The Desert Mermaid

I really loved the Lord of the Rings movies--I even think some of the character arcs were better in them--but I can totally understand Christopher Tolkien's issues with them. If I'd spent my entire life in my dad's world and all sorts of other people started barging into it and crashing around, I'd be a bit territorial, too.

This also made me realize that I am far more worried about The Hobbit than I was about LotR, because I am far more invested in Bilbo as a character. He's a brilliant character, possibly the most relatable hero I've ever come across. And he's very hard to get right--I adored the hell out of There and Back Again, Pat Murphy's awesomely insane space opera remix of The Hobbit, but Bailey Beldon is no Bilbo. And I don't know if Martin Freeman could be, either--though if there were somebody I'd want to play him, Freeman's at the top of the list. Right under a magically age-reduced Sir Ian Holm, really. But even with Freeman playing him, it's a question of whether it'll work. We'll just have to see.

Aw, yeah, I know how to make a damn fine pizza.



I am finding that good pizza takes a lot of practice. I keep trying different recipes--but the most successful one I've found for thin crust, like the one up there, is snagged from the back of one of those bullshit cozy mystery books I periodically shelve.* I did hit a bit of a snag when the recipe suggested that I use my portable brick pizza oven for best results. Uh, yeah. Look, I'm surprised I have a pizza stone.** But even with the recipes, it takes a lot of work.***

On the plus side, if my appetite for pizza continues, all this kneading is going to give me some serious Popeye forearms. Who'd have thought pizza could make you a badass? The Ninja Turtles were right all along.


*But didn't actually read, because cozy mysteries are Not My Thing.

**Also I have this, thanks to my brother. That's all I really need.

***Getting the darn thing from the paddle onto the stone, for example. Which is why I had the fight with the oven.

So a couple weeks ago, acrossthelake sent me a book: There And Back Again, by Pat Murphy. I had a vague recollection of her describing something like it to me in the past, but it was just that—vague. I wasn’t really sure what to expect.

Then a couple days ago I sat down and read it. And you couldn’t get a coherent sentence out of me afterward, because OH MY GOD.

The Basics: THIS IS A SPACE OPERA VERSION OF THE HOBBIT.

Really, I could stop there. I mean, after all, what more information do you need than that THIS IS A SPACE OPERA VERSION OF THE HOBBIT? It’s totally enough for me. But I’ll try to tell you more. Here goes …

THIS IS A SPACE OPERA VERSION OF THE HOBBIT.

Whoops! Sorry. Okay, let’s try again.

The Plot: C’mon, you know this plot. Bailey Beldon is a “norbit,” which is a population of compact, gregarious, spacefaring folks content to live a quiet life in the asteroid belt.* All is well and good until the mysterious Gitana shows up, along with seven women from the Farr clone family, looking to retrieve a message capsule he had found. The message contains a map! To the center of the galaxy! Where treasure awaits! So that the Boss Clone, Zahara, may reclaim the honor of her family! Glory and riches for everyone!

So somehow Bailey gets roped into this quest, and the next thing he knows he’s on a Crazy Space Adventure. He winds up diving through wormholes and dilating time to make his way to the center of the galaxy, becoming an important crewmember in short order.

You Had Me At “Norbit,” But … : This book is not a classic in the same vein as the original. But I’ll tell you what this book totally is: IT IS PURE CRACK.

It is like a pinball game that bounces off every crazy Golden Age grain-of-science trope you could possibly dream up.** There are neuro computers and clone clans and killer nebula spiders and and brain-stealing marauders and space pirates including Space Blackbeard and a scrappy starfighter AI named Fluffy and a giant robotic space dragon. Pat Murphy could not have found more of my squee-buttons if she’d sat down and interviewed me.

Don’t Worry, Tolkien Purists: Bailey is fun, but he’s no Bilbo. Bilbo’s brilliance as a character is almost impossible to duplicate. He’s a perfectly relatable combination of goodhearted, whiny, resourceful, petty, polite, useless, clever, snarky, cautious, and homesick. We all like to pretend we’d totally Batman our way through any adventure that came our way, but there is something really reaffirming about a story where a character with all the flaws we all have still manages to average it out to being pretty awesome. Bailey skirts toward that, but with him, the flaws don’t show through as often—and as a result, he’s less engaging.

On the other hand, I rather liked that the clones had a bit more individuality than the Dwarves, who came across more as a collective—and yes, I know just how ironic that is. Also, it was nice to have some women in the story, without any fuss over the fact that they were women. That’s always refreshing.

In Conclusion: THIS IS A SPACE OPERA VERSION OF THE HOBBIT.

Seriously, you didn’t need anything else, did you?


BONUS POINTS: Ever since beccastareyes pointed out how often writers get this wrong, I can't help but pay attention when a writer tells you the phase of the moon, the position of it, and the time of day/night. This book always got it right. Good on ya, Murphy!


*They go from asteroid to asteroid in steam-powered rockets, which must take forever to get anywhere. Asteroid belts aren’t quite the dense messes they are in movies, y’know, but whatever.

**I literally jumped when they mentioned cooking right- and left-handed food. “Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! Stereoisomers!” Apparently wormholes make you into a mirror image of yourself, right down to the molecules.

Deeper’n’Ever pie for dinner.

Heck yeah you know you want some.


*Or, in molespeak, Moi Koind o' Poi.

The traditional: Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, MY GOD THE YAMS, and green beans with mushrooms. Nobody drank wine because Dad’s on call, and he’s really the wine guy—I always drink grape juice anyway, like I’m Mormon or some shit, and if Dad doesn’t bring out the wine Mom forgets about it.

What did you have for dinner tonight?

(Yes, not just the US folks … I like hearing about food, okay?)

First day of soup season! And hot damn, what a soup—Expensive Cheese Soup. I am not much for the cheese-and-wine tastings Mom and Dad are enjoying, but I completely approve of the part where we get rid of the leftover expensive cheeses with soup! Mmm, makes me feel all warm and cozy, even if it's still pretty warm outside.

Also, soup season reminds me of Snowhead in Twilight Princess, aka the Soup Dungeon, which adds to the fun.

Ah, what could be better than nice hot Expensive Cheese Soup, fizzy apple juice, Super Mario Galaxy, and listening to the Rifftrax dudes doing impressions of the Yip Yip Martians? Life is good.

EEEEE!

EEEEEEEEEE!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

... I was going to post something coherent, like "Damn, I hear that music and I just go all high fantasy LotR-y again and pull out my own hobbit characters!" or "Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis are like old friends!" or "I will miss all the old characters!", but all I can muster is pretty much EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

So, uh, EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, I guess. Who's with me?


Thanks to cougarfang for the link!

Damn. New plan for dinner tomorrow: now serving turnip'n'tater'n'beetroot* Deeper'n'Ever Pie. And then crying into a copy of one of my favorite books from childhood, Redwall--one Mom would read aloud while my brother and I listened and my sister bounced around the room like an excited gibbon. Good memories, those.

Farewell, Mr. Jacques, farewell.


*'n'cheese'n'mushroom, because I take artistic license here and cheese is delicious.

I have discovered mushroom and cheese pie! MY LIFE IS FULFILLED.

Also, I think I accidentally made Plague Cookies yesterday. I thought I was making a fantastic batch of sugar cookies,* but this morning I woke up with THE PLAGUE. Sore throat, sore eyes, and don’t even ask about the nose. I am just hoping no plague found its way into the delicious cookies.

Off to make tea and see if there’s any mushroom and cheese pie left! I may have the plague, but today, life is good.


*Tragically colorless, however. We will have to get to the store for food coloring for the next batch, because there is nothing more fun than dividing the frosting you’ve made into small bowls and colorizing it. This was just one of the many Early Educational Activities Mom came up with when we were small. Inevitably we would decide to experiment with mixing ALL THE COLORS, resulting in a whole lot of what Dad called “earth-tone cookies.”

Well, I’m back. Feeling better, too, despite the cat’s failure to also be back. It sucks, but I’m no longer breaking down crying every few hours. Nothing makes you philosophical like a grand vista and the calming presence of nature.

Granted, the presence of roughly eleven million tourists I could have done without.

I did try to fill the hole Charlie left in my heart with bacon while I was there. The bacon could not fill the metaphorical hole, but I'm pretty sure it at least clogged a couple of arteries.

Seems to have done Mom good, too. We have both lost something, and we are both still quite unhappy about it, but hey! We are also both semi-functional again!

Anyway, now that the insanity, both awesome and awful, of the last few weeks is, with any luck, behind me, what’d I miss? Did you guys have any shakeups while I was gone? Personal triumphs? Fortunes won? Fortunes lost? Natural disasters? Fandom implosions? Now is the time to catch me up!

Man, and I’ve got to catch up, too. Maybe I should finally go back to that “work” thing that seems to keep me from losing all my money, ask y’all if my Supplement Income With Junk plan has any possibility of succeeding, and keep on top of all that shit you gotta do if you wanna be an author.* Not to mention my stack of unread library books and that meme I’ve had from nobleplatypus sitting around for, like, two months now. I got things to keep me busy.

Life goes on. I just hope it does it QUIETLY for a while.


*I have a two-pronged approach to That Shit right now: agent queries for Doctors!, and, because like any writer I have come to believe that my current work is COMPLETE GARBAGE, writing something totally different. Just before everything exploded last week I managed to complete notes on the structures of the OGYAFE books 2-4, and at this early stage the entire quartet still sounds halfway decent! Get back to me around the end of the third book, though …