Quote of the Week

So I'm not much for science fiction. It's not that I don't like it - to be honest I've never really given it a chance. I will admit that when I'm at the library or the bookstore and I'm looking at books I judge the hell out of books. I judge their cover art; I judge the blurb; I even take time to laugh at the author's picture because, let's be honest, the poses some of them come up with are hilarious. Science fiction books are full of insane names and not just for the places but for the characters as well. It's not always fun to read a book when I have the uneasy feeling that I'm pronouncing every single proper noun incorrectly. Luckily I'm only pronouncing it wrong in my head or to my six month old. Recently I asked a good friend of mine to give me a list of sci fi reads because I knew he was into that genre. I was able to find some of the titles at my local library and while the stories didn't necessarily sound all that alluring to me I grabbed them and brought them home in my little book bag. I should have brought a bigger bag because all of the books were giant hard backs. I think in total that little cloth bag was holding about thirty pounds worth of books! Sturdy little thing. Anyways, I haven't gotten far into my reading - I only picked them up the other day - but I did get to read one of the short stories he had suggested. I wasn't initially interested but I am so glad that I picked up that book. I have a new author that I get to explore their works and am finally excited about a genre I used to avoid like the plague. I had never heard of this author before now and I think it's a shame that she was never on any reading lists when I was in school. You know you always read Joyce Carol Oates or Nathaniel Hawthorne or Alexander Pope, even Milton if you're in those AP courses, but science fiction always seems to get left behind. We never read H.G. Wells and if we did read Bradbury there was very little of it. I'd like to give a big THANK YOU to my friend Martin for his opening my eyes to the wonderful Anne McCaffrey!




 "Helva's class was doing fine arts, a selective subject in her crowded program. She had activated one of her microscopic tools which she would later use for minute repairs to various parts of her control panel. Her subject was large---a copy of "The Last Supper"---and her canvas, small---the head of a tiny screw. She had tuned her sight to the proper degree. As she worked she absentmindedly crooned, producing a curious sound. Shell-people used their own vocal cords and diaphragms, but sound issued through microphones rather than mouths. Helva's hum, then, had a curious vibrancy, a warm, dulcet quality even in its aimless chromatic wanderings."

-- Anne McCaffrey, The Ship Who Sang