Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Sweet were the showers...

' Sweet were the showers in early youth that drenched my body, and sweet the drops of pity that fell upon the books I read!'
--William Hazlitt, from 'My First Acquaintance with poets'

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Cheers for that one Melissa. You can find that whole essay here, and I heartily recommend it's reading.

Other necessary reading: this online version of Cory Doctorow's 'When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth', which, as well as being an awesome read, first introduced me toThe Declaraction of Independence of Cyberspace, and, I concur with Felix on this one,

'I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever read. I [want] my kid to grow up in a world where cyberspace [is] free—and where that freedom infected the real world, so meatspace got freer too.'

--Cory Doctorow, 'When Sysadmins Ruled The World'


Check out all of Cory's works, this one especially (not that I've had experience of all of them, only those available as audio fiction from EscapePod.org and it's sister podcast PseudoPod.org [but stay away from 'Bliss', that shit is fucking nasty...]) and, as well as this, I recommend Craphound (just click on the title to read the text), also by Mr. Doctorow. This was my first introduction to his work, and I found it quite stirring indeed. Try and find some Greg van Eekhout. Infact, just subscribe to EscapePod.org, so I can stop going on about how goddamned awesome it is. Seriously guys, just do it. I can't keep justifying it as, if I keep typing, my fingers might drop off (considering it's been so long since I've had to type anything as remotely long as this; I've know idea how those SF writers pull it off).

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Well, this turned into something quite productive considering I had set out with the intention of writing a blog about how it's raining and it makes me sad.

Oh yea, by the way: it's raining and it makes me sad.

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Word to your mother.