Saturday, February 11, 2006

Science Fiction I Can't Bring Myself to Read

Earlier this week, while engaged in some early morning dryer repair that eventually wasn't dryer repair on my part, but rather a bill for $180 that would have been a new used dryer in the summer when it wasn't so cold, I decided I was officially out of anything at home I wanted to read. This isn't actually the truth, there's plenty to read; there just wasn't a science fiction book at hand I wanted to read and I was really in the mood. So I started at the library, and not only could I not find something I wanted to read (I queued some things up, so there would be something to read later), but my search came to a definitive, defeatist end when I bumped into this book.

Science fiction based on the songs of Janis Ian. The very thought gives me waves of willies. I know it has 11 reviews averaging 5 stars, but those reviews all have to be by people my mother's age who forced their young sons to listen to Janis Ian when they were younger and then questioned their sexuality for listening to Janis Ian - a vicious full circle. And I can picture few things more terrifying than Orson Scott Card's literary riffing on "At Seventeen" or Tad Williams bringing his pen to bear on "Water Colors". I'm not even sure how you get those two authors involved in the same project - their writing seems to me to be that of two minds diametrically opposed to one another in real life other than an interest in science fiction, and even then Williams seems more the soft, fantasy sort of guy. But maybe the music of Janis Ian allows them to bridge their differences...

(As an addendum, I hit Barnes and Noble and grabbed the latest anthology of best scifi by David Hartwell just to cleanse the scifi anthology portion of my brain. It was kismet, because I also found "Dog Train" by Sandra Boyton for Eryn, something I'd been watching for since Christmas and which is usually sold out [it comes complete with the Kate Winslet/Weird Al Yankovic duet "I Need a Nap"]).

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