Bent Corner

Grimspace
By: Ann Aguirre
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Ace (February 26, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0441015999

Sirantha Jax is a jumper. She has a rare gene that allows her to navigate a spaceship through Grimspace, a mysterious void that allows quick travel between two distant points in space. A jumper can find beacons in Grimspace that serve as the jump points, the on and off ramps of grimspace. It’s unknown who (or what) created the beacons. What is known is that only people with the J-gene can detect the beacons.

People like Sirantha Jax.

Grimspace was just a lot of fun to read. It’s space opera at it’s very best.  To say that I loved this book is an understatement.  When I go to Borders or Waldenbooks and I peruse the science fiction section looking for something decent to read, this is just the type of book I’m hoping to find.

I can’t recommend this book enough.

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I stumbled on this image today while looking for something else. Something that didn’t involve gnomes armed with bull whips and wearing swastika armbands. What really struck me with this image was not the book itself, but the snippet from a review from the New York Times.

Why would the New York Times even review a book like this?

I tried to find something about the book’s author, John Christopher. As it turns out, that is not his real name. It’s only one of the many pen names employed by British writer Samuel Youd.

They don’t write books like this anymore. Maybe if they did, someone from the New York Times would review it.

Not only do the Harry Potter books feature witches and wizards, at least one of the main characters was gay. A gay wizard. What’s the world of literary fantasy based fiction coming to?

This from Newsweek:

In front of a full house of hardcore Potter fans at Carnegie Hall in New York, Rowling, sitting on the stage on a red velvet and carved wood throne, read from her seventh and final book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” then took questions. One fan asked whether Albus Dumbledore, the head of the famed Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, had ever loved anyone. Rowling smiled. “Dumbledore is gay, actually,” replied Rowling as the audience erupted in surprise. She added that, in her mind, Dumbledore had an unrequited love affair with Gellert Grindelwald, Voldemort’s predecessor who appears in the seventh book. After several minutes of prolonged shouting and clapping from astonished fans, Rowling added. “I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy.”

To some people, the only thing worse then a gay wizard would be a gay wizard conducting stem cell research. I’m not sure how the religious right will react to the notion of a character loved by millions of children being gay. I’m guessing it wont be good.

Link

The current issue of Time Magazine has an essay written by Lev Grossman entitled, Who Dies in Harry Potter? God. It’s an overly pretentious piece that tries to speak to the popularity of the Harry Potter franchise. Instead of celebrating the fact that a book can still be a powerful catalyst of excitement in this age of video games and iPods, Grossman denounces the series because it supposedly lacks the presence of God. He complains that Harry Potter lives in a world free of religion or spirituality of any kind. He complains that in the world crafted by JK Rowlin, young Harry Potter has no one to pray to.

No one to pray to?

I’m getting tired of people picking on Harry Potter. If I didn’t know better, I would think he was not a fictional, made up character, but in fact a real spectacle wearing young boy the neighborhood bully loves to kick around. I’ve never read any of Harry Potter books or watched any of the movies. That doesn’t mean I don’t value what the Harry Potter franchise means to so many people. I also cannot help but notice that seemingly the only people that pretend to have a problem with all things Harry Potter do so because of their religion. Mainly, the Christian religion.

My message to them is this - Harry Potter is not real. The make believe world he and his make believe friends live in is not real. It’s fiction and total make believe. Why anyone would want something as personal and sacred as their religion to be injected into a fictional make believe world is beyond me. I would think Christians would appreciate the fact that JK Rowling did not create a wizard named Jesus that can raise the dead or turn bottled drinking water into fine wine. Let’s not forget how well some Christians respond to books and movies that do make religion a central part of the story. Remember all the Catholic outrage over The Da Vinci Code?

So what if Harry Potter doesn’t pray? If he were to be shown getting down on bended knee and asking God for guidance and then grabbing his magic wand and jumping on his flying broom, religion would be relegated to the make believe world of magic wands and flying broom sticks. God and religion is a very real thing to a great many people. Magic wands and flying broomsticks are not.

Author James Frey is in the under fire from critics after The Smoking Gun website pointed out that many of the facts contained in his autobiographical book “A Million Little Pieces” were made up. The book deals with Frey’s experiences overcoming drug addiction and alcoholism. The book has supposedly helped thousands of people overcome drug and alcohol problems.

If you are in the habit of believing everything you read or hear.

“A Million Little Pieces” was published in 2003. It enjoyed good sales, and when Oprah Winfrey named it as the September 2005 choice for her book club, it became one of the best-selling books of last year.

I did not read it. Chances are, I wont read it either. Not because some of the facts contained in the book are really fiction, but because the book does not involve zombies, demons, mutants, or people that have been exposed to a radioactive substance and now have superhuman powers. Lately everything I have been reading has contained at least one if not all of these things.

When news first came out that some of the book was fiction, Oprah defended Frey. She then had him on her show supposedly to once again defend him. Instead she turned on him. Oprah pulled a flip-flop.

She said that she felt ‘duped’ and that Frey betrayed his readers. Frey appeared surprised at the way he was being treated by Oprah. What followed for the rest of the show was simply uncomfortable TV.

I really don’t understand what the big deal is. So Frey made some shit up about his drug and alcohol addiction. Does it really matter? If reading Frey’s book helped you get over smoking crack and drinking vodka for breakfast, does it really matter that some of the details in his book were exaggerated?

What are you going to do, start smoking crack again? Chances are if this book caused you to stop doing drugs or stop drinking, you should have stopped a long time ago.

People lie everyday. Some lies end up hurting people. Remember how we were told that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and Iraq had the will to use them against us? That was a lie and a lot of innocent people have been needlessly killed because of it. James Frey may have lied in his book, but I don’t see how anyone has been harmed because of it. Only positive things happened because of his lies. If one person was able to kick their own problems with drugs and alcohol, his lies were worth it.

Making Oprah looking like an idiot doesn’t count when deciding if anyone was harmed over this book. From what I can tell, that really is the only harm done.

If someone were to write a book that could get me to stop eating too much, I wouldn’t care if they lied about how hot wings they ate in one sitting.

If Oprah wants to get mad at someone, perhaps she ought to look into the mirror. Didn’t she do any research on Frey and his book before picking it to be her book of the month? Why is it that The Smoking Gun could discover the truth when Oprah and her media empire couldn’t? For that matter, why didn’t anyone in the mainstream corporate news media do any investigating into Frey’s book?

Everyone needs to get over it.