tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62107872008-04-30T21:30:02.963Zgabe chouinardnoreply@blogger.comBlogger341125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1149000227483847282006-05-30T14:38:00.000Z2006-05-30T14:43:52.670Z

I'd once argued with James Gunn and other SF readers over whether Vonnegut was ashamed to be labeled among the SF writers. Gunn, who apparently knows the man personally, corrected me and I had to accept his word (though I was sure I’d read differently). Vonnegut was on BBC radio this morning, explaining why he didn’t want to be labeled an SF writer. “I’m a novelist!” he said, going on to

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1148999879475354052006-05-30T14:33:00.000Z2006-05-30T14:38:03.390Z

Ever since the magic of watching Barfly in high school, I’ve loved the strong character voice from Salinger to Bukowski to Henry Miller. A friend has just fallen in love with Miller, so I’ve been lending her my copies. The man could write about but nothing but a meal and you’d have to gobble his prose. Of all the grungy wit writers, Miller was probably the best. I never got around to

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1148851248485782102006-05-28T21:09:00.000Z2006-05-28T21:20:48.506Z

This explication of Stevie Smith's "Not Waving, but Drowning" is an excellent description of arc, the point by point changes, reversals in perspective--not that poems have to swing so drastically. Also, it points out how shorter stories can compact more story in fewer words. SF seems to reserve the short short for gags, which is rather disappointing.

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1148596298002429982006-05-25T22:28:00.000Z2006-05-25T22:31:38.016Z

Slate has a discussion on the old pulps, including praise for Westlake by John Banville.

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1132532646675765782005-11-21T00:17:00.000Z2005-11-21T00:28:21.256Z

Originally published in Polyphony, this work by Bruce Holland Rogers won a World Fantasy Award in 2004. Evo Terra of the Dragon Page reads the hispanic voice pretty well. But this isn't a story. Like his Stoker-winning "The Dead Boy at Your Window," originally published in the North American Review, there is no arc--a vignette about a dead person. Dead Boy's prose is closer to a prose poem

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1132454599734959872005-11-20T02:22:00.000Z2005-11-20T02:52:31.063Z

Online SF Workshop with James Gunn! If you want to write SF, this is an important first step for at least two reasons: 1) You'll go through winnowing an idea to something workable. 2) You'll learn what makes a scene. This workshop flops for a number of writers because they either don't write or don't follow the exercises. Some writers start with the story first and worry about the science

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1132196451739727992005-11-17T02:48:00.000Z2005-11-17T03:00:51.770Z

A professional author said she thought only published professional writers should review. I picked her argument apart*, but it didn't change her mind (of course, I'd rather hear my literary heroes said, but sometimes their judgement isn't any better than Joe Blow's). Aparently, this phenomenon of presumed authority is circulating the web in multiple discussions. Here are two of the best:

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1131832738367723792005-11-12T19:58:00.000Z2005-11-12T21:58:58.420Z

Without doubt, the best image is the vivid one, the visceral one, the evocative one, the right one. It captures a moment. But I've debated writers on the ability to attempt other kinds. Here's proof. If you've read Kelly Link, you may already intuit what I'm getting at, but here are some examples from Christine Schutt's Florida. The vivid/visceral/evocative/right image (for contrast): The

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1131825360731964002005-11-12T19:42:00.000Z2005-11-12T19:56:00.740Z

SciFiction has ceased publication. Datlow has done tremendous work in SF wherever she's gone (Omni, Event Horizon). Let's hope she get a new SF-editor's job soon.

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1131737502565521142005-11-11T19:18:00.000Z2005-11-11T19:31:42.576Z

Nalo Hopkinson writes of Michel Faber's comment in a review of Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days: "...perhaps the fiction Cunningham is attempting here is pitched at a reader who doesn't exist: an adolescent who can leap straight from Star Wars to Henry James, or an adult steeped in Woolf and Whitman who nevertheless retains a childlike capacity to be moved by X-Men 2." In fact, Cunningham

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1130903128606356822005-11-02T03:11:00.000Z2005-11-02T04:06:37.153Z

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. --THESEUS from William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, ACT V, SCENE I. Athens. An Apartment in the Palace of THESEUS. Been

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1130244860913897942005-10-25T12:48:00.000Z2005-10-25T12:54:20.920Z

Tipped by Mumpsimus, here's a good quote from a Booker judge: From the beginning, I was clear about my criteria. I was looking for a book that would repay sustained attention, that was worth reading for the quality of the prose itself, that took tenacious hold of one's imagination. I was hoping to find something that would still be admired in 2075: a book that was worthy of the honorific

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1128916072778889702005-10-10T03:40:00.000Z2005-10-10T03:47:52.783Z

"It's not much to think about, but it's certainly something to see."--A. O. SCOTT, N.Y. Times Review I didn't find a single reviewer who saw it as I did. Yes, yes, 9/11, yadda yadda, but keep watching, keep listening, carefully. You guys missed a great deal. I guess I was spending too much time in the symbolic level. Yeah, some of family scenes were a little over the top, but some real

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1128368446536829762005-10-03T19:27:00.000Z2005-10-03T19:40:46.560Z

A Serenity movie promotion last year made the film out to be a minor-league fan-boy operation that happened to find itself lucked into the majors. SF fans, who look cross-eyed at the same flavors in print, go googly-eyed over the same half-baked stories on screen. We seem strangely more forgiving of the movies. So it was that I went in with rather low expectations. A Serenity fan-boy said it

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1128108632332807392005-09-30T19:09:00.000Z2005-09-30T22:45:08.576Z

That's the question on the table for my poetry class as we read through the Norton Anthology of Poetry. I took the liberty of rewriting Herrick since I felt he took too many lines to say what he had to say: "The Argument of His Book" [original] Through lyric schmaltz and poems so cheeze ball, I write of Hell ; I sing (and ever shall) Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all. *** "To the

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1128099616425021082005-09-30T16:56:00.000Z2005-09-30T17:00:16.433Z

Via Barth Anderson: In the battle of the ages, "I have a thousand years of power" combats 21st century police! Who shall prevail in this dynamo of will?

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1127864232670927762005-09-27T22:54:00.000Z2005-09-28T02:27:06.460Z

Lewis Shiner has been a two-time finalist for the Nebula (Frontera, Deserted Cities of the Heart), a finalist for the Philip K. Dick (Frontera), and won the World Fantasy award for Glimpses. Earlier comment here on "Perfidia" and others Lewis Shiner's website Contemporary Authors biography ($2.30) Autobiography (free) "Jeff Beck" and an excerpt from Glimpses recently appeared in The Best in

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1127676313545897292005-09-25T19:12:00.000Z2005-09-25T19:28:36.900Z

Listening to DragonPage over someone else's XM Radio, I was intrigued by their synopsis of The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks. Gabe Chouinard has been pimping the book as well and sparking discussion who the author is. Podcasts of old-time SF. Here's Raymond Carver on why the short story. Niall Harrison links Nature's SF short shorts.

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1127672646808565492005-09-25T17:37:00.000Z2005-09-25T19:34:19.240Z

Nick Mamatas had the opposite reaction as I did. (For a story so simple, only read the link or the following entry if you don't plan to see or don't mind watching something thoroughly explained in plot/theme.) First paragraph begins with his usual humorous but unsubstantiated gripes. In the second, he expresses glee over anti-"middlebrow striving" (not really a theme of the movie). In the

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1127586579262794472005-09-24T18:16:00.000Z2005-09-24T18:29:39.270Z

Corpse Bride was a pleasant surprise. A bumbling young groom falls suddenly in love but fails in his rehearsal vows and cannot marry until he has perfected them. So he wanders into the woods, practicing.... Being generally uninterested in musicals and unimpressed by Burton's recent output, I found this a fun little excursion into the underworld, with splashes of clever humor among a few

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1127257879366042252005-09-20T23:06:00.000Z2005-09-20T23:11:19.373Z

Miami Ohio is having a novella contest (under 40,000 words), with a $25 reading fee. I assume everyone's heard of Jonathan Lethem's Genius Grant. Interviews forthcoming shortly, fingers crossed.

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1125584829999271132005-09-01T14:22:00.000Z2005-09-01T14:27:10.003Z

An ad for Borders says, "Bestsellers are 30% off everyday, or create you own bestseller [also 30% off]." Why not convene on which good book to buy and see if there's an impact to be made? I realize this is what blogs are doing in general, but I'm talking about timing, coordinating so that the idea might blip on people's radars.

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1124985222360805672005-08-25T15:46:00.000Z2005-08-25T15:53:42.373Z

A sign I saw on a bus on my walk to work read: You see a smaller house payment. We see peace of mind. A man and woman are lifting an infant into the air. Adorable. Heart-warming. I didn't think about it much the first time I spotted it though I thought it weird that anything could be win-win, especially when it comes to an advertisement for a business deal. Then I realized what they were

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1124838816912093682005-08-23T22:34:00.000Z2005-08-23T23:24:45.586Z

Any fans of Lewis Shiner must read Shiner's latest, "Perfidia," which genre fans may have missed since it came out in a literary journal, Black Clock. As good as the story is and as attractive the magazine (not to mention contributions by Steve Erickson, Shelley Jackson, Jonathan Lethem, Ben Marcus, Rick Moody, and others), it's twelve bucks that I might have saved had I known that it will be

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6210787.post-1124728358422337292005-08-22T16:25:00.000Z2005-08-22T16:32:38.430Z

Jeff Ford posts a story. James Gunn on the History of SF (where it's been, where it's going). (How did Tobias Buckell get to it before I did? Bastard!) Stephen Leigh on workshops. Deirdre Saoirse Moen has a great series of icons. If you get it, you're in the SF club. It's both funny and enlightening.

Trenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16691824673281607781noreply@blogger.com