Chrononautic Log

August 26, 2004

...to check into an Ivy League PhD program in American History for five or ten years, solely in order to learn enough to be able to write this book:

Glaukon: I've often wanted to read a history of the early years of the United States as if the U.S. was a developing country during the Cold War. Domestic factions allied with Britain and France, which will recognize no neutrals. George Washington throwing all his prestige and virtu on the side of neutrality in the Farewell Address, pleading with his countrymen not to fall into this trap . . .

The Ghost of Daniel Webster: And being completely ignored . . .

Thrasymakhos: As some chose France, and others chose Britain. The Alien and Sedition Acts, beginning the process of imprisoning people for political dissent . . .

There would be denunciations. There would probably be death threats. But it would be a hell of a book.

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August 25, 2004

Andrew O’Hehir noted that “the Dogme movement is best described as a system for making imitation Ingmar Bergman films.” The authors of the Mundane Manifesto cite Neuromancer and 1984 as influences; but what they’ve got reads, to me, like a system for writing imitation Kim Stanley Robinson novels.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that — even if I’m not a Robinson fan myself. Still . . . I can’t help but hear in the Manifesto a distorted echo of SF’s chronic mainstream envy. What makes this list of SF’s chronic “Stupidities” the right one — why twelve Stupidities, and not eleven or thirteen?

The Mundanes recognize this much themselves; the last entry in the list is “Continue at will.” But why not take it farther? Why not eliminate some of the other SF motifs that they explicitly embrace, like nano and VR — surely no less abused than parallel worlds or English-speaking aliens? Why not take it as far as mainstream’s New Puritans did, and shed “all improbable or unknowable speculation about the past or the future”?

Maybe it’s a matter of timing — maybe it’s that it comes at a point when I’ve just decided that, in my own writing, it’s time to try, for a while, SF without constraints. But in the end what the Mundane Manifesto mostly comes across as, to me, is a little amusing, and a little sad.

Still, some of them, undoubtedly, will eventually realize that writing the kind of honest, thoughtful, thought-provoking SF they want to write has much less to do with what they write about than they think it does.

In the mean time, I wish them luck.

(Via Notes from Coode Street.)

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August 20, 2004

Since I was here till 9:30 last night trying to reproduce a bug that was causing problems for a high-risk demo that’s happening today but really in any reasonable world would be happening at the end of the QA cycle instead of less than halfway through it, maybe today’s Bob the Angry Flower seems funnier to me than it really has any right to.

But I’m laughing anyway.

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August 17, 2004

This essay by Philip Agre, “What is conservatism and what is wrong with it?” gets to the heart of the place where I stopped stone dead in trying to meet Gene Wolfe halfway. (It’s also a useful gloss on John Holbo’s takedown of David Frum, previously discussed here.)

(Agre essay courtesy of Electrolite Sidelights.)

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August 16, 2004

ULTROCRACY PROMOTION! Giblets will not settle for promoting anything as pansy-ass as Democracy! He will not rest until every single country in the world — including countries where are no countries such as Antarctica, Atlantis, and the Moon — into Ultrocracies, democracies so ultra-democratic that the will of the people manifests itself as an immense avatar-being of pure energy that roams around the countryside turning garbage into food and corpses into high-paying private sector jobs!

Also: the punchline to this cartoon says it all.

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“Sci-fi.” When I’m not writing some other kind of speculative fiction, that’s what I write.

And don’t misunderstand me — I do mean . If someone tells me I write “skiffy”, I won’t argue, but I sure don’t think of it that way.

I think it’s about time we reclaimed rhymes-with-hi-fi. Am I alone on the barricades here?

Maybe I’ll cafe-press myself up a SCI-FI PRIDE T-shirt for my next convention.

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Update: Okay, forget it. It looks like my problem with this is just a symptom of my other problems with the quote SF community unquote. I’ll shut up.

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August 15, 2004

Guess I’m not going to be the last person in the English-speaking world to read Iron Council after all.

I’ve still got the UK version on order, ’cause that’s the kind of sick fetishist that I am, but I broke down and bought the US edition Friday afternoon, since I’d decided Thursday I was going on a 36-hour writing retreat and knew I wasn’t going to be able to get away with no reading that whole time.

As you’d expect, I blew through it in about four sittings. (And yes, I did get a good bit of writing done, too, so shut your mouth.) Council didn’t have the urgency of The Scar, but it was an easier read than either Scar or Perdido — the writing in Council is probably better, line by line. Still, Mieville’s at his most interesting when he’s indulging his penchant for baroquely overwritten description, and too many of Council’s settings are too open and spare to let him really go over the top. And when he has a good opening for that sort of thing, like the Council’s two — two! — crossings of the cacotopic stain, he doesn’t always take it.

Figure 1. Not the Iron Council.

I’m torn. On the one hand, I found the world of Perdido Street Station so fucked-up and depressing I’ve never been tempted to reread it, as impressive and memorable as it was. On the other hand, now that Iron Council (which is much more involved than The Scar with the things that made Perdido what it was, enough that I’m nearly tempted to reread the earlier book just to catch all the references I’d half forgotten) has offered that hopeless world some hope, it’s also drawn a lot of its poison.

I’d say The Scar is probably still my favorite. It’s a glorious mess, but Iron Council, though less messy, is also less glorious.

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August 11, 2004

Aug. 11, 2004 | Shanghai, China — Chinese astronauts are in the final stages of preparing for a manned space mission that will orbit the globe 14 times before returning to Earth, a state-run newspaper reported Thursday. . . .

On Wednesday, state-run television and other media, citing senior officials in China's space program, reported that China would send its first person into space on Oct. 15 [emphasis added] for a single-orbit, 90-minute flight.

Presumably that would be October 15th of last year?

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August 10, 2004

I notice this Asimov’s is available at Fictionwise through September ($3.99, $3.39 for members), for those of you who like e-books. Also, the cover:

Figure 1. Asimov’s, “September” 2004.
Note the large spaceship in the foreground.

I can’t help but take a kind of demented pride in the fact that my story is probably the one the cover’s most applicable to. (I say “demented” because I’m pretty sure the covers and stories generally have nothing intentional to do with one another.)

Plus, it’s got my name on it.

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Does anybody still believe that the US is in Iraq to liberate it?

You do? What exactly do you think the word “liberate” means?

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August 9, 2004

The September issue of Asimov’s is on the stands, with my name on the cover and everything. (When you get to the line of dialogue that has the word sure in it twice, substitute sir for one of them. Which, I leave up to you, but there is a right answer and a wrong one.)

This story, “The Third Party”, is my first pro print magazine sale, and it’s an interesting experience, reading this story this way. It’s meant to be the first part of a novel, a novel I spent half of last year outlining and then set aside. Two or three people saw the outline. The main feedback I got was, “What’s with the monks?” I think that in not talking about the rest of it they were being kind.

Reading it this way, presented differently (Asimov’s really needs to go to two columns, or else budget for more paper), with some time and distance, it’s easier to put myself into the shoes of someone reading it for the first time, whether here in Asimov’s or as some of the opening chapters of a novel. Easier to read it not in terms of what I had intended to write next, but in terms of what possibilities arise from this beginning.

Easier to see that the novel I write could be much more interesting than the one I would have written from last year’s outline.

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The nice thing about the auteur approach to filmmaking is that it gives you someone to blame.

So, let me start by saying I’m one of the eleven people in the English-speaking world who hasn’t seen “The Sixth Sense” — and boy, am I glad I haven’t, because if I had (and if it was really any good) I would have been even more disappointed by “The Village” than I was. Also, if I had gone to see it, M. Night Shmalyan might have gotten some of my money, and that is something that is never going to happen again.1

I won’t give you any spoilers — but don’t worry, if you do see this film (which course of action I am, obviously, recommending against) it will spoil itself for you. You’ll have the film’s central “revelation” figured out by the time the first monster comes knocking at the door, and after that it won’t matter how good Mr. Night S. is with camera angles and whooshy noises and snuffly noises. You will feel absolutely no fear, because after that you will know that the film is on rails.2

In due course and a series of clumsy flashbacks, the alleged reversal will be presented to you and to the protagonist. (The protagonist’s reaction, by the way, is entirely implausible: think about the way it’s revealed, then ask yourself exactly what the protagonist’s terror is in response to — how does the protagonist even understand what’s being shown?) You will be disturbed — when you look at your watch and see how much of the movie is left to run.

By the time Mr. Night S. presents his attempt at a second reversal, you will have no trust in him, as a director, to do anything interesting, so your only reaction will be to look again at your watch and sigh regretfully, knowing that at least another fifteen minutes of your time will be wasted explaining this and tying it up.

Eventually, in a way that does not so much wrap up the film’s implausibilities (which in a better-plotted film one might be able to over look, but which in this one produce a disbelief too heavy to suspend) as parade them, the film will end.

And you will be left to ponder the real mysteries of “The Village”:

• Why did so many good actors sign up for such a bad script?
• Why were their performances so wooden?3
• What justifies the reputation Mr. Night S. has gotten as a writer/director?

And, most curiously:

• When was the last time a film left you feeling this badly ripped off?

If you figure it out, let me know.

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1 No, I didn’t see “Signs” either. The reviews weren’t that great, and anyway Mel Gibson makes me break out in a rash.

2 Yes, there’s a subplot, which does have a twist in it that’s merely foreshadowed rather than telegraphed. Someone will undoubtedly claim that this subplot is the main plot and that, therefore, the film is not on rails To that I say: Feh. It’s not interesting or complex enough to be the main plot. (A role reversal is not a plot reversal, Mr. Night S.) In a film of this type — if it’s not good enough to transcend its type — the “plot” is just the process of answering the question: “What the hell is going on?” And that, as I’ve said, you’ll know long before Mr. Night S. decides to hit you over the head with it.

3 The one exception is Adrien Brody, who gives us the film’s one really interesting character. Unfortunately, that character is completely wasted on this plot. As for Hurt, Weaver, Phoenix et al. — they just leave me expecting to cringe the next several times I hear the word “coyote”. I know the dialogue was stilted. The dialogue in “Ride With The Devil” was stilted, too, but that didn’t stop Tobey Maguire.

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August 6, 2004

Remember when burritos were small enough to eat?

So now that the anthology is nearly off the ground (proof / advance reading copies should be coming back from the printers any day now; final cover art in a few weeks and then it’ll all be over bar the shouting) I have, predictably, gone insane and decided I want to do another one.

Not All-Star Robot Adventure Stories. That’s still a definite possbility, but ASRAS would pay real money. (pause, while half the audience realizes this new idea will not pay real money, and leaves the room) So the robots have to wait, while the Zeppelins pay themselves off. (You can speed up this process by pre-ordering!). Meanwhile, a different idea, as follows.

First, you should all go buy Rabid Transit: Petting Zoo and read “How to Write an Epic Fantasy” by David Lomax.

Done?

No?

I’ll wait . . .

Okay; you can read it later, if you insist.

Here’s the idea:

All-Star Stories Presents: Twenty Epics

The problem: Epic fantasy takes too long. It takes too long to read, it takes too long to write. The industry has too many incentives to make the author write the same book over and over again, piling up the foreshadowing, wearing out characters’ boots, to no good purpose except to give the reader more time to spend in the author’s fantasy world.

Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, if you’ve got the time. But for the busy reader/writer on the go, I think we need an alternative, and that’s where Twenty Epics comes in.

Twenty Epics would be, to the traditional epic, what the false pasts created for the replicants in Blade Runner are to real human experience. Each of the twenty would create in the reader the same kind of emotional and aesthetic experience one has on finishing, say, Titus Groan, or the original Earthsea books, or the Fantasy Masterworks collection of the Viriconium stories, or Orlando — or, for that matter, War and Peace or Lonesome Dove. (All of these are a little short already by modern epic standards, I admit — I’m going for sublimity here, not exhaustion.) But they’d do it without making the reader or the writer sit through ten books and ten years.

Now, I know what I’m getting into. If I just advertise for twenty condensed epics at, oh, say $50 a pop, I know what I’m going to get: A lot of gaming-module backgrounds and poorly written plot synopses crammed with unpronounceable names. I can cope with that (the Editor’s name is a tower of strength), but what I’m looking for is something different, and harder to define — a Silmarillion with sophistication, a “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” with narrative drive. The closest examples I can think of are the aforementioned David Lomax story, and some of the stories in Angelica Gorodischer’s Kalpa Imperial.

Oh, and maybe this piece my friend Jon wrote in college, excerpts from the marketing literature produced by the estate of one “G.L.L.L. Kerpim”. (Beautiful stuff, pure vitriol. “Lo! The Fire-Sheep are closing in! Use the Jewel-Sword-Ring!”)

Beyond that, I think we’re back to Herodotus.

Am I the only one who would read this?

Help me pin this down.

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August 4, 2004

There was this lopsided conversation at Rockaway about SF conventions, and about writers going to them to do or to not do business, and the difference between fan and fan (those links are a little off, but you get the idea), and all like that. I say “lopsided” because started to go pear-shaped, mostly on account of it being Sunday afternoon of a very long weekend, I think . . . Anyhow, there’s apparently this discussion springing up on the subject of advice to writers attending conventions. Some of it would give me a headache if I didn’t have one already, but Michelle Sagara says one thing that is fairly close to something I meant to say at Rockaway, and didn’t:

I think it comes down to this: I don’t do anything that doesn’t look like fun. This goes for everything at a Worldcon, including talking to editors. If it’s not fun to speak with a specific editor? I don’t do it. I am guaranteed to get away from home once a year, and even if it’s in theory for business reasons I’m selfish enough not to want to spend that time putting on a fake smile and pretending I’m enjoying something I’m not. If it’s fun to speak with an editor, even if I think there’s no chance I’d ever submit to them (or that they’d ask <wry g>), I speak with the editor. Ditto pretty much everything else at a convention.

That’s what it comes down to: Nothing that doesn’t look like fun. The writing itself is enough work. If the rest of it isn’t fun, you seriously have to ask yourself what’s the point of it all.

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I’m just sayin’.

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August 3, 2004

Havin’ some real deja blog here . . . I think Greg originally found this, some time back. Came up at Rockaway. Been looking for it for a while.

Confused by my own web-site.

Or ‘web-station’ as my friend Lee and I have taken to calling them. As in ‘oh, I lined-on to the interweb to inload some web-stations’.

Feel free to borrow this lingo. It’ll either make you sound really dumb or like you’re onto something new. We use it cos it makes us sound stupid.

Which is funny. Sometimes. To us. Or to amuse your friends you can refer to the internet as ‘the email’. As in, ‘Oh, I love lining on to the email. They’ve got weather and news on the email. My friend Jenny just can’t get enough of the email.'

— quoth Moby.

And speaking of web-stations, I’m soliciting suggestions to improve mine. (Not this one; the static one.) The SFWA won’t list it in its current state on account of not being “clearly identifiable as a personal author page.” Various folks have complained about the bibliography. And me, I’m not too happy with the stack-o’-boxes layout. Thoughts?

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Update: Moby’s rearranged his journal; the entry’s now here.

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Does anyone know why this didn’t end up in this?

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John Holbo has a suggestion:

[China] Miéville should seriously consider writing a thumping great historical political economy of his world – Marx’s Das Silmaril, if you will. It would be huge fun to read. It should be a multivolume affair that, ideally, he never manages to finish. (“What I have to examine is the magical mode of production, its supernatural laws and tendencies winning their way through and working themselves out with necessity as hard as mithril.” A long and careful analysis would follow of how power in Middle Earth is a function of — and race relations are inescapably mediated by — silmarills and, in later stages, ring ownership; value and use-value; importance of control of the means of ring production. “A spectre is haunting Middle Earth — no, really, a spectre!”)

Update: If you’re interested in epic fantasy — and when I say “interested in”, that includes “hostile to” — go and read the rest of his expanded post on Miéville. Post haste.

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August 2, 2004

I grew up in a time when people talked about a clash between democracy and communism, but that’s like talking about a war between snakes and frisbees.

— Will Shetterly

Keep that in mind when you hear those jokers talking about “democratic-minded strongmen”. They’re not talking about democracy; they’re talking about supporting the snakes against the frisbees.

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Via BoingBoing: Finnish (or Estonian? can’t tell) blogger Kaksoisagentti remixes Cory Doctorow’s copylefted Ebooks: Neither E nor Books to produce “Posthumans: Neither E, Nor Humans”:

I take the view that the human is a “practice” — a collection of social and economic and artistic activities — and not an "object." Viewing the human as a “practice” instead of an object is a pretty radical notion, and it begs the question: just what the hell is a human? — Brewster Kahle’s Internet Humanmobile can convert a digital human into a four-color, full-bleed, perfect-bound, laminated-cover, printed-spine flesh human in ten minutes, for about a dollar. Try converting a flesh human to a PDF or an html file or a text file or a RocketHuman or a printout for a buck in ten minutes! It’s ironic, because one of the frequently cited reasons for preferring flesh to posthumans is that flesh humans confer a sense of ownership of a physical object. Before the dust settles on this posthuman thing, owning a flesh human is going to feel less like ownership than having an open digital edition of the text.

I love the phrase four-color, full-bleed, perfect-bound, laminated-cover, printed-spine flesh human. Even Bruce Sterling would be hard-pressed to invent that one without mechanical aids. Further proof that if everyone would just listen to the ideas Cory expresses so well about copyright and new media, the world would be a much more fun place.

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You know, back in 2000 a Republican friend of mine warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we’d lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what? I did vote for Al Gore, he did win, and I’ll be damned if all those things didn't come true.

—— James Carville

(Via Brad deLong.)

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