when good books go bad (or bad books go good?)

Today I was waiting in line at a coffee kiosk with a very tall pile of books which prominently had a copy of Pacific Edge with a garish science fiction cover on top. The guy behind me in the line was sussing out my books and commented that it looked like I had some for business and some for pleasure. When I responded 'nope, all business!' he was utterly confused - and all 'Kim Stanley Robinson, what?'. I can't tell if he was horrified or impressed, but it just goes to show the tenuous spot that SF holds in the canon, I guess.

FUTURE-CAT!!!

Pacific Edge available

Finally!! There were troubles with access and other things too ghastly to mention, but it's now on the WebCT site.

Kim Stanley Robinson environmental hero of the year

Time magazine recently named KSR one of its heroes of the environment for 2008.

I adore Oliver Morton, who wrote this article for Time. He has also written a wonderful book called Mapping Mars about humanity's ongoing fascination with the red planet (maybe even or especially as a site for utopian dreaming and visions?).

Following on from Peter's comment about rounding out the semester with a happy book, I would particularly like to highlight the line Morton writes here: "Life is lessened if the imagination fails to offer futures we can envision better than any past".

One of the points that Morton makes in Mapping Mars is that Robinson's writing is often a form of restitution or atonement for the mistakes that we have made in the past - particularly in his rewriting of the Western American landscape.

While Robinson has moments of beautiful prose (especially when writing about encounters with nature in the tradition of Gary Snyder etc) - unfortunately, sometimes his writing is also more second rate.

But he will always remain an ideas man and visionary. His books are definitely filled with soaring optimism.

New Australia, anyone?

This is great, does anyone know anything else about this? Why Paraguay?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Australia

"New Australia was a utopian socialist settlement in Paraguay founded by the Australian New Australian Movement. The colony was officially founded on 28 September 1893 as Colonia Nueva Australia and comprised 238 adults and children".

Arrrrrrgh.

In my utopia there will be no leaf-blowers.

Damn these motorized phalloi. Damn them.

Truman Show and Philip K Dick

I am equally surprised, pleased and weirded out by the discovery that The Truman Show was partly inspired by the Philip K. Dick novel Time Out of Joint.

But the more I think about it, the more Truman's surreal experience of a reality so real and safe and perfect that it can't possible be real is pure PKD.