Part-time prevaricator
I spent Saturday with my wife and some of her family at the MacGregor Fair, and so I took a bunch of photos. I looked at it as an opportunity to get better acquainted with my 24mm f/2.8 lens, which so far has mostly been used in the dark.
A bunch more photos are available on Flickr for your perusal.
I’m not sure if Music Monday is a thing, or if Chadwick is just trying to make it a thing, but either way here’s my response (riposte?) to his Queen post.
Faith No More put out a new album earlier this year, their first release in 18 years. Because I’m old, I bought the CD. Here’s a live version of the first track, “Sol Invictus” (which is also the title of the album). It’s a quiet meditation on the loss of faith.
I believe in something, I think — for some reason that line really gets me.
Also, for those looking for something a bit louder and more aggressive, well, the new album has you covered, too.
Here’s “Superhero”, the second track:
…it’s a pretty good one.
I submitted a short-story proposal for a forthcoming anthology in honour of Sir Terry Pratchett. I knew going in that it was a long shot — they’re looking for humorous writing, and the story I proposed is about a 9‑year-old child dealing with his father’s cancer diagnosis — so I wasn’t terribly1 surprised.
From the rejection letter2 itself:
The reason we didn’t select your work on this occasion was that
- It didn’t quite have the humorous characteristics we’re looking for.
The sample was occasionally a little confusing.3
We both enjoyed your story, and it was a close call as far as submissions went.
Please don’t judo us for the rejection, and best of luck in your future writing projects.
Please understand that while your material does not fit the bill for our current project, we encourage you to continue writing, and wish you the best of luck in future.
So… I will continue with this little tale, and find a new market for it. (Anyone interested? It’s about the collision of fantasy worlds and real-life pain.)
There’s an article in The Guardian by one Natasha Pulley which posits that proper fantasy world-building can’t be accomplished in a short story, and that’s why so many fantasy novels these days are a) hefty and b) continued in multi-volume series.
I offer the following counterpoints:
the short fantasies of Michael Swanwick (for example, “The Dragon Line” or “Radio Waves”)
the very existence of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
…and Beneath Ceaseless Skies
…and Fantasy Faction
…and so forth.
Earlier this week I read an article on io9 about why you shouldn’t write action scenes, an article aimed at screenwriters, especially those making big-budget action movies. Then this afternoon, I went to see one of the biggest action films currently in theatres: Avengers: Age of Ultron.
From the article:
You don’t do an action sequence for the sake of doing a damn action sequence — you do an action sequence because it’s a new or more effective way to advance your character or story.
Ultron featured a lot — a lot — of action sequences. The bulk of them, to my eye, were action for the sake of action. A few of them — the mass fight at the start, for example — featured some character building. Among other things, it established the team as an actual, cohesive team, and it showed the start of the Widow/Hulk storyline. But a lot of the later action sequences were there, it seemed, to Make Things Explode. More than once I found myself wondering when they were going to get back to the story. (That, or trying to calculate just how much money Stark’s rebuilding fund must burn through in a year. It’s got to be a lot.)
This is not to say I didn’t enjoy the movie. I liked it. It was a pleasant diversion. For a big stupid fun movie, it was decently smart (though the whole plot hinged on a couple of supergenius scientists making some pretty boneheaded decisions).
Once more, quoting from the article:
Don’t write action sequences. Write suspense sequences that require action to resolve.
We’ll call Ultron a partial success there. Here’s hoping that the next film I see — slated to be Mad Max: Fury Road1 — does as well or better.
Update: I watched Mad Max: Fury Road on the holiday Monday. Even though the movie is one protracted action scene (or maybe it’s more like a dozen or so action scenes, linked together with brief pauses so the audience can catch their collective breath), it had more character development and sense of story than Avengers: Age of Ultron. So that’s a win.
Update: Well, today’s the day. “Person to Person” is now up on DSF’s site.
On May 18th, my short story “Person to Person” will appear in Daily Science Fiction. When it’s posted, I’ll be sure to add a link to his post.
Here’s a teaser:
Jake called from Heaven again.
That’s the first line, and it just came to me, a gift from on high1, and I knew I had to use it. I spent some time deciding whether I meant it literally or not; once that was settled, the story essentially wrote itself (which is in itself another gift).
Mmmm, Velvet Dip.
The big 4–2. I’m the age of the Answer from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy.
I discovered Salvador Dalí, I think, in my first year of University, back in the earliest of the 90s. Something about his art struck a chord in me, and I’ve been fascinated by him ever since. So when I found out that I hadn’t missed seeing his paintings at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, of course I went to check it out.
But a funny thing happened. Of all the paintings and sculptures I saw (and let me tell you, friend, I saw a lot), the one that struck me most wasn’t a Dalí piece at all.
It was The Fountain of Indolence, by Joseph Mallord William Turner.
Something about it — the tree, the fountain, the mountains in the distance and the revelers in the foreground, the narrow channel of water passing into the front — really called out to me. It put me in mind of the feeling I got when reading Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun, though I’m at a loss to explain why.
It got me, the way that art sometimes does, in a visceral way; a way that bypassed my brain entirely, and went straight for my gut.
We went in to Winnipeg this past weekend to visit family. While we were there, my mother pointed out that the Salvador Dalí collection — which had been scheduled to leave town at the end of last month — had been held over for another three weeks. I’d resigned myself to not seeing any of it.
So when I found out it was still in town, well, I think you might be able to guess what I did on Sunday afternoon.