Slashdot just posted an “amazing interview with Neal Stephenson”:http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/20/1518217, with subjects ranging from art criticism to the Vingean singularity to travel tips. The whole thing shows what a true wit Stephenson is, with the full power of both geekiness and social awareness at his disposal.

I’m posting the entirety of the interview here, because there’s no way of telling how permanent the Slashdot link is.
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While roaming a mall-based Waldenbooks yesterday, I happened upon a display of books promoted as “paranormal romance.” The great majority of them in the store were vampire romances, which really caught my attention since I’m teaching “Death, Burial and Culture” this fall and want my students to do projects on folklore surrounding the dead (or undead, as the case may be). So I, uh, bought one… For research purposes only, of course (Oh, like I’m supposed to pass up something titled, “A Girl’s Guide to Vampires”).

To restore my now-tattered academic credentials, here’s a fairly serious literary analysis of this subgenre by Lee McClain.

Help me here.

It is an odd thing to have one of your favorite mythical worlds spun in an unpleasant way. I came across a mind-twisting article on Harry Potter, the capitalist pig. Nevermind that J.K. Rowling is richer than God now; the fantastical world she created was a lift to my spirit every time I entered it. Maybe it is because I have been raised in a competitive, capitalist environment all my life, and furthermore find competitiveness and also greed to be intrinsic to human nature in all but, as we would say, the most “saintly” among us (when thinking of the greed aspect), but I can’t fathom how the competitive drive could be conquered on a large scale within the real world, and how that would even be healthy. Competition causes us to rise to greater challenges, and without the constant battle, we would be complacent and jaded.

Not that I don’t tire of the battle to survive many days… especially when paying rent and other bills. In the U.S. the balance is probably shifted too much toward a “lord of the flies” mentality. And the consumerist aspect of our culture truly is poisonous. The latter and former things are somehow conflated, though, to make wholly “evil” the very process by which evil is battled in Harry Potter’s world.

I welcome comments that address the mindset of the essay’s author. (Does this explain the lukewarm reception of Lance Armstrong by the French and other Europeans? This year he has certainly approached Le Tour with the mindset of dominance.)

I’m being obnoxious because with the release of my dad’s new book, “Raised Christian Style: The Story of Betty” (the title is ironic – this is the story of a girl who was abused until she became a murderous psychopath and of the state teacher who helped her recover – based on true events), I am very proud of him.

While searching for a good link to the book to put above (which I didn’t find, but see below), I stumbled upon my dad’s blog (!!). Who knew? He turns 70 this month and is right there with the technology. Go Dad!

Finally, because I realized suddenly that many people I know personally are published authors (yay!), I decided to create an Amazon.com “Listmania!” list about it. If you can think of authors I know but don’t know I know or forgot about or something, let me know. Um, yeah….

All hail Ursula K LeGuin, one of this (and last) century’s foremost writers. If you haven’t read any of her work yet, you should!

LeGuin’s (later*) work tells the truth with clever lies that strip western social norms to their roots in order to better shake the tree. You’ll never look at the world in the same way.

(*Interestingly enough LeGuin started as a fairly conservative Sci Fi writer.)

Then, when you’ve cut your teeth on that, you can move on to Octavia Butler . . .