Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Yesterday night I stayed up too late reading Philip Pullman's…
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2002 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Yesterday night I stayed up too late reading Philip Pullman's The Ruby in the Smoke, the first in the Sally Lockhart trilogy of mysteries. Today I finished Vernor Vinge's The Peace War. Early on in the Vinge I noticed superficial similarities in the protagonists of the two novels. They're very smart young people who have trouble adjusting to new homes where everyone treats everyone equally. I liked them both. I think I liked the Pullman better than the Vinge, but that's just because Pullman writes mythic fairy-tale fantasy and Vinge writes far-out, alien sci-fi with premises building on top of premises. One is comfy and the other is cerebral.
