Stuff I've read lately

"Finding Darwin's God" (Kenneth Miller) - Reviewed on my faith blog.

"The Last Centurion" (John Ringo) - Only Ringo could make a disaster which eliminates 50% of the world population funny. It's basically a fantasy scenario where liberal ideas and policies selectively kill themselves off, leaving conservatives to rule the world. I expected more action scenes. He probably needed to leave out one scenario and go into more detail in the remainder.

Stuff I've read lately

"The January Dancer" (Michael Flynn) - I am really enjoying Flynn. This story was really well done. In this universe, FTL is done via regions of space with higher local c (to enter the "Electric Avenue"). The main problem I saw is that Flynn required ships to approach local c to enter these regions. The ending was a little anticlimactic, but understandable for a short book (350 pages). I'm not going to encourage 800 page monstrosities.

Stuff I've read lately

"I is for Innocent" (Sue Grafton)(audio) - Grafton didn't have me fooled. Well, I was fooled for a little while. Going in, I knew the obviously guilty guy had to be guilty (despite the title). But, near the end, it looked like he really was innocent (the most suspicious guy haven't picked up some hapless mook for obvious en-murder-ation).

Of course, the obviously guilty guy really was guilty. The suspicious guy was just suspicious.

Body count: we had:

1. the original murderee
2. the detective who Kinsey replaces
3. hapless mook on the night of the main murder
4. main bad guy (courtesy Kinsey, of course)

Stuff I've read lately

"Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" (Seth Grahame Smith)(audio) - It's funny, the book is actually listed as "by Jane Austen and Seth Smith". It's really a good idea; take an old stuffy book and add in a bunch of scenes with zombies.

A similar book was Philip Jose Farmer's "The Other Log of Phileas Fogg" (based on "Around the World in 80 Days"). In that book, Farmer created a whole story in between the breaks in the original.

Here, Smith took the original text, then made slight changes. It actually had me going for a while. I considered going through the original to find the differences (did Wickham really get crippled?). Then I realized, wait "Pride and Prejudice" was one of the worst books I ever had to read! (The worst being "The Illustrated Man" and second worst being "Where the Red Fern Grows")

Sadly, the book did need more zombies. It is a hard trade off - keeping the original text, and adding enough zombies to make it interesting.

I almost want to grab the text for "Old Man and the Sea" and make "Old Man and the Sea and Zombies" (Zombie fish? Drowned?).

Software Updates

A NewStars update!

Surprise, surprise, the first executable didn't work (at all). The second executable mostly worked, the third executable should work (haven't heard any complaints!)

Each executable is about 3 MB, which takes several minutes to upload (no FIOS for me right now).

But, there is a way to update a Starkit piecemeal! Just make a list of files to check for updates, then foreach s in that list:

if {[file exists $s]} {
file rename -force $s [file join $starkit::topdir $s]
}

So, I can update one file and just drop it in the runtime directory, and it will slurp it into the archive.

Of course, Windows becomes extremely angry if you try and update an exe while it is running!

This is going to require me to drop from a Starpack back to a Starkit and ship Tclkit. I'll also need a batch file to couple everything together.

Irritating, but worth it to reduce update sizes.

Stuff I've read lately

"The Wreck of the River of Stars" (Michael Flynn) - The first book I read by Flynn ("Fallen Angels") left me full of meh.

It was a strange set of circumstances that led me back to Flynn.

Imonk had a post about aliens and Christianity (what with all the talk r.e. Gliese 581g). There, someone had a comment about dogheads, and linked to Flynn's blog. His blog interested me enough to try another of his books.

"Wreck" is a tragedy. It seems like a lot of current SF is depressing, Wreck still manages to be enjoyable.

The story entails the series of accidents which lead to the loss of the River of Stars (a hybrid magsail/fusion torch ship headed into Jupiter). It is very much like the old story of the man who sells his watch to buy a braid for his wife's hair - while the wife sells her hair to buy a new band for the watch.

Many people think SF is all about technology and science. Really, it is about people. The science and far future settings allow the author to strip away the conventions that the reader is accustomed to and reveal aspects of raw human nature.

Flynn excels at this. The wreck is due to the conflicts of human nature; the science behind the events are secondary. The ruined careers, the last chance for glory, the longing for the good old days, interpersonal squabbles, simple hatred and jealousy.

A sad story, but well done.

I particularly like Flynn's snarky comments:
Twenty-four DeCant (to the sail master): "Then, if you're staying... I'm staying."
Captain Gorgas: "We don't seem to have gotten this 'abandon ship' thing quite right."

Titanic

I have almost finished "The Wreck of the River of Stars". It got me thinking a lot about the Titanic (which I'm sure was the parallel the author had in mind).

As I remember it, there were a number of factors involved, any one of which might have reduced the magnitude of the disaster:

1. Ice cube tray effect - the bulkheads should have run higher, but were shortened for aesthetic effect
2. Running too fast (trying to break a speed record)
3. Reversing engines (their rudder design worked better in forward)
4. Poor utilization of lifeboats
5. Poor communication with other ships

Of course, Wikipedia is the wet blanket on many of these ideas:

1. "The height of the bulkhead deck above the water line in flooded condition was well above the requirements"
2. "Captain Smith to increase speed in order to make an early landfall... There is little evidence for this having happened"
3. "The Olympic using the same semi-oval shaped rudder as Titanic's was able to turn in a virtual moment's notice"
4. "The White Star Line actually exceeded the regulations by including four more collapsible lifeboats" (although regulations were out of date). Lifeboats were not intended for carrying everyone at once, but for ferrying to a rescue ship (so 1/3 capacity means three round trips).
   
5. "The closest ship to respond was Cunard Line's Carpathia 58 miles (93 km) away, which could arrive in an estimated four hours—too late to rescue all of Titanic's passengers"

Ahh, well.