Book Number 8
I'll be appearing on March 13 at 3 PM on the "Interactive Day Stage" in the convention center during South By Southwest. The title of the program is The Bad Sex With Neal Pollack Show. More details as they emerge, but the organizer assures me that Malcolm Gladwell will be signing books directly opposite me during my reading, so there will definitely be people in the audience. Hey. I'm not ashamed to take a best-seller's sloppy seconds, especially when that best-seller has such amazing hair.
Meanwhile, I've completed book number 8, finally, in my 50 Book Challenge. I've been bogged down with work and also watching Season One of Deadwood on DVD, so my reading time has been limited. But the book is Air, by Geoff Ryman, a gay British science-fiction writer, though the book has no gay themes and doesn't take place in England. The premise is this: Mae Chung, a peasant woman from a made-up country that is half-China and half-East Asian Soviet-era breakaway republic, goes mad during a worldwide test of Air, a new technology that can be best be described as an Internet of the mind plus a time machine, but rather than let that madness stop her, she instead starts a global fashion-design business. OK. So maybe there are some gay themes. The premise is compelling and the details of the technology are elegantly laid out. Plus Ryman does a remarkably good job at describing Third-World village life and discussing the geopolitical politics of technology. There are a couple of disastrous missteps in the plot and several sags of 15 pages or so. But the conclusion is satisfying and hopeful, and beautifully rendered. I'm undecided about the talking dog. An interview with Ryman provides excellent background if you're interested.