Vernor Vinge: The Children of the Sky

The Children
of the Sky

Without knowing whether Vernor Vinge would ever write one, a sequel to his outstanding 1993 novel A Fire Upon The Deep has been eagerly awaited by his fans for 18 years. Unfortunately that sequel, The Children of the Sky, is quite a disappointment, having little of what made Fire such a great book (it’s one of my all-time favorites).

The book follows the lives of the humans who were stranded on Tines’ World following the defeat of the Blight in Fire. Ravna Bergsndot is the sole human with direct experience of the Blight, and who knows that a Blighter fleet is surely heading for them at slower-than-light speed. Helping to raise the children marooned on the world, the children of the scientists who released the Blight, Ravna also co-rules the local nation of Tines – the wolf-like pack minds of the planet – with the erratic Queen Woodcarver. Together they hope to bootstrap the planet to a more advanced level of technology in time to face the Blighter fleet.

The crux of the story are the challenges Ravna faces in her goals. Distrust among the Tiners in Woodcarver’s domain is the least of it; many children have reached adulthood and not only resent that they don’t have the technology they grew up with (including life extension treatments, which Ravna has completed), but some of them doubt Ravna’s word that the Blight is a threat, believing that their parents could never have released such an evil, and seeing the results of Ravna’s crew’s actions in Fire which stranded them there as more sinister. And a scheming Tine named Vendacious has allied himself with a powerful entrepreneur and rival to Woodcarver named Tycoon who seem to be pacing – if not outstripping – the humans in development.

While Children is a capably-written book, it’s missing the ideas content that is the hallmark of Vinge’s books. Indeed, A Fire Upon the Deep is a great novel not just because it’s well written, but because it throws out terrific ideas – and explores them in depth – with a frequency and density rarely encountered elsewhere in SF. Fire is a tall act to live up to – neither of Vinge’s next two books, including the prequel A Deepness in the Sky – really do so, but Children is perhaps his least ambitious book since.

The most compelling idea in the book is the notion of the “Choir”, the huge mass of Tines who live in the world’s tropics and have a rather different society than the lands of discrete packs such as Woodcarver’s. And it adds some small twists to the old chestnut of a plot where a few advanced people try to bootstrap a medieval society to a higher technology. But the book doesn’t build much more on the nature of the Tines – showing, I guess, just how deeply the race was explored in Fire – and doesn’t expand on the Zones of Thought or the Blight at all (the threat of the Blight hangs over the first half of the book, but if you’re hoping for a big showdown between the human/Tine alliance and the Blight at the end, you’re going to be disappointed). It’s a book of local political machinations rather than groundbreaking science fictional ideas.

For what it is, the book is pretty good, though rather slow to develop. The characters are enjoyable enough, and a few of them develop in interesting ways, but they’re not enough to really carry the book. If a book of politics and gamesmanship is what you want to read, then you’ll probably enjoy it.

But while the Tines are interesting, what I really wanted from a sequel to Fire was something that further developed the Zones of Thought that delineate areas of the galaxy and introduced some interesting new aliens. What Children actually is was quite disappointing to me.

Farewell to Tim Wakefield

Tim Wakefield is my all-time favorite Red Sox, for several reasons, but here are two:

1) I picked him up for my fantasy team when he came to the Red Sox in 1995, and he promptly had the season of his life (despite fading down the stretch). We might never see a knuckleballer have a season that great ever again (considering we only see a really good knuckleballer about once per generation).

2) He helped save the staff in Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS when the Yankees were pounding all comers (including Tim) into the dirt en route to one of the most lopsided playoff victories ever. Wakefield threw over 3 innings and saved other good pitchers for Game 4 and the Sox’ historic and unique comeback.

Plus of course he’s one of the longest-tenured Sox (17 years!), pitched longer than most (he’s 45, one of the few players last season older than me), and seemed as dedicated to the team as anyone. While David Ortiz has been the face of the franchise this past decade, Wakefield has always been right there, usually an average starting pitcher, but never as flashy as some of the other players.

Wakefield retired from playing baseball today, which is the end of an era for the team as far as I’m concerned.

I saw him pitch in person a few times, but none more memorable than one game at Fenway in his magical 1995 season, against the Twins. As I recall, he somehow loaded the bases in the top of the first inning, and then got the next two hitters. Chuck Knoblauch was the Twins’ leadoff hitter (before he went to the Yankees he was a great player), and he spent much of the inning dancing around third base. From my vantage point in the bleachers it looked like Wakefield finally got frustrated with Knoblauch, looked at him, and waggled his head as if to say, “If you’re gonna go, then go.”

On the next pitch, Knoblauch broke for home plate, and he was tagged out at home. Side retired with no runs.

Kirby Puckett – still a great hitter, but in his last season, though no one (including him) knew it at the time – didn’t start, but he came in to pitch-hit with 2 outs in the ninth and the Red Sox leading. On – I think – the first pitch, Puckett hit a rocket to left field which was snagged by the shortstop to end the game.

Wakefield was a really fun player (“how the heck did he get that pitch anywhere near over the plate, never mind getting a called strike?”) and a class act. I’ll miss him a lot.

Yard Work

Since we’re never snowed in around here in mid-February, I spent a chunk of this weekend doing yard work:

  • I raked the front yard, hopefully the last batch of leaves I’ll have to rake this year. Had to go across the street to retrieve the leaf pan from our neighbor Juan (it’s his, but he doesn’t have many leaves, so it often lives with us).
  • Dug up some crab grass and pulled up many tree seedlings from around the boxwood in front of the yard. The boxwood is young – most of it under 18″ high – and a bunch of it turned partly brown earlier in the winter. I suspect it needed more water, but now I wonder if the stuff I pulled up was taking away some of its water and nutrients. Maybe it will bounce back now. (All of it is still partly green, so it hasn’t died.)
  • Pulled up a daisy around the side of the house which was a style I’m not fond of, and which had grown to be ginormous since we moved in. I transplanted a different daisy from a large pot on the patio in its place. Hopefully it will settle in nicely.
  • Finally transplanted the lavender plant that Joar and Karin gave us last Memorial Day into a proper pot. Only took me nine months.
  • Did you know that when you leave a plant in its temporary container which in turn is inside a real pot for nine months, snails discover it and decide to hang out there? Dozens. Of. Snails. Eew. I threw them all into the rosemary bush.
  • Pulled up a bunch of weeds in the back lawn.
  • Trimmed back a bunch of juniper and daisy plants along the back fence that were starting to grow over the lawn. Take that!

It’s been nice having a break from mowing during the winter, but I gotta say, I’d rather mow than rake.

The Home Sickies

Debbi came down with a bad cold last night, and was home from work today. She was pretty well zonked this morning when I left for the gym, and says she spent much of the day sleeping. She seems a little better tonight, but she still doesn’t sound very good, and I bet she’ll be home again tomorrow.

Hopefully this won’t lead to me being home sick in a couple of days, especially if it’d lay me out for most of a day. Not even being able to stay awake to read a book, what kind of sick day is that? And hopefully Debbi will be better by the end of tomorrow.

In other news, Blackjack suddenly entered a down period last week, walking around with wobbly legs and occasionally stumbling. He still seems pretty happy, just somewhat frustrated at his wobbliness. He’s not as bad as he was over Thanksgiving, and he’s still able to jump places. It really kills Debbi to see him like this. But I think he’s going to alternate stronger and weaker periods for the duration of his illness. Hopefully this cycle will pass and he’ll be stronger later this month.

His wobbliness seems to coincide with him throwing up more. We’re not sure what to do about that. He seems to not throw up when we give him wet cat food, so we’ll give him more of that for now. At least he doesn’t throw up all of his dry food.

He seems to be a little better today. Debbi tells me he kept stealing her blanket when she fell asleep on the couch!

Lastly, I’ve been working to pull together my tax information over the last few days. Boy, I’ll be glad to get that behind me. Buying and selling houses makes it so much more complicated.

Inaugural Poker Night

Thursday I had people over for the inaugural poker night at the new house.

It’s taken us a lo-o-ong time to get the dining room set up: Buying a big buffet to store my board games (and empty all the boxes of games that we lining the room), and getting a rug for the room to protect the hardwood floors. Then last weekend I bought a length of felt to use as a playing surface (I already knew the table cloth doesn’t really work – it bunches up whenever you try to pick up the cards). But finally we were ready.

The great thing about our dining table (which I inherited from a friend of mine) is that with both leaves in, it easily sits 8, and could probably sit 10 without too much trouble. We got 8 people – though we maxed out at 7 at once – for the game, and everything went smoothly. I even hauled out our glass mugs from the freezer for the people who wanted beer (“How unusually civilized” one of the players said). The cats briefly checked things out, but only Blackjack hung out with us for the evening. And Debbi said that after she went to bed, she could barely hear us still playing (and talking) downstairs.

The only casualty is that I managed to knock over my own chair right into an electrical outlet, chipping a piece off of its frame. But that should be easy to replace.

The game – our usual small-stakes 5¢/10¢ blind no-limit hold ’em – went well. I won some early pots, lost some late pots, and ended up a couple of bucks. Two players got it all in after a ridiculous flop betting line (several near-minimum-raises followed by an all-in overbet and a snap call), revealing a set-over-set situation. One player said, “I didn’t think you’d call me!” and the other replied, “I didn’t think you’d beat me!” A third player just shook his head at their (deliberately) silly line of play, even though the outcome was inevitable.

People started turning into pumpkins sometime after 11, so we called it a night. The next morning Debbi said she wondered how we ended up with more beer than we started with (since we don’t drink beer, and most of what we had was left over from my birthday party). I said that Adam left it to encourage me to host again.

I certainly will.

Before Watchmen

Before Watchmen, the upcoming project from DC Comics, has been the talk of the comics world for a little while now. Here’s my two cents on the project.

First, I do get a little tired of Alan Moore saying that he wishes comics companies would stop exploiting properties he created that he doesn’t own, or that he co-owns. On the other hand, he has his wishes, and the media keeps asking him what he thinks of the latest project based on his work, so what do they expect him to say? “Oh gee, you’ve worn me down, so I’ve decided that it’s great they’re doing this.” So I think people who complain about Alan Moore complaining doth protest too much. As long as people keep doing new projects based on his work we’re going to keep hearing him complain about them, so we just have to accept that and move on.

On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine a less-necessary set of books than prequels to Watchmen. It was a gorgeous and influential book which was complete unto itself, and which is tightly tied to the creators who made it (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons). Moreover, it pretty much plumbed the depths of all the major characters, and what was left unsaid was left so deliberately. Any prequels I think would only be interesting to the extent that they inform a new reading of the original book, but since Moore and Gibbons aren’t doing the prequels, I expect they’ll feel superfluous.

It’s strange to me that DC would do prequels to the series, rather than a sequel, since building something new on top of the original might genuinely move the book forward. But doing prequels just seems like a cynical effort to squeeze some more money out of the property – cynical because it indicates that DC is too timid to do anything daring.

Which is ironic because, as Moore has said, the whole point of Watchmen was to do new things with the medium (graphic novels) and the genre (superheroes). You can argue to what extent they succeeded in being truly innovative, but the book clearly greatly influenced comic books for years after it was published. Going back and further rooting around in the backstory of its milieu seems contrary to the spirit of the book itself – and thus all the more cynical.

But in pop culture all old fads end up coming back and being revisited or reworked eventually. Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re bad, sometimes they’re fresh, and sometimes they’re stale. The only way this project is different from DC relaunching the Doom Patrol/the Teen Titans/the Suicide Squad one more time is that it has Alan Moore complaining about it.

Just remember: The great thing about literature (graphic or otherwise) is this: Regardless of whether or not Before Watchmen ends up being a cheap knock-off of the original, we can always go back and enjoy the original. Considering how many superhero comics have devolved into a serpent swallowing its own tail, that’s an important fact to remember.

Incremental Changes

Another sunny weekend here in the Bay Area. We got a good dose of rain last weekend, but now we’re back to the sun. Such a tough life, I know. I really would like to get some more rain, but at least the cats can enjoy the sun beams.

We went out running errands yesterday. Debbi’s boot camp, EmpowerFit, was having an event at the Road Runner Sports venue in Redwood City, so we swung by. Debbi saw some of her friends from camp, and I went through their shoe finder test to get some new workout shoes. The test was pretty interesting: I knew my feet pronate pretty good, but my right foot also lands pointing outwards a little bit. They also recommended that I go from my usual size 11 4E shoes to size 11-1/2 2E shoes. I tried on a couple of pairs, and bought some New Balance ones, which are ones I have favored anyway, but I did genuinely like them better than the other ones I tried. Plus I got some insoles for them to give me more support. I may look at getting some new insoles for my everyday shoes sometime.

We also went by Joann Fabrics where I bought a length of felt for our dining table, so I can host poker games once in a while. Our regular table cloth doesn’t really cut it, since it’s difficult to pick the cards up without grabbing a good chunk of cloth.

(We really need a new table cloth, too, but with both leaves in the table is so big that it’s hard to find ones that fit it. And yes, I’ve looked on the Interwebs.)

In the evening we drove up to Menlo Park where my team was having dinner for a departing team member (he’s just moving inside the company, though). It was actually just team members only, so Debbi had dinner at our usual Saturday night haunt, Cafe Borrone. Dinner was at Bistro Vida, which we’d walked by but never eaten at. It’s pretty good! I’ll have to take Debbi there sometime soon.

Having gotten most of the errands out of the way yesterday, I expect we’ll just hang out today. But wait, it’s warm and sunny out, and we bought new shoes yesterday! So maybe we’ll go out for a walk sometime…

Birthday Trip

I had a nice birthday today. I’d debated going up to San Francisco to Cal Academy, but I didn’t really feel like getting up early to get there before the holiday crowds rolled in.

So instead we got up at our usual time, and Debbi made scones. Somehow I forgot to open my presents in the morning – Debbi thought I was just waiting until this evening, but no, I just forgot. Blackjack and Newton were happily lying in the sun in the family room. A nice lazy morning.

Late in the morning we drove down to Santa Cruz for the day. We had lunch and did some shopping downtown. Then we stopped at the surfing museum (Flash required, lamely enough) – it’s fun enough, but we were mainly there for the views of the ocean:

Then we went to Natural Bridges State Beach. It’s one of several stopovers for monarch butterflies migrating through California, and I’d hoped we’d seen a bunch of them. We were disappointed to only see a few; perhaps February is better for swarms. We did have a nice walk around the park and a visit to the beach to see the natural bridge for which the park is named:

Did you know Santa Cruz has a natural history museum? I didn’t. But we didn’t visit it this time; maybe next time.

We had dinner at FJL, and are wrapping it up watching the premiere of Alcatraz, which is okay. I rather wonder what any of the last inmates of the prison back in 1963 – if any are still alive – think of the premise, that they all disappeared and are coming back in the present day. The show greatly exaggerates the conditions on the Rock, from what I understand, too.

A pretty nice birthday, really. Way too short, though!

Birthday Weekend

My birthday is tomorrow, and Debbi and I have the day off to enjoy a long weekend together. It’s not a “significant” birthday, so I don’t feel much older. 🙂 But it’s nice to have some extra time off.

I threw my usual birthday party last night, and it was nice to not have to worry about how many people would fit into our house, like it was in the townhouse. A lot of people couldn’t make it, but we still had about a dozen people show up over the course of the evening. I made a huge amount of Mai Tais, which were fully consumed by the end of the night, and bought a couple of cakes from the Prolific Oven which about half of which got eaten.

Our neighbor Juan came by. He teaches salsa dancing, and later in the evening we put on some of his music and he got both Debbi and my friend/cow-orker Kelly dancing. (I resisted grabbing the camera and taking pictures.) I also saw Trish and her boyfriend Jared for the first time in quite a while. Susan and Subrata came by with Ajay; I think Ajay got a little bored with the big-peoples’ party until I pulled out one of my Hot Wheels cars (yes, I have Hot Wheels cars) which kept him entertained for the next hour or so.

(At one point Susan suggested she and Ajay go explore the house. She asked him who had to go with him when he goes upstairs. He was being a little shy and hesitated, so she said, “You can only go upstairs with a g–?” He didn’t respond, so I said “Gorilla!” That sort of humor goes over pretty well with a 3-year-old and his parents.)

I often feel like my parties are kind of underwhelming, but everyone seems to have a good time, so I’m probably overthinking things. I always have a good time, anyway, and I’m glad people came.

We watched both football playoff games yesterday. While the Patriots’ victory over the Broncos was a laffer (all the pundits have made the expected jokes, but the long and short of it is that Tim Tebow is no Tom Brady), the 49ers victory over the Saints was memorable and exciting, and gave the home crowd some great memories. (And then today the hated Giants stunned the 15-1 Packers giving the Niners home field advantage in the NFC championship game next week. I expect “low scoring” will be the term for that game.)

(I’m a little disappointed that it won’t be a Patriots/Packers Super Bowl, as the “no defense bowl” might have seen over 100 total points scored.)

Today we went to the Moss Beach Distillery for brunch. We had an epic food coma afterwards and collapsed on the couch for a few hours before running some errands, but mostly we had a quiet day at home. Which the cats appreciated, of course.

State of the Newton

I’ve written about Blackjack and his cancer so much over the last year that you might have forgotten we have 2 other cats.

Newton is our elderly orange kitty. He’ll be 18 in April, and we’ve been together for over 17 years. He’s lived in 2 states, in 4 different homes, he’s seen Blackjack and Roulette join our household, and seen his brother Jefferson pass away. He’s been on meds for the last 3+ years because he has hyperthyroidism. Yet he keeps plugging away.

After his vet appointment in November the vet upped his meds by 50%. And then over the holiday break he came down with a kitty-cold, for which I took him in last week and got him some antibiotics. The vet said that in older cats sometimes sniffling and sneezing is just a respiratory infection, but sometimes it’s an indication of something worse, like a tumor. Fortunately, the antibiotics seem to have taken care of his symptoms (with 2 days of meds left to go).

Newton’s always been a small cat – I think he topped out at a little under 10 pounds at his heaviest – and he’s gotten smaller in his old age. He’s now at about 6-3/4 pounds, and he is definitely boney. I’ve actually been worried the last week that he hasn’t been eating enough, although he loves wet cat food when we give it to them, but I have seen him eating his dry food in the last couple of days, which is a relief. But he’s so small that I’ve been worrying about him. Fortunately, he hasn’t shown any indication of being unable to do things he normally does, like jump up on the counter, or have trouble going up the stairs.

What he has done is slowed down. He was a manic cat when he was younger, and now he’s sedate. He plays a little, but not very much. He used to run all over the townhouse, but he hardly runs at all anymore. He does sometimes get that old spring in his step when he’s trotting around, though. But he spends a lot of time sleeping, and he especially likes to sleep in the hallway from our bedroom to the master bathroom, which we think it because it’s warm – we have a thermometer in the closet there, and it’s consistently 2-3 degrees warmer there than any of the other places in the house where we have thermometers. I don’t know that Newton has arthritis, but maybe the warmer temperature is more comfortable to him. He’s never been big on purring, but it’s been a while since he’s purred, that I can recall.

It seems like he’s slowed down a lot in the last few months, so when I take him in to get his blood work retested later this month, I’ll ask the vet whether the increased thyroid meds may be slowing him down. The vet who checked him out for his cold said his heart rate seems to be under control due to the meds. I just hope it’s not too under control. He’s also been getting picky about taking his thyroid meds, enjoying pill pockets less than he used to. (He eats them more enthusiastically when they’re fresh. But since they come in packs of 45, they get less fresh long before they run out. I’m trying to figure out how to store some of them so they stay fresher.)

If all this sounds like I’m preparing for the worst, well, I guess I am. He’s an old kitty, most cats don’t make it to his age. And he’s slowing down. And I know he’s not going to be here forever. And after Jefferson’s quick departure, and with Newton showing signs of his age, I guess I’m steeling myself to not be quite so blindsided when the time does come. It doesn’t help that Blackjack’s condition makes me more aware of Newton’s age.

I’m trying not to think about it too much, though. But I am trying to give him more attention and affection, especially when I realize he’s been snoozing up in the hallway most of the day and hasn’t come down to hang out with us. I’m grateful that he’s still healthy and comfortable. I miss the little troublemaking cat he used to be, but I’m glad the old snuggly guy he’s become is still with us.

And I’m really glad that he seems to have given up on meowing his head off in the middle of the night!