C. J. Cherryh, Cyteen gets a sequel, Regenesis
C. J. Cherryh’s new book, Regenesis is just out.
This the sequel to Cyteen, and my colleague has informed me I need to read it first. 
C.J. Cherryh was the 2005 Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award Winner, given by the Oklahoma Center for the Book. Here’s a sample of her achievements…
C.J. is one of the most prolific and highly respected authors in America. She has more than sixty books to her credit and is the winner of numerous honors, including three prestigious Hugo Awards, given by the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS).
Cherryh’s first book, Gate of Ivrel, was published in 1976. Since then she has become a leading writer of science fiction and fantasy, known for extraordinary originality, versatility, and superb writing. She received the John W. Campbell Award in 1977 for the Best New Writer, voted by the WSFS. Cherryh received the coveted Hugo Award for short story in 1979 for Cassandra, for novel in 1982 for Downbelow Station, and in 1989 for Cyteen. Cyteen also won the Locus Award, presented to winners of Locus magazine’s annual readers’ poll, for the best science fiction novel of 1988.
A person of varied talents, Cherryh’s personal interests lie in human genetics, astronomy, space science, aeronautics, astrophysicis, botany, geology, climatology, archaeology, cosmology, anthropology, and technology in general with practical and anthropological consideration. In her official biography she states, “I write full time. I travel. I try out things. The list includes, present and past tense; fencing, riding, archery, firearms, ancient weapons, donkeys, elephants, camels, butterflies, frogs, wasps, turtles, bees, ants, falconry, exotic swamp plants and tropicals, lizards, wilderness survival, fishing, sailing, street and ice skating, mechanics, carpentry, wiring, painting (canvas), painting (house), painting (interior), sculpture, aquariums (both fresh and salt), needlepoint, bird breeding, furniture refinishing, video games, archaeology, Roman, Greek civ, Crete, Celts, and caves.” At 61 she took up figure skating.
Cherryh has a BA in Latin from the University of Oklahoma and a MA in Classics from John Hopkins University in Maryland. She taught Latin and ancient history in Oklahoma City Public Schools. Today she lives in Spokane, Washington.
Crosstimbers
Crosstimbers magazine is an amazing find. Published by the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, it includes; poetry, reviews, art, non-fiction and fiction articles and mostly by Oklahoma authors and illustrators.
( my scan of the magazine cover isn’t all that great, but please don’t judge this magazine by its cover)
For example, this issue has poetry by Sandra Soli, Robert Ferrier, Carol Hamilton, Chris Ellery, Audrey Streetman, Ann Brown and Robert Cooperman. There’s an article on Mary Welborn, “Art with a Mission : the New Botanicals.” She has an exhibit at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, from Feb.25th to April 22.
The exhibit is on display at the McDermott Learning Center from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day during the spring. The Wildflower Center is located at 4801 La Crosse Avenue in Austin, just off Loop 1 South (MoPac Boulevard). For information, call 292-4200. or www.wildflower.org
This month’s Crosstimbers also includes a thought provoking article by Tonnia L. Anderson, “On Remembering the Familiar: The Cultural Politics of Depression Era Photographs of Blacks.” Reviews of books like, Weigland’s Books on Trial and Klein’s Grappling with Demon Rum“. There’s an article on Nathan Brown, one of the Oklahoma Center for the Book finalists in poetry. And even an article on Train travel in America by Layne Thrift and J. C. Casey.
But if you want to read all this for yourself, USAO is very kind to post the current issue on the internet. Current issues are located on the Crosstimbers website. This is one great deal.
What’s growing by your bed?
My Bedside stack of books grows and grows and grows. It’s now starting to look like this aging, slightly moldy pile in this picture. I want to read everything and occasionally I come to the realization that is impossible. Now that I can’t find a library book and I’ve reached desperation I’m starting to sort through what I’m going to read and what is probably going to keep going to the bottom of the stack.
The other bad quality I harbor is to have 3 or 4 books going at the same time. Right now it’s Watchmen (almost done). We’ve already talked about that. Simon R. Green’s Drinking Midnight Wine. (Metro book sale buy). If you like Jim Butcher you’ll like Simon Green. And I do. And just borrowed on Interlibrary Loan, Thumbprint, by Friedrich Glauser, any author who started his book while he was an inmate at a Swiss insane asylum and then gets a crime fiction award named after him, must be good.
For Lent, I’m trying not to be a book hog. Time to turn in those overdues, get realistic about reading goals. Even if there is a large stack hiding in the closet, ah out of sight …..
What’s growing by your bed?
My Bedside stack of books grows and grows and grows. It’s now starting to look like this aging, slightly moldy pile in this picture. I want to read everything and occasionally I come to the realization that is impossible. Now that I can’t find a library book and I’ve reached desperation I’m starting to sort through what I’m going to read and what is probably going to keep going to the bottom of the stack.
The other bad quality I harbor is to have 3 or 4 books going at the same time. Right now it’s Watchmen (almost done). We’ve already talked about that. Simon R. Green’s Drinking Midnight Wine. (Metro book sale buy). If you like Jim Butcher you’ll like Simon Green. And I do. And just borrowed on Interlibrary Loan, Thumbprint, by Friedrich Glauser, any author who started his book while he was an inmate at a Swiss insane asylum and then gets a crime fiction award named after him, must be good.
For Lent, I’m trying not to be a book hog. Time to turn in those overdues, get realistic about reading goals. Even if there is a large stack hiding in the closet, ah out of sight …..
Chick Flick Saturday night
It’s Chick Flick Saturday night and I’m home alone watching Bridget Jones Diary, oh for about the 20th time. Now there’s a book that doesn’t do the film justice, but how can you have Colin Firth in a book. What do you expect from a woman who spent the afternoon vacuum cleaner shopping with her husband and is ecstatic about a new bagless cyclonic hepa filter vacuum cleaner that picks up pet hair. Believe me with three dogs and one cat there is plenty of pet hair.
So with all the talk about movies never equalling the book, I think there are plenty of movies that are better than the book. Does anyone else think that, or do I just have Chick Flick euphoria?
Watchmen, Alan Moore, am I just too old
I’m reading Watchmen,
okay, I feel a little quilty because everyone I know at work is re-reading it to get ready for the movie. Somehow I have yet again missed that moment of reading what’s important at the time everyone else is. I’m going to blame it on my age, except I just looked and Alan Moore is just a year younger than me. (I hope I look a lot younger)
And along with my aging process, I’m not sure if I like my heroes as flawed as Watchmen. I like those guys/gals with super powers, the good vs. evil caricatures, and the sides are clearly delineated. Flawed, old, crazy is how I feel why do I want my superheroes to be the same, I think fantasy is a good thing. Am I totally against the grain with this thinking.
But I do get the angry, cynicism, irritation with the, forgive the word, “establishment”. So I’ll read on even if I’m a day late and a dollar short as my grandmother would say.
Melancholy Elephant, Spider Robinson and Lawrence Lessig
Sadie at Extremely Graphic blog has really gotten me thinking about creativity and copyright issues. I’m beginning to be a Lawrence Lessig fan, and when I saw him on the Colbert Report recently I became intrigued again with our antiquated thinking about copyright and artistic expression. In promoting his new book Remix (which I have already mentioned on this blog), by the way there are remixes of the interview everywhere on youtube.
Here is a YouTube of Lessig….
Lessig’s blog provides all kinds of discussion on this topic including interviews, and lectures of Lessig explaining his views on copyright and creative collaboration.
Spider Robinson, in 1983 wrote a short story called Melancholy Elephants that addresses what Sadie and Lim, the Vidder are talking about. Thanks to his use of the Creative Commons you can read the story for yourself.
So maybe it’s time to re-think art, re-think copyright, use collaboration more and explore what all these issues mean to us and do they create unnecessary limitations on creative expression when everyone is worried about violating copyright. And is art finite? Are there any cheerful elephants?
Carolyn D. Wall, Sweeping Up Glass
The most powerful novel I have read this year is Carolyn Wall’s Sweeping Up Glass.
Currently published by Poisoned Pen Press (hardback), with Random House picking it up and releasing it in paperback, August 2009.
ISBN-10: 1-59058-512-7 (1590585127) Poisoned Pen Press
ISBN: 978-0-385-34303-9 (0-385-34303-5) Random House (paperback)
Sweeping Up Glass is set in 1938 Kentucky, dirt poor times and determined folks barely hanging on. Olivia Harker lives with her abandoned grandson, and her crazy mom Ida, who inhabits the shack out behind their tiny country store. Olivia has her own mothering issues, her daughter has left her and her son behind. Will’m is the only bright light in Olivia’s life. This is a tale of poverty, race, love lost and found, failed relationships, and somewhere in it all the possibility of hope.
The most poignant parts of the novel are the interplay of race relations as it affects the characters particularly Olivia during her childhood and latter the decisions she must make. What we see and fail to see determined by the color of our skin. The catalyst for the story is the needless slaughter of the silver faced wolves and the mirroring of cruelty of man against man.
The story is a strong one, but in my opinion what makes this an outstanding debut novel are the characters. Olivia and Ida, Will’m and Pap, Junk and Love Alice, and the Cott’ners filled with hate. The ending will startle you, jar you, and hold you spell bound through the final chapters. I won’t spoil any of it for you.
