Closing the pages on Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes and still craving the smell of bookpaper, slipstream and sci fi, I began perusing Arthur Clarke's The Sentinel and Tales from Planet Earth again. A quick visit to booksales (one unknown in the ground floor of Festival Mall has cheaper and better titles, alas, they don't keep a master copy of what's in stock) yielded Carl Sagan's Contact in its original issue at 55 pesos and the 3/3 of a Mary Stewart trilogy on Merlin, which I declined. I also found William Gibson's Idoru (part 2 of the Bridge trilogy) and squinted. Oh no.

I hate trilogies and therefore sequels unless I start right at them. It's too frustrating to begin at the last and search fruitlessly for the rare prequels, unless I have the patience of a beaver. I therefore declare to read Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama and sometime continue with Tolkien's famous trilogy where I left off at The Hobbit. And initiate myself with the bible of cyberpunk, Gibson's Neuromancer (which strangely sells for about a hundred pesos at Powerbooks, zero stock of course) that can be hacked in e-book websites.

What's the love affair between the sci fi genre and sequels anyway?

Finally, a segue. What do you think an engineer would do seeing a scant offering on sci fi and fantasy shelves from his favorite bookstore? Go girly, go erotica. I've used Memoirs of a Geisha as my springboard and landed right on the laps of Shanghai Baby and Belle de Jour, the latter I consumed in one weekend. I just can't put my erection, I mean, the book down. Belle de Jour, chalked by an anonymous author (deduced by some to be Stewart Home, or Sarah Champion take your pick), writes smoothly that her words slide on paper. While others have qualms on its authenticity and its depiction of the London punting scene, it nonetheless provided wit and a happy room for doubt if a real call girl can actually argue with her client over Martin Amis. She has a blog which I've read earlier (along with favorite Rentboy Diaries, now blocked by corporate IT) and I can state the same for that too.

Down the aisle I've seen another blogger-turned-author, Washingtonniene but I wouldn't care. There's no shock factor in interns and White House anymore.

I wonder if Malacañang's got something other than Garci tapes. Hmmm.

This entry was posted by sky, on Tuesday, August 02, 2005. You can leave your response.