flux

Flux by Orson Scott Card, was my filler book while I read Sherlock Holmes. The Holmes book was too massive to read in bed so I started on Flux. Flux is a series of short stories, with a small essay (afterword) in the backmatter by Card, discussing each of the stories: what inspired them, what he was trying to accomplish, his thoughts about similar works, and what was going on with him and the world when he wrote them.

Some were good, and others, not so much. I haven't read a lot of Card's work, and if I have, it was a long time ago when I was much more into science fiction. Flux was originally released as book two of Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card in 1990.

A Thousand Deaths was pretty grim, but read like the first chapter of a larger story. When I got to Clap Hands and Sing, I thought I was in chapter 2 of Deaths, so I was lost for a while. Clap Hands was melancholy and sweet.

Dogwalker was cyberpunk fun, but only just. Then came I Put my Blue Genes On. Really? Yeah. A little hokey.

Next was In the Doghouse. Even more hokey. Like a bad Star Trek episode. During the writer's strike. In the rain.

Last was The Originist, which was also the longest. This one took a while to get going, but then I couldn't put it down. I guess it took a while to get the storyline laid out. Card set this story in Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe, by open invitation from Asimov, apparently. Card explains in his essay that he'd had the idea for this story for years after reading Asimov, but didn't feel that it was right to set a story in another author's universe. Something that's pretty commonplace now. I've never read Foundation, but I understand there is a movie in the works, so I better get crackin'!