Comic Cuts — 25 November 2022

Oh shit... only one month until Christmas. Where did the year go?

I know where most of this week went. A bit of a change of pace, as I was asked to write an obituary for The Guardian about the late Greg Bear. I was a big fan of his novels, especially the trilogy that made up The Way saga: Eon, Eternity and Legend. Moving Mars was another superb book.

Here I'll quote John Clute: "Between 1985 and 1990, however, Bear published six novels whose importance to the realm of Hard SF – and to the world of sf in general – it would be hard to overrate." Everything from Blood Music and The Forge of God to Queen of Angels and its sequel, the weirdly entitled / (a.k.a. Slant) I loved. My reading pace slowed down in the 1980s and has been slow ever since (too much of my reading time is spent on research), but I didn't stop picking up books that I'll read in the future, including Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children, a few technothrillers and his War Dogs trilogy.

Listening to a podcast interview, Bear mentioned he was writing a memoir. I hope he managed to finish it, or it is in a state where it can be reasonably finished by his family.

The tidying up continues, with another 46 books no longer in the house. Things have slowed down while I have been writing, but I have dug out a couple of boxes of stuff that I can chuck and I found a pile of magazines that are in such a state that they, too, can be turfed out. We're still dealing with the empty boxes that were left over from putting all my DVDs into cases — we've had two fortnightly collections already and we still have a bin bag full of them to dispose of.

Part of the problem is that we're waiting to get rid of some furniture, which we should be able to do this weekend. We're sending an armchair and a couple of old (and slightly rusty) filing cabinets to the dump. Once we have that extra space, we might be able to speed up again... and, yes, I know we cleared some space by getting rid of all those boxes of books the other week, but we can't fill that up quite yet because we need it so we can move the furniture around.

I've managed to lose a box of World of Wonder magazines. No idea where they've gone. On the other hand, I found my bound volumes of Modern Wonder. Swings and roundabouts.

The other thing that's fogging up my brain is what kind of computer I should be getting. I spotted something that was nice and cheap and seemed OK, but when I checked with someone who actually knows what they're talking about, I was told that my choice had all the oomph of a three-legged tortoise in a greyhound race. (I'm paraphrasing.)

A list of suggestions all had eyewatering prices in the £1,200-1,300 region, and I would need additional kit on top. I'm toying with the idea of a dock, as it would save me plugging in and unplugging all the various external hard drives I use. Scanning and storing comic strips takes up huge amounts of space.

So I'm still searching for the right computer or laptop. The constant thrashing of the fan on my PC reminds me every day that it could conk out any minute, so I've got to make a decision sooner rather than later. Talk about First World Problems!