Update: One of the points below was unfinished. I was actually planning on splitting this post into two parts, but I guess I left it scheduled and it got posted while I was doing other things. It’s been linked a few times, so… I’ll leave it as it is. Except I went ahead and finished that point. ORIGINAL Post: So: what did I learn from RPGing, and specifically from GMing? This is the last post in the projected series (though who knows, there may be more to say…) I think I should put this into two categories: stuff I learned …
Tag: WRITING
Article Help?
UPDATE (20 minutes later): I got the articles. The second one is, indeed, online here. That was quick. Thanks KSM! ORIGINAL POST: Anyone have a copy of this article kicking around? Ahem, I mean, you know, I could use a copy for my research, but my employer won’t have JSTOR access till 2011. Ooh, and this one? Yes, it’s just background for a story, at most likely to turn into a vaguely passing detail here and there, though I suspect the former article may factor into a discussion of Ian McDonald’s River of Gods/Cyberabad Days too. (McDonald is a citizen …
Offstage Time, and This Weekend’s Research/Writing
I’m into some heavy research right now, trying to make some headway on a story of mine that ties together the lives of HG Wells, Moura Budberg, RH Bruce Lockhart, Constance Coolidge, Gorky, Stalin, a Malayan woman of the time named only Amai (Lockhart’s first “wife” if common-law marriage had applied to “natives” in the Empire), and many more figures, locked together with questions central to the later work of Wells, SF and nonfictional futurism alike. (It’s a story I considered attempting at Clarion West, before going, but which I realized, after I’d arrived, I would have to research a …
Cut, Cut, Cut, and Another Review of “Sarging Rasmussen”
Well, today is not a particularly interesting day: I spent much of it cutting text. (I’ll spend the rest of it on laundry, steaming my floors with my new steamer vacuum, probably watching the remaining two-thirds of the Bollywood film Krrish, maybe having a coffee with the espresso machine that arrived today to replaced my previous, broken machine, and avoiding seed fruit, nuts, brown rice, and beans–because I’ve have an upset digestive system for most of the time since I got back from Indonesia, and am going to go to the hospital Monday morning to undergo, yes, basically the same …
Random Snippets
If I ever were to write an autobiographical account of my life in Korea, or a chapter on the same in a bigger autobiographical text (other than this blog), I would want to have all of the humor of the first twelve pages or so of Peter Mayne’s A Year in Marrakesh. That’s all I’ve read, but I’m sure the rest is funny too. Other Westerners I know have much better first-day-in-Korea stories than I do. One guy I know ended up on the bus to a totally different city, but, if I remember it right, didn’t know he was …
The Law of the Handicap of a Head Start
Flipping through Shine, I ran across an interesting mention (in the introduction to Lavie Tidhar’s contribution) of Jan Romein’s notion of Wet van de remmende voorsprong, or, in English, the “Law of the Handicap of a Head Start.” It struck me that the Korean internet (a subject about which I recently posted) is a wonderful demonstration of both sides of this notion: the benefit of a late start, and the handicaps that a head start can introduce into a system. The link above details several of the handicaps: the dependency on Windows, ActiveX, and even Internet Explorer 6.0, as well …
Outsider Writing
Now that I’m back in Korea, and have a free morning, I’m just catching up on some blogs and fiction online and so on. I ran across a very interesting post at Aliette de Bodard’s blog, titled, Writing cultures: insider vs. outsider, about the various advantages and pitfalls faced by authors writing about a specific culture either as an insider, or as an outsider, for a Western audience (as in the dominant SF-reading audience, for example). It’s worth a read, including the comments, especially if you’re interested in my thoughts on the subject.
Other Good Movies I’ve Seen Lately
I should add — some non-SF films I’ve seen lately were: Nixon. Well, I haven’t finished it, yet, but I enjoyed what I saw. Anthony Hopkins, damn, that man can act. New York, I Love You. A fine omnibus of shorts, this was like a collection of flash fiction set in what seems like a realer New York than most depictions of the city. Haeundae. Well, actually, I guess this Korean movie was an SF film — no less than Japan sinks — based on the idea that something as bad as the tsunami that struck Southeast Asia could hit …
Thailand: A Short History (2nd Edition) by David K. Wyatt
History is not just a procession of Great Men, kings and generals and high priests. We all know this, we insist upon it. Yet it is difficult to tell the story of history without discussing these figures, not only because we know so much more about them than we do about the commoners for so much of history, but also because of the degree to which their decisions, agendas, and problems influenced, shaped, and determined the lives of those around them. When we want to know something of a particular historical period, history becomes a Shakespearean play, complete with clowns, …
“Melei” on Locus List!
Well, I was just alerted by my pal Maura McHugh that my story, “Of Melei, of Ulthar” (which appeared in Clarkesworld‘s October issue, #37) was honored with a place among the many wonderful works (at least, the ones I’ve read were wonderful!) on the Locus 2009 Recommended Reading List. Yay, Melei! I’d get into a detailed analysis of the list, except that I have other crap to do, so I’ll navel gaze momentarily instead, and note that I just realized that both of the stories I published laast year featured female protagonists with names ending with the letter i. Two’s …