Poetic philosophy/fiction. (And it's snowing again, dammit.)
Oh peeping blue hell, it's snowing. AGAIN.
It's very light, but it's definitely snow. I got home from my errands and was set to go out walking, but two things decided me against that idea: 1) it was really, really cold; and 2) it was snowing. I don't know if it's going to get heavier, but I'm boiling water for cocoa/tea, getting dressed in my warmer things, and trying not to swear.
And now for something completely different (that being the entry I was actually going to write before it started snowing again).
I've been rereading C. J. Cherryh's science fiction books the last few weeks. I've read many of them several times over, and each time I re-read a story I find something new - something I missed the first time around. Sometimes it's a quick reference to events in one of her other books, weaving her universe more tightly together. It's entirely possible to enjoy her books quite a lot without knowing the whens and whys of every last event she mentions or alludes to; but it's a heck of a lot of fun to be reading one of her stories and realize: hey, those folks that made the Sol alliance so paranoid? That's a shout-out to the Compact Space novels. (And that's just one of the more obvious ones.) Some of her stories also have occasional, pleasant bits of philosophical lyricism. When you're reading the story, it's possible to only catch these little pieces tangentally, or even to miss them. Sometimes I've paused in my first readings to think over a phrase, and for a while I had the habit of writing them all down whenever I found them. Surprisingly, though, I can still find bits even on a third or fourth re-read.
Some of my favorites include:
- Truth and illusion are but mirrored refractions. (Cyteen)
- Opposites are mutually necessary. (Cyteen)
- Illusions are all we have - and so they are a truth unto themselves.
- Everything can be in another state, or it can't exist at all. (Cyteen)
- The whole universe is talking. Listen and be amazed. (Cyteen)
I might be able to make a web site design using that quote, several Astronomy-of-the-Day pics, and some VLA shots.
Taken in context, they're interesting snapshots of how the characters think: either right at that time, or habitually. Taken out of context, they're still beautiful and thought-provoking.
When I dropped by the author's web site, I learned that she's working on a followup to Cyteen. In one of the blog entries, she mentions a character by name and says that he's talking to her again - which she takes as a good thing.
