(no subject)

[clayhornik]

Written for my bookworm blog, but posting here as well:
Listening to The Mates of State singing "California" with a slide show of pictures of the Salton Sea streaming on flicker. Kind of spooky actually.
I'd heard the name The Salton Sea before, initially in conjunction with the movie of the same name, but until I'd read Caitlin Kiernan's short story "Sakambo Redux" aka "Little Conversations" on Clarksworld Magazine I'd not really looked into it.
What a truly eerie place. An ecologists nightmare. First, a screwup creates an inland saline lake. Making lemonade, the area is turned into a resort. Then agricultural runoff and industrial waste screw things up even worse. Water levels have risen taking out the parts of the town. Massive fish die off render the place stinking. It's like a apocalyptic nightmare.
"Those science-fiction movies set in wastelands after nuclear wars," she says, "that's what it was like standing there on the shore of the Salton Sea."From Little Conversations.
Looking at the flickr sets out there you can believe it.
But don't take my word for it, see for yourself here.
Then go and read Kiernan's short story. It's free. You like free, don't you? Well, then, there you go.
If you like it, her first novel, Silk, is being reprinted in December, and her novelization of Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery's Beowulf is coming out in November, not to mention the recent mass market editions of her novels Threshold and Low Red Moon that're on shelves now.

Comments

[throughthefire.livejournal.com]

Thanks for finding and linking to the flickr pictures of the Salton Sea. I'd just finished reading "Little Conversations" when I read your lj entry. --Pretty desolate place.