greyduck.net

Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

  • This list would keep you busy a while…

    Since Lil’ did it, and I was upset enough at the misspelling of my namesake, I figured I might as well do it too. So, here’s my response to the “100 Science Fiction Books You Just Have to Read.”

    1 Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke (I have a soft spot for Clarke’s work. Not all of it, mind you.)
    2 Foundation by Isaac Asimov (Tedious, ever so tedious.)
    3 Dune by Frank Herbert (And the increasingly larger follow-ups, all the way through the massive, absurd Chapterhouse.)
    4 The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
    5 Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
    6 Valis by Philip K. Dick
    7 Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
    8 Gateway by Frederik Pohl (It was a long time ago; I remember it poorly.)
    9 Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl
    10 Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
    11 Cuckoo’s Egg by C.J. Cherryh
    12 Star Surgeon by James White
    13 The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
    14 Radix by A. A. Attanasio
    15 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (In addition: 2010 and 2061, the former being far superior to the latter.)
    16 Ringworld by Larry Niven
    17 A Case of Conscience by James Blish
    18 Last and First Man by Olaf Stapledon
    19 The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
    20 Way Station by Clifford D. Simak
    21 More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
    22 Gray Lensman by E.E. “Doc” Smith
    23 The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
    24 The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (I own a copy of Lathe of Heaven… somewhere. The Earthsea books left me cold, though. Maybe I’ll get around to this one some day.)
    25 Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock
    26 Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
    27 The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (Good old fashioned moralistic Sci-Fi, baby.)
    28 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
    29 Heritage of Hastur by Marion Zimmer Bradley
    30 The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
    31 The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
    32 Slan by A. E. Van Vogt
    33 Neuromancer by William Gibson (I’ve got this one on my “to read” shelf. Eventually…)
    34 Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (I haven’t read any of the follow-ups, though, because I really think the single tome is quite succinct and effective.)
    35 In Conquest Born by C. S. Friedman
    36 Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
    37 Eon by Greg Bear
    38 Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey (If they were smart they’d have marked this as “The Dragonriders of Pern”, since you can’t read ‘flight without also reading ‘quest and The White Dragon and… and… okay, I’m a big McCaffrey fan.)
    39 Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
    40 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
    41 Cosm by Gregory Benford
    42 The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A. E. Van Vogt
    43 Blood Music by Greg Bear
    44 Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
    45 Omnivore by Piers Anthony
    46 I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (I read Robots of Dawn first, oddly enough.)
    47 Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement
    48 To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer
    49 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
    50 The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
    51 1984 by George Orwell (I prefer Animal Farm. *shrug*)
    52 The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl And Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
    53 Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
    54 Flesh by Philip Jose Farmer
    55 Cities in Flight by James Blish
    56 Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
    57 Startide Rising by David Brin
    58 Triton by Samuel R. Delany
    59 Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
    60 A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
    61 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (Short and effective. Who knows, maybe it will make a fine movie.)
    62 A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
    63 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
    64 No Blade of Grass by John Christopher
    65 The Postman by David Brin (Who knows, maybe it will make a fine movie… *smirk*)
    66 Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
    67 Berserker by Fred Saberhagen (I went through a phase where I read every single piece of Berserker material I could find. Saberhagen’s far from a genius, but he can tell a fairly good story from time to time.)
    68 Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott
    69 Planiverse by A. K. Dewdney
    70 Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward
    71 Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh
    72 Dawn by Octavia E. Butler
    73 The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein
    74 The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
    75 Forever War by Joe Haldeman
    76 Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
    77 Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky
    78 The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
    79 The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (Weird, weird stuff.)
    80 Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
    81 Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
    82 Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
    83 Upanishads by Various
    84 Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (And this is SciFi how, exactly?)
    85 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (Brilliant. Absurd. Essential. As are its follow-ups.)
    86 The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin (I should really find this and re-read it. I think this book helped me refine my vision of the universe inside my head that I keep trying to write about.)
    87 The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
    88 Mutant by Henry Kuttner
    89 Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
    90 Ralph 124C41+ by Hugo Gernsback
    91 I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
    92 Timescape by Gregory Benford
    93 The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
    94 War with the Newts by Karel Capek (Not entirely unlike his play R.U.R. in theme, this is the best-known novel by my namesake. Note: I corrected his name from the original list. Those morons.)
    95 Mars by Ben Bova
    96 Brain Wave by Poul Anderson
    97 Hyperion by Dan Simmons
    98 The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (The only Crichton I’ve read is Sphere. Thanks, but no thanks.)
    99 Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch
    100 A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

    So I’m less than thorough on my “required SF reading.” I’m more of a Fantasy sort of guy, anyway… bring on that next Raymond E. Feist novel!

  • See a WHAT?

    I can’t think of anything clever to say about this, so let’s just roll with the picture, shall we?

    I assure you that this is not a hoax. There apparently is a building so named, in the Southeast Portland area, and someone went to the trouble of emblazoning said building name in big letters.

    Wow.

  • My new favorite snacky food

    Normally I’m not fond of the whole “Let’s mess with a good thing” mentality that prevades modern corporate culture. (C2? What in the name of New Coke is that?) And on the face of it, your average Ritz cracker doesn’t need much improving. The entire purpose of a Ritz is to be a small edible platter for some other snackfood.

    They’ve started making two additional flavors of Ritz cracker, now. One is a “wheat Ritz,” which is as unimpressive as it sounds. The other, though… well, I suppose my friend Geoffrey won’t ever know how yummy they are.

    Garlic-butter Ritz. They’re dee-lish, I tell you. It’s a little round treat that tastes just like a slice of garlic bread. And if you know me, you know how much I love garlic bread.

    Yum. If you like garlic bread, you owe it to yourself to at least give these new Ritz crackers a try.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to pop a breath mint…

  • Race for the MAX

    The helicopter on patrol above Waterfront Park on a cool, drab Sunday morning should have registered as a warning in my mind.

    I rolled out of bed to the alarm, actually grateful to be awake after a night full of bad dreams. After swinging by the store to pick up grub for my workday, I trekked over to the MAX station. I noted the heli’ but didn’t think much of it.

    Then I noticed the runners. Two of them were waiting near my usual leaning post. I’d been blessed with good timing, as the next train was down at the Lloyd Center stop as I arrived. When the train was about to pull up, one of the two ladies quipped, “Hopefully this time they’ll let us on.”

    Um. What?

    The MAX train, a double-car rig, was packed solid… with folks heading downtown to take part in the 2004 Race for the Cure.

    Just my luck. I actually manage to roll out of bed early enough on a Sunday to finish my chores with daylight left at the end of ‘em, and I pick the day when I have to pack in cheek-by-jowl with a trainload of joggers. Apparently the MAX was the transportation mode of choice for a sizeable percentage of Race participants this year. And since each train had to disgorge almost its entire ridership at one particular stop downtown, the entire MAX line was getting backed up quite a bit.

    So there I was, packed in with dozens of women, stuck in that part of a low-floor light-rail train between two of the center-section doors, with no handholds, on a vehicle prone to making sudden motions along both the X and Y axis. I somehow managed the entire ride without stumbling into somebody or making any inappropriate physical contact.

    No, I don’t know how I did it either. I do know that my calves were sore by the end of it. Maintaining balance on the MAX without handholds is hard, dammit.

    Oh yes, and lest you think I’d somehow died and gone to Heaven… er, no. The women were friendly and chatty, but also out of my age range by quite a bit, thanks. Women in their 40s and 50s, some with their teenaged daughters along. All in good shape, mind you, but still. Bzzzt, sorry, thanks for playing.

    Bonus points for classlessness go to the scuzzball who proclaimed loudly his relief that the “estrogen level” had gone way down once all the runners had left the train. Whatever, dude.

    All things being equal, I’m glad I gave myself plenty of extra time to arrive at work when I intended to… which I did. I’m also glad I chose not to have my Neuros on, as the light banter between passengers was a better antidote than the sweet isolation of music for the crowded conditions.

    Gotta love the public transit, baby!

  • Dear NCSoft…

    I’ve installed your fine, fine MMORPG called City of Heroes on my computer here at the office. (It’s a long, slow Sunday spent waiting for backups to run. What do you expect me to do for the next seven or eight hours?) Having double-checked the various agreements and your not-too-clunky Knowledgebase, I know that I can install the game on another computer besides my home gaming rig, as long as I only use the actual account from one location or the other at a given time. No worries. I have no intention of abusing terms-of-service or anything like that.

    Here at the office I use a handy dandy proxy server for all of my connection needs. This provides me with protection while also granting me much more freedom than the main corporate firewall (the one I can’t configure to my own requirements) provides.

    But for some reason, your game is the first piece of software I’ve seen that is apparently incapable of using said proxy server. So I look in the Readme, under “Configuring your Firewall.” I’m referred to the appropriate section of “Connectivity Devices and Issues,” which refers me to… “Configuring your Firewall.” That’s it.

    Er, what? Nice bit of work there, guys. Really nice. Time to shoot off an email via your regular support channels…

  • Oooo, shiny!

    Well, well. Take a look at what arrived from Right Stuf this morning:

    I know what I’m watching tonight…

Calendar

November 2025
S M T W T F S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30  

My Links