If you don’t like sci-fi novels, you might want to stop reading … now.

Chasm City is Alastair Reynolds’ second novel. Tanner Mirabel is a security operative who travels by light-hugger to the distant colony world of Yellowstone, in search of a man named Reivich, against who he owes a blood-debt of vengeance. Here’s the problem: in the years Mirabel has been in reefer-sleep, Yellowstone got hit by the melding plague. The city has gone crazy, its living buildings changing so rapidly that thousands of people were killed as their city turned against them.

Meanwhile, before departing for Yellowstone, Mirabel was infected by an indoctrinal virus of the Cult of Sky. Many years before, Sky Haussmann, the captain of the slower-than-light Santiago, one of a flotilla out to colonize Journey’s End, committed a horrible atrocity for which he was crucified. Now the virus plays itself out — at inconvenient times, of course — in Mirabel’s head as he hunts for Reivich.

This also happens to be the second of Reynolds’ novels that I’ve read. At the moment, I think it’s his best.

I remember watching a Star Wars Documentary, and Mark Hamill quoted a line from his audition that he still remembered thirty years later, and remarked, “Who talks like this?” Sure, the technical stuff Reynold’s characters dig in to is completely unintelligible, but when you get past this, the dialogue doesn’t leave you scratching your head wondering if Reynolds’ borrowed his dialogue from JM Straczynski. And when you get to a point when you’re like “WTF are you talking about?” Reynolds’ writing is so descriptive that you believe this is how people will talk in this dark and desolate future.

Add that to a deftly woven complex plot — I think I understand the ending — and you’ve got a recipe for a good bit of readin’.

I hit the Netflix jackpot: three films, all great! I’ve got Rendition above the DVD player as I type this, and I’m pretty sure that my track record of success means that movie’s gonna suck monkey testies.

First up, a sequel: Elizabeth The Golden Age, with Cate Blanchett reprising her role from a decade ago. It’s not as good as the first film, and the final battle scene is underdramatic and a little confusing, but it’s more than a decent film, and does well in trying to convey a lot of information and plot while not being overwhelmingly boring.

Hanover Street, an excellent Harrison Ford film, set in WWII England. He’s a bomber pilot. She’s a nurse. There’s a great comedic scene where they both upstage each other vying for a spot on a bus. Then they got bombed by the Germans. Then they jump into bed. Then he gets picked to fly her husband over France on a secret mission and they get shot down and you can probably figure out the dramatic tension from here. Well scripted, cool action sequences, a hint of Catch-22, and some great acting from Chris Plummer, Harrison Ford & Lesley-Anne Down make this totally queueable.

Last — certainly not least! — is from those claymation dudes behind Wallace & Grommit. I liked Chicken Run, so I figured I wasn’t going out on a limb putting this flick — Flushed Away — onto my queue. Nope! It’s a movie about a pet rat who gets flushed into the sewer and needs help from a cute-rat-chick with a Han Solo vibe to get home. Along the way he learns a lot of valuable lessons about blah-blah-blah. Seriously, the rat chick is cute. For a claymation rat chick, anyway. Cute, silly movie. French frogs who surrender when their French frog leader calls them to action. Hilarious stuff.

The honeymoon period continues.

No, I didn’t get married. I’m talking about the merge of “old staff” and “new staff” that occurs when a business is bought out by new owners: in this case, the Indy, which Gary sold not quite two weeks ago, breaking the news to us by showing up at 8:30pm on a Saturday night with a case of beer, telling us to lock the door, hit the lights, and join him for a drinky-drink. Although I saved my beer for later (walking into a party with it in hand a couple of hours later, someone remarked, “Holy shit you come prepared!”), it was a very somber occasion. What would these new owners (a Philippine family) be like? Would any of us still have jobs? What would change? What would stay the same?

For the moment, the Indy remains largely as it was. The back walls have been scrubbed down and are being prepared to be painted. Some wall-wire-shelves have been relocated. Gary removed his personally owned artwork from the lobby. The new owners bought 18″ screens to make larger pizzas to sell for slices. They’ve been ordering 22 ounce dough balls for the large pizzas. There are now plastic bags available for customers’ soda orders, and new hot bags have arrived. The menu, aside from some new coupons, remain largely the same. The old staff has largely moved on — former insiders and managers were either not hired on, or chose to leave to focus on school, or worked a night or two as a driver and decided they didn’t like it. About half the driving staff opted not to continue under the new management.

I worked with Deep before, many many years ago when I first moved to Baltimore County. I was living at The Colony in Towson, attending school during the day and driving down to Columbia to work as the assistant manager of a Domino’s Pizza. When I finally transfered to the Timonium store (which closed shortly thereafter and reopened on Cranbrook Road), Deep was one of my drivers. He left Domino’s shortly after I did, and moved to California, where he worked as a taxi driver in Los Angeles before moving back this way a couple of months ago. Along with several of his cousins and his uncle and aunt, he’s one of the new management. He’s got big plans for the place: a new pizza oven (the one we’ve got is older than I am and even Gary — who worked as an electrician before buying the place — isn’t quite sure how it still operates), a grill and fryer, desserts (don’t know how we’re going to deliver ice-cream in the summer, exactly), even a selection of Indian food.

I worked with Deep’s uncle last Sunday, and will again tomorrow. He wants to put a big screen TV in the lobby so customers will stay and enjoy football and March Madness. I don’t know if he knows how much Comcast will charge for commercial-use TV access, but there’s precedent: we used to have a TV/DVD player in the kitchen. Robin & I would watch “COPS” every Saturday night, followed by Law & Order and one of those 48-hours-type crime documentary shows. I like these guys. They’re energetic, eager, excited, and best of all, when they speak of Gary, they do so postively. There’s nothing to sap moral more than new owners coming in and saying “Man, this place is a shit hole.” Gary owned the place for eighteen years. He was more than a little burned out, and in five years of working for him, I’ve never seen him as happy as when he told us he’d sold the place. It was like the weight of the world had been removed from his shoulders. Deep’s cousin, A., who I worked with tonight, has spent time working as a bartender and in construction. Sunday is his only day off, but he’s probably going to come in, grab some menus, and doorhang some neighborhoods anyway. Their attitude towards the store is so infectuous, I’ve actually cut my hours back at the slack-a-shack Franchise.

I think the future is bright for the Indy. But no matter how good these new owners are, it’ll never quite be the same without Gary and Robin behind the counter. It really was the end of an epoch, when GLW sold it.