Silly me, I would have thought that you would just use really engaging and exciting books.

Rick also recorded our after-reading panel discussion where Terry Bisson, Carter Scholz and I all wax thoughtful about sf. It was an interesting conversation and the audience had great questions (though they aren’t mic’ed well so you have to crank up the volume and listen carefully to hear them).

And finally, I want to link to Carter Scholz’s reading as well. We only met at the event, and I was sadly ignorant of him going in, but he did an astonishing reading from his book Radiance. I liked it so much I bought the book.

In case you are writing a Master’s thesis in psychology about the emotional timelines of hostages, let me give you a summary.

From day 1 to day 10, you think it’s all a mistake and the United States embassy will retrieve you at any moment.

From day 10 to day 50, you lose hope you can reason with your captors.

From day 50 to day 150, you cling to the possibility you can make your escape, even though you are in a filthy stone dungeon somewhere in the African jungle, your stomach bloated from dysentary, your feet gangrenous.

From day 150 to day 230, everything is a blur of leering faces and pots of gruel.

On day 233, you decide you can’t take the heat or the mosquitos or the maggot-infested food and you’re going to smash your skull in a single blow against the wall of your cell.

At this point, he’s got me hooked. I’m in. He’s very efficiently set the scene and given me a good initial window into his main character, and I’m ready to give the writer my trust. He in turn rewards that trust with a couple good sharp shocks along the way to a satisfying conclusion.

I spend so much time writing that it’s hard for me to enjoy reading much anymore. This was a nice exception to that. If you can find the Apr/May 2007 Weird Tales, I think “Faraji” makes it worth a look.

Amend that, lets just say that I’ve been reading very little in the sf/f genres in the last decade. I’m looking to educate myself as to what the genre looks like these days. I’m looking for good reads with interesting ideas, and I’m looking for good reads that are just plain fun (I write too much depressing stuff to spend all my time reading it, too, right? ;-) ).

Any suggestions?