Delusions of Control - My archives
1st half 2007
More current hysterical ravings can be found here.

June 2007

June 30th

And so the month ends. My poor little baby girl has come down with yet another cold (or a relapse of an earlier one), with a 40°C fever, sniffles and a headache. So we're all back to where we started in the realms of sleeplessness... apparently going nowhere.

As I promised some of my friends, a few of my short reading highlights(?)... but just a few of them, 'cause I'm really tired:

Japanese Motorcycle Clob, by Michael Stone, from TQR. Brilliant, immediately accessible and very funny. Quirky (like a lot of TQR's stuff tends to be), this is the story of a young man and his quest to become the object of his girlfriend's desires... with a little help from his 'id', which happens to manifest itself as a little devilish pig. Psychoanalysis meets a motorcycle... try it, you won't be disappointed.

Rest Stop, by Gary Moshimer, also from TQR. I don't always read the full list of stories in any given online 'issue', and I almost wasn't going to read this, because it didn't immediately appeal to me... but it lured me in anyway. It's a ghost story of the not-really-dead variety - quite depressing in a way - but it ultimately comes off well.

Death by Scrabble: or Tile M for Murder, by Charlie Fish, from Short Stories at East of the Web. This had a sense of bold confidence about it. Quick and more than a little predictable, there was nothing subtle at all - which was quite consistent with the narrating character. It grated, but I smiled.

The Dead Man's Child, by Jay Lake, from COSMOS Magazine's Online Fiction section (I haven't looked at this mag for a long time, so I'm not sure when these stories were posted). Set somewhere on a future spaceship(?), this is sad, strange, beautiful... and complex through its sheer simplicity. Knowledge, choice, and the constraints of fear, with the contemplation of loss thrown in for good measure.

and then there's this oddity, read a couple of days ago:

Sinking, by Joshua Cohen, from The Fiction Warehouse. An interesting take on things coming apart - an insider's look at murder-suicide - it's more like a postmodern poem than a short story, and just as hard to read. (I'm wondering if this wasn't also hard to sell)? I'm not sure that I actually liked it, but I did find it intriguing.

And a few other things:

"Bad Babies: Vacuum Selection and The Arrow of Time", Brett McInnes, arXiv0705.414v1 [hep-th] 29 May 2007. Looking at string theory's cosmic landscape, this paper discusses the possibility of multiple universes arising as offspring of a parent universe, and whether these "baby" universes would necessarily inherit the parental "Arrow of Time". I laughed in quite a few places while reading this. I'm not sure if I was meant to do that...

Burn: The Epic Story of Bushfire in Australia, by Paul Collins (Allen & Unwin, 2006) and The Still Burning Bush by Stephen Pyke (Scribe Short Books, 2006). There's something ironically appropriate in reading about bushfires while the rain is falling - rather like reading Tim Flannery's editorial in New Scientist (16 June 2006) about Australia descending into a global warming induced state of dessication while watching the flood waters receding from the beach. Burn documents Australia's worst fires while The Still Burning Bush looks at fire policy and culture in Australia. Fire policy in Australia is a melting pot of nostalgia, idealism, pragmatism and denial, with more than a dash of political expediency thrown in for good measure. There is no 'right answer'. Just as there is no such thing as a stable climate.

The World and Other Writings, Descartes, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, 1998. Descartes' medieval legacies show up clearly here in a way they don't in his Meditations. Originally published - posthumously - in 1664, this is fascinating insight into the mechanistic origins of his philosophy. I've only skimmed it so far, but already I'm craving a quiet hour or two to be able to chew over some of the thoughts it provokes.

I've been proof-reading a friend's novel and have (finally) returned to working on my own after a break of six months. I also sold another short story, the only one I finished last year. I should be feeling upbeat about this, but I really can't manage upbeat. Still, it was nice to get an email from Stephen Dedman, a writer I've admired since... well, for ever... since way before I ever stopped tinkering and became serious about writing myself.

Berserk #286 was released on June 23rd and the scanlation was available on June 28th, thanks to the magnificent efforts of the team at Evil Genius, who were working under more difficult circumstances than usual. My comments on that chapter are here.

June 21st

One of the reasons weather events interest me - apart from the fact that I love storms and lightning, and big waves - is that they can still catch us by surprise. They seem inherently unpredictable... though in reality it is only the sheer complexity of the systems involved that trouble our understanding. It is said that the more we learn the more we realise how much we don't know... but that's not true at all. The universe shrinks with every horizon we cross, with every frontier we map that eventually becomes another urban landscape, or - at the very least - yet another PhD thesis.

Thank goodness for human beings. Advances in psychology, genetics, biochemistry and the like might one day make us as predictable to each other as a complex weather system, but somehow I doubt it. I never cease to be amazed at the things people do, intentionally or otherwise, to fuck each other up.

So in a way I find it quite refreshing when it happens to me... most of the time.

I've been considering the possibility of going to the snow at Perisher Valley this year, just for one or two days. It feels very strange to me to be organising something like this without Ben - and I can consider it only because I learnt to ski well before I met him. Those (many) places we discovered together; small, comfortable places like Mudgee or Dorrigo, for example, or Tasmania, Cairns, Fraser Island, Easter Island, Patagonia, Cuzco... I can't imagine returning to any of these, can't even think about them without feeling sick. Even skiing, because we both loved it, is going to stick like a thorn in my brain no matter what I do. And I suspect I will be frozen and aching in ways that have nothing to do with the cold.

I miss him so much.

June 19th

It's almost 10.30pm EST. I'm sitting in the dark, half watching an episode of Numb3rs, and half watching my internet screen, which has the latest weather observations (the half-hourly wind gust and rainfall figures from the BoM, and the real-time water-level data from the Manly Hydraulics Laboratory. There are discrepancies in the overlapping rainfall radar images from the BoM which are quite distinct and annoying). The peak wind gusts measured at Green Cape on the NSW South Coast have gone from 40 to 63 to 83 km/h in the space of an hour and a half. That's not unusual for a coastal station, but there's an expectation of a meteorological bomb exploding - so, we'll see. We'll see if the media, having been caught by surprise over the last low pressure system, aren't overcompensating this time around... Wave heights (Hsig) just east of Eden (NSW) are already approaching 6m (with Hmax approaching 10m), and that upswing from the 2m average has been quite rapid.

Looks like it's going to be an interesting night.

June 10th

Some interesting weather for coastal NSW has provided the highest rise in Tuggerah Lake in just over 20 years. Some photos here. Later I'll amend the page to carry some more meteorological information about the low pressure system, and I'll add related links as they appear (the BoM usually do an analysis of these types of weather events, especially when - like this one - they kill people).

More notes later. Apart from trying to stay dry (and preventing the children from falling into the flood water), I've been reading some good short fiction (which is the only thing I seem to have time for at the moment). I'll post some links/comments about these at the end of the month.

May 2007

May 29th

Make that three weeks + with a virus, which has just kicked up a gear into full scale misery. I'm not sure that I can say I'm "behind schedule" since I didn't exactly have a schedule to begin with. However, I am conscious of the fact that very little has been read, almost nothing has been written and I've barely stayed on top of the necessary boredoms, such as removing unidentified gelatinous substances from the carpet before they set or start to smell.

After a few slight delays (mostly due to my throat being too sore to talk on the phone), I finally managed to fix a date for the 2007 OzCanyons Slide Night. It is slated for Saturday 25th August, at the Maraylya Community Hall in NW Sydney.

My list of 'distractions' is a little short for this month:

Aurealis - Australian Fantasy and Science Fiction #37. This actually arrived at the end of April, but I didn't really have the chance to read through it until last week. There are some nice stories in this issue, and while there was nothing which really got my blood pumping, this was probably due more to my zombie-like state than the stories themselves. My favorite of the collection was Sophie Masson's Dreamer, a nice dream within a dream story, tightly woven and almost like a dream in itself. The non-fiction essay on strange eating habits, Xtreme Science - Thought for Food, by Patricia O'Neill, was entertaining; well researched and well written (but not the sort of thing to put on the kitchen shelf). The book reviews were - as always - useful.

Something short and sweet: Qubit Conflicts, by Jetse de Vries, published online in the May edition of Clarkesworld Magazine. The (very ordered) reminiscences of a matrioshka brain... when you know everything there is to know, what else is left? This is speculative fiction doing what it does best - in this case looking at the ultimate development of an artifical intelligence, the problems that an unlimited community computer mind might face and how it might deal with them, but also with how it might feel. That was the cincher for me - it takes a lot of skill to inject real feeling into a story about quantum computing. Be warned, however - if you're completely unfamiliar with the whole matrioshka brain, dyson sphere, computronium thing, you may not get this at all.

The Neutronium Alchemist and The Naked God, by Peter F. Hamilton, Parts 2 and 3 of The Night's Dawn Trilogy. Gone are the times when I used to be able to knock over a thousand page novel in the best part of a day... there are simply too many interruptions now (and too much guilt). So it took me a full week to read these two. If I had any complaints about this awesome trilogy it would be that it was too broad, and too epic, and the sheer number of characters left me cold. But it's beautifully written, with some impressive quantum scale descriptions of various acts of violence. The main characters are engaging and the handsome hero succeeds in not becoming annoying, even if he is out-manoeuvred in the likeability stakes by his girlfriend, who skilfully manages not to rely on him for anything.

About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution, by Paul Davies, 2005. Another one that I have to puzzle over, particularly with regard to what appear to be discrepencies between some statements in here and some things said by J. Richard Gott in "Time Travel in Einstein's Universe" (mostly to do with reference frames in relativity). It may simply be a problem with the terminology. I might wander into the physics forums later and ask someone.

Tinder Box: The Iroquois Theatre Disaster 1903, by Anthony P. Hatch, 2003. I'm not sure why I keep reading these sorts of accounts. The same blatant negligence, the same results, the same ultimate evasion of responsibility. Civic codes and safety standards are tightened as a result of a transitory public outrage, but in fits and starts - in this case not fast enough to prevent the deaths of 171 children some five years later in a school fire, the victims trapped by fire escape doors that opened inwards (a major contributing factor to fatalities in the Iroquois fire). Risk and engineering, risk and denial, risk and economics... Will we ever get the balance right? I don't know, but I do know that you can always make more money. Can't say the same about someone's life.

Path of Revenge, by Russell Kirkpatrick, Harper Collins, 2007. Book 1 of Husk. Death and the misguided desire for immortality. I really enjoyed this - the first main section seemed a little slow but the characters in the second lifted it well and it cruised from there. And the maps are fantastic... I will certainly be picking up book 2 as soon as it comes out.

Metallic Love, by Tanith Lee, Random House, 2005. A sequel (of sorts) to one of my favourite SF novels, The Silver Metal Lover. I wanted to like this, but - while it is still a well written story - it just doesn't have the raw emotional brilliance of that earlier work. Metallic Love has a different emphasis, though, so perhaps the comparison is unfair.

May 20th

Almost two full weeks wasted with a virus... just what I needed. I think my daughter had it more severely than the rest of us. But two sick children = NO sleep. I can function quite well on 5 hours a night, but two weeks with an average of around 3 hours can make me a little bit shaky. So if I've emailed you recently and made even less sense than usual, that's the reason.

To console myself (hah!) I've just bought what is essentially a text book: The Cosmic Century: A History of Astrophysics and Cosmology, by Malcolm Longair, published by Cambridge University Press, 2006. This is just what I've been after for ages, an up-to-date treatment of a subject that has fascinated me since I was about twelve years old. And though I have well and truly overspent my book budget for the month, I must once again express my gratitude to ABBEY'S BOOKSHOPS, who (as always) have delivered the goods in excellent condition and with astonishing speed. I ordered this the previous Friday around lunchtime, and it was on my doorstep first thing the following Monday morning.

While skirting the subject of astronomy, I'm booking a place on the August 2008 Russia Solar Eclipse tour that is being organised by the Sydney Observatory. Ben would have wanted to go - and though I can't actually afford it, it may be the only chance (read "excuse") I ever have to visit Russia. A two minute totality and a first class trip on the Trans-Siberian railway, plus a visit to Star City, Novosibirsk and St. Petersburg - it sounds utterly beautiful... or am I just seeking history and darkness?

The issue summaries of Jaeger are up at last. They're pocket reviews if you like, covering issues #21 to the most recent #26. I can't believe they took me so long to put together.

May 8th

My apologies for the self-indulgent rant last month (not that I'm going to delete it - truth of the moment and so on). From the feedback I've been getting it's become apparent to me that I have inadvertently alarmed a surprising number of people. Sorry about that. I had no intention of doing anything but releasing a few demons into the outer atmosphere, and exploring the possiblities of this whole experience. Think of it more like a snapshot taken with slow film in low light; there's a lot of detail missing. I'm not always so gloomy.

In fact it's hard to be gloomy when a two year old child has just glued a handful of sticky, half-chewed jubes into your hair.

Ce qui sera, sera.

Or something like that.

....

On another subject,

- it's about time another slide night was held for OzCanyons, so I'm getting the planning underway for that. The last one ended up costing me about AU$400, almost all of which was the hiring of the hall at Maraylya in NW Sydney. That's partly because we apparently overlooked something which resulted in the deposit cheque being cashed. The most likely date is sometime in July or August of 2007, and preliminary details can be found here.

April 2007

Self-pity is an awful thing to be drowning in. Something like quicksand, I imagine, having experienced this substance once on a small scale, while studying the fluid dynamics of sedimentation (which of itself is also like drowning in quicksand). The April full moon fades away and the nocturnal landscape falls back into darkness. I can say, with absolute conviction, that I really don't like it here.

Back in the old days one would simply reach for a large bottle of laudanum and that would be the end of the problem. Now I would have to dig out my old organic chemistry cookbooks and brew some up for myself. And rusty as I am in this area, I'm sure that whatever I made would explode, both unintentionally and ineffectively.

I have added some more photographs of Ben to his web page. Thanks to all the people who have sent their condolences, I will get back to you before too much longer. There are days (quite a lot of them, actually) when I don't feel like speaking to anyone, even in writing.

My distractions for this month:

Chasing Hubble's Shadows: The Search for Galaxies at the Edge of Time, by Jeff Kanipe.
Very neat summary of the current state of research into the evolution of the universe.

The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design, by Leonard Susskind
OK, I have problems (plural) with this. Not with most of the science, which is clear and well explained, nor with the rejection of the notion that a supernatural explanation is necessary for the universe to be 'just right' for us (though I sometimes wish there was a god to believe in, just so I'd have something to kick the shit out of). I don't like string theory much - which might render me more critical to begin with - but the main problem is that I can't quite nail down exactly what Professor Susskind is saying his interpretations of the Anthropic Principle are. It should be obvious, but his use of this familiar term feels as if it is constantly shifting underfoot as you go through the book. Am I missing something? *Sigh*. Now I'll have to read the damn thing for a third time.

The Mountains of My Life, by Walter Bonatti
Finally got around to reading this, the autobiographical account of the major climbs of this famous Italian mountaineer, an incredibly talented man who was shunned for much of his life by the mountaineering world for no other reason, it seems, than someone else's arbitrary bitterness.

Ascent, by Sean and Dix Williams
Some nice SF to unwind with.

Vulcan 607, by Rowland White
The last flight of the Vulcan? British bombing exploits during the Falklands War, showing what can be achieved under difficult conditions with the right application of skill and determination (and more than a dash of luck).

Flight 427: Anatomy of an Air Disaster, by Gerry Byrne
737s and rudder reversals: I'll agree with the reviewer at Amazon.com about this one, this book needs something visual in the form of diagrams and photos to help with the technical discussions. Fortunately I have some of those (somewhere) in the other account of this accident that I read last year (and the title of which I do not have on hand at the moment). The strength of this book is in making the stages of the investigation clear and giving a thoughtful discussion of all the various theories put forward to explain the accident... plus a nice summary of the political tensions between the FAA and the NTSB.

The Light Ages, by Ian R. Macloud.
Yeah, it's fantasy, I guess.... and quite nicely done too.

The Reality Dysfunction, by Peter F. Hamilton.
OK, I've been eyeing the Night's Dawn Trilogy for a while now. So far so good. No. 1 is really well written and very well paced, even if it is a little overburdened with attractive women drooling to get into the bed of our handsome hero. Fortunately (for him) our handsome hero also likes to use his brains. The author likes to use his brains too and fortunately (for us) he's very good at it....

100 Decisive Battles from Ancient Times to the Present: The World's Major Battles and How they Shaped History, by Paul K. Davis.
I bought this more as a reference work, but once I opened it I couldn't put it down. For some reason I don't find modern warfare quite as intriguing as the older battles, but everything up to the end of WWII... wow...

Berserk #284 was finally released (a week late) on April 13th.

March 2007

Autumn. The doors open out from my bedroom to a small balcony above a little patch of sand at the edge of Tuggerah Lake. The lake has many moods; it can change its temper with a breath of wind or the reflection of lightning. I grew up here: I used to absorb these elemental aspects of the environment whether I wanted to or not. Now they're simply there, and I remain indifferent. Unlike the Idea of Order at Key West, I suppose, I've nothing human to add to this landscape by way of meaning.

March took me through Benjamin's birthday and into another, colder kind of cerebral numbness. I did a few things, which means, essentially, that I wrote some words and read others. I can't really remember what they were. A short story, a poem. I'd like to write a decent poem one of these days... but for that I'd have to find some talent somewhere - which isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

The western evening view from my bedroom balcony.
By the middle of April the water will be covered with black swans.

February 2007

I was hoping to have a couple of the book reviews finished, but alas not... James William Johnson's hefty biography of John Wilmot has unexpectedly turned out to be easier going that Dessaix's Turgenev, though they're both excellent books, just very different. And Joe Simpson's "This Game of Ghosts" still makes me cry. Though I've read it twice, I might leave the 'analysis' until later. At the same time I'm also re-reading Max Born's "Einstein's Theory of Relativity" to re-acquaint myself with the basics of relativity, and there's also Jay Bonansinga's very sad tale of the sinking of the Eastland in Chicago in 1915.

On the other hand I have put up my (so far) very brief notes on the possibility of backward time travel.

January 2007

Welcome to my world. My world is black, with no hint of white, no shades of grey.
For some stupid reason I keep waking up every morning, and I don't want to.

For a quick explanation of how I arrived here, you will need to have a look at this:
Fatality at Kanangra Walls and Ben Porter.

I've resisted the temptation to write vast tracts of useless, emotional rubbish about what happened the night Ben died. Writing may come later, when I'm better able to control what I put down on paper. Though this may never be possible... Everything feels utterly useless; my writing, looking out the window, even being with our children.

But I do need to say this important thing about the man with whom I shared the last eight years of my life.

Some of you may understand the feeling of wonder you get when you stare at a beautiful sunset, or stand upon a cliff top with the wind in your face and the waves beating the pulse of the earth against the rocks beneath you, or when you've just climbed a mountain and the world is laid out gloriously beneath you and you're breathless with exhilaration, or when you've carved a trail of powder snow behind you in a blinding race against yourself and the hill, or when you look up with amazement to see the glittering tail of a comet spreading stardust against the apparent eternity of the night sky. It's not the thing in itself or even what you might have done but the feeling that for a moment, for just the split fraction of an instant, you have been brushed with the elusive essence of what it means to be alive.

This is what Ben was for me.

Page archived 21-12-2007
C.A.L.