Daily Thoughts 8/30/2009

Arents Cigarette Cards W.Somerset Maugham, From New York Public Library Digital Gallery

Daily Thoughts 8/30/2009

I finished reading Songs of the Dying Earth Stories In Honor of Jack Vance, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. Jack Vance is considered a masterful writer of science fiction. He is 93 years old and still writing. His style is very interesting. This collection is an excellent collection of writers. It includes many of the best writers in fantasy living today; George R.R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Tanith Lee, Dan Simmons, Robert Silverberg, and many others.

In addition to lots of short stories, there is also a novella, The Guiding Nose of Ulfant Banderoz by Dan Simmons. Each stories starts with an introduction about the writers and ends with a short summary of their experiences reading Jack Vance. Some of them are quite interesting. I learned that Jack Vance was very influential with roleplaying games, having set the background for many magic systems. This is an article by Gary Gygax about Jack Vances's influence

http://www.dyingearth.com/files/GARY%20GYGAX%20JACK%20VANCE.pdf

The setting of The Dying Earth which these stories are written in is fantastic. The sun has grown dim, the earth has grown old and is now strewn with ancient ruins and the roads are filled with strange and terrible creatures dangerous to man; the deodanth, the pelgrayne, giants, ghouls, twk-men (little people who ride dragonflies), and other beasts. Magic (a kind of super science) has replaced the science of old and the world has become decadent and filled with superstition.

This is a world of trickery, debauchery, and magic. Wizards wander this world with names like Cugel the Clever, Rialto the Marvelous, and Lixal Laqavee. These are stories of cunning, trickery, magic, and debauchery. There are terrible spells like the prismatic spray and elemental and magic servants which serve the wizards. The characters survive by their cunning. They also seek the pleasure of wine, song, food, and dance. Jack Vance played the banjo and the kazoo.

There are magical towers, libraries full of spells, ancient ruined cities, dangerous inns, and woods full of monsters. The language is florid full of complex adjectives, odd sounding nouns, and strange names of far away places. The writers who wrote these stories do a good job filling the flavor of the settings.

The book is 670 pages long. It is published by Subterranean Press http://www.subterraneanpress.com/ which produces high quality fantasy works. Many of the chapters start with a fantasy illustration and the pages are bordered with simple lines. The cover and interior illustrations are done by Tom Kidd http://www.spellcaster.com/tomkidd/ . It is a well designed, entertaining book to read.

Maps And Legends Reading And Writing Along The Borderlands-- Michael Chabon-- Review

Maps And Legends Readings And Writings Along The Borderlands by Michael Chabon is a collection of essays. An interesting thing about this collection is that the proceeds from the book go to a nonprofit literacy organization; http://www.862national.org I think this frees the author from commercial constraints. He is also using McSweeney's an avant garde publisher. This combination allows him to have free reign with his opinions making for some very interesting writing. I enjoyed both the style and substance presented in this collection.

Michael Chabon is writing about the borders between serious literature and popular culture. For example, he describes how Cormac McCarthy's The Road remains literature despite being written as post apocalyptic science fiction in his essay, Dark Adventure: On Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Similarly, the borders are touched on in On Fan Fiction: Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyles ambivalence about writing about the great detective is explored.

The origins of his bestselling, The Yiddish Policemen's Union comes from a traveller's phrasebook How To Say It In Yiddish. The essay Imaginary Homelands describes this process. He angered a number of people when he wrote about How To Say It In Yiddish in the periodical Civilization. This gave rise to thoughts on the urge to form a Jewish homeland and led him to write his story about a Yiddish homeland in Alaska.

Thoughts on the Death of Will Eisner, Kids' Stuff, The Killer Hook Howard Chaykin's American Flagg are all essays about graphic novels. Michael Chabon is talking about the maturation of the graphic novel as an art form. The Death of Will Eisner is a eulogy to both Will Eisner's art and his business acumen. Kids' Stuff describes how graphic novels have become an acceptable art form and at the same time have had an incredible drop in readership. The essay on American Flagg is about how Howard Chaykin turns graphic novels into works of pop art.

The writing in this collection is open and free flowing. It touches on a wide variety of subjects. All in a way are somewhat autobiographical. Michael Chabon became a writer partially because of his interests in old maps and legends. He criticisms numerous other writers in this collection including Philip Pullman, M.R. James, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Part of the essays are autobiographical. He talks about his origins as a writer in Diving Into The Wreck. His last essay is entitled Golem's I Have Known, or Why My Elder Son's Middle Name Is Napoleon A Trickster's memoir. This essay touches on the idea of the golem, both as a story and a spiritual metaphor for deeper understanding.

I have not listed and described all of the essays in this collection. They are all unique with varying perspectives on writing, genre fiction, graphic novels and literature. I think the writer was enjoying himself when he wrote this book. There are a few single page illustrations, a daily strip of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, and a single panel from Howard Chaykin's American Flagg. These essays are well worth reading especially if you like genre fiction and graphic novels.

Pump Six And Other Stories-- Paolo Bacigalupi-- Review

Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi is a short story collection. It is mainly science fiction. The short story, The Calorie Man, won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. This collection comes from a relatively new press, http://www.nightshadebooks.com It looks like they have an excellent selection of new science fiction and fantasy titles. This book is c2008.

The style of writing is very dark. They address the destructive side of human nature. Contemporary issues like water pollution, agricultural seed control, water supplies, and mans relation to nature are addressed. I would think of this science ficiton as being focused on biological, environmental, and psychological issues. The stories at times are quite cruel.

There is quite a bit of irony used in the stories. For example in The People of Sand and Slag, a group of cyborgs finds a dog in a wasteland, they keep it as a pet until it ceases being satisfying to them, then they eat it.

The Story The Calorie Man and The Yellow Card Man seem to be set in the same future dystopia. It is a future of agricultural plagues and giant companies controlling the genetically modified grains which are used for both the food supply and energy supply. To be at the bottom is to be under the thumb of the environmental police.

In The Pasho, the author philosophizes on the differences between soft power; power coming from technology, culture, and philosopy, and hard power; power coming from war. A Pasho is a kind of pirest of knowledge bent on rebuilding civilization after a long collapse.

There are a total of eleven stories in the collection. I really look forward to when the author finishes writing his novel. The writing itself has surprising imagery in it. There are cheshire chameleon cats, fields of soyPRO and HiGro. The characters have varied names and backgrounds, Soldier Wang, Lao Xia, Lolo, Raphel Ka'Korem, Lalji, and others. This is a writer worth following closely.

The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll, Short Stories

The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll is a collection of his short stories. All are set in a kind of magically realistic universe infused with an odd mysticism. Some of the stories in the collection I liked are Mr. Fiddlehead about an imaginary friend that grows up with its creator and changes her life. Another story is about a man who adopts an exceptional dog who causes some bizarre changes in the persons life, Friend's Best Man. The Jane Fonda Room is about a trip to hell where the person gets to watch all of Jane Fonda's movies for eternity. A Wheel In The Desert, The Moon On Some Swings is about a man trying to capture his last important images through photography as he goes blind. The writing in these short stories deals with issues like death, sorrow, mysticism, and the every day moments that seem to stretch into forever. There is a real sense of magic and wonder in the writing. Even with the magic and wonder it touches on ordinary every day life things and the present. This makes for some exceptional fantasy writing. His writing is both different than most other writers and touches close to the heart.

I don't often read short stories. Most of the time when I read short stories, it is to find new writers which I hven't read. I will pick up a recent anthology of science fiction or fantasy writers and look for short stories by people I haven't read before. After I read a few of the stories, I will look in the back of the anthology to read the brief biography of the writer that is usually included. If both the short story and the biography are interesting, I will often go look for books by the author so I can read them.

Anthologies also help when I have to find out about a style of literature which I have never read before like Brazilian Literature, or Scandinavian literature. These often give me a jumping off point to find other authors. Also because the stories are short, I can skip over the ones I don't like and be selective about which ones I am going to read.

Short stories are a very good point for looking for new authors. The general publishing pattern for many writers is to write several short stories to establish an audience before they attempt to write novels. Many publishing houses will not as readily accept manuscripts from novelists who have not written short stories first.

___________________________________________________________________

After looking through Bloggers, Blogs of Note; I found three major science fiction and fantasy authors, David Brin, Robert J. Sawyer, and Neil Gaiman who used blogger as their blog platform. It is one of the little things which happens when you look through lists obsessively.

___________________________________________________________________

I found another directory of blog literature sites this time with over 700 blogs listed. I am applying for membership to this list. It is really, really big.

http://metaxucafe.com/cafe/find_members/index/

___________________________________________________________________

I also pinged my site today using http://www.pingoat.com/ to announce that I had updated my site. This is supposed to increase traffic to this site by letting search engines and directories know that you are keeping your site up to to date.

Neil Gaiman reads short story

An interesting short story, "Babycakes."

Elizabeth Moon and Some More Random Thoughts.

I am about halfway through Moon Flights by Elizabeth Moon, a short story collection. I enjoyed reading her earlier science fiction and fantasy. Both the Deeds of Paksenarion series, and the Vatta's War series are very good. There is a short story called Say Cheese which is set in the Vatta's war setting. This collection is a mix of swords and sorcery and military science fiction. So far, I've liked "Fools Gold" about a miser turned into a dragon, and "Politics" which is about the politics of a group of marines in the future. There are fifteen stories and an introduction by Anne McCaffrey who she has collaborated with.

I've finished adding images to each of my posts. These are all public domain images with their copyrights removed or just in the public domain because of age. I got most of them from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page .

It is fun to look through this site, there are a lot of very interesting images. Most of the images aren't particularly modern, but they are free and in my mind free is good. They are good for things like bookmarks, newsletter headers, and other minor items.

I haven't found any new places to post my site. I might go through and look at my keywords again to see how they might be improved. I am working a little bit each day on making this site better.

I just went and added a listing for Book Calendar to the social network site http://www.technorati.com/