{"id":1775,"date":"2008-01-02T13:00:04","date_gmt":"2008-01-02T20:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=1775"},"modified":"2008-01-02T13:00:04","modified_gmt":"2008-01-02T20:00:04","slug":"off-the-queue-and-into-the-neurons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2008\/01\/02\/off-the-queue-and-into-the-neurons\/","title":{"rendered":"Off the Queue and Into the Neurons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Books conquered during the holiday resting season: &#8220;Learning the World&#8221; by Ken MacLeod, &#8220;The Crack in Space&#8221; by Philip K. Dick, and &#8220;Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide&#8221; by Paul Gregutt.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Learning-World-Scientific-Ken-MacLeod\/dp\/0765351773?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1199295084&amp;sr=8-1\">Learning the World<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=thequantumpon-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important;margin:0px !important\" \/> by Ken MacLeod.  A first contact novel.  Or rather, a pre-first contact novel.  Enjoyable, but I was left wishing that the characters were more fleshed out.  Also [SEMI SPOILER ALERT] notable for its use of the increasingly common &#8220;universitas ex machina.&#8221;  You know what I mean: &#8220;universitas ex machina&#8221; is where parallel universes\/the multiverse are used as a nice escape from writing an actual ending (tough to be fair, MacLeod&#8217;s ending only partially relies on this technique.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Crack-Space-Philip-K-Dick\/dp\/1400030064?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1199295201&amp;sr=1-1\">The Crack in Space<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=thequantumpon-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important;margin:0px !important\" \/> by Philip K. Dick.  Presidential politics, a path to a new universe, and a world overpopulated and highly segregated sounds like good fodder for a PKD novel.  This one, however, isn&#8217;t up to Dick&#8217;s normal standards.  It&#8217;s just not paranoid enough, nor  is it crazy enough (although a two bed mutant running an orbiting brothel is pretty damn crazy.)  At this point, I think I&#8217;ve read almost all of the really &#8220;good&#8221; PKD novels, and am stuck in that &#8220;must read his entire canon&#8221; mode.  But that withstanding has anyone read the new recently re-released main stream PKD novels?  Seeing as how one of my favorites of Dick was &#8220;The Transmigration of Timothy Archer,&#8221; I&#8217;m hopeful that they might not be so bad.<\/li>\n<li>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Crack-Space-Philip-K-Dick\/dp\/1400030064?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1199295201&amp;sr=1-1\">Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=thequantumpon-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important;margin:0px !important\" \/> by Paul Gregutt.  History of Washington wineries, a unique rating system for Washington wines, and some insight into where Washington wines are going.  Gregutt really seems to know his stuff.  Now if only I can get my hands on some of the wines he points to!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Books conquered during the holiday resting season: &#8220;Learning the World&#8221; by Ken MacLeod, &#8220;The Crack in Space&#8221; by Philip K. Dick, and &#8220;Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide&#8221; by Paul Gregutt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[68,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-read-you-tweed","category-wine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}