Bought Barlowe's guide to extraterrestrials. The most significant omission I could think of at first glance was Niven's Moties.

2006-02-07T23:08:00.000+05:30

A nice, long, detailed review of Contact.

The “first Indian SFF genre novel” and others

2006-01-26T20:50:00.000+05:30

I read two new books this week – Kleptomania by Manjula Padmanabhan and The Simoqin Prophecies by Samit Basu. The first is a collection of short stories – 3 of them science fiction. The second is what has been touted (by some, atleast) as the ‘first Indian sff genre novel in English’. I just finished the Prophecies – and it’s left me with a feeling of incompleteness.

A few weeks back I was at a weekend get together of old college mates in Bangalore. While talking about books in general one of said something like ‘hey have you read that Indian science fiction writer? Sumit…Sumit Basu I think his name is’. I hadn’t heard of any such writer, I said, and the matter dropped there. After getting back to Hyderabad, some googling turned up a lot of references – it’s Samit Basu, and The Simoqin Prophecies was published in 2004 (Penguin India). He is pretty well known by now, and my first taste of his writing was The Plasmoids.

After some hunting in Walden and Odyssey I got hold of the Prophecies. Normally I shy away from works of fantasy and works leaning towards fantasy – but I decided to give this a try. The blurb on the back cover was too cliched, though.

Maybe I’ve lost my bias or maybe the book is really good, but I finished it. And I like it and dislike it at the same time. I dislike it because the influences from Harry Potter are a bit too obvious and so is some of the other borrowed stuff.
I like it because I admire the author’s imaginative power of conjuring up the world where the action takes place, the easy, fast paced, no nonsense style of writing, and the humour. I like the (well) disguised parallel Earth, the city-state of Kol, which is based on Kolkata to a great extent (including Chinatown!!), the references which make you want to find out more about this world he’s thought up.

I mentioned at the beginning that it’s left me with a feeling of incompleteness – well, that’s why I’m hunting for the sequel right now :).

Samit Basu’s blog is at samitbasu.blogspot.com.

The Frankfurt book sale is still going on in Hyderabad – last time I picked up Humans (Robert J Sawyer), some anthologies, some Pohls, Shadows’ End (Sherri S. Tepper) and a 1968 hardbound edition of 2001.

2006-01-17T22:07:00.000+05:30

While Hugo Gernsback's Ralph 124C41+ might not have much of a storyline, it amazes with its sheer power of prophecy. Only Gernsback could have possibly imagined all those technological breakthroughs in 1911.
This thin volume goes on for most of it's first half like a future technological encyclopedia, begins to concentrate on the more romantic interactions of the protagonist and the girl he's met as a result of a cross connected telephone, and ends with an interstellar chase. The title of the book has yet another meaning, but I won't give it away here.

By the way, the 2005 Hugo awards are at http://www.interaction.worldcon.org.uk/pressr47.htm
Hm...I just realized I've not read a single one of them yet :(.

On the same note, I'm working on building my database of sf books again after a gap of two months. It's quite boring work, entering data, coupled with occassional curses as I realize I've bought the same book twice, or even thrice in one of my sprees, not remembering that I already have it.

Currently I'm reading Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear.

2005-12-25T00:03:00.000+05:30

Movies I've watched recently -

The Black Hole - disney stuff, with atrocious dialogues sometimes. Reminded me of the more tedious parts of Star Wars. Disclaimer - I never liked Star Wars.
Um, thats it.

2005-11-26T15:10:00.000+05:30

The Andromeda Strain is one of the best Crichton has written - but the movie (1971) seems to have an uncomfortable dependency on the book. Watching it last week gave me the impression that Crichton had written the screenplay - it's almost a page-to-frame transformation. It might be difficult to appreciate it without having read the book, but it's well made, with fast paced scenes. The technology show is of course, appropriate to the times it was made in, but apart from the bulging tube computer screens I couldn't find much else to mark as really dated.
Definitely worth a watch. At one go.

New stuff

2005-11-23T00:11:00.000+05:30

Ancient, My Enemy, A Universe collection, Total Eclipse and Dreamfall (Joan D. Vinge) were last week's acquisitions. And...well...Ancient Evenings (Norman Mailer)....it was looking good on the shelf, so...
Tried watched a bit of Plan 9 from Outer Space, but got scared after that vampirish dead wife spreads her arms. Gave up till the weekend.

Ha!! Here I am!!

2005-11-22T23:59:00.000+05:30

Well, finally decided to rollover some stuff from jroller. All non tech thingies, actually. This will be my other nest, hehehe.

Starting anew...

2005-07-30T23:12:00.000+05:30

After the not so happy experience with www.jroller.com as a blogging site, moved my stuff here. My old archives are at http://www.jroller.com/page/talonx. The main reason I moved away from it was publishing/editing/viewing (especially on Firefox) problems - and the increasing instability of the site itself.
blogger.com is a refreshing change.