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The Wind Is Blue
Jan. 31st, 2007 10:15 pmI haven't been keeping you up to date on my reading, and that's just a shame.
Odd Thomas is a bittersweet sort of book. It's got more than its share of laugh-out-loud turns of phrase, and a winning first-person narrator, but it's just as dark as your average Koontz book, if not more. It's not what you'd call lighthearted at all.
After that I was still feeling indulgent, and so I treated myself to rereading The Gap Into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die, the last book in Stephen R. Donaldson's Gap series. Good stuff. I wish Donaldson wrote more space opera. One of these days I suppose I should check out the new Thomas Covenant book, to see if it's any good. Frankly the Covenant books are my least favourite of Donaldson's works, but it might have picked up a little.
Now I'm being a little more dutiful, reading an anthology called Science Fiction of The 40s, edited by Frederik Pohl. (Martin H. Greenberg coedits, but then it's hard to do an SF anthology without him, and Joseph Olander too.) Pohl is ideally suited to the job, since he claims to have read every SF story published in the 40s. Now think about that for a moment. Is there anybody who can claim to have read all the SF published in the 1990s? In the last year? I mean, let's be fair and count Star Wars tie-ins here. Anyway.
So far it's pretty good. It's actually amazing how well some of these stories have aged, though perhaps that's what Pohl was picking them for. Most of them aren't especially prescient, though I was impressed at an offhand reference in Clifford Simak's "City" to a teenager listening to loud music on the radio. This story was published in 1944, when there probably was no such thing as loud music on the radio, so I think that's pretty shrewd.
Lester Del Rey's "My Name Is Legion" was quite interesting. Written before the end of WWII, the story posits that Hitler escaped to Switzerland at the end of the war, but tried to return to power. He was "aided" by a man with an unusual time machine, which could summon future copies of an object to the present. Hitler, who doesn't see the implications of this, agrees to let himself be "duplicated" this way and thus form an army...not realizing that he is now dooming all of his future timeline to loop over and over in this same day until he dies. (Conversation of energy, schmonservation of schmenergy.)
The Sims is still occupying most of my mind, buzzing in the back of my brain when I'm not actually playing it. So I feel I must give you an update on that as well.
I've started the second generation in my Legacy Challenge neighbourhood. Elstree Azpiazu managed to lure Pedro Fernandez (I renamed all the NPC sims, and I forget who he is in the default neighbourhood) into her lair, and after a couple of false starts managed to marry him. I still have some trouble keeping my parties from ending up as Disasters, but I'm learning. They were a little strapped for cash, but the hot tub bought with Aspiration Points helped a lot.
Then they Tried For Baby a couple of times, and ended up with...twin girls! That'll give the family a bit of a start. I'm not sure how many people I'm going to keep in the house at a time, though; I gather that you can move people out, but once you do they don't count for the challenge anymore, and you can't move them back in. Anyway, it's a major handful keeping up with the twins, and still try to get the parents to a)work and/or b)sleep. Luckily Elstree had a lot of paid vacation time. Pedro's in the Culinary career track, and a bit of a klutz, having gotten demoted to Drive-Through Clerk at least twice through those evil Career Chance Cards. (When will I learn to just click "Ignore"?) The twins, Niamh and Bronwen, are finally almost into childhood, which means another birthday party... I learned a lot about toddlerhood this time, including the proper use of the high chair, and the education toys (both girls now have Charisma and Creativity of 3-5...).
In Pleasantville, Romilda and Don Lothario still aren't married; I'm waiting to see if Romilda's fear of commitment will fade a little bit. Plus she apparently caught a cold at work, so she'll actually be able to legitimately Phone In Sick. I hadn't spent too much time with David Harp and the Brokes since they moved in and baby Roy was born; Brandi Broke wants 10 kids, apparently. Well, we'll see about that.
I need to come up with matches for all of the Pleasantvillers. Dustin Broke and Angela Pleasant are one couple, and Lilith Pleasant and Dirk Dreamer are another, though I gather that teen love affairs fade a little once you reach adulthood. Then there's Lucy Burb and Alexander Goth, who haven't quite reached teen-age yet, and the other two Broke boys who are even younger. I can keep the Caliente sisters in cold storage for them, I guess. There's NPCs too, of course, but I'd like to avoid those if I can, in this neighbourhood, at least. I'm more interested in weaving together the families as much as I can. And I'll try to preserve at least one of each surname. Oh, I suppose Cassandra & Darren goth should have some kids, too. When I have time. Raising kids is hard work, both in the Sims and outside of it.
I still haven't managed to figure out how to age NPC children and teens, even with the Mirror of Mind Control. I gather there's some cheat code that comes with the University expansion pack that might do it, but I'd rather stick with the baseline pack for now, because I don't feel like I've begun to exhaust its possibilities yet. We'll see how long that lasts.
Simon and Luke have tired of it a little bit. Simon has gotten back into Space Empires III, which Luke still finds dull, and Luke has been asking for more Neopets games, which is mostly okay. As long as he doesn't get back into the Atari games.
Odd Thomas is a bittersweet sort of book. It's got more than its share of laugh-out-loud turns of phrase, and a winning first-person narrator, but it's just as dark as your average Koontz book, if not more. It's not what you'd call lighthearted at all.
After that I was still feeling indulgent, and so I treated myself to rereading The Gap Into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die, the last book in Stephen R. Donaldson's Gap series. Good stuff. I wish Donaldson wrote more space opera. One of these days I suppose I should check out the new Thomas Covenant book, to see if it's any good. Frankly the Covenant books are my least favourite of Donaldson's works, but it might have picked up a little.
Now I'm being a little more dutiful, reading an anthology called Science Fiction of The 40s, edited by Frederik Pohl. (Martin H. Greenberg coedits, but then it's hard to do an SF anthology without him, and Joseph Olander too.) Pohl is ideally suited to the job, since he claims to have read every SF story published in the 40s. Now think about that for a moment. Is there anybody who can claim to have read all the SF published in the 1990s? In the last year? I mean, let's be fair and count Star Wars tie-ins here. Anyway.
So far it's pretty good. It's actually amazing how well some of these stories have aged, though perhaps that's what Pohl was picking them for. Most of them aren't especially prescient, though I was impressed at an offhand reference in Clifford Simak's "City" to a teenager listening to loud music on the radio. This story was published in 1944, when there probably was no such thing as loud music on the radio, so I think that's pretty shrewd.
Lester Del Rey's "My Name Is Legion" was quite interesting. Written before the end of WWII, the story posits that Hitler escaped to Switzerland at the end of the war, but tried to return to power. He was "aided" by a man with an unusual time machine, which could summon future copies of an object to the present. Hitler, who doesn't see the implications of this, agrees to let himself be "duplicated" this way and thus form an army...not realizing that he is now dooming all of his future timeline to loop over and over in this same day until he dies. (Conversation of energy, schmonservation of schmenergy.)
The Sims is still occupying most of my mind, buzzing in the back of my brain when I'm not actually playing it. So I feel I must give you an update on that as well.
I've started the second generation in my Legacy Challenge neighbourhood. Elstree Azpiazu managed to lure Pedro Fernandez (I renamed all the NPC sims, and I forget who he is in the default neighbourhood) into her lair, and after a couple of false starts managed to marry him. I still have some trouble keeping my parties from ending up as Disasters, but I'm learning. They were a little strapped for cash, but the hot tub bought with Aspiration Points helped a lot.
Then they Tried For Baby a couple of times, and ended up with...twin girls! That'll give the family a bit of a start. I'm not sure how many people I'm going to keep in the house at a time, though; I gather that you can move people out, but once you do they don't count for the challenge anymore, and you can't move them back in. Anyway, it's a major handful keeping up with the twins, and still try to get the parents to a)work and/or b)sleep. Luckily Elstree had a lot of paid vacation time. Pedro's in the Culinary career track, and a bit of a klutz, having gotten demoted to Drive-Through Clerk at least twice through those evil Career Chance Cards. (When will I learn to just click "Ignore"?) The twins, Niamh and Bronwen, are finally almost into childhood, which means another birthday party... I learned a lot about toddlerhood this time, including the proper use of the high chair, and the education toys (both girls now have Charisma and Creativity of 3-5...).
In Pleasantville, Romilda and Don Lothario still aren't married; I'm waiting to see if Romilda's fear of commitment will fade a little bit. Plus she apparently caught a cold at work, so she'll actually be able to legitimately Phone In Sick. I hadn't spent too much time with David Harp and the Brokes since they moved in and baby Roy was born; Brandi Broke wants 10 kids, apparently. Well, we'll see about that.
I need to come up with matches for all of the Pleasantvillers. Dustin Broke and Angela Pleasant are one couple, and Lilith Pleasant and Dirk Dreamer are another, though I gather that teen love affairs fade a little once you reach adulthood. Then there's Lucy Burb and Alexander Goth, who haven't quite reached teen-age yet, and the other two Broke boys who are even younger. I can keep the Caliente sisters in cold storage for them, I guess. There's NPCs too, of course, but I'd like to avoid those if I can, in this neighbourhood, at least. I'm more interested in weaving together the families as much as I can. And I'll try to preserve at least one of each surname. Oh, I suppose Cassandra & Darren goth should have some kids, too. When I have time. Raising kids is hard work, both in the Sims and outside of it.
I still haven't managed to figure out how to age NPC children and teens, even with the Mirror of Mind Control. I gather there's some cheat code that comes with the University expansion pack that might do it, but I'd rather stick with the baseline pack for now, because I don't feel like I've begun to exhaust its possibilities yet. We'll see how long that lasts.
Simon and Luke have tired of it a little bit. Simon has gotten back into Space Empires III, which Luke still finds dull, and Luke has been asking for more Neopets games, which is mostly okay. As long as he doesn't get back into the Atari games.
