Chilly, Shots, Ilium

Well, when I woke up this morning to take the dog outside, the thermometer read -18.9 degrees. Of course with a 5 to 10 mph breeze, it really felt like -30 degrees. Yikes is that cold. Surprisingly, the car started with little effort. Just a few more days of this and hopefully we will be in the double digit temps again (but on the positive side of the number line.)

Other news, Glacierbaby had his first set of shots on Wednesday. After the shots he was a bit fussy and his legs were a bit sore. But by mid-afternoon yesterday, he was the same old Glacierbaby.

Well, I finally finished Robin Hobb's Assassin's Quest. It was very good. In fact if you like fantasy and haven't read her books, I would highly recommend them. Now I've started Dan Simmon's* Ilium. I read his Hyperion Cantos (Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion) in college. Those 4 books are probably some of the best Sci-Fi written (in particular the first two). The structure of Hyperion is much like that of the Canterbury Tales (but in the far future, with a machine that kills people, yet they worship it, etc.). In fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons changes narrative format, settling on more traditional story telling techniques. However in Fall, he borrows heavily from John Keats' poetry.

Ilium is one of his latest works. It quite interesting at the moment. Presently there are old style humans living on earth and all have lost the ability to read and invent. On mars the Trojan War has been recreated by the "Olympian Gods". They have also brought back to life Scholars from the 21st century to monitor the war and compare the "actual" events to Homer's account of the war. Third there are group of sentient bio-mechanical machines living in the Jovian moons that have been sent to monitor the events on Mars and Earth. These bio-mechanical machines love to analyze Shakespeare (mainly his sonnets) and Proust. I'm only 100 pages in or so, but having a great time with the book. The sad part is that Ilium is the 1st book of 2. The second, Olympus concludes the story.

*On a side note, Dan Simmons seems to have some pretty extreme views on Islam. Although I don't agree with his view, I do enjoy his writing. His stories are some of the most thought provoking stories I've ever read.