touching base
My computer is on the fritz (just when I had almost finished doing our taxes on it!) so my blogging is likely to be light for a while. I’ll check in from T’s computer, but probably won’t have much in the way of serious posts until I have it back in gear or give up and replace it. (It’s scary, but the low-end machines are so cheap, that at any reasonable valuation of our time, it almost always makes sense to buy a new one.)
I did want to express my sadness at the unexpected death of Octavia Butler. Fledgling wasn’t my favorite of her books, but she was a great writer. I ran across this link to one of her short stories, Amnesty, today, and I recommend it to anyone who isn’t familiar with her work. In miniature, it displays all the themes that Butler kept on returning to.
Interestingly, it seems that the news of her death spread across the blogosphere well before it was reported in the press. Steven Barnes seems to have reported it first. Edward Champion shares a nice memory of how Kindred rocked his world, and a roundup of posts from others.
February 28th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
This is really sad and I heard it first on your blog. She was a fantastic writer and, tho i’ve not yet read fledgling, i always eagerly waited for anything from her to come out. And though i read very widely in that genre, i don’t think i’ve found many whose work is as deep, thought provoking, and troubling.