Today I hit the Greek mythology tangent in Cryptonomicon. Mmmm.

The first was about a group of kids that were isolated in this weird labyrinth thing. I seem to remember all the walls being white. They were conditioned - I feel like it was a Pavlov type experiment or something. They were forced to eat these synthetic food pellets, they did odd movements when they saw red or green lights. The only reason I remember that is because at the end they somehow escaped, but when they were on the street they saw a traffic light and they all started doing the movement....creeeeepy.

Micole is right, this is William Sleator's House of Stairs. Sleator is one of my very favorite YA scifi writers, and HoS is brilliantly creepy. I also love his memoir about his childhood, Oddballs.

The Mists of Avalon started me on a long obsession with Arthurian legend that is still going strong today. I read it a couple times in high school and haven't gone back to it since, but I remember it very fondly. I think I liked The Firebrand more, though, since I was a HUGE Greek mythology geek when I was younger. The Firebrand tells the story of the Trojan War through the eyes of Cassandra.

Adoring Micole's post.

Micole, I didn't mean Gentle had a series dangling - I was remembering (or partially remembering) a phone conversation with Roz Kaveney, and I do seem to recall she said something along the lines of a standalone that had been in the works forever, and that a lot of people were waiting for.

And truth to tell? Weirdassed as this may sound? If Tanith Lee wants to keep pulling in big advances, she may be out of luck. I'm not a huge fan of them anyway, and frankly, when I come across a big advance, I think uh-oh, that thing had better sell, because one way or another, you owe the money to the publisher. I'd like to see reasonably-sized advances spread among (between?) more good writers, but the market is the market, and if the books don't sell, things get adjusted. C'est la guerre.

Raquel, my mama in law (who posts here occasionally) knows Melly Rawn far better than I do; I've only met her a few times. But yes, she had a very unexpected death in the family a couple of years ago and it threw her badly. I last saw her at WorldCon, in 2002, and she was in a fog.

I just finished reading Empire of Light by David Czuchlewski? Has anyone else read it? I loved his first book, The Muse Assylum, and I was really hoping to love this one as well, but I found it very unsatisfying and scattered. Especially the ending.

The Mists of Avalon started me on a long obsession with Arthurian legend that is still going strong today.

Saw a long trailer last night for a King Arthur movie that's coming out this summer. It looks like they've - let's say, taken some liberties. But they sure do seem to be bringing the pretty.

I was remembering (or partially remembering) a phone conversation with Roz Kaveney, and I do seem to recall she said something along the lines of a standalone that had been in the works forever, and that a lot of people were waiting for.

Oh, that makes sense. Ash and 1602 were both a long time in coming, and I think Gentle had some kind of serious accident which involved strenuous and long-term physical therapy in the middle there.

(Stuff Deb probably already knows:)

I think Lee's advance expectations were unreasonable, but she seemed to have gotten caught in the middle of a lot of industry shifts without knowing it. She started publishing sf and fantasy during a boom in the 80s -- which didn't exactly collapse in the 90s, but saw a big drop in volumes of books published and sold. People tend to blame this on a Supreme Court case which changed the treatment of inventory for accounting purposes, making it more expensive for publishers to keep backlist books in warehouses, but I suspect that the consolidation of markets -- both bookstores and other retail sellers which used to stock books -- had as much to do with it. The upshot is, although the number of books being published continued to increase, the print runs decreased.

At the same time, at the very end of the horror boom, Lee switched from writing sf/fantasy to writing horror. She probably caught a couple of end-of-boom advances before the horror market collapsed in the early to mid-nineties. People who were horror fans at the time may remember the horror sections in bookstores literally disappearing, as the big-selling names like Straub and King got shelved in general fiction and the rest of the section got axed.

Horror seems to be coming back, which I find interesting from a ... kind of publishing studies perspective, since I don't read much of it. A lot of the authors I liked--often, like Lee, from Dell's upmarket Abyss line--seem to have shifted to mainstream publishers (Poppy Z. Brite) and/or shifted genres entirely (Kathe Koja). Though Leisure seems to be back in business, republishing older books or small press books with good reputations in really schlocky packaging (Melanie Tem, etc.)

The YA book with cloned girls named Anna was called, I believe, Anna to the Infinite Power by Mildred Ames, and socked me hard in the 5th grade. See Amazon: [link]

I also ADORED The Girl with the Silver Eyes, and have not yet reread it as an adult. The View from the Cherry Tree, also by Willo Davis Roberts, held up pretty well to an adult reread.

I love the hive mind!! Thank you flea, Kate P, and Micole for the titles on Anna to the Infinite Power (that was definitely the one) and House of Stairs. I will have to find those again, as they were definitely not at my parents house when I just went through all my old books at Christmas.

I remember House of Stairs too...I think it gave me nightmares!

Atkins breakfast bars:

And now that I know the title I did a little searching and it was as I remember, there was a movie made of Anna to the Infinite Power in 1984 starring Martha Byrne, who IMDB says has been in As the World Turns for a long time.