Little Snippets, Working Backwords

I was writing a very long post, which unfortunately was eaten by LiveJournal. So now here are random stuffs in vaguely reverse chronological order. I would have had to do these anyway because the post I was making would have had to have been ultra-double-supersafe-secret anyway, and some of the things are safe for public consumption anyway.

This little thing is the note that during the course of the day I managed to reschedule my appointment with the employment agency. It was clashing with my newly reinstated education, now it is the morning after. I do not know what they want of me. Whatever it is they don't need me to bring anything.

And now, I sleep.

Still Reading...

    The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke. Getting near the end of this thousand page volume now. A lot of the stories are dry and often hard to read (the one I am on now, A Meeting With Medusa, seems to have been written with teflon) but there are some gems too. And abominations (she says with light heart): Neutron Tide is built around a pun. Reunion is built around a joke too, but one with a positive message. Late favourites from this third are The Wind From the Sun and Crusade, but the best of this lot is easily Transit of Earth.
    Probably the most annoying part of these stories is the teleology that keeps creeping into the stories whenever biology comes up, or even just future history of civilisations. The frequent telepathy annoys me sometimes too, even though it probably should not. Could do with more women in the stories too, especially in important positions.
    I think the mood has shifted from the beginning of the book too - less emphasis on the fragility of humanity and how susceptible we are to events beyond our control and more stories about other stuff, strange gadgets and near future space exlporation (especially the moon, and most of the near future stories are in the past now). I think the shift came about during the flood of White Hart stories. There is a definite slowing of pace too. The past thirty years fit into about one fifth of the volume.

Placeholder Lyric

knight faces knight/across the bloody field