A Grand Master is gone

Arthur C. Clark has died.

2001.

 

Rama.

Childhood's End

The Fountains of Paradise

.

I could go on, and on. Clarke is the writer who really expanded my horizons, who made me think big impossible things. Who made me understand, finally, that we are living on this tiny little ball in a backwater section of the galaxy in a small corner of a vast universe. He realized the importance of satellites in communication before there were satellites.

There is apparently one more Clark book forthcoming, a collaboration between him and Fred Pohl. What a gift.

Ad Astra, dear sir.

Two from the King

I freely admit that I avoided Blaze when it came out in hardcover. I knew it was a revised and updated "trunk" novel from pre-publicity, and I think King has talked about it before in one of his earlier works (On Writing or something). So I just wasn't enthused about something he wrote 30 + years ago that he didn't think was publishable then. I thought I'd catch it at the library, or wait for the paperback. Or both.

Well, my boss, knowing me to be a pretty big King fan, gave the paperback to me after he finished it. And I was wrong, OK? Blaze isn't a bad book, and it's well worth reading. I wouldn't put it near the top of any list of King's work, but it mostly held my attention and was interesting.

Clayton Blaidsell is our main character, and he's a big boy who's a few cards short of a full deck. He finds it easiest to make money by being 'muscle' for the bad guys. Then his partner is killed and he's left on his own, deciding to pull of the last big job; a kidnapping.

Blaze is mostly the story of the kidnapping, the aftermath, and the chase. We learn about Blaze in a series of flashbacks that are frankly often more interesting than the 'main' story.

This is typical of early King works, where we know early on what is going to happen and the suspense comes in the waiting until it does. Only here the suspense never really comes, we're just along for the ride. It's a good ride, but not a great one.

So it was with much trepidation that I picked up "Duma Key" in hardback. I knew it was a different King story. Not set in Maine, not about an author, not a Dark Tower book. Something new. I had read the short story "Memory" that was at the end of Blaze and was intrigued to see how it would play out.

I don't really have words to describe how profoundly this book affected me. Duma is not merely a great King story, it is a great novel period. It's the kind of thing that makes me glad I stuck with him through the "Tommyknockers" phase. It's just an excellent, excellent read.

It's the story of Edgar Freemantle, a self-made man in the construction industry. He loses his arm and nearly his life in an accident, then proceeds to lose his wife and perhaps his mind. As therapy he picks up and moves to Duma Key, a small isolated island off the coast of Florida. And he paints, meets some local residents, and paints some more.

And that's all I'm willing to say. The plot is amazing and surprising. We don't know where this story is going and it's delightful. There are things that happen that I had no idea would happen, delightful things that are both wondrous and scary. The Florida setting is evocative and well realized.

Plainly put this is just great, great book and you are doing yourself a disservice if you miss it. If you've never read King this is a great place to start.

At last, System Center Service Manager Info

Delayed even more than I thought, timelines are finally out for Service Manager.

System Center Team Blog Post Here

With beta in late 2008 and projected RTM of 2010, this had better be as fully baked as I hope it will be when it releases. I'm no longer certain we can wait, but hopefully we'll be able to stay in the TAP.

I hope everyone doesn't see this as a complete negative for this product. It should be far better for the wait. The initial effort had plenty of potential, and for them to blow it up and go back to square one was just a staggering commitment. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Finally, a use for that System Center scarf.

At the end of the System Center Service Manager TAP airlift (then called Service Desk), the swag came out in the form of scarves. Scarves? We were all waiting on a cool SCSD polo shirt or something. But a scarf?

There were some leftover at the end of the day, so I grabbed two. Just because. I finally found a use for the second one.

I'm still trying to figure out how Omar got everyone's certificate on the correct chair with no nametags or placemarkers. There's no way I could memorize that many names and faces in that short a span.

Ten Things I've done that you haven't

With thanks to John Scalzi's challenge. This was an intriguing exercise.

1. Fathered six children. With the same woman. That I'm still married to. Over a twenty years span.

2. Played big band jazz in a hundred year old theatre.

3. Ran over a skunk. On a motorcycle. (I was on the motorcycle, not the skunk). That bike still smelled faintly of skunk when I sold it two years later: he baked into the exhaust.

4. Early online pedophile stalkerage: was propositioned by a transvestite on The Well at the age of 15 or so.

5. Owned a 1978 Ford Mustang King Cobra v8. It was a piece of crap, but a relatively rare piece of crap.

6. Cooked hot dogs by essentially plugging them into a standard outlet.

7. Nearly blown up a house while experimenting with making my own hydrogen. (A garbage bag full of hydrogen makes a BIG fireball.)

8. Had the brand XYLINX burned into the back of my hand while testing FPGA's for heat issues. It stayed for about three months.

9. Pitched the championship game for my "B" league team. (OK, I'm stretching now).

10. Got a signed rejection from George Scithers at the age of twelve. Thought my crap didn't stink: still haven't published.

The Traveler

I just finished "The Traveler" by John Twelve Hawks. To be honest I'd heard nothing of this book or the author before buying it. I ran across it at The Frugal Muse and it looked interesting.

Apparently the internets are rife with speculation about who John Twelve Hawks might be. The book tells us that he lives "off the grid", and not much else. Some say it's Dan Brown writing for the YA market.

I'm not sure who the author is and don't really care. It's mediocre at best.

It details an omnipresent corporation that has fingers into every database, every public surveillance camera, every system. Big Brother is most certainly watching you. There are folks called Travelers that can cross over into other "realms", and folks called "Harlequins" that protect them. And of course, the bad guys are out to kill or control the travelers.

It's not a bad book, by any stretch. It kept the pages turning, and most of the action was well-paced and believable. It just didn't have a character I could bring myself to give a rip about.

I won't seek out the next book in what will be a four book series, but I won't turn it down if I see it for $3.95, the price I picked up this one for a The Frugal Muse.

I'm ordering one today....