Today we have the first brand new, never-before-seen WIR reaction to appear on the website. I spent the month of March reading through essentially every word written by Vernor Vinge, and this is the first in a series of WIR reactions which will cover his entire corpus of work:

WIR 46: The Short Stories of Vernor Vinge

I’ve also recently been spending a good deal of time listening to every single note of music ever published by the Flaming Lips. It may just be a personal and idiosyncratic synchronicity, but I’ve found that their albums At War With the Mystics and (even moreso) The Soft Bulletin have proven to be the perfect musical accompaniment for Vingean exploits.

Variety, schmariety. Three more What I’m Reading reviews:

36. The Merchanter Novels – C.J. Cherryh
37. Lord of Light – Roger Zelazny
38. Skylark – E.E. “Doc” Smith

The next What I’m Reading is a review of the Lensmen novels by E.E. “Doc” Smith. I never finished this reaction, for a variety of reasons. For my next update I will most likely be cleaning up and finishing that reaction. That’s right: Completely new, never-before-seen content! Capture the excitement! An event to recount to your grandchildren!

More of What I’m Reading today. I might try for some variety tomorrow, or I might just keep chewing through these until I’ve got the website completely updated:

26. The Psi Corps Trilogy – J. Gregory Keyes
27. Komarr and A Civil Campaign – Lois McMaster Bujold
28. Midnight Sun – Karl Edward Wagner
29. Northwest Smith – C.L. Moore
30. 40,000 in Gehenna – C.J. Cherryh

Here’s another batch of What I’m Reading reactions:

21. Diaspora – Greg Egan
22. Gardens of the Moon – Steven Erikson
23. Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
24. Deadhouse Gates – Steven Erikson
25. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser – Fritz Leiber

The Fafhrd and Grey Mouse reaction includes a suggested reading list for skipping over the chaff in that series.

I am terribly sorry for my five month, almost to the day, absence from updating these pages. The long version I’m not going to share. The short version is this:

In a chain of events which began on August 8th, and was most obliquely referenced on these pages on August 9th, I attempted to save someone from a truly horrific situation. Into this effort I poured essentially all the time, energy, and money that I could; gave it everything I had until it nearly broke me upon the wheel. In the end…

… I failed.

I am trying not to think of it as a colossal failure. I am trying to nurse the small hope that I planted seeds that will take root and give a truly remarkable human being the power to save herself from herself. But I’m hardly the first to try, and the Quote of the Month from Marten (look up) more accurately reflects my state of mind at this time.

If you come back tomorrow, there’ll be some actual content on these pages. And, barring any more Drama with a capital “D”, this will hopefully become a regular occasion once more.