Balls and Walnuts
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Monthly Archives: June 2005
Paging Miss Manners
Have I mentioned my raging crush on Olivia Hussey?
‘Twas Olivia’s Juliet (in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet) who first made my heart race. How, how could she speak words of love to that pasty-faced, mealy-mouthed Leonard Whiting? Let’s just say I’ve gotten very good at squeezing my eyes shut during Whiting’s stage time. Also, I’ve developed a preternaturally good sense of timing during the balcony scene, allowing me to unstop my ears for Juliet’s, “Swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon.”
Juliet was a sweetie, but it was Olivia’s Mary who won my eternal love.
Here, I was going to run off at the mouth about how Romeo and Juliet is Juliet’s tragedy, and Jesus of Nazareth is Mary’s tragedy; but then I realized I don’t know crap about Romeo and Juliet, nor do I know much about Christianity. Sure, I read the Gospels in college, just to prove a point to Weyton Tam (a high school friend who was certain I’d convert if I read the New Testament), but when you get right down to it the story doesn’t stick to me. I’m sure I’ll get the details wrong — on R&J as well as Testament II — and I’ll have to fall back on that WEAK excuse, “It’s my blog and these are my opinions, even if they are based on my imperfect memory of the facts.”
Well, I don’t need anyone’s help to make me look like a fool, least of all my own.
So instead of drawing ill-advised parallels between Mary and Juliet, I’m going to change the subject and ask your advice on a tangentially related matter.
A patient called in a few days ago, asking for medication for a recurring problem. I phoned in a prescription for the same medications I’ve used in the past — the same ones which have helped her repeatedly — and I had my receptionist squeeze her into the schedule ASAP. Today.
“Hi!” I said. “How are you feeling?”
Her boyfriend, she said, took her to his pastor, who “laid on hands and healed me”. (Mind you, she’d started the medications the day I phoned them in.) As I proceeded to examine her and pronounce her well, she said, “Oh, thank you, Jesus. Praise Jesus. Thank you Jesus.”
I kept a civil tongue. “Whatever works,” I said.
“Have you been saved?”
Not even a I hope you don’t mind my asking but. There it was, in my lap; and you know, I’m tired of saying, “I’m Jewish,” only to be told condescendingly, “Oh, you people are very close to God,” or, “The people of the Book! How fortunate for you!” How good for me, even if I am going to hell.
Instead, I stupidly went for the funny line. (And it wasn’t even all that funny.)
“Trust me, I’m beyond salvation.”
I might as well have bent over.
“Oh, Dr. Hoffman, no one’s too late for salvation. Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever.” You get the point.
But, honestly, what am I supposed to say? I’m a Jew (even if I am agnostic, which my rabbi says is perfectly okay — I have a Jewish ethos, and that’s all that matters. Hey, he’s Reformed). I don’t believe in salvation, the divinity of Christ, the resurrection, heaven, or hell. I’m unconvinced as to the historicity of Christ. I appreciate the Christian philosophy as embodied in the Sermon on the Mount, but that’s as far as it goes. If I were forced to convert, like one of my conversos ancestors, I’d become a Jeffersonian Christian.
I’m sure there’s a correct answer to my question. Much of Miss Manners’ book is devoted to polite responses to rude questions. I’ve even read an earlier edition of her book, but — and I know I mentioned this recently — I have a memory like a sieve.
Maybe next time someone asks if I’ve been saved, I should say, “Yes, thank you very much; the Archfiend Himself has drawn my blood, and I have signed my name upon his parchment; yea, I walk with Belial, with Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies; I cavort with the Prince of Light and Darkness, the Foul Redeemer, the Monarch of Hell; and he has cleft me with his member, cold as winter’s ice, and left his mark upon me. How about you?”
I mean, if I’m going to be funny, I might as well be funny.
D.
Born-again virgins and other sex dwarves
Isn’t it nice
Sugar and spice
Luring disco dollies
To a life of vice
Listening to Soft Cell’s Sex Dwarf today, my spaghetti bowl brain meandered over to John Mason, wannabe groom to runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks. Mason, you’ll recall, declared himself a born-again virgin. Stop snickering. I’ve heard all the jokes, and none of ’em were very funny. Rather than ridicule the guy, I began to wonder what would drive Mason to take a vow of chastity, and to call himself a “born-again virgin.” Ignore for the moment the obvious explanation (he’s a newbie born-again Christian, and thinks “born-again” is a way cool adjective), and consider the possibility that maybe he really, truly wants to be a virgin again.
And now, ask yourself this question: if you could have it all back in a Samantha Stevens nose-twitch, would you take the offer? Would you recapture your lost innocence?
All of her lovers
All talk of her notes
And the flowers
That they never sent
And wasn’t she easy
And isn’t she
Pretty in pink
The one who insists
He was first in the line
Is the last to
Remember her name
There’s a bit in The Rocky Horror Picture Show where Frank-N-Furter sings, “I want to come again,” and the audience responds, “So does Brad!” The joke being that Frank-N-Furter has just deflowered not only Janet (Susan Sarandon) but also her beau, Brad (Barry Bostwick), and Brad isn’t complaining. Rocky Horror delights in the loss of innocence, and it’s not alone. Think of The Graduate, Summer of ’42, Dangerous Liaisons, and, for you youngsters, American Pie. Here in America, anyway, we really seem to love cherry-popping.
But it’s a love-hate relationship. Apparently, we draw the line at single-digit-age homosexual pedophilia; Fox News convicted Jackson even after he’d been acquitted, and that seemed to be the mob’s reaction, too. Only the cognoscenti — like author-lawyer Andrew Vacchs — seemed unsurprised by the acquittal.
and you shouldn’t have to pay for your love
with your bones and your flesh…
Loss of innocence isn’t necessarily sexual. When Jackson’s “little friends” think back to their time at Neverland, what will sting the most — memories of undercover cuddles (at least), or of their parents, who put them in that position (and for what?)
Deflowering is an inadequate metaphor for loss of virginity, which is itself an inadequate metaphor for the loss of innocence. This has nothing to do with sex. It has everything to do with the sudden ejection from childhood’s illusory sense of security.
Abuse victims lose it in one acid instant. The rest of us lose it by degrees. For me, two moments stand out above all others. The first occurred soon after my high school girlfriend and I broke up. We’d only been together for three years, but at 19, that seemed like forever. There came an evening when we finally said goodbye to one another for good. For keeps. We wouldn’t see each other ever again — quite possible, too, since I was going to college 400 miles away. And I felt like a bird kicked from the nest long before he’d been fledged.
The second time: roughly two years later. I’d been with Karen for about a year, and we were sure we’d get married. We had it all planned out — I’d been accepted to med school at Stanford, and she’d been accepted to Stanford’s graduate program in Chemical Physics. We were down in Southern California visiting my parents over Christmas vacation when she got sick. A bit of numbness at her ankle, spreading up her leg. Once she got to the hospital, things happened fast. On the way to X-ray (this was pre-MRI, mind you), a nurse gave her a shot — “To shrink the tumor,” she said. They let me stay with Karen in the hospital room that night, which surprised me since we weren’t married and this hospital had a bunch of nuns running around in it. They treated us both really nice. This was scary.
I think I had my big moment the following night. The tumor scare had passed, but the diagnoses the doctor tossed around weren’t too reassuring (even at that early date, I think MS was fairly high on the list). So we didn’t know what was happening, but it seemed increasingly likely that it would not go away anytime soon.
That night (don’t laugh) it struck me that life wasn’t fair. Yup. That was the first time it hit home. It should have hit home a long time before that (another story for another time), but I guess it never did.
She waves
She buttons your shirt
The traffic
Is waiting outside
She hands you this coat
She gives you her clothes
These cars collide
Maybe we focus on the sexual angle because that, at least, is a pleasant (or at least humorous!) memory. And, maybe for some people, the loss of virginity does equate with the loss of innocence. But for me, and I suspect for most people, loss of innocence meant coming to terms with the real world. I wouldn’t take that innocence back no matter how much you paid me — because it would only mean having to lose it all over again.
John Mason: abstain all you like. You can’t regain your flower. You wouldn’t want to.
D.
Howdy, neighbor!
A very special welcome for the lovely, talented, and soon to be published novelist Lisa Adams, who I hope will be stopping by sometime soon. She may never come back here, or she may beat me up the next time she sees me. You never know with some folks.
Lisa works as the Yurok Indian Tribe’s in-house counsel. That means we have two lawyers here. Scott, Lisa. Lisa, Scott. This painting is for the both of you:
I’m sure either of you could supply the identity of the judge in question. And I’m certain this is all quite innocent — doubtless he’s reviewing some vital piece of evidence.
I’d write more today, but I was up late last night taking this
out of this
I pinched that X-ray off the web here at emedicine, since in my opinion, image-napping is a far smaller sin than violating doctor-patient confidentiality.
I’ll try to do better tomorrow. Hi Lisa!
D.
Ancestor worship
Digging Up Donald by Steven Pirie
Keith Pirie (Steve to his publisher) is one of those fellas you know is going to make it big some day. Oprah big. (Her book club! Jeez.) I suck up to him every chance I get so that, when that day comes, I’ll be riding on his coattails. As in, “Hey, Doug. Here’s a used tissue I found in Oprah’s wastebasket. Think you can make something of it?”
So you may be wondering why it has taken me so long to review his book. I dunno, it may have something to do with the fact that we’re living down here in Crescent City and 95% of my books are in the money pit-cum-children’s tuition charity fund for my contractor, i.e., the house in Harbor. Out of sight, out of mind. And, to continue the trite saws, better late than never.
More to the point, I have a memory like a sieve. Not the kind of thing you want to hear from your doctor, right? To which I must say: That’s what the chart is for, bucko. I have over 2000 active patients. Do you really want me to trust my memory, especially as regards your history of anaphlyactic shock with penicillin? Hmm? Anyway, I have been known to reread books three or four times and be surprised by the ending each time. Sometimes the old Warner Brothers cartoons knock me for a loop.
What I’m trying to say is, I read Donald last October, and that’s a really long time in Doug years.
Without further ado, here’s the review I posted in Amazon, with additional commentary in green.
Digging Up Donald was on my stack with Bruce Sterling’s Distraction, China Mieville’s King Rat, Robert Rankin’s The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, and Nathanael West’s A Cool Million, yet it was Donald I kept coming back to. The comparison to Terry Pratchett is most apt, not only in the style of humor, but also in the manner in which both authors build up a nice “what the hell is going on here?” tension.
Distraction: I never got past the first chapter. Boring.
King Rat: This is one I really wanted to like. Mieville has talent. Trouble was, one hundred pages into it I realized I didn’t give a damn about anyone, and there were other books I wanted to read more — like Donald.
Hollow Bunnies: Wonderful title, and the first chapter is a corker, but it fell down after that. I lost interest after about one hundred pages.
A Cool Million: I finished it after I finished Donald. If I can make one recommendation to all the writers here: if you haven’t read West, read him. Start with Miss Lonelyhearts, move on to The Day of the Locust. The Library of America collection is well worth the $.
Donald: I would have finished it even if Keith wasn’t a friend. Donald met my two most important criteria for a novel: I cared about the characters, and it was fun. (I shouldn’t be too strident about the ‘fun’ part. I’m a Le Carre fan, but I cannot think of his novels as fun.)
Back to my Amazon review:
This book has a host of fine points: domineering matriarchs; a sex-crazed reverend with, shall we say, unwholesome intentions for the world; young love; not-quite-so-young lust; a bar fight in the land of the dead; high tea in hell . . . I’d say more, but a large part of the fun lies in figuring out Pirie’s particular brand of mythology.
That’s for sure. Don’t expect the usual thinly veiled warp of Greek or Norse mythology. Keith’s universe is Keith’s and no one else’s.
My favorite part of the book was the well-developed relationship between young Robert and the Reverend’s daughter, Joan. These passages were surprisingly sensitive and insightful.
All in all, a fine read!
Good heavens. Is that the best I could do? What a lame ass review. Anyway: young love does it for me every time. I remember how it feels — the intoxication, the madness of it. Clearly, Keith remembers, too. I was/am so taken with Robert and Joan that I will be tickled silly if Keith puts them center stage in the sequel; and, really, my main disappointment with Donald (almost a spoiler!) came towards the end, when I found myself wanting to see far more of both of them.
Are you listening, Keith? (Keith apparently hates blogs.) More Joan and Robert! And move that WONDERFUL animation you have on your Writers BBS homepage over to your website — now!
D.
No! Not Eminem! ANYTHING but Eminem!
As an early Father’s Day present, I asked my wife and son to come with me to Eureka for the afternoon. I wrote until 1PM, so it’s not like I was slacking. Primary point of this trip: Borders Bookstore. I’ve griped about this before, but we have to drive 90 minutes to get to an actual bookstore.
I tried to find books by some of the folks I’ve linked to. Sad to say I couldn’t find anything by Gwenda Bond or Scott Westerfield, but they did have John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War (but I already own that!) Nor did they have Keith Pirie’s Digging Up Donald, but I’m beginning to despair of finding that in a US store. Which reminds me, I need to give Keith’s book a good plug here sometime soon.
Here’s what we got:
make love!*
*the bruce campbell way
by Bruce Campbell
gun, with occasional music
by jonathan lethem (what’s with all the lower case letters, anyway?)
Tales of Neveryon
by Samuel R. Delany
Nightfall
Isaac Asimov & Robert Silverberg
plus a Catherine Asaro fantasy (The Charmed Sphere) and a Piers Anthony fantasy (Being a Green Mother), both for Jake. Surprisingly, Nightfall was his pick, too. I say ‘surprisingly’ cuz he usually doesn’t read SF (unless Piers Anthony wrote it).
I’m still trying to recover from the shock of learning that our government has used pop tart Christina Aguilera’s music as a form of torture at Gitmo.
You gotta rub me the right way honey
I’m a genie in a bottle baby
Come, come, come on and let me out
Message to the Feds: if you ever want to break me, put me in a padded room with a continuous loop of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Hell, just show me the CD and I’ll talk.
D.
Help a fellow blogger
Here’s a link to blogger Hossein Derakhshan, AKA Hoder, an Iranian-born Canadian presently planning a trip back to Iran. He recently posted this plea for help should he be detained, or worse.
I have no idea where this fellow falls on the political spectrum (I haven’t read that far down in his blog) nor do I care. He’s a journalist who speaks his mind and he’s fearful of the price he’ll pay for it. I’m going to follow his progress, and I’ll hope you do the same.
D.
Harris Beach
I had a productive morning. Finished a 1300+ word scene (tough one, too), finished the week’s laundry, drank two cups of coffee. Aaaah.
Also cool: we increased Jake’s dose of propranolol last night and today he felt better. Yippee! He felt well enough that we drove up to Oregon and spent several hours at Harris Beach State Park. Currently in bloom: foxglove, daisies, salmonberry, milkweed. Present year round: pillow moss, horsetail, poison oak. We had a clear blue sky, temp in the high seventies, and a stiff wind.
Nothing of note in the tidepools except hermit crabs, and regular crabs of the I-don’t-need-no-steenking-shell ilk. On the beach, we found lots of desiccated sailors by the sea. Here’s a photo I pilfered from the web:
They’re Cnidarians — related to the man of war, medusae, and jellyfish. There: you’ve met your cool critter of the day. Here’s another link for Velella.
With all the wind and sand, I pretended to be T. E. Lawrence while Jake spent a couple hours building dams and destroying them. When it came time for DBE (deep beach extraction), I steeled myself for the inevitable five-hours-per-mile departure, what with Jake stopping for every hermit crab, every odd rock, and — especially — every running stream of water (more dams, more destruction). My son the hydraulic engineer.
We stopped off at the pet store and bought two land hermit crabs. I’ll get a photo or two up sometime soon. Cute devils. Land hermit crabs are known to swap shells rather promiscuously, all for fun.
We also made it to the library today. I picked up Michael Swanwick’s Jack Faust and Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. I was tickled to see that they have John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War on the shelf, and shocked to see Cintra Wilson’s Colors Insulting to Nature. And here I thought I was so cool, probably the only person in Del Norte or Curry County who knew of Cintra Wilson. If you’re unfamiliar with her work, Cintra is a razor-sharp humorist — I prefer that to the stuffy ‘social commentarist’ — best known for her articles in Salon. I think she’s gorgeous (check out her gallery), but her home page is way, way over the top. Poor kitty!
D.
A rogue Xavierist is trying to put me down.
For a brief, glorious instant, I topped the charts over at BlogHop, pushing hunky Xavier from his number one spot. I knew it couldn’t last, and I was right.
Some Xavier-loving fanboy has given me an “I hate it!” vote to drop my rating.
Yea, verily, I say unto you: science fiction fans, don’t take this lying down! I don’t want you to counterattack — Xavier has far too many votes for that tactic to be effective. Besides, he’s kind of cute, and if I swung that way I’d spread him on my toast, and from what I’ve read of his blog he’s a good, kind-hearted human being, and far be it from me to suck up to his fans to keep them from nuking me even further because, after all, they’re good, kind-hearted human beings too.
No, I have a simple request. If you haven’t clicked on the green smiley face on the BlogHop icon, please do so. Tell a friend about Shatter and get your friends to vote for me, too. Right now I’m at 91%. Except for that B+ I got in Spanish in 9th grade, and one crummy quarter of organic chem, I’ve never been that low. Save me, my loyal minions. You’re my only hope.
Type A personalities should not be allowed to blog.
D.
Time travel convention a failure? Not for the reasons you think!
In a recent news bit, the journal Science reported on the apparent flop of the May 7 MIT time travel convention (Times up on Time Travel, Science 20 May 2005). Although Dorothy (of Wizard of Oz fame), Bill, and Ted were present, the travelers themselves failed to materialize.
Theoretical physicists Alan Guth and Ed Farhi were on hand as pallbearers to speed time travel to its grave. Guth lectured that wormhole-mediated time travel could only occur at the quantum level, and cosmic strings (the other contender) “could take half the energy of the universe to create”.
I love how these bigheads are so quick to dismiss the endless scope of the future: as if technology 100 years from now will only be a refinement of present-day technology, and theoretical frameworks will only be tweaks on the mess we have today. Folks have ignored the most obvious reasons for the conference’s failure.
Curious? You’ll have to sit through a story, first.
As a twelve-year-old, I decided it takes humans two or three years to forget pain. Hence the usual spread between siblings, and hence the fact that our summer Voyages of the Damned happened at the same interval. My parents, Bostonians transplanted to California, regularly schlepped us across country to visit our cousins, great aunts, great uncles, and my Dad’s mom.
Throughout the 60s, my Dad dreamed of buying a motor home so we could make the trek with all the comforts of home. In 1974, he made it happen: he bought a great big green-and-white 25-foot Harvest. He taught math* at Roosevelt High School in East L.A., so when school wrapped up in June, we were on the road the very next day.
We made it as far as Clinton, Oklahoma, before the beast broke down (for the first time). For the next two weeks, we holed up in a motel while the Harvest sat in someone’s shop, waiting for parts. I’m not sure what my parents did to preserve their sanity (deep irony there, by the way), but all my brother Randy and I could do was hang out by the pool, play cards, and watch TV. Not much else to do.
I think Randy was 19 going on 20 at the time, so whenever he walked, his hormones jangled. You could hear him from a hundred feet away. One day, two girls came to the hotel — oh, they were maybe in their twenties. “Whores,” my mother insisted. But Randy was on the make. He’d made it as far as their motel room when my thin tissue of lies fell apart.
Mom: “Where’s your brother?”
Me: “Out by the pool.”
Mom (looking out the window): “I can see he’s not out by the pool. Where did he go?”
Me: “I don’t know . . . oh, stop! Stop! The pressure is too much to bear. He’s in Room 19 with those whores.”
That’s a paraphrase, naturally. Mom called over to Room 19.
Mom: “Helloooo? Is Randy there? This is his mother. Tell him his little brother has a high fever and we need him to run down to the store to get some aspirin.”
Poor Randy. I can imagine what followed. “Your mother? You told us you were transporting rattlesnakes to the Texas roundup, and that you’d stopped in Clinton to settle a score with those mob bosses who crossed you back in Vegas. Well, our boyfriends are gonna show up in ten minutes, and Clem, he wrestles alligators . . .”
Randy and I used to play cards with a good ol’ Southern boy, a forty-something fella named Dave. He was a dead ringer for Mac Davis, a country-western guy who had his own one-hour variety TV show back then. Remember, “I don’t like spiders and snakes / But I got what it takes to love you”? Yup, that was Mac Davis. During a three-handed game of hearts down by the pool, Dave spied a forty-something gal with no ass and no boobs. But she was a loner, no band on her finger, no guy tagging along, and Dave had all the jangling hormones of my brother but another twenty years worth of finesse. Randy and I watched, slack-jawed, as Dave loped over to her poolside umbrella table, chatted her up for five minutes, and came back to announce success.
“Room 22, seven o’clock,” said Dave. “And forget foreplay. That pump’s already primed.”
Those are my two best stories from that two-week dip into the bolgias. Aside from that, nothing to talk about but the usual pitched battles that were de rigeur for mi familia. But the boredom was the worst thing; I’d brought three SF novels with me (the only one I remember: Frank Herbert’s Hellstrom’s Hive) and had finished all three. And that’s when, out of a mind-numbing not another game of Hearts or another rerun of Gilligan’s Island panic, I conceived of something, a glimmer of hope that would tide me through the next few days.
I would, three days hence, meet up with my future self.
To achieve this, I’d have to remember the precise time and place of the meeting. This became my mantra. The irony of replacing one boring activity with an even more boring activity was, I’m sad to say, lost on my twelve-year-old self.
You can guess the rest. I was a no show; my version of the MIT Time Travel Convention flopped every bit as badly as theirs. Only difference is, I understand why.
Let’s say I wake up tomorrow to discover I’ve inherited a time travel belt (anyone out there remember David Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself ?) Would I use that belt to go back in time and make that meeting? No way. Two reasons:
1) I’ve forgotten the precise time and place of the meeting. I can’t even remember the approximate time and place of the meeting. I had to think mighty hard to come up with “1974, Clinton, Oklahoma”, and I’m only 95% confident of that data.
2) I have no interest in meeting 12-year-0ld Doug. None whatsoever.
In my opinion, those two reasons, writ large, account for the failure of the MIT convention. The conventioneers assumed that a bit of internet press would guarantee some sort of eternal memory of the time and place of the meeting. Does anyone doubt for a moment the fragility of the internet? Or the vulnerability of our knowledge to the crush of centuries? Besides: if a time traveler wanted to announce himself (herself, itself, themselves), why choose a convention of geeks dressed up like Bill and Ted and Dorothy?
Which leads me to the next point: the conventioneers also assumed that our future selves would want to come visit us. This seems like one hell of a leap of faith. When I think about visiting mini-me, I feel apathetic and faintly nauseated. I suspect those future us’s would feel the very same way.
No, there’s only one reason they’d come back. To steal Nazi gold.
D.
*British translation: maths
June 4th to June 9th entries HERE
Thanks to the lovely and talented Robin at Blogger Support for resurrecting my blog. I wish there were a prettier way to merge the pre- and post-epocalypse blog, but hey, this is the best I can do. Cheers, y’all.
D.
PS: I’m not sure why I should save this, but Shatter2 (the sequel that flopped) contains the last six days’ of posts in their natural environment. Aside from posting a little note on Shatter2 to explain its existence, I won’t be adding to it after today.
Yeah, I really can’t think why I should save Shatter2, but I’m loathe to hit that delete button again any time soon.
By the way, if you feel the need to comment on this post, you’ll have to scroll way, way down, to just below the Oops! entry.
Hiccups (June 8, 2005)
The good folks at Blogger Support might bail my ass out yet. Here’s the response I got to my whiny plea:
Hi Doug, Thanks for writing in. We're sorry to hear about the frustration that you've been experiencing with the deletion of the incorrect blog. Please send me the URL of your old, accidently deleted blog, as well as the username and email address associated with this account, and I'll see what I can do about restoring it for you. Sincerely, Robin Blogger Support
And if that fails, Amanda has shown me how to find my cached files on Google. I wonder how long I should give Robin?
Speaking of ‘how long should I give’, I’m still strung out about Continuum Science Fiction. Bill Rupp, Continuum’s editor, accepted two of my stories earlier this year (“All Change” and “Heaven on Earth”). Continuum is a print magazine, so these would be my first stories to be published outside ezine-space. Unfortunately, no word from Mr. Rupp as to when my stories are going to run. No contract, either. After our initial exchange of letters — his acceptance, my “Yippee!” — I waited six weeks before writing again. I sent him an email and waited another four weeks. Nothing. I pinged him again on June 1, and still haven’t heard a thing.
I’m finding this a lot harder to take than rejections.
New purchase: Norman Spinrad’s 1972 novel, The Iron Dream. Premise: imagine an alternate universe in which Adolf Hitler came to New York in 1919, became a comic book illustrator, and later, a science fiction author. The Iron Dream is, in fact, a more palatable title than the book’s real title: LORD OF THE SWASTIKA, a science-fiction novel by Adolf Hitler. Yup! Spinrad has put himself into Hitler’s mindset and written about an ubermensch who must battle against genetic degenerates. Here’s how he introduces the main character, Feric Jaggar:
Finally, there emerged from the cabin of the steamer a figure of startling and unexpected nobility: a tall, powerfully built true human in the prime of manhood. His hair was yellow, his skin was fair, his eyes were blue and brilliant. His musculature, skeletal structure, and carriage were letter-perfect, and his trim blue tunic was clean and in good repair.
The first few pages are rippingly good satire (my wife would say, “Who cares? It’s an easy target.”) I’m 23 pages into it, and I am beginning to wonder if it’s a one-note joke. I’ll let you know.
And now I’m off to help Bare Rump with her diary. Lest you think this is all fun and games, I do have a bit of method behind all this. I have in mind a bona fide blogged novel with a beginning, middle, and end, but one that will also respond to the times. In other words, I don’t know what will happen when Ms. Rump finally meets W., since much will depend on what’s in the news at the time. Meanwhile, I’m having fun thinking up new jokes & making funky photos with Paint Shop Pro.
Exhaustedly yours,
D.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 9:23 PM 5 comments
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
An antediluvian tale
Michael Swanwick
Avon Books, 1992I first encountered Michael Swanwick not through his fiction, but through his website, Michael Swanwick Online, and in particular, his site's lovably churlish unca mike's advice column. If you're not familiar with unca mike, his modus operandi is to encourage questioners to do the worst thing possible for their writing careers, thereby winnowing his competition.Yeah, like he has tsuris competing with other writers.
Here's an exchange he recently shared with his readers:
Dear Gardner:
An rtf file of "The Word That Sings the Scythe" is attached, as
requested. I note that you've had my story for over an hour and you
haven't bought it yet. GET OFF THE POT, DOZOIS!
Cordially, Michael
That evening he wrote back:
Dear Michael,
I like "The Word That Sings the Scythe," and I'll take it.
Sorry for the delay, but I had to have dinner first.
--Gardner
For my non-SF audience, Swanwick is writing to Gardner Dozois, editor of Asimov's Science Fiction (one of the primo bitchin' markets) since 1985.
Okay. So we've established that Michael Swanwick either (A) has an ego the size of Uzbekistan, or (B) has a sadistic sense of humor. I'm leaning towards (B), given some of the other content on his unca mike column.
I bet you're thinking this is going to be a negative review. Not entirely.
Actually, it depresses the hell out of me that Stations of the Tide is out of print. It won a Nebula Award, for cryin' out loud. What do you have to do in this business to stay in print? Here I am thinking, "If only I can manage to get my book published, I'll have a steady flow of income to tide me over into my old age," and then I find out that even if you win a Nebula you STILL don't have it made.
Yes, that's my retirement plan. Write a bestseller and live off the residuals. I play Super Lotto, too.
On to the review.
***
The polar caps of the planet Miranda are about to melt, inundating nearly all land. (We never find out why this happens, or with what periodicity, since Swanwick is a show-don't-tell-if-it-kills-me kind of guy. But that's okay; I read SF, so I can take a lot on faith.) While Miranda's flora and fauna have evolved to cope with this regular deluge, the planet's human inhabitants must be evacuated. Self-styled magician Gregorian has another way out: for a price, he'll transform you into a creature capable of thriving post-deluge.
Our protagonist, the unnamed bureaucrat, comes to Miranda as the representative of a shadowy interplanetary governing body that, through the power of embargo, controls the technology level of individual planets. The bureaucrat's bosses suspect that Gregorian is using stolen, proscribed tech to deliver on his promises. The bureaucrat's job: find Gregorian (before the Jubilee Tides swallow all, naturally) and persuade him to give back the stolen technology.
We see numerous metamorphoses throughout the book; some are tricks, some are not. Early on, we're told (shown, actually -- excuse me!) that Gregorian could have such technology -- i.e., it really exists -- but he could easily be pulling a nasty con on these people, too. Dead marks tell no tales.
It's a given that in a story such as this, the protagonist is going to change. Otherwise, what's the point? Carping on that would be like bitching that a novel is formulaic because it has a plot, and, oh God, why do these novels always have to have plots? (Yes, yes, I know there are exceptions to that rule, too.) I'd like to mention one interesting counter-example: J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, in which (spoilers!) the protagonist goes through hell and back, yet insists to himself that he has learned nothing at all.
So, yes, the bureaucrat is going to change. What matters, what really matters, is that we buy that change every step of the way. Is the transformation believable, and is it inevitable?
I have to tread carefully to avoid spoilers. Yes, spoilers count, since I think you ought to read this book, if for no other reason than the sex is that good, and Swanwick's writing is, at times, beautiful. (I love the title, Stations of the Tide, merging as it does the stations of the cross with the idea of a natural cycle; and I love the first line, too: The bureaucrat fell from the sky.) I'm also interested in hearing from other readers on this point. (Hey. Pat. You out there?) But here's my gripe:
There comes a time rather late in the story when the bureaucrat must choose between love and duty. His choice will be a clear indication of the changes wrought by the novel's preceding 200 pages. If he chooses one, the story might grind to a halt. If he chooses the other, the plot is advanced. Trouble is, the believable, inevitable choice is the one that stops the plot dead in its tracks -- so, guess what: the bureaucrat does what he needs to do to advance the plot. Some 40 pages later, he's faced with another choice. At this point, his choice swings the other way. It's believable this time, it has the feeling of inevitability, and yet this critical moment is undercut by the fact that I, the reader, am saying, "HEY! WAIT A MINUTE! DIDN'T YOU JUST . . . ?"
It's difficult criticizing a book that promises to teach me things that will make my orgasms last longer. But, there you have it: Stations of the Tide falls short of classic status, in my opinion, because it fails the inevitability test. In a book about magic and illusion, I could see the puppeteer's strings.
Inevitability is on my mind a lot lately. As I wrap up my novel, I find myself fretting over whether I have frogwalked my characters to the finish line, or whether they've done what they really really truly would have done.
D.
PS: Have you been checking out Bare Rump's Diary? Give the ol' girl some feedback when you get the chance. She has read a great many romance novels, by the way, so if you need to ask her for advice on love, I'm sure she'll be all legs.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 8:31 PM 4 comments
A link to some of the lost blog entries.
You'll find:
Because Maureen asked for really bad angst-ridden poetry
(Confessions of a Teenage Angstwolf)
Violet survived her squeezing
(Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: where are they now?)
I think I can, I think I can
(My student dream; memories of Carmela)
If I can figure out how Amanda did it, I'll post more, and update the list here. Thank you, Amanda!
D.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 6:30 PM 4 comments
Monday, June 06, 2005
An SF market you won't see listed on Ralan.com
In 1999, with the millenium approaching, Nature began running a weekly feature called Futures. Come 2001, Nature stopped publishing new stories, but they recently started up again. They're all one-page offerings, tasty bites from an assemblage of authors whose names read like the SF equivalent of Ultimate Baseball: Arthur C. Clarke, Bruce Sterling, Joe Haldeman, Norman Spinrad, Gregory Benford, Vonda McIntyre . . .
Hey, I never said it would be easy for me to get published in Nature.
Here are a few recent stories that you won't regret reading.
Last Man Standing by Xaviera Young (17 March 2005)
After the Y virus eliminates half of the world's population, we are left with "A planet with no more moonlight strolls, not really." Poignant contemplation of a world without men.
Heartwired by Joe Haldeman (24 March 2005)
Designer psychopharmaceuticals for the perfect 25th wedding anniversary. (Does anyone do the future of love as well as Haldeman?)
New Hope for the Dead by David Langford (26 May 2005)
Electronic afterlifes (afterlives?) aren't all they're cracked up to be. This one is funny as hell. Come to think of it, Langford has come up with a mighty interesting take on hell.
Meat by Paul McAuley (5 May 2005)
Disgruntled tissue culture biologists have become meatleggers in this creepily believable tale of the future perversions of fame. "These days, you aren't a hardcore tru-fan unless you've partaken of the flesh of your hero."
Ivory Tower by Bruce Sterling (7 April 2005)
Who needs college? Blogging self-educated physicists band together to form their own academy.
Now for the bad news:
1. If you're not a Nature subscriber, you'll have to become one to read Futures. (If you're fortunate, your local library subscribes to Nature.) It ain't cheap.
2. I've tried and failed to find submission guidelines for Futures. I suspect this gig is by invitation only.
#2 merely pushes the dream back one step. First, I need to become the kind of author who rubs shoulders with the likes of Haldeman or Sterling . . .
D.
PS: Only four more votes on BlogHop and I'll get listed with the big boys. If you haven't already experienced the pleasure of clicking (it helps if you let your finger circle ever so slowly on the mouse button a few hundred times before clicking -- and a little Astroglide helps, too), go over to the right margin and look for the colorful BlogHop icon. Click on the GREEN SMILEY-FACED BUTTON. I don't want to have to threaten you with my Virgin Mary matzoh square. You know I'll do it.
*Hmm. Hard to call leaving Texas an epiphany.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 7:53 PM 2 comments
Sunday, June 05, 2005
September 13, 1975
Anyway, he didn't want just any Battlebots tapes. Season Two, it had to be Season Two. Naturally, the Season Two tapes were at the bottom of the bottom-most box labeled Jake's Toys (at least the labeling was correct!) Meanwhile, I snuffled around in the dust until I found my old diaries, all six volumes of them. I'm going to reprint the first page of the first volume here, because it's funny, in the hopeless pathetic way anything written by a thirteen-year-0ld boy is funny. Here goes.
***
DATA: BOUGHT SATURDAY, SEP. 13, 1975 52 cents
VOLUME I First Quarter, First Semester, 9th Grade
Sept. 13:
I bought this notebook with the grand hope of keeping a day-by-day account of my high school years, and perhaps college as well. (That day-by-day thing got dumped mighty quick. The next two entries are from September 16 and September 19. Good God, what kept me busy back then? Nowadays, I work a full time job as a doc, and I still manage to blog daily. What was I doing back then?) I admit that I have future fame in mind which will make these 'diaries' valuable, but the reason that I prefer is that I can show this to my kid(s). (Even then I had the grace to feel at least a little bit sheepish about my lust for fame. Thank heavens I'm not screwed up like that anymore -- so egocentric, so, so hungry for power and adulation. By the way, it has come to my attention that some of you have not yet voted on my blog. All you need to do is click on the green smiley-faced cube at the far left of the bloghop.com icon. That's over in the right margin -- see it? Yesssss. Remember, this blog is essential to my plans for world domination. Click on the green smiley-face. Click now. Get your friends to click, too -- tell them how much fun it is to click. Goooood.)
But first, a brief autobiography. (When and where I was born, what schools I attended, who my favorite teachers were, yatta yatta yatta.) I won't give any crap about my family because I don't think I'll forget that too fast. (Ain't that the truth. Okay . . . more stuff about school . . . then:)
That, I hope, will be the only line of crap in this whole bit. Why do I say that? Because I feel that such an oration is insincere, and thus is crap.
(But hey, I just edited out all the crap, so all that comes through is the sincere stuff. And a thirteen-year-old boy is nothing if not sincere. Especially when he's jerking off.)
***
Oh, that's right. That's what I was doing in my spare time.
D.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 11:25 AM 8 comments
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Hope the ol' gal is worth it.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 11:43 PM 5 comments
Guess it could have been worse.
Here's how it happened. (I will always share my stupidity with you, my loyal readers, because I have no pride. Or is it, I have no shame? I always get those two mixed up.) I wanted to start a second blog. Never mind what; you'll find that out soon enough. I set it up on the same account as this one, and discovered too late that my pic & 'about me' info gets carried over to every new blog I create. Well, I didn't want that. My new blog would represent a whole new identity. New pic, new 'about me'. I mean, that was the whole point. So I decided to delete the new blog, hop over to a different internet account profile, and start a new blog from there.
The problem came at the 'delete the new blog' step. I had the wrong blog selected.
Don't try this at home.
This looks permanent. If any of you know this to be otherwise, please let me know. For now, I'll content myself with thinking about the massive volume of written material -- PUBLISHED written material -- which disappears every day. Books go out of print; old pages turn to dust. It was a blog, Hoffman, not the Library of Alexandria.
I'm still here. I ain't going anywhere. Drop me a note so I can start building up my blog links again.
D.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 9:00 PM 6 comments
Oops.
posted by Douglas Hoffman at 8:50 PM 0 comments