Younger Women by Karen Joy Fowler.

Mirror, Mirror by Tobias S. Buckell.

Speculative fiction–gotta love it.

I liked “You’re Almost There” for it’s basic aura and it’s statement on the world of today. I liked “Written on the Wind” because it’s a kind of interesting tale, but I have to admit I liked it just as much for the fact that it’s founded in linguistics. This appeals for two reasons. First, it’s hard to find intereting stories built around linguistics. But the bigger reason is that it made me think of Brigid, who is majoring in (among other things) Linguistics at Purdue.

In this case, the question is about how one goes about making reasonable equations or relationships between things when writing from an alien point of view. In other words, if you say “the boulder was the size of a truck” we all understand that. But an alien being may well not know what a truck is, so the alien rally can’t say that. So what’s a writer to do?

My gut instinct as I heard the question (while treading along on my treadmill) was to dismiss it out of hand. I mean, you just feel things out, you know? You put yourself in the point of view of the alien and you do your best, right? It’s a feel thing. An experience thing. In other words … what a damned silly question.

But it’s not a silly question at all. It’s a great question, and Toby gave an outstanding response that made me think both about my personal writing and about what it means about me that I jumped to such an unhealthy first response.

Hopefully it was just that I was getting tired. [grin].

It’s pretty deep in the podcast, and I don’t have a minute-point to note. But the whole thing is worth listening to.

Definitely worth a read.

I like that last sentence.

One advantage of the electronic age is that when Lisa asks me “How far into the book are you?” I can answer her. The book actually tells me how far into something you really are. Or does it? I mean, what, exactly is 21%? The book will stay on 21% for several “page-clicks” so technically it’s 21.X%. But then I wonder if the algorithm truncates. Will it read 21% all the way until I cross the 22% barrier? Or, does the algorithm round? Could it be 20.7%? I don’t know. in the old days I could have looked at the page number, then flipped to the last page and read that number. A quick bit of mental math and I would have known exactly where I was, which would make my engineer’s mind happy. But now I’m left to wonder whether I’m 20.50000001 percent through the book or 21.999999%.

Of course, the next question is whether it uses words or characters or something else completely in its calculations. Clearly it cannot be using the definition of “standard pages” since that definition doesn’t apply.

I suppose I’ll have to Google a bit to see if the calculation algorithms have been publicly vetted. Just what I need. Something else to do.

Damned e-book.

Never mind that when Lisa asks “How far into the book are you?” she’s not asking me for a measure of distance. Sure, my mind interprets it in numbers and pages, but she means “what’s happening in the story?” So she gets a bit annoyed at times when I reply with a nearly perfectly correct “21%.”

Hey, it’s not my fault she’s not an engineer at heart.

That said, I’m enjoying the stories. And, yes, the reader is nice, too.

—–

I picked this out of Kris Rusch’s feed, so you might already have seen it. But I thought this was a great commentary of criticism … but then, Roger Ebert kinda knows what the heck he’s talking about.

Things change so quickly, but I enjoyed this quite a bit at the time. Very different way of experiencing a story.

In this case, I quite enjoyed “Best Western“, a short story by Anne de Marcken (read by Laura Esterman). It’s the second story in this podcast. The first is good story–Rebecca Curtis’s “Twenty Grand” as read by Jane Curtain. But “Best Western,” in my opinion truly shines.

I can also vouch for “When Sparrows Fall,” which has a deep power to it.

But, honestly, I really, really love “Rena 733.”

Try one, I’m sure you’ll want them all.