Bummer bummer bummer bummer. My teams lost. I don't much care that Brazil lost. It wasn't about the score so much as Brazil not being the Brazil of old. They didn't play to their potential. I said earlier that if Brazil didn't pick up their game compared to the first round, they wouldn't get very far. Well, they didn't pick up their game, and they paid the price. It wasn't just Ronaldo, though his slowness and random falling over didn't help anything.
The whole team was limp. They didn't win because they didn't deserve to.
That's not to say that France was unworthy. Far from it. They played an excellent game. I'd gotten sick of hearing the commentators praise Zinedine Zidane, endlessly lamenting his imminent retirement. After the Brazil game, though, I can understand. The man was brilliant. The game's only goal was credited to Thierry Henry, but it was Zizou who made it happen. He ran the game like a general, constantly aware of the whole field, dropping passes with pinpoint precision, and using his magnificent footwork to dance out of tricky situations. Ribery and Vieira both had strong presences as well, but this was Zidane's game.
Portugal v. England was pretty close, as I expected, but Figo et al. sent the English packing. They were missing a couple of key players with yellow cards, so I expect they'll provide better competition against France. That will be a close game; I expect it will hinge on how much the French expended themselves in defeating Brazil.
The result of Italy v. Ukraine was no surprise, but the game itself was surprisingly exciting. I kind of wish I watched the whole thing, but I had more important priorities.
Which brings us to Argentina. That game was a heart-breaker. I knew it was going to be a tough one from the beginning, but it was even more tense than I had imagined. That it finished with penalty kicks left a real sour taste. Brazil didn't deserve to win, but Argentina did. Whether they deserved to win more than Germany is up for debate, but I do know why Argentina lost. It came down to one mistake by the Argentine goalkeeper. No, he didn't let the ball go by. Instead, he went out into a cluster of players when he should have stayed behind, getting a knee in the chest for his efforts (neither foul nor intentional, unless it was really subtle). Apparently, that hurts. A few minutes later, he left the game to be replaced by Argentina's #2 keeper. Germany's equalizing goal happened after that, and it's likely the first goalkeeper would have missed it as well. However, the game ended on penalty kicks, and that's where a better goalkeeper would have made a diffeerence. Furthermore, after replacing the goalkeeper, Argentina only had two subs remaining. This was important enough in regular time, but even more so during the two overtimes and the penalty kicks. I am firmly convinced that the knee to the goalie's chest is what tipped the game to Germany.
The final four are far less interesting than in 2002. Three of the four have already won World Cups, and all four are European. Compare that to 2002, when only Germany and Brazil were previous winners, and only Germany was from Europe proper (the other two were South Korea and Turkey). My order of preference is a perfect inverse to what I expect will actually happen. I most want Portugal to win, as they've never won before. My next choice is France, as I've enjoyed watching them play. Italy would be my third preference, with Germany coming in last. At this point, it looks like Germany will triumph, however. If Italy defeats them in their semi-final today, then I think Italy will win overall. France I expect to squeak out over Italy and then lose in the final, with the same result for Portugal if they win.
Overall, I'm a little disappointed in this World Cup. The Argentine loss and the lackluster Brazilian play sealed it. I'm looking forward to South Africa 2010, but four years is a long time to wait. Both the aforementioned teams will be able to bring back key players, but not all of them, and some of them will be into their thirties by then. Zinedine Zidane is proof that you can still play world-class soccer at 34, but he is the exception. That might be of benefit to Brazil, but I worry that Argentina may have lost their best chance for a time. Still, one can hope.
The idea that democratic debate gives "aid and comfort to our enemies" is self-evidently stupid. It doesn't make logical sense, and there isn't a shred of proof, either. I think it may be even more wrong than just having no effect, though. A vigorous debate about the Iraq war, rendition, Guantanamo Bay, domestic spying, and all the other bad Bush policies in defense of which the administration has trotted out the above canard could very well weaken our enemies.
Remember who the enemy is, and where their support comes from. They are extremists, to whose benefit it is to polarize the people into diametrically opposed sides, to eviscerate the moderate middle. They want Arabs and Muslims to believe that America is hell-bent on the destruction of Islam and the enslavement of Muslims. They get much of their support from poor, idle, angry youth who believe that America is responsible for their problems, and that they have little choice but to fight.
Now consider what effect a sensible, deliberate, reasonable, and, above all, public debate would have. It would demonstrate that America is not hell-bent on destroying them. It would demonstrate that there is a hope for a future that does not involve blowing up innocent people and themselves. They would immediately recognize that extremist tactics would make it harder for the moderate, reasonable voice to be heard. Far from strengthening Al Qaeda et al., showing our disunity would have the opposite effect. The fact is that we cannot win the "War on Terror" without winning over those who might otherwise become terrorists.
Consider how we in the United States reacted to the apparent ascendancy of Iranian moderates like Khatami, and the disappointment of their replacement by hard-liners like Ahmadinejad. There were and are many Iranians who interested in normalized relations, avoiding aggression and hostility, and finding a peaceful solution to various problems. That they exist is a good thing. That they publicly disagree with the ruling hard-liners is a good thing. That is, it is a good thing for everyone except for the hard-liners.
And there lies the crux of it. When the boisterous discourse of a functioning democracy is condemned as treasonous, the ultimate goal is maintaining power. That debate may be a healthy thing for America and the world at large, but it is a threat to the Bush administration. They have no interest in the morale of the troops
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, though that is the banner they wrap themselves in. No, the goal is to squelch and pollute any reasoned discourse of important issues, because their destructive and short-sighted policies cannot stand up to scrutiny. Only thus can they remain in power and achieve a "permanent majority."
Maybe it's the symmetry, or the odd expressions, or that the staff apparently thought those were the best pictures of Zidane and Figo were the best available.
A giant Asian supermarket just opened about a mile from my house. We checked it out this weekend. Among the foods you can buy:
Dried white fungus
Egg steamed bread
Essence of chicken drink
Pineapple gel
Pineapple seaweed shortcake
Tamarind drink
Veggie sesame eel
I realize it's not very nice to make fun of simple cultural differences, but c'mon... Pineapple seaweed shortcake?
There will also eventually be eight Asian restaurants in the same shopping center. My hope is that at least one of those will be a decent Thai place. Having all that good food so close will be pretty cool.
On the subject of the evolution of advertising over the last 50 years or so, the Economist quotes one Rishad Tobaccowala as likening a 30-second spot on broadcast television to "the atom bomb," segmentation of advertising on niche cable channels as being "dropping conventional bombs on villages," and targeted web-based advertising as allowing advertisers to "make lots of spearheads and then get people to impale themselves." And people wonder why I don't like advertising.
I'm hoping that technology advances to the point of providing the ideal, immersive World Cup experience by 2018 (Mexico?). There are a bunch of moving parts to it.
First off, I want a giant HDTV display, but I don't want to pay a lot. 2018 ought to be plenty of time for HD circuitry to get super-cheap. For the display, I figure it's either OLED or DLP, but either way, I expect 52" to be way cheaper and way better than it is today with standard projection, plasma, or LCD TVs.
I want to be able to pick and choose what is added to the feed. ESPN did a terrible job of choosing how and when to display screen overlays. They were too big, too opaque, and badly timed, often obscuring the action. Often, they showed me things I didn't care about or already knew. I want to be able to choose how that stuff is displayed, or if it's displayed at all. I also want little icons floating over the players' heads that tell me who they are, and give me some way of accessing their info on the side.
Then there were the commentators. I was fine when they said things like, "Kaka to Ronaldo, Ronaldo back to Ze Roberto. Nice move to get around Thuram, but the pass to Adriano got picked off." I was less fine when they were going on and on about how much they wanted to marry Bruce Arena and have like ten thousand of his babies, or repeated for the millionth time that Côte d'Ivoire was in the middle of a civil war. So I want to be able to pick and choose live commentary from any source I want, or turn it off entirely without muting the rest of the game.
One more big thing is the camera angles. I want a lot more of them. I want clusters at each corner, over each goal, on either side of the half line, and directly over the center of the field. Each cluster should have 26 independent cameras to ensure that every player on the field, the ball, the referee, and the referee's assistants each have a camera fixed on them at all times (that's 234 total). Obviously, each of these cameras will have to track automatically rather than having a camera operator. I'd certainly have no problem with augmenting these with field-level steadicams, other positions, or whatever; this is just the minimum. The cameras should record at a greater resolution than HD. That way, optical zooming is unnecessary, with digital zooming being the norm. Finally, I should have direct access to all of these raw feeds, or be able to tune into someone else's "mixing" of them into a broadcast in the same way that I can do with commentary.
The first couple are pretty easy, but the last will require a huge amount of bandwidth. I figure that it's relatively possible if the raw feeds are only available to broadcasters, with them "flattening" the feeds into a single stream like the current state of the art. What's more important is having a number of cameras on any and all potential actors, so it's easy to see Zidane or Figo head-butting another player. Of course, these would also be very handy for improving the refereeing, but that's a topic for another day.
It's been a while since I've pimped Sinfest, which is totally the awesomest web comic out there. I mean, Scary Go Round is good, and so is Schlock Mercenary, but Sinfest has it all, as this best of Sinfest thread on their message boards illustrated. I especially liked the Come Back sequence. Also, Hobbes? and Forrest Pimp. Read the thread for the highlights, but you should really read them all because they are awesome. Start with the first one (which renders tiny for me for some reason. If it happens to you, view the image directly).
Ugh. Yesterday was not fun. Uma woke up Friday night at 10pm, which is unusual. Then she woke up again at 2am, which is still unusual, but less so. Then we couldn't fall asleep until around 4:30 or 4:45. Uma then woke up at 5:00 am for the day. She had a short nap on her walk, but categorically refused to take her regular nap around noon thirty. Then she slept a while in the car. We got home a little late, and she was unhappy, but eventually fell asleep around 8:10. Then she woke up again at 8:40. No amount of persuasion could get her to fall asleep again, so we let her up and about while we ate our dinner. We went back into the trenches at around 10:30 and finally got her to sleep at 12:15am. She woke up exactly an hour later. Luckily, she went back to sleep after nursing. She woke up at 3:20am, but fell asleep without issue, and then again at 4-something, 6-something, and finally a little after 7 for the day.
Note that anytime I say "Uma woke up" or "Uma wouldn't go to sleep," I mean that she was very, very unhappy. To summarize, Uma was basically up from 5am to after midnight, with about 80 minutes of sleep in between. Usually, she wakes up around 7am and goes to bed around 7pm, with a 2 hour nap in the middle. We didn't get much rest, either, which only makes things harder. Things were sort of like this when she was a newborn, but she was more consolable then. Right now, when she's upset, she has to have Mommy and only Mommy.
It was a long, long day, and I hope we've gotten through the worst of it. We think that she's having some massive teething, since she has a runny nose and mild fever, is reluctant to eat, and is roughly due for some canines. Ibuprofen had no apparent effect, though maybe what it did was keep things from getting even worse. She gets so confused and upset, and she thinks we can help her, but at times like that, we are out of ideas. We all just end up feeling miserable. I hate to think it's something we can't fix, that we just have to bear it until it's over, but I hate even more the idea that it might be something more serious. That's almost hypochondria-by-proxy, which is very, very easy to slip into as a parent.
Uma's on the mend. It looks like it was the teething. It's funny how a couple of days of mayhem can really throw things off. Last night, even as she was clearly feeling better, I was still walking on eggshells after she went to bed. She woke up hungry in the night twice, but those are easy wakings: she wakes up, nurses, and goes back to sleep. The memories of harder nights are too fresh, though, and it takes a little while for me to relax again. Every little noise sends me into a panic, I fret about us making too much noise, etc. But this round is over now.
For my reward, I have a scratchy throat, a runny nose, and a mild fever, no doubt the beginning of a cold that found my immune system asleep at the gate. Now I have to figure out how to keep my distance from Little Miss. Getting sick for most adults in isolation is a minor inconvenience, but worrying about infecting a toddler makes it much more stressful. Bad enough that we just had this unhappy weekend; following it up with Uma getting sick would just be terrible. My hope is that maybe she had a minor cold and was teething this weekend, so that she's already fought off whatever I have. An irrational straw to clutch, no doubt, but she needs to have a stretch of happy time. So do we.
Consider. Syria and Iran have a mutual defense pact. Invading Lebanon is almost like invading Syria, as it has been a puppet state for decades. If we attack any of those countries, either independently or with Israel, we'll be at war with all of them. It won't be a separate war, either; a war with Syria will merge with the war in Iraq which will merge with the war with Iran which will merge with the war in Afghanistan. Then consider the effect on Egypt and Saudi Arabia. They already have trouble keeping the lid on Islamist rebellion; after their people see the United States go to war with half of the Middle East, they won't be able to continue being US allies. Even worse, their governments could collapse, and I'm pretty sure that anyone who replaces them would not be positively disposed towards either the United States or Israel. It's hard to see Muammar Qadafi not try to take advantage of this situation as well.
Up north, Turkey will have a hard time keeping out of the war due to its substantial Kurdish population seeing the war engulfing the other large Kurdish populations just over the borders in Iraq and Iran. On the east side is Pakistan, which is already having its own problems with Islamists and rebellion. Having a war along its whole western border will hardly help its stability. If Pakistan goes under, look to India to immediately invade to prevent Pakistan's nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of Islamist fundamentalists. So now we have a single war stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, and that's just how it starts. Imagine what happens if China takes advantage of our impotence to take Taiwan, or North Korea invades South Korea, leading to a war there and a remilitarized Japan. I can't possibly understand how these people think that is something that can help us.
The United States is number one right now. We have the most powerful military in the world backed by the most powerful economy in the world. In spite of that, we are bogged down and slowly losing two wars. From what bottomless well do Kristol et al. think we can find the manpower and resources to fight Iran, a nation bigger than Iraq and Afghanistan put together, as well as Syria?
Few nations have started and won wars on this scale. Wars on this scale overturn the established order, and we very much want the established order to continue. WWI ended the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire both, while WWII saw the sun set on the British Empire, the near-total destruction of Germany, and the ascendancy of the United States and the USSR respectively. The only way we can maintain our position of power is to not use that power, for to use it is to test it, and it only needs to fail once.
Iran and Syria have little to lose and plenty to gain. We have everything to lose and little to gain. After all, it's hardly as if Iran and Syria threaten core American interests. This is not Red Dawn. Those countries can't strike us with anything like what the USSR can. The threat they pose is significant, but it is also localized and indirect. If we put ourselves (more) in their reach, they can bleed us dry. The United States can only be a loser in such a contest. We can look at modern day Germany to see the future that awaits us if we embark on this foolish venture. After we have wrecked ourselves, and a swath from Libya to India is in ruins, China will emerge as the undisputed superpower of the world. If that isn't what Kristol and Gingrich want, it's hard to tell.
I actually read Shadowmarch back in the spring (maybe even March), but I haven't said anything because there is very little to say. It's kind of a by-the-numbers, decent opener to an epic fantasy series. It's not particularly original, though, and it has the semi-Disneyfied feel of a lot of fantasy fiction, sort of like how a goth teenager is quote dark end quote. It'll do, but stacked up against the competition from George R. R. Martin or Steven Erikson (of which more shortly), its lack of ambition and depth is apparent. Those other authors have raised the bar, so to speak, but Tad Williams hasn't raised his game to match. This kind of bland story might have worked in the 1980s or 1990s, but the landscape has changed.
Author: Steven Erikson
Title: Gardens of the Moon, Deadhouse Gates, and Memories of Ice
A few months back, Amir (who has a blog now) told me to read Gardens of the Moon. I'm glad he did. It is the first in the "Malazan Book of the Fallen" decalogy (projected). 6 of the books have been published so far, of which 3 are available in the United States. This is what fantasy fiction ought to be. Erikson is an anthropologist and an archaeologist by training and vocation, as well as a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop (according to Wikipedia), one of the most prestigious writing programs in the nation. Those qualifications are keys to what makes him such a superior story teller.
Erikson has done a fine job (in collaboration) in creating his world. It's not just what populates it, though; he also avoids the Disneyesque softening of hard truths. The standard fantasy fiction world is a romanticized version of medieval Earth. One thing that Erikson makes clear, especially in Deadhouse Gates, is that there was nothing romantic about those times. For most of history for most of humanity, life has been nasty, brutish, and short. At times, it seems almost gratuitous, but it's consistent with human history. He's an archaeologist, after all.
That's not to say there are no flaws. I found three primary objections, all minor. One is that Erikson falls into the standard fantasy author cliché of t'oo ma'n'y a'post'tr'oph'es. Another is his choice of Proper Nouns. Some of the ones he's chosen, like Warren for a source of power, are just clunky. He also uses wizard and a few other improper nouns that are too evocative of Tolkien (to be kind) or Dragonlance (to be unkind). The word magic should be off-limits to any fantasy writer, as well as other words that go with it. Too much baggage, as well as being too bland. Just invent your own terms. Well, as long as they're not Warren. Finally, the pantheon and cosmology of the Malazan world seems oddly rigid and arbitrary. Maybe it will make sense after I read more of the books.
I am reminded again of the pitfalls of trying to review a book without actually giving any meaningful details of the contents. I'll just summarize. If you like fantasy fiction, you'll find a lot to like in these books, but you'd better have a strong stomach.
I just finished Max Barry's latest book last week. I enjoyed his previous book Jennifer Government, with which this shares many themes. As you can guess from the title, Barry takes aim at the corporate world, specifically the bizarre mindlessness and incompetence often found in very large companies. Like his previous book, Company is clever, funny, and an absolute breeze to read. Barry shares with Nick Hornby a particularly lucid and easy style that keeps the pages moving. Unlike Jennifer Government, which was slightly science fiction, Company is pure contemporary fiction. If you work in corporate America, you liked his previous book, or you're just looking for a fun, quick read, I recommend you take a look at Company.
Charles Stross gave a nod in Jon Courtenay Grimwood's direction in an interview I read. I picked up Pashazade expecting a post-Singularity, post-modern bizarre bazaar a la Stross or Cory Doctorow. Instead, I got an atmospheric, noir-ish mystery tale. Grimwood is sort of science fiction, in that the story takes place in the future. The greater shift is that it's the future of an alternate history, where Woodrow Wilson brokered a peace in 1915 that kept World War I from breaking out of the Balkans. Even that is almost a footnote, however, as it is used mainly for setting up a very particular setting.
The story in brief concerns the arrival in Al Iskandariyah, a modern-day Alexandria nominally in a still-extant Ottoman Empire, of one ZeeZee, a fugitive from justice who was rescued from imprisonment by parties unknown. He lands in Isk assuming the identity of a Pashazade, the son of a high-ranking official, thanks to his mysterious benefactors. Almost immediately after his arrival, he is plunged into intrigue by a murder while trying to sort out an arranged marriage to a rebellious Western-influenced daughter of new money. Suspicion quickly turns on him, due to his sudden and inexplicable arrival on the scene. The problem is it's all a mystery to him as well.
I found Pashazade to be an absorbing read. It's a good book. It's more noir than a standard whodunit style mystery. Atmosphere is key to this book, with a vividly imagined setting. It has a deliberate pace, neither rushing through nor dragging down. I give it the thumbs up.
I wonder about the longevity of some Hollywood players' careers. Why do people keep giving M. Night Shyamalan money? How do box office poisons John Travolta and Kevin Costner keep getting roles? There are many, many people whose careers have hit a brick wall (Patrick Swayze?) after a number of failures, which means that Hollywood has at least something of a clue. And yet, there are the exceptions.
One thing we haven't done much as parents is stretch Uma's limits. We've gotten burned too much when we've done it inadvertently that it makes us hesitant to test them. Of course, if we don't test them, they'll hardly grow, which is something we're slowly learning. It's mostly with regards to where she sleeps, where she goes, whether/when we leave her, and other basic logistical concerns. We don't actively avoid as many things as we used to, and we're not shut-ins, but we are still skittish, and we certainly don't seek out potentially challenging situations. That's not fair to her, nor is it really fair to us. A 15-month old is much different from a 5-month old (though we could have been more ambitious then, too). I guess we're falling into the standard parent trap.
I wonder what global travel will be like in a post-oil future. Will gas-guzzling airplanes be replaced by more sedate, fuel-cell powered Zeppelins riding the jet stream to go from New York to London in a day? Maybe inter-continental voyagers will rediscover the romance of ocean liners, this time on nuclear-powered hydrofoils running from Sydney to Tokyo at 150 knots. Or there will be a bullet train from Tokyo to Los Angeles, skipping along the edge of the Pacific up Russia and over the Aleutians and down the West Coast. Or maybe we'll just learn to enjoy staying home, keeping in touch with fancy-schmancy video-conferencing and exploring with virtual reality, gobbling up the gigabytes, gigahertz, and gigawatts.
I picked up Zeitgeist because they didn't have Schismatrix on the shelves at the library. What a waste of time. It was just a limp nothing. Some hustler puts together a fake girl band pre-millennium and goes on an aimless journey where bizarre stuff happens. Woo. Sterling was trying too hard and got too little. Pre-millennial this, post-modern that, narrative structure blah blah blah. The story didn't go anywhere. The characters didn't go anywhere. There were no interesting ideas. It was a quarter-baked book at best on the things that mattered. I only finished it because it was a fluffy, quick read. If it wasn't such a nothing, I would have given up, but then, if it had been a something, it would have been worth reading.
I read in bursts. I just realized that has nothing to do with moods or free time, but just that sometimes I remember to go to the library. I did a little wishlist gardening, but still have some 360+ books to go. In the last week, I've read 3 books, and I'm partway through 2 more (one might be a no finish due to lameness). I have 2 unopened books at home, 2 waiting for pickup at the library, and 2 outstanding requests. There are many, many good books out there. The SF/fantasy genre is more represented in my actual reading than it is in my wishlist. That's because I assume those books will be more challenging. That's foolish, of course, partly because it's wrong, and partly because it's no reason to avoid them. I'm going to try to keep the queue full. Back in 2000-2001, I averaged a book a week. Of course, it's not the rate that matters so much as it is always having something available to read. It's especially important since I've whittled down my TV show list, and the remaining shows on the list are in reruns. If nothing else, for my sanity's sake, I have to read books that are not Goodnight, Moon.
On a list of the 50 largest US cities with greatest natural disaster risk, Austin is right in middle. They just ranked them there, though, instead of scoring, so it's hard to tell what the risk difference is between various cities. If I only include cities I would want to live in (Milwaukee, anyone?), it comes out like this:
After I read an excellent book, rushing into another one seems like a betrayal. I find myself now at a time I normally read, yet unwilling to pick up even a newspaper, reluctant to diminish the novel I have just finished. The Namesake is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Part of its appeal is personal, as it concerns an Indian immigrant family in the United States, primarily the son, Gogol. Mostly, though, it's just a well-written, nuanced, and affecting story.
The story of Gogol and his family is so achingly familiar at times as to almost seem like reading a biography of myself. For example, as a student, I often had to deal with substitute teachers struggling with my name on the roster, to the point that I could tell by the significant pause and look of consternation when they got to me on the list, announcing my presence prematurely rather than subject them and (more importantly) me to the awkward agony of attempting my name. I'ts not all so specific, of course. Gogol and I have a complex relationship with the land of our parents' birth. We are neither fully American nor fully Indian, so India and all things Indian seem at once familiar and alien.
Such a result is obvious with second-generation Indian-Americans, but a similar phenomenon is found in the first generation as well. They grow accustomed to the more sedate, sane way of American life. For them, India will forever live in the 1960s, as occasional visits cannot disturb the weight of memory. Their friends and family age and die, their old haunts grow unfamiliar and change in strange ways, and they realize that what they thought for so long as their home is no longer. However, their new home can never fully replace it, either, as their formative years were spent in a different place, so its ways will never seem fully natural.
Naturally, with parents and children staring at each other from opposite sides of a cultural chasm, the generation gap only magnifies the potential conflict. The parents' natural tendency is to try to raise their kids as they have been raised. There is the obvious cultural clash, but there are deeper, fundamental incompatibilities between how people lead their lives that make the old ways unsuitable. What works living with an extended family, in the same neighborhood as your birth, where nobody drives, and where few people move more than a hundred miles from home is hardly suited to most of the United States. These conflicts are common to many immigrant families, and underlay much of the progression of the story.
Not all the themes are about Indian-ness, however. Some are more universal, or at least more American. There is the slow murder of the soul in the lonely suburbs. There is the emptiness of loss that can never be filled. We see the slow corrosion in a relationship from tiny differences leading to sudden breaks, and the insensibility of attraction. The story is inextricably meshed with the experience of Indian-Americans, but is accessible to all.
I am pleased that I found such an engaging book so soon after resolving to read more literary books. I highly recommend it. I suggest reading it soon, as the Namesake will be in theaters this September, and you don't want to be one of those people who reads a book after a movie about it comes out, right?
Shiva 3000 is a hard book to describe. Most succinctly put, it is a quest and journey of discovery in an oddly-distorted, fantastical India, where the gods of the Hindu pantheon walk the Earth. It is classified as science fiction, but whatever is science fiction about it is peripheral at best. It's not your traditional fantasy, either. It probably has most in common with magical realism. Anyway. It's a bizarre and strange world that Jensen has imagined, with many virtues and heresies (often the same) that provide enjoyment for anyone curious about India, Hinduism, or just looking for an interesting read.
