The malcontents from Clarion South Apartment 336 (Ben, Steph, Su Lynn and myself) are proud to announce the arrival of the world’s first 4D blog. (Viewing goggles optional.  Imax version subject to demand).

The Long Write
http://thelongwrite.com/

* More insightful than the Collected Twitter Posts of Jar Jar Binks.

* More controversial than the implementation of decimal time.

* More entertaining than reading a history of object-oriented management strategies written in binary.

* Filled with more Fail than AmazonFail, RaceFail and the Fail Whale combined.

* Now with 20% more monkeys.

For your reading enjoyment we present the wise words and thoughtful thoughts of the unstoppable Sean Williams.

http://thelongwrite.com/2010/02/03/sean-williams-interview-2/

http://thelongwrite.com/2010/02/03/sean-williams-interview-2/

It’s been just over a year since I left Japan.  It had been six years since I had lived in Japan.  Since it’s Australia Day, I thought it was a good opportunity to list some of the differences I’ve noticed in returning to Australia.

Things That Have Changed in Australia:

• Things are a lot more expensive. (Yes, I know that’s how inflation works).  For example, the apartment I’m renting in Melbourne is smaller and a lot more expensive than the the one I was renting in Osaka.
• Melbourne seems to have  a preponderance of shops dedicated solely to ugg boots.  I can’t remember encountering any ugg boot only stores last time I was here.
• Half the population seems to be gluten intolerant now.  (I hadn’t come across anyone who was gluten intolerant pre-2004).
• My local supermarket now has self-service checkout lanes.  They’re a pain to use.  You have to scan things yourself and the machines attempt to judge the accuracy by weighing the bags.  Almost every time, I’ve had to get an assistant to reset the machine because something has gone wrong.
• Internet speeds and download limits are a lot better than before.  (Still more than 5 years behind Japan, but a big improvement on last time I was in Australia).

Things That Haven’t Changed in Australia (But I notice because I have changed):

• Melbourne’s public transport sucks.
• There are still a lot of racists in Australia.  (Given Australia’s history, it’s particularly galling to hear Australians complain about boat people.)
• A lot of people talk on their mobile phones on their trains.  (After being in Japan, I now found this particularly annoying).

Things I Miss About Japan: (Other than my friends in Japan):

• All of the cool places: the shrines, temples, ninja towns, monkey hot springs.
• The daily encounters with strange things.
• Lots of food: 551 Horai Shumai, Chibo Okonomiyaki, Izakayas (Melbourne has some izakayas that are all right).

Things In Melbourne That Remind Me of Japan:

• Within a 15-minute walk of my apartment in Melbourne there are 4 or 5 sushi restaurants and another half dozen or so Japanese restaurants.
• The communal laundry in my apartment has a sign up reading: “Someone has stolen my underwear again!  Beware of the pervert.”

Most of the published short stories (as opposed to drafts of friends’ stories) I read in 2009 were from online magazines.

I read them on my computer or downloaded them to my Palm Pilot and read (or listened to) them while I was commuting.  I noticed that I’ve got less patience with stories I read in electronic format.  If I’m sitting down with a book, I’ll generally give a story more of a chance.  But with stories in electronic format, if they haven’t grabbed me by the first paragraph, I’m likely to discard them and move on to the next one.

I didn’t read any original anthologies last year.  I just got my hands on Eclipse 3, The New Space Opera 2 and The Apex Book of World SF and am looking forward to reading them this year.

Here are my ten favorite short stories I read in 2009 (several of them were published a few years ago).

Death and Suffrage
Dale Bailey
The dead have risen and are voting democrat.  Funny and moving.

Shoggoths in Bloom
Elizabeth Bear
Winner of the 2009 Hugo for best novelette.  An interesting and thoughtful blend of Cthulhu mythos and race relations.

The Tale of Junko and Sayuri
Peter S. Beagle
A slow-paced, but carefully drawn tale of mythical creatures in ancient Japan.

Exhalation
Ted Chiang
Along with Greg Egan, Ted Chiang is my favorite short story writer.  I don’t think there is anyone else that compares with the sheer granduer of Egan’s and Chiang’s ideas.  Exhalation won the 2009 Hugo for best short story.  It’s a bit drier and slower than some of Chiang’s other stories, but still contains some remarkable ideas.

Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast
Eugie Foster
Manages to successfully pack a whole range of interesting world-building ideas into a short story.

A Study in Emerald
Neil Gaiman
Sherlock Holmes versus Cthulhu.  What’s not to love?

Orange
Neil Gaiman
A quirky, fun story in an unusual format.

Article of Faith
Mike Resnick
A robot wants to know why he is excluded from the church’s congregation.

The Death of Che Guevara
Lewis Shiner
A thoughtful alternate world history story speculating on what might have happened if Che didn’t die in Bolivia.  I loved it, but I suspect that if you’re not familiar with Che’s history, a lot of the story might be lost on you.

From Babel’s Fallen Glory We Fled
Michael Swanwick
A well-crafted story with interesting aliens and technology.

I read Freakonomics early in the year (it was published a few years ago) and loved it.  Full of fascinating details about human behaviour.  The book sold a lot of copies and many similar books followed on its heels.  Levitt’s and Dubner’s follow-up book, Superfreakonomics came out this year and caused a bit of controversary due to a lot of accusations that their research on climate change wasn’t the most accurate.  Superfreakonomics wasn’t as good as Freakonomics, but the first two-thirds of the book still has a lot of fun details.

My favorite non-fiction books of 2009:

Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan
Jake Adelstein
Not the best written book ever, but the subject material is fascinating.  An American reporter got a job as a crime reporter in Japan and ended up breaking a story about the yakuza paying for liver transplants in the US.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Dan Ariely
One of the books that followed in the wake of the success of Freakonomics.  Fascinating stuff.

Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell
Why some people succeed and others don’t.  Lots of interesting stuff in here.

The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World
Tim Harford
Another freaky behavioural book.

Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions
Christian Lander
The funniest book I read this year.  Lots of telling observations in here.

Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
The book that opened up a new publishing niche.  Examines why do people do what they do.

The Last Lecture
Randy Pausch & Jeffrey Zaslow
Randy Pausch shot to fame when he gave a lecture about how to live a good life.  He was a professor of computer science and had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.  He died last year

Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded
John Scalzi
The collected amusing and insightful blog rantings of science fiction writer John Scalzi.

Born on a Blue Day
Daniel Tammet
Tammet is an autistic savant who experiences numbers in a different way from most people.  Details some of his accomplishments such as reciting pi to more than 22,000 decimal places and learning to speak Icelandic in less than a week.

Booklife
Jeff VanderMeer
I’ve read lots of books on writing and this is one of the best.  There are plenty of writing books that give advice about how to write, but this book focuses on how to be a writer.

I also enjoyed Alex Kerr’s Lost Japan, where he talks about some of Japan’s disappearing traditions and Paul Theroux’s Riding the Iron Rooster, his travel book about riding the trains in China.

I read 67 books last year.  But I’m still fighting a losing battle not to get behind on my reading.  Last year I added 142 books to my list of books to read.

My favorite fiction books of the year:

Before They Are Hanged
Joe Abercrombie
I loved The Blade Itself and thought the sequel was just as good.  Crippled torturer Inquisitor Glokta is one of my all-time favorite fictional characters.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz
The tale of an overweight nerd from the Dominican Republic who wants to be the next Tolkien.  Surprisingly for a novel infused with genre references it won the Pulitzer.  A funny, sad and wonderful book.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Jeff Lindsay
Everyone’s latest favorite serial killer.  Although I really enjoyed the book, I actually prefer the TV series.  For once, I think the plot changes the series made were for the better.

A Feast For Crows
George R. R. Martin
Gritty, epic fantasy from the master of gritty, epic fantasy.  Book four of the increasingly-delayed Song of Fire & Ice series.

Watchmen
Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
One of the most influential works of fiction of the last 25 years.  I saw the movie first, loved it and so decided to read the graphic novel.  Brilliant stuff.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Brian Selznick
A wonderful children’s book filled with beautiful illustrations and a moving story.

The Arrival
Shaun Tan
A graphic novel that manages to say so much with pictures alone.

Blindsight
Peter Watts
A brilliant first contact novel.  Not an easy book to read, but filled with fascinating ideas about the nature of consciousness, evolution and alien communication.

Snake Agent
Liz Williams
The first of the Inspector Chan novels.  Blends Eastern mythology (Chinese demons) and modern technology.  Fun stuff.

Saturn Returns
Sean Williams
Fun, exciting, intelligent space opera with plenty of big ideas and cool concepts.

Some other novels I enjoyed were Summer Knight (another of Jim Butcher’s Dresden novels) and Mortal Engines (Philip Reeve).

I’d heard good things about Ian McDonald’s Brasyl and while I enjoyed the book, parts of it disappointed me and I wasn’t entirely convinced by the depiction of Brazil.  I guess I’ve just read enough stories where Tipler’s Omega Point is a major plot device.

I enjoyed Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio (Pu Songling), one of the classic sources of Chinese ghost stories.  After having watched movies like A Chinese Ghost Story, some of the tales in here were a lot of fun.  Some of the other tales were just a little bit odd and not exactly satisfying in terms of story development (Monster appears in town.  Monster eats random villagers.  Monster leaves.  The end).

I also battled my way through Slan, one of the classics of the science fiction.  As a genre, science fiction doesn’t age well.  Especially stories that are all about the ideas.  Modern science fiction stories have built on those ideas and added better writing and more convincing characters.  An example from Slan:

“Her own excitement was submerging in the first formulation of contempt for the clumsly efforts of the assassin.  “You fool,” she said, her child’s voice hot with disdain, yet immensely unchildlike in its stinging logic, “do you actually believe that you can catch a slan in the darkness?”

I read Haruki Murakami’s Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World.  The book is divided into two narratives.  One narrative I didn’t like at all and tended to skim.  The main narrative was a lot more fun and featured that wry sense of humor that infuses Murakami’s work:
“I thought about getting a haircut before the end of the world.  It wasn’t, after all, like I had lots of better things to do with twenty-four hours left.  Taking a bath, getting dressed, and going to the barber shop were about all I could hope for.”

I suspect one of the reasons Murakami is the most popular Japanese author overseas is that his books aren’t very “Japanese” in the sense that he is more influenced by Western literature and most of his cultural references are familiar to Western readers.  I enjoyed Hardboiled Wonderland, but not nearly as much as I liked Norwegian Wood.