Happy Birthday to Me! (And Other Things)

Monday, I had a haircut and puttered about main campus.

Tuesday, I headed downtown to order my devotional drama reader, bought a kettle for tea-brewing and an erasable marker for calendar-marking, and reorganized my desk in the office.

Wednesday was my birthday, my 24th.

Today, I and some other MA students will be meeting with a representative of the Mac-Corrie (PDF format) administration to make an argument in favour of keeping these rooms for next year. After I loot the library (see below), a birthday party tonight at 9 o'clock for me and a dormmate.

Friday, Queen’s support staff might go on strike, which will nicely complicate things for me. (According to a fellow student, the probability of a strike barring a remarkable university change of heart is very high; Queen’s might be preparing for a four to five week strike.)

I’m also going down to Toronto for the weekend or some sizable portion thereof. I’ve a presentation upcoming (next Tuesday) for my medieval devotional drama, on Miri Rubin’s book on the Corpus Christi (the bread and flesh of Christ in the Eucharist).

The days are full, but they proceed nicely (by and large, at least).

Cherryh, and Downbelow Station

While I did my laundry Sunday night (or, rather, very early Monday morning), I read C. J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station, and I was impressed. It’s marginally space-operatic—there is a faster-than-light drive, after all, and physical commodities which are valuable enough to merit transport across interstellar distances—but on the whole it’s a plausible universe that’s described here. True, at times the writing is so dense and the plot so convoluted that Downbelow Station descends to some of the stereotypes of inferior science-fiction writing. On the whole, though, I’m impressed by her capabilities as a writer, as more people should be.

In the first century or so of starflight, the Earth Company manages to scatter a half-dozen stations to nearby planetary systems. None of these have Earth-like planets, and so these stations remain dependent on Earth for support, exporting to each other and to Earth. The discovery of the world of Downbelow at Pell’s Star (Tau Ceti), with its Earth-like biosphere and native hisa sophonts, changes this; Pell Station is able to grow quite nicely, supported by an entire biosphere and native labour, attracting immigrants from the other more marginal stations. It is the discovery of the world of Cyteen, generally Earth-like and far from Sol (at BD +01 4774, in case anyone wants to know), which emancipates the furthest stations from their dependency on an increasingly out-of-touch Earth. Supported by a planetary biosphere, boosting their numbers with mass cloning, and possessing a faster-than-light jump drive, the Union and the Earth Company go to war.

Downbelow Station takes place at the end of the War. Earth Company’s fleet has ravaged most of the stations between Pell and Cyteen, precipitating flows of desperate refugees to Pell but failing to break the Union, indeed being steadily forced back to Sol by the Union’s fleets. The Fleet, under the charismatic and ruthless Captain Mazian, has become a power dangerously without scruples or any external loyalties; the Union, equally dangerous, is determined to take Pell. The Konstantin family that runs the Pell system—Downbelow, Pell Station, the Tau Ceti’s entire population both human and hisa—and the remaining free merchanters are caught in the middle.

I’d prefer not to spoil the plot for the reader, not least because Downbelow Station is one of the earliest books (both in terms of writing and in terms of her universe’s chronology). Still, despite the aforementioned occasional turgidity of her writing, it was rather good. I’ll have to read Cyteen--another one of her award-winning novels—next, or, possibly again. I’ve taken out both it and Rimrunners from the Kingston public library, but it remains to be seen whether I’ll have the time to (well) read them in time.)

The below quiz results, though, aren't very encouraging for me:

My #1 result for the SelectSmart.com selector, What Cyteen character are you?, is Ariane Emory

( Read why. )

[BLOGROLL UPDATE] Far Outliers

I've added Far Outliers to my blogroll. It's an excellent blog with a lot of interesting materia on overlooked populations--diasporic, immigrant, transient--in the Asia-Pacific region.

Big words

rfmcdpei's Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 11
Average number of words per sentence:	20.30
Average number of syllables per word:	1.58
Total words in sample:	2355
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Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern

Let's hope Bush is thinking differently

More lunacy from Adam Yoshida, this time literally so:

More to the point, space is the key to the American future. Whoever owns the stars will be the master of all humanity. No other nation, no other civilization, or other race can be allowed to take his honor. Space must be American just as Virginia or Colorado is American. It is our collective destiny, our birthright.

[...]

Some will ridicule those who dream of ‘Space Empire’ or speak of the future colonization of the Moon and Mars. Yet these will be the realities of the future, whether we are willing to accept them or not. The control and colonization of space will not only render humanity less vulnerable to the random chances of fate (an asteroid strike, for example) but it will also forever forestall the rise of another great power upon the Earth.

Think about it for a moment. A single Star Cruiser, maneuvered into position, could drop dozens of weapons onto a target seconds after launch. Defending against such an attack, short of the use of other space vessels, would be essentially impossible. A handful of such ships could, if necessary, wipe an entire nation off the face of the Earth. In the face of such power, most rational nations would have no choice but to accept permanent American world rule.

[...]

It might also be worth pointing out that, if aliens do exist, there is little reason to assume that they will be, as most have postulated, more advanced than we are. There is an equally good reason to believe that they will be less advanced. Would it not be prudent then to be prepared to restrict various alien races to the surface of their home planets?

[...]

It may even be that we will find alien races that will have to be destroyed, lest they pose a threat, or that we will find races of servile aliens which might prove useful to us in other ways. I don’t know if we will, and we won’t know unless we try.