I can’t say I’m a fan of Isaac Asimov. I know, it’s weird, I’m into SF and I don’t like Asimov. Well, okay, wait a minute, I don’t like The Foundation books. I, Robot was okay when I read it one afternoon a year or so ago. But Asimov, he’s just… his writing is just… well, it’s just not good, in my opinion. He’s clear and straightforward but almost all of characters that I’ve encountered have the consistency of cardboard, the personality of a soup pot, and the prose has the style of some PhD dissertation. He may have been …

My mom grew up in a time when the Church still instructed people not to read Sartre and Camus—at least in Quebec. So when a Cardinal starts trying to give reading instructions to people, it makes me want to read whatever he’s telling people to avoid. The Da Vinci Code, though? I mean… it’s fiction! Pop fiction! Why doesn’t the church go back to trying to keep people from great philosophical works of literature? You know things are bad when they’re stooping to worrying about the popular response to fictional depictions of the Church, rather than, say, the forceful discussion …

A while back, AsianWeek.com had a piece up about the Korean poet Ko Un. He’s been translated, and I do want to check him out, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Soon, hopefully. Hey, here are some poems of his, translated by… yep, that Brother Anthony guy. I don’t know how good he is, but he’s sure prolific in his translations!

Here’s an interview with the brilliant novelist Neal Stephenson, over at Reason. One of the more interesting questions and answers: Reason: The Baroque Cycle suggests that there are sometimes great explosions of creativity, followed by that creative energy’s recombining and eventual crystallization into new forms—social, technological, political. Are we seeing a similar degree of explosive progress in the modern U.S.?Stephenson: The success of the U.S. has not come from one consistent cause, as far as I can make out. Instead the U.S. will find a way to succeed for a few decades based on one thing, then, when that peters out, …

Here’s Salon’s interview with Iain Banks. I think I nabbed this from Zarq, linked in the last post. If not, sorry.

Both Charlotte Street and Word Munger have posted recently on the same topic that Chad Orzel recently touched upon… the place of literary theory in the study of literature. Much has been made of Salman Rushdie’s disdain for literary theories and those who formulate them. Though it’s slightly hidden behind some of her langauge, I think Charlotte Street makes the most important point: What passes as spontaneous insight and theory-free close reading is shot through with the reified or shrivelled remains of earlier theories, which have now become mere second nature and therefore invisible/unconscious. The first task of Theory would …

Again, something interesting via Chad Orzel, who comments on a matter that at one point was the subject of a long discussion over at Making Light. Written sex scenes are very hard to do well, and in many books I cringe at how badly they’re handled. If one skips writing the scene too squeamishly, one gets the sense that the author is somehow invading the narrative, censoring the actions of the characters. The zealous avoider takes something from the narrative. And yet, the all-too-common reaction among younger writers, including those who infest Creative Writing Departments, is to err too far …

You’d think it would be easy to take on the Fifty Book Challenge, wouldn’t you? Read fifty books in a year, and blog about them? I’m a slow reader, though. We’ll see. I’m thinking of taking up the challenge anyway, but it’ll mean cutting down on a few other things… then again, that might be good for me. via Crescat Sententia

A while back, Cory Doctorow posted about one of his stories being pirated for a Chinese magazine. Well, it seems there’s a boom in SF magazine publication now, and Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei is on the story: here’s a post about new mags, and an interview with the editor of one of them. I wonder if any non-Chinese authors are getting more than just authorial credits… but I figure if it’s popularlizing SF in China, it might be worth the loss. As an added bonus, here’s the blog of the editor interviewed, who goes by zhwj; it has all kinds …

I’m not sure which of the SF blogs in my blogroll I found this on, but anyway, it’s a good little short story that explains why we’re all alone in the universe. Well, it’s one explanation. Me, I favour the notion of galactic-scale natural disasters as a likely explanation, since very simple and not-uncommon cosmic events could wipe out life on a huge scale, and rather regularly, too. But They’re Made out of Meat by Terry Bisson is a much more amusing possibility.