Post-Christmast Post

Still winding down from a long, eventful Christmas vacation.  The blizzard which hit the east coast was impressive, and nixed plans for Broadway.  My own little neighborhood was plowed out fairly promptly, which made me glad I wasn't still in Seattle (assuming the same snow, of course).

There has been plenty of Christmas media, even if Phantom of the Opera wasn't in the cards.  From Girlfriend, I acquired Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  Of this I have read a bit, but not gotten into the meat of it.  It's on the stack.  As are several books by Connie Willis, author of the amazing Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, which I actually got for my birthday.  But all this goes on the same docket.

Also received Machine of Death, a collection of short stories with several interesting things about it.  First is that it is largely the product of the webcomic community, specifically the axis of Ryan North-David Malki! et al.  Driven to vanity-publishing by the collective obscurity of their contributors, they decided to ask as many people as possible to buy the book the same day, to see how high they could get on Amazon's bestseller list.  It turned out that they hit #1, and stayed there for more than a day.  After that, naturally, publishers took notice.

The names I recognize from this endeavor are all very clever people, and I expect to enjoy what they've written.  Moreover, stories of obscure authors suddenly selling large numbers of books warm the gelid cockles of my heart.

Speaking of "gelid" (and also, "lambent" and "incondign"), I finished The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever the other day.  While I enjoyed it, I'm left with the odd sense that I have very little to compare it to, other than The Lord of the Rings, which isn't really fair.  Apparently I just haven't read much epic fantasy.  This dismays me somewhat, but I don't know how or how vigorously I should set about rectifying it.  Lately I began to wonder if there is a convenient place to jump into The Wheel of Time rather than starting at the very beginning.

My general exposure to the world of speculative fiction should be improved by my new subscription to the appropriately-named Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Other media includes Halo: Reach.  I haven't played very far into it but I've always appreciated Bungie's approach to storytelling, getting interesting stories told without losing sight of the peculiarities of their medium.  If anything I'm a little disappointed by what looks like a shift in this game toward longer cut scenes and more breaks in the action to focus on characterization.  But at this early point I will give them props for one thing: Reach is the only game I can think of that makes dramatic irony a cornerstone of its feel.  Specifically, in the first 15 seconds or so of the game its established that your character dies at the end.  Surely this has been done before, but I can't remember it.