(no subject)

[liralen]

Flat. I just feel really flat today. Depressed, mildly, tired, mildly. Reading Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky and really brain-deep into its intricacy and detail. Yum... detail. Lots of details that give a feel to an alien way of being. I really enjoy the way he's gotten the feeling of how aliens live, think, play down with human words that 'feel like' what they're supposed to represent. It's just a really solid book that requires detailed reading and lots of thinking.

My brain's still overloaded from the parental visit on top of work weirdnesses. The book takes me away from the bad grooves of old thought patterns. There are a lot of emotional flatnesses throughout my ... self. Just dark spots that are cold and dead and flat and without... color? warmth? no life or desire or...

There were times, when I was really into the technical stuff where I could really related to the Focused folks in the book. Where there was nothing but the problem, and real life was just a stupid waste of time. I can't do that anymore with Jet. And this odd in-between state of sometimes being able to focus on technical stuff and sometimes being dragged back on an interrupt to service Jet's needs I feel all torn in half, or, more simply, angry at both things that are requiring my attention, which isn't a good way to be.

Today I just didn't care, especially about work. Which isn't a terribly good thing given that control of the list of the things that 'we're going to do' happens on Friday. Not that the folks that are supposed to be giving me answers about stuff are actually showing up at all. I'm getting kind of dully angry at the folks that aren't stepping up to be asked about things.

Comments

[flit.livejournal.com]

I actually coveted Focus (though with an off switch) when I read that book. Though I did feel guilty about wanting it....

[liralen.livejournal.com]

oh, yeah! I can sympathize with both the desire and the guilt...

A Deepness in the Sky

[mallen.livejournal.com]

I absolutely loved this book. Kirby Krueger loaned it to me while we were still roommates and I'm glad he had it. I found all of the ideas in the book pretty fascinating on the one hand and pretty scary and repulsive on another level. The pervasive surveillance, the mind-rot, the idea that your life might span thousands of years. Yick. Let me be dead and gone long before then. I'll leave the extra long birthday parties to the Traders.

Re: A Deepness in the Sky

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I really liked how Vinge managed to evoke both sides of that, and all those extreme concepts are both intriguing and horrifying. To leave everyone and everything you've known to come back a decade later to everything gone or everything changed by centuries of time for, of all things, money, that would certainly take a certain kind of mindset. Though the thought of 'burning ones life' was intriguing as well.

With the Spiders hibernating for two centuries, at least when they came back most everyone would come back with them, and the time-out was the same for everyone. Which amuses me in reminding me of the recent plant closures at work... the thing everyone loved about the one week plant closures was coming back from what felt like a vacation and finding that one hadn't been left behind by the rest of the company. Getting to come back from a vacation without having to scramble to catch up was such a luxury!

I can't imagine having to 'catch up' on a few centuries. I especially liked the awe I felt at just how far a civilization could go in thirty years, and then looking back on 1940-1970 and going "Oh!" Thirty years seems such a short time, yet there's so much that has been done.