Back in the non-political world, I'm in the middle of one of the best pieces of, as the fancy set like to call it, "speculative fiction" I've ever read. And I've plowed through an alarming number of such novels since the age of 10 or so, so I don't say that lightly. The book is Robert Charles Wilson's Spin. It's set in the more-or-less present, and some of it even takes place in the Berkshires, yet it's an absolute mindblower, told with a deft hand the likes of which is seldom seen in SF circles.
It's not giving anything away to say that the premise involves the disappearance of the night sky, and the subsequent discovery that a barrier has been erected around the Earth. Outside the barrier, time passes at the rate of 3 years per second. All this is told without the dull trappings of hard science fiction, and it focuses on the intertwining lives of three people. Wilson is a deeply talented storyteller. Highly recommended.
UH-OH: I'm not really an alumnus, but I did attend Baylor University for a portion of my college education. Great teachers, but the place, well, just wasn't for me. Baylor is a Baptist college at least technically (you'd never necessarily know as a student, outside of a few course requirements), long considered somewhat aloof and separate from the fundamentalist versus moderate Baptist battle, not to mention the political connections between Texas Baptists and the right wing of the Republican Party.
I bring this up because Baylor just made the national scene (and surprised an awful lot of people) by declaring a hard right political turn, choosing as its new president a deeply polarizing figure: Ken Starr. Seems worth noting for its sheer weirdness.
IN OTHER NEWS: I'm intrigued to see what my now fully functioning anti-blog will do. Will it become autonomous? Does time pass differently there, too? Stay tuned!
