Tidbits.

Huzzah! I finally finished Blue Mars. At last I'm free of the burden of a long and acclaimed science fiction triology tangentially related to my interest areas...at least until I start up The Baroque Cycle. Look, I recognize it's not Proust, but apparently no one's going to be posting on that.

In terms of a review, I think you probably already know whether you're the kind of person who will read a 1000-page trilogy about the terraforming of Mars or not. I liked this book because it handled narrative problems in a fairly interesting way--the "longevity treatment" that extends character's lifespans into the hundreds of years initally seemed like a too-easy end-run around the time span issues involved in colonizing Mars, but ended up being a chance to ask some interesting questions about memory. Also, I liked it because it is clearly the forerunner of other science fiction that I like, (and some that I laughed at); and because I am always a sucker for a novel of ideas, even if it does mean half of the book takes place at a talkfest like a constitutional convention (or a trial, or what have you.) Yet, and this is a big yet, the character development was really something that KSR was apparently only intermittently interested in. Especially in the case of the not one but two enigmatic yet forever silent genius Asian women characters that haunt the margins. (And perhaps we should not even mention the interlude in which the Dalai Lama is reincarnated into a community of tiny Mars men.) This is the kind of book that's more interesting to talk about having read than to actually read, I think, and I don't exactly mean that to be as snarky as it sounds. Obviously Mars' place in the Terran imagination remains powerful. I'm sure I'll read about it again. But for my next book I'd like a little more real in my realism.

Last night's read-alouds: Just Teenie, A Pirate's Alphabet, Bored Bill