Good and Bad Sci-Fi

Started: 2003-02-11 21:07:38

Submitted: 2003-02-11 21:39:08

Visibility: World-readable

Within the past week, I indulged myself in a few Good Sci-Fi books. The first was Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which is conveniently available online for free. Since I lack sufficient currency to purchase very much of anything, including hardcopy novels, "available online" is a Really Good Thing. It was a short book, 172 k compressed (compared to 836 k for War of Honor and 244 k for The Voyages of the Galactic), but most entertaining. I started it last Wednesday night and finished it Thursday afternoon.

I'm currently enjoying Babylon 5 fourth season, working my way through the first main plot of the season. (I'm being vague on purpose because someone has no idea what happens in season four.) Very excellent sci-fi.

Gem decided I could have an allowance from my recent payment from a web hosting company, so I went to my local independent bookseller (after returning an epic armfull of books Gem checked out from the Boulder Public Library) and acquired Pattern Recognition, the latest book by one of my favorite authors, William Gibson. (US$27 after tax; I convinced myself it was worth it. So far, I'm convinced I'm right.)

Willy has been bugging me for a year to read his book, The Voyages of the Galactic, especially since I created a Palm version for myself in December, about the time I got addicted to another space opera. I finally managed to finish it yesterday morning. It's obviously not as polished as various professional books I may have read, but it still has its moments.

Willy and I stared filming wsf:mo -- Worst Sci-Fi: The Making Of. We filmed each other talking about the process of making the movie and that sort of thing. Tomorrow Bitscape will be joining us for his take on the whole thing, which should be most entertaining. We got 48 minutes of footage today; I have a bad feeling we may end up with more footage for the making-of than we had for the movie itself.