Spanked by Heinlein

Posted on July 27, 2010 by Kristin

I recently finished reading Robert Heinlein’s 1956 novel Double Star. Unlike many of my writer and fan compatriots, I didn’t grow up reading Heinlein. I’m not sure I’d ever even heard of him until college. My child and young adult reading skewed more to fantasy than science fiction. I’ve read Stranger in a Strange Land within the last 10 years, but Double Star is only my second Heinlein novel.

The story takes place in 2100, but since it was written in the 1950s, people still use slide rules and make audio recordings exclusively on tape. And use encyclopedias for research (paper encyclopedias, presumably; at one point the protagonist mentions referring to the ship’s copy of a major encyclopedia).

Another thing I noticed: I’ve only read two Heinlein novels, but in both novels, some no-nonsense older man threatens to spank a young, attractive woman for impertinence. To be fair, in Stranger in a Strange Land (published in 1961), the young woman threatened with the spanking, at another point in the novel, helps two other women to dump the man in question into a swimming pool for being insufficiently polite. Still! Do men threaten to spank women in all Heinlein novels?

The novel was fast-paced and entertaining, although the way it caricatured anyone who disagreed with the “correct” politics of the future (as far as I could tell, basically libertarianism and free trade) was mildly irritating. I find it more interesting when an author acknowledges that many of the people who disagree with his or her politics do not, in fact, eat babies. (Okay, there was no actual baby eating in Double Star.) It reminded me a little of C.S. Lewis, in that respect. (Don’t get me wrong; I’m a huge fan of C.S. Lewis, but there’s just not a whole lot of moral complexity in the Planetary Trilogy; I think there’s probably more of it in the Chronicles of Narnia, interestingly enough; can children perhaps handle moral complexity more easily than grown-ups?)

Now I’m reading Book Twelve in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series (this is the first book co-written by Brandon Sanderson, after Jordan’s death). A series in which, as Donald pointed out, there are many spankings and threats of spankings.

As far as I can remember, there are no spankings in Donald’s novel.

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Another lovely New Hampshire weekend

Posted on July 25, 2010 by Kristin

Donald and I went camping in the New Hampshire White Mountains this past weekend. I took Friday off, and we drove up early Friday afternoon to avoid most of the weekend getting-out-of-town traffic.

We stayed at the Waterville Campground, just around the corner from the Waterville Valley ski resort. It was pretty quiet there, though that may have been partly because it was a slightly rainy weekend. Or maybe because it’s a small campground without a lot of luxuries. Like showers, or flush toilets.

We had a very late lunch on Friday on the drive up (at the Common Man restaurant in Ashland; we both agreed that of the two free cheese dips, we like the cream cheese dip better than the cottage cheese dip, and that their homemade root beer isn’t as good as the homemade root beer at the Woodstock Inn). So we sort of skipped dinner, and just ate occasional snacks through the evening. I wanted to toast marshmallows, but we were having trouble getting a fire going, with damp wood, and rain starting to fall. Eventually we cheated by dousing the wood with some of the white gas fuel for my camp stove. Oops! Too much fuel. Don’t try this at home, kids! No harm done, though, and the gas kickstart did get the damp wood burning long enough for me to toast 3 or 4 marshmallows. Donald passed on the marshmallows; he said that he enjoys toasting them (with a better fire), but doesn’t enjoy having to eat them afterwards. It’s kind of funny that I’m way more of a food snob than Donald, but I love marshmallows!

We went to bed early, since it was dark and there wasn’t much else to do. On Saturday morning, we were up bright and early for a hike. Well, we were both up for our own definitions of bright and early. I got up at 7, ate some fruit, granola bars and nuts (and a marshmallow or two!), and read my new books on edible wild mushrooms and edible wild plants until Donald finally got up around 9.

Once we were both ready, we drove another hour north to hike Mount Garfield. Donald had forgotten his hiking boots at home, unfortunately, but a good part of the hike up Mount Garfield is easy going; though there’s some steep scrambling right at the end.

Here are some pictures from the top of the mountain:

The view from the top of Mt Garfield

More of the view

I kept trying to get a picture of Donald, so I would get his attention, and he would look at me just until I had focused the camera and then look away before I snapped the picture. This is about the fourth or fifth time I’d made him look at the camera, which is why he looks so irritated.

Don't you already have enough pictures of me?

I’m incapable of not making a stupid face when a camera is pointed at me.

Bad picture of me

Sleepyhead!

I didn’t want to sit right at the top of the mountain, because some darkly threatening clouds were moving in, and I didn’t want to be at the highest point for hundreds of yards in any direction. Donald thought I was being excessively paranoid, but he hasn’t been caught on top of Mount Monadnock in a sudden, vicious thunderstorm. Not fun! So we sat for a while on one of the ledges a short distance below the actual summit.

Hmm ... are those cumulonimbus? (or is it cumulonimbi?)

I also got a nice picture of Donald without his shirt, back at the car, but he said that if I put it on my blog, he had a nice picture of me in my bikini, showing a considerable amount of cleavage, that he’d be happy to post on his own blog. So I thought better of it!

The hike was 9 1/2 or 10 miles, round-trip. The hiking book said it would take 5 1/2 hours, and while I used to be able to beat the book time pretty consistently, I’m not in my 20s anymore. Our total time was around 7 hours, but that included a half hour break at the summit, and several short breaks during the hike, especially on the way up. Also, Donald can hike faster than I can uphill, but I’m faster downhill, so if we hike together we’re probably slower than if we hiked separately. But that wouldn’t be very romantic, now, would it?

It didn’t rain on us on the way down the mountain, but it did rain pretty hard while we were eating dinner at a restaurant between the trailhead and our campsite (the aforementioned Woodstock Inn, of the excellent root beer, and even more excellent–in my opinion–actual beer). We both felt it was too much effort to actually plan ahead for meals, so we just ate out (and bought stuff at a local grocery store for snacks). The Woodstock Inn has good food, but their portions are enormous. Rachael Ray size! I ordered the potato skins and a salad, and I really should have ordered a half order of potato skins, because it was just enormous. They were really good, though. A lot of places think potato skins are 5 neat shells of roasted potato half with a bit of cheese and a few bacon sprinkles; these were actual skins with a lot of potato flesh still attached, deep-fried, then thrown into a dish and smothered with melted cheese and bacon crumbles. Oh, and they actually gave us a reasonable amount of sour cream, too. Donald was all sensible and ordered the swordfish. But he passed on his vegetable accompaniment to eat some of my potato skins (potato is a vegetable, right?).

It wasn’t raining too terribly hard on our walk back to the car (the Woodstock Inn is very popular, so we couldn’t find parking right next to the restaurant). It didn’t start raining hard again until around 1 am, by which time we were both safely ensconced in the tent.

Other interesting things from the weekend: I tried this DEET-free insect repellent that I got at a local store; it contains cedar, mint and citronella oils in a base of corn oil. It was supposed to be really good against black flies. I think it worked okay, but I’m not entirely sold. I don’t think it lasts as long as DEET-containing repellents, and it’s kind of messy to be slathering corn oil on yourself constantly. It doesn’t taste as bad as DEET, though, so it doesn’t interfere as much with eating, and it’s not as disgusting if you’re sweating a lot and some drips into your mouth. I’m not convinced it would do the job in really heavy mosquitoes, though.

Slugs seemed to really like our sandals. We would leave them outside the tent at night, and in the morning they would be covered with slugs. It was kind of gross. But not as bad as the large spiders in the outhouse.

We left late Sunday morning, and got back to Boston early in afternoon. It was a good trip! Next time we go camping, we might try backpacking. I guess we’ll have to be better organized; no hiking out of the wilderness to the Woodstock Inn for dinner, I suspect!

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Which famous writer do YOU sound like?

Posted on July 23, 2010 by Kristin

Someone on one of the mailing lists I’m on sent this around. You enter some text in the box, and it’s supposed to analyze your writing style and tell you which famous author writes like you.

I wouldn’t put much weight on the results (I get different answers depending on which story of mine I analyze, or even which excerpt from the story.). But it’s strangely addictive, nonetheless.

Apparently, my three published stories sound like Mark Twain (the e-mail epistolary), Harry Harrison (the organic chemistry science fiction story) and Chuck Palahniuk (the high fantasy story with elves).

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Weather hype

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Kristin

I left work an hour earlier than I’d intended to today, since the news on the radio was broadcasting a “severe thunderstorm alert” for the Boston area until 8 pm, warning of frequent lightning, violent and destructive winds, and hail.

Well. It had rained for about 15 minutes BEFORE I heard about the thunderstorm alert. But I didn’t encounter any rain at all on the bike ride home, and by 6 or 7 the sun was coming out again.

I was trying to be safe, since the wooded bike path can be quite dangerous in heavy winds and lightning. But I guess weather forecasters have taken to hyping potential summer thunderstorms the same way they treat oncoming winter blizzards.

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Top Five(-plus) Novels

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Kristin

A few months back, on the mailing list for my Clarion West class, someone started a thread asking people for their Top Five novels. I hesitated to contribute until it became clear that a lot of other people in the class couldn’t limit themselves to just five, either.

The question of Top Five is difficult, too. Top Five that I like best now? Top Five most influential on my own work (even if I’ve come to realize that they aren’t all that good)? Top Five that I should claim to like, so everyone will think I’m, like, really smart and all?

I went with something between 1 and 2. But, yeah, there’s way more than five.

Little House on the Prairie series, Laura Ingalls Wilder: My mother taught me to read before I started kindergarten, using a “teach your toddler to read by bribing them with treats” method that probably flies in the face of modern educational techniques. But it worked. In first grade, when most of my classmates were learning to read, me and this other girl who could already read had our own separate special reading class, and the teacher would take us to the school library and pick out books for us (or maybe she gave lists of suggested books to our parents; my memory is a little fuzzy on that point). I remember reading all the E.B. White children’s classics, and I liked them, but not nearly so much as I liked the Little House on the Prairie books. I desperately wanted to live in pioneer days. I used to think this was because the life depicted in the books was so different from mine. Now I’ve begun to suspect that, since my parents were doing this hippie back-to-the-land/raise-your-own-pigs/grow-your-own-vegetables thing, I liked the books because there were aspects that reminded me of my own life. Only with long dresses, and horses.

The Bible: For my 6th birthday, I asked for a Bible. What I really wanted, but never told my parents (probably because I assumed they already knew), was a fashion accessory Bible. There was another little girl around my age at church who always brought this pretty New Testament with a white leather cover and gold-edged pages. THAT was the Bible I wanted. Instead (since I could read), my parents gave me the Children’s Living Bible: the complete text, only in simple language that a child could understand. Mind you, the content wasn’t edited. Every gang rape, stoning, animal sacrifice and tent-peg assassination is still in there, only at a 4th grade reading level. No one bothered to tell me that the Bible was different from a novel, so I read it like it was a novel. I loved it! Well, except for the boring parts. But I skipped those. This was probably the origin of my love for epic fantasy. Move over, floor-length calico dresses! Bring on the swords and epic battles!

The Tower of Geburah, John White: I can’t re-read this, because I suspect that the Suck Fairy will have waved her magic wand over it. (According to a Boskone panel, the Suck Fairy is the magical entity who reveals to you that your favorite books suck. There’s also a Racism Fairy and a Sexism Fairy.) The book is a blatant Narnia rip-off (magical television sets instead of a wardrobe) for the children of evangelical Christian parents who thought the Christian message in the Chronicles of Narnia was too subtle. But I hadn’t read the Narnia books when I was 8, so I thought this was amazing. It’s got swords, and castles, and a nine-foot tall evil sorceror, and a barely averted human sacrifice scene that gave me nightmares for weeks.

The Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis: I read these so many times. Despite the elves in my own epic fantasy world, it’s WAY more Narnia pastiche than Tolkien pastiche.

The Chronicles of Prydain, Lloyd Alexander: I’ve stolen ideas from this series too.

The Dark is Rising (series), Susan Cooper: Oh, the badly-written prophetic poetry I tried to work into my own novel after reading these! I also tried to work in a subplot about King Arthur (though The Fionavar Tapestry (Guy Gavriel Kay) also deserves some blame for inducing me to think that this was ever a good idea). Fortunately, the bad poetry and Arthurian subplot went by the wayside while I was still in highschool.

Anne of Green Gables series (first 3 books), Lucy Maud Montgomery: There are 7 books. I think the series kind of jumps the shark after the first 3. Especially book 7, which ends up being WWI pro-Allied propaganda more than a compelling story (though anyone who thinks propaganda necessarily makes bad art hasn’t seen Casablanca). But the earlier books are awesome. I was reading one of them in elementary school during our end-of-the-day free reading period, and I didn’t even hear the bell ring. It was a very loud bell.

Emily of New Moon series, Lucy Maud Montgomery: Emily is the emo-Anne. Dark-haired, brooding, consistently unpopular with her classmates, wants to be a writer … she even has pointed ears, and people comment on how she looks kind of like an elf. I have to point out that, while not necessarily pre-Tolkien (I think these came out around the same time as The Hobbit), this series is DEFINITELY pre-LOTR. So there. Tolkien did not invent elves.
These are dangerous books to give to preteen girls unless you want them to become writers.

Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare: Can we include plays? I include this one because I’m kind of obsessed with Romans (I put them in my epic fantasy series), and I think it started here. Though I’m not sure whether it was the text of the play that did it, or the movie portrayal of Mark Antony by a young and hawt Marlon Brando.

The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien: Okay, I admit it, I didn’t put elves in my epic fantasy series until I read this. It seemed like a good idea at the time….
I read these one summer, and was so hooked I stayed up each night reading until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.

The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, Mary Stewart: I stole a lot of stuff from these, too. This was the first novelized re-telling of the Arthurian legends that I ever read, so it always felt like canon to me.

The Thornbirds, Colleen McCullough

Memory, Sorrow & Thorn (trilogy), Tad Williams: One of the best surprise twist endings in all of epic fantasy. It undermines the conventions of the genre in the same way that The Murder of Roger Akroyd did for mystery.

The Wheel of Time (12 books and counting), Robert Jordan: Books 4 and 5 are among the best epic fantasy ever written. If he’d finished the series in 2 more volumes after number 5, this would be an amazing work of fantasy fiction. Instead, the plot basically stalls for five books. Five 900+ page books. And yet, on the strength of those earlier volumes, I still want to put it on my list.

The First Man in Rome (and subsequent books), Colleen McCullough: Incredibly dense Roman historical fiction. Thank you Colleen McCullough, for doing so much research for YOUR novel that I can just read the appendices instead of doing my own research! (actually I’m exaggerating, I’ve done lots of my own research on ancient Rome, and have the 400-page history textbooks to prove it)

A Song of Ice and Fire (4 books and waiting), George R.R. Martin: It’s unclear to me that Martin is ever going to actually finish book 5, let alone the entire series. I include it anyway because it’s SO well-written, and the structure of the first book is such a wonderful text for anyone else who wants to see how to sidestep many of the problems inherent in writing an epic fantasy series (how to avoid information overload on the part of the reader, especially too many names of characters and places, how to bury foreshadowing in plain view, how to avoid long and boring descriptions of scenery that have no relevance to the plot….).

The Deptford Trilogy and The Cornish Trilogy, Roberston Davies: Smart, humorous, well-written books that nonetheless avoid playing literary tricks for their own sake, or trying to show off how clever the author thinks he is; everything is subservient to the demands of telling a good story. My favorite is book 3 of The Cornish Trilogy, The Lyre of Orpheus, which is kind of like a book version of Waiting for Guffman, only funnier.

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin

To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke: This seems to be a book that people either love or hate. I loved it. It’s like a really long Jane Austen novel. With fairies and magicians. And footnotes. Really long footnotes.

Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Michael Chabon

Flora Segunda, Ysabeau S. Wilce: After reading this the first time, I wanted to immediately go back and re-read it, to find all the clever bits I might have missed, and have a better appreciation of how they all fit together.

Okay, so that was a few more than five.

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Produce Heaven

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Kristin

Now that my boyfriend lives in the apartment upstairs from me, in the same building, I get to borrow his car. (He even gave me my own set of keys, with a little Swiss army knife attached to the keychain.) This means that I get to shop at Russo’s.

Russo’s is the best place to buy fruits and vegetables in the Greater Boston area. It’s in Watertown, about a 20-minute drive from my place, and it’s not accessible by public transportation, and not realistically bikeable (not unless you’re Jonathan Edelson, but that’s another story).

I don’t know if the quality of produce in grocery stores has actually (as it seems to me) been getting worse, or if I’m just getting picker, as I get old and crotchety. A couple weeks ago, I went to Whole Foods, which is usually much better than Shaw’s (part of the Albertson’s chain); the fruit was fine, but the only vegetable I could find that didn’t look wilted and disgusting was cabbage (okay, the corn was fine too, but I was looking for a vegetable I didn’t need to cook the same day I bought it). In July! Are you kidding me, Whole Foods?

Ah, Russo’s! An entire large bin of crisp, crunchy snow peas (instead of a small bin of wilted, droopy, brown-edged snow peas like at Whole Foods). Green beans so fresh that you could just take a handful out of the bin and end up with mostly good ones, instead of having to pick through and choose one bean at a time. Russo’s has vegetables I’ve never even heard of, and they consistently have any vegetable or fruit I might want, and decent quality, too. Last Saturday, they had fresh sour cherries. And quail eggs. I didn’t happen to want either fresh sour cherries or quail eggs, but it’s nice to know that I have the option.

There are a few downsides. Although they have an excellent deli (way better provisioned than the one at the Fresh Pond Whole Foods), their fresh meat department is tiny. No fish. And, while they have a lot of dry goods, canned food and condiments, they’re all on shelves below eye level (under the produce bins), so they’re really hard to find. And the store is always crowded, even before 9 am on a Saturday.

But if you like fresh fruit and vegetables, Russo’s is the place. They also have an extensive cheese department, a good selection of bakery items from local artisanal bakeries, a patisserie, and lots of fresh flowers. Plus a decent selection of dairy, prepared foods like hummus and olives … I could go on and on.

I don’t like the idea of having to go to multiple grocery stores each week. But, since most of what I buy each week IS fresh fruit and vegetables, and since there’s a Shaw’s supermarket right on the way home from Russo’s where I can get all the dry goods I lost patience trying to find at Russo’s … well, it’s kind of worth it.

Donald’s just glad not to be dragged along to the grocery store with me anymore.

Posted in Food and drink | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Great story from Realms of Fantasy

Posted on July 18, 2010 by Kristin

I’ve been reading the August issue of Realms of Fantasy, and I really liked Sara Genge’s story, “Seagull Girl’s Butterfly Tongue.” It’s a zombie story with an unusual take on zombies (they’re a little like a fantastical version of the Borg).

I might be reading too much into it, but I thought the story also hinted at a parallel with the way western culture often attempts to experience other cultures, stealing bits of the other cultures and incorporating them into their own in a misguided attempt to understand them, perhaps ruining or at least diminishing the original culture as part of the process. “… that was the zombie way. Forever to yearn for new things. Forever to absorb them and turn them into the same old McHuman.”

Of course, this tendency is hardly unique to American, Canadian and modern European culture. I think of the ancient Romans borrowing from Greek culture. Or the Mughal conquerers of northern India (especially Akbar) borrowing from Hindu culture. And I’d also question whether it’s entirely bad.

But I liked the thought-provoking way in which Genge’s story raised some of these questions. Also, the zombies were really creepy.

Posted in Short fiction | Tagged | 1 Comment

Shame on you, America’s Test Kitchen!

Posted on July 16, 2010 by Kristin

After all my dissing of Rachael Ray and her so-called 30 Minute Meals, and my holding up of America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks as a sort of star pupil in the school of Giving Realistic Time Estimates For Recipes … the other day, I made Beef Teriyaki from the America’s Test Kitchen The Quick Recipe cookbook. It was supposed to take 30 minutes, and it took an entire hour!

The ongoing problem with all these recipes, which I think I might have mentioned before, is that they seem to start the clock at the point where the ingredients have already been chopped and diced and minced. Unfortunately, I don’t have a staff of kitchen servants (or even one kitchen servant) to do my chopping for me. (A friend of mine from India said that her mother does, in fact, have the maid chop up the vegetables for dinner, and then the mother does the actual cooking.)

Not being a Rachael Ray recipe, the America’s Test Kitchen Beef Teriyaki provided only 3 servings, instead of the suggested 4 to 6. But that was partly because my boyfriend Donald had a second helping. (Though Donald often has second helpings of Rachael Ray recipes, and I still end up with 6 to 8 servings when they’re supposed to serve 4.)

I liked the beef teriyaki too, although I think I might have reduced the sauce a little too long. The recipe instructions said to cook the meat in the sauce at the end “until the sauce reduces to a syrupy glaze and the meat is well coated.” But I had some uncertainty about what, exactly, that meant. The sauce did taste good, but I think it might have been a little too syrupy and candy-like.

Last night, Donald cooked dinner for me, also from The Quick Recipe. He made Stir-Fried Pork, Celery, and Peanuts in Sichuan Chile Sauce (with rice from a rice cooker; my rice cooker; Donald doesn’t own any cooking utensils as specialized as a rice cooker). In the cookbook, the recipe calls for chicken, but pork was what he had, and besides he’s sort of allergic to chicken.

It was quite delicious, flavorful and spicy, and the sauce was just the right degree of thickness (it was better than the teriyaki). Donald doesn’t really cook, and this may be one of the few recipes he’s ever cooked completely from scratch (he can feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). He even mixed the stir-fry sauce from raw ingredients like soy sauce, sherry, and Sichuan peppercorns (which he first toasted and then ground in a coffee grinder). Which I think is a good illustration of the fact that anyone, no matter how inexperienced they are, can cook perfectly well as long as they have a good cookbook, and are good at following instructions.

It’s also an illustration of the fact that these cookbooks that promise quick meals, whether Rachael Ray’s or America’s Test Kitchen, fail especially in that promise to inexperienced cooks. (Which is especially aggravating with the Rachael Ray cookbooks, because they’re specifically marketed as being suitable for people who don’t already do a lot of cooking.) The America’s Test Kitchen recipe was supposed to take 35 minutes; Donald said it was more like 2 hours. “Mincing takes a lot longer than you’d think,” he said. Perhaps he’d do better with Lisa’s tomato-feta-pesto pasta dish. (Though I can’t really see him trying it, since he believes that all dinners should include meat, and doesn’t really like pesto.)

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More online fiction from Clarion West classmates

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Kristin

Two of my Clarion West classmates have stories out online: Rajan Khanna at Basement Stories, and An Owomoyela at Fantasy Magazine. An’s story has already been positively reviewed in Locus Magazine!’

Another classmate, Pamela Rentz, has a story “The Battle of Little Big Science” in the current issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, but unfortunately you can’t get it online! There might still be a few floating around at newsstands.

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Buy stuff from my Mom!

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Kristin

My mother, Heide Janz, has quilts available for sale at Etsy and ArtFire. She’s just getting started with these online marketplaces for people who make and sell handcrafted items, so right now she only has 4 quilts listed. But she does plan to add additional items, so if you like quilts, check back at her “shops” in a month or so.

Posted in Crafts | Tagged , , | 1 Comment