Crit List Stardate 2009: It's Not 'To Boldly Go,' It's 'To Go Boldly,' You Semi-Literate Baboon

Every time I post without a picture of some kind my soul dies a little; I have no other excuse than compulsion.

I started writing this as a reply to comments from Rob, Peter, and Craig on my last post when I realized that what I was writing should be a post in itself. I do go on, do I not?

I have a confession to make. I never really enjoyed Star Trek until recently.

As a kid I watched reruns of Star Trek every weeknight and was vocal in my support of the show. But in my heart of hearts I found it insanely boring.

This tradition continued with The Next Generation. I watched the very first episode (as I recall it was titled Planet Of The Naked White People), and at one point in the show I found myself confronted with a conundrum.

There was one scene where the lead characters were walking through a vast warehouse-like space filled with gauze-clad blond couples humping and it was boooooooring.

(As an aside, when the missus and I were going through our rough years from time to time she'd tell me I needed to be more like Captain Picard. "I'm trying," I'd say. "I'm getting more emotionally distant and I'm balding as fast as I can. What the hell more do you want?")

That was when I began to formulate the Bikini Paradox -- there is nothing in the world more interesting than an attractive female body yet mere skin is not enough to redeem crappy entertainment. Even Raquel Welch needed dinosaurs to maintain interest through a whole movie.

Anyway, in the last couple of years I've seen a fistful of original Trek episodes and found myself loving them. First off, there's the other side of the Bikini Paradox -- when something is entertaining, a certain amount of cute girl (or whatever your preference is) really adds something.

The women used for display purposes back in the Trek days were of distinctly higher quality than the current crop, whose devotion to unfortunate diet and exercise programs, cosmetic surgery, and Photoshop qualifies them as cyborgs. Take a look at the Olsen twins and then let me commend to you the thighs of Yoeman Rand. Case fucking closed.

But that's just part of it. I also adore the crappy drywall on the Enterprise. I do (or, rather, did) better drywall than that. The Enterprise is a dump and I love it. The idea that the Federation is underfunded and shoddy really has some appeal for me.

Then there's the rocks. The same damned rocks in scene after scene after scene, all lit with weird gels. Old school Star Trek is all about the tacky.

And the best part of all is William Shatner's gut. When you start tracking it, it becomes a source of genuine fascination. Kirk makes a dramatic speech -- low tide. He thinks you're not watching -- high tide. I find myself vigilantly waiting for the moment of relaxation. Suckitinsuckitinsuckitin -- aaaaaaahhh. The relief.

There were a lot of things about the Trek movie that bugged me from a critical standpoint. It was one of those movies that's basically one long action scene with no room for the characters to breathe. The plot was entirely dependant on coincidence. (A good craftsman allows themselves one coincidence -- one 'gimme' -- per story, maximum.) The science was crap, of course -- but it was interesting to see them alternate scenes where there is no sound in a vacuum with scenes where there is sound in a vacuum. (Those simpering halfwits do dearly love to stay on the left side of the bell curve, do they not? I bet the Silent Space scenes were concieved of as salutes to Firefly rather than physics.)

The creators never allowed any touch of reality to stifle anything that looked cool, a modality that always leaves me emotionally disconnected. If you aren't going to try to be believable, why should I believe in you?

(See Peter Jackson's King Kong, a movie that kept popping into my mind while watching Trek.)

Ol' Kirk spend a fuck of a lot of time dangling over precipices, none of which existed for any other reason than Kirk-dangling. Star Trek was all flash and no guts.

But it was fun to look at and the idiot breakneck pace kept it from getting boring, as did the return of the Starfleet miniskirt. (I also liked the nod to Kirk's bad case of chartruese fever.) And there was a point of redemption, of true contact with the tacky, low-budget, half-assed Star Trek that I have learned to like, if not love.

Where once we had William Shatner's gut --

(Have I ever told you my theory of Actor Continuity? That every character an actor portrays is the same character? An example. Jeff Bridge's character in The Big Lebowski is addled and doofy as a post-traumatic stress reaction to what happened to him in Tron. Likewise, when James T. Kirk grows up, he turns into Denny Crane. The man was destined to be a sweaty drunken obese pervert -- may I be as lucky.)

-- where once we had Shatner's gut, now we have Leonard Nimoy's dentures. Interstellar travel they've got, teleportion they've got, time travel and interspecies sex they've got, but poor old Spock is still slurring because his Polydent isn't up to the task of keeping his choppers in place.

And they still don't have fucking seatbelts.

Mektoub.

I Really Shouldn't Do This: The Guardian's Science Fiction And Fantasy Novel List

This is the piece that's in the art show tomorrow and is being printed in the Laney Tower today... Hmm. That makes it my most-published work of art.

Over at the Biology In Science Fiction blog, Peggy has responded to a meme -- The Guardian published a long list of must-read novels and included one hundred and forty-nine SF and fantasy novels. See her post for more details.

Anyway, I read down the list and found myself thinking -- so here's my annotated version. The novels I've read are in bold. And having gone over the list, I'm not fond of it. It smacks of committee work -- one guy is interested in proving that some of this stuff is Real Literature, someone else is fixated on Klassic SF, another person it way totally Goth...

And if you're going to do a representative list of fantastic literature, you need to include more stuff from outside Europe and North America. Where are the Latin American Magic Realists? (Although where I come from, we call those guys fantasy writers.) Where's Amos Tutuola? Where's A Voyage To The West or The Ramayana? And why aren't there more children's books?

And I was irked that my favorite group of North American fantacists, the Weird Tales crowd, got totally shafted.

My main complaint was that this was restricted to novels. One thing that really bugged me was the continual inclusion of second-rate novels by people who should have been on the list for their short fiction.

And the methodology behind the listing seemed weird -- some series were included under one heading, others were broken up, others had a couple of books from a series listed seperately. Like I said, this feels like the effort of a poorly-coordinated group.

Oh, well -- this was still a fun little stroll down memory lane. Perhaps I shall construct my own lists -- Ten Worthwhile Supermarket Horror Novels, Ten Genre SF Books That You Don't Have To Be An SF Fan To Enjoy, Ten Fantastic Novels From World Literature, Ten Novels That Gave Birth To Modern Genre... It's something to think about.

Now, on with the kvetching!

1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
Kinda cute. If you like this, read Robert Sheckley instead.

2. Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
It was okay -- his Hothouse and The Malacia Tapestry were both a lot more fun.

3. Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
I tried but I just bounced off of it. I dunno; I'm just not that crazy about Asimov's stuff. I loved his robot books and Lucky Starr novels when I was a sprat but as an adult, eh.

4. Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
5. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
I've been meaning to check these out for a while but have been put off by the whole, "I am a writer, these are not science fiction," schtick.

6. Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
Been meaning to get around to this guy, too. Got one of his books on the shelf.

7. J.G. Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)
8. J.G. Ballard: Crash (1973)
This one's sitting on the shelf. Ballard is one of those people I'm supposed to like more than I actually do.

9. J.G. Ballard: Millennium People (2003)

10. Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
One of my favorite books. I must have been through six copies of this and I currently don't own a copy -- people borrow them and I never get them back. Good-natured nastiness with a curiously domestic edge, perfectly captures the vibe of 'child as a compulsively superstitious religist.'

11. Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
It was okay, I guess, if you like big loud noisy weird space opera.

12. Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
I have yet to read a Barker novel that was anywhere near as much fun as The Books Of Blood. His first was more controlled; this one wobbled around a bit.

13. Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)

14. Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
A real hoot, especially for those of us who are Morlock sympathizers. (My first Thaumatrope submission: "You do understand," the Morlock said, "that it's in very poor taste to fuck them.")

15. Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)
A ridiculous premise, competently executed. I've read a bit by Bear but aside from Blood Music I've never had much enthusiasm. I'm just not in his target audience.

16. William Beckford: Vathek (1786)
Great, great fantasy, wonderfully decadent. It's Arabian Nights stuff written by a brilliantly degenerate nobleman.

17. Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
A hoot and a half. The beat version of Cyberpunk, fast dense high-tech lowlifes.

18. Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
In the second and third grades I went through a phase where I read nothing but Ray Bradbury. Now the only stuff I can take is The October Country. Another guy who's really worth listing because of his short fiction, although I've come to find his use of metaphors hooty in the extreme.

19. Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
Read some of her short fiction; hipster stuff, kinda bored me. Isn't she the one who wound up with a suicide-scented edition of one of her books, due to an immolation in a warehouse?

20. Charles Brockden Brown: Wieland (1798)

21. Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
Tried it; it was impenetrable. Another writer I wish I liked.

22. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
Hilarious stuff but I just didn't get the connection between the main storyline and the Pontius Pilate flashbacks. Well worth reading, though.

23. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
This is the kind of thing I wonder about -- is this here because it's a readable novel, or is it here because of its historical significance?

24. Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
Not the most impressive of Burgess's works but a mean little bit of lit-flavored pulp. I used to have a sheet that my brother handed out to his friends containing all the terminology from this, 1984, and Brave New World.

Duncan also went through a phase where the only shirts he wore were Clockwork Orange T-shirts based on the movie poster. Once in public I pointed out to him that his shirt was actually a Sigue Sigue Sputnik shirt; he tore it off of his body. I mean, tore -- grabbed the chest in both hands and ripped. God, I miss that stinky bastard.

25. Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
I went through a Burgess phase when I was twenty-three -- it was his book on Napoleon that ended the binge.

26. Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912) 27. William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
You want an explanation for me? In the fiction section of the Richmond Public Library these two authors were mingled together indiscriminately and that's how I read them. Nowadays, with my visual imagination Edgar reads just as pornographically as William -- 'naught but a sword-belt' translates to 'pretty much butt-naked.'

Naked Lunch was one that I put off reading for a looooong time and when I got to it, it was just as hilariously appalling as I'd been told. I have very mixed feelings about WS Burroughs, though. On one hand he's a childfucker who shot his wife in Mexico; on the other hand I've found him one of the most useful writers I've run across, in terms of expanding my creative toolchest.

But if I only allowed myself to appreciate art by genuinely good people, I'd be shit out of luck, now wouldn't I?

28. Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
This one's sitting by the side of the bed right now. I've got a hell of a lot of respect for Butler's work. She never takes the easy way out; her depth of thought is admirable and her work is strongly moral.

29. Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)

30. Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
I've got a copy of Cosmicomics that I've started any number of times. It seems great; I have no idea why I've never gotten more than ten pages into it. Perhaps that says something...

31. Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
I went through a Campbell phase as well; my favorite is still The Face That Must Die. Quite unpleasant in a good way; this guy knows his crazy.

32. Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) 33. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
These were childhood obsessions; my mom paid me a buck to memorize Jabberwocky when I was three and it's still on tap at a moments notice.

I'm also in the habit of picking up the various differently illustrated editions -- Barry Moser, Ralph Steadman, etc.

Shame about the whole pedophilia thing; that does give it a taint. See Burroughs.

34. Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
35. Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
I've got a copy of The Bloody Chamber on the shelf. She's one of those writers I'm supposed to love, so I'm feeling a bit hesitant about actually cracking the covers.

36. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
Right, so was this SF or fantasy? I'm still irked at Chabon's disingenous introduction to Thrilling Stories -- he acts as though plot-oriented short fiction was dead when he knew damned well that genre fiction is the Serenghetti of the short form. He's good, though.

37. Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
Loved Clarke as a child and still take great pleasure in Tales From The White Heart.

38. GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
This reads like the work of a very nice fellow indeed.

39. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
It's sitting on the shelf.

40. Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)

41. Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
The Mojo Nixon cover of the song of the same title rocks.

42. Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
Again, on the shelf, but it looks like one of those books where sooner or later you have to get up and go to the bathroom in order to read a reverse-printed passage in the mirror and life is fucking short, you know?

43. Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)

44. Samuel R Delany: The Einstein Intersection (1967)

45. Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
46. Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
Delany and Dick are both writers I ought to like but don't. (Not entirely true -- I have thoroughly enjoyed short fiction by both.) See Angela Carter; this is why I'm shy about her.

47. Thomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)
Someone else whose best is their short fiction. Pretty decent poet as well. This one is great until the cop-out happy ending.

48. Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)

49. Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)

50. John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
This one's on the shelf. The missus recommended The Sot-Weed Factor as well.

51. Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
He's developed into a quite decent novelist; his single issue stories in the Sandman comic book series remain his strongest work. He's someone who works the same field as magazines like Unknown; his agriculture improves the quality of the topsoil, if you'll forgive me the hooty metaphor. (See Bradbury.)

52. Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)

53. William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
When this came out I was going through my above-mentioned Ramsey Campbell phase. I was sick of science fiction and getting deep into punk rock. When I read about this the phrase cyberpunk thrilled me so much that I avoided reading any so that I could just mentally riff on the concept -- here's some of what I came up with.

Another Duncan memory -- we had a power struggle for a while. I wanted him to read Neuromancer; he wanted me to read this story he'd found in an old Omni called Johnny Mnemonic. Each of us knew we'd found the best SF ever. Duhr. More a phase than a great work; still great fun.

54. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
The Yellow Wallpaper is bone-crushingly miserable and transmits massive testicular guilt.

55. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
I read it in one period in high school -- one of those assigned texts that just captured me. For that hour I lived that book.

56. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
Read it a couple of times; kinda sorta liked it.

57. M John Harrison: Light (2002)
Sitting on the shelf.

58. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
I tried to reread Tanglewood Tales recently -- god it was awful. Rapacinni's Daughter is great, though.

59. Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
I like me some Heinlein when I'm in the mood but this was just plain bad. The Dawn Of The Horny Heinlein. And not horribly entertaining like Farnham's Freehold; it was dull as well as dirty. Not hardcore porny; dirty minded masquerading as wholesome.

60. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
I read this while my family was driving back and forth to Oregon; it was worth the carsickness. I'm gonna try it again but I'm afraid it might not hold up.

61. Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)

62. Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
I've had two copies of this and have never read the damned thing.

63. James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
Man, I loved this one. I should go back to it soon. Realistic, visionary, full of the whiff of true madness. Funny as fuck, too.

64. Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
Dude wrote an asinine self-satisfied rape of H.P. Lovecraft that made me want to smack him. Fuck you and everything you stand for, Houellebecq. It's your kind that gives hyperintellectual solipsistic nihilism a bad name.

65. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
Read this again recently; not bad at all.

66. Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)

67. Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
She's so good -- but the works of hers I love the most are her humorous domestic memoirs, Raising Demons and Life Among The Savages.

68. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
Tried reading The Golden Bowl; I could not care about his characters and I did not like his prose. Boredom carried to an exquisite pitch.

69. PD James: The Children of Men (1992)

70. Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)

71. Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
I keep getting her mixed up with Diane Wynn Jones, which certainly isn't fair to either of them.

72. Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
I haven't read enough Kafka but what I've read I've loved.

73. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
It jerked my tears when I was eight or nine; doubt I'll ever want to read it again.

74. Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
Still haven't seen the Kubrick film based on this one... I enjoy King but he needs either discipline or an editor with a chair and a whip and a pistol loaded with blanks. I'm of the opinion that he could be a lot better than he is -- that he has chops he hasn't used yet.

75. Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)

76. CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56)
I heard one of these as a book on tape a little while ago; genuinely hateful. The racism and misogyny in his works are not fucking subtle. I have to wonder whether or not he was a dick in person.

77. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
I need to check out more of this guy's work -- ever read Carmilla? Ooh-la-la, that one carries an erotic charge.

78. Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
Haven't read this one but The Cyberiad is one of those books I read every few years. Funny, funny stuff, both clever and smart, full of remarkable wordplay. I really should read more Lem.

Interestingly, a work pal once recommended the writer Michael Kandel to me. I loved Strange Invasion but found it strangely reminiscent of The Cyberiad. That was because Kandel was the translator.

79. Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990)
I read and loved the first three when I was in Jr. high; I've been saving the more recent ones for a binge when I'm emotionally vulnerable enough to really appreciate them.

80. Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
I'm supposed to read this one, aren't I?

81. Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
My Independent Study sponsor in high school gave me this one. I really owe that woman a debt; I can see her face and hear her voice but her name has been stolen by the years. Man, she had to put up with some ugly shit from me.

I found this alternately fascinating and frustrating -- I was a lot more genre-oriented at that age and her refusal to play by the rules bugged me.

82. MG Lewis: The Monk (1796)

83. David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
Sitting in a stack of books at the top of the stairs.

84. Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
Loved his first four novels, liked his next three, haven't read any since. Why are so many of the best SF writers Scots socialists?

85. Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)

86. Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)

I've read a couple of books by him; not bad, not good.

87. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
Another writer with a half-assed novel on the list and brilliant short fiction that should be here instead. Why the fuck did the specify novels?

88. Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
Sitting on the shelf.

89. Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
Loved it -- brutal and depressing, just like me. But it's a realistic story -- why the hell is it on this list?

90. Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
Someone else I'm supposed to like -- it's Blood Meridian that I really want to read.

91. Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)

92. China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
Lousy prose, many dull passages, both more than compensated for by brilliant moments of visionary imagination. Hmm. Kinda like The Night Land, now that I think of it. My favorite of his thus far. For a while I thought he was the next Gene Wolfe; then I noticed the prose. But hell, Gene Wolfe isn't the next Gene Wolfe anymore.

93. Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)

94. Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
Sitting on the shelf.

95. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)

96. Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
I've read a good chunk of Moorcock and I just am not that crazy about his stuff. I suspect I'd like the man, though.

97. William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
I dug The Woods Beyond The World but I was in the mood for it. More interesting than good.

98. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
Sitting on the shelf.

99. Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
The missus has been reading Murakami; she was surprised to find out that Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World was one of her first presents to me. I really dug it and should read more of his stuff.

100. Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
Got a copy of Pnin on the shelf; have been hesitant.

101. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)

102. Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
Loved it as a kid, it's influenced me strongly. Great, but not very good. I read Niven with the same feeling I get when I eat candy, and do neither very often. Still, he's influenced me.

103. Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
I tried reading this one. Just not good.

104. Flann O'Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
One of my absolute favorite writers. But again, it's his short work I love the best. The twist ending here is predictable but the side-trips more than justify the book.

105. Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)

106. George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
Like everyone else, I reread this in 1984. Been meaning to read Down And Out In Paris And London.

107. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
I just don't like his stuff. I dig shock value but gimme a break, you've got to have something else there. But people I respect love his stuff so I'll probably try it again.

I do like the movie based on this book, though. More than I ought to.

108. Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)

109. Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
Haven't read the second two; loved this one. He writes like an artist but in a good way.

110. Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)
Reread this recently; just wasn't as crazy about it as I was when I was a kid. Kornbluth wrote some top-notch short fiction, though.

111. John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)

112. Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- ) (A few of them)
More substantial than Douglas Adams; still, it seemed more like product than literature. Not bad, though. I'll probably read more. His Strata was a nifty riff on Ringworld.

113. Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
Really well done but it seemed to labored to be truly entertaining.

114. Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000)
I really enjoyed these but I felt that they fell apart at the end. His shorter novels like Clockwork are among the most strongly plotted fiction ever. Every writer should study them.

115. François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
Whenever I've sat down to read this one, I've found myself incapable of resisting his exhortations to the reader to drink. So I've never finished it.

116. Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

117. Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)

118. Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

119. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)
I can't even remember if I gave up on these with the fourth or the fifth volume. At one point I was reading a collection of old Robertson Davies newspaper bits from the fifties and he included a deconstruction of a play with a hoary old cliche plot dating back to the 1800s. It was the plot of this book.

120. Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)

121. Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
Again, ought to try him.

122. Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)
Read Alyx recently; eh.

123. Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
When I was a kid I hated this for being sad but read over and over again anyway. I hear it's a fuck of a lot better in the French.

124. José Saramago: Blindness (1995)

125. Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)

126. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
Read the version illustrated by Bernie Wrightson for the pictures; found myself empathizing more with the creature than with any other literary figure I'd read to that point.

Imagine you're the creature. You're living in a shed, you're held together by stitches, and you're teaching yourself to speak and read with the help of a book.

That book is The Sorrows Of Young Werther. Bummer, dude.

127. Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
I tried but I just couldn't do it. Seemed like a Gene Wolfe ripoff; I was probably unfair to Simmons, who has written stuff I've liked.

128. Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
Sitting on the shelf.

129. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
His lead character is named Hiro Protagonist. You just can't lose with that sort of thing.

130. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Amazing. Structurally fascinating. Really, this should be much more highly regarded.

Of course this was written on a coke binge and I've had to deal with some coke freaks in my life so I may be biased.

131. Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
I've tried. I picked up an Edward Gorey-illustrated version at a yard sale recently so I suppose I'll try again.

132. Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)

133. JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937) 134. JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
Massively influential in my life. My first book was The Hobbit, which provided the key cultural reference for most of my childhood. TLOTR was my grandmother's favorite fiction.

Shame they aren't all that good. TLOTR in particular doesn't read as though it was meant to be read. I'll give Tolkien this much -- he may not have known a damned thing about women but unlike Lewis, at least he thought they were probably a good idea. Sorry, Inklings.

135. Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)
Really sadistic at the end. Loads of fun.

136. Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
Sitting on the shelf; my favorite is still Cat's Cradle.

137. Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)

138. Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)

139. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
Her Kingdoms Of Elfin was brilliant; I need to score another copy.

140. Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)

141. HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895) 142. HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
Most of his stuff still works quite well -- he's a genuinely good author. Very fond of this stuff. I'm thinking about doing some illustrated editions for self-promotional purposes, actually.

143. TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
Sitting on the shelf; was read to me aloud as a child and I loved it.

144. Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)

145. Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
I was fixated on this one for a while. One of those brief, "This is the best book ever," things. I've been meaning to go back to it...

146. Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)

147. John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
Decent prose but a ridiculous plot. Still, he's always good for an afternoon's light reading.

148. John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)

149. Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

A New Story! A New Story!

Behold! My very first attempt at drawing a dinosaur. This was back in the days when Gregory Paul was suggesting that small theropods may have been feathered and everyone formed a circle around him, pointing and hooting and saying, "Get a horse! It'll never fly!"

I had my doubts but I wanted to try drawing one.

I came upstairs this morning with every intention of continuing the skeletal diagrams for my Psitaccosaurus neimongoliensis. Instead, I wrote a new short story.

For the last while we've had some critter -- either squirrels or raccoons -- stockpiling chunks of concrete on the roof outside my studio. I've joked to my music buddy that someone's trying to make the jump to a paleolithic culture.

This came up in conversation with the new writer's group on Thursday and it dawned on my that I've written two stories with the same characters and setting that used other whimsical SF notions -- I think of the series partially as a dumping ground for those kinds of stray thoughts. I've mentioned this in my blog at other times.

Well, this morning my narrative function made the little ping noise that mean's a story is ready to write.

These stories are old-school short fiction. This one in particular had John Collier and Saki whispering in my ear while I worked.

Here's a taste. I'll let you know when it finds a home.

from
Procyon habilis

Like I said, I always get into trouble at Gary’s.

I sighed loudly enough to let Gary know that I was doing him a favor and got up.

“Hoss, this is Heather. Heather, my man the Hoss,” Gary said.

I smiled and nodded. “Heather.”

Heather smiled back – big worried eyes and a thin tight smile -- and reached her hand up. “Hoss,” she said.

I took her hand gently – I’m always wary of using a firm grip – and kept my eyes on her face as we shook. Her dress was cut low and I couldn’t help but imagine myself falling face first into her pillowy cleavage. Poof.

I scooted into the booth. The scuffed leather-covered padding on the bench was thin and the space between the table and the walls was narrower than I found comfortable and Heather and I were entirely too close to one another.

When I looked up I caught Gary staring at her. “I’ll have your drinks in a second,” he said, and went back to the bar.

Heather picked up her glass and licked at the salt on the rim, looked at me as though inspecting a piece of livestock. The silence went on forever, so long that I actually jumped when she spoke up.

“So you got any kids?” she asked.

“Nah,” I said. “I love ‘em but I can never finish a whole one.”

Heather giggled. I wasn’t sure she was really amused – she seemed worried. “Maybe that’s what I should do with mine, just put him in the oven.”

“Kids are great,” I said, “I used to work at a day care center when I was in high school. I love kids, I’m pretty good with them, but I just don’t want any of my own.”

Gary set our drinks down on the table; another margarita, my stout, and a double of something amber.

“I know you like your whiskey,” he said to me. “Since the lady’s paying I figured I’d give you a taste out of my private bottle.” He looked hard at Heather as he spoke and his statement sounded obscene – I’d like to give you a taste out of my private bottle.

“Well, thanks to both of you,” I said, and Gary pulled away reluctantly.

Heather lifted her glass. “To kids.”

“To the health of your boy,” I said, and we clinked glasses. There was something about this whiskey, something richer than usual, and I realized that it wasn’t watered.

Then Heather scrambled for her purse, sniffing loudly. Her eyes shone with tears as she pulled out a Kleenex and dabbed at her face. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with him, Hoss.”

I took another gulp before I spoke. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s… Jason’s in with a bad crowd,” she said.

“You mean like a gang?”

She shook her head. “No. Well, sort of.” And then she laughed through the tears and the sound made me think of ripped cloth.

“What do you mean?”

Heather blew her nose and wiped at her lip for long seconds before she replied. “They’re raccoons.”

Guess Who's Been Published Again?

Well, it looks as if you'll be able to see my fiction making its first appearance in a genre-oriented publication. The second issue of New Voices In Fiction is out and it also features an interview with Kim Newman, of whose work I am rather fond -- I actually prefer Jack Yeovil but I'll settle for Newman.

Anyway, if you go here you can see a brief slice of the story -- it's another SF bar story, this one with a slightly uglier edge than It's The Little Things. This one concerns an attempt to devise a way for people to think rationally. It ends badly, of course. And there's also one of my author's notes, this one guaranteed to make the missus cringe, despite the qualifier the editor added to the end.

I can hardly wait to hold this in my hands. Neat!

From The Valley Of Lost Projects: Cyberskunk!

So I was attending Laney college in the mid/late eighties when I ran across a fellow named Angel who wanted to do a comic book. He'd gotten a lot further down this road than I had, to the point of having been to conventions and so on, and he had an idea. A funny animal cyberpunk comic called Cyberskunk. (His name's Cyril -- get it?) It's important to remember that at this time there was no internet and funny animals had not yet been smeared with semen. Angel had the basic ideas, I came in and did some designs and made some writing suggestions...

This is all that remains. A bunch of designs were done, some layouts, some scripting -- we had no idea how to approach a large creative project and this was one that was eventually going to need some kind of financing to get off the ground.

I really want to do comics and it seems as if the better I am at writing and drawing the further away I get from cartooning. This is as close as I've come... I want to address this situation over the summer.

There were a lot more hippy designs than this. 's funny -- the big conflict was greasers vs. hippies and not a punk in sight.

I think I like this guy's boots more than anything else in the whole shebang.

From the Valley of Lost Projects -- Greetings From Grid City or Cyberpunk: The Future of my Youth

You know how old fashioned cyberpunk is? This was done using Zipatone. And Grid City, the comic script it was based on, was written on a typewriter.

Well, I promised a non-mopey update. I didn't get any work done on my novel this morning -- I used up my juice on three short fiction pieces for the next issue of Milvia Street. But here's a blast from the past, the first time I tried doing a comic book story. I wrote a hundred and thirty pages of script and some concept drawings and that was as far as it got. I gave up because I thought I sucked; now I look at this stuff and think, hey. Back in eighty-seven this would have been a hell of a comic book.

These two are a couple of good-natured drug manufacturers. When they combine cocaine with the amino acid precursors to the neurotransmitters whose release is stimulated by coke they have a hit on their hands. Too bad it winds up making people allergic to their own neurochemicals... When I heard the story about people getting those kinds of reactions to aerosol pig brains I got a nostalgiac glow. Oh, and the benefit of this rig is that they can each choose their favorite details for the lovemaking session without bothering the other person.

When I first read a review of Neuromancer in Heavy Metal I avoided reading it for a year just so I could let the idea of cyberpunk twist in my punk-rocking SF geek brain. When given a copy as a gift, I fell in love with it and tried to push it on my brother. "Fuck that," he said. "I've got this copy of Omni with a story called Johnny Mnemonic. It's the best fucking science fiction ever!" Took us a while to put two and two together. William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling, John Shirley! I salute you!

Any Big Black fans out there? This here's Dead Billy. He's a former soldier who had a Tin Man number done on him. Is he is or is he ain't a person? Who knows -- just don't get on his wrong side.

The Grid City script is long gone but I did write a short script for a screenwriting class that draws on the background. Ol' Dead Billy and his main squeeze Helter Kitty play prominant roles. The teacher said, "Give me something as weird as you can imagine." Well, I wasn't going to do that -- but here's a compromise.

Take a look at comment number one for the animation script Chad and Debbie's Vacation Wonderland!

Uma Thurman: Living Weapon or Why I'm Sick Of Kick-Ass Babes

I've got a lot to do this morning and here I am making a blog post. Like I keep saying, blogcessive compulsive. Today's thoughts were sparked by a conversation I had with the missus a couple of hours ago. (Yeah, she gets the insomnia too. It's almost worth it for the sake of talking in the dark, he said sentimentally.)

So there's a common... archetype isn't the right word. Model? Stereotype? Anyway, the warrior woman has been making a serious comeback in popular culture over the past couple of decades. But I'm not talking about Anne Bonney or Boadicea. I am flat-out in favor of women being able to handle themselves in a combat situation. While I don't want my granddaughter and nieces to engage in combat, if they are unfortunate enough to face violence I want them to win.

I'm talking about the oo-la-la sexy babe with an oversize weapon and armor that's basically shiny lingerie. I'm talking about armed Japanese schoolgirls with their little plaid skirts. I'm talking about Uma Thurman: Living Weapon.

First off, it's fetish stuff. (Louis Royo, I'm looking at you!) Nothing wrong with that, live it up. Me, I dig fat chicks. Chacun a son gout, baby. These kinds of fiction are fantasies and other people's fantasies are always a little weird.

But there's a certain point where things start going bad. For me one of the breaking points was the promotional campaign they've got going for The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The perfectly lovely young actress Summer Glau plays a Terminator, in case you're lucky enough to be able to avoid the mass media.

There have been a number of images of her that I frankly find offensive. Anyone who's read much of my fiction might be startled to find out that I can be offended -- but yeah. This shit is degraded and degrading. I think it's bad for the culture.

I'm not going to put the images here. The one that I just spotted in a comic book was one that showed Ms. Glau with her shirt off, back to the audience, with a series of bloody wounds that has peeled her flesh off to reveal the metal underneath. The combination of raw meat and a shapely body is torture porn. Right now someone's stroking it to that image right now.

(As an aside, my favorite euphemism for masturbation is 'counting to one.')

But far worse was...

Okay, if you're not a comic book reader you aren't familiar with this form of promotion. From time to time when I buy my comics they come in a specially printed plastic bag bearing an advertisement for something related to genre culture. Just before The Sarah Connor Chronicles (which I watched for a couple of episodes before dropping out to to excruciating boredom -- I hear it's gotten better) started airing I got a bag with an image of Ms. Glau on it.

It showed her fucking head and chest hanging from a rail, wires and mechanical connections dangling from the stumps of her arm and waist. She's nude; her nipples are covered by a couple of locks of her hair (man, that method of hiding nipples is old; next time why not try a couple of slices of pepperoni?) and she is gazing directly at the viewer.

This was fucking pornography. Not just pornography; it was robot amputee pornography. And my suspicion is that those bags were used for every purchase made in that comic store.

There is a sick part of me that thinks it's hilarious that children were given free robot amputee porn. But there's an even sicker part of me that thinks maybe we need to be paying attention to this stuff. At the very least parents should sit down and talk to their children about robot amputee porn openly and frankly.

This is an extreme example. But it is part of the whole hot chick kicks ass phenomenon.

I've talked to women who really enjoy seeing a female character kicking ass. I think this is part of something that doesn't get discussed very often -- one of the reasons why guy stuff is so predominant in a lot of cultural arenas is that a lot of women respond to it -- that by targeting guys you also target a lot of women. When I went to see Kill Bill I saw it with my buddy Megan. (It's more or less her fault that I'm writing -- I owe her a lot.)

She liked the movie a lot more than I did.

So why was Kill Bill an eh for me? Again, the woman warrior was part of it -- when I see an action scene in a movie I'm always thinking of how I'd fight if I were in that position. Now there are plenty of women in the world who can kick my ass. Some of them are, in fact, very attractive. I've got no more problem with that than I do with the fact that I can't go hand to hand with a grizzly or a bulldozer.

(What I mean here is that I've got a fucking huge problem with it. I won't be able to feel at ease until I'm cabable of rending humans limb from limb, tearing buildings apart, smashing holes in the crust of the Earth, crushing the universe in my hands. Anyone know a martial art that could teach me to do this?)

But watching Kill Bill I wound up instinctively imagining myself fighting Uma Thurman. That was grotesque. I mean, she weighs what, eight pounds? I don't want to think about fighting Uma Thurman!

(Who was it who said, "How can you fight a woman? There's no place on 'em you can hit!")

And of course that's my problem. Kill Bill was about someone else's fetishes. The thing is, is that no matter what I'm told I don't really see it as healthy.

That's because I don't see a capacity for violence as genuinely empowering.

I'm not arguing against the study of martial (Just misspelled that as marital -- thank you, Dr. Freud!) arts and I'm not saying that for some folks knowing that they have a capacity for violence is important to their sense of security.

But violence, as much a part of life as it is, is bad fucking news. It's not good for you. People who have been exposed to violence tend to get damaged by it both physically and emotionally. If you really do need to feel like a bad-ass it means that you have a wound. And there's something about combining it with sexy bodies that really bothers me.

It makes violence pretty and sex ugly. It takes things that have consequences in real life, things that we all have to deal with one way or another and it trivializes them.

If women find a sense of empowerment in images of dangerous females that's no worse than men finding a sense of empowerment in images of dangerous males. Hey, I read pulp fiction and comic books and I watch action movies and so on and so forth. I can understand the appeal. I get a serious charge out of extremely brutal depictions of violence.

But I'm nuts -- and I know that there's something degraded about my tastes. I do have a certain critical distance that lets me process this stuff and regulate my own exposure. (For instance, I've kicked my forensic textbook habit and my taste for true crime.)

I think what bothers me about the depictions of violent women in popular culture is that they almost always come from a male perspective -- and very often the sexy warrior babe is, in terms of character, more or less a dude. For example, Molly Millions/Kolodny/etc. from William Gibson's Sprawl stories is a dude. (Given the setting this may actually be the case.)

It is possible to handle this sterotype well, though. The missus got me hooked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer when it came out on DVD. One of the things that I really liked about it was that as the show went on, you could see Sarah Michelle Gellar's character grow more and more angry, alienated, and miserable as the show went on. For the last few seasons she was pretty damned unlikeable unless you understood what had driven her to that point.

That's what real fighting does to you. Not the controlled and consensual fighting of the dojo, of course. But when you are really fighting because someone really wants to hurt you and you really want to hurt them...

... it will make you a shittier human being. By showing that truth Buffy the Vampire Slayer managed to use the stereotype and subvert it at the same time. Buffy's being a bad-ass made her a worse person -- but she had no real choice.

As silly as the show was in many ways (Why did every single vampire know kung fu?), once you got past the obligatory thrilling action scenes it had a sense of the weight of violence.

If women want to kick ass, they are going to have to pay the price.

I grew up with powerful women. I like powerful women -- if I didn't, me and the missus wouldn't get along. My mom was a powerful woman. My grandmother was a powerful woman. My sister's like Molly Kolodny, though. She's a dude -- but still a powerful woman.

In my novel I am consciously trying to depict women that I would like in real life. Strong, purposeful, and effective when they're at their best.

But I'm not going to make them fight. And while violence is a subject -- and I do use it for adventure thrills here and there -- I'm trying to show how damaging it is. And I want the real turning points and climaxes to come from the rejection of violence rather than its expression.

At the end of the day I don't want it to seem as though kicking ass is cool or fun. Painful, stupid, or necessary -- yeah.

But kicking ass is not cool.


Now if you'll excuse me, for my homework I have to design some wallpaper for a boy's room. I'm going for a blood-spattered reptilian head with crossed chainswords motif.

At least there won't be any cleavage.

Speculative Biology of the Limbus Part One: A Desperate, Pathetic Plea for Thoughts and Inspiration

Another linoleum cut, this one based on a dried piranha I picked up at a flea market.

I'm asking for some inspiration regarding a certain element of the novel. Even if I don't get any response I'm sure that just laying it out will give me a chance to think about things in a different way.

So here's the official Spoiler Warning! If you might want to read the novel at some point, be warned that you're getting inside information here. My own thought is that if knowing this stuff ruins the reading experience for you than I haven't written a good enough book -- but others are more sensitive to these things than I am.

One of the most difficult aspects of writing the novel has been the ongoing process of conceiving the... Well, in this story it's a facet of the afterlife but you can think of it as Fairyland, Oz, Middle Earth, the Enchanted Forest, the Monster Zone.

It's called the Limbus. I chose the name after searching randomly through the dictionary. I needed a name for the place between life and the real afterlife, the place where souls got a chance to let go of their attachments to life before moving on.

Later I found out that in Medieval theology the Limbus was a place between Heaven and Hell, while in biology a limbus is an indeterminate area of tissue between two organs. This was interesting because if you put those two concepts together, well, that's what the Limbus is in the novel.

(For the record, my official position is to deny the existence of souls and the afterlife and any type of Easter Bunny stuff at all. My honest position is a lot spookier and more complicated and will be the subject of an upcoming essay.

But for the novel I'm proposing an unusual version of life after death that plays into cultural expectations and messes with them at the same time...)

Anyway. The Limbus is just a part of the natural world, of the cycle of life energies that extends far beyond our perceived existence. And it originated as part of the Earth before it grew into the Limbus.

It started out as a farm in Florida and the first sign that it was becoming something other than a patch of land was when the living things both plant and animal began to change.

In the Limbus organisms can change shape to match the desires and fears they have for their bodies. This notion was originally in place to allow for some metamorphoses on the parts of the lead characters but then I realized that if that was a natural law of the land it would affect the plants and animals in the Limbus as well.

Another aspect of the Limbus is that time passes there much more quickly than it does on Earth and the difference in rates is continually increasing.

I put those two things together and realized that I had inadvertantly dunked chocolate into peanut butter and the result was an environment where Lamarckian evolution (a discredited model of evolution based on the idea of purposeful change) would take place while the characters were watching -- where the ecology as well as the species would change drastically over the course of the novel in a way that would support the story.

So here's the question: What kinds of animals would evolve out of the population living on a subistance farm in Florida in the early eighteen-hundreds?

I'll post further information on the environment next time but here's a taste of what I've got down so far and frankly I'm thinking my imagination is a bit lame.


A hill of monstrous animal bodies joined together in a single mass as though they’re devouring each other or are locked in coitus or both. Pressed in between a wingless rooster ten feet tall with scimitar spurs and a hog with the legs of a racehorse and jaws like an alligator I see a familiar shape. It’s human. I wonder if it’s someone I know.

And:

Then the sound of a branch snapping came from the woods. I looked over and saw that a tree was shaking; the motion died. Then I saw a treetop pull away from me. There was another snap and the tree lashed back into place. I saw something reddish-brown in the treetops.

As I got closer I could hear chewing sounds, see more of the animals. I shouldn’t have approached them but I could not for the life of me figure out what they were. They had the heads of cattle, horns neatly curled in front of their ears. A beautiful dark roan with white bellies and white stripes at the haunches, they were six feet at the shoulder with another three feet of neck; their backs sloped sharply, rear legs distinctly shorter than their forelegs. Long tufted tails whipped at insects; they looked like cows trying to be giraffes.

I stood still and watched them feed, wrapping their long prehensile tongues around small branches and pulling them loose from the tree. There was a surge in the music and I snapped back into consciousness and started backing away.

There was a snort from the brush in front of me, deep and powerful, and a clot of dirt and grass arched through the air. I’d been looking up and the bull was close to the ground. Built like a pig with a narrow muzzle made for grubbing in the dirt, it was far more massive than the cows, thick neck holding a head easily two feet across. One horn hooked down below its jaw and it dug it into the dirt and threw another clod into the air. The other horn curved out and forward, more than a yard long. The bull was sideways to me; it glanced at me, arched its back and shook its head.

And:

“Just give me your story, son, and I’ll decide if I think you’re lying. But half a moment.” He stuck the fingers of his free hand in his mouth and whistled loud, one short, one long, one short. I heard the sound of something big galloping towards us.

It was a dog, a fox-faced yellow dog the size of a quarter horse. His long bushy tail curled up over his back. He had a saddle and blanket on its back but no bridle.

And:

The watercourse was broken up by huge boulders and overhung by trees. They had white trunks and broad hand-shaped leaves, their trunks almost hand-shaped as well with a broad mass laying on the ground and fingers a couple of feet thick thrust up from one edge, the opposite edge rooted in the ground. I had no idea what they were; some kind of sycamore?

And:

Something that looked like a dragonfly with soft droopy wings and a body loosely dangled between them was working a cascade of tiny pale-yellow blossoms on a tree; it was at least three inches long and as bulky as a mouse. With a buzz and thwap it was dropped from the air by a beetle as long as my hand and as thick as a cigar. It folded its wings under their green cases and began to loudly munch the nectar-eating dragonfly.

And:

As I got in the water I noticed the water-skimmers at the water’s edge. Like the other insects I’d seen this trip they were oversized, too big to skim the water. Instead, they stuck close to the shore and waded. I’d bet real American dollars that there was some extra oxygen in the air if the bugs were getting this big.

And:

The Deacon’s new dogs didn’t look the same as Tap. One had a saddle, one loaded with gear, they were gray as ash with just a sandy hint of yellow over the ribs. They were longer and rangier than Tap had been, easily six feet at the shoulder but still narrow enough to straddle, their fur sleek and close to the body. Their paws were broader, the toes spread wide as if for gripping, and they had the easy lope of a Rhodesian ridgeback.

But it was their demeanor that had the real difference. I didn’t look in their eyes, didn’t look directly at them. They returned the favor and pretended I wasn’t there. They weren’t interested in me at the moment and I knew better than to approach animals of that temperament. They had the vibe of a bad Doberman along with the skittish wildness of a wolf cross. They were one-man dogs — for as long as that man could maintain dominance.


So there's a taste of it. I'll have more on the environment tomorrow. Yeah, this is definitely a fantasy novel -- but there are aspects of it that I'm treating as if they were Golden Age science fiction, where an admittedly unscientific premise is given a dose of rigorous speculation...

What the hell am I doing, anyway?

A Lazy Day, Then Back To Fiction

I have a distinct suspicion that I'm not gonna get much done today. I am burnt out from my recent bout of productivity and it's Saturday and I've been in this mood lately.

The missus is going away this afternoon and there's no band practice tonight. But my music buddy is going to a pinball expo with a mutual pal and I may tag along. I have the iPod that was left here on Thursday so I will be seeing him.

I'm anxious to get back to the fiction. I've got the start of one story for New Voices in Fiction. That one may or may not fly -- I'm conducting an experiment in writing something based on the virtues of olde school cyberpunk -- how dense? how fast? I'm getting a kick out of taking the exposition that I normally try and avoid and making it the core of the work. And in a weird way it's a Hunter S. Thompson tribute -- honestly, I read his stuff as heroic fantasy or adventure fiction anyway.

It may well wind up unreadable, though. In which case I've got other options, like the short story I need to edit.

The main job I've got ahead of me is restarting the novel. The last submission I made to the writer's group was received with great sorrow. The consensus was that the narrative flow which had been running from the start evaporated.

Of course I hadn't been in prime fettle when I wrote that material but it still bums me out to hit this bump. In previous drafts I had this happen all the time but this one was moving along just fine until now.

I have realized that the section in front of me needs a different kind of treatment than I'd given it. It's actually going to be a story inside the bigger story and it is more along the lines of traditional adventure stuff than I've had so far in the book. It's Western-flavored with a taste of post-apocolyptic mutant future novels like Heiro's Journey by Sterling Lanier. I need to take a breath and think it through before I start.

Also, there's a speculative component to it that I'm thinking of posting about. It's a fantasy but it's influenced by science fiction and because of that the element of speculative evolution has come into play...

Anyway. It's seven-thirty so the missus ought to be up. Y'all have as nice a day as possible under the circumstances.

My first series!

Another graphics element -- I used it in a grayscale illustration in the first issue of Swill.

As soon as I stuck my head in the bar I knew I was making a mistake. The place was packed and noisy and full of happy young people, a breed of human I can do well without. I started to withdraw when the bartender caught my eye and held up his hand and waved two fingers toward himself.

Damnit.

I pushed my way through the crowd and the bartender gestured again, moving me further down. That’s when I saw that there was a big chunk of territory at the end of the bar that was completely vacant except for a beefy beef-colored guy in a Hawaiian shirt and a dark-green fedora. He had a tumbler of something clear and fizzy in ice, a shot glass, a sweaty silver shaker and a red plastic bucket sitting next to him on the bar and he wore an expression of exceptional mildness.

The bartender smiled at me from behind his mustache. If I get much balder I’m going to have my scalp depilated and get a tattoo of his comb-over.

“Come on, hoss,” he said. “You’ve got to meet the latest. Get him while he’s here cause he’s going away fast.”


So on Friday I was feeling well enough to work -- but I didn't want to do anything I was supposed to do. Instead, I had a short story that wanted to get out. Seven pages later it was done and I'll be thrashing it over with the writer's group tonight. (Remind me to introduce you to the writer's group some time -- nice batch of folks. We are a diverse bunch to say the least...)

It's got the same setting and a couple of characters from The Little Things (currently available both on-line and in print form, see the Swill website over in the sidebar) and I realized that I've solved a minor problem that's been bugging me for a while.

I adore science fiction. The second book I was exposed to was Red Planet by Robert Heinlein and that was it. I was hooked.

But SF hasn't been an easy thing for me to write. See, the way I look at it is that if you're gonna write SF you need to make some kind of scientific speculation part of the package -- if it's just an excuse to give us weirdness you may as well just write fantasy.

But when I've tried to do this in the past the ideas ate the story. The fiction went away. And then I wrote The Little Things and found a way to make the ideas the center of the story. Make them into bar stories make the POV character part of the audience.

No more elaborate setups, everything is explained to the POV character and thus the audience, and best of all the idea is the story.

Bar stories are great. But I hate bars -- and that was the key element that really made things congeal for me. By making these stories unpleasant experiences for the POV character and by making the bartender into mean-spirited bully-ish asshole there is conflict built into the situation from the get-go.

This is a formula. That's appropriate here -- I just want an outlet for the goofy little riffs I come up with as I graze my way through the sciences. My ambitions for these stories are quite humble.

But they're gonna be fun.

The thought that triggered this entry?

Rational thought does not come easily or naturally to humans. Our brains are great for making up mythologies -- but achieving an understanding of the world and ourselves is an uphill struggle.

It's not what our brains were made to do. They've been doing brainscans of people making decisions. It looks as though most of our thinking takes place in parts of the brain that we share with fish and lizards -- what we regard as rationality gets very little play.

So what would happen if you had a brain that was made for rational thought? Here's a hint -- it doesn't go as well as one might hope...