Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Viola's Bookshelf. Viola’s Bookshelf is a project blog dedicated to publishing altered out of copyright, or creative commons licensed fiction, where the character’s genders have been reversed. The idea behind this is to help provide an understanding of gender construction in fiction and to an extent in everyday life.
Labels: fiction, sex/gender
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Rubbing the Cloudy Bottle of the Audio Genie
Starship Sofa has had some fun bits of fiction recently. You can grab it from their audio page. I'd especially recommend The Second Coming of Jasmine Fitzgerald by Peter Watts in which a doctor is involved in the psychological evaluation of a woman accused of the bloody murder of her husband and, in the best fiction tradition, discovers there's more to the case than there first appears. I've just listened to We See Things Differently by Bruce Sterling. It's not really science-fiction, more the reportage/memoir of an Egyptian journalist in a near future where an Islamic caliphate has risen to replace both Russia and the United States as the global superpower. We travel with him to what remains of the States as he seeks an audience with a rock star who energises his audiences with songs reminding them of what they once were.
If you check out Episode 75 on L Sprague De Camp, even though it doesn't mention it anywhere, the last thirty minutes is an episode of one of those sci-fi radio dramas from the middle of the last century about big game hunters time travelling to bag some dinosaurs. It's pulp fun.
I'm a bit behind with the stuff over at Escape Pod.
The Color of a Brontosaurus by Paul E. Martens is also a story involving time-travel and dinosaurs, a somewhat clichéd story about a man looking desperately for time travellers so they can take him to the past to see dinosaurs. Some of the more interesting diversions are sadly ignored and the ending is fairly predictable but it's still a fun take on the old idea. Artifice and Intelligence by Tim Pratt is about whether the danger of self-aware machines is less Skynet and more just boredom and whether there's much of a difference. I enjoyed the way that what initially seemed like a number of unconnected vignettes came together, and there are some interesting characters, like the Indian A.I. and the techno-pagan who's more than happy to let power corrupt her. Friction by Will McIntosh is an odd story of an unnamed race on an unnamed planet at an unspecified time who live in fear of their bodies falling apart due to the friction of joint movement. A philosopher who has made it his purpose in life to read the works of his forebears, carved on to an impossibly long wall around the planet, must decide whether the risks he incurs in friction burns by engaging in an act of charity are outweighed by the benefits if he succeeds.
All well worth your time to have a listen.
If you check out Episode 75 on L Sprague De Camp, even though it doesn't mention it anywhere, the last thirty minutes is an episode of one of those sci-fi radio dramas from the middle of the last century about big game hunters time travelling to bag some dinosaurs. It's pulp fun.
I'm a bit behind with the stuff over at Escape Pod.
The Color of a Brontosaurus by Paul E. Martens is also a story involving time-travel and dinosaurs, a somewhat clichéd story about a man looking desperately for time travellers so they can take him to the past to see dinosaurs. Some of the more interesting diversions are sadly ignored and the ending is fairly predictable but it's still a fun take on the old idea. Artifice and Intelligence by Tim Pratt is about whether the danger of self-aware machines is less Skynet and more just boredom and whether there's much of a difference. I enjoyed the way that what initially seemed like a number of unconnected vignettes came together, and there are some interesting characters, like the Indian A.I. and the techno-pagan who's more than happy to let power corrupt her. Friction by Will McIntosh is an odd story of an unnamed race on an unnamed planet at an unspecified time who live in fear of their bodies falling apart due to the friction of joint movement. A philosopher who has made it his purpose in life to read the works of his forebears, carved on to an impossibly long wall around the planet, must decide whether the risks he incurs in friction burns by engaging in an act of charity are outweighed by the benefits if he succeeds.
All well worth your time to have a listen.
Labels: fantasy fiction, fiction, podcasts, science fiction
Monday, December 17, 2007
Polishing the Shiny Monkey in the Audio Cockpit
Can I interest Sir/Madam/Both/Neither/Ostrich in some audio fiction? What would take SiMaBoNO's fancy?
How about something in the 'is evil an inherent or learned behaviour' vein? I have an Me and My Shadow by Mike Resnick. It's all the rage, down our way. Or perhaps something a little more traditional SiMaBoNO? Don't turn your nose up please, when you've tried our Stu by Bruce McAllister you won't go to anyone else again.
Or perhaps SiMaBoNO wants something a little bit stronger? I have a Connecting Door by Richard E. Dansky tapping into that situation we've all faced at sometime in our life, with too-thin walls separating us late at night from some inconsiderate person and, in true horror style, suggesting that asking them to keep the noise down might be a bad idea. Or maybe SiMaBoNO would rather try Memories of the Knacker's Yard by Ian Creasey, in which a world weary cop has to visit ghost-town to find the victim of a serial killer in the hopes they can tell him who killed them. A fine vintage, as I'm sure SiMaBoNO would agree.
Pardon? You want what ? I think SiMaBoNO has us mistaken for another establishment, We don't do any of that here, the vitamin C from the Kiwi Fruit can cause a burning sensation for hours afterwards. I think SiMaBoNO will find SiMaBoNO's needs more adequately served at an establishment like Air Out My Shorts, down on the left, just past the Hooting Yard. If you pop into the pub and check down the back of the Starship Sofa I've heard they are podcasting Michael Moorcock fiction. And if SiMaBoNO can't find something out of all that to satisfy SiMaBoNO then there's just no helping some people.
How about something in the 'is evil an inherent or learned behaviour' vein? I have an Me and My Shadow by Mike Resnick. It's all the rage, down our way. Or perhaps something a little more traditional SiMaBoNO? Don't turn your nose up please, when you've tried our Stu by Bruce McAllister you won't go to anyone else again.
Or perhaps SiMaBoNO wants something a little bit stronger? I have a Connecting Door by Richard E. Dansky tapping into that situation we've all faced at sometime in our life, with too-thin walls separating us late at night from some inconsiderate person and, in true horror style, suggesting that asking them to keep the noise down might be a bad idea. Or maybe SiMaBoNO would rather try Memories of the Knacker's Yard by Ian Creasey, in which a world weary cop has to visit ghost-town to find the victim of a serial killer in the hopes they can tell him who killed them. A fine vintage, as I'm sure SiMaBoNO would agree.
Pardon? You want what ? I think SiMaBoNO has us mistaken for another establishment, We don't do any of that here, the vitamin C from the Kiwi Fruit can cause a burning sensation for hours afterwards. I think SiMaBoNO will find SiMaBoNO's needs more adequately served at an establishment like Air Out My Shorts, down on the left, just past the Hooting Yard. If you pop into the pub and check down the back of the Starship Sofa I've heard they are podcasting Michael Moorcock fiction. And if SiMaBoNO can't find something out of all that to satisfy SiMaBoNO then there's just no helping some people.
Labels: fantasy fiction, fiction, horror fiction, podcasts, science fiction
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Why it's a tragedy that writers concentrate so much on misery at the expense of comedy. And not just prose either, how many long running TV shows have you seen where after a few seasons the program turns in on itself and becomes a never-ending gallery of horrors and pain, based on the mistaken idea that tragedy automatically elevates the tale?
Labels: authors, fiction, philosophy
Saturday, August 04, 2007
Crying Over Imaginary People
Escape Pod has done well recently with some really great stories.
There's Cinderella Suicide by Samantha Henderson, a treasure hunt tale in a cyberpunk alternate Australia on a world that had it's technological revolution almost concurrently with it's industrial one. It uses a dialect that, like A Clockwork Orange , might take you a while to slip into, but then you should spin with it all shipshape mine droogs.
Squonk The Dragon and Squonk The Apprentice by P.M. Butler are, strictly speaking, stories for children, but adults can enjoy them too. Squonk is a dragon, abandoned as an egg and hatched and brought up by Mrs Tweedle-Chirp, a redoubtable little bird. Their tree in the forest is shared with Wendel the Wizard who is, based on dragon's usual eating habits, initially not keen on his neighbours. The title of the second story should be enough to give you an idea of it's contents. Very funny.
The Giving Plague by David Brin is a clever story about a scientist who discovers a virus that might be considered 'good', it encourages generosity. And what happens when a 'good' virus meets a 'bad' person? It's a bit long but still worth a listen.
Then there's Conversations With and About My Electric Toothbrush by Derek Zumsteg. It's a funny and short story about a sentient electric toothbrush that wants more out of it's life than just keeping it's owner's mouth clean. It's the insane optimism that makes me laugh.
And the one I listened to most recently was Ej-Es by Nancy Kress and wonderfully read by Sheri Mann Stewart. It starts off on fairly standard lines, explorers find the remains of a human colony, long ago fallen apart and now just a few near savage survivors. But it is one of those stories where everything hinges on the last five minutes and the reversal of the usual trope, terribly logical based on the preceding story but still somehow unexpected and moving.
Escape Pod also tries to broadcast the nominees for the Hugo Awards, in the short story category, something I don't particularly care about. They tend to always sound weaker than the rest of the stories we get throughout the rest of the year. I enjoyed The House Beyond Your Sky by Benjamin Rosenbaum, which marries Iain M. Banks crazy science-fiction pyrotechnics with domestic abuse, although it's arguably a story easier to understand read rather than heard.
There was only one story they couldn't get the rights for, Neil Gaiman's How to Talk to Girls at Parties , but luckily Neil's done it himself and stuck it up at his site. It's a funny story about how boys are from Mars and girls from somewhere else that astronomers aren't even arguing over what to call it yet.
That should keep you out of mischief for a while. If, on the other hand, you're looking for mischief, you'll be wanting Air Out My Shorts.
There's Cinderella Suicide by Samantha Henderson, a treasure hunt tale in a cyberpunk alternate Australia on a world that had it's technological revolution almost concurrently with it's industrial one. It uses a dialect that, like A Clockwork Orange , might take you a while to slip into, but then you should spin with it all shipshape mine droogs.
Squonk The Dragon and Squonk The Apprentice by P.M. Butler are, strictly speaking, stories for children, but adults can enjoy them too. Squonk is a dragon, abandoned as an egg and hatched and brought up by Mrs Tweedle-Chirp, a redoubtable little bird. Their tree in the forest is shared with Wendel the Wizard who is, based on dragon's usual eating habits, initially not keen on his neighbours. The title of the second story should be enough to give you an idea of it's contents. Very funny.
The Giving Plague by David Brin is a clever story about a scientist who discovers a virus that might be considered 'good', it encourages generosity. And what happens when a 'good' virus meets a 'bad' person? It's a bit long but still worth a listen.
Then there's Conversations With and About My Electric Toothbrush by Derek Zumsteg. It's a funny and short story about a sentient electric toothbrush that wants more out of it's life than just keeping it's owner's mouth clean. It's the insane optimism that makes me laugh.
And the one I listened to most recently was Ej-Es by Nancy Kress and wonderfully read by Sheri Mann Stewart. It starts off on fairly standard lines, explorers find the remains of a human colony, long ago fallen apart and now just a few near savage survivors. But it is one of those stories where everything hinges on the last five minutes and the reversal of the usual trope, terribly logical based on the preceding story but still somehow unexpected and moving.
Escape Pod also tries to broadcast the nominees for the Hugo Awards, in the short story category, something I don't particularly care about. They tend to always sound weaker than the rest of the stories we get throughout the rest of the year. I enjoyed The House Beyond Your Sky by Benjamin Rosenbaum, which marries Iain M. Banks crazy science-fiction pyrotechnics with domestic abuse, although it's arguably a story easier to understand read rather than heard.
There was only one story they couldn't get the rights for, Neil Gaiman's How to Talk to Girls at Parties , but luckily Neil's done it himself and stuck it up at his site. It's a funny story about how boys are from Mars and girls from somewhere else that astronomers aren't even arguing over what to call it yet.
That should keep you out of mischief for a while. If, on the other hand, you're looking for mischief, you'll be wanting Air Out My Shorts.
Labels: fiction, humour, podcasts, science fiction
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
OK, this might work...
Harry Enfield as Dirk Gently. Harry. Dirk.
The second book is a load of pish, but the first one, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency isn't too bad, though most of the funniest jokes come from the authorial voice, not any of the characters. And I probably would have gone with Richard E. Grant myself but never mind. But as Harry Enfield has spent most of the last seven years trying to make people forget he was ever funny, is he going to be any good in this?
The second book is a load of pish, but the first one, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency isn't too bad, though most of the funniest jokes come from the authorial voice, not any of the characters. And I probably would have gone with Richard E. Grant myself but never mind. But as Harry Enfield has spent most of the last seven years trying to make people forget he was ever funny, is he going to be any good in this?
Labels: books, Douglas Adams, fiction, radio, science fiction
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
You should be listening to Starship Sofa anyway, if you have any interest in science-fiction that is. But their H.G. Wells episode has the famous Mercury Theatre episode, which caused such hysteria in the United States in the 1930s, appended to the end. Beats Spielberg and Cruises effort into a cocked hat.
Labels: books, fiction, H.G. Wells, podcasts, radio, science fiction
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Lesbian pulp fiction covers retouched to include Janeway and Seven from Star Trek: Voyager.
Labels: fiction, lesbian, Star Trek
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Hello again my beautiful children. These are the words of your saviour. Read them. Devour them. Then go out and seek bloody beauty. Oh yes.
Things have been a-changin' recently and, like most of my blog buddies I've been going through some ennui and dissatisfaction. I've had a fairly fallow period in the last month or so in cultural terms, never did get round to seeing Children of Men while I'm hoping to find some time to see Pan's Labyrinth. The books I'm reading at the moment don't particularly inspire me to write about them or their themes (I'm currently slogging through The Shape of Things to Come by Greil Marcus and finding it not as fun as his mighty Lipstick Traces). I may try and write a post at some point to explain why I spent around four days depressed after reading A Christmas Carol but I suspect that would just depress me more.
I did take advantage of the weak American economy to get ahold of Alan Moore's Lost Girls but was eventually unimpressed. Moore's script is all right but I just did not enjoy the artwork of his partner Melinda Gebbie at all. The vast majority of her panels come off as flat and don't give any sense of depth at all, so much so that I'm still in two minds about whether it's actually supposed to look like that or whether it's some clever metatextual commentary on the one-dimensional nature of characters in pornography. But all the characters, with the exception of the plump Monsieur Rougeur, seem to be cut from the same body template, quite often it's only the hair colour that distinguishes between the three main characters, despite the fact that Dorothy is in her late teens, Wendy her late thirties and Alice somewhere past fifty.
Televisionwise I'm finding Heroes to be entertaining and fun, after a strangely unengaging pilot. It's great to see a show that can support a large cast, even if it means that individual stories run as slowly as a typical episode of Lost . I'm only up to the fourth or fifth episode so am hoping that as I watch the rest and catch up that we'll actually get some backstory and explanation for exactly what is going on, that we're not in for another Lost -style 'going round in circles'-jerk. But of course it's Battlestar Galactica that is front and centre in my affections at the moment. For the first and early parts of the second season I was insistent that there needed to be an overarching plan for the entire show or else it would be rubbish. Since then it's become obvious that they are making things up as they go along and, strangely, I'm prefering that. The free-form approach does have some drawbacks, namely in those middle-block standalone episodes, but I'm coming to realise that having a five year or seven year show bible that details exactly what happens when is no more a guarantee of good stuff than doing it on the fly. For more BSG-related discussion, check out the Read Less, More BSG vlog. Show-related critique and gender theory through fluffy animals.
Things have been a-changin' recently and, like most of my blog buddies I've been going through some ennui and dissatisfaction. I've had a fairly fallow period in the last month or so in cultural terms, never did get round to seeing Children of Men while I'm hoping to find some time to see Pan's Labyrinth. The books I'm reading at the moment don't particularly inspire me to write about them or their themes (I'm currently slogging through The Shape of Things to Come by Greil Marcus and finding it not as fun as his mighty Lipstick Traces). I may try and write a post at some point to explain why I spent around four days depressed after reading A Christmas Carol but I suspect that would just depress me more.
I did take advantage of the weak American economy to get ahold of Alan Moore's Lost Girls but was eventually unimpressed. Moore's script is all right but I just did not enjoy the artwork of his partner Melinda Gebbie at all. The vast majority of her panels come off as flat and don't give any sense of depth at all, so much so that I'm still in two minds about whether it's actually supposed to look like that or whether it's some clever metatextual commentary on the one-dimensional nature of characters in pornography. But all the characters, with the exception of the plump Monsieur Rougeur, seem to be cut from the same body template, quite often it's only the hair colour that distinguishes between the three main characters, despite the fact that Dorothy is in her late teens, Wendy her late thirties and Alice somewhere past fifty.
Televisionwise I'm finding Heroes to be entertaining and fun, after a strangely unengaging pilot. It's great to see a show that can support a large cast, even if it means that individual stories run as slowly as a typical episode of Lost . I'm only up to the fourth or fifth episode so am hoping that as I watch the rest and catch up that we'll actually get some backstory and explanation for exactly what is going on, that we're not in for another Lost -style 'going round in circles'-jerk. But of course it's Battlestar Galactica that is front and centre in my affections at the moment. For the first and early parts of the second season I was insistent that there needed to be an overarching plan for the entire show or else it would be rubbish. Since then it's become obvious that they are making things up as they go along and, strangely, I'm prefering that. The free-form approach does have some drawbacks, namely in those middle-block standalone episodes, but I'm coming to realise that having a five year or seven year show bible that details exactly what happens when is no more a guarantee of good stuff than doing it on the fly. For more BSG-related discussion, check out the Read Less, More BSG vlog. Show-related critique and gender theory through fluffy animals.
Labels: Alan Moore, Battlestar Galactica, fiction, Heroes, pornography, Television
Thursday, November 09, 2006
If there's one aspect of the job of being a librarian that I find difficult to get people to understand it's that it's not all glamour, it's not all fast cars, loose women and the legal right to torture and kill anyone you don't like. There's boring things you have to do. For example, at the moment I'm having to buy a couple of thousand quidlingtons of what we call 'Family Saga' books. I'm not sure if they exist or sell so well outside of the UK but they follow a basic pattern, they're about 400 pages long, they have a generic cover in which a young girl stands in a working-class street circa 1932 and in the book someone goes through absolute misery in the period of time between the end of the Boer War and the start of WW2.
Normally the main character is a girl. Sometimes at least one of the parents is missing by the time she's born, maybe he went off to fight in the war. If Dad is still around he's usually an alcoholic and Mum is killed by him soon after giving birth. If Dad isn't around then Mum will be the alcoholic and blame the daughter for driving Dad away, until about five minutes before the vicious old bat dies of old age. If the little girl has any brothers and sisters then they'll all die of cholera or the lurgie and leave her alone, unless she has an older brother who's already sixteen, he'll be really nice to her and then go off and die at one of the big slaughters of the First World War. She'll celebrate puberty with a couple of rapes and get chucked out of home by any parental figure still around. The next thirty years will be a number of ill-advised liasons, any nice men will get killed before she has a chance for any real fun, she'll marry someone who'll use her as a punching bag but, if she can last until the Blitz then he'll get killed in a collapsing house that's been bombed by the Frtitz, leaving the way clear for our heroine, now in her forties, to get it on with the emotionally constipated Air Raid Warden. Only at this point she'll get cancer and die in one of those National Health Service hospitals that that nice Mister Attlee gave us.
These books are very popular with women from late-middle-age onwards. I believe this is because they like misery porn and this is why such women are evil.
I'm also impressed that Sheelagh Kelly, one of these writers, can write books with a character called Probyn Kilmaster and get away with it.
Normally the main character is a girl. Sometimes at least one of the parents is missing by the time she's born, maybe he went off to fight in the war. If Dad is still around he's usually an alcoholic and Mum is killed by him soon after giving birth. If Dad isn't around then Mum will be the alcoholic and blame the daughter for driving Dad away, until about five minutes before the vicious old bat dies of old age. If the little girl has any brothers and sisters then they'll all die of cholera or the lurgie and leave her alone, unless she has an older brother who's already sixteen, he'll be really nice to her and then go off and die at one of the big slaughters of the First World War. She'll celebrate puberty with a couple of rapes and get chucked out of home by any parental figure still around. The next thirty years will be a number of ill-advised liasons, any nice men will get killed before she has a chance for any real fun, she'll marry someone who'll use her as a punching bag but, if she can last until the Blitz then he'll get killed in a collapsing house that's been bombed by the Frtitz, leaving the way clear for our heroine, now in her forties, to get it on with the emotionally constipated Air Raid Warden. Only at this point she'll get cancer and die in one of those National Health Service hospitals that that nice Mister Attlee gave us.
These books are very popular with women from late-middle-age onwards. I believe this is because they like misery porn and this is why such women are evil.
I'm also impressed that Sheelagh Kelly, one of these writers, can write books with a character called Probyn Kilmaster and get away with it.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Worst book reviews ever!.
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare:
"i just read this book. everybody like always talks about how great it is and everything. but i don't think so. like, it's been done before, right?? soooo cliched. omg."
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare:
"i just read this book. everybody like always talks about how great it is and everything. but i don't think so. like, it's been done before, right?? soooo cliched. omg."
Sunday, October 29, 2006
It's Hallowe'ee'ee'ee'ee'een (I always start spelling that word with no clear idea about how to stop). In America this is an anaemic bloodless festival dreamt up by dentists to pay for their kid's college education. In the United Kingdom the children's hunt for sweets is merely a cultural custard skin over a deeper psychological belief that the dead fucking walk . This is why I doubt that Rapturology will ever find much root amongst the dour Protestants and CofE, God has already forsaken them.
Anyway, if you want an All Hallows Eve spookening, head over to Pseudopod. There have only been nine episodes so far, a couple of them were misfires but most of them are satisfyingly eeky.
Anyway, if you want an All Hallows Eve spookening, head over to Pseudopod. There have only been nine episodes so far, a couple of them were misfires but most of them are satisfyingly eeky.
