Missing Chapters and Winter's Nights

My husband and I have been reading The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman aloud together. It is a decidedly wintry book, so we read the first half last winter, then put it aside in the spring and have just picked it back up. We were happily reading about arctic temperatures and Alethia meters when we noticed a printing error in the book: chapters 15 and 16 had been printed twice, chapters 17 and 18 were missing. This left us with a pretty serious problem: what happens next?

My first thought when we discovered the error was another half-finished book I left behind somewhere in Italy. Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore by Italo Calvino (English translation: If on a winter's night a traveler) is a novel all about the joy of reading. The bookworm protagonist settles in all comfy on the sofa for a good read, dives into an intriguing tale, but is jarred out of the authorial spell part way through when he realizes a large portion of the book is missing. He sets out on a quest that leads him to bookstores, libraries, publishers' offices, and obscure university departments, in search of the rest of the manuscript. Along the way he encounters nine more incomplete manuscripts (each more captivating than the next, and yes, we get to read them all) international intrigue, and romance with a mysterious girl. The Calvino book is the kind of novel meant to savor: by which I mean turning the pages in wild feverishness then, like the protagonist, stepping back for awhile to ponder the significance of what it is you've read. It's the sort of book that will stay in your head years after you should have forgotten it.

Real life, alas, is not so fun and exciting as fiction.

In my own attempt to find the rest of The Golden Compass, I contacted the publisher. Random House customer service could not send me an electronic copy of the missing chapters (Random House, Inc./Yearling owns the rights to both my defective book and the eBook version) nor would they replace the book. They advised me to contact the seller. A phone call to Barnes and Noble customer service ended in a stubborn adherence to their 30 day exchange policy. Of course I knew about their policy before I called, but I mistakenly believed they had an interest in readers, that a bookseller would understand that readers don't want to thumb through the book to check for printing errors before they read it. Turns out B&N doesn't understand the reader, but they are excellent at moving product- defective or otherwise. Even when I said I'd be happy with an electronic copy of the missing chapters, they were unable to help me. So at this point I was stuck with a grave conundrum for the avid reader: I couldn't find out what happened next. My solution? Three bucks and change at fictionwise.com. Less romantic than Calvino's Winter's Night, but at least now I can learn Lyra's fate!

Ubik

"Ubik speeds relief to head and stomach. Remember:...Avoid prolonged use."
"Ubik plastic wrap- actually four layers in one. Keeps freshness in, air and moisture out."
"Instant Ubik has all the fresh flavor of just-brewed drip coffee...Safe when taken as directed."
"Ubik is the nation's number-one choice in beer. Made only in Cleveland."
"Ubik provides uninterrupted sleep...Do not exceed recommended dosage."
-Philip K. Dick, Ubik

Just what is this ubiquitous Ubik? If Joe Chip weren't fighting a losing battle against time, he might have a moment to figure it out. But he really, really doesn't.

Joe is the kind of guy who doesn't have so much as a nickel to pay his refrigerator so he can drink a glass of milk. His trouble with small change only gets worse when he finds the vending machines won't take the quarter in his pocket, and only antique coin collectors accept his currency. Cups of hard-won coffee grow rancid in his hands. Bummed cigarettes decompose and crumble on his lips. Just when Joe doesn't think life can get any cruddier, a friend dies, found dried up like a mummy. She's one of twelve people exposed to a bizarre bomb blast. Joe is among the twelve. Yep, things just got worse: the world around Joe and the ten survivors is slipping back in time. Yesterday it was 1992, today the papers are asking if the U.S. will join the war in Europe. Joe Chip would like to know what the hell is going on, preferably before he dies.

Much like its namesake, Ubik offers something for everyone. It's that satisfying mystery novel that allows you to figure out whodunnit just one step ahead of the protagonist. It has smart-mouthed appliances, telepaths, and a sexy stranger who takes off all her clothes. Dick refers to the Bardo Thodo (often called the Tibetan Book of the Dead) and makes fun of funeral directors. The reader enjoys a trip to the moon and later to my home state of Iowa in 1939. Readers may enjoy laughing at what pre-war Iowans thought of houses of prostitution, or the way Dick envisions futuristic tape recorders. Slight chaffing may occur as certain plot devices repeat in the last third of the novel, but the reader, like Joe Chip, will probably be too distracted by Chip's eminent death to be annoyed. If not, you can always apply a little Ubik to the pages. It will make everything shiny and new.

Ubik, a highly recommended read. Safe when imagination is used as directed.

Virtual Limb

As an SF writer I find the idea of an amputee's phantom limb fascinating fodder for the imagination. As a human being I feel bad for the amputees! What can be done to cure intense discomfort in an area of your body that does not exist anymore?.

Graphics technology may have found an answer. This CRAVE article describes how a virtual reality system using video game graphics helped a woman experience the use of her fingers again and find relief from the her painfully clenched missing hand. Participants in the program get nifty virtual reality goggles and enter into an absorbing virtual reality where they can wiggle non-existant fingers and run with legs that have magically come back to them.

Variable Star

"I wanted to read a new Heinlein novel so badly that I didn't care if I had to finish it myself."
-Spider Robinson

I grabbed this quote from a Slashdot article on the Heinlein manuscript Robinson completed. Variable Star was released on September 19th, 2006 by TOR. I read the first chapter before the release but haven't yet read the book. Trying to avoid spoilers, I've merely glanced at the reviews. My impression that this is classic, yummy Heinlein has been confirmed by reviewers on Slashdot and Amazon, but there are some disgruntled readers who complain that the history timeline includes modern events that Heinlein would have never known to include.