Tormented Artifacts

I have a friend who does good art. He's raising money for a new computer to continue producing it. If you like the images below, perhaps you'd like to click the button at the bottom of the post and donate a buck .

or this:

And want to see more of it, or if you want to keep seeing Tormented Artifacts at different events and such, then hit this button:

Teaching to Transgress

It has been a while since I read bell hooks. I first encountered her when I was learning to teach writing as a Master's student. I remember loving her work.

It's only recently that I have been reading the works of the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, and have found that his way of thinking resonates with mine.

When I picked up Teaching to Transgress tonight and began to read, it was easy to slip into hooks's rhythm; she is another writer for whom I have an awesome respect and would love to meet one day. Then I turned a page to discover that her work has been informed by Hanh's.

That explains why she works for me, too. Engaged pedagogy and and engaged Buddhism must fill some kind of need I have.

To educate as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone can learn. The learning process comes easiest to those of us who teach who also believe that there is an aspect of our vocation that is sacred; who believe that our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students.

In chapter one, hooks points out that Thich Nhat Hanh's engaged Buddhism is practice in conjunction with contemplation, which is similar to Paulo Friere's "praxis" or combined action and reflection.

*I personally interpret the words "spiritual" and "soul" in a non-theistic way.

Chris Barzak: One for Sorrow

Chris Barzak and I went to YSU together as grad assistants in the English department. He was a year ahead of me.

I knew Chris was doing fiction, but you know that thing about prophets in their own countries. I wasn't in any of his classes, but I knew he was very serious about his writing and that the department took his work seriously, so I assumed he was good.

I just didn't know he was . . . good.

One for Sorrow is very good indeed, and in many places it's stunning.

He writes what he knows. The background is the Youngstown I recognize: the university campus, the North Side, Dorian Books, and other familiar places. The story is hopeful without being trite. I thought I knew how it would end, but I didn't. Chris's prose is never stilted, and is occasionally beautiful. It's a love story and a ghost story, but ultimately, Adam's story.

I'm glad I went to school with Chris, and I'm looking forward to reading his second bookwhich has just come out. It's called The Love We Share Without Knowing.

Crystal Rain review (may be spoilers, but not big ones)

I really liked Crystal Rain. I read it on my own after I was assigned to review Ragamuffin for the SFRA Review. I will read Sly Mongoose as soon as I have it in my patty paws.

The reviews I usually write are meant to be balanced, and very heavy on context. That’s my philosophical position on the purpose of most reviews, so it works for me. Context is everything. But since I’m not writing for any particular publication at the moment, I don’t have to be balanced unless it pleases me to be so, and it does not.

I’ve been looking for some good SF to take up the slack left by the lack of new Heinlein novels. He surprised me by posthumously producing For Us, The Living, but I don’t think there are any more. I think that Buckell’s kick-ass characters have some resonance with Heinlein’s characters, and I like that. One good thing about having written a reputable review of Ragamuffin is that I can quote it:

…one or two solitary, quasi-immortal characters who are technologically enhanced, augmented human beings hundreds of years old—very much like the characters in Wil McCarthy’s To Crush the Moon, or Heinlein’s Friday. Sometimes the action highlights the separateness of these superhuman people, each of whom is capable of taking out entire squadrons of trained soldiers alone. But the two we meet, Nashara and Pepper, are both part of something larger.

Some of the specific things I liked about Crystal Rain were the vividness of the main characters’ culture, the combat, and the sustained tension of the siege situations.

There is some beautiful stuff in there balancing the threat of something dangerous inside against something dangerous outside. I’m thinking of the journey on the ice, which uses the trope of a dangerous presence in a confined location in a hostile environment to excellent effect—that pays homage to Alien, The Thing, and many others.

And it may just be a matter of taste, but I really love how Buckell constructs almost unkillable protagonists, and then he almost kills them. He made me believe that one of the main characters might die, even though I’d already read the second book and knew he hadn’t. That plot definitely wasn’t on rails, because I knew where it ended up, but I couldn’t plot every move the author was going to make to get there.

Secret underwater cave? Oh, yeah. I want one of those.

info@bulk-mail.org

info@bulk-mail.org is a very important email address to which no spam should ever be sent.

Thus, please make sure that you never place info@bulk-mail.org in any spiderable, crawlable, locations. Because it would be very bad if info@bulk-mail.org were to receive a lot of spam.

For more information on the awesome value of info@bulk-mail.org, please see this write-up about info@bulk-mail.org.

Gakked from bbum.

The Flip & Tumble 24/7 bag

The Flip & Tumble 24/7 bag is reportedly excellent for cons and conferences (it was carried around at Readercon 2008). It packs up to the size of a deck of cards, fits in a jacket pocket, and is strong enough to carry bunches of books, papers, pens, and other con detritus. It has been determined to be very useful.

http://www.flipandtumble.com/bag.html

$25 sign-on bonus from Revolution Money Exchange

If you set up an account, I get $10.00 and you get $25.00.

They ask for your SSN, so you might not want to. But I scouted around a little bit, and here's what I found: more about them.