Gravity's Angles

[Dave Monroe]

... which I think is coming to the big screen this fall, Drew Barrymore,
Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, with Bill Murray as Slothrop (!--if only ...) or
Bosley or Mr. C or whoever ... but recently reread (well, recently
actually finished, a decade or so down the line, to be more precise)
Michael Swanwick's (first novel?) Vacuum Flowers, which was quite
interesting.   I'd put it alongside (if not quite at the level of) Bruce
Sterling's Schismatrix on that "posthuman" cyberpunk tip (a bit more
residually "humanist," I suppose).  Speaking of whom ...

Well, I don't read much in the way of short stories (so let me know how
that Swanwick collection works for you), but did quite enjoy Sterling's
most recent collection, A Good Old Fashioned Future.  See esp. the first
story (cf. that Levinasian countereconomic gift ethic), the one about
the Indian film crew in a Mad Cow Disease decimated Scotland ("What
language are tehy speaking?" "Who speaks proper English when ...?" ...
and a great line about the Japanese crew filiming a remake of Throne of
Blood ...) and the last nigh-unto-novelette (Sterling, he thinks big
...).