Welcome to My World

My birthday brought an assortment of happiness this year, and despite my brooding about turning the “big” 30 (yeesh — talk about drama queen … my life is likely less than a third over, and “30” isn’t so big; hell, my voice cracked today as I was singing a song at karaoke, and I was told puberty ended in the teens ) I got all the warm fuzzies I needed given what happened that same week.

Friends and family both conspired to make the event memorable, and they succeeded. Despite that I’m over there all the friggin’ time, they managed to sneak around and snag some gifts for me without my having even a single clue they were doing it. My folks sent a very nice gift as well (it arrived a bit late since apparently the first attempt to buy it saw the merchant claim the beast was “damaged” at the warehouse before it could be shipped).

There was a big, nice leather computer bag (the gadgets and stuff I carry around finally outgrew the one I’d received last year from a former coworker), and within it were two books I’d expressed interest in (paperbacks, both science fiction works) and a gift card to snag some more once I burn through these (heh, not bloody likely anytime soon, as you’ll understand in a moment). The shipment from my parents was a 23-pound monster — the Complete Calvin & Hobbes, a three-tome compilation of every Calvin & Hobbes comic strip ever published.

With my folks sending me almost 1,500 pages (yes — the Complete C&H really is that big) and the two books my friends gave me totaling 1,750 pages(!), I’ve got a lot of reading ahead of me before I need to actually use the gift card. The two science fiction books in question are Peter Hamilton’s Fallen Dragon, a 650 page book (a pretty damned thick paperback — and the thickest single volume I’ve ever tackled) that’s already grabbed my interest just 50 pages in, and Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, an 1,100 page monster that actually scares me with its sheer length. I haven’t even finished tasting the world Hamilton is weaving for me in this one, but I already like it and I find myself sneaking in at least a few pages every day. Whenever there’s downtime (insomnia, down time in the cabin on a cruise, waiting for laundry at 2:00am after the cats have pissed on the bed again, etc.) I get in a few dozen to a few hundred pages (depending on the length of the downtime ). I’m equally eager though to get started on Stephenson’s work; I’ve read plenty of good things about it, so I’m looking forward to starting on that.

I’ll admit the cynic in me will probably drive me to go buy the first two books of Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn Trilogy to burn through the gift card soon, since I know if you don’t use a gift card fairly quickly, the store that issued it will start slowly sapping its value until it’s empty.

When I’m not in the mood to read a science fiction novel, a collection like The Complete Calvin & Hobbes fits the bill perfectly. Like The Complete Far Side set (which I also have, and haven’t finished either), it’s a collection of every strip ever published by the author. Both are huge endeavors — The Complete Far Side is comprised of two gigantic hardcover volumes, totaling 1,272 pages, while The Complete Calvin & Hobbes packs three gigantic hardcover volumes weighing in at 1,440 pages. They make it possible to easily read the comics in chronological order, which helps them make more sense and helps keep the plots together (okay, so The Far Side didn’t do “plots,” but it’s still nice to have everything organized like this).

My friends and family all gave me gifts that explore entirely different realities, with me as their guest. The science fiction novels capture my imagination and remind me that there is always infinite hope for humanity, for myself, and for those around me I care about, despite all of our flaws and problems. They give me abstract ideas to think about that I’d never considered before, and it lets me flex some mental muscle in ways nobody but me will ever know or understand. The Far Side reminds me to laugh at absolutely everything, because absolutely everything is ludicrous, silly, ridiculous, strange, or just downright funny when you look at it from the right angle (my all-time favorite Far Side strip remains the view through a pair of binoculars, looking at a bird’s nest … a nest that contains bird-watchers’ hats and binoculars, and one very big bird, staring straight at the reader, with the most purely satisfying evil grin ever printed to paper).

Calvin & Hobbes walks me through a pair of worlds, both linked together by the creative presence of an eight-year-old boy. His alter-ego “Spaceman Spiff” is brave, unflinching, and never gives up or quits fighting, which is a good thing because he always seems to get into trouble and his ship never functions for very long at a time. It’s a fun reflection of an average kid’s imagination at that age, though Calvin isn’t quite average — he’s sharp as a tack and his “imaginary” friend Hobbes is equally witty. There’s something in each strip for just about everyone, and there are constant reminders among them of my own childhood. There are plenty of nods to my demented sense of humor (Calvin’s carefully constructed sand castle cities, destroyed long before their time by an unfortunate collapse at the Hoover Dam; or his cleverly staged “worst-case scenario” car accidents involving innocent family sedans, cement trucks, and high-explosive tankers) and lots of devastatingly accurate shots at modern culture, politics, parenting, and more.

The strips all serve to remind me that the crazy little fun-loving kid in me is still alive and well, and I should let him out to play more often than I do. I’m grateful to my friend, by the way, for a recent resurgence in her interest in video games (or, at least, her tolerance of them, though I think she really does love beating the living hell out of computer-controlled idiots in Super Smash Brothers Brawl), since that’s helping to unleash the “inner child” a bit too.

If you liked The Far Side or Calvin & Hobbes when they were still being published, it’s worth it to pick up the complete collections. They’re not gimmicks this time — they really do encompass the entire bodies of work by the artists, and they’re actually fairly inexpensive for their total size. Be warned, though — you aren’t going to stop laughing for a long time once you pick one up. As for Hamilton and Stephenson, I’ll let you know how much of your life you can expect to surrender to those works as I get through them I can already tell you Fallen Dragon is pretty good so far.

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