William Gibson's Spook Country

By Mary Foster, Associated Press Writer, via Yahoo! News:

"Spook Country", by William Gibson: Hollis Henry, investigative reporter and former rock singer, has a fascinating assignment. She's in Hollywood checking out a new art form — a virtual art that can recreate the death scenes of the famous or fill a hotel room with knee-high poppies.

Hollis is apparently doing the story for a start-up magazine called "Node." The problem is no one has ever heard of the new publication, which is contrary to the buzz most new magazines generate. And she's warned about its superrich owner Hubertus Bigend.

"Locative art," as it's called, is a change, Henry is told. Instead of experiencing virtual reality through a screen, locative art can take place in the world around us.

While she's checking out virtual death scenes, Bigend directs her to get in to see Bobby Chombo, a reclusive, disturbed computer genius who sets up the network needed to support the locative art. Bigend tells her that Chombo may be doing more than installing art works.

Bobby sees everything in terms of GPS grids. He has even divided his living space with a grid, a series of squares so he can sleep in a new one each night. Besides setting up the virtual art displays, Bobby designs military navigation systems.

"The most interesting applications turn up on the battlefield, or in a gallery," he says.

He may be tracking a mysterious ship, a modern-day Flying Dutchman, that doesn't put into port anywhere. If so, Bigend wants to know and he wants to know what's on the ship and where it will finally dock.

The intricately plotted novel is told from three viewpoints.

Besides Hollis, there is Cuban-Chinese Tito, who with his family specialize in delivery of information and misinformation. Then there's Milgrim. Hooked on prescription anti-anxiety drugs, he is being held prisoner by a man who may, or may not be connected to a government agency. And there is an old man who eventually connects all the elements, including the mysterious ship and its cargo.

As fresh and clever as the innovative locative art that opens the book, Gibson keeps the plot twisting, weaving dark and dangerous elements in a series of fascinating scenes.

Whether he's taking you inside the surprisingly lucid mind of Milgrim or into the semi-mystical world of Tito, where superb training mixes with the guidance of ancient gods, Gibson holds readers spellbound.

The Children of Hurin

By Bruce DeSilva, Associated Press Writer, via Yahoo! News:

Six thousand years before the Fellowship of the Ring, long before anyone had even seen a Hobbit, the elves and men of Middle-earth quaked at the power of the dark lord Morgoth.

Hunted by easterlings and orcs, they fled to the fastness of Nargothrond and to the deep forests of Brethil and Doriath. Among them, a hero emerged. Strong and courageous he was, but foolhardy and impetuous. His name was Turin, son of Hurin.

His story, released today by Houghton Mifflin, is a publishing event: It is the first new book by the creator of "The Lord of the Rings" in 30 years. The publisher calls it the culmination of an effort to bring to the public the vast body of work J.R.R. Tolkien had left unpublished, and largely unfinished, when he died in 1973.

Tolkien began writing "The Children of Hurin" 99 years ago, abandoning it and taking it up again repeatedly throughout his life. Versions of the tale already have appeared in "The Silmarillion," "Unfinished Tales" and as narrative poems or prose sections of the "History of Middle-earth" series.

But they were truncated and contradictory. Outside of Tolkien scholars and Middle-earth fanatics, few read them.

These works were, after all, largely unreadable — dense, hard to follow histories and legends of Tolkien's vast, imaginary world, crammed with complicated genealogies, unfamiliar geography and hard-to-pronounce names. Readers who took up such books hoping for another Rings saga or charming yarn such as "The Hobbit" abandoned them after a few pages.

"The Children of Hurin" is the book for which these readers have been longing.

It is the fruit of 30 years labor by Christopher Tolkien, the author's son, who has devoted much of his life to editing and publishing the work his father left behind. By meticulously combining and editing the many published and unpublished versions of the tale, he has produced at last a coherent, vivid and readable narrative.

Beautiful Sunrise

Beautiful Sunrise 2
Originally uploaded by m_andrew.

“Before the gods that made the gods / Had seen their sunrise pass, / The White Horse of the White Horse Vale / Was cut out of the grass.”
(G. K. Chesterton)


“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.” (John Muir)