Black Gate

Well, I’m now about halfway through Neal Stepehenson’s Anathem and, while I’m enjoying it, the going is slow.  When I was in graduate school, my 18th century British Lit class had as required  reading a 1500 page epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson called Clarissa which recounts the seduction, rape and subsequent suffering of said title character.  Correctly suspecting that perhaps not everyone would read it thoroughly, the professor assigned the students sections that we would each summarize and present to the class as we worked through the reading.  My section was some 500 pages into the story, and I remember starting my presentation by saying, “I was fortunate to be assigned the part of the book where something actually starts to happen.”  Which is sort of how I feel about Anathem about now.

I’m not overly obsessive, let alone concerned, about world-building.  I don’t look at the maps, or the etymology of a sword’s name, or get overly concerned about any of that stuff. I don’t get upset if there’s some inconsistency in the imagined world; hell, the real world is inconsistent enough for my taste.  I’m more interested in metaphor, or even just whether it’s a good read.  In Antathem, Stephenson is poking fun at the world-building fetish (I think) but, at the same time, is a practicing adherent.  A dangerous thing for an author known to never hesitate to let the reader just how much he knows.

Certain sections of the book begin with definitions of the Earth-like society’s terms, sociological classifications, and historical events.  Here’s Stephenson reading these definitions.  If you like this sort of thing, you’ll love the book for this alone.

More snarking and snarling at the expense of the stories nominated for this year’s Nebula Awards, this time directed at those in the “novelette” category.

One point, which may not be terribly original but seems worth making anyway: the stories tend to look backward. The best one on the list is a pastiche of two 19th C. novels. The worst one is at least talking about a social change that seems to be underway in the western world (but has nothing to say about said change but “Aauugh!”). Another is a historical fantasy and the other two are retakes of ideas that have been done before. Where’s the future? Where are the stars? Where’s the talking squid in outer space?

I think we need the talking squid in space.

Anyway: onward and backward.

…

Read More Read More

One of the advantages of living near a college town is The Virginia Festival of the Book.  The two things that persuaded me to move to Charlottesville were the extensive music scene  — the hometown of Dave Matthews with venues for just about any major artist from Dylan and Springsteen to Bill Frissel and Jane Siberry to locals such as Devon Sproule ( just this past week I saw Joan Baez and Ani DiFranco); and the home of WTJU, one of the last remaining noncommercial free form terrestrial radio stations where they even let someone like me spin discs on a Saturday night —  and the fact that in the downtown there are literally a half dozen used and independent book stores  all within strolling distance.  This year’s book festival has Mary Doria Russell, though she’s assigned to historical fiction which has been her genre of choice lately, but it also has some comics, fantasy, SF discussions that I’ll probably attend, though I’m not overly familiar with most of these authors. The danger, of course, is the likelihood of adding even more books to the already overweighted “to be read” shelves.

Check it out, if you’re in the neighborhood.

When I became eligible to become a member of SFWA last year I thought about it long and hard and finally decided to join. I forget why, now. The experience hasn’t exactly been a bad one–it’s been oddly non-experiential, as a matter of fact. For instance, you may have noticed that the final ballot for this year’s Nebulas was recently announced, here… and here (and elsewhere). The information content is not identical on these apparently official pages, and they don’t seem to be aware of each other’s existence. There is no link to an actual ballot where one might actually vote (here or apparently in the members-only section of the site), or any information on the deadline for voting. I queried for info at the “query for info” email address; I was told that I’d be told when the final ballots were mailed. Old school mail: carried by weary snails and weighed down with stamps and stuff.

I am a traditionalist, and all that. But maybe not all that. The thing is, I like the snails pretty well, but they don’t seem to be able to find my house reliably. Email is faster, more reliable, cheaper, more check-backable. Why not use it? Are we not Living in the Future? Also, doesn’t SFWA know now when the votes are due? Why can’t they tell us? Why not have, say, one page with all the relevant info or links between all relevant pages? Where shall wisdom be found? Where is the place of understanding?

You practically can’t be an SFWA member unless you’re kvetching about something, so there’s my kvetch of the day.

But to celebrate my first and possibly last Nebula vote, I thought I’d read as much of the nominated work as I can and inflict it on share it with you readers of the Blog Gate. This week: short stories.

…

Read More Read More

A few years ago, for one of Brian Swann’s anthologies of traditional Native American literature, I translated a quasi-historical story from Kwakwaka’wakw oral tradition that contained in it an episode in which a dead man is brought back to life by wolves. One of the English word choices I struggled with was the term the revivified character later used to describe why the wolves had done it.

Stories about wolves resurrecting the dead permeate older bodies of Kwakwaka’wakw story, and range from ancestor myths to first-person accounts of shamanic initiation. The myths have a subgenre featuring adolescent heroes who go out into the wild, enter the spirit realm, encounter dangerous and beneficient beings–not infrequently dying and resurrecting in the process–and return home with spiritual treasures. Does that not sound just a little bit Campbellian?

One problem with seeing this subgenre as more evidence of the universality of Campbell’s monomyth is that the genre as a whole also has stories featuring magical children and stories featuring mature heroes, each of which has a characteristic structure that is distinct from the adventures of the adolescent hero. …

Read More Read More

You may have heard that a fairly good copy of the iconic first issue of Action Comics that introduced the character of Superman — the first superhero — is on the auction block.  Recession be damned, some estimate a winning bid could be as high as $400,000.  For a comic book.

Like any other red-blooded American boy in the Cold War era, I was a comic book collector.  But, as my childhood chum and fellow collector once remarked, “The trouble was we actually read these things, so pages would be torn and folded.  So, even if we didn’t end up throwing them out,  they probably wouldn’t be worth much today as collectibles to people who are more interesting in owning the things as an object, rather than what they were originally intended for – something to make being a kid more bearable.”

I think I started collecting comics at around third or fourth grade, but by the time I got to junior high school it was, to use a Biblical phrase that has come into use of late in the political realm, time to put childish things away.  I had graduated to the tales of Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke and real books without pictures.  I wasn’t (or at least didn’t want to be treated like) a kid, anymore.  Consequently, I emptied my drawers of comics and sent them, I don’t really remember where.
…

Read More Read More

I thought I was done with this series of posts on planetary romance, a.k.a. sword-and planet, at least until the new edition of Kline’s Outlaws of Mars comes out. But then I came across a reference to James Blish’s Sword of Xota (a.k.a. The Warriors of Day). I had a hard time believing it was for real. Blish, the hardnosed “‘Sour Bill’ Atheling”, the apostle of modernism in literature and Spenglerism in history, the author of the quadruply ambitious trilogy After Such Knowledge (a four-book trilogy–ambition has no higher scope–no, I don’t believe in your five-book trilogy–sheesh, will this parenthesis never end?)–that Blish was the author of a planetary romance?

…

Read More Read More