People of the Book

People of the Book: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
What an amazing read. Geraldine Brooks stunned me.

I love historical fiction that teaches me about history inside of a great story, but this book exceeds expectations all around.

The book is about a five hundred year old book, and the history of the people whose lives intersected with the book. The present day protagonist is Hanna, an Australian rare book expert sent to Sarajevo to work on Sarajevo Haggadah which was saved from Serbian shelling by a Muslim librarian.

As Hanna investigates the book, the story jumps further and further into the past, where we see the book menaced in other times and places. Sarajevo in World War II, Vienna in the time of the Empire, Venice in the waning years of the inquisition, Spain during the expulsion of the Jews, and finally in Muslim Spain.

Hanna has her own journey, which is often painful. Her story has the most complete arc. The historical episodes have well drawn characters, but they come and go. Hanna's discoveries about the book lead into each of these vignettes. Since we are going backwards in time, we get background information about people and events that we've already read about. And Hanna's story is told chronologically, so we have two time streams, going in opposite directions.




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Game Book Reivew: Purge the Unlcean

Purge the Unclean: Dark Heresy adventure anthology by Black Industies

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is more than three well written and connected adventures for Dark Heresy. It is also a template for how to write your own Dark Heresy adventures, with tips on Action, Horror, and Investigation adventures.

The adventures are for acolytes new in their careers, and can be played after the example adventure in the core Dark Heresy rule book.

T. S. Luikhart is a fine game designer, and these are fun adventures that will have your players hopping.

The three adventures showcase Investigation, Action, and Horror. I would quibble that the Horror adventure doesn't get truly horrific until the end, but it goes all out once it gets there. The action adventure is my favorite, and I like the design hints for doing your own action adventures.


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Edit 8/21/09: Now that I've GM'd them all, I'd like to say the third adventure, Baron Hopes, required a lot of modification: http://johnwsmarvin.blogspot.com/2009/08/rpg-scenario-modding-on-baron-hopes-for.html

Clean Coal still polluting my TV

OK, I'm finally back on my soap box.

Clean Coal does not exist. See my previous post.

What to do is easy to say, hard to do:

• Build no more coal plants unless they have a working carbon sequestering program that is operational before the plant is turned on.
• Prohibit the expansion of capacity of all coal plants without working sequestering programs.

So what does this give us? It closes out the option for "cheap" electricity. It will drive everyone's rates up. So what do we build? Expand?

• Conserve. Up energy requirements across the board. Put a big prize out for anyone who can design an energy efficient dryer.
  
• Allow natural gas plants to be built and expand capacity. Allow liquid natural gas to be imported. Natural gas still produces carbon dioxide, and is getting more expensive every day. But it's well understood.
• Subsidize solar and wind power. Support the development of saving energy when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing to lower the requirements for other energy sources.
• Allow replacement of existing nuclear plants with newer, safer nuclear plants. If and when "Generation IV" plants come on line, and if they really shrink the wastes down, we can expand them if they are cheaper than solar/wind.

Importing liquid natural gas and building nuclear power plants put me at odds with the Sierra Club, which I'm a member of. They do support conservation and renewables, but their policies would leave a hole in our energy needs big enough to demand more coal.

Connor on You Tube

I'll solve the energy problem in a bit.

But first, Connor in a (silent) You Tube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A89o6M41do

Student ID

He's the one with the sideburns and the blue sweater...

Clean Coal All Over My TV Screen

We've been watching more CNN in the primary season, and one thing I've noticed is the ads for "Clean Coal" are 24 x 7. This pisses me off.

No matter how you clean it up, coal is 60% to 91% carbon. High grade coal basicly is carbon. Burning it takes oxygen out of the air, binds it with the carbon, and produces carbon dioxide (or worse), the biggest greenhouse gas.

And in 100% of the power plants on earth, that carbon goes into the air, trapping heat, and changing the climate. The ads mention carbon sequestering, capturing it before it goes into the air. But that has never, ever, been done in a commercial power plant. Maybe someday.

But right now, coal use is climbing world wide. Why? It's cheap, old tech, easy to build, easy to run. And the world wants more electricity.

What are the choices?

• Conservation: We could be a lot more efficient, so we could get more use with less electricity. In any plan, this has to happen. However, this won't be enough. Around the world people are getting their first refrigerators. People want a decent life, and are going to get one, coal or no coal.
• Oil: Oil has less carbon than coal, about 40% in gasoline, with the rest as hydrogen. That's still a lot of carbon, and it's way more expensive than coal.
• Natural gas: The cleanest of the fossil fuels is about 20% carbon and the rest is hydrogen. The infrastructure for natural gas is similar (but easier) to what pure hydrogen would need. Where I live in Oregon, the Sierra Club, (I am a member) has been lobbying against building a port to import natural gas by sea. In my mind this is counter productive, and will result in more coal power.
  
• Hydrogen. 0% carbon, all hydrogen. Expensive (now), and will leak out of the tiniest holes. Burning hydrogen creates water. It can also generate electricity in fuel cell. The infrastructure is not built yet. It would be like the natural gas infrastructure. Pipelines and tanker ships.
  
• Nuclear fission. Produces 0% carbon. Expensive and very toxic wastes. The US gets 20% of its electricity from nuclear power, and most of the reactors are nearing the end of their lifetime. The cheapest replacement for them is more coal plants.
• Solar. 0% carbon. Tiny but growing. Expensive, and requires a back up (coal?) plant for when the sun is not shinning.
  
• Wind. 0% carbon. Bigger and less expensive than Solar, but still tiny. Shares the same need of a back up plant, which could be coal, for when the winds die down.
• Hydroelectric. 0% carbon. Requires big dams that flood large areas and disturb fisheries and habitats. Most of the good (as in they make a lot of electricity) dam sites already have dams on them.

Next. What to do?

The End of Publishing?

Last night, at a dinner with Mary Rosenblum and others from the Other Worlds Book Club, we talked about the future of publishing. Or the lack of one.

Today, the big publishers are all operating on razor thin profits, and are cutting back to only celebrity authors and best sellers. The bookstores only carry books by the big, New York, publishers.

This is not just a problem for authors. Where do readers go to find new books? It used to be if it was on the shelf at a big bookstore, it had a good chance of being a decent read. After all, a big publisher put it out. But if the shelves are full only of celebrity mommy books and best sellers the reader has already read, what then? Where do they find their new favorite author?

Random searching for your favorite genre on Amazon will yield a sea of titles. Many of them self-published, most of them awful.

So, from the readers point of view, what is the future of book finding? Mary thought that quality small presses could be come a brand that readers would use. Many were not so sure. Who notices the publisher? We talked about favorite book review blogs. If a blog gained your trust, you would try a new book it recommended. Or both. The reader might not know a "quality" small press from a "publish anything that gets submitted on" but the blogger might.

Whatever happens, interesting times ahead.

Birdwatcher

My friend Garth Upshaw has a story in the current (May 2008) Clarkesworld. Check out Birdwatcher.

I critiqued an early version of this story, and while I can't claim any credit for the Garth's work, I do feel a slight sense of being there at the genesis. And this is Garth's first professional sale. Go Garth!