Over on Tor.com, a discussion of Sir Terry Pratchett’s works, and how there’s more to them—far more—than just silly puns and goofy characters.
Terry Pratchett is best known for his incompetent wizards, dragon-wielding policemen, and anthropomorphic personifications who SPEAKLIKETHIS. And we love him for it. Once we’re done chuckling at Nanny Ogg’s not-so-subtle innuendos and the song about the knob on the end of the wizard’s staff, however, there’s so much more going on beneath the surface of a Pratchett novel.
After two previous attempts got lost in the mail (or else lost in customs), my artistic license finally arrived sometime between last Wednesday (when we left for Edmonton) and yesterday (when I checked the mail).
I can’t decide which one I want to read first. I really like Join Scalzi’s writing; I loved Son of a Trickster and I’m looking forward to reading more of Eden Robinson’s prose; but man, Sara Gran’s last novel ended on such a cliffhanger, so I’m leaning towards The Infinite Blacktop.
This one’s for the Canadians in the crowd. Writers, SF/F fans, helpful family members…
The Aurora Awards nominations have opened, and will be open till the 18th of May. My short story “Vincent and Charlie” is eligible for nomination, as are a myriad of other great stories both long and short. You can check out the eligibility lists at the Prix Aurora Awards site (you’ll need to be a member of the site to nominate anyone; it’s $10.00 Canadian for the year).
The story, in a nutshell, is about a retired farmer, afflicted with dementia, who happens across a crashed alien craft and rescues the pilot. This attracts the attention of some people whose attention you’d prefer not to attract.
I read Eden Robinson’s Son of a Trickster this weekend.
It’s the story of sixteen-year-old Jared, who’s doing his best, trying to balance baking weed cookies, caring for his elderly neighbours, keeping his dad from losing his home, keeping his aggressive mom off his case, and generally just trying to not fail grade ten.
It’s not real helpful that he’s started hearing crows talking to him.
My first encounter with Gordon Lightfoot’s classic song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was actually reading the lyrics published as a poem in a high-school English reader. (I had a similar experience with Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence”, though I think I’d probably heard that one on the radio, my dad being an aficionado of the ’60s station KY58.)
So for Throwback Thursday, please, enjoy this tale of human woe and the sinking of a massive freighter in a storm on (spoiler alert!) Lake Superior.
Of course, because this is The Good Place, I can’t honestly tell if this is just some placeholder text that slipped through, or if this is legitimately the intended description for tonight’s episode.
Finally, last night, I watched Bad Times at the El Royale. Back when I first saw the trailer, I thought it was an Evans movie for sure, but it ended up playing at the multiplex down the street instead, for all of two weeks. I managed to miss it. Now I regret not seeing it on the big screen.
El Royale takes place at a hotel in Lake Tahoe, on the border between Nevada and California. The border literally bisects the hotel. Rooms on the California side are $1 more per night.
The movie opens with a priest, a singer, and a vacuum-cleaner salesman trying to check in, one lovely afternoon in 1969, but the clerk is nowhere to be found. Once they do track him down, a fourth guest appears, and she’s got some baggage. Well, they all have baggage, but the fourth woman appears to have kidnapped someone.
Of course, this is a noir-ish thriller, and no one—not even the venue—is who they seem to be.
I quite enjoyed El Royale. It felt a lot like a Quentin Tarantino movie, but it was written and directed by Drew Goddard. Goddard managed to take all the good things about a QT movie—colours, music, sudden violent twists—and discard the endless soliloquies. It really makes for a tight, nasty thriller, and it’s just the thing I was looking for.
If you like violence, secrets, thunderstorms, ’60s music, and violence, it might be just what you’re looking for too.
God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
From Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
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