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.

And I admit I’m not often into poetry, but I found this one by David C. Kopaska-Merkel to be kinda fun.

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Since I’m in the media frame of mind, I’m currently reading a pair of books–Stephen King’s Full Dark, No Stars, and a “Best of” collection of Edmund Hamilton’s work.

King’s work is great, of course.  He’s really a no bullshit storyteller of the best cut.  Hamilton’s collection is interesting in the historical sense, and from the point of view that you can really see him maturing over time.  Perhaps you can say that about the field, too.  The collection spans stories over some four decades.

With the field literally exploding with uncertainty over almost every aspect of the future, I think it’s valuable to look backward, too.

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So, in theme of looking backward, I’m apparently in a bit of a retro mood this AM (and last). I’ve had Sarah McLachlan on the iTunes as I write.  Can I call Sarah McLachlan retro?  I guess I can, eh?  Retro is what I point to when I say “retro!”

Regardless, the story I’m working on is flowing pretty well, still. Main characters introduced, conflict kinda set up and ready to get deeper. Fun being had.

But now it’s off to work.  Have a great day!

I absolutely love the comment, too.

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

This is a great, professionally done piece of work. Recommended.

Progress:

Down to 11 more pages to go on the Light Rewrite. I wanted to power through, but I completed about 70 pages worth, and my brain is a little loopy. Better to just let it sit until tomorrow and do it right.

Anyway. I think it’s an important story.

It originally appeared in the anthology Phantom, edited by Sean Wallace and Paul Tremblay.

Progress:

The gobbledygook is now now gobbledy-gone. I’m off and running again on the light edit. Took me two days to untangle the hoses of the ten-page problem, but if the sailing’s as clear as I think it is we’ll still see the finish line sometime next weekend.

Of course, the next story I read in Astounding Stories of Super Science (gotta love that title) is full of tentacles, disintegration rays and other knee-slapping examples of scientific misuse of things like, oh, gravity.

Not that it wasn’t fun for all that, though.

Progress: 90+ pages through the light-pass. At this rate I should be done by the weekend after next. That’s the target, anyway. I’ve cleaned up three of my main issues, and made strong dents in three others. the last four have yet to come up.

What I’ve really done is to dive right smack-dab into a bunch of SF history.

I’ve been reading old work available on manybooks.net, including short work from Bob Sheckley, Frederik Pohl, and Phil Dick. I’ve gotten my mitts on the few issues of Astounding that were published in the 1930s that are filled with names that I have never seen. It’s been a heckuva lot of fun, and really educational. I’m finding myself doing little bits of research on those guys I had never heard of, and enjoying the work. Like everything else, a good chunk is drecky (I can say that about a lot of the newer stuff I’ve been reading, too, of course), but good stuff exists. I even grabbed Ayn Rand’s “Anthem,” which is clearly SF, and which is in public domain apparently due to an error in re-upping copyright.

Now, I’m sure many of you are way, way ahead of me.

But for those paltry few for whom the idea of SF of the 19202 and 1930s consists wholey of hokey ray guns, cardboard space ships, and tentacled monsters from planet X, I think there’s great value in understanding where the field has really come from. Amid some clunky crud, I’ve read about miniature electronics, and advanced communications techniques that stand up. I’ve read about automation and warfare techniques that still work today. I’ve read a story or three that could be easily printed today.

For any “new” SF writer (and by that I mean anyone who–like me–really hasn’t spent time studying SF history), I recommend taking a few weeks and digging into some of these works. The worst thing that can happen is that you have a little lighthearted fun–and where’s the harm in that, eh?

Progress:

30+ pages on my light-pass rewrite of novel #3.