The three greatest things I read today are Charles Stross's Rogue Farm, Bruce Sterling's The Beautiful and the Sublime, and Ursula LeGuin's The Author of Acacia Seeds.

The Beautiful and the Sublime is Sterling at his best.

The Beautiful and the Sublime by Bruce Sterling
Driftglass by Samuel Delany
The Author of Acacia Seeds by Ursula LeGuin
Pretty Boy Crossover by Pat Cadigan
Forever Yours, Anna by Kate Wilhelm
Dust by Greg Egan
Air Raid by John Varley
Forlesen by Gene Wolfe
Surface Tension by James Blish
Balanced Ecology by James H. Schmitz

New Reads

John Varley's Air Raid is the most moving thing I've read in a while. Next up us Zelazny's The Engine at Heartspring's Center, and Le Guin's The New Atlantis.

The Moon and what it stands for in SF

When something is within our physical reach, and has been made much of and nearly exhausted in a rigorous kind of way, it rarely appeals to the imagination in the same way that a conjured up concept would, or something not immediately verifiable. This statement, of course, assumes a lot about the nature of Imagination, but what we are interested in today is not just any kind of imagination, but the science fictional imagination, something that exists right inbetween the kind of pleasure to be had in whimsy and the kind of joy to be had from arriving at some knowledge of the 'real' world. The SF-nal imagination partakes of both liberally, sometimes more from one than the other.

In this respect, the Moon is a very rewarding motif in Science Fiction, and points to several interesting inclinations when it comes to the genre. I use the term 'rewarding', because it, in itself, acts as a microcosm of all the possible flavours that science fiction affords: ranging from the sublime, to the grotesque, and finally, to serving as a space which serves as philosophical playground and testing field.

We shall look at five texts: Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys, Requiem by Robert Heinlein, The Distance of the Moon by Italo Calvino, Hothouse by Brian Aldiss, and finally, Griffin's Egg by Michael Swanwick

In these five texts, we see a very definite kind of progression, that also says a lot about the anxieties and expectations Science Fiction breeds, perhaps more so as a mode than as genre.

Cleaved

When you have nothing but your mind to entertain you, you start seeing things. Like the wall in front of me, with the myriad cracks spreading from the ceiling to the floor. The left one looks like a lightning bolt, as anyone can tell. The one on the right however, with the little corner edging inwards?...that looks like a gun. I think of telling Vincent but then remember its been a week since he's stopped speaking or even eating much. Vincent has started resembling a mantis, with his arms bent and stick like. Come to think of it, I’m very insect like myself. The little slab of glass nailed to the wall tells me exactly what kind: a cross between a fly, thanks to my bulging eyeballs, and an earwig. That’s how my goatee’s shaped…like an earwig’s pincers.

The cell is damp but the food is excellent. It’s a pity Vincent doesn’t agree. He misses his wife’s cooking. Heck, I miss his wife’s cooking. I miss his wife more, but I won’t quite go there. Fifteen minutes earlier, a familiar gruff voice shouted "Food!" and shoved the bowl in, and today we have soup with nothing floating in it and bread only two days old by the looks of it. Oh joy! And still Vincent sleeps. You’d almost think he’s dead! As I sit down on the damp floor and say Grace and start my meal, I wonder why they never, in all this time, gave Vincent his share of food. He’s always been a skimpy eater but even then. Why should I have to share? Not that I had to for the last couple of days but its unfair. Much like its unfair of Vincent to have stopped entertaining me with his jokes and fond reminiscing. Such an enormous wimp, that man, but he was funny alright. And he helped make things less dreary. Vincent had a way with descriptions. The world as we knew it came alive right in front of my eyes. So yes, I miss Vincent and I wish he’d stop sulking and wake up. “Here’s to you, ol’ chap”, I say and make an invisible toast to him. He makes no noise, and lies there, deathly still.

I finish my meal and utter a sigh of contentment and look again. It’s no longer a gun now. It’s a house. It’s a house and wait, there’s more…the little slab of wall that’s missing there, that right there is a backyard and the specks of dirt…they look like lilies, swaying in the breeze. And just then a breeze really does blow in through the grills from the sea just beyond . Reminds me of a few lines Vincent used to say aloud from time to time. Something that had lilies and the sea in it.

Someone’s coming. But I don’t feel like getting up. It feels pleasant suddenly. I think its Geoffrey again. What’s he want now?

“Oy Vincent, mate”, he said again, laughing that disgusting phlegmatic laugh of his. “Not too many days left now, is there?”

Something with the lilies and the sea. I forget the exact lines.

The Bird

I have lived in more cities in this lifetime than I have known songs. In one such city, I remember happening upon the strangest creature I have ever had the opportunity to observe from close quarters. It used to hang in a cage right above the Pawn shop I used to work at, and I thought it was like a bird, and every morning, as I made my way to work on my overgrown and by then deliberately uncommunicative vehicle (I remember watering it every day, morning and night, exactly the way it'd always wanted), right in front of my shop at 7 in the morning would pass by a group of meerkats, hurrying to their respective burrow schools, shrilly talking amongst themselves in wide eyed interest at the day about to begin, and this large, hulking bird, sitting in its cage, would try and match them word for word, scream for scream. I sensed that it was the bird's firm belief that if he could keep at it long enough, he'd pick up every word the meerkats (the primary population of the city) knew, and soon they'd be impressed and let it go. And day after day, when I wasn't swamped with work, and when my attention would be allowed to momentarily shift from a bunch of customers to the bird's plaintive cries, I did find that it was getting better and better in its attempts, to the extent that it started meaning what it said. The meerkats would now stop and cheer, and the bird literally beamed, and bowed. It never failed to amaze me that it'd picked up so much in so little time, and I found myself clapping along. The desperation had left its face, however. The last time I had a talk with him, the bird now being able to converse more than adequately and fluently, it said to me that it had fallen in love. With the language. It didn't mind the cage anymore. It could think in words, something it couldn't do before. It enjoyed the attention. It craved it. And its eyes shone and shone as it said these things to me, and I wondered if I felt sorry for it anymore, and realized I still did.