Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

07 Jul 2004, 10:42 a.m.

Did You Mean: C.S. Lewis or Philip Pullman?

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2004 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 So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it!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.

I've read James Morrow's Only Begotten Daughter and Bible Stories For Adults and now I'm reading Towing Jehovah. Like, say, Stephenson, he loves naming things, "Father Thomas Ockham" for one. Lots of great analogies: "A choral gurgling filled the air, as if the museum were honeycombed with defective storm drains." As for Towing Jehovah (which Leonard insists on singing to the tune "Waltzing Matilda") specifically, the World War II re-enactment subplot bores me, but I still like the main plot so far. On the whole, I like Morrow, and taught a very interesting short story he wrote in my sci-fi class. His Christian and ethical fantasy amuses me, even if it's uneven. The similarly themed stories in Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others are consistently good. I want to read more by both.