Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

...in this slice of seasonal story from Strange Horizons...

There, I met my pilot. He was a veteran of the war, with a characteristically large Gallic nose and sharp black eyes that peered from just underneath the seam of his leather flying cap. He nursed his root beer silently, his manner that of the haunted serviceman, and let his two friends supply the conversation. On his left sat a pretty French girl, whose eyes were completely obscured by heavy spectacles. On his right sat a chattering yellow fellow—kin, by his looks, to the mechanics in the hangar.

[link via Boing Boing]

Robert Buettner's first novel opens with a quote from an anonymous letter fragment found on Omaha Beach: "war is an orphanage".

Most of the characters in Orphanage are orphans of one form or another. Kinetic weapons from what appears to be an alien colony on Ganymede are devastating the world, killing millions. A multinational force is being put together in order to take the war to the enemies door - and Jason Wander is part of it. Driven to despair by the death of his mother in one of the first attacks, he signs up in the military to avoid a prison sentence. It's an unnatrractive alternative that finally helps him realise who he is, to find love and friendship, and a purpose. In the orphanage of war he finds a new family. Jason's story mixes military service with a touch of detective work into the true nature of the foe (alongside a forgiveable authorial trait of using authorial fiat to put him in the right place at the right time).

This is the positive side of military SF, a novel like Haldeman's Forever War that takes war and uses it to explore its effects on the people involved. This isn't a story of glory and of overwhelming might. It's the tale of a suicide mission with little hope of return, and of the people who choose it over the alternatives. Jason Wander is a flawed character who surmounts his flaws to take advantage of lucky accidents and to find an impossible route to some kind of victory.

An enjoyable read, avoiding much of mil-SF's didactic nature.

Pens you write or draw with and then scan what you've drawn to give you one of those persistence of vision LED displays when you waggle the pen around in the air...



Rave on!

Though $39 is a little steep...

(Link via Gizmodo)

For those with small screens, it says on the screen:

Es wurde ein neues Geraet gefunden.
Device: Airbus A310
Soll die Auto-Konfiguration gestartet werden?
Start oder Abbrechen

For those who can't read German, it translates as:

A new device has been found.
Device: Airbus A310.
Should auto-configuration be started?
Start or Cancel

(via The Mobile Technology Weblog)

Walking down the street today (the one with the trees that featured in The Atrocity Archive), I heard an unusual bird call. It turned out to be a woodpecker high up in a tree. Normally we get Greater Spotted Woodpeckers travelling up and down the railway embankment, but the colours were wrong...

A bit of googling later and I'm pretty sure I saw the much rarer Lesser Spotted Woodpecker.



A red-listed bird in Putney!

Rar!

One of my favourite big books of recent years was Julian Cope's eclectic and idiosyncratic The Modern Antiquarian, a highly personal tour of the megalithic structures of Britain. If you could cope with the many snaps of his wife standing by a standing stone, you were left with an exploration of the ancient, the mysterious and the truly unknown. The related web site is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to visit the many megalithic structures scattered around the British Isles...

Now he's followed up with The Megalithic European - a similar exploration of the stones of Europe. One for my Amazon wishlist...



Anta de Gafete, Portugal