Author: Michael Rawdon

Larry Niven: World of Ptavvs

Review of the novel World of Ptavvs by Larry Niven.

  • World of Ptavvs

    • by Larry Niven
    • PB, © 1966, 188 pp, Del Rey, ISBN 0-345-34508-8
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World of Ptavvs

Astonishingly, I’ve read very little by Larry Niven in the past: A couple of his story collections, and I tried reading Ringworld, but was not able to finish it at the time This was 20 years ago, but it’s a mystery to me. But I’ve collected his early novels over the last few years, and figured my recent trip to Florida was a good time to get through a few of them. In particular, his Known Space novels.

World of Ptavvs is the chronologically earliest-occurring of the novels in Known Space, taking place in the early 22nd century (and is one of the earliest written, as well). The alien Kzanol is a Thrint, a race which, millions of years ago, controlled most of Known Space and enslaved all other races it found. (This Thrintun are referred to as the “Slavers” in other stories.) A mishap while travelling forced Kzanol to put himself into stasis, and he landed on Earth and remained there until the present day, until he was dredged from the ocean and dubbed the “Sea Statue”.

Larry Greenberg is a low-level telepath who specializes in communicating with other species, notably dolphins. A scientist develops a stasis field and reasons that the Sea Statue might also be a creature in such a field, and recruits Greenberg to telepathically connect with the Statue when he frees it from stasis. However, it goes horribly wrong: The Thrint are true telepaths, able to control other creatures mentally. Kzanol imprints his mind on Greenberg’s, and Kzanol/Greenberg escape with a Thrint disintegrator weapon. The real Kzanol revives and steals a spaceship, and Kzanol/Greenberg follows him, the group heading for the outer solar system where Kzanol believes some of his equipment should also be stored in stasis, which could allow either incarnation of Kzanol to take over the world. A member of Earth’s police force, ARM, follows, as do a number of ships from the asteroid belt, as Earth is in an uneasy cold war with the Belters.

The novel is primarily an action/adventure yarn with some interesting underpinnings. Unfortunately it never quite rises above its basic structure of the “good guys” chasing the “bad guys” after the McGuffin of Kzanol’s device. Although this proves to be an interesting little travelogue, showing us the state of Earth writ large, and its tense relationship with the Belters, it’s still pedestrian stuff.

What engaged me in the book were the supporting ideas, especially the long-dead Thrintun, their slave races, and the remnants of their era which have survived into the present day. I’m a sucker for stories involving bits of the past coming to impact the present (which may be why I continue to read Jack McDevitt’s SF mysteries such as Seeker), and besides Kzanol himself qualifying (and ending up as a man-… er… thing-out-of-time) there are a few other leftovers which rear their heads here as well. While they’re not integral to the plot so much as a portent of what humanity will have to deal with as they head into the stars, they’re still pretty neat.

The story also includes two pieces of showstopping technology. Well, Kzanol’s mind control abilities aren’t really technology as such, but they’re so powerful (if limited in the number of people he can control at a time) that it’s easy to see why the Thrint were able to control Known Space in their day with ease. Niven is clever in introducing a Thrint as a single creature isolated from everything he knows, turning Earth into a little cauldron to see how it reacts to Kzanol (and vice-versa). The second element is the stasis field, which naturally is tremendously powerful, and apparently plays into the later Known Space stories to a large degree. Being able to stop time around some area, and consequently rendering that area indestructible, has many applications, which are explored pretty widely in the introduction. (Vernor Vinge of course explored these issues in his later pair of novels The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime, but it’s interesting to see Niven working with a slice of the implications here, almost 20 years earlier.)

World of Ptavvs is a little disappointing and isn’t essential reading, but there’s some good stuff in here. There’s better stuff in the later books, though.

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Extractions

I should expand a little on that last entry:

Debbi learned recently that she should have her remaining wisdom teeth extracted. Moreover, she has a baby tooth which never fell out and which has cracked, and also needed to be pulled. So she scheduled an appointment for this morning to have all this done, as well as to put in a post for a future implant to replace the baby tooth. It was rather clever of her to schedule it for now, since she’s had our trip to DisneyWorld and then Karen’s visit to distract her, and she didn’t really start getting nervous (or didn’t talk about it) until last night.

The appointment was for 8 this morning, so I drove her in and then came home for breakfast. Then I drove back an hour later to pick her up. The extractions went fine, but she needs to get two bone grafts in her jaw for the post, so she got one this morning, and will get the next in a couple of months, and then will get the post probably a couple of months after that. And then the full implant probably six months after that, if I remember all the details. Quite a pain, but what can you do? (The implant, by the way, is much more expensive than the extractions were. Amazing how these tiny little things are so pricy to care for.)

Debbi’s home now. She sat on the couch and read this morning, and then the numbness started wearing off. She got some drugs from the doctor, took some, had some lunch, and has mostly been sleeping since then. She says she was more alert when she came out of the anaesthesia than she’d expected, and has not been as uncomfortable as she’d expected. And since I still have all of my teeth (and will probably have them until I die, if I take care of them), I had no idea what she should expect. But it’s gone pretty well, I think.

She’s taken the whole week off for this, and she’ll surely need at least the first three days for her body to recover. The trauma alone has probably got her laid low for today and maybe tomorrow. I’m home today to take care of her (company policy allows me to take time off to care for sick family members – which makes sense, since otherwise how would parents cope?), but it’s back to work for me tomorrow!

Debbi really, really, reallyreallyreally hates the dentist. She’s been a real trooper through this whole thing.

My Insane Month

A summary of why March is being so stressful for me.

So here’s how March shapes up:

  1. March 1-2: Prepare my income tax information and mail to my CPA.
  2. March 3-10: Fly to Florida, go to DisneyWorld with Debbi’s family, fly back.
  3. March 11: Clean the house, try to relax.
  4. March 12: Karen arrives to stay with us while she’s here on business.
  5. March 13: Frisbee.
  6. March 16-18: A weekend of eating many foods.
  7. March 19 (that’s today!): Karen leaves. Debbi has surgery to remove her wisdom teeth. I take the day off to take care of her. Debbi has the week off to recover.
  8. March 20: Frisbee.
  9. March 31: Final frisbee tournament of the year.
  10. April 1: Fantasy baseball draft.

Many of these things are fun. But all of them require some attention. And for the next two weeks, I’ll be spending most of my spare time preparing for that fantasy baseball draft. Which I enjoy, but it does tend to take my focus away from all of my other hobbies during that time.

And none of this includes work, which is plenty lively these days. (Did I mention that e-mail was down at work on Friday? It bothered me well enough, and I can only imagine that it drove managers and others who simply live in e-mail nuts.)

On the plus side, we didn’t get hit with a snowstorm which cancelled all of our plans. I knew that I heart living in California for some reason.

I’m looking forward to April.

Beach Day

When talking about the shaky housing market these days, people in the Bay Area are naturally wondering how the market will shake out here. But we do have an intrinsic advantage that goes beyond the employment and cultural opportunities here: On a Saturday in the middle of March you can go over to the ocean and walk along the beach wearing just a light jacket.

My friend Karen has been visiting this week, staying with us but mostly here for business. She finished up the bulk of her work on Thursday, so Friday we went out and gorged ourselves on food, and then Saturday we headed over the hills to Half Moon Bay. We had brunch at one of my favorite breakfast places, the Main Street Grill downtown. We were initially surprised because we went by their storefront and it was empty – cleaned out down to the booths and stools! But it turns out they just moved a block down the street into a large venue which had been the home of the competing diner. Whew! The people and food are just the same, so overall I’d say it’s a win, and they’re still busy enough that a few people who came in after us had to wait for seats.

We spent over an hour shopping downtown; for whatever reason Karen happens to have great success finding things in the little shops and bookstores in downtown. In particular we spent quite a while in the Moon News Bookstore, which is one of those rare independent bookstores which pulls out all the stops in presentation and recommendation of the books it carries – a quantity over quality approach.

Downtown is actually experiencing a lot of turnover: Other than the second diner that went under, a travel clothing store is moving out-of-state, and several boutiques have turned over since our last visit (which must have been late last year). Some turnover is a good thing for consumers I think, but of course it’s a good thing only up until one of your favorites stores goes out of business. But at least new stores keep springing up, which means that Half Moon Bay isn’t moribund and is still in some demand.

After that we drove over to the beaches south of Pillar Point Harbor where we walked along the beach for a while. I was chilly and overcast, but not really so bad if you had a jacket on. Try that in New England this month, people! We walked north towards the harbor before turning around to walk along the trail which runs above the beaches to head back to the car. (I had thought there used to be a bookstore in that vicinity, but either I was mistaken or else it’s gone under. Ah, well!)

So after a view of the ocean, of the various coastside plants that are flowering at this time of year, and a brief encounter with a kitty-cat, we piled back into the car, picked up some coffee, and drove back home.

A great outing. I don’t know why we don’t do this more often.

Jeff Dunham

Last year Debbi came across comedian/ventriloquist Jeff Dunham on Comedy Central, and he became a favorite of hers. She bought his DVD, Arguing With Myself. I can’t remember seeing Debbi laugh so hard as when she saw his special, and then his DVD! So, of course, we’ve gone twice to see him at the Improv in San Jose.

At first glance, Dunham is this unassuming-looking guy who looks like he could be your next-door neighbor. In fact, his humor is extremely irreverent. He opens his act as a straightforward stand-up act, usually talking about his family (wife, three kids, and many dogs), and then brings out his puppets, who include crotchety-old-guy Walter, and manic-verbal-abuser Peanut. It’s sort of a good-cop-bad-cop routine, with Dunham trying to keep the characters in line, while they’re abusing him, the audience, their hypothetical relatives, and anyone else who comes to mind.

And really, he’s hilarious! Many of his gags deliberately break the illusion of his puppets’ reality, as they comment on his reactions to him, and suggest some novel uses for his ventriloquism.

I think my favorite joke of the evening involved his chihuahuas, which (he says) were entirely his wife’s idea. Little yappy dogs, he’s greatly amused at some of the tortures they undergo due to their small stature and smaller brains. This gag involved his youngest daughter taking one of them for a walk using a retractable leash, and the devious trick the played on the poor beast.

Have I mentioned that my sense of humor is a little irreverent, too?

The one thing that makes me a little uncomfortable are his gay jokes. They aren’t really gay-bashing jokes, but rather using “gay” to mean “effiminate”, as in “driving a powder-blue Prius while holding your wife’s chihuahua is gay.” The web comic strip PvP often makes exactly the same sort of jokes, for instance in the sequence starting here (though Dunham is funnier than PvP). Is this funny, or is it a little too tactless? I’m not sure.

(Note that I have no problem at all with him making fun of people who drive Priuses. Or, for that matter, abusing chihuahuas. We each have our own boundaries, I guess.)

He’s even edgy enough that one of his new puppets is Ahmed the Dead Terrorist. Which is, uh, really weird. (This wasn’t his A-list material, but I think it was also some new material he’s still shaking out.) Then again, is anyone else taking on the terrorists in quite this way?

Overall, we had a terrific time at the show, and assuming you’ve got an equally irreverent sense of humor, or are willing to shove aside your sensitivities for 90 minutes, I’d wholeheartedly recommend going to see Jeff Dunham.

That Smell of a Smell

So last weekend we had a heat wave, with the themometer cracking 84 on Sunday. It’s steadily tapered off since then.

Sunday and Monday it felt like spring, with that spring smell in the air. Three days later, it smells like fall, as things cool off after warmer weather. So today I felt like I should be carving a pumpkin or something. But everything’s turning green at the same time. Bizarre.

Crikey, only two weeks ’til opening day!

This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 14 March 2007.

Actually, two weeks’ worth, since I was away last week:

The Team-Ups volume are really for hard-core Justice Society fans only, really. That said, one of the Atom stories herein is a longtime favorite of mine: Ray Palmer starts aging backwards and Al Pratt has to save him. As Gardner Fox gimmick stories go, it’s pretty good. It’s also interesting that many of these stories are treated as just one more adventure for our heroes, and not the “event” comics that JLA/JSA team-ups would later become.

Wonder Woman #4 ended with a cliffhanger, leading into the final part of the “Who Is Wonder Woman?” story. But #5 doesn’t complete the story, it was released with different content than originally solicited, and the conclusion will appear “at some later date”. The story that actually shipped is a pretty mediocre piece about the impact Wonder Woman has on the world around her, beyond her material deeds. It basically explores in depth what Kurt Busiek simply implies with his Winged Victory character in Astro City, but doesn’t really say anything more. So, shrug.

Fantastic Four: The End concludes the ho-hum series by writer/artist Alan Davis. He sort-of brings a science fictional sensibility to the FF in the future, but it’s really just a standard superhero yarn.

Athena Voltaire #2 actually shipped some time ago, but my shop didn’t get a copy for some reason. So they ordered me one and it arrived this week. Now I can catch up…

Captain Clockwork is a little black-and-white book by Glenn Whitmore about four generations of heroes named Captain Clockwork, who work to save chronology from the 1930 to the 2010s. Whitmore’s plotting and dialog is a little shaky, but his art – though not very detailed – is clean and polished. There’s some promise here, but I don’t think I’m up for “yet another superhero book”. Future installments will need to indicate that they’re going somewhere for me to keep buying. (The web site has a preview from this issue.)

In many ways I enjoy B.P.R.D., but the story has been going on for an awful long time, and with no end in sight. I’d like them to wrap up Abe Sapien’s background and deal with… heck, I can’t even remember exactly what the ongoing threat they’re dealing with is. Or else I’m getting close to losing interest.

Boneyard wraps up their current story with an adorable ending. What a great comic book series.

Evil Inc. is a graphic novel assembled from the first year of the popular webcomic about a corporation run by supervillains. It’s entertaining, maybe even better read in collected form than serially, although I kind of wish it were a more straightforward collection. Apparently there’s already a second volume, but I don’t think it’s yet been solicited through Diamond Comics’ Previews catalog.

DisneyWorld

I’m back! Back from my week’s vacation with Debbi and, well, her entire immediate family visiting DisneyWorld and her parents in Florida.

We flew out last Saturday, and the trip was fairly uneventful other than a delay with our connecting flight out of Dallas. We got in a bit late, but we picked up our car and got to our hotel with no problems. Sunday morning we drove over to meet Debbi’s relatives who flew in from Boston: Her two sisters Dianne and Janine, Dianne’s husband Shawn, and their three kids. Then we caravaned towards Orlando to meet Debbi’s parents (well, father and stepmother) for brunch at Cracker Barrel. Deb’s parents have a time-share near DisneyWorld, so we checked into two rooms in the afternoon. Shawn, Dad and I went shopping, while everyone else went swimming. With all the people, Debbi and I were fortunate to end up with one of the king-sized beds to sleep in. And we needed it because, it was a long and busy week!

DisneyWorld (officially “Walt Disney World Resort”) is an odd place, even odder, I think, than Disneyland. It’s spread over a much larger area, and you have to drive on myriad roads to get to any of the four parks within, and you’re surrounded by swampy Florida landscape along the way.

The “main” park, the Magic Kingdom, was completed in 1971, and is basically laid out the same as Disneyland. However, it has fewer rides in a large space. So you have more space to walk around without bumping into people, but there’s not as much to do. The park feels cleaner and more polished than Disneyland, but by the same token has a lot less character. This may be because the design aesthetic of 1955 has less in common with our modern aesthetic than that of 1970. But it might also be because the restrictions of space in Disneyland force the Imagineers to be more creative. Or it might just be that Walt Disney personally oversaw Disneyland and gave it an attention to detail which the forces which created DisneyWorld – mostly after Walt’s death – just couldn’t attain. (After all, the 60s, 70s and 80s are not exactly remembered as a golden period in Disney’s history.)

We started the week at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, which has a few good rides, such as Expedition Everest (basically a variation on Big Thunder Mountain), but which is mainly notable for the Kilimanjaro Safari ride, which travels through a refuge with elephants, giraffes, wildebeest, and other animals. It’s actually quite scenic. The Flights of Wonder show is also quite cool. But overall the Animal Kingdom is not a terrific park.

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Tuesday we went to the Magic Kingdom, which as I said is very similar to Disneyland’s main park. Overall I felt the rides were at best the same, but often not as good as those at Disneyland. The Haunted Mansion, for instance, is missing the nifty walking corridor at the beginning. While some of Pirates of the Caribbean benefits from the additional space, it’s missing the initial ride through a Lousiana swamp. Space Mountain is just as good, but its veneer feels a little old, since the Disneyland Space Mountain was completely renovated in the last few years. The Enchanted Tiki Room at DisneyWorld was converted to The Enchanted Tiki Room (Under New Management), a pointless revision which is not only not as much fun, but is probably incomprehensible if you’re not familiar with the original. Tomorrowland has the old Peoplemover (rechristened the Tomorrowland Transit Authority), which is a fun and relaxing tour of Tomorrowland, but it also has the execrable Stitch’s Great Escape, which is a pointless and gross non-ride to be avoided at all costs. Ew.

DisneyWorld is missing several Disneyland rides, such as Indiana Jones, the Matterhorn Bobsleds, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Alice in Wonderland, and the Storybook Land Canal Boats. Some of these aren’t exactly essential rides; nonetheless, despite its size, it feels like there’s less to do at the Magic Kingdom than at Disneyland.

Debbi’s family went off Tuesday late morning to a character breakfast, so Debbi and I got to do a number of things without the eight other members of our party. Which was nice since we could go on several rides less appropriate for kids. Debbi was able to go on all the rides she really wanted to go on, which made her happy.

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Wednesday we went back to the Magic Kingdom for part of the day, and then went to EPCOT for half a day. We didn’t see a whole lot of it, and apparently the park bears almost no resemblance to Walt’s original vision. We did ride the Test Track ride, which is quite cool, in that you get up to around 65 MPH in the little car. But we weren’t too impressed with the World Showcase, and we didn’t have a chance to ride Soarin’ or Spaceship Earth. We did see the fireworks show, which was fun. But overall we weren’t too impressed with EPCOT.

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Finally, on Thursday we spent the day at Disney MGM Studios, the fourth theme park. The Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster is quite cool (although perhaps not much better than California Screamin’ at Disney’s California Adventure next to Disneyland). Lights, Motors, Action! is a pretty neat demo of how car stunts are staged and performed for films. More than the other parks, this park packs more into a fairly small space, and we were all a little surprised that we managed to pack a full day into this park.

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Our days were long, however, and we were regularly getting up at 6 and going to bed at 11 or midnight, so we were pretty exhausted at the end of it all. The kids had a great time, though. I don’t know whether they’ll remember much of it when they’re older, but they had so much fun that I don’t think it matters. I think the adults got worn to a frazzle from time to time, though.

Thursday night we drove to Debbi’s parents’ house where we spent the next couple of days. Sleeping arrangements were, uh, suboptimal, with me on an aerobed, and Debbi on an uncomfortable couch (she didn’t seem to think doing it the other way around would be any better, though I offered). We did enjoy hanging out at the pool, and playing dominoes until midnight on Friday.

Debbi and I wrapped up our trip leaving early Saturday afternoon. We got to the airport three and a half hours early, which is good because we found that our flight to Dallas was delayed over an hour, so we’d miss our connection. But we were able to act promptly and get rebooked on a flight to Chicago, then switching airlines to fly to San Jose. Despite the longer flight, we took off 2 hours earlier and got to California at the same time we’d been scheduled to arrive. We only had a long dash across Chicago O’Hare to make our connection, but otherwise we and our luggage arrived safe and sound (much to my surprise). Debbi was completely exhausted, but Subrata and Susan picked us up, so all turned out well.

The cats were extremely happy to see us.

Sunday we relaxed. Indeed, Debbi took a long nap in the afternoon. I did some work in the yard, did some housecleaning, and cleaned the grill (and boy did it need it) before grilling hamburgers. A pretty successful end to the whole vacation – even if it wasn’t the most relaxing vacation ever.

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This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 28 February 2007.

  • 52 #43 of 52 (DC)
  • Jack of Fables #8 (DC/Vertigo)
  • Justice #10 (DC)
  • Welcome to Tranquility #1-3 (DC/Wildstorm)
  • Eternals #7 of 7 (Marvel)
  • The Secret History #1 of 7 (ASP)

Despite a cover featuring Animal Man, 52 #43 mainly focuses on the Black Adam Family, which is my least-favorite storyline in the series. Bummer.

I’m starting to think that Jack of Fables just isn’t going to get very good. Jack is a one-note character, and not at all a likeable one, and the series has yet to cohere around an interesting plot or supporting cast. I wonder how it’s doing in sales?

Welcome to Tranquility has gotten some good word-of-mouth, so I gave it a try. It’s written by Gail Simone, who’s ended up in my consciousness as one of those “decent wordsmith, nothing in particular to attract me to her books” writers, similar to Geoff Johns and Greg Rucka (and ahead of Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar), but not as distinctive as Grant Morrison. That said, I’ve never actually read anything by her, so it’s just purely word-of-mouth.

Tranquility is a town which serves as a retirement home for old superheroes, but which also houses their children and grandchildren. The Sheriff, Thomasina, tries to hold things together, while a documentary filmmaker, Collette, shows up just in time to see things start to fall apart, as an old-time detective-hero, Mr. Articulate, is murdered. The town is also on edge because it houses the children and grandchildren of the old heroes, and the generations don’t see things the same way.

The book feels in some ways like Alan Moore’s take on Supreme with its nostalgia for these alternate heroes, while they’re still very much among us. But there’s more of a feeling of “days gone by and they’re not coming back” than in that book (which is more about successfully restoring the glories of yesteryear), and a lot of that feel that the characters are stuck in Tranquility and they’re not going to get out. The three issues so far are mainly setup, with some investigation into the basic mystery. There are some nifty characters, especially Maximum Man (a Captain Marvel type character who’s forgotten his magic word and spends all his time trying to remember it) and the Emoticon, who wears a mask which displays smileys.

Neil Googe’s art at its best is reminiscent of Chris Sprouse, but his figures occasionally go all cartoony, which wrecks the book’s atmosphere. It’s right on the edge of being a style I can really enjoy, but I wish he’d nudge it into a more realistic direction.

Overall, it’s not a bad start.

Eternals wraps up Neil Gaiman’s second series for Marvel. 1602 was a lot better. I’m not a big fan of John Romita’s artwork (and his depictions of San Francisco are atrocious), and the painted covers are also pretty bad. It ends up being one of those “character discovers he’s really a superhero and loses all of his personality” stories, so I’m not sure what the point was.

Archaia Studios Press continues to crank out good books, this time The Secret History, written by Jean-Pierre Pécau and drawn by Igor Kordley. It’s the story of four immortal siblings who each possess a runestone which gives them great powers and who basically don’t like each other. It’s not a real novel premise, but if it successfully reveals the characters over its seven issues, it ought to be pretty entertaining. The first issue focuses on the events surrounding Moses and the Jews’ departure from Egypt, and is lively with some thoughtful moments, mainly surrounding Erlin, who possesses the rune of the Shield, and who seems like a responsible and philosophical person who regards the mortal Moses as a trusted friend. I’ve seen Kordley’s art a couple of times before, but he really does a great job depicting large battles and realistic landscapes. It’s too soon to call this an unqualified winner, but I enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to more.

As a final note, I decided this week to stop buying the Jack Staff monthly comic, and switch to reading it in the collections. Paul Grist’s storytelling style isn’t well-suited to a periodical, and I’m finding that the overall stories take a long time to get anywhere (and sometimes I’m not sure where they’ve actually ended up). Basically, Grist’s writing just isn’t tight enough for my tastes