Cunning as a 9 Tailed Fox?

[matgb]

lithium_doll:

I'm going to try for the 1000 comments anyway. SPAM ME! Invite your flist, your family, your enemies, your milkman. I welcome discussion, poetry, fic, jokes, pr0n, pretty, pretty pictures, and politics. And anything else. I'm easy. So, so easy.

here. 'twas her who pointed out to me I'd made my 500th post, so go comment as requested? She may even make a vid or something. However, as rho observes I must've deleted some, as the post number said 503:

I also know how to work it out anyway. This entry is 129014.html. Take the numerical part of that (129014) and divide it by 256, then chuck out the remainder. That gives you 253. The number in the URL is generated by:

N = 256E + R

where N is the number in the URL, E is the number of the entry, and R is a random integer from 0 to 255.

Which was interesting. It also means that milady Doll has deleted about 31 posts at various stages, as it's actually her 1031st...

Today, I was due in Exeter. draich_goch even rang me to remind me. I said hello, and immediately went back to sleep. Instead, I read Jon Courtney Grimwood's 9TailFox. Apparently, it's an SF novel. I'd say it was even less SF than the Ashraf Bey series (which apparently he's writing a new one of), but there y'go. Good read, regardless.

Basic premise is that a San Francisco cop is investigating an apparent murder committed by a 13 year old girl, and gets killed. He then wakes up in the body of a coma case who's been unconscious for quite awhile, and, conveniently, is a little bit wealthy. There's the usual Grimwood characterisation, but I'm not really sure it's a real difference from either the Ashraf books or Stamping Butterflies. I didn't spot some of the twists, although they were heralded, and some of the elements were a little OTT, but I suppose the OTT elements may be what made it SF.

Only big drawback to me is it made me miss San Francisco and wish I'd organised my stay there a bit more than "get up, find something cool to do" while I was there. Ah well, can always go again sometime. Well, assuming it doesn't sink into the sea anytime soon...

Comments

[davidnm.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about books that are nominally "science fiction", although lacking in any elements that actually identify them as such. I had a similar moment a while back, when I got an anthology from the library in Exeter. Supposedly it was a "the best of" collection from one of the big American magazines. A lot of the stories, though, had nothing in them that set them aside in any real way from conventional literature.

I had nothing against them as stories, but I just couldn't see what the point was of pretending they were SF/fantasy when, umm, they obviously aren't.

[shakalooloo.livejournal.com]

They were set in THE FUTURE!

[davidnm.livejournal.com]

Actually, that was the other ironic thing ... most of them weren't!

[matgb]

So they were funny, but not sci-fi?

Or was that an Alanis use of the word ironic? ;-)

Meh, weird categories are at times used; his Ashraf Bey books were for awhile classed and sold as 'crime', despite being set in an alternate history future version of Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile, and him having a computer embedded into his head talking to him all the time...

I care not, it was a good book that I liked, I'd have bought it regardless of how it was filed.