Classics Print

Paul Jessup proposes a new line of public domain classics in affordable editions. Sounds like a blast!

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Plots Have I Laid, Inductions Dangerous…

An interesting discussion of plot here at Steve Goble’s Swords Against Boredom, and a discussion of plot vs. character in fantasy, starting here on the Black Gate message boards.

More later, maybe, as this has been much on my mind lately. But right now I have to run off and explain to a bunch of serious-minded undergraduates why Aristophanes is funny.

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The Black Gate Opens (a Little)

It’s been a long wait, but the preview for Black Gate issue 10 is up. The magazine itself is due out in March.

As always, I’m impressed by Chuck Lukacs’ take on Morlock. Also, I wonder what the horse is thinking about the titular book, which was not something I gave any thought to before I saw Chuck’s art.

I’m looking forward to this issue for a lot of reasons, though: the Harry James Connolly story looks like a riot; there’s a new Judith Berman story set in the fascinating world of her earlier “The Poison Well”; and Howard Jones is pitching in with one of his Dabir and Asim stories: I’ve read three of these so far, and they’ve all been great historical fantasy.

Rich Horton’s column this issue is about sf/f magazines in the 1970s which was not, as we know, the Golden Age of Science Fiction, but it was the decade when I was a teenager, just discovering the genre magazines, so the column should be a fun read.

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jamesenge.com–No, really!

I succumbed to temptation and put up an egomaniacal shrine a website at https://jamesenge.com/.

The motivating factor was that, with Pitch-Black dead, one of my “published” stories is likely to be seen by almost no one. So I coded it for HTML and posted it there, along with links to some other stuff.

The site is pretty bare-bones at the moment. You wouldn’t believe how many hours it took me to make those dry bones live, though: I was not born for that kind of work.

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Iron-Genre

In a recent post at Deep Genre, Constance Ash quoted a NYT film writer’s passing mention of genre in movies:

My point is not that these movies are interchangeable, or that their similarities betray a lack of imagination on the part of their makers. A genre is not a formula but a paradigm, an endlessly variable model that can be adapted to different temperaments and circumstances. Directorial acumen, agile screenwriting and sensitive acting distinguish the run-of-the-mill from the genuinely interesting.
–A.O. Scott

She wondered, shrewdly it seemed to me, whether this applied outside of film.

In a comment I wrote:

I guess I like the idea of genre as a paradigm, rather than a formula.

A formula is necessarily restrictive. “Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.” If you don’t follow the recipe precisely, the Holy Hand-Grenade will not explode.

But the root meaning of paradigm is “example” and I really think that’s how our sense of genre is formed. “This book has spaceships and multicolored rays, like Doc Smith; I’ll put it in the box with the Lensman series. This one has elves; I’ll put it in the same box with The Lord of the Rings.” Eventually the boxes get tags (”space opera”; “high fantasy”; “mysteries where the murderer sings ‘Banana Phone’”, etc). But these are really just abstractions from a set of specific examples. If the set of accepted examples grows, the borders of the genre can expand. (Likewise they can contract if the set of defining examples shrinks.)

So, I was going to add, but I thought the comment was getting a tad long, this model is more flexible than the formula definition of genre, but it’s not utterly chaotic. People’s notions of a given genre won’t necessarily coincide with each other (nor should they) but the addition of new examples, extending the genre paradigm, won’t necessarily eclipse the old examples. There will be continuity as well as change.

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Earth, Air, Fire and Strunk

I’ve been flipping through Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (2nd ed., 1972), prompted by a glance through Weird Tales‘ guidelines. I’ve owned the book for roughly 30 years and hated it continously all through that time. I don’t suppose I’ve actually had it open since the 1970s but its stupid lying prohibitions have been dogging my steps since, apparently, before I was born.

It’s not as if there is no good advice in Strunk and White. Right there on page one the it’s/its thing is handled with deft concision. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve marked a student paper for something like that, I would, um, have ever so many nickels. I’d love to be able to hand this book to students and say, “Read this and use it.”

But on the same stupid page it says that one may not form the possessive of a word ending in -s with a simple apostrophe. Except for the name of Jesus. But not the name of Moses or Isis. One must write The laws of Moses but never never Moses’ laws or Moses’s laws. Jesus’ laws–totally okay. Charles’ laws–totally wrong. Why? These are Strunk’s laws. Yours is not to reason why, not if you want a passing grade in composition.

Those who internalize these ad hoc prescriptions will not improve their English. Charles’ and Charles’s are both in common use and there is no reason to thunder against one or the other. But those who read S&W and believe it are likely to become usage-fetishists, constantly squeaking in excitement and horror when someone violates some dictate of the Master.

A decent style guide ought to combine direct, useful advice with tools that would assist the reader to think about writing effectively, rather than cookie-cutter mandates that kill thought. (Adverbs are bad! They make the angels cry!) And, of course, it ought to have some kind of linguistic accuracy. (Although prescriptivists tend to hate descriptive linguistics as much as linguists hate prescriptivism, the only valid basis for a stylistic prescription is sound linguistic knowledge.)

I wish I knew of such a guide. But, whatever it is, it’s not Strunk.

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Snow Day II: The Untold Story

Another unexpected day off in the middle of the week. As I was kicking my way through snowdrifts, on my way downtown to buy some flowers for the One, I realized the storm had been a little more severe than I’d thought. The total amount of snow wasn’t that much, but the wind had packed it into high, hard snowdunes.

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Snow Day!

My university has just cancelled day classes. I can’t remember the last time this happened.

On the one hand, I have a school-kid’s delight in an unexpected day off. On the other hand, I’m embarrassed to live in a town that would shut down for a few inches of snow. We didn’t do things like that in the Old Country.

I think I’ll go sit, with an expression of disapproval, in front of the fireplace and read Leigh Brackett and the Iliad. That will send the right message, I think.

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Last Night’s Heroes

When I realized that last night’s episode would feature Telecop, Doublement and Mohinder Snoresh, I was prepared to be bored (these being hands down the most tedious characters in the group). But Mohinder crossing paths with Sylar lent a certain interest to the proceedings, and I was hoping that the Eeevil part of Doublement would either kill Telecop or compel him to behave with a reasonable degree of intelligence in order to survive. Amazingly, I almost got my wish; Telecop used his ability as if it were an asset for once. He reverted to type by doing something unbright at the end of his plot-segment, but even that made a certain amount of sense in context.

I wonder, too, if some of the writers aren’t “of the devil’s party” (as Blake said of Milton). Masi Oka as Hiro lights up the screen whenever he appears, but he’s been sidetracked for a number of episodes. The Amazing Indestructible Cheerleader is under the thumb of the Sinister Man with Horn-Rimmed Glasses, Peter Petrelli’s superpower will probably end up to be gale-force whining, etc. etc. It’s only the Eeevil characters who are allowed to act decisively, intelligently, effectively.

This is a potential problem but (talk about gale-force whining!) I thought last night’s episode was above average.

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An Eternal Verity

I… I don’t know anything about this sort of thing. Not personally. An ill-tempered reaction to a rejection slip, I mean. (It’s not as if anyone can prove anything, anyway: those records were purged.) But I’ve heard… I’ve heard it’s like this… thing.

[Snerged from Sean Stiennon.]

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