damnum absque injuria [translation]

Since I haven't found time yet to write about my travels to Dublin and London, I shall just steal this text from J's email:

I'm sitting in the theatre watching Will Smith in his new film, The Pursuit of Happyness. I thought I'd be seeing something different from Apocolypto last week, but no. It's basically the same movie. Rudy Youngblood runs through the busy jungle of South America to make it back to his family before a flood, his Mayan pursuers, and ...well, one more thing, catches up to him. Will Smith spends a greater part of his movie running through San Francisco trying to sell his bone scanners, make it to his intern job on time, and get to the homeless shelter by 5 before it closes. Both movies are huge adrenaline rushes. Ok, there is no beefy Mayan captain trying to spear Will in the concrete jungle.

Last updated by eric Tue Dec 19 07:05 2006 | thought | link

adversus solum ne loquitor [translation]

Have you seen the premiere episode of Aaron Sorkin's new show "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip"?

I have. In fact, I've watched it three times now. I think I'm obsessing, perhaps. You see, it's on pretty late, because it uses adult words and addresses adult concepts. Words like "Christianity", concepts like "bigot". Or do I have those two reversed? Anyway, it's on late, and on a weeknight, so I can't stay up and watch it "live". I have to record it. But once I've recorded it, I can watch it over and over and over again. And I have. Though I may have already mentioned that.

I just watched it again today. Every viewing I notice something different. For example, consider these spoilers:

• First viewing: Did Matt Albie just say "he's never not been there for me"? This is the writer character using a double negative, mind you. And yet it works perfectly. Sigh, such dreamy words.
• Second viewing: Why does Jerry Jones say, "If you still had the muscle..."? Later a character talks about "balls", so it's not like they're not allowing that word. Ohmigosh, that's IT—Jerry's character is the Standards and Practices guy, so of course he's going to be familiar with alternatives to rude language and actually uses them. One word choice tells you everything you need to know about a character.
• Third viewing: I still can't figure out why Harriet Hayes says "truer words were never spoke" instead of "spokEN". But this time around I notice that Jack Rudolph tells Jordan McDeere that he fired Matt and Danny, yet later tells Matt that he wasn't fired. Such fascinating posturing going on among those characters.

Speaking of dreamworlds, the show's acting is solid, too; I never catch a whiff of Chandler Bing in Matthew Perry's characterization, and Amanda Peet's subtle facial expressions draw me in, make me wonder what exactly she's smiling about. Or is she smiling? Hard to tell, and all the more alluring because of it. Timothy Busfield doesn't remind me at all of his West Wing character.

No, really, judging these actors I've seen over and over again in other television roles by how they don't do something is completely valid. Stop laughing!

I loved the show completely. I hope I have enough time to give the second episode an appropriate view count. If you haven't seen it yet, it's available online here. I heartily recommend it.

Last updated by eric Sat Sep 23 22:53 2006 | word | link

hinc illae lacrimae [translation]

I've been thinking off and on of possibly creating a comic book, perhaps even publishing it myself. Along those lines of thought, and perhaps influenced by a recent issue of Hero Squared, I wondered whether newsprint is cheaper than the current glossier papers used to print comic books, and if it is, why aren't comic book publishers using it any more?

But then I wondered—what makes glossy paper glossy? I tried a couple Google searches (which led me to the Wikipedia article on toilet paper for some reason I can't fathom), but didn't have much luck until a search for 'gloss paper' brought up this glossy paper page, wherein I learn that it's kaolin clay, or else calcium carbonate, that makes paper glossy.

And radioactive. Cool!

But now I want a set of depleted uranium dice.

Last updated by eric Sat Sep 09 06:06 2006 | thought | link

a vinculo matrimonii [translation]

I have new eyeglasses. Shortly after the eye exam and new frame selection, Sh and I were walking home, and she commented that the salesguy had it all wrong: "At one point you tried a pair on, and he said, 'Everybody's wearing those these days,' and I thought, 'This guy's never going to sell Eric on frames; doesn't he realize that Eric will run screaming from anything that everybody is doing?'"

That's my gal.

She's right. Though I try to not just run counter to every fashion the crowd is following, I'm highly suspicious of doing something just because everybody else does.

For example, Dan Savage's recent book The Commitment details his grueling decision about whether to get married to his boyfriend. Reading it, I felt like it was inappropriate for me to take advantage of the privileges that heterosexual marriage provides when committed couples (with children, even!) are barred from similar benefits.

The list of benefits is pretty long. Various web sources suggest that there are presently around 1,400 advantages provided by state and federal law to married couples. Many of these can be duplicated by other complicated legal means, but some—such as inheritance of Social Security benefits—are completely confined to only heterosexually married couples.

This is unfair. And I feel like there's absolutely nothing I can do about this. Except, perhaps, try to empathize.

There's a point in The Commitment that really stands out in my memory. I found it online here, but the important bit is:

"It wasn't until 1215 that the [Catholic] church finally decreed marriage a sacrament," [E.J.] Graff writes [in What is Marriage For?], "...and according to the church, what turned two individuals into a married couple? It was—drum roll, please—the couple's private vows. Why a drum roll? Because the church insisted that a private promise was an unbreakable sacrament... After a great many theological volleys and debates, theologians decided that a marriage was made and permanently sealed the moment that the pair knowingly and willingly said 'I marry you.' Even if they said their vows in absolute secrecy, with no witnesses."

The emphasis is mine [Dan Savage's].

I grabbed the Henning Mankell novel out of Terry's hands and handed him Graff's book.

"You have to read this," I said.

Here was a marriage ceremony we could get behind. It had the added benefit of being a more traditional, ancient, and sacred marriage ceremony, a marriage ceremony that predated cake toppers and florists and obviated the need for seating charts. If marriage was a promise two people made to each other, and if you didn't have to make it in front of anyone else, then here was a marriage ceremony infused with quiet dignity. All we had to do to turn our anniversary party into our wedding reception was mutter "I marry you" to each other before we walked in the door.

We wouldn't even have to tell anyone we did it.

I'd been thinking about proposing to Sh for a long time, but I couldn't come up with a good way to do it. My married friends always have such great stories about how it happened—on a beach, a surprise ring, a family heirloom, a special moment. I had no ideas how to go about it, and the last thing I wanted was someone else's input. This is my chance to ask a very important question, so it should come from my heart, not someone else's romantic notions.

It turns out what I had in my heart was "wing it". (Well, and "don't do it the way other people usually do," of course.)

Sh was working up in the Castro at the time (also known as "the gayest neighborhood in the gayest city in the United States"), and we'd occasionally stopped by Brand X Antiques while wandering around there in our free time. One day we stopped in, and I noticed they sold rings there. So I started asking about their ring selection. Sh noticed, and we started looking together, admiring their antique rings, hearing descriptions of the various materials, shapes, designs, what works well, what he thought made the most sense for wedding bands, etc.

It was really fun. We didn't come to any solid conclusions that day, but a while later we stopped there once more together, and more closely considered the rings. I have a thing for copper (and non-traditionalism), so I was thinking a copper ring would be cool. Sh digs silvery colors, so was leaning more toward white gold. F (one of the proprietors of Brand X) mentioned that copper is the metal that tints rose gold, and that nickel is in white gold. I was leaning toward rose gold as a general concept when I found out that nickel and copper with gold make plum gold, and looky here, there just happens to be an awesome men's band made of that alloy.

In the meantime, Sh had found a nice curlicue-engraved white gold ring that sparkled as if it were diamond-encrusted. It wasn't the perfect size, but F assured us it could be stretched. Then F pointed out that Sh has normal knuckles that are large enough to hold a ring on, while I have tapered fingers that require something like a vise grip from the ring to hold it on. (In case I haven't sufficiently demonstrated how totally cool F is, I was completely fascinated by all the little facts and tidbits he was sharing with us about all the rings we were looking through.)

F pointed out that some of the rings we were looking at were one-of-a-kind antiques, so if we really really liked a certain ring, we should consider buying it soon to avoid losing it to someone else. (Sure, this is a common pressure sales technique, but I never felt pressured by F, so you should just wash away your cynicism right now, reader.) With this in mind, I bought the ring I liked. Sh was surprised, and softly admitted that she wanted to buy a ring, too, which I gladly accommodated.

It was at this point that F and his partner T revealed that they had recently celebrated their 25th anniversary together.

Twenty-five years. It seems like forever. Maybe I'm just getting maudlin, but there's something about buying wedding bands from a couple that's been together for 25 years. It feels like a blessing.

So I wholeheartedly endorse Brand X Antiques in San Francisco's Castro district. Unless you're queasy about pictures of naked men with enormous penises. No, I'll endorse them even then. You just need to get over it.

After Sh's ring had been resized, she wanted to start wearing it. (To be honest, I kinda wanted to start wearing mine, too. I can't stand jewelry, generally, but my ring is awesome. (Better than Sh's, even, but don't tell her I said that.)) So I asked Sh to read The Commitment. She enjoyed the book very much, and kinda saw my point about how getting legally married feels wrong these days.

A couple days later, maybe a little tipsy from rice wine, holding her in my arms, I told Sh, "I marry you." Much to my delight, she said the same to me, and we are now illegally married.

The next day, the first thing I remember her saying to me, like a kid on Christmas morning: "So can we wear our rings now??"

We do.

Last updated by eric Sat Jul 22 14:34 2006 | deed | link

de pilo pendet [translation]

Mongo: If you will pardon the pun...

Bernice: Uh-oh.

Mongo: ...I have made an earth-shattering, ground-breaking discovery!

Bernice: Do I have to watch you pull a rabbit out of your hat?

Mongo: I finally have figured out how to avoid getting caught unprepared in a major earthquake.

Bernice: Move to Kansas?

Mongo: Every earthquake I've ever experienced has been on a weekday. I think the increased human activity on weekdays probably contributes to it, possibly due to psychic emanations.

Bernice: Oh, do please continue.

Mongo: Monday, January 17th, 1994: Northridge. Wednesday, October 18th, 1989: Loma Prieta. June 28th, 1992: Landers. All on weekdays! This is no coincidence, this is a universal pattern that, once acknowledged, can be woven into our earthquake preparedness.

Bernice: I think Landers was actually on a Sunday. You always tell the story about how you were sleeping when it happened in late morning, and if it had been a weekday quake, you wouldn't have been sleeping in late morning, no?

Mongo: ...

Bernice: Also, I'm not sure that's a sufficient sample. Three earthquakes? I could get even numbers after three tosses of dice, but that doesn't mean that every toss is going to be even.

Mongo: Think of all the lives that will be saved! Ground-breaking, I say! Ow! That hurt! Quit it! Stop! Ow!

Last updated by eric Mon May 22 20:51 2006 | thought | link

maior e longinquo reverentia [translation]

Mongo: San Francisco needs its own superhero.

Bernice: What, we're not enough?

Mongo: I do not dispute that we are mighty, but I'm thinking more in the fictional sense. Gotham has Batman, Metropolis has Superman, New York City has Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and every other Marvel character who has nothing better to do than hang out on the East Coast, but San Francisco?

Bernice: The Teen Titans Tower sprouts from San Francisco Bay!

Mongo: — but when do their adventures ever actually take place in San Francisco?

Bernice: ...

Mongo: Exactly. I can't think of any occasion where they have, either. I also know of the protagonist in Less Than Hero, whose adventures definitely take place in San Francisco. The Punk fit the city fairly well, I thought.

Bernice: Ah, so it's not just about a hometown hero, there also has to be a "good fit"?

Mongo: If I'm casting for the role, yes.

Bernice: Well, let's see — what makes for a good San Francisco superhero? Our buildings are probably too short for a Batman or Spider-Man style of mobility, using the height of buildings as their urban Tarzan routines.

Mongo: True enough. And I don't think a flying hero would suit the nature of the city.

Bernice: A flashy automobile wouldn't really work, either. Perhaps a super-powered bike messenger?

Mongo: Ooh yeah, I like that! Does his power come from the bike, or from within?

Bernice: "His"??

Mongo: What? You didn't say "bike messenger...ess".

Bernice: ...

Mongo: What?

Bernice: But maybe this has been done already. Dark Angel was a bike messenger in post-apocalyptic Seattle. Her abilities were supplied by the current trends in venture capital, even.

Mongo: Damn you, James Cameron!!

Bernice: We don't want to just copy Seattle's established superheroine.

Mongo: Yeah. [pause] And I never said superheroine, so "he" was just fine! Ha! Ow!

Bernice: So: no cycling, swinging, or souped-up automobile. No flying, and no stealing from other localities.

Mongo: I feel like I should be writing all this down.

Bernice: — it seems we're just left with speedsters like Flash or Quicksilver.

Mongo: Superpowers that involve ready water transit would be valuable here as well. Maybe I shouldn't rule out the flying types — I could see Sub-Mariner doing pretty okay in San Francisco, especially with his occasional ecological bent.

Bernice: What about drawing on the sizeable gay population? Perhaps have a brick-style hero named "The Bear", kinda like Mastadon from D.P.7?

Mongo: Mastadon was gay??

Bernice: Well, no, but he definitely fit the big and hairy part well.

Mongo: True. I was thinking along similar lines, but I just envision the situation of: Crime in progress, and "The Bear" steps around the corner, points majestically and loudly proclaims, "Halt, miscreant!" The bad guy runs, and "The Bear" huffs and puffs trying to catch up, but eventually just lets the baddie get away.

Bernice: Just because that big guy tried picking up on you that one time is no reason to —

Mongo: Look, I've said this a million times, I'm NOT A HOMOPHOBE!

Bernice: — you should just take it as the compliment it was meant as and move on in life, Mongo.

Mongo: Plus, the gay population isn't the sum total of the city. I don't disagree that the rogue's gallery for our hero would need to be drawn from the diverse populace, it just seems like gay superheroes are getting a little cliché, is all.

Bernice: Uh-huh.

Mongo: Maybe the best superhero for San Francisco would be "The Obsessive Hipster", who attacks his foe The Unconsidered Life with great gusto and verve as he drives useless topics deep into the earth with his ceaseless barrage of barely-educated musings!

Bernice: Well, step on up to the counter and claim your title, then!

Last updated by eric Thu May 18 21:17 2006 | omission | link

ubi libertas ibi patria [translation]

Mongo: All this talk of the U.S. federal government spying on its own citizens has me thinking that Yakov Smirnoff is totally going to be able to rekindle his national stand-up career: "In GOP America, telephone answers you!"

Bernice: ...except his'll be funny?

Mongo: And maybe not born of such an overwhelming nostalgia for lost freedoms.

Last updated by eric Tue May 16 21:17 2006 | thought | link

Paete, non dolet [translation]

Mongo: I spent a lot of time playing Animal Crossing last night. I found a cliff at one point and kept trying to guide the character over the edge.

Bernice: They have power switches for a reason, you know.

Mongo: It wouldn't let me, though! No matter how often I rammed myself up against the cliff's edge, it just kept walking me in place. I felt it was a metaphor for existence, or God's eternal love.

Bernice: Or perhaps an allegory of video gameplay.

Last updated by eric Mon May 15 20:55 2006 | deed | link

audi alteram partem [translation]

Mongo: There are a lot of blind characters in comic books.

Bernice: Blind characters?

Mongo: Yeah. Daredevil, of course. And the guy in PvP.

Bernice: "The guy"?

Mongo: I'm not sure what the character's name is. Anyway, there are a lot of blind characters in comic books.

Bernice: By "a lot" you mean "two"?

Mongo: [glares]

Bernice: Do you have a point?

Mongo: My point is, where are all the deaf characters?

Bernice: You mean like Daredevil's girlfriend?

Mongo: Elektra?

Bernice: No, another one. I think they called her "Echo".

Mongo: "Echo"?

Bernice: Yeah, might as well call Daredevil "Mirage". But Echo's a deaf character.

Mongo: Huh. Didn't know that. [pause] And Splinter! Wasn't Splinter blinded at some point?

Bernice: You're probably thinking of Stick, the guy who trained Daredevil.

Mongo: Yeah, him! But, like I was saying, why the obsession with blindness? Why not deafness?

Bernice: Well, it's a visual art, after all.

Mongo: But that's my point! If it's possible that we read comics to live out our own fantasies, then I would think we'd want to have something in common with the characters. How are blind people going to appreciate a Daredevil run?

Bernice: We're only supposed to read stories about ourselves?

Mongo: Well, not exactly. You're kinda ruining my point.

Bernice: It's not much effort, really.

Mongo: It just seems to me that portraying deaf people in a comic book format has some interesting opportunities. How do you convey their signing? Do you show a highlight of the sign, with moovles suggesting the signing going on?

Bernice: Do speaking characters usually have their mouths frozen in mid-plosive, and wiggle marks drawn around their chin?

Mongo: Right, that's what I'm saying! There's a challenge there, and no one's taken it up. Why is that?

Bernice: For all of the emphasis on sequential art being a visual medium, the script weighs heavily for most mainstream comics. To have a deaf character, you have to have characters who can understand that deaf character, whereas blind characters can still interact vocally with the usual inhabitants of comic worlds.

Mongo: True. It'd probably end up with some strange arrangement of a sidekick providing vocal translations, which would completely undermine all the cool stuff bumping around in my head. Ah well.

Bernice: Does Awesome Andy count?

Mongo: Count...?

Bernice: In Dan Slott's recent She-Hulk comics, Awesome Andy is mute, but communicates with other characters via a chalkboard. We rarely see him writing on it, though.

Mongo: Yeah! Stuff like that. For a signing character, should standard word bubbles be used? Generally the "tag" on a word bubble will point to a character's head or mouth, indicating the words come from there. Should a deaf character have the word bubble pointing at their hands?

Bernice: Ugh.

Mongo: Or should it be something like how translated text is usually bracketed? I'm just saying, there's potential there, and a deaf audience would be able to appreciate such stories, I would think.

Bernice: Ah, because deaf people aren't able to properly appreciate a Daredevil story arc as it stands?

Mongo: You are no fun whatsoever.

Last updated by eric Sun May 14 14:32 2006 | omission | link

asinus asiunum fricat [translation]

Though I really appreciated Sedition's April Fool's gift for 2006, I think my favorite overall is The Cure for Information Overload.

Last updated by eric Fri Apr 07 09:37 2006 | omission | link

sartor resartus [translation]

I read recently that a weblog should have some authorial autobiography.

I lack one here.

I think the main reason is that, if you've read, say, the entire front page, you'll have a pretty good idea what sort of person is writing these entries. No number of self-revelatory facts I throw in will provide you with any better notion of who I am than the mass of topics I've assembled here, and the collection of links over there on the right.

However, I do want to be usable, so I'll throw out this bone:

Usually, when I finally get a free moment to sit with my laptop and tap out an entry, I'll be in my pajamas. My apartment has poor weatherproofing, lately it's been pretty chilly, and the warmth of an overworked CPU isn't quite enough to keep me comfortable, so I'll sometimes add a few layers.

What I wear is pretty telling, I think. Generally it'll be:

• Red pajama bottoms with froufrou kitty-cats and little tiny pawprints. I can't stand the pattern, but they're quite comfortable, and I got them for free from my girlfriend, so they were quite the bargain. And she seems to like them.
• Some random selection of gimme t-shirts from my former employer; today it's from the 2000 company picnic. I think that was the only year I actually attended because it was the only year I didn't have to work that day.
• To keep me warm, an Animaniacs sweatshirt. Those wacky Warner Brothers! (and Dot!) — I'm pretty sure this one was a gift from Sh's mother
• If it's really cold, gigantic green and black slippers that look like the feet of a large bipedal lizard. They have three stuffed yellow vinyl claws on each foot, and one of them has a zipper on the back where some sort of noisemaking device is intended to rest, so that they roar when I take a step. I never had the noisemaker, though, because they were bought on sale. My thanks to Jane for those.

Next time I'll consider explaining what the deal is with the "nondescript posting titles".

Maybe.

Last updated by eric Sat Mar 25 12:08 2006 | omission | link

alias dictus [translation]

Well, that's interesting.

Last updated by eric Wed Mar 22 20:51 2006 | omission | link

diem perdidi [translation]

Dana: How do you know I even want your job?
Isaac: Everybody wants my job.
Dana: Not me. I think your job stinks. You get to create your own show and make all the decisions and have a big staff and make a lot of money. That's not for me, Isaac. I like to answer to people, I don't want to create. When I get a thought in my head I like it to die right there.

— Sports Night

Last updated by eric Sat Mar 18 12:46 2006 | word | link

conjunctis viribus [translation]

[Note: I originally started this entry over a year ago, if I remember correctly, but only now got around to finishing it up. It still doesn't quite measure up to the thoughts bumping around in my head. But it still interests me as a topic.]

Looking for Kim Stanley Robinson content on the internet the other day, I found this great interview with him; I'm especially intrigued by this bit, of which I probably quote too much:

The Years Of Rice And Salt is published as a HarperCollins book rather than a Voyager book; the marketing literature doesn't seem to be pushing it to a science fiction audience. Do you feel that it's not a science fiction book?

No - it's a science fiction book. The alternative history has a long and honourable part in science fiction and that's the way I conceptualised it when the idea first occurred to me 20 or 25 years ago. On the other hand I can see the logic of their thinking. The science fiction audience is fully aware of me and if they're interested, knowing me as they know me at this point, they'll buy the book - and if not, not - but there's no further work to be done there. The notion, I think, is that people who may not think of themselves as science fiction readers could read this book with pleasure and perhaps haven't tried me before. You can't help but like the strategy involved and that a publisher has a strategy.

It's a common discussion; people thrashing around as to whether they are science fiction authors or not; people who talk like they're 'escaping the ghetto' or they're climbing over the boundaries and don't seem to want to look back.

I'm not one of those. I'm a science fiction writer and always will be. It's my genre and my community and intellectual home. This escape, some of it probably has to do with outdated sociology of the reputation of science fiction. Some of it has to do with a hidden inferiority or ghetto mentality - that it would be better off in the big bad world. At my point in life, I don't see the advantages of the big world. Science fiction is one of the most powerful tools of human thought we have and one of the most powerful ways we have to generate beautiful novels. I don't seem to have suffered in terms of an audience. I have a relatively big and extremely supportive and intelligent audience so what's so bad about that? What would be the gain in going out into a gigantic, anonymous market place where you are one forgettable figure amongst others, which doesn't even have a sense of it's own history like the science fiction field does? I'm a science fiction patriot but that doesn't mean the books have to be published under a Voyager imprint as opposed to a HarperCollins imprint - that's just a marketing decision. What I would like to do is somewhat like what Asimov did, which is always to be resolutely and obviously a science fiction writer but just to expand out to be one of those science fiction writers who everyone understands they can read with pleasure. That's the plan.

In 2004 Matt Ruff showed up at the Science Fiction/Fantasy book club meeting since we were discussing his book Fool on the Hill. Ruff has since ventured into non-SFF realms, and we'd recently been reading some other books that I didn't think necessarily fit under the SFF umbrella, so we ended up discussing the ins and outs of being genre-specific in one's work.

Several authors have made this transition, especially in the past twenty years. Neal Stephenson often ends up mentioned in such discussions since his earlier books are all so popular among SFF fandom, and fit well in the SFF section (including Zodiac, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and, I could argue at length, The Big U), but at some point Stephenson decided to branch off into what I like to call "engineer" or "applied science" fiction—fiction that still includes a lot of science, but lacks the extrapolative elements featured so predominantly in most science fiction. Some examples that fit into this mold:

• In the Beginning...was the Command Line
• Cryptonomicon
• Quicksilver

Granted, since SFF is often tossed under the general heading "speculative fiction", it's easy to step back and shovel in the rest of fiction, since the very basis of fiction is some sort of "what if" question: "What if we can fly faster-than-light?" "What if dwarves and dragons and elves and magic existed before, but somehow faded from popular notice?" "What if there were a whaler captain obsessed with a certain white sperm whale?" (I've never really noticed before, but the phrase "what if" doesn't seem to be grammatically correct—it seems to be a shortening of "what would happen if". Weird that I never noticed that before.)

Jonathan Lethem is another author who fits into this discussion; his first book, Gun, With Occasional Music, totally fit into the science fiction mold, yet at the same time planted a foot in hard-boiled detective fiction as well. Lethem followed this up with several more "sciffy" titles, including Amnesia Moon, As She Climbed Across the Table, and Girl in Landscape, all of which had a similar blend of genre fiction, perhaps most noticeable in the final title's borrowing from Western tropes.

Then Lethem started expanding his genre range outside of SFF; in This Shape We're In, Lethem earns our forgiveness for ending a clause with a preposition by taking us on a fascinating journey through a wondrous world that doesn't feel at all science fictiony, yet doesn't really fit into fantasy, either. It instead seems to stray afield into allegory without a clear genre identification—I've generally seen it included in the general fiction sections at bookstores, so it's apparently not genre enough to make it to the SFF's dark corners. The genre mixing continues in Motherless Brooklyn, as well as (to some extent) in The Fortress of Solitude, but by now Lethem's left SF behind, and very little of his genre introitus is visible.

But I still dig his stuff.

I could go further into other examples (I think Jasper Fforde is likely headed down the same path), but Kim Stanley Robinson puts it into the best perspective:

...you've got the kind of acceleration of history and the heavy dominance of technology in our lives, the fact that technology shifts all our habits every five years or so. At this point, I think of us as all living in an enormous science fiction novel, which we're co-authoring together. You couldn't be better placed as a writer than in science fiction. I feel like the stage people in the Elizabethan era - simply that we are in the right form for the historical moment we're in. The things you can bring to bear to your storytelling from a science fiction perspective are the ones that can best describe our current reality. If you are going to be a realist to 2002 you'd better start writing science fiction.

— "This Is the Year One: Kim Stanley Robinson Interview"

The truth is that between writing, research, parenting and life in general, I have no time anymore to read other sf writers, and seldom do. I'm even beginning to feel that it's part of my job to remain ignorant of current sf, and to become increasingly idiosyncratic. That's what novelists are supposed to do.

— "Wilderness, Utopia, History: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson"

Last updated by eric Sun Mar 12 07:31 2006 | thought | link

tenax propositi [translation]

When Carl Castanaveras was still a young boy, before puberty turned him into a Peaceforcer weapon, an officer of the United Nations Peace Keeping Force once asked him what he wished to do with his life.

The question startled the boy. He had been raised by doctors and scientists and Malko Kalharri; the Peaceforcer's question was not the sort of thing anyone had ever asked of him before.

After a moment's consideration he said, "Am I supposed to do something with it?"

— Emerald Eyes

Last updated by eric Sat Mar 11 17:59 2006 | deed | link