[SR. Near Tongariro National Park, a.k.a. Mordor's Tower.]

All right, I’m back from New Zealand! (SR means this photo by Sylvia Rucker, as are all the photos which show me and a few others as well, even though I'm not gonna always remember to put “SR”.)

I made some journal notes, but let’s start with excerpts from the emails I sent back home to the kids. I'll be doing several more entries on NZ.

—Auckland, NZ, Nov 11, 2006.—

Came in at 5 AM Friday morn, killed the morning walking around town till hotel. Rode a ferry. Rode a bus. Cute parks. Giant plants. Strange accents. They say all the short e's as long e's . So better is beeter and best is beest and yes is yees.

It's kind of colder than we expected tho. a bit rainy.

Today the museum! With Maori carvings. (In the native local tongue, “Maori” acutally means “Normal.”) And a rose festival.

great food in Auckland.

[SR. A carving in a waka hut near Waitangi and Paihia in the Bay of Islands.]

The drain water seems to go counterclockwise I think. Writing this in a Chinese gamer cybercafe with Chinese keyboards. Sylvia can't find the backslash!

[Ship stacks on a ferry from Russell to Pahaia.]

The moon is like a C shape here instead of a D shape as it is back home because we are upside down. Down under.

—Raglan, NZ, Nov 14, 2006—

We are in Raglan, NZ. west coast. we went for a walk on some hills that were like Big Sur — turned up to 11. So pristine and empty. Giant slopes down to the sea. wild plants, we were in a forest of tree ferns. Then a Kiwi road race popped up, stock cars going past (on our gravel road back). Tough driving on the left. Everything here is backwards and upside down.

[Norfolk island pines near Tutukaka north of Whangerei.]

—Wellington, NZ, Nov 20, 2006—

We're leaving Wellington for Picton tomorrow, from North Island to South Island. We met a local guy who calls the South Island the Mainland — and refers to Australia as the Small Island. Lots of Kiwi/Kanga kidding here.

Had dinner with a programmer internet friend Nick Chapman last night and turns out he's 25 and lives with his parents. His dad Ray is a professor, a bit younger than us, they gave us a great dinner in their art filled house, he had a sister Amy just out of college and a brother Harry in high school. Like antipodal Rucker family, kind of, three kids all nice and bright, good paintings and sculptures all around, really fun. Civilized.

[Dr. Seuss alpaca up north of Whangarei.]

Near Picton (Pigton?) we'll stay in a lodge accessible only by boat I think, and may not have email for a few days. Then on to Christchurch down south and next up to the Northland where it's warm. I plan to get a couple of dive days in.

The food is mostly great, especially at the Chapmans’ house, though now and then in restaurants we get English style food like fried mashed potatoes. Driving is a real hassle, hard to stay in the middle of the mirror reversed left hand lane, and the passenger (s or me) always feels the driver is OVER TOO FAR TO THE LEFT LOOK OUT! We plan to take boat, train, plane for the coming week…

[Ferns near Queen Charlotte Sound.]

The most impressive plants are the giant tree ferns, kind of like those little ones in Golden Gate Park, but 12 or 20 or 30 feet tall even.

This is the furthest south we've ever been. Pushing towards the Southern Hole to the Hollow Earth!!!

[Statue of The Duck in Picton.]

—Picton, NZ, Nov 24, 2006—

For thanksgiving dinner, Sylvia and I had veggieburgers hand made at this eco resort Lochmara Lodge we stayed at. A lovely place in a fern jungle. I'm talking 30 foot tall ferns, with a dark trunk of roots and a fern frizz on top, the fronds 8 feet long. Like Eden. They had about 30 or 50 hammocks all over the jungle, and S and I lay around most of the day. Lovely.

Today it's the train to Christchurch, base for expeditions to Antarctica. They're excited here as some icebergs a kilometer long are drifting up the coast as global warming melts the Ross ice shelf. the world is always changing, never settling down. They used to have flightless birds here the size of turkeys with long legs called moa. The Maoris ate them all in 50 years when the arrived from the southern Polynesian islands not all that long ago, maybe seven hundred years ago. The world an endlessly turning kaleidoscope, it's all right, I guess. It is what is.

Maybe we could have had roast moa for dinner…

It's cozy to see all this with S. Soon we'll head up north where it's warm, not that it's very cold down here. It's cute how they talk here. They say “reed leegs” instead of “red legs.” There's a bird called the bellbird that sounds like a bell.

Oh, on Thanksgiving we also walked down on the rocky Maine-like each and pulled about 20 mussels off the rocks and steamed those up for our appetizer. In Bruegel's time that's what the poor people ate. you can always get mussels. Here the water is so clean there's no second thoughts. No roads in this region (Marlborough sounds) to speak of. The resort owner boats his two red-haired daughters into school every day, we caught a ride in to wait for our train.

Jimi Hendrix “All Along The Watchtower” is playing from a store where they're painting the walls.

Hard to imagine ever being back, the trip unfolds and exfoliates like an endless fractal, more adventures every day.

[Giant weta beetle at Lochmara Lodge, more on these guys later.]

—Christchurch, NZ, Nov 25, 2006—

Another day in Christchurch. Some really homesick British people laid out this town! We fly North to the sunny (hopefully) top tip tomorrow and if all goes well, we'll dive/snorkel near Tutukaka on Tuesday.

They have two kinds of rugby here, union and league, with different rules. Also cricket and “football”.

Last night we went to a giant outdoor Christmas concert in Christchurch. Sponsored by Coca Cola, who does one for Auckland, too. About 10,000 people in a field with crooners and slick 1950s announcer, giant coca cola sign on stage, an xmas tree 50 meters tall, the spring sunset stretching out, so odd to be here. Like a parallel world, or a colony planet in the Galactic Empire.

[Local dance show at the Wangirai Treaty center near Pahaia. Classic Polynesian woman here.]

The local (Maori) name of the country is Aotearoa, which means Long White Cloud, and when you're off shore you do see a long white cloud over the country.

Went to the Anglican cathedral at the center of Christchurch this morn, part of the service in Maori. I think “God” is “Atura”.

[Beach near Tutukaka north of Whangarei.]

Before humans got there were NO mammals on NZ. Just birds. Therefore large flightless ones were okay like Moa and Kiwi. But humans brought the Polynesian Rat at some point. Possibly the rats came aboard the explorer James Cook’s ship. Getting a big view.

Saw a kiwi in a “Kiwi House” roadside attraction. I’ll write more about these marvelous birds later on.

—Tutukaka, NZ, Nov 29, 2006—

[Sky in Russell over a Four Square food store.]

We're near the end now. Staying 3 nights in a cheap cottage on a farm near Tutukaka, amid cows, who've been loudly mooing as yesterday their year-old calves were sold and trucked away for fattening. I'd moo too!

We dove, even Sylvia snorkeling in a double wet suit in the 40 degree water. I saw sting rays, scorpion fish. The guide claimed the water is “gin clear” in the summer but right now we could only see about ten feet. Was fun anyway, with a fifteen mile boat ride to the Poor Knights Islands. Though I about died from the stress of the cold water dive and nearly puked on the way back.

[From the headland to the lighthouse near Tutukaka.]

Saw a giant kauri tree today, also a lovely beach. The big deal in New Zealand was kauri trees, which are fat like redwoods, but smoother barked, and they only go up about sixty or a hundred feet and then stop in a bunch of fat branches. Like giant broccoli stalks. Most of them were felled in the old days, first by the Maori for “waka” (canoes), then by the pakeha (Europeans) for houses and such.

I'm not going to be blogging much for a bit. Big news is that our daughter Isabel is getting married to Gus in Wyoming! And I'm thinking about a trip to New Zealand.

Are any of you dear readers New Zealanders? Let me know, maybe we can meet up. Random advice on NZ is welcome as well, should the trip come together

You can check out my website for Mathematicians in Love; just today I posted a nice review of I got in Publisher’s Weekly.

I did some work on my home page, listing the upcoming books and readings.

Catching up on links readers sent in: Abe Cofnas is working on using cellular automata for financial modeling. Always nice to see CAs in action.

Stephen Wolfram wrote an interesting essay in honor of Kurt Gödel’s hundredth birthday.

Marc Powell is doing weird and yummy things with food hacking.

My student Leo Lee is working at Apple on iPod games. He says to check out Vortex.

Michael Mays reports an interesting page on how the painter Rubens and Bruegel the Younger collaborated.

Be good.

I just got the great cover for the Monkeybrains Second Edition of my novel The Hollow Earth. Cover art by John Picacio, long may he wave. Thanks to Chris Roberson for putting this together.

I’m working on the revisions to my novel Postsingular for Tor. For today’s text, I’ll drop in some of an opening scene I wrote, the prelude to a grisly model-rocket accident that warps the character of Jeff Luty enough to make him the novel’s chief villain.

The fotos are from Santa Cruz yesterday, Sylvia and I were at Four Mile Beach and then at Natural Bridges with my niece Nicole.

[Begin excerpt]

Two boys walked down the beach, deep in conversation. Seventeen-year-old Jeff Luty was carrying a carbon-fiber pipe-rocket. His best friend Carlos Tucker was carrying the launch rod and a bottle of champagne. Gangly Jeff was a head taller than Carlos.

“We’re unobservable now,” said Jeff, looking back down the sand. It was twilight of a clear New Year’s Day in Stinson Beach, California. Jeff’s mother had rented a cheap cottage to get out of their cramped South San Francisco apartment for the holiday, and Carlos had come along. Jeff’s mother didn’t like it when the boys fired off their home-made rockets; so Jeff had promised her that he and Carlos wouldn’t bring one. But of course they had.

“A flying dinosaur,” said Carlos with his ready grin. “Your program says it’ll go how high? Tell me again, Jeff. I love hearing it.”

“A mile,” said Jeff, hefting the heavy gadget. “Equals one thousand six hundred and nine point three four four meters. That’s why we measured out the fuel in milligrams.”

“As if this beast is gonna act like your computer simulation,” laughed Carlos, patting the thick rocket’s side. “Yeek!” The rocket’s tip was a streamlined plastic cone with a few thousand home-grown nanochips inside. The rocket’s sides were adorned with fanciful sheet-metal fins and a narrow metal pipe that served as a launch lug. Carlos had painted the rocket to resemble a pterodactyl, complete with claws, folded wings, and a toothy bill.

“We’re lucky we didn’t blow up your mom’s house when we were casting the motor,” said Jeff. “Over a kilogram of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and powdered magnesium metal mixed into epoxy binder, whoah.” He hefted the rocket, peering into the rear at the glittering, rubbery fuel. The carbon-fiber tube was stuffed like a sausage-casing.

“Here’s to Lu-Tuck Space Tech!” said Carlos, peeling the foil off the champagne cork. He’d lifted one of the bottles that Jeff’s mother had been using to make mimosas for herself and her boyfriend and Jeff’s older sisters all day.

“Lu-Tuck forever,” exulted Jeff. That was their projected name for the company they dreamed of starting. “It’ll be awesome to track our nanochips across the sky. Each one of them has a global-positioning unit and a broadcast antenna.”

“They do so much,” marveled Carlos.

“And I grew them like yeast,” said Jeff. “In the right environment these cute little guys can self-assemble. If you know the dark secrets of robobiohackery, that is. And you have the knack.” Jeff waggled his long, knobby fingers. His nails were all bitten to the quick.

“And you’re totally sure they’re not gonna start reproducing themselves in the air?” said Carlos, working his thumbs against the champagne cork. “We don’t want Lu-Tuck turning the world into rainbow goo.”

“That won’t happen yet,” said Jeff and giggled. “Dammit.”

“You’re sick,” said Carlos, meaning this as praise. The cork popped loose, arcing high across the beach to meet its racing shadow.

It was Carlos’s turn to giggle as the foam gushed over his hands. He took a swig and offered the bottle to Jeff. Jeff waved him off, intent on his inner vision.

“I see an astronomically large cloud of self-reproducing nanobots in orbit around the sun,” said Jeff. “They’ll feed on space dust and solar energy and carry out calculations too vast for earthbound machines.”

“So that’s what self-reproducing nanomachines are good for,” said Carlos.

“I’m gonna call them nants,” said Jeff. “You like that?”

“Beautiful,” said Carlos, jamming the launch rod into the sand a few meters above the water line. “I claim this kingdom for the nants.”

Jeff slid the rocket down over the launch rod, threading the rod through the five-inch tube glued to the rocket’s side. He stuck an igniter wire into the molded engine, secured the wire with wadding, and attached the wire’s loose ends to a battery-powered controller.

“The National Association of Rocketry says we should back off seven hundred feet,” said Jeff, checking over their handiwork one last time.

“Bogus,” said Carlos. “I want to see our pterodactyl lumber into flight. We’ll get behind that dune right there and peek.”

“Affirmative,” said Jeff.

The boys settled onto the lee slope of a low dune and inched up until they could peer over the crest at the gaudy fat tube. Carlos dug a little hole to steady the champagne bottle. Jeff took out his cell phone. The launch program was idling on the screen, cycling through a series of clock and map displays.

“You can really see the jetliners on that blue map?” asked Carlos, his handsome face gilded by the setting sun.

“You bet. Good thing, too. We’ll squirt up our rocket when there’s a gap in the traffic. Like a bum scuttling across a freeway.”

“What’s the cluster of red dots on that next map?”

“Those are the nanochips in the rocket’s tip. At apogee, the nose-cone blows off and the dots scatter.”

“Awesome,” said Carlos. “The pterodactyl shoots his wad. Maybe we should track down some of those nanochips after they land.”

“We go visit some guy in the Sunset district, and we’re, like, congratulations, a Lu-Tuck nant is idling in your driveway!” said Jeff, his homely face wreathed in smiles.

“Gosh, Mr. Luty, can I drive it to work?” said Carlos, sounding like an earnest wage earner. “You got key?”

“Here comes a gap in the planes,” said Jeff.

“Go,” answered Carlos, his face calm and dreamy.

“T minus three minutes.”

Only now, damn, here came a woman jogging down the beach with a dog. And of course she had to stop by the rocket, look around, spot the boys. Jeff paused the countdown.

“What are you doing?” asked the woman, her voice as penetrating as a buzz-saw. “Do you have permission for this?”

“It’s just a little toy rocket-kit I got for Christmas,” called Carlos. “Totally legit, ma’am. No problem. Happy New Year.”

“Well—you two be careful,” said the woman. “Don’t set off that thing while I’m around. Hey, come here, Guster!” Her dog had lifted his leg to squirt pee onto the rocket’s side. Embarrassed now, the woman jogged off down the beach, her pony-tail bouncing.

“I recommend that you secure the integrity of the launch vehicle, Mr. Luty,” instructed Carlos in an officious tone.

“I’m not wiping off dog p*ss! I can smell it from here, see it dripping down? We’re sending that into the sky.”

“Resume countdown, Mr. Luty.”

“Batten down for Lu-Tuck Space Tech!” said Jeff, enjoying Carlos’s closeness. He looked up and down the long empty beach. The woman was a small streak in the distance. And now she deviated into a side path. “T minus one minute,” said Jeff, snugging the bottle into its hole. “Battle stations, Carlos.”

The boys backed down below the crest and lay side by side staring at Jeff’s little screen. The last ten seconds ticked off. And nothing happened.

“Sh*t,” said Carlos, raising his head to peer over the dune’s crest. “Do you think that dog—”

The blast was something Jeff felt more than heard. A hideous pressure on his ears. Shrapnel whizzed overhead; he could feel the violent rippling of the air. Carlos was lying face down, very still. Blood stained the sand, outlining Carlos’s head. For a second Jeff could think he was only seeing a shadow. But no.

Not sure if should roll his friend over, Jeff looked distractedly at the screen of his cell phone. How strange. The chaotic explosion must have sent a jet of nanomachines into Carlos’s face, for Jeff could see a ghostly form of his friend’s features on the little screen, a stippling of red dots. Carlos looked all right except for his — eye?

Jeff could hear sirens, still very far. Carlos didn’t seem to be breathing. Jeff went ahead and rolled Carlos over so he could give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Maybe the shock wave had knocked his breath out. Maybe that was all. Maybe everything was still retrievable. But no, the five-inch metal tube that served as launch lug had speared through Carlos’s right eye. Stuff was oozing from the barely protruding tip. And Carlos had definitely stopped breathing.

Jeff leaned over his beloved friend, pressing his mouth to Carlos’s blood-foamed lips, trying to breathe in life. He was still at it when his mother and sisters found him. The medics had to sedate him to make him to stop.

[End excerpt (it ends in tears)]

I was up in SF on Valencia Street again yesterday. Here's Ouroboros the world snake who swallows his own tail; twisted into an infinity sign to boot! Ad for an upstaris tattoo parlor.

I hung with John Shirley in the Mission and then went with Sylvia and Michael Blumlein to see Bob Dylan play.

It’s always great to be with Shirley. He gives me this sense that nothing matters but the now. He has the fresh, innocent, all-seeing quality of the true Outsider. (As does Blumlein, come to think of it. I love being with my writer friends, it's like breathing unpolluted baseline-type Antarctic air.)

John and I walked down the grafitti alley off Valencia (which looks like image inside the man in this picture) and there were a bunch of artists at work repainting the murals.

I was rereading Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” this week. And here’s poor Gregor Samsa, he’s turned into a giant cockroach and can’t even get out of bed in his parents apartment because his little legs are waving uselessly in the air, and his boss shows up at the apartment and is yelling through the door, and Gregor offers this very long and heartfelt explanation, but all that the boss and his parents hear through the door is guttural twittering.

To be really far out, you turn into a giant cockroach and make noises that don’t even sound like a human language. I’d like to write a story like that with John Shirley one of these days.

Right now I’m busy revising Postsingular. My editor Dave Hartwell gave me some good suggestions. Basically it’s a matter of rounding out the secondary characters. The spear-carriers. When I’m writing the first draft, I focus on the primary characters, but often the secondary characters are just doing what’s necessary to move the story along. So maybe in Part I Craigor is a jokey artist, and in Part IV he’s a brainless Lothario. So now I need to make him consistent and explain why he changed. The explanations don’t even have to be that convincing, but you need a fig leaf to cover the behavioral forking.

It’s great how Dylan keeps at his art, year after year. Out there performing. A good role model for any artist. Like the writer who writes every day and continues publishing.

A few weeks ago I read an excerpt of an old interview with Dylan, and he was talking about certain of his songs as depicting the quality of later afternoon light in certain parts of a city. Which reminded me that a musician isn’t just thinking about the words, the art is in the sound, like a painter piling up colors and shapes, and it may indeed synaesthetically evoke just about anything that’s on the creator’s mind.

He and the band had a killer trio of songs for their encore: “Thunder on the Mountain,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “All Along the Watchtower.” That last one—I was remembering thirty years ago how I’d sometimes get out my big flat black plastic records and play the Dylan and Jimi Hendrix versions of this song, enjoying both of them. And maybe Dylan didn’t play this song live for awhile, but now he’s back to it. He reimagines his songs on every tour, tailoring them to the band and current state of his by now somewhat duck-like voice.

There were some good guitar lines in “Watchtower” — not mimicking Jimi, which would be dull — but playing something that takes into account what Jimi did, and then does something different. A postmodern, 21 st Century sound, post-9/11, irony in the music, a full awareness of the past thirty years, the long vista of time we’ve passed through, the dead friends and relatives, our own inevitable deaths to come, the human condition, and that good old touchstone: the ecstasy of losing yourself in the music in a crowd.