Obdormio.com

A couple of weeks ago, I bough a bunch of books on one of those evil sales. Now that exams are over, I finally have time to read again, though it’s remarkable how all that drive to read and write I felt during the revision period dissipated once the exam was over. Nevertheless, I have recently finished the first of these books, Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart.

This book chronicles the experiences of Isherwood Williams, who returns home from a research trip in the mountains to find that humanity has all but died out from a mysterious disease. Banding together with a few other survivors, he tries to survive in the ruins of civilization, while dreaming of one day rebuilding it.

I quite enjoyed this book. While I was not overly fond of the main character, as I found him a bit too arrogant and inefficient, the story as a whole was quite interesting. I should admit that my ambivalence towards Ish might come from being hit a bit too close to home, though.

I particularly enjoyed the little segments on what happened to the things Man left behind, the plants and animals and constructions. Especially in the first segment of the book, these observations on how the natural world would change without people there to keep it in the mould we’ve built for it, were much more fascinating than Ish himself. Possibly, the author thought so too, as the first part of the book is mostly Ish driving around to observe the effects of the calamity, rather than taking any active part in events.

In the second segment, when Ish and some other survivors have banded together to form their little tribe, these little asides become rarer, but it doesn’t matter much, as the formation of the new society becomes the interesting part. The books characters aren’t really all that much to shout about, many of them can be described in a single word, and several of them never get any more characteristics beyond a name. At this point, the story is much more about the character of the emerging society than of its individual members. It is really only Ish and his wife who are more than background, yet it is the background that is interesting, the rites and customs that emerge in the little tribe, like the New Year ritual they develop. As the survivors age, the tribe becomes numerically dominated by their children, who never knew the old world, and who have original ways of seeing the past. The reverence they have for Ish’s hammer, which has acted as a sort of safety blanket for him, was a touch I really liked.

Overall, I wish we had seen more of the culture and mythology of the tribe, especially in the third part of the book, when Ish is old and dying as the last of the Americans, and the tribe consists entirely of people who have never known any life but the one they lead. Since Ish is the focus point, and at this point in the story, apparently senile, we get only fleeting glimpses. I would dearly have loved to see the story continue beyond where it ended, to have a look at the new world when the old was truly gone.

Overall, this story is enjoyable chiefly for its plot, rather than its characters. The plot is very interesting, and while the characters might not be the most developed personalities, they do not detract from the enjoyment. It was well worth the read.

It’s been two weeks, so I guess it’s time to face it: Uru is gone, for now at least (hope springs eternal…). I don’t really have time for extended mourning due to imminent exams, but I finally took the time to hang up the Journey Cloth I bought before Christmas. If I can’t have the real thing, at least I can have a reminder. Courtesy of my seldom used camera, here are a couple of shots of how it turned out:

My desk, with the Journey Cloth hanging over it. It was actually good to get something on that wall, it’s been a bit bare.

Here’s a close-up of the cloth. It’s very cool, just the way you’d imagine they would look if the game were real. The hand print even glows in the dark, but it can sadly not be activated by touching it.

For those wanting their own Journey Cloths, look here.

This digital Elfquest thing has got me pondering reading order (I suspect my imminent exams also have something to do with my dwelling on these thoughts; the alternative is just to horrible to contemplate!), what is the best way to read through the entire story?

Elfquest has been published in several different series, some of them running concurrently, telling simultaneous stories, but with crossovers, which makes it hard to put one ahead of the other. There is also no guarantee that any given issue does not take place before the previous one, with the series like Hidden Years and the other flashbacks. And when they switched to anthology-publishing, I get the impression that chronology varied even more, though I haven’t read these myself yet, so I’m not sure (and this makes planning a reading order even harder, of course.)

How, then, to read it in an order which minimizes spoilers for future issues, but retains a certain chronology? I’ve pondered, studied timelines and mapped it out, and put together this list. Since I don’t know exactly the contents of all the series (and boy, is there a balancing act to reading time lines and avoiding spoilers as best you can!) so it might not be quite right, which is why I’m putting it up here to hopefully get comments from people more knowledgeable than I.

The first three series are easy enough, they’re a story alone, and only after these did the publications split into concurrent runs, so the list begins:

• All of the original Elfquest.
• All of Siege at Blue Mountain.
• All of Kings of the Broken Wheel.

After this is where it gets tricky. Here’s what I have so far:

• Hidden Years #1-3.
• New Blood #11 and #12.
• Hidden Years #8, then #5-7, #9 and #4.
• All of Kahvi.
• Hidden Years #9.5-22
• New Blood #14-35.
• All of Shards.
• Hidden Years #23-29.
• All of Blood of Ten Chiefs.
• All of Two-Spear.

Two-Spear in particular, I am unsure of, it is possible it should come before Kahvi, in which case Blood of Ten Chiefs should probably follow it as well, to maintain the thematic link. If that is the case, both of them should go before Hidden Years entirely, along with the Wolfrider!-stories.

Which brings me to the next segment, where it really gets messy, since we’re now in the anthology years.

• The Wolfrider!-stories found in Volume 2 #19, #21, #23, #25, #27, #29, #31 and #33.
• The Dreamtime-stories found in Volume 2 #4-7, #9-13, #15, #16 and #18.
• The Wild Hunt-stories found in Metamorphosis* and in Volume 2 #1-7, #10-12, #14, #15, #18, #20-30, #32 and #33.
• The Fire-Eye-stories found in Metamorphosis and in Volume 2 #1-7, #9-14, #16, #17 an #19-22.
• The Wavedancers issue, as well as the Wavedancers-stories found in Metamorphosis and in Volume 2 #1, #2, #5, #21, #23, #24, #27, #28, #30 and #31.
• The Rogue’s Curse stories found in Metamorphosis and in Volume 2 #1, #3, #8-10, #12, #13, #15-17, #20, #22, #24-26 and #28-30.
• All of The Rebels.
• All of Jink.
• The FutureQuest-stories found in Metamorphosis and in Volume 2 #10, #11, #13-15, #17, #19, #20 and #22.

And then finally all the Worldpool “what if?”-stories:

• New Blood #1-10.
• The Worldpool-stories in Volume 2 #2-4, #9-27 and #31.

And that’s the list. If anybody has comments, please share them! Now I need dinner.

^{* I have not been able to determine whether Metamorphosis and Volume 2 #1 is the same thing, or if Metamorphosis was a special. If you know, please tell me!}

I’ve twittered about this, but I feel it’s worth a post of its own as well: Warp Graphics is making the entire run of ElfQuest available for free on the web. As a long-time ElfQuest fan, this is the kind of news that makes me go “squeee!” My collection has significant holes in it, so I’m really looking forward to seing what I’ve missed.

I suppose this is another interesting development in the business of webcomics, what with another established publisher moving its stuff online, interesting to some, anyway. It’s also clearly a marketing strategy to drum up interest for future publications. It’s already working. After reading what is up there now, I ran through my whole collection again over Easter, and today I went out and bought “the Discovery”, so good thinking, Warp, I guess.

In July, I wrote:

I somehow suspect that I’ll be more tempted to blog once school starts again and I have other things to do.

And, man, I wasn’t tempted at all! It seems that it is only when the holidays draw near an end, and the prospect of going back to classes and ridiculously large lists of curriculum rears its ugly, ugly head, that the bug bites me. But meh, I’ve made no promises, so I make no apologies.

Since I can’t seem to muster the will to write full length blog posts very often, I think I’ll try compensating with lots of tiny ones. Enter Twitter. Putting these tweets in the main post area would be a sure way to offend my own sensibilities, so I’ve gotten myself one of these fancy-pants plugins, and you should now be seeing a neat little list in the sidebar to the right.

With a bit of luck, this is so easy that I’ll get addicted to spewing text again, and eventually end up with stuff that won’t fit in a tweet, resulting in more proper posts. Tricking myself like this is a delicate process,though, so don’t mess it up by telling me what I’m up to!

Obdormio says:
“such matters” are all about image quality

Good Sir! - wistfully flying - “My fish is a hooker. Fan-tastic.” says:
and the image quality of my existing pig-image is still better than your nonexisting pig-image

Good Sir! - wistfully flying - “My fish is a hooker. Fan-tastic.” says:
much like 1>0 even though it’s clearly inferior to all other numbers

Obdormio says:
my exisiting pig image is why you even have a pig image!

Good Sir! - wistfully flying - “My fish is a hooker. Fan-tastic.” says:
finder’s keepers, Abooboo.

Life, lately, has devolved into getting up in the middle of the day, going to work, coming home, and then not moving for several hours until I fall asleep. Writing it out, that seems far from healthy, but I find it satisfies my innate laziness.

Since my last post (in MAY? Good grief! Loki is right to complain!) I don’t feel like I have really done much worth talking about. School’s obviously been out for the summer (and is actually soon to start up again, but let’s gloss over that little tidbit), and I’m back at my parent’s house, not being very useful. Despite swearing that I would never touch a lawn mower again, I am once more mowing graveyards. The equipment and lack of communication with management is just as bad as last year, and just to make it all perfect, I seem to have developed allergies to grass. Definitely not applying for this job next year.

I am also making a bit of money by cleaning the doctor’s and dentist’s offices on weekdays. Basically I have the job of the Janitor from Scrubs. (Well, except for all the fixing and handyman duties, I just clean, so it’s not really like that job at all, but any analogy that compares me with Neil Flynn is worth including.)

I spent a week in Fredrikstad, on the Oase festival, but a writeup of that wouldn’t be very interesting. There are only so many ways to say “sang and prayed a lot” before it gets boring.

I have bought a new computer, one running this fancy-pants Vista stuff. Help Desk speaks truth, and they’ve sucked all the fun out of Solitaire and Minesweeper (I liked them because they were simple, now they’re a chore!), but other than that, all is well. Mainly because it can run URU!

I’ve been aching to play Uru again for some time now, and now I finally can! I never want to leave my room ever again! And yet I keep having to anyway! Curses! Exclamation points!

This is the main reason for my slack updating, to be honest. Uru Live is very definitely pretty much at the top of my list of Most Awesome Games Ever, narrowly beaten by Riven, possibly sharing second place with The Longest Journey. Explanations can’t do it justice, go get one of the free visitor’s accounts and have a look around it for yourself. It helps to have played the rest of the Myst games, but it isn’t necessary. Or even better, get a paid account, so you can actually see the game, not just the visitor approved areas. August is right around the corner, sign up on the first. It’s 99 cents for the first month, so that gives you plenty of time to get hooked decide if you like it or not.

Another thing I’ve been doing a little bit of is reading, so I’ll do a quick little mini-review-list:

Swamp Thing - I bought all the volumes containing Alan Moore’s run (and when he left it ended! LALALALA THERE IS NO MORE AFTER THAT!). This was very good, I can definitely see why it became so popular. I’ve read them twice since buying them, and will probably end up reading them again before going back to school.

Hellblazer - I bought Original Sins and Dangerous Habits, which the lie-list at the store said were the two containing the earliest stories. Wikipedia tells me there are two volumes in between, though, so I guess I know where next month’s comic budget is going. Original Sins was ok, but nothing spectacular, but I really loved Dangerous Habits, which seems to be where the movie pilfered all it’s best bits. I really didn’t need to get hooked on an expense like this now, but I’m much to weak to resist, so I guess I’ll be buying new shelves soon.

The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas under Red Skies - Oh man! I bought Lies some time ago, on sale, and it’s just been sitting in my shelf ever since waiting for me to find the time to read it. Luckily for me, that time arrived at the same time as the sequel, so I didn’t have to grind my teeth and wring my hands waiting for more. At least not until I finished Seas. These books were good. These books were very good. Who doesn’t love con men and capers? And pirates? And it’s in a good fantasy setting to boot. Locke Lamora is hereby officially one of my favorite fictional characters.

Renegade’s Magic - the end of Robin Hobb’s Soldier Son trilogy, and what an end! Seriously, the end took be completely by surprise, especially considering her other work. Like all her books, this was a fantastic story, well worth the read.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - I’m not even going to bother. Either you’ve read it, or you intend to read it, or you hate it without having read it, or you just don’t care. I thought it was good, and I’ll leave it at that.

I think that’s it. I make no guarantees for continued activity, not with Uru installed, but I somehow suspect that I’ll be more tempted to blog once school starts again and I have other things to do.

I just wish it to be known that I in no way have part in the horrific lie that is the word “progress” in the sentence beneath this page’s header, and I do indeed take grave umbrage from the use of the word.

Thank you for your attention.

_{Oh, and since I’m posting here anyway, if someone doesn’t get their rear end in gear soon, you can all look forward to (or possibly dread) a randomly fake post describing Obdormio’s recent stay at Camp Christianity in view of his return home a few days past. Toodles!}