HRSFANS.org

Awesomely, one of the New Yorker weblogs published a post musing on another very new-to-me reason for reading, not reading, and/or finishing a book during the same week as the HRSFANS-discuss book recommendation thread I wrote about in July. (By the way, I have started—barely—to collate the recommendations list on the wiki. Please help! “‘Paperbacks-for-the-road’ Recommendations” is linked through from the “Index to the Awesome.”) I considered in parallel from the start Ms. Minkel’s apparent compulsion to show herself “an adult” in her reading life and Tony’s warning of potential future bad volumes in good-so-far series, so here come my musings specifically on the former.

An extract:

On one hand, we have big, painful books we feel compelled to see through to the end. On the other, the books we’ve sort of read and glibly lie about having finished. Both of these seem tied to some sort of reading scorecard, one in which the readers are measured and judged by—perhaps even more than—the books that they’ve read. …

But is the reading scorecard internal or external? Or are the two so entwined that it’s impossible to answer that question?

Ms. Minkel could mean the “we” impersonally: “On one hand, we have [here an example of] big, painful books we feel compelled to see through to the end,” but the rest of her post seems to indicate that she does speak as “we” for herself and her assuredly well-read readers (the comments posted seem to presume this, too).

Yet to me this entire concept of a compulsion to finish a book (painful or not) is foreign, bizarre, and surely detrimental to reading health. Does it ring a bell for anyone? Can you explain how this compulsion could make sense inside one’s own head (or how it can compel regardless of sense)?

People who’ve read my posts before may have noticed that I, if anything, tend to brag about my willingness to drop a book at any point, as if it’s macho, or stoic, to leave the story ever unfinished in my own mind. Come to think, in some cases it does feel internally macho, in that I’m deliberately holding myself back from the experience because I do care and yet don’t feel it would be advantageous to continue (Big Love after “Pilot”, new Battlestar Galactica after “Bastille Day”, A Reliable Wife more than 2/3 through, and to a lesser extent The Pillars of the Earth after 300p); in other cases it does feel internally stoic in that I’m accepting that I don’t care a whit about the next phase of the story and would rather turn to more enjoyable pursuits, without necessarily faulting the author(s) for being unable to keep my interest (Potter V 70p in without a single page free of people yelling at each other, Angel after “Reprise”, Farscape after “Season of Death”). When I discovered Ms. Minkel’s post, I immediately opened a chat to a friend whom I’ve mentioned earlier as a counterpoint to my reading style: he once devoured half of War and Peace in two days as escape reading. I opened the conversation (minor typos & grammatical quirks corrected):

me: you’ll have a COMPLETELY different reaction to this than I will …

you won’t think this whole concept of “we have big, painful books we feel compelled to see through to the end” is foreign, bizarre, counter-to-one’s-reading-health

he:i think that reading is just less painful for me

because i read so fast

… i mean, i am a bit compulsive about finishing books, but that’s more my obsessive nature than it is powering through

what would take willpower is putting them down

it’s not that i feel compelled to finish a book because i started it. it’s because i like reading and don’t like putting books down.

me: Usually a reading struggle for me just means my psyche isn’t keeping pace

I still don’t see how liking reading is a reason to keep reading a story you’re not liking—there’s hundreds of others available just as easily (in your case, without even putting down the device if you’re reading on the iPhone)

he: well, but you want to know how it ends

as i said, i don’t task switch well

if i’m in the middle of a video game

i find myself playing it for several more hours

me: no, I only want to know how it ends if I’m interested in the story

and even then, that’s not the important part

If I wanted to know how every story ends, I’d be even more of a basket case about keeping contact with everybody than I already am—and I never would have cancelled my FB account due to lack of interest

Read for your self, not for your private morals or for their public display. Reading is between you, the story, its characters and/or its world, and the author. Everything and everyone outside is just details—and if they aren’t, read something else.

Daniel Rabuzzi (’80) has a retrospective about the recent Toronto Spec Fic Colloquium on Modern Mythologies up on his speculative fiction blog at http://lobsterandcanary.blogspot.com/2011/10/toronto-specfic-colloquium-modern.html. The colloquium webpage itself is at http://www.specfic-colloquium.com/. I guess it’s too late to recommend the colloquium for this year, but perhaps locals and approximate locals might consider attending next year?

Hello, all! This is the first installment of the Bimonthly Roundup, an attempt to list and discuss events (like sci-fi or gaming conventions) which HRSFANS are going to. Future installments will be sent to hrsfans-discuss and posted on thiS blog, and a list will be kept on the HRSFANS wiki.

Are you going to any of these events? Got anything coming up that you’d like HRSFANS to know about? Like to see other HRSFANs? Great! Just drop a note and let people know!

Now, without further ado:

August

8/26 – 8/28: Pax Prime: Seattle, WA
This is probably today’s largest and most influential video game conference, created by Penny Arcade. A number of HRSFANs will be attending, including Tony V, Rebecca N, and Dennis C (who has previously convinced Tycho of the wisdom of drinking Catan, if I’m not mistaken).

8/29 – 9/5: Burning Man: Black Rock City, NV
An experiment in temporary community, filled with creativity and bizarreness of all sorts. At least a few HRSFANs will be there.

September

9/2-9/5: DragonCon: Atlanta, GA
A very big gaming con. No HRSFANs (that we know of) are going, but several are interested in a possible expedition next year.

9/16-18: Intercon Midatlantic: Bethesda, MD
A LARP-focused con with a strong following. Several HRSFANs attending, including Warren T, Rebecca M, and Michael V.

October

10/20-10/23: Spiel: Essen, Germany
A giant 4-day board game convention in Essen, Germany, where new board games come out. For most of us, heading there sounds a little crazy, but it’s a great place for new German-style board games (as you might expect), and Kevin G is potentially interested in a trip.

10/21-10/22: BlizzCon: Anaheim, CA
For all things Blizzard related, especially World of Warcraft. Certainly of interest to several HRSFANs, but none (so far) are known to be going.

To get put on future announcements, just add yourself (or your event) to the wiki list, or email me to let me know!

We are excited to announce that you should Save The Date for: THE SECOND QUADRENNIAL BIG HRSFA REUNION! This will be held on March 15-18, 2012, coincident with the HRSFA undergraduate SF convention, Vericon XII. Our “blue-ribbon” committee of “people who like to volunteer for things”* is busily working out the details of lodging, food, events and costs.

The reunion in 2008 was a blast — attending were scores of HRSFA alums spanning 20 years, sharing many activities such as going to Vericon VIII, partying, playing games, and generally re-uning. We guarantee that, like the prior reunion, this one will be Made Of Win.**

If you like, keep an eye on the HRSFANS Blog, now available on RSS and Twitter, for updates as they arrive. The Big Sign-Up Announcement will be sent over hrsfans-announce, so please sign up there if you haven’t yet.

Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem,
HRSFANS Reunion Committee

* If you, too, are a person who likes to volunteer for things, let us know and we will get you involved in helping to plan the reunion. We are always interested in feedback about what you might like to see happen at the reunion. Contact Jason Brodsky (jaybrod at gmail) if you are interested.

** By FDA rules the reunion must be at least 90% Win to qualify for this certification.

The other month, a to-be-commended HRSFalum asked through HRSFANS-discuss for good books to bring on a long vacation, imposing only constraints that they be in-print (reasonably available) mass-market PBs. As one might expect, this generated an excellent recommendations list (which someone really ought to collate for the HRSFANS wiki—shoot, I volunteered again, didn’t I?), if rather heavy on SF/F and historical fiction with SF/F elements. But there’s nice range to the discussions, as well; and a bit of back-and-forth amongst the recommenders.

One day into the discussion, Tony cautioned:

His Majesty’s Dragon, like Name of the Wind, Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and Vlad Taltos are all unfinished series, and I’d really recommend reading the GREAT books on this list that are DONE before reading ones we don’t know how they turn out.

This seems to involve a bit of legerdemain in categorization, comparing “unfinished series” to “books … that are DONE.” A series pretty much by definition comprises several books completed in their own right (or at least to the extent that individual publishing is deemed warranted). His Majesty’s Dragon is done, as are five successor novels: the author is not yet done with all stories she intends to set in the Temeraire universe, but why should her artistic and/or business decision in our reality handicap the readability of books already available?

Even if the intent is to recommend complete series (such as The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) over ongoing ones (from the barely-begun City of a Hundred Rows through the apparently-still-kicking Song of Ice and Fire all the way to, I suppose, Wheel of Time?), why should the expected number of additional related books be a more compelling reason against or for reading volume 1 (or 5) than the qualities of the specific volume in question?

And how does this square with Tony’s own list of recommendations, emailed to the thread the previous day, including “Hyperion by Dan Simmons (only read the first book!)”? Once a reader knows how a set of related books “turns out,” s/he can choose only the “GREAT” one, but that same reader should hold off reading a GREAT book that might yet have good, bad and/or indifferent successors?

Please allow me only barely to mention the undead series, completed by their creators for good or bad and re-animated in subsequent decades (Dune being probably the most extreme example—in this aspect as in others—but with the Foundation books an arguably even weirder case, since they were re-animated first by Asimov himself and then again by his estate!).

I say, read any given book on its own terms. As I’ve written before, if it is a GREAT book there will obviously be further stories to tell, but that does not mean you need feel any duty to seek out any more of those stories, or to believe any related stories just because the same person (or an anointed successor) wrote them.

I just ran across this description of the Daniel Bartlett Memorial Mathematics Lectures. Hosted at the University of Arizona, they honor Dan Bartlett ’03, a HRSFAlum who passed away in 2006.

This isn’t particularly timely, I realize, but I thought others might be interested to know about it regardless. While news of Dan’s death did percolate through the alumni community, I at least had not heard any specifics in connection with it. The linked page includes a very nice section about Dan.

The lectures themselves are apparently designed to inform a general audience about higher mathematics, and are held annually at the University of Arizona (Dan was studying Algebraic Geometry at the UA math department at the time of his death). The next one will apparently be held this fall, and information about it can be found here.

By the way, if you’d ever like to post something here, but you don’t want to get your own posting account, email your post to me and I’ll put it up.

If you’d like to post often enough that this sounds like a hassle, email Emily and she’ll set you up with an account of your own.

In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a HRSFANS event was hosted in the Lowell Senior Common room. The event was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

For anyone attending the Harvard 2011 reunion, there will be a HRSFANS event on Saturday, May 28th, from 3-5 pm in the Lowell Senior Common Room. Come join us for refreshments, good company, and the possibility of going mad if you stay too long.

The following post was written by Tony, and is posted here at his behest:

In anticipation of vericon TWELVE, in 2012, which is TWELVE months from now, I wrote a song: The Twelve Days of VeriCon:

On the twelfth day of Vericon my hrsfa gave to me…
Twelve	Friends a greeting
Eleven	Creatures Tapping
Ten	Boards of Gaming
Nine	Authors Signing
Eight	Alums Carousing
Seven	Movie mockers
Six	Larps late-running
Five	Viral Memes
Four	Cosplay teams
Three	Common rooms
Two	Burdicks runs
One	And a ConChair in a Tizzy