In the Kitchen with a Lead Pipe
We still haven’t seen any effects from Hurricane Alex, but the rain is on its way, apparently. Three to five inches in some places. Eighty percent chance of rain today and tomorrow, 50% on Friday and Saturday, with lingering rain on Sunday. Sounds like we’re in for a soggy long weekend.
What struck me most about Stewart O’Nan’s story “Land of the Lost” from Stories: All-New Tales was that it was based on the same kind of story as a novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo several years ago. In O’Nan’s story, a woman becomes obsessed with trying to find the buried body of a murdered child based on scant details provided by the killer. She doesn’t know the victim–she only read about it in the paper or heard it on TV. In my manuscript, which is called The Silent Desert, a father travels to West Texas to try to find the body of his murdered son with only minor clues about its location, too. During his quest, he meets a woman who was doing much the same thing as the main character in O’Nan’s story, though perhaps not as obsessively.
I started “Leif in the Wind,” which is a science fiction story by Gene Wolfe in which an exploration team is returning home after a years-long journey during which some of the team has died. One of the three remaining astronauts believes he saw birds on their destination planet before they depart, though the planet is clearly uninhabited (from the POV of the other two, at least). During the long, long, long return trip, either the guy was right or his delusion is spreading.
It’s interesting that I should read an SF story when I’m in the process of working on one myself. I have this oldish story that has limited marketability in its current state. Written for a themed anthology where it failed to pass muster. However, I had the idea last weekend to take it out of Earth history and put it in space. Not sure how it’s going to work out, but it’s an interesting idea, at least.
Law and Order: Criminal Intent was interesting last night. It had a rather pointless wrap-around story with Nichols in London spilling his heart about the case to an un-named woman that seemed to exist only to fill in time. However, the core of the story itself was right out of Agatha Christie or PD James. Two men die in a mansion. At first it seems like they’ve killed each other swordfighting, but the scene proves to have been staged. It has all the tropes of a classic British mystery: old money, mental illness, butlers, messages left in the event of death, interesting wills, bankrupt estates, hidden staircases and rooms, mysterious taps in the night, rare and valuable books. For good measure, throw in a Da Vinci code-like second century manuscript that threatens to rewrite the history of Christ’s trial, and a cabalistic group, The Conclave (i.e. Opus Dei, the Templars) who will stop at nothing to keep the secret from coming out. And the culprit, well, talk about a deliberate cliché!
Next week is the CI season finale — two hours, starting an hour earlier than usual. Set your recorders appropriately!
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