For a while, I was posting reviews of everything I’d read, one by one, but has become somewhat burdensome. Still, I figure a small summary might be justifiable, so, here’s a breakdown on some recent readings:
Read/Reading
Tag: SF
The Ragged Edge
Lately, I’ve been reconsidering a lot of my preconceptions of story and of writing. Today, I want to talk about one of them, and that one is: control.
On the Cutting Room Floor
Having fun with a short story snippet that may not be a short story after all. Figured I’d post something I’ve cut since I probably won’t be using much, if any, of it at all in the final version of the story…
Thoughts On Ellen Oh’s Advice re: #DiversityinSFF
While looking up a little more information for a post to add to my series on SF in South Korea (though the post is about Koreans outside Korea writing speculative fiction) I ran across this post at the website of Ellen Oh, one of the authors I’ll be discussing in that forthcoming post. Oh is the Korean-American author of a series of books titled The Prophecy series, which are a high fantasy trilogy set in what is (according to this interview) a fantastical version of Korea modeled on the Three Kingdoms period. (I’ll have more to say in a forthcoming …
Jazz/SF Intersection: Nichelle Nichols and Duke Ellington
It’s more often than you might expect that I find intersections between the worlds of jazz music and SF. John Coltrane read Flash Gordon and other pulps and comics as a kid, and as I discuss in that same post, Sun Ra (and several other jazz musicians) talked about life from the point of view of an alien from another world who was visiting the Earth. (Some others talked more in terms of being “trapped” on the Earth, and there, the sad root of the metaphor probably lies.) But in happier, more exciting news: my latest find, which maybe is …
Rilke vs. Resnick & Malzberg, or, No, It’s Not Just a Dinosaur Thing…
You know, I’ve been trying for a few days to figure out a way of saying something useful about the Resnick/Malzberg/SFWA thing that’s the talk of the ghetto these days. The thing is, it’s all obvious. What E. Catherine Tobler Said, basically. Others have said useful things too. Jim Hines has compiled many links. Or this is also a good run-down of things, if you prefer. My thoughts? Actually, my reaction is much like Benjamin Rosenbaum‘s, but I prefer to share what me wife said to me when I brought the situation up to her, because she pretty much nailed what’s …
Delany on “Talented Writing”
Marc Laidlaw recently shared a link on Facebook to a post on “Good Writing vs. Talented Writing”over on Brainpickings featuring some ideas by Samuel Delany. Essentially, Delany draws a line between “good writing” and superior “talented writing”: The talented writer often uses specifics and avoids generalities — generalities that his or her specifics suggest. Because they are suggested, rather than stated, they may register with the reader far more forcefully than if they were articulated. Using specifics to imply generalities — whether they are general emotions we all know or ideas we have all vaguely sensed —is dramatic writing. A trickier proposition …
Iron Man 3
Iron Man 3 isn’t out in the US, so I suppose I should put some kind of spoiler warning on it… since we saw it this morning. (The film was released today in Vietnam.) So, consider yourself spoiler-warned: If you haven’t seen the movie, don’t read past here: bookmark it and come back when you have seen the film. Unless you are the sort of person who doesn’t mind spoilers, that is.
Immigration Officer Second, Zombie Fan First.
So Mrs. Jiwaku and I have been in Saigon a little more than a week now. A million things have been happening, but the funniest and most blog-worthy at the moment was what happened at the Immigration desk, after I got my visa stamp and just before we exited out into the airport proper to be greeted by our friends Nick and Chris. Mrs. Jiwaku went first, and the immigration officer had nothing much to say to her–he just looked at her for a moment, fiddled with her passport, and stamped it. But then I stepped forward. I happened to …
Korea in English-Language SF
Over at Gusts of Popular Feeling, everyone’s favorite archives-trawler Matt has a post about about “the first SF story involving Korea” and a few other such tales from the Galaxy/Amazing Stories era. I’ve left a comment clarifying that “the first SF story” should be qualified as “the first English-language SF story” and also noting that depending on how you define “SF,” one might consider Jack London’s Star Rover the first in the English language. As for the first Korean-language SF story, I don’t know what it was, though I’d argue that the amount of remixing that seems to have gone …