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I've been sick, so falling back on lots of comfort reading that is both short and familiar.
4.1. "Damned If You Don't", Randall Garrett (free ebook derived from the Project Gutenberg version)
(Just a short story, so I don't want to count it as new read #5.)
I read this one, finally, through a concatenation of events. First, eReader 2.0 was released for iPhone OS, with my feature wishlist items included. After upgrading, I found that eReader/Fictionwise had reworked some of the ebooks with better metadata, so I wanted to re-download them; the easiest solution was to uninstall eReader, then reinstall and use "download entire bookshelf" to avoid duplication.
One of the books in my collection is The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge, and I wanted to check to see if they'd fixed a typo. (There looks like a badly-done search and replace that's replaced "gu" with "Gu", probably while doing some editing of Fast Times at Fairmont High, but which results in things like "AuGust" appearing elsewhere. Not fixed but hardly a real issue.) I got to the intro to "Bookworm, Run!" and was reminded that I'd never tracked down the Garrett story that Vinge refers to.
After a quick Google search I spotted it on Manybooks.net...which eReader helpfully has a shortcut to, right in the app. Soon thereafter I had the story ready to read. This is so much better than the usual process: check ISFDB, see if it's in an anthology, find the anthology somewhere in the various library systems I have access to, request the book, wait a few days, pick up the book, read the story (in 10 minutes), then have to return the book. In this case, a lapsed copyright renewal made it free, but I'd certainly pay for this kind of stuff. (Fictionwise sells a fair number of short stories by various authors. This is a good thing.)
As for the story itself? I've always liked Randall Garrett's short fiction, and this is no exception, even if the "surprise" was muted by having already read "Bookworm, Run!" Still, it's so unbelievable. The very idea that removing huge amounts of value from one sector of the economy would cause a widespread financial crisis! Who'd believe that one?
( Rereads: Brust, Resnick, more Heinlein, George O. Smith )
4.1. "Damned If You Don't", Randall Garrett (free ebook derived from the Project Gutenberg version)
(Just a short story, so I don't want to count it as new read #5.)
I read this one, finally, through a concatenation of events. First, eReader 2.0 was released for iPhone OS, with my feature wishlist items included. After upgrading, I found that eReader/Fictionwise had reworked some of the ebooks with better metadata, so I wanted to re-download them; the easiest solution was to uninstall eReader, then reinstall and use "download entire bookshelf" to avoid duplication.
One of the books in my collection is The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge, and I wanted to check to see if they'd fixed a typo. (There looks like a badly-done search and replace that's replaced "gu" with "Gu", probably while doing some editing of Fast Times at Fairmont High, but which results in things like "AuGust" appearing elsewhere. Not fixed but hardly a real issue.) I got to the intro to "Bookworm, Run!" and was reminded that I'd never tracked down the Garrett story that Vinge refers to.
After a quick Google search I spotted it on Manybooks.net...which eReader helpfully has a shortcut to, right in the app. Soon thereafter I had the story ready to read. This is so much better than the usual process: check ISFDB, see if it's in an anthology, find the anthology somewhere in the various library systems I have access to, request the book, wait a few days, pick up the book, read the story (in 10 minutes), then have to return the book. In this case, a lapsed copyright renewal made it free, but I'd certainly pay for this kind of stuff. (Fictionwise sells a fair number of short stories by various authors. This is a good thing.)
As for the story itself? I've always liked Randall Garrett's short fiction, and this is no exception, even if the "surprise" was muted by having already read "Bookworm, Run!" Still, it's so unbelievable. The very idea that removing huge amounts of value from one sector of the economy would cause a widespread financial crisis! Who'd believe that one?
( Rereads: Brust, Resnick, more Heinlein, George O. Smith )
