Interworld

Clearly I was on some sort of Neil Gaiman kick during June, because in addition to re-reading some of the stories from M is for Magic, I also read Interworld, by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves. It was one of the best of the YA titles we took with us on our trip to France. The idea was that we could read them and then trade them around, getting more (literal) mileage out of each book because as fellow travelers know, books get heavy fast when you try to pack them.

The one we all liked least was Margaret Peterson Haddix's Found. We weren't expecting to like it as much as her stellar Just Ella, but we did expect to like it as much as Running Out of Time, (which we read before the Shyamalan movie The Village came out) or Leaving Fishers. We thought it would be something like her Shadow Children series, which we all enjoyed. One of the main differences between the Shadow Children series and this new "The Missing" series, of which Found is the first one, is that Found is longer than Among the Hidden or any of its sequels. I think it's possible that Found would be better if it were more severely edited. But maybe it's partly that we're all older than Haddix's targeted sixth-grade audience.

The one we liked slightly better, mostly for the sake of its bad jokes, is Dale E. Basye's Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go. From the moment that "goodbye puppy" merchandise is mentioned, I was willing to give this book a chance. The jokes come at a good pace, accompanied by allusions like
"Where are we going?" Milton said with a motivating clap of his hands.
"The Surface!" Marlo and Virgil replied in unison.
"When are we getting there?"
"Real soon!"
For you non-Buckaroo Banzai fans, that's an allusion to some memorable dialogue and implicitly compares the "heroes" of the book to a bunch of really stupid aliens. But, in the end, we weren't pleased to find that this book is little more than an elaborate prologue to a second one, and our enjoyment of bad jokes goes only so far.

So when I got to Interworld, I was pleased that it had a plot and a main character I could sympathize with, even if the science is brought down to the young adult level by explanations like
"the thing to remember is that certain decisions--important ones, those that can create major ripples in the time stream--can cause alternate worlds to splinter off into divergent space-time continua. Remember this, or you'll wind up paralyzed every time you have to make a choice: The Altiverse is not going to create a brave new world based on your decision to wear green socks today instead of red ones. Or if it does, that world will only last a few femtoseconds before being recycled into the reality it split off from."
The plot is based on the idea that there is a power struggle between worlds where magic works and worlds where science works, and the hero has been recruited into an organization that attempts to keep a balance between the power of science and the power of magic:
"We of InterWorld have no problem with either ideology. Our problem is with HEX and with the Binary, who both seek to impose their belief systems and method of reality on other worlds--sometimes through war, sometimes more subtly."

Interworld has jokes; we all reacted to this one:
...I...looked at Jo, particularly at the two things that made her so different from me.
"Stop staring."
"I'm sorry," I said. "It's just, where I come from, nobody has wings."

And, finally Interworld has a satisfying hero-saves-the-universe ending, complete with a big explosion:
"And then she blew, and it was wonderful. It was like a light show and a fireworks show and the destruction of Sauron's tower...everything you could imagine it could be."

And now, it's about time for fireworks shows all across the U.S. You could do worse than take a couple of hours to read Interworld before (or after) your local fireworks display.

Sunbird from M is for Magic

I come from a family of people who like to eat, and who remember vacations by what we had to eat when we were there. The smell of fresh pineapple and Coca-cola brings memories of our last trip to Hawaii, and one of the things we remember about going to England was the completely fried breakfast we were served at a B&B in the Cotswolds--fried egg, fried bacon, fried tomato and...fried toast. Our most memorable meal in France was in the shadow of Chartres, at a sidewalk cafe where we ordered meals in French and so weren't sure what we were actually asking for (I got four tiny little birds, which were delicious).

So the story about The Sunbird is one I was primed to like as we return from our summer vacation. It's about an Epicurean Club whose members were always looking for something new to eat. At the outset, they think they "have eaten everything that can be eaten," including "several long-extinct species." So one of them says "I fear we must hang it up for there is nothing left that we, or our predecessors in the club, have not eaten." Then one of them suggests the "Sunbird."

The reaction to his suggestion is that he's making it up. One member says it's imaginary, but another responds that "unicorns are imaginary...but gosh, that unicorn flank tartare was tasty." So they decide to travel to Egypt to capture and cook a Sunbird. They find one, admire it, bow to it before it dies, and then they cook it. "It tastes like heaven," one of them says. Another says "It tastes like love and fine music. It tastes like truth." As they continue eating they say "It tastes like my youth. It tastes like forever." And then they all burst into flames. They have achieved their end.

It's a small idea for a story, but the idea stays with me. You go on a quest for your heart's desire, and then what you do when you find it--you eat it! I guess that's why we sometimes stand in front of the refrigerator when we don't know what we really want. As Stephen Dobyns says in "How to Like It," we stand there looking "as if into the place where the answers are kept." Do you ever find your heart's desire when you look in the refrigerator?

Chivalry from M is for Magic

This story is one of my favorites from Neil Gaiman's M is for Magic, mostly because of its elaborately mundane tone. From the very first line--"Mrs. Whitaker found the Holy Grail; it was under a fur coat"--everything that happens seems entirely plausible. The fur coat is in an Oxfam shop, the British version of Goodwill, and an old lady buys it: "Mrs. Whitaker gave fifty pence to Marie, who gave her ten pence change and a brown paper bag to put the books and the Holy Grail in. Then she went next door to the butcher's and bought herself a nice piece of liver. Then she went home." She polishes the Grail and puts it on her mantel.

When one of her friends comes over and asks what it is, Mrs. Whitaker explains "It's the Holy Grail....It's the cup that Jesus drank out of at the Last Supper. Later, at the Crucifixion, it caught His precious blood when the centurion's spear pierced His side" and her friend, who "didn't hold with unsanitary things" says it's nice.

After the friend has gone home and Mrs. Whitaker has had her lunch and her pills, the doorbell rings, and it's a knight on a quest. He identifies himself by handing her a scroll which says he is "Galaad, Knight of the Table Round" before she'll let him in. Once he sees the Grail on her mantle, he drops to one knee and lowers "his head as if in silent prayer." He offers her gold for the grail, but she refuses, saying she likes it on her mantel, as "it's just right, between the dog and the photograph of my Henry."

Undiscouraged, Galaad returns a few days later and offers her a sword that will make the wearer "unconquerable in war, and invincible in battle." Mrs. Whitaker doesn't want it, of course, but she "made him some cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches for the journey back and wrapped them in greaseproof paper."

The next time Galaad shows up, Mrs. Whitaker makes him move things around in her attic while she cleans and tells him about her family and how she met her husband. In return, Galaad tells her about "his mother, Elaine, who was flighty and no better than she should have been and something of a witch to boot" and the rest of his family. They have tea, and then Galaad produces the Philosopher's Stone, the Egg of the Phoenix, and the Apple of Life and offers them in exchange for the grail. Mrs. Whitaker is tempted by the apple, which Galaad tells her "is one of the apples of the Hesperides....One bite from it will heal any illness or wound, no matter how deep; a second bite restores youth and beauty; and a third bite is said to grant eternal life." Although Mrs. Whitaker thinks about "how it was to be young: to have a firm, slim body that would do whatever she wanted it to do," she is no fool. She knows that necromancy never pays.

So at length Mrs. Whitaker tells Galaad to "put that apple away....You shouldn't offer things like that to old ladies. It isn't proper....But I'll take the other two....They'll look nice on the mantelpiece. And two for one's fair, or I don't know what is." Galaad goes down on his knee and kisses her hand. Then they finish their tea and Mrs. Whitaker wraps up "a large slice of fruitcake" for him, "along with a banana and a slice of processed cheese in silver foil" and tells him to use the toilet before he goes.

It's a charming story. Mrs. Whitaker is the exact opposite of a character like Blanche Dubois. Blanche desperately wants magic in her life, but Mrs. Whitaker reacts to magic in the same no-nonsense way she responds to slugs in her garden or her guitar-playing vicar. (Do you know a guitar-playing clergyman?)

How to Talk to Girls at Parties from M is for Magic

I've mentioned this collection of short stories by Neil Gaiman before, when reviewing The Graveyard Book, because the story that book grew from is included in this collection. It's a favorite collection for my daughter and me, so I'm going to tell you about some of the best stories from it individually. Our very favorite story is entitled "How to Talk to Girls at Parties."

The narrator of this story is a teenage boy, the kind who, when he goes to parties, usually ends up "in the kitchen listening to somebody's mum going on about politics." His friend is the kind of boy who ends up "snogging the prettiest girl at the party." So while the friend, Vic, is taking the narrator, Enn, to a party a friend has told him about, he's giving Enn advice on how to talk to the girls he'll meet there: "They're just girls," said Vic. "They don't come from another planet."

So when they get to the party, Vic goes off with the prettiest girl, and Enn tries to talk to a girl he meets, asking "are you from around here?" When she shakes her head no, he asks her name and she says "'Wain's Wain'...or something that sounded like it. 'I'm a second.'" Attempting to keep the conversation going, Enn says "That's, uh. That's a different name." She tells him "it indicates that my progenitor was also Wain, and that I am obliged to report back to her. I may not breed." Enn, in an unexpected burst of suavity, says "Ah. Well. Bit early for that anyway, isn't it?"

When a girl tells Enn that she must report on her impressions of "this place of yours," he thinks she means the section of London they're in and then "wondered if she was American." Things keep getting weirder, but Enn reacts as if it's merely getting later at night and the party guests are getting drunk. A girl whose name is "Triolet" makes Enn think "my generation had not been given hippie names," and when she says she is "a poem, or I am a pattern, or a race of people whose world was swallowed by the sea," his response is merely "isn't it hard to be three things at the same time?" To this she points out that "you are Enn...and you are a male. And you are a biped."

Just as Enn is at the point of kissing Triolet, Vic grabs him and runs out of the party. Vic is terrified and crying, but Enn continues to think about the poem and reveals that "this all happened thirty years ago."

The fun of the story is the detail in which Enn remembers the events of the night, and the way conversations and observations come together to show clearly that these girls really are from another planet. Just as teenage boys always suspected. Didn't you?

Jubilate Agno

This morning I was led a merry chase through the house, upstairs and down, peering under beds and strewing storage containers everywhere, until at last I cornered our black cat, Chester, under the stairs. I made the mistake of putting our orange cat, Samson, into his carrier first, and Chester got wind of what was happening. It was time for their annual trip to the vet for checkup and vaccinations. They only got one shot this morning, but they howled and drooled and generally expressed their displeasure at being handled.

Now they are both back safe in their own house, washing and looking at me reproachfully. I am covered in cat hair and saliva and worn out from my morning's exertions. The extended washing sessions are making me think of Christopher Smart's poem about his cat, Jubilate Agno:

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbor.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him, and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel
from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defense is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord's poor, and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually--Poor Jeoffry!
poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can sit up with gravity, which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick, which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Icneumon rat, very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the electrical fire is the spiritual substance which God sends from heaven to sustain the
bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

I've always loved the line about counteracting the powers of darkness. Neil Gaiman made that line literal in his story, included in M is for Magic, entitled "The Price." In it, a brave black cat protects his house and family from Satan every night while the family sleeps. The narrator, head of the family, says "We wondered who he was fighting. Snowflake, our beautiful white near-feral queen? Raccoons? A rat-tailed, fanged possum?" At one point he gets so beat up that the head of the family takes him down to the basement to rest, take antibiotic, and recover. And
"the four days that the Black Cat lived in the basement were a bad four days in my house: the baby slipped in the bath and banged her head and might have drowned; I learned that a project I had set my heart on...was no longer going to happen...my daughter left for summer camp and immediately began to send hom a plethora of hear-tearing letters and cards...imploring us to bring her home; my son had some kind of fight with his best friend, to the point that they were no longer on speaking terms; and, returning home one night, my wife hit a deer."

When he puts the cat back outside, bad things stop happening and the cat gets all beat up again. The narrator decides to try and see what kind of animal is coming to the house each night and beating up the cat. He hides and finally sees
"It was the Devil....one moment it was dark, bull-like, Minotaurish, the next it was slim and female, and the next it was a cat itself, a scarred, huge gray-green wildcat, its face contorted with hate."
The black cat fights him off, and the story ends with the narrator saying
"the thing that comes to my house does not come every night. But it comes most nights: we know it by the wounds on the cat....he has lost the use of his front left paw, and his right eye has closed for good."

My cats like to pose heroically, especially if they've just brought a nearly-dead mouse or shrew into the kitchen through the cat door. The two that went to the vet this morning are now on quest for food. It will take them another hour or so to stop creeping around the corners, afraid of attracting my notice again.

My vet wants me to bring in the older cats every six months, now that they're "senior" cats. I am reluctant to subject all of us to that stress again before another year is up. Perhaps I'm too laid-back about cat ownership. Do you ever have the sense that you're too relaxed about something, and maybe you should be paying closer attention?

The Graveyard Book

I was sick on Mother's Day. I mean waking-up-at-midnight-not-able-to-breathe sick, lying-in-bed-with-a-fever sick, and not-even-wanting-anyone-to-bring-me-anything-to-drink sick. And while I was lying there, becatted and with the life of the household going on around me, I read The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Because it seemed appropriate when I felt like death.

I'd already read the short story "The Witch's Headstone," in Gaiman's short story collection entitled M is for Magic. That story comprises one of the chapters of The Graveyard Book, which tells most of the story of Bod's childhood, including how and why he got his unusual name ("Bod" is short for "Nobody"). I usually love reading full-length stories that were originally based on short stories (Orson Scott Card's The Lost Boys was one of the first of that kind that I knew about and loved), and this book is no exception.

Although I was absolutely thrilled with the illustration on the first page-- "There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife" and you SEE the hand with the knife--I didn't care of the rest of the illustrations. If anything, I found them distracting. When I'm reading, I form pictures in my mind, and they were nothing like the illustrations, which consequently struck me as cheesy and wrong. But as my regular readers can tell, I'm not a big fan of the visual. I think text speaks for itself. Give me the thousand words over the one picture any day. So even though I loved reading illustrated stories to my children when they were young (especially Dr. Seuss and William Joyce), I'm not a fan of illustrations in general. I have never cared for comic books or animated movies. Take my criticism of the illustrations, therefore, with those big grains of salt.

From the moment that the ghostly Mrs. Owens refuses to give up the living baby that has come into the graveyard, I was completely hooked by this improbable story. Instead of "it takes a village," in this story "it takes a graveyard" to raise a child, and his adventures and what he learns from the dead folks makes for an oddly old-fashioned style of story-telling.

Not all of the story is aimed simply at younger readers. One of my favorite parts is when young Bod comes to a dead poet, Nehemiah Trot, for advice, thinking "really...if you couldn't trust a poet to offer sensible advice, who could you trust?" He asks Nehemiah to tell him about revenge:

"'Dish best served cold,' said Nehemiah Trot. 'Do not take revenge in the heat of the moment. Instead, wait until the hour is propitious. There was a Grub Street hack named O'Leary--and Irishman, I should add--who had the nerve, the confounded cheek to write of my first slim volume of poems, A Nosegay of Beauty Assembled for Gentlemen of Quality, that if was inferior doggerel of no worth whatsoever, and that the paper it was written on would have been better used as--no, I cannot say. Let us simply agree that it was a most vulgar statement.'
'But you got your revenge on him?' asked Bod, curious.
'On him and on his entire pestilent breed! Oh, I had my revenge, Master Owens, and it was a terrible one. I wrote, and had published, a letter, which I nailed to the doors of the public houses in London where such low scribbling folk were wont to frequent. And I explained that, given the fragility of the genius poetical, I would henceforth write not for them, but only for myself and posterity, and that I should, as long as I lived, publish no more poems--for them! Thus I left instructions that upon my death my poems were to be bburied with me, unpublished, and that only when posterity realized my genius, realized that hundreds of my verses had been lost--lost!--only then was my coffin to be disinterred, only then could my poems be removed from my cold dead hand, to finally be published to the approbation and delight of all. It is a terrible thing to be ahead of your time.'
'And after you died, they dug you up, and they printed the poems?'
'Not yet, no. But there is still plenty of time. Posterity is vast.'
'So...that was your revenge?'
'Indeed. And a mightily powerful and cunning one at that!'
'Ye-es,' said Bod, unconvinced.

Even with such help, Bod manages to learn right from wrong, and wisdom from foolishness. At the end of the story he's about fifteen years old, and one of the dead folks that's helped raise him, "Mother Slaughter," (whose headstone is so old that some of the letters no longer show up and has puzzled visitors for years as to why it says "laughter") says to him:
"I still feels like I done when I was a tiny slip of a thing, making daisy chains in the old pasture. You're always you, and that don't change, and you're always changing, and there's nothing you can do about it."
Maybe I liked that passage merely because my father once said something similar to me, about looking in the mirror and wondering who that old man was, when he still felt like he did when he was younger. But there are other passages like it, and they raise the story above the level of a simple children's tale.

It might even be fun to read when you're not sick. Is there a certain kind of book you tend to read when you're sick? I usually tend more towards the slow literary kind of book when I'm not feeling well, but this time I just picked up what was beside my bed.

American Gods

We're here in the hurricane aftermath...how did a hurricane (Ike) make it all the way to central Ohio on Sept. 14? We still have no power and American Electric Power is still telling us that it could take until Sept. 21 or even longer. Most of the trees have been cleared off the roads, and we've been hopelessly searching for ice and D batteries since Monday. There's a bad smell coming from the refrigerator, so it's too late for ice. (Yes, we have considered just replacing the refrigerator without opening it, like Dirk Gently in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.)

I'd never been in a hurricane before, and it was really impressive, as is all the damage. The radio kept saying "straight line winds" but there are some big trees that were obviously stirred around in a corkscrew and torn apart three or four different directions at once. Yesterday the road crews got most of the trees off of the major roads. We have four small trees (redbuds and ornamental pear) lying in our front and back yard, one with the cable line wrapped around it where Ron pulled the line off the street. There are a number of big trees down up in our woods. In the next yard the enormous tree trunk that fell on the power line is still lying on the line.

On Sunday it was kind of an adventure. We played cards by candlelight. On Monday it was less of an adventure. Even businesses were closed. McDonald's was closed, which gave Eleanor the unpleasant sensation that we were in one of the post-apocalyptic novels she'd just read. There was no school and the local colleges had to cancel classes.

Today most businesses and schools have power, but many of the residential areas, like mine, are dark and quiet. The motels and restaurants are full. The libraries are full. Most of the schools are open. I'm at the college library, because the public library is so full that it's hard to find a free outlet. And when I find a good book (I found two yesterday), it's hard to find any time to read, because most of my reading time comes in the evening, and I find it hard to concentrate when my book light keeps dimming.

I did finish a book right before the hurricane hit. It was American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. I picked it up because we'd listened to the audiobook of Anansi Boys this summer and found it compelling enough to keep us going through miles and miles of the midwest. American Gods was written before Anansi Boys, though, and I found it more loosely plotted. One character is martyred and then resurrected by a god named "Easter," and another comes back to life by means of unintential necromancy by leprechaun gold. It turns out that (naturally) necromancy doesn't pay:

"'Did you ever figure out how to bring me back from the dead?" she asked.
"I guess," he said. "I know one way, anyway."
"That's good," she said. She squeezed his hand with her cold hand. And then she said, "And the opposite? What about that?"
"The opposite?"
"Yes," she whispered. "I think I must have earned it."
"I don't want to do that."
She said nothing. She simply waited.
Shadow said, "Okay." Then he took his hand from hers and put it to her neck....
He closed his hand around the golden coin that hung around her neck. He tugged, hard, at the chain, which snapped easily. Then he took the gold coin between his finger and thumb, and blew on it, and opened his hand wide.
The coin was gone.
Her eyes were still open, but they did not move."

There are some good parts, but I'm thinking that Gaiman is a writer who got better as he went along. If you're a fan, you'll probably like this book. If you're not, don't start with this one. Start with Anansi Boys, and then read Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul before you read American Gods.

Old Man's War

I'm late to the Scalzi party--it's a good one, and I've been missing it! My friend who reads more SF than I do had what I consider a minor quibble about John Scalzi's wonderful first book, Old Man's War, and so didn't recommend it to me. He has a weird philosophy about not wanting to read books other people recommend anyway, so I guess that's why he didn't bring me the book, press it into my hands, and demand that I start reading it right then. This is what I would do to all of you if I could. I press the book virtually into your hands right now.

What did I like most about Old Man's War? Well, it has stuff. You know, science fiction stuff that's described in just enough detail to make it interesting, like the "beanstalk" elevator that gets the main character, John Perry, to outer space. It also has aliens. And it doesn't just have one or two, and it doesn't just describe them physically. They have mysterious motivations and philosophies, and there's an entire universe of them! Most of all, it has this great idea that old people would make good soldiers, if they only had physical prowess to match their decades of experience.

I found the description of Perry's transformation into a physical being capable of soldiering to be accurate, if a bit speedy. The process has just taken place (note that I'm carefully not telling you exactly what the process is; it would be rude to steal the author's thunder in that way), and the old man steps out:

"I placed my right foot forward and staggered a little bit. Dr. Russell came up beside me and steadied me. 'Careful,' he said. 'You've been an older man for a while. It's going to take you a little bit of time to remember how to be in a young body.'
'What do you mean?' I said.
'Well,' he said. 'For one thing, you can straighten up.'
He was right. I was stooped slightly (kids, drink your milk). I straightened up, and took another step forward. And another. Good news, I remembered how to walk. I cracked a grin like a schoolboy as I paced in the room.

What took me about a month to learn--how to walk again after walking like an old person for some years--takes Perry about a minute, but hey, this is fiction. It's good enough fiction that it brought me back to the coaching I got on how to hit with the heel first and then roll the foot and bend the knee at the end, and the days when I had to think about stepping like that in order to be able to do it.

The stuff in this book includes Scalzi's version of the feed. He calls it a BrainPal. When Perry gets his, he names it Asshole:

Apparently, there was very little Asshole couldn't do. He could send messages to other recruits. He could download reports. He could play music or video. He could play games. He could call up any document on a system. He could store incredible amounts of data. He could perform complex calculations. He could diagnose physical ailments and provide suggestions for cures. He could create a local network among a chosen group of other BrainPal users. He could provide instantaneous translations of hundreds of human and alien languages. He could even provide field of vision information on any other BrainPal user.

The uses of the BrainPal get even more interesting in the sequel to Old Man's War, entitled The Ghost Brigades (I'm halfway through it). The kinds of philosophical questions raised by human use of technology get more interesting, too--and they start out pretty interesting in Old Man's War:

The next step of evolution is already happening. Just like the Earth, most of the colonies are isolated from each other. Nearly all people born on a colony stay there their entire lives. Humans also adapt to their new homes; it's already beginning culturally. Some of the oldest of the colony planets are beginning to show linguistic and cultural drift from their cultures and languages back on Earth....you've lived long enough to know that there's more to life than your own life. Most of you have raised families and have children and grandchildren and understand the value of doing something beyond your own selfish goals. Even if you never become colonists yourselves, you still recognize that human colonies are good for the human race, and worth fighting for. It's hard to drill that concept into the brain of a nineteen-year-old. But you know from experience. In this universe, experience counts.

When I finish The Ghost Brigades, I'm going on to read The Last Colony and then all the other Scalzi books I can find, probably starting with the one about Jane Sagan, even if it is only available in hardback, and the one about Jane and Perry's daughter Zoe, which is coming out this August. Not only that, but I'm joining the considerable party of readers who follow Scalzi's blog Whatever. It's like what Holden Caulfield imagined all those years ago--you finish a book, and you can virtually call up the author and talk to him about it. Everyone's invited, but you'll have more fun if you've read his books, and maybe the books of his friends... For mother's day, I got a trip to the bookstore to find some of the books on the list I keep. We have a credit card that gives us a book dollar for every thousand dollars we spend, or something like that, so I got a bunch of books I've been wanting to read, including The Ghost Brigades and Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. It's a great week to be underemployed.

By the way, at the bookstore I went to, Borders, I found The Ghost Brigades in SF, Little Brother in YA, and Neil Gaiman's M is for Magic in the children's section.

Good Book with a Bad Title

Part of not judging a book by its cover, for me, is not judging it by its title, either. If I did that, I never would have read Neil Gaiman's new short story collection M Is For Magic. Maybe the title is supposed to attract the young adult audience. At any rate, I checked it out of the library and my daughter and I read it, and we liked three of the stories so much that we kept talking about them and got it back out of the library before deciding we need to buy the book. It's not the kind of book I feel the need to own in hardback (unlike the new Penderwick), so it will languish in my Amazon shopping cart for a while.

The story we talked about the most is "How to Talk to Girls at Parties." In it, a guy who doesn't feel very comfortable talking to girls goes to a party he hasn't been invited to and meets all kinds of girls who have conversations with him like this one:

"I said, 'What's your name? I'm Enn.'
'Wain's Wain,' she said, or something that sounded like it. 'I'm a second.'
'That's uh, That's a different name.'
She fixed me with huge, liquid eyes. 'It indicates that my progenitor was also Wain, and that I am obliged to report back to her. I may not breed.'
'Ah. Well. Bit early for that anyway, isn't it?'"

You've got to suspect that this story might have arisen out of Gaiman's inability to resist the temptation to tell a story just to disprove the conventional wisdom that the friend spouts early on: "They're just girls," said Vic. "They don't come from another planet."

Our other favorites from this collection are "Chivalry" and "The Price." The Price is the story of a brave black cat, and I can't tell you any more about it without spoiling the story for you, so go read it. Chivalry is the story of Mrs. Whitaker, who found the Holy Grail under a fur coat at the Oxfam Shop, and what she does with it.

We also like the story Sunbird, but mostly as a curiosity. It is three kinds of strange, and it reminds me of Steve Martin's story (in Cruel Shoes) about how wonderful it is to see the cathedral at Chartres before it's knocked down by a wrecking ball--operated by the teller of the story.