Dear gentle reader: this blog has been operating continuously since I was a teenager. The writing below is at least a decade old. In that time every molecule of my body has been replaced, along with many foolish ideas and flighty beliefs. I want to keep some of those things public out of an honesty and humility I owe the world. I trust you to carry that context with you.
Category: Books
The joke was about a fish
I have been such a big fan of Kris Straub’s for a long time that, when I fondly reminisced about a joke of his from 2001 today, Stephen told me I was the creepiest person he knew. Anyway, I sort of assume you all know that as soon as Straub produces anything new, I want you to get it. But that is not how the Internet actually works! I have to keep reminding you fuckers!
First, he restarted F Chords! Like, five-days-a-week restarted it! While preparing to get married! I think he wants to kill himself with work, but I like it better in its new incarnation already.
Second, I read through my copy of Starslip 4 last night, and wow, it works way better on the page than on the screen. I’d forgotten how big a leap he took art-wise when he rebooted the strip, and almost perversely, the vector sharpness really looks excellent in ink. Being able to read through big chunks of the story sequentially makes it easier to get involved, too. Buy it!
Imperfection
Remember last year when I told you about Joe McDaldno and his foolish ambitions? Well, the game he was trying to fund is actually coming out now! It’s very exciting! I already have my beautiful copy of the PDF, but don’t worry: it’s only because I’m perfect.
I hate Lev Grossman
What’s that? Lev Grossman wrote a vacuous cover article for Time? I am taken aback! The Stranger (and its sister publication here, the Mercury) grate on me with their preciousness from time to time, but I admire the execution of Noah Kalina’s mirror-parody. It would have fit right into Modern Humor Authority, and I don’t think I’ve ever said that before about something that actually showed up in print.
If none of the preceding makes sense to you, you can pretty much reduce this entire post to its title.
Tasha Robinson is great and you should read everything she writes
But just to be clear, the above statements are not causally connected:
“Separating artist and art can just plain be difficult. More than a decade ago, I talked over this issue with a prominent, veteran science-fiction author who’s won every major award in the field. He came down firmly on the side of the importance of the art over the artist. And then he paused, thought about it for a minute, and added something to the effect of ‘Except when it comes to Harlan Ellison. Ever since I met him, I can’t read anything he’s written without hearing it all in that high-pitched, angry little voice of his.'”
After seeing it on LJ a couple times, I put some stuff from my blogs into the I Write Like tool. Different NFD entries came back as Stephen King, Douglas Adams and (oh God) Dan Brown. Anacrusis consistently gets tagged as Margaret Atwood.
I was prepared to disclaim this whole post, but I cannot argue with that at all. “The world’s longest-running Atwood microhomage” is a painfully accurate description of Anacrusis. You win, Mémoires.
I liked it this much despite the fact that it takes place in Kentucky
Recommended: Underground, by Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber. Those of us who are always demanding clever, tough ladies in lead roles will enjoy meeting cave geek Wesley Fischer, and those of you who want exciting comics without superheroes and lasersharking will be equally happy. (I could have stood a little more lasersharking, but my weaknesses are common knowledge.) There’s a hint of a sequel in the afterword, which is an idea I heartily endorse!
I have, as expected, read more Maureen McHugh–specifically Nekropolis. I liked it more than China Mountain Zhang, in that it had a much defter way of pulling my heart out and stomping on it. The problem with writers who deal in compassion is that they are mean.
McHugh has a prose style which I believe I am required to call “unadorned” and which I don’t typically go for–despite all my protestations about clarity and Strunk and White, I am easily seduced by linguistic fireworks (Douglas Adams, William Gibson, Margaret Atwood, Ellen Kushner, et al). She makes me understand why people get so lathered about Hemingway.
Still playing catchup on my 2009 material
On the plane to Kentucky for Christmas last year, I read Maureen McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang. For the first half of this reading, I was under the vague impression that it had been published in 2008. I found it tremendously enjoyable, and contemporary–a gay protagonist of color and strong female characters, China as the sole world superpower, a mundane and difficult life on a lunar colony–but with some irksome anachronisms, like the way the characters used their wrist-implant cyberjacks to make calls from pay phones.
Eventually I flipped back to check the copyright page. It came out in 1992.
Jesus Christ, Maureen McHugh, you were on top of this shit while the rest of the field was just starting to get boners for steampunk? I will be reading more of your books.
This is an easy test for determining premillennial science fiction from the postmillennial, by the way: the ubiquity of cell phones (and how big a deal the author makes about them).
AH CRAP
I just realized, thirty-six hours after writing it, that a better title for my last post would have been “The Slow Zone.”
SEE?!