Kickstarter Jumps the Shark

Hey,

Just FYI, there's a Kickstarter to print a new edition of World of Synnibarr.

If that doesn't meany anything to you, ignorance is bliss.

If you do know what I'm talking about, rest easy. Raven c.s. McCracken says the project won't go unless he raises $55,000. So it's good to see he still thinks highly of his art, but Kicktraq doesn't think he'll even get a third of the way there.

later
Tom

Review of Triton

Hey,

So this is odd in that it's a book I started reading many years ago in Junior High/High School and have only now come back and finished it. The book is Triton by Samuel R. Delany.

I remember the book primarily because of Vlet, the incredibly complex chess-like game that's referred to in the book. However, for my young self, the book was simply a bit too dense and internally-driven to hold my interest. I'm also shocked that it found a place on the school library shelves of my small Nebraskan hometown considering the themes of gender and sexuality that run through the book. Perhaps the librarian just figured sci-fi is all about lasers and robots.

Anyway, the story follows Bron Helstrom, a native of Mars who's emigrated to Triton and now works as a meta-logician and lives in an all-male commune. He bums around the habitat and runs into an intriguing guerrilla theatre artist and accompanies a friend back to Earth on a diplomatic mission.

The book kinda wanders. Really it's the story of Bron living in a pretty good, if not utopian society, but still feeling like an outsider. Triton offers him every opportunity to live a life the way he wants to, but he can't seem to settle on any particular thing that he wants. Near the final quarter of the book, he changes gender, but that doesn't particularly satisfy him in any way and he ends the book just as unhappy as when he started.

I dunno. It's a tough book. Bron is kind of an unlikeable character. His indecision makes him petty and jealous and it causes him to act badly (not really immorally or violently, just badly). Perhaps it's meant to illuminate the way modern society can give you everything but an ability to settle for something, or to provide the viewpoint of an outsider to a society. Still, Bron isn't terribly sympathetic and the book sort of rambles without reaching any particular conclusion. I suppose Delany's Delgren is a lot like that but the circular trip is more interesting.

later
Tom