The chat room at MCiOS was invaded by Slovenians yesterday; CdM wanted to demonstrate an Internet community during a lecture and so asked me to be there for a few minutes. It was fun, though I have no idea what kind of weird impression I made. . . still, they didn’t know me, and won’t be returning to the room so I guess it’s ok. As I say, it was great fun. Certainly not your ordinary chatroom experience.

Also a few days ago, I finished Kim Stanley Robinson’s Blue Mars, after having spent the last several months with the Mars books as occasional reading. I have read them before, some 4 years ago, so there was no hurry this time even if I didn’t really remember much of the plot; the plot isn’t really what’s important anyway in these bricks.

The premises are superficially simple: a few decades into the third millennium, one hundred people travel to Mars to start a colony; they are soon to be followed by more, many more, people and a whole new society grows on the red planet. The making of a new world on an uninhabited planet is complicated on many levels: the physical world must be made inhabitable, for a start — but how much should Mars be made to resemble Earth; don’t the red rocks and lifeless plains have a right to remain untouched for future generations to marvel at? Politics enter into the decisions immediately, when the colonists from different countries group together (or don’t) and when basic differences in viewpoint are brought out by the newness of everything. And when the population of Mars is no longer one hundred but ten million people, when overpopulated Earth screams for somewhere to ship its citizens (there is one additional, important factor here which I won’t reveal. . .) , when the second- and third generation Martians are born, grow up and have no affinity with Earth, the possibilities for complication become endless. Robinson has put a lot of thought into this work, as well as 17 years of research, and he has many theories on politics, economics and psychology as well as insights in the intricacies of ecological and medical matters.

The problem for a layman reader is to know how much of all this is indeed plausible; what matters is of course that it works in the framework of the story but it isn’t unimportant whether Robinson’s vision of the future is founded on fact or fantasy. He does have something of an exaggerated reliance on technology, not that he envisions technological solutions to all the world’s problems, rather the opposite in many cases; but his gadgets almost always work, and for me living in a society where the bus time tables are thrown into confusion every time it gets below freezing, the image of a cadre of robots unassisted building factories for extracting minerals from the bowels of an asteroid seems far more remote than a mere 50 or 60 years.

Not that the technology is what makes the books memorable, or indeed worth reading. That is accomplished by the characters, the people, sympathetic and unsympathetic, who populate the books and Mars. The novels are written from a variety of viewpoints, a device I find very successful and that conveys the intricate complexity of any human society and particularly a brand-new one. Every person who moves to Mars brings his or her cultural baggage from Earth, and may be more or less willing to shed it. Seeing the same society, sometimes the same incidents, through different eyes makes it all the more vivid. And Robinson doesn’t shy from letting the bad guys talk either; personally I couldn’t stand Frank or Zo, for instance, yet somehow it is possible to understand them when you see how they look at things, how they think about matters. It is not a bright and happy future that is painted in this story, but nor is it hopeless. It is striking how much Robinson believes in the power of people working together; through the two-and-a-half thousand pages or so people discuss, argue, debate and talk, making things happen, making the new society work. Yes, in the end it is a hopeful picture in spite of every disaster that have befallen and shaped the Martians through the course of the story.

The three Mars books are long, overlong even; still, I do not regret re-reading them and I am sure I will read them again in a few years’ time.

I finally got round to reading The Inkeeper’s Song by Peter Beagle the other week. It was a very beautiful tale; it seemed like a fairytale but had the most unexpected twists, the author made very good use of the shifting points of view, and the language was very wonderful, very beautiful indeed. I must read more books by Peter Beagle.

Dags att deklarera — men jag har redan gjort det! Ha! Johan gjorde grovjobbet så förtjänsten är egentligen hans. Det är förmårrat skönt att ha det gjort, hursomhelst.

And now, hooray hooray, I must do my taxes. I know I ate Squigglypills when I was a wee tot — shouldn’t that insure me from this…?

I set a record in microsleep this morning — fell asleep five times in approximately four minutes (between three bus stops.) I know I was asleep each time, for I had different, distinct dreams; very weird experience.

Good Things have been happening: flerdle is going to Europe in June, and she’s coming to visit us — yay!! Am really looking forward to that, and planning things to do and see. Good Thing no 2 is that Dunx and Jen got engaged, which makes me very, very happy. Double yay (one for them each!)

And it’s only 2 weeks until Walpurgis!

Sudden musing: What is it with bloggers and capital letters, or rather the lack of same, anyway? So many weblogs/web journals I’ve seen don’t use capitals at all; is it because they are written by people who care more about the graphically symmetrical look of things than I do? I have to admit, I don’t like it at all personally in running text. Capital letters are there for a reason — remove them and the text becomes difficult to read. Headlines are different though: I can understand and sympathise with the usage there, but, well, grump.

Today we went on our first flipist walk since moving to Storvreta. A flipist walk is the kind you make armed with a die, and for every crossroads or fork you roll the die to see which way you should go (bearing in mind that you can’t take a road that leads back to where you have already been.) It’s good fun, and a good way to learn the layout of a place and get to spots you haven’t seen before. There will be more flipist walks; soon, probably, if the weather stays nice.

We watched Whisky Galore this evening; it is a very funny film, and no worse for being watched whilst drinking whisky, either. Which means bedtime. Now.

Bonadea caught a bird today! No parents could be prouder of the first steps of their toddler than we are of our wee fur-head — why, we’d more or less expected her to turn tail and run when confronted with a live bird! She’s getting an extra treat tonight, not because we dislike birds (it was a yellowhammer, so rather a beautiful bird, too) but surely she deserves it, particularly as she wasn’t allowed to eat it. Let’s see if Cassandra manages to catch something too, one of these days. . .