Guess I'll find out if it deserves the name Windy City

[bironic]

If a person were going to be in Chicago for the first time for, say, 6 hours and possibly a few evenings, in February, what might one do? Sears Tower? Field Museum? Pizza?

ETA: Also, if a person had basically the entirety of the English sci fi and fantasy literary canon at one's fingertips, what might one try next? Short stories and compilations are a personal favorite.

Comments

[musicisbelievng.livejournal.com]

one would dress in layers. It's cold.

Navy Pier is cool, but we went in the summer. Ummm... I was a bad tourist and didn't do much else.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Is it like South Street Seaport? (See me ask you instead of just going and looking it up.)

Mm. Yes on the layers.

[musicisbelievng.livejournal.com]

Yes. Pretty much. There's a carnival/amusement park thing attached to it, too, but I don't think it would be open in Februrary.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Like Adventureland. We could go for hot dogs.

[musicisbelievng.livejournal.com]

but then it would rain.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

or snow.

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

Have you ever been to the Chicago Art Institute? It's just amazing, and you could see Nighthawks.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I have not; my only experience with Chicago was a layover at O'Hare when I was 10. I will check out the website and see how it looks -- thanks!

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

Oh! And you should try and see the Bean at Millennium Park -- it's really cool. And the Chicago Tribune building is neat -- you can watch WGN broadcasting live, just from standing on the sidewalk.

God, I love Chicago. Just walking around downtown is a real architectural-history lesson.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

If the Tribune hasn't gone totally under by then, anyway. :)

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

Heh! The really unusual thing about the Tribune Tower is that it's got historical artifacts buried in its walls. They're in ... like a ring around the building, and you can touch them, a piece of the Alamo, a piece of Notre Dame in Paris, a piece of steel from the World Trade Center, a piece of the Great Pyramid ... you can read about it here.

It's something different, that's for sure.

[roga.livejournal.com]

One would probably freeze to death.

Hmm! I know not. I went up to the Sears Tower which was fun because the view was great and there's a bit of history there, but it's just a touristy attraction, you know? I like guided bus tours so you could probably take one of those; I think they have Mob tours, which sounds cool. I also went to the Modert Art Museum, but... well, I've never really liked modern art.

Or you could go see Oprah!

[bironic.livejournal.com]

You know I love that you've seen more of the country than I have, right? :D Guided bus tour = great idea; will check out. I hope we don't have a blizzard or severe cold snap while we're there, for logistic as well as touristy reasons.

[jadesfire.livejournal.com]

Assuming you've worked your way through Asimov and Gaiman (personal favourites), I'd actually suggest Kate Atkinson's "Not the End of the World". It's not going to be labelled fantasy, but her short stories are odd, moving little pieces that I adored. She's a British author who wrote the only 'family saga' that I've ever been able to read and, in fact, couldn't put down - "Behind the Scenes at the Museum." [eta. okay, so you only have the American English literary canon. *sulks* but I'm leaving the rec because the books are great]

I'd also recommend "Gateway" by Frederik Pohl and "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman.

And it's not sci-fi, but on the basis that sci-fi fans usually like mysteries, if you haven't read Laurence Block, the Burglar series is all kinds of awesome, as well as practically being encomiums of New York City.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Yep, have read much Gaiman and a smattering of Asimov. I also loved Gateway! And Joe Haldeman actually teaches here, and I'd been meaning to try Forever War since he announced they were making a movie. Hm, that could be a good choice.

They have Canadian, British, Australian etc. books in the library, but maybe Atkinson's is missing because it was classified under a different genre?

Thanks!

[jadesfire.livejournal.com]

Heh. Since I am very poorly read, I couldn't really think of anything else...

Ah...I missed the bit about it only being the sci-fi library *headdesk* Sorry, I'm in "DO NOT WANT" panic mode here and am skimming too quickly. I checked the main catalogue and they've got all of her books :)

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

what might one try next?

*clears throat meaningfully* Well? :)

I enjoyed the Haldeman Forever stuff, too (I think there's more than one book in that series). I'm am vaguely suprised that he's still alive, though! His stories have this very 'classic' feel to them, is all I can say. Hee. I love Orson Scott Card's short stories too, although they aren't all SF. The Capitol series - kind of interlinked short stories - is, and it's brilliant.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Haldeman is not only alive, he has a LiveJournal (http://joe-haldeman.livejournal.com/). Trufax.

I read the Egan story last night! It was cool. A gigantic physical set of strange attractors. Gleick never went quite that far, did he? :) Egan had some great ideas in the 100 or so pages I got through of Axiomatic before it was due back today (or possibly yesterday, whoops), and a lot of it tied in to some of the stuff we were covering in classes, weirdly. I only wish he'd done less historical explication and let his rich little worlds exist on their own.

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

Whoa! YOU'RE FREAKING ME OUT! He's actually not as old as I'd envisioned XD

Well, I'm glad you read it, anyway *g*. I love his ideas, and I must say I never noticed the historical explication stuff to which you refer. Either that, or I enjoyed it every bit as much as the stories, which seems highly possible. I always thought reading Egan was rather like attending a lecture, only in the very best of ways ;)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Heh. I guess I would just be reading along, enjoying all the creativity he'd put into each story-universe, backgrounding the plot, but then a passage or whole section would come along that'd be like, "after the apocalypse, which was caused by X, such and such happened, and then such and such followed, and now here we are," which I thought took away from the storytelling. Same in the one about the investigators who take drugs to suppress their disgust and focus their attention to details, where we *got* that that's what was going on, but he stopped to talk about how the cops were trained and what the drugs did. Stylistic differences, maybe. Didn't stop me from reading more.

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that's really interesting - remember when I was writing the vamp sequel to your fic and you didn't like the way the backstory was exposited? That kind of explains a lot, possibly, as to the difference of opinion there.

[Although, I have to say in retrospect I think you were completely right regarding the fic - because I do regard fanfic as a separate genre of its own - and if I'd done it again I would want it fleshed out into a flashback *g*]

[bironic.livejournal.com]

That must be it -- Greg Egan skewed your brain. Or didn't skew mine in time. ...No, he must have skewed yours. *g*

In Egan's case, anyway, I appreciated the thought he'd put into it, and I didn't need him to spell it out for me. And yours, ya, good point -- I like when things that happened before the story are told in the beginning instead of in the middle, or in a prequel, like you say, or alternating sections or something. My ex-boyfriend told me all the past-perfect tense in a flashback took away from the drama in a Star Trek story I wrote in high school. I was kind of bitter about it for a little while, but soon enough I realized he was right, and now that sort of thing strikes me whenever it shows up in fic.

Blah blah blah preachcakes.