Ambrose & Elsewhere

My Blog Gate post of the week is up… really just a postlet about the “GRRM is not your bitch” thing Neil Gaiman wrote. Which is being applauded around the internet as if it were a nifty from the works of Oscar Wilde. Which I don’t think it is, really.

1. Anna Katherine (one half of whom is alg) writes about systems of magic or the lack thereof in an aptly titled post “rules? in a knife fight?”. This so brilliantly expressed my own feelings that I was left saying, “But on the other hand…” (which is how I reply to most of my own opinions).

2. AV Club’s Keith Phipps has worked his way up to Sturgeon’s More Than Human in his Box of Paperbacks Book Club. This is an unusually good entry in a very good ongoing series of pieces. On the other hand, I still feel that “Baby Is Three” is better as a standalone story than as Pt. 2 of More Than Human.

3. SFFAudio has a nice review of the audiobook version of Blood of Ambrose. The reviewer, Seth Wilson, rightly picks up on some of the traces of Arthurian legend in the background, and mentions among them a long-dead character named Uthar. This character was originally named Lothar, but I became increasingly unhappy with this as the novel wore on, because the name sounded too terrestrial. If I was smashing the world flat and giving it three moons so that it wouldn’t be casually mistaken for Earth, how could I have a character named Lothar? So I coined the name Uthar. I liked the sound of it, especially with the “th” pronounced as a soft theta, not the hard Gemanic aspirated “t” of “Lothar”. And at no point in this whole process, until I read Seth Wilson’s review, did it occur to me that “Uthar” might bring to anyone’s mind Uther Pendragon, a figure of nontrivial importance in the Arthurian mythos. Uff da. I think I’m going to assign myself some sort of prize for lazy nomenclature on this one. On the other hand… No, there is no other hand this time. This is a rare one-handed opinion from me. As of this moment.

There’s a judicious review-article (of what seems to be a problematic book) up at The Nation website: Jordan Davis on Laura Miller’s book about the Narnia series.

I thought it was pretty impressive, and had never heard of Davis before, so I went in search of his work. I found some of his verse scattered about the internet, and I’m not sure I totally get it, but I was struck by a longish poem with some classical content, “Hero and Leander.” Leander, swimming, sees a girl (except she’s not a girl) peeling an orange (except it’s not an orange) on the beach.

Leander, seeing, dripping as he came
Onto rocky land said May I
Have a piece of that
It was pomegranate and she
Smiled red and said
Here and he was in intense pain

(The whole thing is online here)

I like that “smiled red” bit, and the general design of the poem (insofar as I understand it).

[cross-posted a couple places]

My Blog Gate post for the week is up, this one a late-breaking review of a movie you may have already heard a little about.

Unless that’s actually last week’s post, which I unaccountably skipped. Actually, I could account for it, but that would involve complaining or explaining, two things I never do, unless my feet hurt, or I need money, or some exposition is needed for a story, or–hm. Maybe I’ll have to rethink that position.

Everyone knows by know who won the Nebulas so it would be otiose to post a link here. I was disappointed that McDonald’s wonderful Brasyl didn’t win in the novel category, but Le Guin’s Powers is a superb book, doubtless without a doubt.

It was nice to see that Kessel’s “Pride and Prometheus” took the novelette award; it seemed to me the clear winner in that category.

And I didn’t have the nerve to vote in the Norton, because I hadn’t read even one of the nominees. But I was powerfully tempted to vote for Wilce’s Flora’s Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) on the basis of its radiantly moxie-tronic title alone, so I was glad to see it copped the prize.

Re the organization itself…

I guess I’ve been an SFWA member over half a year, now, and I’m not strongly inclined to renew my membership. SFWA does some great things (e.g. Writer Beware, a powerful force against evil–which may sound ironically bombastic, but which I think is actually true). However, it’s not really clear to me that any benefit is accruing to me, or is likely to accrue to me, for belonging to this group.

The recently adopted vision statement describes SFWA as “the best source for information, education, support and fellowship for authors of science fiction, fantasy and related genres.” And this sort of crystallized my discomfort with the organization. Much of its purpose seems to be founded on what my son and infonauts like him call “friction.” In essence, friction (in this sense) is generated by information limited by gatekeepers. That situation doesn’t really obtain anymore. SFWA is offering to reduce friction (i.e. increase the flow of information) to people who are already drenched in data. It’s an offer that seems resonant with the spinning of rotary telephone dials and the rustle of newspapers–old media, dead and dying media.

What we need in the age of new media is not so much a way past the gatekeepers of information as an authoritative source that helps sort good information from bad information. I’m not convinced that SFWA is poised to become that source.

An example would be SFWA’s own internet presence which is broken–obviously broken. That’s not a complaint: it’s just an observation. (The site is impossible to find information on; it’s awash in broken links; it’s inadequately centralized; it has inputs for print media that don’t exist anymore, like the SFWA Forum–etc.) SFWA officers and staff have been working energetically to set up a new website. That’s not a complaint: it’s praise. Here’s the complaint: people are complaining about the new site–quite vociferously and in a way that’s obviously affecting the morale of the people who are doing what I, in my unsophisticated way, would call “the work.” The site has not yet had its debut, by the way–it’s the whole idea of a new site which has been causing strife.

Also, a good number of members are expressing fear and hostility at the notion that their works may appear on Google Books searches. Since I am preparing to drop several c-notes (hopefully of my university’s money) on professional books that I have only examined through Google Books, this point of view seems to me strangely out of touch. Essentially, this is free advertising for the writer forever: it’s not like they’re offering downloads of material still under copyright. But in this new and threatening world we live in, all forms of e-text are a threat until proven otherwise. Heu mihi.

If I thought that SFWA had bad officers and the solution was an election to throw the bums out, I wouldn’t be discouraged. That sort of thing can happen. But if the membership itself is projecting an aura of apathy, ill-temper and bad judgement, the matter is more problematic.

Also, the “fellowship” element doesn’t seem to me to be remarkable, compared to the experience one might have on LiveJournal or Facebook, for instance. Possibly I should withhold judgement on this until and unless I attend one of the live-and-in-person functions. (Then again, my own liveliness and personability are nothing to write home about, so maybe this isn’t such a great idea.)

HarperStudio is publishing a collection of hitherto uncollected (mostly, I understand, unpublished) works by Twain and, to celebrate, they and the New Yorker‘s BookBench are giving away a free audiobook version read by John Lithgow, at least for a week or so. A video sample below.

1. My Blog Gate post of the week is up, this one a penitential review of two volumes from the NESFA’s Choice series.

2. I’m late for something else.

3. The second item could be appended to almost any communication from me.

This: Pat (of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist) is running a poll to see what he should read next… and at least one title will be pretty Bloody familiar to readers of this journal.

That: Morlock audible at last!

The Other: Geniuses behind Vergil-on-Facebook revealed!

That Again: Sara Harvey interviewed me last week on SFScope but I was so spaced out busy that I forgot to mention it here.

Heliotrope‘s long-awaited Moorcock issue is live. You can read it online or download a PDF free. Looks like fun!

Fred Pohl, at The Way the Future Blogs, has a nice reminiscence of Cyril Kornbluth. Kornbluth has become unfashionable, maybe permanently so, even among the few who still remember his work, but I’ve always liked his stuff. For instance, I think The Syndic is the greatest work of social sf to come out of the Fifties–maybe out of any decade. And the genetics of “The Marching Morons” (see in that story, its predecessor “The Little Black Bag” and the Pohl/Kornbluth collaboration Search the Sky) may be all wrong (and when I say “may be” I mean they are), but the complaint about the dumbing down and coarsening of public life still packs some emotional punch. His best story is the horrifyingly pessimistic but strangely not-unhopeful “Shark Ship”.

I didn’t know (until I saw FP’s blog-post) that CK had worked as first reader for F&SF where he discovered, among other things, Fritz Leiber’s The Silver Eggheads.

Of course, the late sf writer everyone is talking about today is J.G. Ballard–indeed a sad loss. I was not too crazy about his novels (except for Empire of the Sun; and I admit I never even looked at Crash), but I was crazy about his crazy stories–e.g. “The Drowned Giant” or “The Assassination of JFK as a Downhill Race”, etc. The satisfactions aren’t exactly like reading stories–more like reading poetry where the words seem meaningful, but the meaning is just out of reach. Not comfort reads, by any means, but not everything should be.