Chrononautic Log

May 29, 2003

Back on the Left Coast for about 40 hours and I still haven’t quite caught up. This was my fourth trip to New York, at four days the second longest, and the first where the temperature was consistently over 50°F. I just can’t get over the place; it’s London and Tokyo and San Francisco all rolled into one.

Doubtless I’d feel differently if I actually had to pay Manhattan rents. But I think by nature I’m either a metropolitan citoyen du monde or a rural college-town eccentric; probably both, in alternating seasons. A provincial capital like Seattle is not, I’m afraid, a very good compromise.

Comments (2)

May 21, 2003

New Amsterdam it’s become much too much
Till I have the possession of everything she touches
Till I step on the brakes to get out of her clutches
Till I speak double Dutch to a real double duchess

—— Elvis Costello, “New Amsterdam”, from the album Get Happy *

Okay; except for this computer, I’m all packed for the Sprawl.

I guess that means it’s time to jack out.

Y’all have fun at WisCon, y’hear?

---

* It was either Elvis or it was Fear’s “New York’s All Right If You Like Saxophones.” And I’m just not that angry.

Comments (3)

More good novel-writing advice from Charles Stross. (Mind you, I have yet to get my greedy little fingers on any of his novels, but I understand most of the rest of the world has that problem as well.)

The moment of realisation: say you’ve got three alternating plot threads set in different parallel universes (like me). If you kick off the novel with alternating chapters, and #1 consists of a head-butt and #2 is a knee in the goolies, it is a bad idea for #3 to be a Vicar’s tea party. I speak metaphorically — describing the tone, not the content, for no goolies are kneed or heads butted — but chapter #3 is limp.

This may have something to do with why I keep skipping over act II, scene 1 of the space opera to write bits of scene 2 and occasionally of acts III and IV.

Comments (0)

Just discovered Electronic Iraq, a portal offering news, “eyewitness reports from Iraq, and ... diary accounts from on the ground.” Among other things, they’re hosting pictures for Salam Pax and mirroring his blog entries, but they’re also collecting and linking to other things I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. They’ve been around since February; wish I’d noticed them earlier.

The site definitely has an editorial slant, but who doesn’t, these days?

Comments (0)

May 20, 2003

Metaphors in fantasy are especially tricky because fantasy is literalized metaphor. Huck Finn’s journey feels like an epic quest; Frodo Baggins’s journey is an epic quest.

—— Will Shetterly

Comments (0)

May 19, 2003

From the “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” department, this tidbit:

[AP] The SEC and WorldCom reached a partial settlement in late November in which the company agreed to a permanent injunction barring it from future violations of securities laws.

Obviously I am not a lawyer — the 100-hour-a-week lifestyle of the junior attorney somehow is not to my taste — but still, I would have thought that WorldCom was already barred from violations of securities laws... by, er, securities laws.

Comments (3)

Ken Macleod has updated 1066 and All That to cover the Reagan-Gorbachev 80s and the brief decade or so of the New World Order, with hilarious results.

The second thing Gorbachev did was to introduce Russia to the market. The problem was that Russia did not have bourgeois civility, so after it was introduced to the market it did not know what to say to it. Instead it stood about with its hands in its pockets, until it found that its pockets were empty. Its pockets had been picked by the Russian Mafia, which is just like the Sicilian one, except it is not Roman Catholic so does not have a Godfather at its head. Instead it has Ministers, like Protestants.

I can’t link to the actual entry — or rather, I can, but something bad seems to be happening to Blogspot’s archives, so you may have to start at the top.

Comments (7)

May 16, 2003

William Gibson on fanzines, blogging, and formality:

One of the reasons, I’m convinced, that I’ve been able to produce even the few novels I have is that, almost from the start, I largely swore off less formal avenues of literary expression. The culture of SF, particularly, seemed to me to be studded with truly scary examples of talented writers who had chosen to sublimate their energies in SF’s native (and relatively ancient) fanzine scene, the geniuses of which (and there arguably were a few) eventually (and perhaps inevitably?) evolved their own equivalents of blogging.

It’s the “conversational” aspect, I think, that keeps this kind of writing from really getting off the ground. You see the initial lift into heightened language, into intent, but when the wings begin to wobble (as they invariably will) there’s always the option of safe and instantaneous descent back into a fundamentally informal relationship with the reader. There’s no risk involved.

Unless, if you’re accustomed to playing for higher stakes, it’s the risk of some edge being taken off your game.

I think I spend (waste?) more time here in grinding the compositional gear-train (perhaps because I feel I’ve got more to prove?) than does Mr. Gibson for his blog, but I take his point. In fact, I’d take it farther, and argue that it’s not just in the ‘zine scene that we see those truly scary examples; it can happen to the best of the genre’s “formal avenues,” too.

And for a writer, that cozy familiarity with the reader is far too easy a trap to fall into, particularly when you and your hazy notion of an ideal reader are both members of the same amiable and homogenous community.

It’s not that the beer and chicken wings aren’t important. Just not while we’re on duty.

---

Update: Just to be clear, I didn’t mean the above as an attack on blogging, or an attack on ‘zines, or anything like that. What it really is, is a reminder to myself to be on guard — in my fiction — against writing only (or even primarily) for the comrades on my shift in the Ol’ Baloney Factory.

(As for what I write here, I’m not aspiring to 21st century journalism. And the real 21st century journalists in the blogiverse don’t need the reminder.)

Comments (7)

Some day, when from the luxury of my authorial Fortress of Solitude I can look back on this period of my life with nostalgia, I will have to read this book.

When I wrote the code samples that are in “The Bug,” I sat and then I thought, well, what would these connect to? And there I was, sitting at the MacDowell Colony, ostensibly writing the novel, and whole days would go by when I was just writing code. I actually had a little compiler on my laptop. Finally I thought, this is really a bad idea — code really eats up your time. I thought, I’ll never write a novel if I set something where I actually could write the companion code.

Which reminds me, I still haven’t finished the damn relativity calculator I need for the space opera.

Comments (0)

Not the facts themselves, which are great for Pfc. Lynch* and, really, for one’s opinion of humanity in general. But knowing how the military and the media over here have spun it — yes, depressing.

This, by the way, is why I try to stay away from TV.

* Don’t get me started on the persistent habit in the press of referring to her as “Private Jessica,” or even just “Jessica.”

Comments (6)

May 13, 2003

Now here’s something useful: The Political Graveyard: The Web Site That Tells Where the Dead Politicians are Buried.

My favorite so far, further strengthening my conviction that politics were more interesting before Philo T. Farnsworth:

David Smith Terry (1823-1889)... Justice of California state supreme court, 1855-59; chief justice of California state supreme court, 1857-59; delegate to California state constitutional convention, 1878-79. Killed U.S. Senator David Broderick in a duel near San Francisco in 1859; tried and acquitted for murder. Shot and killed by the bodyguard of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field, whom he had confronted and slapped, in the train station restaurant at Lathrop, San Joaquin County, Calif., August 14, 1889.

Enough with the attack ads and sniping at one another in press conferences. I want politicians who aren’t afraid to submit their disputes to the arbitrament of steel.

Comments (3)

May 12, 2003

Fifty-nine Democratic members of the Texas state legislature are now on the lam as they flee the statehouse in order to cut off debate on a controversial redistricting bill.

As the rebellion took shape during the weekend, the Democrats broke up into small groups, with only their team leaders knowing the details of their travels. They were told to pack enough clothes and necessities to last four days.

(For some reason I’m reminded of Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker, in which the Prime Minister of a postapocalyptic England is reduced to travelling the country in company with the Shadow Minister, putting on a Punch-and-Judy morality play. Maybe itinerant opposition parties are the wave of the future.)

---

Update: For those of you who don’t reflexively dismiss Molly Ivins out of hand, here is a summary of the events leading up to the Dems’ precipitous flight. A subversion of the democratic process it may be, but so is the tyranny of the majority.

Comments (2)

“Fetch”, the story I conceived on the way back from ConJosé under the influence of the Space Station IMAX movie, Maureen McHugh’s “Laika Comes Back Safe”, and not enough sleep, is now up on Strange Horizons.

(Thanks to the folks who gave me some feedback on the story’s early incarnations, and props to Jed Hartman for some excellent editing. Any inconsistency, historical inaccuracy, or lack of clarity that remains is the product of my own pig-headedness.)

Comments (6)

May 11, 2003

Ran across this side note in an otherwise not overly interesting article about the maturation of the IT industry:

It is a very sad thing unquestionably that railways, which mechanically have succeeded beyond anticipation and are quite wonderful for their general utility and convenience, should have failed commercially.

—— The Economist, 1857

Still true, alas. (And if you’re in the biz, it has to make you wonder about airplanes.)

Comments (2)

Yeah, I know, it’s so six months ago to care about this stuff. I just wanted to make a note of it, for the record, so that in the future, when someone asks me why I don’t trust my government, I can just link back to this entry.

The group directing all known U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms, according to participants.

The 75th Exploitation Task Force, as the group is formally known, has been described from the start as the principal component of the U.S. plan to discover and display forbidden Iraqi weapons. The group’s departure, expected next month, marks a milestone in frustration for a major declared objective of the war.

Objective, and justification, and legal basis too. At best, this administration has presided over a massive intelligence failure. At worst, they’ve perjured themselves.

But nobody cares, ‘cause We’re #1. Guess I’ll shut up and go have some ice cream.

Comments (0)

May 9, 2003

Following up on our earlier report on Borges’ Library of Babel, we have a rather more discouraging note from the Dept. of Combinatorics. It is a well-known truism, often attributed to T.H. Huxley (and, for that reason, often attacked by creationists as if it meant something) that a sufficiently large number of monkeys, given sufficient time and sufficient typewriter ribbon, would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.

Various probabilistic approaches have been made in an attempt to determine the required quantities of monkeys, time, and ribbon, but a recent small-scale experiment with nine monkeys suggests that the analysis may be less straightforward: the subjects of the experiment did not, in fact, type randomly, and their longest typed “utterances” consisted largely of the letter S. (It is worth noting, however, that the monkeys in question were provided not with a typewriter but with a word processor.)

Comments (3)

A lot of the stuff from Micah Wright’s Propaganda Remix Project is, barring a repeal of the 22nd amendment, going to seem dated in a few years. But a lot of it isn’t.

I can’t help it; I’m a sucker for retro graphic design. And freedom of expression.

Comments (2)

May 8, 2003

Looks like you can now order Say... what time is it? from those kind folks at Small Beer Press. Say... #2 features not only a story by your host, but also stories by luminaries like Greg van Eekhout and Kelly Link, which ought to be more than enough reason to buy it. (Go buy it!) I only wish my story had actually managed to capture half of the dream that inspired it.

Comments (0)

Someone definitely should have submitted this picture to Mr. Rowe.

(From the random kitten generator, courtesy of Heather.)

Comments (8)

Too busy working and writing to post much lately. Jay Lake tells me he writes 1,500 words an hour. Boy, do I feel like a slacker. Anyway, it doesn’t leave me much time to pay attention to whatever’s going on out there.

In the mean time, if you’re looking for something to read:

I read Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead this weekend and it’s as good as everyone says it is. Much less messed up than I expected from the reviews. If you’ve read other infantry memoirs like Guy Sajer’s The Forgotten Soldier or Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried you may not learn a whole lot that you didn’t know already, but Swofford’s an excellent writer, and you should definitely check him out. (And then you’ll be able to get the jokes in the Chris Offutt story in McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, too.) I hope we get some guys like him coming out of this war.

From the department of unimbedded journalism, Phillip Robertson doesn’t quite have the technical chops of a Michael Herr or a Robert Kaplan, but the stories he’s filing from Iraq for Salon have a visceral immediacy that’s hard to match. I need to go back and check out his Afghanistan stuff.

And I’m glad to hear (via William Gibson) that Salam Pax seems to have made it through so far.

A conversation overheard by G. while in the Meridian Hotel — the Iraqi media center:

Female journalist 1: oh honey how are you? I haven’t seen you for ages.

Female journalist 2: I think the last time was in Kabul.

Bla bla bla

Bla bla bla

Female journalist 1: have to run now, see you in Pyongyang then, eh?

Female journalist 2: absolutely.

Iraq is taken out of the headlines. The search for the next conflict is on. Maybe if it turns out to be Syria the news networks won’t have to pay too much in travel costs.

You want something in between the Potemkin village statue-topplings and the radical Shi’ites’ anti-US rallies, something a little nuanced, Salam Pax is your man.

Comments (0)

May 2, 2003

Australia’s first publicly traded brothel is called, yes, The Daily Planet.

Comments (2)

May 1, 2003

I get the message. Enough with the novelettes. No more novelettes.

Comments (8)

About three years ago I wrote a story about the hanging of a political dissident. (That was the first story I sold — to Century. It’ll be out any month now, honest.) About that same time, Greg was working on a story, which will shortly see the light of day in Flytrap, about a hangman and a priest. Andy Duncan was up for a Nebula for “The Executioner’s Song.” Greg and I joked about this new trend in speculative fiction.

And here we have the real thing.

A ramp went from the lower floor to an upper floor about halfway toward the ceiling. A prisoner walked this ramp to a loft where there were two trap doors in the concrete, and above those two trapdoors, there were two thick ropes, like the kind used for securing ships. There were no lights and the windows were slits in the concrete walls. The execution chamber had a smell and I cannot describe it. An executioner pulled levers to release the trapdoors and kill the men. What struck me about the nooses, aside from the fact that the looters had avoided touching them, was how well-used they looked. The nooses looked blackened and greased.

—— Phillip Robertson, Salon

The story’s about the return of an Iraqi novelist and poet, Hamid al Mokhtar, to Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison (also known as Kanay), where he was imprisoned and regularly tortured for eight years. Because of the things he wrote.

Hamid al Mokhtar is a man with stories to tell. I’m just some guy who makes stuff up.

Comments (2)