ver·sion con·trol noun COMPUTING the task of keeping a software system consisting of many versions and configurations well organized. – google When I’m feeling particularly sorry for myself over something, I like to think that in some other, parallel universe, I was in a similar situation, only things were worse. And now here I am, living in the version of my life that follows the lesser of two evils. How many versions of your life have you imagined? Is there any way to know that […]
Putting the science in science fiction
Holy mother moly I loved this book. Plot driven? Check. Genre fiction? Check. New worlds? Check (several checks). Dense complexity to the point of ridiculousness? ALL THE CHECKS. Rebecca is doing okay. She has a job and while she’s not crazy about it, hey, it’s a job. She’s (happily?) married though her husband works all hours and is utterly consumed by the “causality violation device” he’s working on – and don’t you dare call it a time machine. Lately, though, there’s something … off. She can’t […]
The Tempest meets Blade Runner and also not.
This is a novel fundamentally concerned with “total representation.” Representation is such a squelchy topic, especially in literature, because like everything else in art, life, physics, and pretty much everything else, there is a gap between reality and representation of reality. In this novel, which is a kind of futuristic steampunk, a sort of what if a steampunk past made it to the future. Also, it’s sort of like what if there’s a kind of lateral time-line. So think Oryx and Crake, but written by […]