Future Poltergeist

A couple of weeks ago, one of the bigger names in sci-fi, Kim Stanley Robinson, asked why the Booker Prize people were ignoring science fiction . The Booker Prize is awarded annually to the best English language, non-American novel published in that year. Robinson thinks that sci-fi is being unfairly shut out. Speaking as an outsider from California and as a science fiction writer I see these very brilliant writers doing excellent work who are never in the running at all, for no reason except their genre and who their publishers are – the so-called club members. It just needs to be said," he said today. "The Booker prize is so big, the way it shapes public consciousness of what is going on in British literature, but the avant garde, the leading edge, is being ignored or shut out of the process entirely. I don't read a lot of new fiction since I rely more on used bookstores so it's hard for me to comment specifically on the past year. But I do have a little experie...

Short movie review: it was ok, not great. Very much what it was advertised as. The rest will be a review of our night out, I think. We went out for our first sit down dinner together in ages tonight. Nothing special, just a chance to sit and chat without feeding Relia or anything. It was very nice. We talked about our (suddenly happy) finances and that made it even better. Then a quick spin around Ikea. Didn't buy anything but we like to cruise through there every so often. They are so clever! And I love the little room layouts. If I suddenly found myself trying to outfit a 500 sq foot apartment, I'd probably just copy one of their blueprints (and turn my storage locker into a library or something). Then off to the movie. It came out a good month ago so we were hoping it wouldn't be too crowded. No such luck. We ended up with seats filled on both sides of us, me with my coat in my lap. Every time we've gone to a movie together over the last year or so (whic...

The book opens with a car driving off of a bridge. Witnesses claim it was suicide but the family pushes to claim it was an accident. A newspaper clipping makes it clear that the family is prominent and above reproach. Why would the driver commit suicide? This book is actually three intertwined stories, an old woman named Iris tells about her current life. She also is writing her memoirs, focusing on her childhood and the events that led up to the car accident. We learn that Iris's life is solitary and that she's been abandoned by her family. The third story is actually a different novel, based on an affair between a higher society woman a man on the run. The man is writing a pulp science fiction story to entertain her. This is by far the most interesting part of the book. Unfortunately, it's also the smallest. This book won the Man Booker Prize in 2000 and Time named it one of the top 100 novels of the last 80 years (or whatever their gimmick was). Holy cats is it ...