where the books were found

[freckles_and_doubt]

Y'know, I really don't get why the world's publishing suits get so het up about Teh Internets, Eeeeevul Destroyer of Copyright. Since Tor started sending me a weekly link to a free online version of one of their sf novels, I have formed an unholy alliance with Take 2 and am now buying more sf novels than I ever have before. Because, yup, I actually don't enjoy reading on the screen, and if I fall for a novel, I want an actual copy in my hot little hands, not to mention any sequels that might be kicking around. I'd judge that about two-thirds of their offerings are pulp, or simply don't appeal to me, but guess what? I'd never have read them anyway, so the five minutes I spend reading through the first chapter or so before I reject it, is actually considerably more than I'd do if I was browsing in a bookshop. It's nice to see that some publishing houses are starting to catch on to free downloads as a marketing opportunity rather than The End Of The World, although I suspect the bulk of them are hopelessly reactionary and threatened by new technology and its cultural function, to the point where they are never really going to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat.

Theoretical wossnames aside, this week's Tor offering is Orphans of Chaos, by one John Wright, an accomplished gentleman of whom I have not hitherto heard. His sort of weird semi-inexplicable Victorian/modern heroic school story shows a pleasing ability to (a) express itself in full sentences, (b) madly mix advanced multi-dimensional physics, mythology, and a sort of quantum theory of comparative paradigm function, and (c) demonstrate that any vague pretensions I had to be a classical mythology geek are, alas, entirely delusional. It is also an enormous pleasure to run across an author who hooks you into his novel by throwing you in headfirst and refusing to explain anything. I devoured Orphans while I should have been working on Friday, and have ordered it and all the sequels posthaste. Recommended.

I've just realised, reading this back, that "weird semi-explicable Victorian/modern heroic school story" makes the novel sound as though it's a Harry Potter rip-off, and I hasten to say that this is absolutely not the case - this is far more complex and interesting, and utterly different in flavour. On the other hand, courtesy of Dayle, I am pleased to note that J K Rowling's address to the Harvard grad ceremony shows that, Potterverse moral dubiousness notwithstanding, she may actually be capable of ideological self-awareness.

Now, off to cook garlic pork roast and malva pudding for jo&stv, because I have the excuse that it's winter.

Comments

Re: Tor...

[confluence.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Hmm. If I scrupulously calculated my current book karma, I think I could re-forest a small country. :)