LOOKING FOR A 4 BEDROOM 2 BATH HOUSE TO RENT ON THE NW OF HUNSTVILLE AL. "ONLY FOR GOOD AREAS" YOU COULD REACH ME BY EMAIL janno2006@aol.com THANKS....................

Printable Version of Topic

-Message Boards
+--+---Topic: MAKE EASY MONEY started by RFROMAZ
------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------


Posted by: RFROMAZ on Mar. 02 2006,8:20

Printable Version of Topic

-
+---Topic: MAKE EASY MONEY started by RFROMAZ
------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------


Posted by: Guest on Sep. 28 2005,2:05

WANT TO EARN CASH?? NO SCAMS!! NO TRICKS!!

Have you fallen for the DON LAPRE/CARLTON SHEETS SCHEMES? You're not the only one!
Although these programs do have some valuable info, they don't tell you anything that you can't find at your local library.
Just look up "mail order" or "Money Making Opportunities"! Yeah Don Lapre is rich but his wealth
comes from selling us his program for $39.99. KEEP READING!!! IMPORTANT!!!

CHECK THIS OUT, BELOW IS A PERFECTLY LEGAL PROGRAM THAT IS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN DON LAPRE'S AND IT ONLY COSTS $6.00!
HOW TO TURN SIX DOLLARS INTO SIX THOUSAND: READING THIS COULD CHANGE YOUR LIFE! IT DOES WORK!
I found this on a bulletin board and decided to try it. A little while back, I was browsing through newsgroups,
just like you are now, and came across an article similar to this that said you could make thousands of dollars
WITHIN WEEKS with only an initial investment of $6.00! So I thought, "Yeah right, this must be a scam",
but like most of us, I was curious, so I kept reading. Anyway, it said that you send $1.00 to each of the 6 names
and address stated in the article. You then place your own name and address in the bottom of the list at #6,
and post the article in at least 200 newsgroups. (There are thousands) No catch, that was it. So after thinking it over,
and talking to a few people first, I thought about trying it. I figured: "what have I got to lose except 6 stamps and $6.00,
right?" Then I invested the measly $6.00. Well GUESS WHAT!?... within 7 days, I started getting money in the mail!
I was shocked! I figured it would end soon, but the money just kept coming in. In my first week, I made about $25.00.
By the end of the second week I had made a total of over $1,100.00! In the third week I had over $8,750.00 and it's still
growing. This is now my fourth week and I have made a total of just over $17,000.00 and it's still coming in rapidly.
It's certainly worth $6.00, and 6 stamps, I have spent more than that on the lottery!! Let me tell you how this works and
most importantly, WHY it works... Also, make sure you print a copy of this article NOW, so you can get the information off
of it as you need it. I promise you that if you follow the directions exactly, that you will start making more money than
you thought possible by doing something so easy! KEEP READING TO FIND OUT HOW THIS WORKS!!!

Suggestion: Read this entire message carefully! (print it out or download it.) Follow the simple directions and watch the
money come in! It's easy. It's legal. And, your investment is only $6.00 (Plus postage on only 6 envelopes...one time only...no repeat mailing)

IMPORTANT: This is not a rip-off; it is not indecent; No Misleading promises or claims; it is not illegal; and it is 99%
no risk - it really works! If all of the following instructions are adhered to, you will receive extraordinary dividends.
JUST KEEP READING!!! PLEASE NOTE: Please follow these directions EXACTLY, and $50,000 or more can be yours in 20 to 60 days.
This program remains successful because of the honesty and integrity of the participants. Please continue its success by
carefully adhering to the instructions. You will now become part of the Mail Order business. In this business your product
is not solid and tangible, it's a service. You are in the business of developing Mailing Lists. Many large corporations are
happy to pay big bucks for quality lists. However, the money made from the mailing lists is secondary to the income which is
made from people like you and me asking to be included in that list.

Here are the 4 easy steps to success:

STEP 1: Get 6 separate pieces of paper and write the following on each piece of paper "PLEASE PUT ME ON YOUR MAILING LIST."
Now get 6 US $1.00 bills and place ONE inside EACH of the 6 pieces of paper so the bill will not be seen through the envelope
(to prevent thievery).

Next, place one paper in each of the 6 envelopes and seal them. You should now have 6 sealed envelopes, each with a piece of
paper stating the above phrase, your name and address, and a $1.00 bill. What you are doing is creating a service. THIS IS
ABSOLUTELY LEGAL! You are requesting a legitimate service and you are paying for it! Like most of us I was a little skeptical
and a little worried about the legal aspects of it all. So I checked it out with the U.S. Post Office (1-800-725-2161) and
they confirmed that it is indeed legal. Mail the 6 envelopes to the following addresses:

#1) Sam Moore 8624 State Route 21 S.Naples,NY 14512
#2) Joung Kim 1113 Chesterfield Road,Huntsville,AL 35803
#3) Derek Kashmir,32 Edgeware Road,Clithero,Exeter,EX24 6UO
#4) Emmanuel Pierre, 14735 NE 10 court Miami,FL 33161
#5) Carl Sanchez,1 Carrnock Close,Huntington,York YO32 9YP
#6) Ronald Van Dorin 6105 N.59th Ave.Apt37,Glendale,AZ 85301

STEP 2: Now take the #1 name off the list that you see above, move the other names up (6 becomes 5, 5 becomes > 4, etc...)
and add YOUR Name as number 6 on the list.

STEP 3: Change anything you need to, but try to keep this article as close to original as possible.

Now, post your amended article to at least 200 newsgroups. (I think there are close to 24,000 groups) All you need is 200,
but remember, the more you post, the more money you make! You won't get very much unless you post like crazy.
This is perfectly legal! If you have any doubts, refer to Title 18 Sec. 1302 & 1341 of the Postal lottery laws.
Keep a copy of these steps for yourself and, whenever you need money, you can use it again, and again.
PLEASE REMEMBER that this program remains successful because of the honesty and integrity of the participants and by their
carefully adhering to the directions. Look at it this way. If you are of integrity, the program will continue and the money
that so many others have received will come your way. NOTE: You may want to retain every name and address sent to you,
either on a computer or hard copy and keep the notes people send you. This VERIFIES that you are truly providing a service.
(Also, it might be a good idea to wrap the $1 bill in dark paper to reduce the risk of mail theft.) So, as each post is
downloaded and the directions carefully followed, six members will be reimbursed for their participation as a List Developer
with one dollar each. Your name will move up the list geometrically so that when your name reaches the #1 position you will
be receiving thousands of dollars in CASH!!! What an opportunity for only $6.00 ($1.00 for each of the first six people
listed above) Send it now, add your own name to the list and you're in business!

--- DIRECTIONS ----- FOR HOW TO POST TO NEWSGROUPS------------

Step 1) You do not need to re-type this entire letter > to do your own posting. Simply put your cursor at the beginning of
this letter and drag your cursor to the bottom of this document, and select 'copy' from the edit menu. This will copy the
entire letter into the computer's memory.

Step 2) Open a blank 'notepad' file and place your cursor at the top of the blank page. From the 'edit' menu select 'paste'.
This will paste a copy of the letter into notepad so that you can add your name to the list.

Step 3) Save your new notepad
file as a .txt file. If you want to do your postings in different settings, you'll always have this file to go back to.

Step 4) Use Netscape or Internet explorer and try searching for various newsgroups (on-line forums, message boards,
chat sites, discussions.)

Step 5) Visit these message boards and post this article as a new message by highlighting the text of this letter and
selecting paste from the edit menu. Fill in the Subject, this will be the header that everyone sees as they scroll through
the list of postings in a particular group, click the post message button. You're done with your first one!

Congratulations...THAT'S IT! All you have to do is jump to different newsgroups and post away, after you get the hang of it,
it will take about 30 seconds for each newsgroup! **REMEMBER, THE MORE NEWSGROUPS YOU POST IN, THE MORE MONEY YOU WILL MAKE!
BUT YOU HAVE TO POST A MINIMUM OF 200** That's it! You will begin receiving money from around the world within days! You may
eventually want to rent a P.O. Box due to the large amount of mail you will receive. If you wish to stay anonymous, you can
invent a name to use, as long as the postman will deliver it. **JUST MAKE SURE ALL THE ADDRESSES ARE CORRECT.** HERE'S HOW
$6.00 DOLLARS TURNS INTO THOUSANDS!! Out of 200 postings, say I receive only 5 replies (a very low example).
So then I made $5.00 with my name at #6 on the letter. Now, each of the 5 persons who just sent me $1.00 make the MINIMUM
200 postings, each with my name at #5 and only 5 persons respond to each of the original 5, that is another $25.00 for me,
now those 25 each make 200 MINIMUM posts with my name at #4 and only 5 replies each, I will bring in an additional $125.00!
Now, those 125 persons turn around and post the MINIMUM 200 with my name at #3 and only receive 5 replies each,
I will make an additional $625.00! OK, now here is the fun part, each of those 625 persons post a MINIMUM 200 letters with
my name at #2 and they each only receive 5 replies, that just made me $3,125.00!!! Those 3,125 persons will all deliver this
message to 200 newsgroups with my name at #1 and if still 5 persons per 200 newsgroups react I will receive $15,625,00!
With an original investment of only $6.00! AMAZING! When your name is no longer on the list, you just take the latest posting
in the newsgroups, and send out another $6.00 to names on the list, putting your name at number 6 again. And start posting
again. The thing to remember is: do you realize that thousands of people all over the world are joining the internet and
reading these articles everyday?, JUST LIKE YOU are now!! So, can you afford $6.00 and see if it really works??

I think so... People have said, "what if the plan is played out and no one sends you the money? So what! What are the
chances of that happening when there are tons of new honest users and new honest people who are joining the internet
and newsgroups everyday and are willing to give it a try? Estimates are at 20,000 to 50,000 new users, every day, with
thousands of those joining the actual internet. Remember, play FAIRLY and HONESTLY and this will really work. GOOD LUCK!!!
---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------
end

It's a fabulous book. 1898, I think it was written, and it's just White (trained as a historian, best known as the founding president of Cornell, also US Ambassador to Russia) ranting about how religion holds back not only science but all good things and progress. He blames the Church's medieval persecution of Bacon for the European smallpox epidemic of the late nineteenth century, among other things.

I may have to visit just to get a look at History of the warfare of science with theology in Christendom.

The fellowship restricts us to quarter-time employment, ten hours a week. Except that readerships may end up paying more than that--quarter-time allows for thirty-five students, and I'll have sixty or sixty-five. There's all sorts of stupid administrative calculations behind this. The payroll person claims that I can take the job with sixty students even though it's technically too many hours, since readerships all go on the books as only being quarter-time. Or something. No one is sure what's going on.

At any rate, I do need to have some employment appointment even when I'm on fellowship, because the fellowship (in a gesture of astonishing stupidness (or poverty) on the part of the department) doesn't include my registration fees. Which run to over three thousand dollars per semester.

That's interesting - how much does a readership pay? For some reason, most fellowships in Astronomy won't let you be a teaching assistant, and the grad college won't let you get paid both as a research assistant AND a teaching assistant. There's some kind of limit to make sure everyone ends up with the exact same paycheck, plus or minus summer funding.

I was going to say something about Spider Woman, but that's already been done.

My mother once told me that if you're afraid of spiders, it means you have a problem with your mother. Seems spot on for me.

I've also always been fascinated with the Navajo myth of the Spider Woman -- someone who perpetuates culture and heritage through weaving. There's something about spiders and history. Maybe it's a good omen for your dissertation.

Edited by author 08-27-2003 09:17 AM

According to my Dictionary of Symbolism, spiders are variously seen as cunning tricksters; as Christian evil counterparts of the good bee; as "the sinful urges that suck the blood from humanity"; as the soul; as treachery; as sacred good-luck symbols; as omens of impending good fortune; as "associated with the expectation of joys descending from heaven."

So basically, take your pick. With all the spiders around your new place, there's probably room for a little bit of everything.

They're, you know. Symbolic. Of, uh. Things.

I don't know! I'm a chemist! How am I supposed to know these things?

I always worry a little about my grad student friends who don't like to talk about their studies. Nice to hear that you feel like you're growing into your scholar hat! Feel free to hold forth any time you want, it's fascinating.

Happy belated birthday Ms. Susan. I really do have to get an updated birthday calendar going.

And happy birthdays to all the other people on your birthday list I haven't said so to already. Go, cancers, go!

Speaking as someone with a Pikachu and a Squirtle sitting on top of my office computer, I say purple airplanes are downright conservative. And speaking as a parent, I say carrying neat and entertaining stuff on one's person is good contingency planning, and there's nothing more grown-up and responsible than that.

Act and dress in a manner appropriate to your age, huh? But, purple airplanes notwithstanding, what does that even mean?

If it's any consolation, my mom has taken to telling me that it's high time I "get a real job". Bleagh.

Hey, happy birthday!

Happy B-day, Susan! Stay purple airplaney as long as possible, I say. I still have all the rubber snakes and aliens you sent me surrounding my computer, too.

I turned 28 last week and my mom told me she thinks I should become an insurance agent. Does that beat out what your mom said? ;)

Much love

(Sorry about the double post.)
(slinks away...)

Hey, now -- in my bag, I have a small wooden boat inside a plastic egg, a superball Jenn gave me at Clarion, and a plastic duck. That's not childish. It's child*like*. It's a crucial distinction.

Hey, now -- in my bag, I hae a small wooden boat inside a plastic egg, a superball Jenn gave me at Clarion, and a plastic duck. That's not childish. It's child*like*. It's a crucial distinction.

I have to say I agree with your mother. One should wait until one is 30 (or at least 28) to begin carrying purple plastic toy airplanes around.

and I am two days late! happy birthday, susan marie. I hope your continuing celebration continues in a celebratory fashion.

Thank you! You guys are wonderful. Needing to go to New Jersey to do birthday with mom has made the celebrations a little... let's just say we're stretching them out, a little at a time. Last night I had dinner with my mother and Matt, and then some family came over for cake. Tonight I got to see the pirate movie, oh so wonderful. And next week I get the real birthday dinner at a restaurant I love.

And then there's all of you, being so charming. Bit by bit,, it's an excellent birthday.

Happy birthday Susan!!!

I'm a day late. Shit. Instead, I will buy you some gigantic alcoholic fruity drink with, like, little paper umbrellas in it! Or another drink of your choice. Whatev.

Happy Bday, Susan!! I will attempt to become drunk in your honor. :)

Oooh, happy birthday girl! I really really wish you were here. Or that I'd had the foresight to get the address where you're staying out there so we could've sent you a Lush Rose Petal bath bomb, to literally shower you with those flower petals Tim was talking about!

Yay, Susan Marie was born!

We miss you! Come back early!

Yes, trupmets indeed! Also happy newts and fewmets!

Wish you were here, so we could shower you with flower petals, or something similarly celebratory. Consider it done from afar!

Happy Birthday, Susan!

I am stunned, stunned that I actually got the right day for one of the two I thought it might be.

*trupmets*

I hope you're having yourself a three-cake party!

Natal felicitations and forward-looking warm intentions!!!

Y'all, today is Susan's birthday! Happy happy.

The sushi was from... er... no, not that place, but I'm having trouble remembering the name. I'm so useless. But it was very good!

The good sushi in Rockville wasn't from Taipei-Tokyo Cafe, was it?? Ohmigod, it's one of the things I miss most about Maryland. After my friends, of course. Yeah, after my friends. *whistles* I lived in Germantown and Gaithersburg before moving to LA -- they're just north of Rockville.

We miss you Susan. Heather and I walk past your apartment and sigh wistfully. We're moving into our new place next week (starting tomorrow, we think), and we can't wait to have you over to see it. Have fun. Be researchy. There's wine and sushi waiting for you on this coast...

Well, parental support is a good thing.

Yay! That's completely awesome news. Yay for Karen! (And for lucky Strange Horizons!)

(I am now officially past my exclamation point quota for the year.)

Why, that's smashing. Top drawer, and all that.

Very cool news -- Karen sounds like a perfect fit! Congrats all 'round.

I am sorry to hear about the street cleaning. Somerville is coping with big cuts in state aid by dramatically increasing their ticketing revenue on street cleaning days this year. Towing is way up.

That Chicago comment reminds me of an illustration in "How to Colonize the Galaxy in 8 Easy Steps". It was a side-by-side comparison of a slime mold and an aerial view of a modern city. It was difficult to tell which was what without reading the caption.

I guess it makes me feel uncomfortable to classify urban growth as "natural" without mentioning that it's also "unconscious". That is, it proceeds in a largely unplanned fashion, with no anticipation of the long-term consequences.

So let me get this straight: Susan just traded one vaguely malevolent female landlord for another?

One of my friends insists that there's no midwest, that it's just little city islands linked by highway, like the florida keys.

I am reminded of a book we read in my historiography class in college, "Nature's Metropolis." It was about Chicago, and how its growth can be seen as no less natural than a forest (which, when you consider that there's something like less than 5% old growth forests around anymore, is a valid point). it's a very interesting book, and I'm always reminded of it when I think about the naturalness of towns and roads and houses and such.

Finding those PhD surveys sounds like looking down in a stream and seeing a shiny yellow bumpy rock bouncing along. Okay, maybe it's very specific gold, valuable only for your particular purposes, but still. How did you discover them?

Caviar comes from a virgin sturgeon! Virgin sturgeon is a very good fish! No good sturgeon wants to be a virgin -- that's why caviar's a very rare dish!

uh, yeah.

Edited by author 06-06-2003 07:40 PM
Not biology -- gastronomy! I'm talking about caviar. That sturgeon isn't big enough to be a beluga (unless it's a baby -- sing it with me! "Baby beluga..."), but it might be one of the other kinds of sturgeon that caviar comes from...

You could fit a lot of eggs into nine feet of fish. What? Don't try to confuse me with biology. I'm not a scientist!

That's a sturgeon, man. It's all about the eggs.

I get distracted trying to calculate how much sushi a nine foot fish could provide.

I'm a little afraid of fish. Except for the kind that are yummy.

I think a nine-foot fish is pretty interesting. It's not like you'll see one in a pet store. Or at dim sum.

Was it named Theodore?

That was one big-ass sturgeon.

(...wait for it...)

Go you!

Congrats, Susan! And nice work on the revamped newsletter. I quite enjoy it.

Nicely done, your Editorness.

Congratulations! You should keep this up, the one-upping yourself in each track of your dual career.

Susan is a powerful editorial force!

Congrats on the promotion, Susan!

Ah... drinking and South of the Border. A perfect mix! Thanks for the tip, Karen. Now I just need to find a reason to GO to South Carolina...

Edited by author 05-29-2003 11:07 AM
Mister Rowe has spoken! The territory's all yours, kid.

You don't have to go with his title, though. You could, for example, make your story a meditation on toupees and call it "Bald Rug". Or an exploration of suburban teen angst called "Mall Thug". Or try to hit that note of ironic detachment (perhaps as a post-modern comment on Objectivism) with "All Shrugged".

Just trying to be helpful.

PS. I've been to South of the Border and was not disappointed. It probably helps to be there with merry friends, and drunk don't hurt either.

Edited by author 05-29-2003 11:02 AM
Hmm... that makes me want to do a South of the Border story for folks driving from North Carolina to South. They've got more signs on the highway than any other place I've seen...

Though I imagine actually stopping and going into South of the Border would be a huge disappointment...

Safe travels, Susan! We're all waiting for the Wall Drug story.

not to mention the whole "signs everywhere with how many miles to Wall Drug" (up in space, on Mount Everest, perhaps from another dimension?) theme that pervades the Wall Drug experience.

The nomination has been seconded, but I think we can dismiss with the pretense of a vote. The motion carries. Coming soon, "Walled Drugs, Drugged Walls" by Susan Marie Groppi.

Second the nomination.

I nominate you to write a Wall Drug story. And you don't have the "I'm an editor not a writer" excuse anymore, Ms Writer Person.

Wall Drug really feels a lot like the House on the Rock, doesn't it? It's got the same kind of twistiness, and the same kind of weird niches with odd things in them, and as a cultural landmark-for-landmark's-sake, it really can't be beat. I have a really warm feeling in my heart for Wall Drug, for exactly that reason -- it is exactly what it is, all the time, and it feels like an oddly placed cultural nexus that only travellers ever get to see.

Wow, that really is a beautiful piece of writing, Susan. It's been wonderful seeing you so happy, too.

Vive le point-virgule! Vive l'amour!

Good luck, Susan.

Susan, that was sweet. Hope it works out.

It occurred to me after posting that section that it doesn't really showcase my semicolon problem. In the full draft, I'm guessing that I have a semicolon in every third sentence. They're so useful!

The bigger problem, potentially, is the academic overuse of the passive voice. Someone emailed me a rewrite of that passage that doesn't use the passive voice, and it's an interesting change. The (actually quite charming) thesis-writing guide that the psych department gave us as undergrads suggested purposefully breaking passive voice to prove a point. "Instead of using the traditional construction 'It was discovered that...', you may want to consider taking a risk with a bold declarative statement. 'Lo, I found this!'"

Fuck, I would vote for a comma splice for president at this point.

I only count a single semicolon in that paragraph. That seems like a perfectly reasonable semicolon density.

I actually have suffered from semicolon deficiency most of my life. At twenty-six years old, I am finally figuring out how to use the little buggers. That's a lot of comma splicing.

Carol Emshwiller rules. Can you, uh, get me her autograph?

I am the semicolons' bitch. Currently, that is; the semicolons and the em dashes have periodic turf wars, and during negotiations they pass me back and forth between them like someone's kid brother neither gang really wants tagging along underfoot.

And, oh, you had to go and break my heart. Carol Emshwiller at WisCon? *sob* Be sure to give us hapless non-attendees the extra-complete report? yes? please?

I'm trying to work out a pun involving the president and colons, but can't get it to work and that's really just as well. "Colonialize" had more promise but then I just lost interest in the whole joke.

Ditto Gwenda; Semicolons R Cool!

I would completely vote for a semicolon for president.

Heather is right, Susan is a party animal! I'm grateful that Tim kicked me out of the WisCon room we were supposed to be sharing in 2001 (for Heather of all people!) and into the room with Susan, who I barely knew.

Best WisCon ever! (Said in my terrible Comic Book Guy voice.)

Also, Susan, you are many things, but a "dreadful writer" ain't one of them. I think most of your journal entries would sell to Asimov's, if you just bothered to throw something speculative in them!

Geez, woman. :)

Lots and lots of academics are dreadful writers, so I don't think that'll be held against you.

Exxxxxccellllent.

Nick, you've obviously never been to a con with Ms. Groppi. As her (con) roommate, I can confirm rumors that she is quite the night-owl/ party girl. Out until 3am (at least! sometimes later!) and up (this is the part that I just don't get) at 8 or 9am every day! Me, I can do one or the other -- not both. So, you know, I'll be happy to stay up late, just no one expect me to make it to that 9am panel the next morning.

Oh, and last Wiscon, she had a trail of folks following her from party to party, because she was having *that much fun*.

Nick, you totally went to the wrong workshop, and that's really all I can say at this time.

It's all the anti-Jersey sentiment around here!

That, and the last time I got together with SF people, at the Strange Horizons workshop, everyone went to bed at 9:30! Only Karen Perry and I stayed up, so bored that we found ourselves talking about what we would buy if there were a 7-11 in town!

>Gosh kids, does this mean no 3AM diner run at Wiscon?

Nick, what makes you think that??

Gosh kids, does this mean no 3AM diner run at Wiscon?

LOL! Damn you and Nick! It was the Great Adventure/Wild Safari question that got me. We always used to roll our windows down when we weren't supposed to. That's why so many of our great high school moment involve animals.

Luckily, I only spent 10 years in NJ, so the overall damage was slight. But I do miss the malls...

Here are my two strategies for getting started with producing Important Documents:

Option A. Find one or more examples of what I'm trying to produce, preferably in electronic format. Cut-n-paste (or type, if hardcopy) into my own document, changing the relevant parts (read: substance) on the fly.

Option B. Sit down and type as if I were talking to somebody. Sometimes I type while talking to somebody on the phone, telling them what I'm going to be typing.

In either case (and often it's mix-and-match), I print out a hardcopy after the first go-round and mark it up extensively. Second and later drafts typically don't bear more than a passing resemblance to the firsts, in case one were worried about plagiarism (with Option A) or loopiness (with Option B). It's all about getting over the initial struggle.

I can so sympathize with writer's block. All semester I've been "How on earth am I going to write this 40-page paper? I have 25 pages, I have figures. Beautiful figures, getting more beautiful everyday. I ...just...can't.. finish." So how on earth am I ever going to write a 100-300 page thesis?

I think Yellowstone was mentioned? A word of warning: it's quite expensive to get in, and even in May there's likely to be a lot of snow still. But, well, it's Yellowstone, so you be the judge.

Oops. Okay -- thanks for the corrections, Mike. I was just going by the bit that said 101 north went along the coast. Sorry, Susan, ignore what I said.

For those of you following along at home... 101 north is actually pretty fast. It's surprisingly straight, and you end up keying through a few smallish towns in Oregon but they don't slow things down too much. It's not really comparable to 1.

http://www.mnhs.org/places/sites/index.html

Susan, if you're coming from the west into Minnesota you could try the Jeffers Petroglyphs

http://www.mnhs.org/places/sites/jp/index.html

which I've heard are very cool.

Wait a minute.

Circus World?
In Baraboo?

Oh, good Lord. So that's where Barry Longyear came up with those stories.

Now that's funny...

Crater Lake is terrific! We kept taking picture after picture trying to capture the feeling of looking down into this steep, smooth-sided bowl of snow and water -- not to mention the scraggly off-centered island that is totally the home of A Mystical Someone Not To Be Trifled With. I'm not sure if it's still snowy this time of year. If so, you'll have the added thrill of knowing that if you slide in the wrong direction, you won't stop until you hit water.

Some opinions from Jed:

101 is nice and all, but coastal freeways in general are not the fastest way to get anywhere (which isn't necessarily a problem in itself, of course), and if you're driving alone you have to pay enough attention to the road that you can't necessarily watch the ocean much, and it's easy to get stuck behind people in RVs going 25 mph, and if you're driving after dark there's pretty much nothing to see. (Okay, so my experience in this regard was largely driving south on 1 at the beginning of my Wanderjahr. But I bet the same applies to 101 north.)

Kam also recommended Circus World, I believe.

I'm told that Victoria, B.C., is very nice -- "like Seattle, only without all that rain" -- but I've never been there.

The best time to visit Seattle is during June, 'cause that's when it sometimes doesn't rain, and you can go to the Clarion West parties.

I've heard good things about Crater Lake, but have never been there.

"All day, all night, Cary Grant.
That's all I here from my wife: Cary Grant.
What can he do that I can't?!?
Big deal, big star, Cary Grant."

Hey, found this link for going through Oregon on 101 -- maybe you can do some whale-watching as you drive past the ocean...

Don't you love having other people plan your trips for ya??? :)

I hope some of us fans of yours will see you on your eye-blurring pass through Portland...

Depending on the route you are taking this may or may not be on the way, but if it is, I highly recommend it - Lake Itasca. It is in the upper part of Minnisota, near the Canadian border, its the headwaters of the Mississipii (or at least very close to it, there is apparently some debate about this point).

But most specifically, there is a really awesome Hostel right in the middle of the park where you can stay the night for very little and spend time in a really beautiful and peaceful park.

Wall Drug is definitely an experience - worth doing at least once if you are driving by.

p.s. I would be so disappointed if I got to Mt. Rushmore and there was no man on Lincoln's nose.

Well, if you're skipping House on the Rock, there's always Circus World in Baraboo, Wisconsin. It's not far, it has wonderful Blue Moon ice cream, great midget postcards, a library with more circus history in it than you can do a cartwheel at, a one ring circus and an absolutely fantastic demonstration of circus musical instruments that are cooler than calliopes.

You know, roadsideamerica.com is a fabulous site that I'm very glad to now know about, but it's depressing when it comes to the route I'm taking. I haven't looked in any depth, though, so we'll see.

I'm skipping House on the Rock on this trip, because it's totally the kind of place I'd want to go with other people, but most other things are fair game.

And Jackie, thanks for reminding me that I need to get AAA before I head out. :) I'm completely not worried about my car, it's a 2001 Corolla, all shiny and incredibly reliable. Well, not shiny in a literal sense, but you know what I mean.

What kind of car are you driving on this trip? Do you have AAA and a cell phone? Can you change a tire?

Good golly, I just channeled my Mom. Actually, I think the road trip is a fantastic idea, and I'm a bit envious.

As for interstates, I advocate making it up as you go. Any road that cuts diagonally across a chunk of interesting terrain is fair game. If something has an intriguing name, that's a valid reason to detour. Most everything is beautiful if you've never seen it before.

Edited by author 04-23-2003 08:36 AM
The only thing that surprised me about Mt. Rushmore is that the visitor's center is no longer the one shown in North By Northwest. Apparentally they replaced it with a more up to date, larger one in the '80s (or therebouts). Not that this is a bad thing, but I did find myself subtly disappointed. OTOH, the mountain remains damned impressive, as is the Crazy Horse Memorial (still in process).

My wife made us see visit De Smet in South Dakota, as it was the Little Town on the Prairie, and thus suitable for Laura Ingalls Wilder fans.

Oh, and don't pass by the Corn Palace. But don't go out of your way either.

Montana is awesome! (She says, never having been there.) You should check RoadsideAmerica.com and see if there are any cool roadside dinosaur museums along that route through Montana. And I've heard that the junk in the shops around Mt. Rushmore is pretty damn impressive.

The open road is your friend. Michael Paterniti's book Driving Mr. Albert always makes me want to drive cross-country just because.

Yes, clearly the thing to do is arrive in Madison well ahead of schedule. (Peter, you're welcome anytime too. The House on the Rock awaits you!)

South Dakota is fantastically beautiful, and there are all kinds of fun things to do on 90. J and I stopped for a half day in the Badlands, and I wish we had stayed longer. Then there's the completely inexplicable Wall Drugstore, and the Spam museum in Austin, Minnesota, which you are compelled to visit for irony's sake. I never got to see House on the Rock, because by the time we got to Wisconson we were a bit behind schedule, but I want to go there the next time I make the drive, if only because it gets a mention in American Gods.

I did! I was persuaded to not tinker with it myself, so I called the landlord again, and it was fixed about an hour later.

Nice tiling (and yes, the shower curtain is lovely). Hope he also put your toliet back.

Incidentally, did you get your low hot water level thing squared away?

Hey, we've got that shower curtain, too!

Thank you! ("PoMo", huh?)

Susan, that's a very classy shower curtain.

[silly]
Apparently, postmodernism breaks the conventions of 'readability' and discovers the inherent conflict between text and background, exposing eye strain to be merely a cultural construct...
[/silly]

Contentwise, nice link. Thanks! I'll paste it into Notepad and read it later.

Jon, that link looks great. I only skimmed it (I got stuck in the part about modernism, which I've studied a little bit in relation to science and culture, but not literature) but I think I'll be reading it more closely later.

I should mention, I think, that while Alan himself referred to "Shepherd's Calendar" as postmodern space-opera, he was quite possibly being flippant. I can't remember.

Here's a definition of PoMo that holds up pretty well, I think (bearing in mind I've not been an English major for many many years now).

Edited by author 04-17-2003 09:54 PM
"Postmodernist space opera"?
Huh.
Can you define postmodern here for the pitifully ignorant?

I think that sounds ideal: getting stories publishing despite not writing. Mmm. Heavenly.

I think it's sort of pretty the way it is. You know, kind of industrial German neo-thingy chic? Or something?

But I suppose pretty don't get your hair no cleaner....

Flytrap is a new 'zine from Tropism Press, a.k.a. Tim 'n' Heather. It'll be debuting at World Fantasy Con '03, and Susan, despite not writing, has a story in it. (And btw, congratulations, Susan!)

...My goodness, now Susan is quoting Gilbert & Sullivan. Should we call you Mad Susan from now on?

What is the list price of your building?

Nick "Slumlord Tycoon" Mamatas

So, what's a Flytrap, and where does one acquire a copy of it?

Hee. It's not that I'm not excited about the Flytrap sale, it's just that I've made such a production out of "oh, but I don't write." If that makes any sense. I don't! Mostly.

The shower situation isn't necessarily as bad as it sounds. I'm at the gym almost every day anyway, and showering there after a workout, so I'm down to one shower a day instead of two. I haven't washed my hair, though--I feel weird doing that at the gym--and it feels all ooky. If I still don't have a functional shower by tonight, I'll get over the weird about washing my hair at the gym.

I had something else to say about the responses to the conversation with my mom, but it's gone now. (I had an affadavit once, but it died, oh, it died.)

You're such a nice lady, I'm sure you'll love the smell of drywall in the morning. Oy.

Oh, since you seem to be uninclined to mention it, congrats on the Flytrap sale.

Edited by author 04-15-2003 03:07 PM
Do you have shower at work? If not, I bet you'll be working out at the gym more regularly!

Hey, Susan, do you know how to do a yoga headstand? I was able to do a should stand on the first try, so I was inspired to go for a half-headstand. Ouch.

Susan -- I've been thinking about this all week, this conversation you had with your mom. First of all, I hate that she thinks that slimmer is always better. "HEALTHY" is always better than unhealty, I'll agree with that...

I'm alway a bit surprised at those extra pounds I see in photos of me, of course. But the image I have of myself is probably closer to the image that OTHERS have of me, if that makes sense. Nobody is going to notice if I've put on or lost 10 lbs., except me.

It's better to like yourself as you are, not hate yourself because you're not someone else's idea of perfection.

That said, if I ever got a scale for my birthday I'd use it as a bludgeoning tool on the giver. :)

Got to be a story in there somewhere. It's trickier since Heather Shaw beat us to it...

Hi Susan! Jackie pointed me here yesterday. (I met you at Chris and Jackie's wedding - the photographer's assistant and one of Chris's office mates)

I was telling Jackie about a phone conversation with my mom the other day:
Mom: In that picture you sent me, your shirt looks tight. What do you weigh now?
Me: I don't know.
Mom: Don't you have a scale?
Me: No.
Mom: May be that's what I should get you for your birthday.

Jackie showed me your story about the walk with your mother. I sympathize.

Also, I saw that you passed your (preliminary? oral? candidacy?) exam. Congratulations! :)

"I can't tell if it's better or worse that it was a library book."

Worse! Much worse! <clutches at heart>

I do hope you cleaned it off well before returning it. Otherwise, that would be as bad as the patron who returned our Caligula biography with very suspicious...well, they were stains, and sticky, and it was a *Caligula* biography.

I love that the address of your photo is sugarspun.net/monster/spider (as if you kept an entire directory full of such monsters).

Yeah, about a year ago I dropped a book on a spider about that same size, and it made something of a mess all over the book. I can't tell if it's better or worse that it was a library book.

I used to have a dread fear of spiders. Living in an apartment where I encounter them weekly, I had two options: learn to not be so terrified, or have a complete nervous breakdown. The nervous breakdown didn't seem so fun.

Ooo, ooo, I know! "Thunderclap"!

Any spider that merits a picture would probably be pretty nasty to clean up if you flattened it.

You know, Chris (Groppi) is arachnophobic? He can't even look at pictures of spiders.

Susan, loved your portrait of your mother and you, talking and walking. I have similar conflicts with my parents as well. I think to some extent, it's generational gaps where the conflicts set it. Other times, I think it's just ignorance. But then I get scared and wonder if my kids will someday think I'm ignorant, that even as aware of myself and the world around me I try to be, to maintain, to be inclusive and understanding of a variety of things, I wonder if my kids and their friends will still find me a stubborn old fool. For now, I'll just say, nope, not possible, and hope that that is true.

And you looked as beautiful before you lost weight as you do now. ;)

That is a big, nightmare-inducing spider. Exactly what digital cameras are made for.

I admire you for leaving the spider alive. I usually just pick the biggest magazine I've already read, close my eyes and hope for some higher power to guide my glossy bringer of death.

Oddly enough, all I see in the picture is a large rectangle of light green and another large rectangle of white. It works as modern art, but unless it somehow captures the essence of spiderness, I'm not sure it works as a picture of a spider. On the other hand, my browsers often see things incorrectly on Susan-related pages.

Disclaimers: 1) it's a blurry picture. 2) there are no size-reference-markers in the picture, so you have to take my word for it. The total size across the legspan was a little larger than an inch. 3) I haven't figured out yet how to not make the pictures enormous, so it's an enormous file. 4) it's mostly white background, so you may have to scroll around a little to see the spider.

That said, here. http://www.sugarspun.net/monster/spider.jpg

Edited by author 04-07-2003 08:03 PM
The masses demand pictures of the spider.

You missed a couple of earth-shaking thunderstrikes(*) while you were gone. Remembering the Earthquake Slug in your bathtub and your other small-animal harbinger (shoot, what was that?), I was wondering if you'd have some sort of manifestation waiting for you when you got home.

(*) Edited to add: okay, thunder doesn't actually strike. Thundershocks? What is the term for an instance of thunder?

Put the remote control down and walk away from the television, and nobody will get hurt.

At first I thought you were saying that you were trying to play the game of Risk in a hurry. Heh.

And can I tell you how hard I've had to work to avoid "Married by America"? The worst part is, I know I'd become deeply fascinated, all the while feeling my soul draining away.

A ha! Now it's all y'all's fault!

But of course, you realize that this isn't actually a war. Since the Constitution says Congress has to declare war, and since Congress has done no such thing, this action is clearly not a war. It's actually knitting -- you just think it looks like a war because of the, you know, bombs and stuff.

Edited by author 03-24-2003 10:39 AM
I can't help but think of this war as the Science Fiction War. There's the rotating 3-D graphics and statistics displays they have for different vehicles. There's the footage from the front and MSNBC ongoing coverage that looks straight out of the Starship Troopers movie. And last but not least, I keep wondering exactly what point it was that the United States turned into the Vorlons.

I once read in _Literal Latte_ about a woman who called her pediatrician after her baby daughter had swallowed some snails. He asked if she used pesticides in her garden. "No? Well, get her some good bread and a bit of butter. . ."

No, it's okay. World War Two is the Physicist's War, and I think they come off worse on destructive potential. And besides, everyone forgets World War One anyway.

"The Chemists' War"?? Man, we get blamed for everything, I swear.

Edited by author 03-20-2003 05:44 PM
This is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls
All propagated with the best intentions
-- Lord Byron (by way of Graham Greene)

Congratulations! Again!

And, um, topic: Did you see the link from mememachinego a little while ago about the war [sic] between psychological scientists and practicioners? It should still be there on the front page.

Yeah, my program doesn't do too much of the quantitative stuff. There are some history programs where you're really pushed to do statistical analyses and whatnot, but we're not one of them. The history of science part of the department (professors and students alike) seem to produce a lot of biography, though. We're not sure why that is.

Smells like a qualitative dissertation. Those stand a fighting chance of being interesting to read, IMO (vs. the number crunching quantitatives).

Edited by author 03-16-2003 04:52 PM
hee. Lovely! Thank you, all of you.

And since Nick asked, here. My dissertation is going to have something to do with the presentation of psychology as a science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I want to look at how psychologists, especially academics, used the rhetoric of science and scientific practice to shape the discipline, and with luck I'll have something new to say about how that rhetoric affected the path that the discipline took. If I have even more luck, I'll manage to make it an interesting read as well.

Yay! All hail the queen of PHDs!

Congratulations! That's so exciting!

Congratulations!

So, what's the thesis on?

Congratulations, Susan.

Wow! That's, like, HUGE! A major milestone. Congrats!

Woo! Well done!

Many hoorays!! Huge congrats!! Kick-ass, woman!

Yay! I'm so happy for you! I'm glad it was fun, too! Huzzah!

W00+! U R 3733+!!#!%$#!!

By which I mean to say, kick some faculty butt, Susan!

Knock 'em dead, Susan.

Susan, break a leg today at exams (not sure if that's appropriate, but in theatre good luck is bad luck, so am superstitious). Can't wait to get you back from studying so much! Miss you! Looking forward to drinking lots with you to celebrate tomorrow night!

Whoo-hoo!

Woo woo!

I have it on good authority that the orals aren't actually about passing or failing, they're about initiation. If you've felt the pain of the ordeal, you've already passed.

Now, go show them how much you rule!

Show 'em your scholarly Kung-Fu, Susan. Go academic on their asses!

Go Susan go!!! Positive vibes heading your way from the Southeast! Kick some ass today. :)

Good, good luck wishes your way, Susan. Kick exam ass!

Edited by author 03-12-2003 12:02 PM
Chris asks: "What's up with yoga? You're doing yoga, the women in my office are doing yoga, Susan is doing yoga. My mom is doing yoga."

"So?" I ask.

He shrugs. "I don't know. I just don't feel any urge to do yoga. None whatsoever."

"I guess that's because yoga is a chick thing."

At this point I'd start with going with things like getting the haircut. You've been studying for this thing for an eternity, so I'd say it's time you start fixing the other things that will drive you absolutely bugshit when you get in there. Sure, that sort of thing is superficial, but you ought to minimize whatever distractions you can at this point.

In my opinion, of course.

The comments page at the magazine isn't, I guess, a bad place for it. Although it's not quite a -good- place either; we're moving to a threaded forum-type comments section, but that's months and months away from implementation.

You could try here, or Jed's topic at the Rumor Mill. I mean, you--oh, sorry, the hypothetical reader. The hypothetical reader could also just email one of the editors, but then he or she would lack feedback from other SH readers.

Say, Susan? If one of your SH readers, hypothetically, had a bad impression of one of the stories and wanted to know what the editors and possibly other, more-favorable readers saw in it--not in that sarcastic "what could you possibly see in this" way, but sincerely--is there an appropriate forum for that?

A friend of mine from grad school (who had gone straight through to PhD land) has trouble with older professors thinking she's just a grad student. She's working at her third professor position and every time she's had some old guy practically pat her on the head because she looked so young.

That's been less of an issue for her since she passed thirty, but for a while there she was seriously considering coloring a gray streak in her hair.

Edited by author 03-05-2003 07:06 AM
More than one person has come to work at my library in pigtails, from the hip just-outta-college tattooed young woman to the middle-aged mother of three who is director of her own (smaller) library. Not that we're a raging hotbed of professionalism, but.

Next thing you know they'll be patting your shoulder and murmuring "My, you're awfully young to be a PhD, aren't you?"

Just leave that giant lollipop at home and you'll be fine.

That only works if I'm actually brilliant, though.

Don't the pigtails make them underestimate you, which then makes your brilliance even more apparent by contrast with the six-year-old they were expecting?

Sounds like Scholz stays in the "maybe" category for now, along with oh so many other books. Thanks for the response!

I loved Scholz's first novel, Radiance.

If you do buy the collection for the library, I wouldn't stick a sci-fi sticker on it.

Scholz certainly writes unusual stuff. See, for example, "Mengele's Jew" in Starlight 1 and "The Amount to Carry" (featuring Franz Kafka, Wallace Stevens, and Charles Ives as insurance salesmen) in Starlight 2. I haven't read enough of his work to have a feel for it in general, but it looks like a lot of his stories have been published in off-the-beaten-path places like Crank! The new collection is published by Picador, which I (ulp) hadn't heard of but appears to have an awfully impressive lit-fic lineup. In short, I haven't read most of the stories in The Amount to Carry so I can't personally recommend it, but if you want to expose readers to more stuff lurking in the interstices between speculative fiction and literary fiction, it sounds to me like it's probably a good bet.

A staff person at my library suggested we might get "The Amount to Carry" by Carter Scholz, and the Publisher's Weekly review says "Most of the stories were published in sci-fi magazines," so I figured: why not ask people who probably know something about him? So, buy or no buy?

Oh, yeah, that song has Vince Guaraldi all over it.

Mark, "descending I7" for non-musicians:
(descending) starting at the highest note and working lower,
(I) a set of notes in the basic key of the song
(7) including the "seventh note" (the second-to-last note you would sing if you were singing the scale of that chord, "ti" in the do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do thing) in addition to the usual first, third, and fifth.

So, a descending I7 goes ti-so-mi-do. The beginning of "Don't Know Why" goes (beat)-ti-so-so-miii-miii-dooo-dooo. The beginning of "Christmastime is Here" goes ti-so-sooooo-mi-miiiii.

If you're a former high school band geek like me, you might note that the chord we're talking about is usually called a major seventh ("Imaj7") to distinguish it from the more-common dominant seventh (I7) that you hear a lot in, say, blues, where the seventh note of the scale is flatted for that groovy lost-my-(wo)man feel.

Importing a question from Peter, who takes part here:

"Okay, back me up here. The start of that Norah Jones song, "Don't Know Why", it reminds you of
  the Peanuts Christmas Special, doesn't it? Doesn't it? You know, the descending I7 chord, like
  they use in "Christmastime is Here?" Come on. This is driving me crazy. I can not be the only one."

I don't know about "Don't Know Why"--but "Come Away with Me" does remind me of the Peanuts Christmas Special music, with the plinky piano against the really relaxed other instruments.

I know, "plinky" and "relaxed" are oh so technical terms. If I knew what an I7 chord was, I'd cite that instead.

I love Norah Jones. I was extremely bad and kept her CD out from my library for several months (the loan period is one week). In my defense, it was uniquely good at soothing both my son and my wife, who were very cranky with interrupted sleep schedules at the time.

Zinc, echinacea and elderberry (that is, if the sore throat is a prelude to other cold-like symptoms.) My dad's a real proponent of elderberry extract, and the fun thing is that my mother *does* look like a hamster (a cute, curious one -- or possibly a bunny-like woodrat.)

Yes.

My mom pushed the "gargle with saltwater" thing, too. Gack.

My parents' suggestion for when I had a sore throat was to wear a hat. That, or have a bowel movement.

No, wait. I'm confusing that with something else, aren't I?

I still have a cool, black, grey and red vinyl printing of a Fates Warning album that I was given at one of the Concrete Marketing/Foundations Forum cons in the early 90s. Not that I ever actually listened to it.

Edited by author 02-26-2003 01:17 PM
Yay for floofy socialist singer-songwriters! We'll make a folk music fan out of you yet.

Edited by author 02-26-2003 12:09 PM
Hey, Greg (/m153), don't feel bad. I can't say I was ever a Rush disciple, but I cherish my well-worn cassette of "Exit Stage Left." Even if I don't play it much anymore.

Just as long as everyone here is Fates Warning-free, I think everything will be ok. And if not, we'll work through this together.

The main fun of the Rush teasing was that you were apprenticed to the earnest punk rock DJ's at WHRB at the time. (That's the right letters, right?) I'm in no position to judge, since my one and only brand-name band concert was Genesis.

Punk rock DJ's. I don't suppose you have a copy of "Fuck you, Norway" lying around anywhere?

These days I'm indulging my socialist leanings and listening to a lot of floofy singer-songwriters.

Reformist!

Oh yes I did! Back in my wayward youth, when I evangelized about libertarian politics and dated a lot of bass players, that kind of thing. These days I'm indulging my socialist leanings and listening to a lot of floofy singer-songwriters. They seem, somehow, to go together.

Is somebody saying I'm not cool? Is somebody saying I have bad taste? Hey, let me tell you something. I am a rebel and a runner! I am a signal turning green!!

My wife also laughs at my old Rush albums, but I think she's mostly laughing at Geddy Lee's voice.

I also think Nanette is a little biased against Rush in general, judging from the rest of her screed.

At any rate, I wouldn't trust anyone of the "don't make eyecontact" crowd on a college campus to be truly crazy if they don't show up except at lunch. Freshman year: Guy in robes calling himself Zeno, holding up a sign with a fairly anti-Semitic message, attracting crowds and getting in shouting matches. Did that for eight weeks, he did, and it turned out he was a psych major doing an experiment.

Susan: didn't you go to a Rush concert in your younger days? I have a fond memory of teasing you mercilessly for it, and it sure would be a pick-me-up to get to do it again.

Strangely enough, though, my brain identified the lyrics as being from an Indigo Girls song.

They do not! Arrrgh.

How come all Rush songs sound the same?

I'm not sure I understand why you were laughing at the lyrics to "Free Will". I mean, it's not like he was singing "By-Tor & The Snow Dog".

OMG! The latest representative of the don't-make-eye-contact delegation is a Rush fan? That is awe. some.

...and a lot better than Abusive/Apologetic Man. *shiver*

Go out in public and listen to the insipid conversations all around you. Relating insipid conversations makes for fascinating talk. If you really don't want to leave the house, turn on C-Span. Same effect.

Or you could listen to Patsy Cline. No matter how gray things seem, I'm always doing better than poor Patsy was. (The Cline Cure is sure to displace Freud one of these days. Yay! Patsy Cline Sigmund Freud cage match!)

Escape Sleep Mode is completely understandable. Sleeping means you don't have to slog. Of course, there's always bubbles. Bubbles are cheap and how can you not be having fun when you're blowing bubbles? Plus, minimal time commitment allows optimum study to occur.

(World problems solved. Let's all blow bubbles...) Anyway, hope you feel better. You should start planning to buy a new pair of shoes after the exam. Yet another tried and true...indulgence.

Gwenda

http://bondgirl.blogspot.com

Susan, you are one of the few people I know who can spout out a mini-essay asserting your boring-ness that is funny, sympathetic, and imbued with personality.

Just an observation.

It was nice to see you with your head apparently above water this weekend. I have no doubt that you'll kick the exam's ass, idealism and positivism be damned.

I wouldn't worry about your current incoherency. It happens. To me, it's usually a sign that most of my subconscious brain cells are Making Tea, thus freezing up enough of my neural processes that I become disconnected from my usual internal feedback loops.

I find that relative solitude, good music, a nice pot of tea and perhaps some physical, non-analytical task (eg. mending, putting together a jigsaw puzzle, going for a walk) often help.

: )

Susan, you stammering mass of chaotic trivial/hyper-intellectual non sequiturs, petrifying innocent conversational bystanders with your tangential threads all wildly a-squirm like Medusa snakes, you.

You're a woman grown and if you say you're incapable of conversation right now, I am perfectly willing to believe you. But seriously, it's not as though measured, sedate, monotopical narrative was ever your strong point. You're welcome to call or write and stutter dizzyingly at me anytime. It's just nice to hear from you.

The old rule on not talking about your German class still holds, though.

Oh-ho, Susan, that was so funny to read. I've felt that way my entire life. I hope it doesn't last too long ... the feeling, that is. I mean, that's all it really is - a feeling, a perception of how you're being perceived. I'm pretty sure you could make billing statements into an hysterically funny anecdote.

I was thinking about aftermath of the exam, though. I think it must be like post-partum, a sort of depression, at least for a week or two. Like you've been swimming upstream for so long to do this one thing, and now there's nothing left to live for. Very northwest.

Hey, you should take an "exam honeymoon".

Actually, I think a certain amount of mental collapse can be fascinating to watch. Sort of calls to mind a feeling of, y'know, "well, thank buddha that's not me."

Besides, your journal entries are not at all boring.

Maybe you carry a small whiteboard with you (a la "Hush") and pretend to be mute.

Oh, Peter, your faith is touching, but you haven't seen me lately. I'm practically stammering. I'm afraid to go out in public because I know I'm so tedious.

Good lord, Sus. If you're boring, I must be dead. Yes, that's it. Dead!

Also, I was insane during the last little bit of my PhD, too. It hasn't quite healed over yet, obviously.

For what it's worth, a few months after my fiancée finished her Ph.D., she started to miss the challenge, even though she was insane through the latter days of her program. I was insane through the latter days of her program, too.

Ah, I have only so much power, you know? Which is to say, very little at all. At least Strange Horizons is in the magazine pull-down list this year!

And yet! I had to write Frank in on the Locus poll, he wasn't on the drop-down menu. What's up with that, Mr Pratt?

Edited by author 02-20-2003 09:43 AM
Susan, I forgot to mention this earlier, but once you've been in a Frank Wu painting, you have Arrived.

Mike, still waiting for Frank to show him his etchings... ;)

I'm taking wiscon up on the suggestion that groups of authors be clustered together under a common name...

besides the obvious groupings like say - "the ratbastards" or the "New Wave Fabulists" (see Conjunctions 39) any other suggestions.

If so, the email address is readings@sf3.org.

Yeah, Susan, congrats on scheduling your exam.

My wife's not a writer of fiction, although she is a good writer and editor (used to be a journalism major, back in the day). Sadly, most of her writing skills these days are used in the corporate world. She's also a pretty good artist, although untrained.

I think a certain amount of creativity is required for longterm attraction to someone, and it doesn't have to be in writing. I don't think they'd even have to be particularly good at [whatever], only willing to keep working at it until they picked up some skill in it. Hmm. So that's creativity with some drive. That'll work.

Susan, glad you've got an official exam date. Break a leg and all that.

Edited by author 02-18-2003 09:59 PM
I saw Aimee and Michael on the Acoustic Vaudeville tour they did together, and it was fabulous. For one thing, they did "No Myth" as a duet, with Aimee taking one verse in an Ethel Merman impression. Also she did "Voices Carry", but in this weird sad acoustic-guitar kind of style, and it was just lovely.

Mostly, though, I was happy to see Michael Penn in concert--I love Aimee Mann, but she tours a lot more often than he does. They both looked like they were having a lot of fun, too, which made it even better.

Oh! You also reminded me of the weird involved in the possibility of Madonna and Aimee Mann having been sisters-in-law. I'm pretty sure they weren't, that the timing didn't work, but still. How weird would -that- be?

What about the "writing gene"? Is there an equivalent to the "math gene"? Like female scientists who only want to marry the most brilliant man, a John Nash or a Richard Feynman, to ensure that their kids are Nobel prize winners. Do writers worry about that?

Susan -- Speaking of Aimee Mann and Michael Penn, it's really cool when they sing together on one of her songs.

Though there's a song of Aimee Mann's where I think it's Michael Penn channeling Ben Folds in the background, singing "You won't get my money back" that really freaked me out when I first heard it. I think the song is "How Am I Different."

What's even weirder is that Michael Penn is Sean and Chris Penn's bro.

End of tangent.

Mike, whose wife is not a writer, but is actively curious about genre fiction and the whole wriing process (see how I seamlessly tied all that together?)

"..once you get to a certain point, you just have to refuse to get involved with anyone who isn't a brilliant writer, because otherwise their suckiness will drag you down."

Nah. That's only true if you look to your mate to be a professional peer. Plenty of brilliant writers over the ages have mated with people who don't write at all; presumably they've found the inspiration for maintaining their creative ideals and standards elsewhere. For example, by reading brilliant books, by hanging out with other writers socially, by having a mind of their own, etc. I do think it's a valuable quality in a mate to be a brilliant *reader*, but that's a different thing.

Ah, dating another writer.

Back in September I went on the Manhattan Lovecraft Walking Tour. One of the organizers was a nice fellow by the name of Peter Cannon. While hanging around outside a bookstore he notices a copy of the book Three Junes and explains that his ex-wife wrote it and that it has become very popular.

So I say "Well you know, since every first literary novel is a roman a clef, you must be a character in it. And since you're divorced, you character must get hit by a bus or something!"

I thought I was joking, but he nods and says "Yep. I'm in there: a character has an anagram of my name and an obsession with comic books -- a stand-in for my interest in Lovecraft -- and I end up falling out a window. It's left ambiguous as to whether I fell or if I was pushed."

I think the real problem might be breaking up with a writer!

I don't care if the person I date is a writer or not, but she would have to have some sort of drive to do something with her life beyond accumulating a big stack of money or a houseful of things.

I'm sorry, I know I'm about to drift into Compulsive Monotopical Reply Syndrome (and no one likes that), but:

"I was trying to take a look at the overall picture of how people might drift into reading it"

But amazon, because it lacks most of the browsing/dumping/word of mouth power of the real world, is an especially poor way of doing this.

Oh, it's not that people find their books because of Amazon links, it's that the correlations at Amazon show (for an internet-buying sample of the population) some effects of all that browsing/dumping/word of mouth/etc. A snapshot of the shadow cast by real-world activity onto a popular online merchant. If I want to know what books tend to associate with what others, it's not the worst possible reference. And the Relator tool makes it easy (and fun) to identify the patterns.

Sorry, Susan, for geeking out like that in your topic. I'm done. :)

I would have a very hard time dating someone who wanted to be a writer, but who wasn't any good. Heather, fortunately, is very good; one of the things that first attracted me to her was her writing skillz.

That said, I could date a non-writer. It wouldn't be as much fun, but it would work. The woman I dated before Heather had no interest in writing; indeed, no interest in genre fiction at all, and that never proved to be a problem. It's more fun to share your successes (and commiserate about your failures) with someone who really understands, though...

"So there's a good question for you writers and editors, would you ever dump somebody if you found out they weren't a particularly good writer? Or even, just had really bad taste in reading?"

Heh. Oh yeah.

I have always, always said that one of the most important characteristics in a mate was creative talent. They had to have some sort of way of expressing themselves artistically (music, writing, art, what have you) and they had to be GOOD at it. This infuriated my sociology teacher in high school when this made my top 5 traits to look for in a mate -- she thought the ability to support me and my children should take its place. Bah.

And, when I've been dating (seriously looking-for-a-boyfriend dating, not dabbling-in-bad-boys dating) I've stuck to it. I dumped a photographer because he really didn't have a talent for it (his whiskers also went right up my nose when we kissed, but that could be solved by a razor). There's nothing worse than trying to be loving and supportive to someone who you think has no talent.

You can imagine my relief and joy when Tim and I hooked up; he's talented, cute and prollific as hell. We've been a very good influence on each other. I'm lucky to have him.

Not only is Alice Sebold married to Glen David Gold, but I read an interview with one (or both?) of them once, and one or the other said something to the effect of: once you get to a certain point, you just have to refuse to get involved with anyone who isn't a brilliant writer, because otherwise their suckiness will drag you down.

Looking back, I suppose that's maybe sort of reasonable, but at the time it horrified me on so very many levels. I mean, it still does--arrogance and lack of compassion, such a lovely combination!--but I can see the pragmatism of it better now.

So there's a good question for you writers and editors, would you ever dump somebody if you found out they weren't a particularly good writer? Or even, just had really bad taste in reading?

I'm not sure whether I have genre blinders or not. I think it's more that I have a genre magnifying glass -- it's not that I actively avoid non-genre stuff, it's that I don't actively seek it out.

Frex, I've never consciously heard of The Lovely Bones before. It's entirely possible that someone's pointed it out to me in a bookstore or mentioned it in conversation, but it didn't really stick if so. But I don't subscribe to a newspaper, I don't hang out in bookstores very often these days, and I'm massively ignorant about what's up in the lit-fic world, except when friends among the cognoscenti point me to something in particular. I certainly don't go out of my way to avoid knowing this stuff; I just don't have any channels for discovering it without going out of my way to find it. And since I have more to read than time to read it in, I don't go out of my way to find new stuff to read.

(I also don't have a TV, but I pick up a fair bit about TV from co-workers who talk about it. My co-workers almost never talk about books.)

So anyway, I think that not going out of your way to be exposed to certain information channels is different from going out of your way to avoid being exposed to those channels. Does that make any sense?

No, People Who Equate Popular with Bad are definitely not exclusively hardcore SF fans. In fact, many of them also Equate SF with Bad.

Edited by author 02-18-2003 02:14 PM
Wait, Alice Sebold is married to Glen David Gold? That's kinda cool. I just found out last week that Sue Carey is married to Ned Block... wait, no one will find that exciting. She's a developmental psychologist and he does a lot of cognitive philosophy stuff. Er... better example, like finding out that Aimee Mann and Michael Penn are married? Something like that.

"Carter Beats the Devil" is one of the best books I read last year, highly recommended.

I actually bought my copy of Lovely Bones at Costco. It was in a big pile near the harlequin romances and asian cookbooks. That's not the reason I bought it, of course - I'd been thinking about reading it after a review perked my interest, probably the NYTimes. I was feeling too cheap to spend $24 on the hard cover version, but Costco had it for $11, so I threw it in with the parmesan cheese and cheap designer jeans.

I think I liked the cover art, too. I must admit, I often judge a book by it's cover.

Not sure how applicable this is to SF, but I think there is a whole category of people who will miss "The Lovely Bones." It's called: People Who Equate Popular With Bad.

It's actually interesting to me that more SF readers don't seem familiar with "The Lovely Bones" because Alice Sebold's husband Glen David Gold's book "Carter Beats the Devil" seemed to have a pretty large cross-over audience. Of course, I have absolutely no data with which to back that up.

Gwenda

http://bondgirl.blogspot.com

I was trying to take a look at the overall picture of how people might drift into reading it

But amazon, because it lacks most of the browsing/dumping/word of mouth power of the real world, is an especially poor way of doing this. If bookstores rearranged their shelving for every individual customers, and ads in magazines and on television did likewise, an examination of amazon would fit better.

I agree that the point was that the book hasn't entered into the reading experience of a whole group of people. My point was that this was acheived through the application of genre-blinders, not through failure of opportunity.

Susan, have I mentioned to you yet how intensely frustrating it is to get suggestive fragments of stories? Beginnings, especially, but sometimes fragments of endings are even worse. Both? Now that's a hanging offense.

My point with the whole Amazon Relator experiment was not to say that SF/F fans wouldn't have heard about The Lovely Bones. The idea was to see what people are actually motivated to buy (which presumably correlates a little bit to what people are motivated to read). I was trying to take a look at the overall picture of how people might drift into reading it, since the original complaint was not that a particular person hadn't read it--a problem that can be fixed by the proper application of peer pressure--but that it hasn't entered into the reading experience of a whole class of people.

It took a couple of years before I stopped feeling like I was putting on airs when I introduced my wife as my wife. But then, I never could introduce her as my girlfriend, before. Oddly, I had no trouble with "fiancee" and kept wanting to stick with that for the longest time. Of course, we were engaged for almost two years, so I guess that makes sense.

Wooo, in-laws. It's all legal-looking. I'm still having trouble remembering to refer to your cousin as my husband. When does that wear off?

Jackie! Hello! And don't apologize at all--the whole point, I think, is for complete strangers to run around talking to each other. Right now it's mostly the spec-fic hipkids running wild, but it's always good to add cousins-in-law to the mix. :)

Hi Susan, sorry to poke my nose in among complete strangers, but your headache post triggered my "know-it-all" response. Have you been going pretty much all-out for this exam thing for a long time? I usually don't get migraines for long periods when I'm really stressing out. But then I'll get a real whopper afterward, when I finally get off the hook. The weekend after final exams, for example. It's just blood vessels relaxing and dilating, but wow, does it hurt.

If you've been really going crazy studying for your qualifiers, it's possible that your body decided to let off some tension now that you feel you've got the exam situation under control. (Then again, it's possible it's something else entirely... )

Sorry about your mom in high school. I guess that's pretty common too.

I read that in Europe most doctors still don't think headaches are a real medical condition. Germans view migraine as a "woman's problem", a bid for attention by the weaker sex. Hysterical women, can't cope with the responsibilities of keeping house and tending children, little better than children themselves, etc...

Eh, that's all I got.

I used to get horrible headaches in highschool, too. I went to see specialists and had little electrodes pasted to my head for tests (the paste residue really made it easy to feather your hair just right afterwards). I remember once, at a football game where I was with the marching band, one of the band mothers discovered my prescription for some headache medicine and freaked. Seems that she was a R.N. and she shrieked, "This dosage is far, far too high for you." Truth be told, I was pretty loopy at that point, but I still resented being made to miss the half-time performance in lieu of being walked up and down behind the bleachers by concerned band parents. But there was also the mixture of thrill and fear that comes from realizing that something dangerous just might have happened to you.

Anyway, I've been thinking about this lately because of the resurgence of migraines in my life the past few weeks. Susan, you think there's some neighborhood pollution causing our headaches? Maybe we can sue the people building the overpriced condos down the street for using some chemical we don't know about yet . . .

I am, of course, mostly kidding.

Jon--it's not a bad suggestion, except that I only ever faked headaches to get out of calculus. I never lied to my mother about them, and she still was the least sympathetic I've ever seen her be about anything. I'm willing to allow that it might be karmic balancing, but I'm quite sure it wasn't intentional on her part.

Greg, the more I hear of your family, the more sympathetic I feel (well, Michael seems all right, for an older brother).

Susan, I hate to suggest this -- I mean, it involves giving more credit to parents than we're usually comfortable with -- but is it possible your mother actually knew when you were faking it?

Ha. My mother's standard suggestion when I had these headaches in high school was something on the lines of "stop whining, there's nothing wrong with you." Which is odd, because she usually overreacts to anything that looks like a medical problem. I was that kid who got prescribed antibiotics every time I had a runny nose because my pediatrician didn't want to argue with my mother. But the headaches? Forget it.

My parents' recommendation for a headache was try to have a bowel movement. I no longer tell them when I have a headache.

Funny. My parents' recommendation for fixing a headache was also to wear a hat. Well, that, and go to medical school.

But my parents are totally insane, so take anything they say with a grain of salt.

Two remarks:

My parents' recommendation for fixing a headache was always, without fail, put on a hat. Preferably one of those tight knit caps, like longshoremen traditionally wear.

I'm still not sure how well known Lovely Bones is -- this evening at my parents we came across the listing for it on Barnes & Noble interactive TV (buy books through your television! no web browser required!). I made note of it (at #8 on the list) and my mom had never heard of it. And she's a big reader. Since retiring she and Dad practically live at B&N and Borders. I know, purely anecdotal evidence. Still.

Oh, I meant to mention -- in his guest editorial in the Winter 03 issue of The Third Alternative, M. John Harrison refers to the perceived slipstream/whatever movement as the "Next Wave." Though he counsels against lumping things into "movements." Just another point for the graph...

Yes, what Nick said. I've even seen television commercials for The Lovely Bones -- it's been a full-saturation mainstream publishing phenomenon. We actually had a big debate at Locus over whether to include it in our Year-in-Review lists, since it has a speculative element in that the narrator is dead (that's not a spoiler; it's on page 1).

Then again, I have a really hard time telling how well-known a given book is, generally. That's just a consequence of working, in however menial a capacity, in publishing; I read Publisher's Weekly, all the various mailing lists/newsletters, review assorted bestseller lists, etc. Hence, for example, my assumption that Charles Stross was well-known enough to be called a "star" -- he's certainly highly regarded, and, jeez, he has something like five books coming out in the next year, most of which look awesome! But anyway.

The problem with SF readers not knowing about The Lovely Bones is not that they are unlikely to stumble upon it.

The Lovely Bones has been reviewed in major daily papers, has been on television (Good Morning America "Read This" Club), and topped the New York Times and other major bestseller lists. Nearly any bookstore one goes into will have a large number of copies, often displayed as "dumps" in the window or near the front.

Alice Sebold has been on the cover of major magazines (most recently Book), interviewed nationally on tv and radio, and has been written about extensively, often using the angle that she herself is a rape survivor. Her first book, Lucky was a memoir of her rape and also a bestseller.

In order for a committed reader to not have heard of The Lovely Bones, said reader would have to assiduously avoid anything that isn't SF. I've found this to be the case, actually -- some people have no interest in non-SF popular culture.

Two or so years ago, someone popped up on a newsgroup for SF writers using the screen name "Barney Gumble" and a budweiser.com address. Pooling their immense, MENSA-approved IQs, some contributors figured out that the name was fake! And then someone kinda remembered that it was a name from a cartoon.

"Fred and Barney, from The Flintstones. Everyone remembers Fred Flintstone and Barney Gumble."

Uh...not quite. It took about a week for them to figure out that Barney Gumble was a Simpsons character, and when this was finally revealed, the guy who thought it was a Flintstones character sniffed, "Well, some people have better things to do than to watch television."

Yeah, like hype one's Diablo II tie-in ebook, which the kid had just sold to a publisher and was spending most of his time on the ng doing.

If one wonders why SF's share of the marketplace is stagnant, well perhaps the the possibility that the hardcore of fans may not want to have anything to do with the rest of the culture could be a factor.

I write stories about the triumph of dirty little secrets.

I start to write them, that is, and then I hide the bits and pieces and hope no one brings them to light. :)

(slow reaction time:) Susan, since you were bemoaning the obscurity of The Lovely Bones in SF/F circles and since I hadn't heard of it myself, I thought I'd do a little research. Exploring with the Amazon Browser tool (http://www.pmbrowser.info/amazon.html), it looks like the works that Amazon associates with it fall into two main clumps, with a couple of oddballs.

First, there is a group of about 20 interconnected books tightly clustered around Cane River (Lalita Tademy) and Girl with a Pearl Earring (Tracy Chevalier), and The Red Tent (Anita Diamant). Bones connects to these via </i>Back When We Were Grownups</i> (Anne Tyler), The Nanny Diaries (Emma McLaughlin), Slammerkin (Emma Donoghue), and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (Rebecca Wells).

Second, there's a chain of books in a sort of detective/intrigue genre--John T. Lescroart, John Grisham, Robert Ludlum, Janet Evanovich, Sara Paretsky. Bones hooks into this through Up Country<i> (Nelson Demille) and <i>The Summons (Grisham).

There are a few places where I can see SF/F genre readers connecting in. Chabon's Kavalier & Clay is a neighbor of The Nanny Diaries and links out to Bones (links are one-directional, "people who bought X also bought Y"), and there are also a couple of geeky non-fictions like The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (Michael Pollan).

Taking the bold assumption that Mieville's Perdido Street Station<i> might be a good representative of what the new "science fantasy" wave might be reading, I added it to the chart. Expanding out to PSS's neighbors' neighbors, I find one path into <i>Bones-land: Perdido Street Station points (to Connie Willis' Passage, and they both point) to Kavalier & Clay points to The Lovely Bones.

So I suppose all this means that if The Lovely Bones is going to make it into the general SF/F consciousness, it will either get there through the bottleneck of Kavalier & Clay or through people who already read outside the genre, most likely in the genre represented by Anne Tyler et. al.

Although, (aaargh), the associations for The Lovely Bones seem to be fluctuating. I just went back to check something, and half of the links that came back were different. Damn it, I've thought about this enough, I'm posting it anyways. Kavalier & Clay is still the nearest book linking Bones and Perdido, though The Botany of Desire is now an alternate, slightly longer path.

The things we do out of curiousity (he said, thwacking his head on the desk).

(It's true about Susan, btw, I've seen it too. She's also a whippersnapper, shanghaiing the conversations from longer-established message boards within days like she has.)

Me, I write stories about the triumph of the human spirit.

No, wait, I write stories about the dirty little secrets of the human spirit.

Tim's drinking all the Bailey's, dammit.

The true drink of the gods is:

a little scoop of vanilla Haagen Daas

good coffee

Irish cream, or Kahlua

Hey Susan -- It's still around! It's part of the novel version, of course. And I'm still looking to reprint it, so I don't want to put it up on my site and let people read it "for free."

But thanks for the idea! And you can always buy a copy of the antho it was first in... from the Scientologists!!! ;)

Oh, and one last belated wavelet that hasn't been mentioned: the Interstitial Arts, Endicott Studio, and Sur La Lune folks. At Wiscon, particularly, Terri Windling, Midori Snyder and Heinz Insu Fenkl have been amazing mentors to us Rats.

Btw, if you want good fun with a ye olde 'movement', read Sterling and Company's pseudonymous zine The Cheap Truth. It's all online and very wacky, wooly, and incisive, albeit strident.

Speaking of the not-finding, Mike, you should put that first Wannoshay story up on your own site somewhere, now that Speculon's gone. It's sad for the story to just vanish, you know?

You better give me my props! I haul around that bucket of water and don't get shit!

I write cool shit I can't find in magazines or anthologies that I want to read.

Nick -- just remember not to include any cockroaches or vampires in the vampire cockroach anthology.

Mike, back to clicking...

Drunkards. This list is filled with drunkards. With remarkably good spelling, all things considered.

I often write grocery lists on the back of rejection slips. That'll show them. Show them all!

Edited by author 02-14-2003 01:04 AM
Bailey's Irish Creme, which, when added to good coffee, makes a nectar worthy of certain gods. As I think you know. Which, when taken in overabundance, can incline one toward the non-sequitarian.

Susan is actually a superhero. A superhero princess. I've seen her costume. The rocket-ship insignia. The tiara. Her secret is known.

Have I mentioned lately that Tim is my hero? He's everything I wish I could be? And I, I could fly... oh, never mind.

I don't understand these three words in this sequence:

"too much Bailey's"

What does that mean?

I write most of my stories, initially, from the point-of-view of a hyperintelligent goat. Then I change the pov characters to (superficially) humans to make the stories more "relatable."

Other times I write hard sf, then replace all the hard sf elements with chicken bones, potpurri, jade amulets, etc., because fantasy sells better. I suspect Harry Potter began life as a junior cadet at the space academy, but nobody wanted to buy the book, so Rowling made him a wizard instead.

I also suspect I have, perhaps, put too much Bailey's and not enough coffee into this cup.

I write Superfriends episodes and try to pass them off as future visions of dislocated identity.

This is Wonder Twins stuff I'm talking about. I just never "got" Wendy and Marvin.

Well Christ, Mike, don't just sit there clicking away at the screen like a simpleton, say something provocative!

How about this? How would one describe one's own writing or editing? No fair saying "I just write/buy good stories." Feel free to use hyphens and slashes to tie genres together, or name influences, or offer up a series of nonsense words like I'm going to.

What kind of writer am I?

Let's just say I have a Ph.D. in Bootyology from Universidad de Funkadelica.

You go next, whoever you are.

PS: I can't believe I'm writing a story for that stupid vampire cockroach anthology, but somebody asked me so nicely.

I'm so tired from jumping from one blog discussion to another... I need a rest...

Still I click away...

Too fascinating to stop...

I think it (this QuickTopic space) should be called Desperately Seeking Schmoozin'.

House of Leaves is essentially a not-terribly-original horror novel written in an intentionally frustrating and bizarre fashion. That said, I enjoyed it, though it did occasionally make my head hurt (and I mean that literally).

(I wrote a journal entry about it, here:http://www.sff.net/people/timpratt/02-24-02.html, but it only says basically what I said above)

Oh, and I vote we rename this QuickTopic to "Susan's Salon."

I wasn't sure what House of Leaves was (I keep confusing it with House of Blue Leaves), so I went and looked it up at Amazon. I think someone (maybe Susan?) showed it to me in a bookstore once, but I'd forgotten the title.

Cute bits from the Amazon review:

"Now that we've reached the post-postmodern era, presumably there's nobody left who needs liberating from the strictures of conventional fiction."

And:

"[Danielewski] stuffs highbrow and pop-culture references (and parodies) into the novel with the enthusiasm of an anarchist filling a pipe bomb with bits of junk metal."

I keep getting bogged down in attempts to comment on more general topics, so I'll stop here for now.

It is 'stan, indeed.

I'm definitely not into any strategy that keeps some set of readers from reading what they like. What I'm into doing is turning on new readers.

Isn't it "Bantustan"? Or am I wrongly extending the Paki-, Afghani-, Kurdi- model?

"If one ends up with 10000 "standard fantasy" readers and 10000 other readers instead of snagging 20000 standard fantasy readers, what's the big deal,"

There isn't a big deal. I just think that if speculative fiction publishing is going to be viewed as a zero-sum game where "drek" is pushed aside by "quality," it's unfortunate because there would be 10,000 outaluck former readers in your example.

I don't think it should have to be a zero-sum game, or that you're saying it should, but that's the original view I was reacting to.

How about "Escapees from the Bantusan"?

Susan, you didn't seem upset when I told you that.

C

"As long as the consuite waddler wasn't stroking my shoulder and murmuring "my, you're awfully young to be an editor", I think I'd be fine with it."

As long as the consuite waddler wasn't stroking my shoulder and murmuring "my, you're awfully young to be an editor", I think I'd be fine with it.

Edited by author 02-12-2003 09:59 PM
And I don't think it's inaccurate to say that despite the admitted crossover, the number of "standard fantasy" readers who wouldn't particularly enjoy pieces that experiment as much as "House of Leaves" is not insignificant.

This I agree with. I don't much care though. There are plenty of non-fantasy readers who can take their place. The mainstream is more open to fantastical content than SF is open to mainstream-borne experiments. If one ends up with 10000 "standard fantasy" readers and 10000 other readers instead of snagging 20000 standard fantasy readers, what's the big deal, especially if in the former case one is likely to have more hardcover and tradepaper back sales and in the latter one might have a greater proportion of mass market paperback sales?

I guess one would be less likely to be invited to cons and more likely to be buttonholed and denounced by someone who waddled up to one in the con suite, but I imagine that our hypothetical bantusan escapee would find a way to survive the experience.

I might have been hitting on you, Mike. Who remembers? It depends on how much I'd had to drink...

I might think "House of Leaves" is pointless, but I don't think it's drek. :) It's perfectly fine that other people don't find it pointless, and I'm actually glad to hear more people enjoyed it than I had thought, given that the reaction of everyone I've seen pick up the book has been "is this *supposed* to not make any sense?"

"Pointless" is my personal reaction, not a blanket critical statement. At least, that was how I meant it: that, and as an example of reluctance to have one semi-monopoly replaced with another (hypothetical) semi-monopoly that would needlessly squash writing that doesn't need squashing, and that wouldn't connect with a sizeable group of readers. And I don't think it's inaccurate to say that despite the admitted crossover, the number of "standard fantasy" readers who wouldn't particularly enjoy pieces that experiment as much as "House of Leaves" is not insignificant. Though I have only anecdotal evidence to support that.

Maybe it's just the populist in me, maybe it's just the librarian professional ethics, but I personally would hesitate to stick the label "drek" on any piece of writing that brings happiness to thousands of people.

later...

And maybe Joe and Jill Reader are right to think they wouldn't be so much better off with shelves full of books like "House of Leaves," which was mentioned by somebody. (Rarely have I seen a more pointless piece of literature than "House of Leaves." Shudder.)

Care to reconcile these two comments? HoL certainly managed to make thousands of people happy, and yes, some of those people were Joe and Jill Reader. One doesn't get on the LA Times bestseller list or the ability to spin-off a second book within six months without our happy couple.

I find the whole discussion of popular v. "good" to be dubious. A couple examples:

Absolute Magnitude, when founded by Warren Lapine, was designed to be a literal response to the "oh so literary" Asimov's by offering good ol' rollickin' adventure stories. A decade and over $100,000 later (including Lapine buying a number of other magazines with a similar ethos) AbsMag has sales of 1/3rd of Asimov's per issue, and only puts out 1/4th as many issues when operating at a full schedule. And it hasn't managed to do that in years, and has finally moved away from the "adventure only" model to publish broader material.

Horror, historically the most populist genre, is all but gone from the schedules of the Big 5 publishers, except for those few authors who transcend the genre in the popular imagination (King, Rice, Koontz, Andrews' ghosts). The two mass market publishers that do publish horror, Dorchester and Kensington, do about 50 novels a year between them. The rest are published by micropresses with print runs of 1000 at best and POD at worst.

When faced with the fact that lots of different things can be popular, I've found that ideologues tend to attack audiences as illegitimate or not real. Thus, Star Trek novel editor John Ordover insists that Nabokov stays in print only because college professors fool or coerce people into reading him. I was denounced as a "one of those faggots wearing a little fucking beret" for liking Caitlin Kiernan's novel Threshold -- the poor fellow (who also called me a "Nazi Kunt"[sic]) couldn't handle the fact that she wrote in the present tense. The problem was obviously mine, because...uh...I dress funny? (I don't own a beret.)

On the flipside is the idea that the elite must "force feed" people the "good stuff" because all they like is shit. I was bemused to see even history being rewritten to accomodate this notion. The Boston Massacre is often credited with sparking the American Revolution. The massacre's victims? An ex-slave, a ropemaker, a sailor, a 17 year-old apprentice and an Irish immigrant. Their funeral caused the greatest march in American history at the time. 10,000 of Boston's 16,000 residents took part in it. More than half the city -- that's quite a broad "elite".

Defending the soldiers in court, btw, was future President John Adams, who blamed the riot on "saucy boys" "teagues" "jack tarrs" (drunks, Irish -- teague is a slur that had the emotional impact of nigger -- and sailors) and of course, those pesky "negroes".

Of course the elite claimed leadership positions and financial responsibility as the social movement that sparked the revolution surged forward, but the number of reforms that took place in the wake of the founding of the US points to impressive amounts of participation and political power by the lower classes. Notably, the old methods of inheritance, entail and primogeniture, were outlawed by 1792, and Tory land was seized, then split up into small lots affordable to hoi polloi rather than just being divvied up by the ruling class.

Things are much more complex that "lots of people like junk" and "only the smartest/most pretentious people like 'good' stuff."

As a fellow librarian, I'm going to side with Mark on this one. You'll be more likely to persuade someone to try something new if you don't start out by insulting the stuff they already like. Makes a bad early impression. They also have the tendency to dig in their heels.

"Spec fic is getting buried under truckloads of drek, and the general readership isn't interested in, as you say, finding anything new. It has to be force-fed, pushed down their gullets... and the only way that can happen is by pushing out the drek that gets in the way."

Maybe it's just the populist in me, maybe it's just the librarian professional ethics, but I personally would hesitate to stick the label "drek" on any piece of writing that brings happiness to thousands of people. No matter how technically inferior it might be.

To take an architectural metaphor, I can freely concede the superiority of a Frank Lloyd Wright house or the Chartres cathedral to my little Dutch colonial--but damned if I would actually choose to live in such a space. Frustrating as it must be to deal with the writing equivalent of a world of cookie-cutter neocolonials and strip malls, the fact remains that these forms serve a purpose that is as valid as any sweeping artistic expression.

To revisit the analogy of the American Revolution--that average folk had to be dragged into it by the elite--I would argue that maybe Joe Farmer wasn't so interested in revolution because he had no real motivation to be, rather than simply being ignorant. Maybe he preferred tending to fields and crops instead of having various armies trampling over them and getting his sons killed. Given the popular uprisings in the years after the Revolution, like Shays' Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion, it could be that Joe Farmer was right to think that his circumstances wouldn't be so much better with the British gone. (Heck, Canada isn't such a bad place, and they never had to fight a war for independence.) And maybe Joe and Jill Reader are right to think they wouldn't be so much better off with shelves full of books like "House of Leaves," which was mentioned by somebody. (Rarely have I seen a more pointless piece of literature than "House of Leaves." Shudder.)

I'm all for literary innovation, and for writers doing work for the joy of it rather than with both eyes on publishability, and for more being available that I like (which is definitely not yet another Robert Jordan or Terry Brooks book). But if currently popular writers are connecting with a satisfied audience, I don't think there's any reason to disparage that relationship.

Yes, more non-English speculative fiction!

But that relies on good translators. And magazines don't generally have the resources to do translation (or to read the story in the original language to evaluate it), so it means that if the authors want to submit their work to the American magazines, they have to get it translated first, so they have to find a translator who's willing to translate on spec. Or else they have to be good enough at English to translate themselves.

The whole world of non-English sf is pretty mysterious to me, but I gather there's a lot of it out there, and I assume some of it must be quite good. It would be cool if there were better ways to bring it to the attention of monolingual English speakers like me.

Orange crushes. Yeah, y'all know what I'm talking about.

Actually, my little essay has been picked up by Fantastic Metropolis and will be up there in handy html format in a few days. So, thanks Jed for psychically making that possible.

One of the hard things to pinpoint is exactly how much SF-nal or fabulist stuff is being printed in literary magazines and trade publications. But I think the number is increasing. I come across the freakiest stories in the oddest places. George Saunders in the New Yorker is a big example, of course, but So it's hard to really cast that wide of a net, but I think in general editors from every walk are feeling more comfortable with a variety of story-slants. The Conjunctions issue caused a lot of deserved stir, but I thought the Rosebud fabulist issue was at least as good, too. And Descant. And this new issue of McSweeney's which looks very intriguing. On a much teenier scale, at times personally I've felt very schizoid with this, because for the most part people who read my SF stuff aren't reading the stuff I publish in literary magazines and vice versa, even if they share many of the same traits. But I don't think I'd want it any other way, in large part because, well, I write what I write, and I like having a wide spectrum (grab bag) of different narrative techniques and images to work with. Where (if) it gets published is after the fact.

I think some of this is incumbent, too, on realistically minded audiences to open up. But I think that's happening. One of my favorite quotes on this is from Ray Davis's blog: "Restricting yourself to mainstream fiction in the late twentieth century is like restricting yourself to heroic tragedy after 1650." And Jonathan Lethem:

"Tomorrow's readers, born in dystopian cities, educated on computers, and steeped in media recursions of SF iconography, won't notice if the novels they read are set in the future or the present. Savvy themselves, they won't care if certain characters babble technojargon and others don't. Some of those readers, though, will graduate from a craving for fictions that flatter and indulge their fantasies to that appetite for fictions that provoke, disturb, and complicate through a manipulation of those same narrative cravings."

Finally, I like the inclusivity of all of this. It all seems relatively sane, y'know? And I think there are writers out there who don't have blogs, maybe not even email addresses, who are writing crazy stuff, who might not be published a lot (or "prestigiously") but who all the same are worth checking out. I love the "Reports from other countries" that pop up in Locus. Many of them are extremely mysterious. I wish there was more non-English SF that was translated. Different mindsets with different inheritances of the "grand narratives" of SF.

OK, I'm going to stop now.

OK, I think I'll stop now.

You're a practical woman, Karen. Pär is a lucky, lucky man.

Drat. Now I'm hungry.

He probably was. But let's focus on the salient point in his post:

Yes. More chicken wings.

Tim -- were you HITTING ON ME at the Tor party at WorldCon in San Jose? :)

About 18 months ago I started looking around at my friends and acquaintances, noticing the stuff they were publishing, the venues they were publishing in (Strange Horizons, LCRW, FUHU, etc.), the things they were posting online, their weblogs/journals (and I don’t think the importance of those should be discounted -- the fact that Jed, Susan, Gabe, ad etceterum have strong online presences has done more to hook me into the ongoing dialogue about our field than anything else, I think, except maybe working at Locus) , and I thought "Wow. Something's happening." I could have easily been on the outside of all this, but instead, I find myself firmly in the middle -- I see these people at cons, send them e-mail, occasionally argue with them online, and most importantly, I read their work, and some of them read mine. Whether or not it's a "movement" depends on how you define your terms, but I'll say this: I support the notion of a movement if it helps us get more exposure, if it helps us support one another and write better work, if it helps bring people into the ongoing conversation. This is my favorite stuff in the world to talk about. And I like talking to you all about it.

Personally, I just write whatever fascinates me -- straightforward pointy-stick-and-sorcery stories, YA fantasies (at least, I'm told they're YAs, since they have young protagonists), outright horror, slipstream stylistic weirdness, lyrical meditations on grief, action-oriented sorcererpunk... if I were part of any movement, it'd have to be a pretty all-embracing one (as some others have said above). I'm probably royally screwing any chance at developing a solid fan base and a place on the ever-shrinking midlist, but who cares? If I was in it for the money or the security, I wouldn't be in it at all.

So what am I in it for? I'm in it for this, actually. To be part of a nebulous and incredibly talented group of people. To read their stuff. To talk to them about it. To eat chicken wings with them, and give them three bucks for a 'zine they made, and hit on them at parties. To be proud of being part of something, even if I can't define exactly what that something is.

You know, I think the people that DO know what is going on outside the genre are the ones that are part of the 'movement'. It's that wide-ranging drawing-in of influences and knowing the REAL competition that is spurring younger (or 'newer') writers on to write better, more interesting, less trope-heavy work. And for me, that's the real excitement of a 'movement'.

It's a bit like the way I view criticism. While I've read and studied widely across the critical spectrum, I don't consider myself part of a particular school of criticism; I'm not a postmodern, not a structuralist, not a formalist, not even a practitioner of 'literary theory' (which is the all-encompassing umbrella lit crit mode); I consider myself a patchwork critic. It's those wide influences and expansive knowledge that gives rise to new modes of thought.

Not that I'm having many thoughts.

But like Susan, I was depressed at how many people had never heard of THE LOVELY BONES, even though I suggested to Jonathan Carroll that WHITE APPLES could be marketed as an intriguing counterpoint to Sebold's book. Were you at that panel, Susan? I don't remember.

Anyway, that's my tuppence.

--gabe chouinard

As much as I'd love to be a bestselling author someday, first I want the respect and admiration of my peers.

I'd be happy with the money. For respect and admiration, I got a dog!

Exactly! I had a little breakdown the first time I caught sight of myself in the mirror while doing prasarita--usually the mirrors in the classroom are a good thing, for seeing if I've got various bits in alignments and whatnot, but sometimes they're a Very Bad Thing. But then I figured out that it's not me, it's the pose.

I think it's fair to say that Prasarita would make Ally McBeal look wide hipped.

Mainstream, lit, spec fiction, whatever. I just want to write what I like and have an audience read it and enjoy it. I know, I know, such simple dreams...

Oh, and Susan -- no, thank *you*! That made me feel so damn good.

And you're welcome. Anytime :-)

Hell, I agree with Mamatas as well, Mike. I've always been a bit ashamed of my, er, "literary pretensions" but why shouldn't we want the largest possible audience for our writing? I love blurring the boundaries between "mainstream/ literary" and "SpecFic" and if this blurring is/ becomes a "movement" then sign me up!

And I love that, the idea that we all are a part of something new, different, happening in the world of words. As much as I'd love to be a bestselling author someday, first I want the respect and admiration of my peers. You (collective) know what's going on, what's being done and if I can impress you guys, well, then I'm happy. That's part of belonging to a group/ movement/ whathaveyou -- an intelligent, creative, talented and hip audience to write for, to help us set our aim just past what we see as our reach so we realize our full potential as artists.

Ok, I'm done now.

Edited by author 02-11-2003 04:33 PM
Damn. I totally agree with Nick Mamatas.

Someone call the meteorologists. Hell's about to have a cold snap.

Jus' kidding. I find I have much more in common with writers and readers who've read all over the spectrum of Fiction. It's Lit Fic that's borrowing all the cool shit from Spec Fic.

Yeah, no kidding. If I fail this exam, it is ALL YOUR FAULT. It's not like this lucrative second career in science fiction editing is going to pay my rent once the fellowships and teaching gigs run out, you know?

(that's a collective, not singular, "you".)

Ah, comment checking. There's a brave new time sink for us all.

I hate the idea of the SF ghetto, personally. Especially when there's so much interesting (and weird) stuff going on in the non-genre communities. I was kind of frustrated at World Fantasy by how many people in the field didn't even recognize the names of books like The Lovely Bones.

That's actually part of what I see in this loosely-defined group thing we've got going, an active interest in what's going on outside of genre. I think I've had this conversation more often with Chris Barzak and Alan DeNiro, but I know I've had it with other people too--it's like we're the kids who grew up loving science fiction, then discovered mainstream lit fic, and want to bring what we learned out there back in here to where our hearts are. I actually read the New Yorker (and generally enjoy their fiction, when they're not excerpting crappy Dave Eggars novels).

And now I'm getting that feeling like I need to defend the value escapist SF stuff. Especially because the last non-schoolwork reading that I did was Lois McMaster Bujold. What I'm really getting is the feeling that I'm supposed to be working instead of obsessively checking people's comments.

Heya Susan et al,

About the movement in the genre: Is it a movement within the genre only? I'm not so sure. I see movement outside, in the so-called literary mainstream, as well. We war like two brothers from the Old Testament, but like most siblings, we tend to not see that we share a lot of complex similarities, not to mention complexes period. Not only has the genre begun to evolve and spin out new variations of stories, but so has the mainstream. Fantastic tropes are cropping up all over outside of the pages of genre magazines as well. Instead of dissing these authors who publish outside of genre interest magazines, we should really be celebrating that science fiction and fantasy has influenced writing outside of its culture. (I think of these groups of writers and readers as cultures, myself).

But I'm like on this new "let's be positive and inclusive" kick, which could pass at any moment. We'll wait and see.

No, it's still here.

Anyway. I believe in the evolution of things. Changes happen. Cultures fossilize and when that happens, something dark and new and rich pushes up from underneath its surface, to break through the exterior, to flower. Some of those blooms may appear strange and possibly dangerous. But those are the most interesting sorts of fauna, in my own humble opinion.

Can gardening become a movement? Yes. Remember all those Victory gardens after the Great War?

Chris

On the flipside, what were the sales of House Of Leaves as compared to the typical Leisure mass market paperback? Or The Lovely Bones for that matter?

Innovation is useful in that attracts non-fans. Part of the problem of movementism is that it is too insular. How many essays about discontents of the genre ghetto can we read in genre magazines? Tons. How many outside? The only recent ones I know of were the ones in the recent issue of Conjunctions (which were apologetic and thus problematic) and *toot* *toot* my own recent missive in the pages of Pages, a mag which conveniently had a cover story on our agent in the mainstream, Michael Chabon.

Personally I've had better luck placing genre stories in non-genre markets like the men's magazine Razor (which, as a lower-order slick still pays ten times the money and has ten times the readership of Asimov's) and Wide Angle NY, than the ideology of the "SF ghetto" would suggest.

SF isn't a ghetto, it's a bantusan, a contrived homeland controlled by bloated hacks ready to smack people down. Rather than struggling for a straw throne, I'm heading for the hole in the fence and joining up with the "mainstream" protestors outside, who seem pretty interested in what we might be offering.

I'd much rather turn on a large audience with more malleable pre-conceptions than win over the hearts and minds of the 3000 or so people who pay attention to things like Worldcon.

Hullo, Librarian Mark (and Susan and everyone else!):

I think this 'talk of movements' is quite important, and for the very reasons that you mention. Spec fic is getting buried under truckloads of drek, and the general readership isn't interested in, as you say, finding anything new. It has to be force-fed, pushed down their gullets... and the only way that can happen is by pushing out the drek that gets in the way. It's a bit like the common folk in America before the Revolutionary War; did the average Joseph on the street WANT to gain freedom? Did they even know what freedom was? Nah. They cared about planting their crops and feeding their families. It was an 'elite' group of folks that thought the US should gain independence.

It's an 'elite' group of writers, editors and critics within speculative fiction that are pushing (in all their diverse, individualized ways) for revolution as well.

I work in a bookstore, did I mention that? And I can't even count the number of people that have come in to buy Jordan's CROSSROADS OF TWILIGHT; it's in the hundreds. Do you know how many I managed to personally convince to buy something else (Matt Stover, John Marco, Paul Kearney, Mary Gentle, ANYONE!) to go with it? Four.

Four people out of hundreds.

Anyway, ramble aside, my obtuse point is that speculative fiction has been in a stagnant rut for a long time; people just don't care about it. But there are some of us building the buzz again, pushing for that newness -- that sense of wonder -- that many people felt the first time they read SFF. Who needs a rut when you can invigorate instead?

--gabe chouinard
http://hypermode.blogspot.com

Edited by author 02-11-2003 10:42 AM
I have to admit I find this talk of movements and the state of speculative fiction a little puzzling. I understand it's your job (at least for a lot of you). You have to make distinctions between different pieces of writing, what makes some better and others worse, what you want to see more of and what you want to see less of--and you do your best to get more of the good into the world, and less of the bad.

But a movement? As a librarian, I get to enjoy/suffer a variety of literary movements. You can't drop a date due slip without hitting a romantic thriller, or a Helen Fielding/Candace Bushnell clone, or an "enchanting" story involving South Asians or Latin Americans. I see patrons actively seeking these sorts of books, and the professional literature is full of reviews of books that might satisfy those patrons.

Speculative fiction, well, is slightly different. Not counting the current spotlight on graphic novels, there just isn't much discussion of different trends in the genre. And in my library, at least, there isn't much interest in trying anything new. The new Dune books had waiting lists, Robert Jordan and Orson Scott card fly off the shelves with their 250th and 300th books respectively, Terry Brooks' new book was requested before it was even published, Anne McCaffrey's new book has gone out twice and we only got it two weeks ago; meanwhile, Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber has gone out four times since we got it early in 2000, China Mieville's The Scar has gone out four times since we got it last June, and Carol Emshwiller's The Mount has gone out once since we got it six months or so ago (twice, if you count me), and so on.

These are novels, of course. Short stories fare a little better: the Year's Best books edited by Datlow and Windling do well, and Ted Chiang's book has drawn respectable interest also. But is there a wellspring of dissatisfaction with the status quo? Not exactly. I'm aware that libraries aren't the first place fans of speculative fiction go for their fix, but still.

I'm all in favor of people trying to improve the pool of writing that fans have to choose from. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm not. More to the point, I'm all in favor of people just trying to improve writing, period. But the energy that goes into discussing it, is a little foreign to me.

Hey, Susan!

I know exactly what you mean about wishing there were a group (and frankly, Notorious Style Monkeys is an excellent name for a movement, new religious or literary) being the impetus behind defining a group. Christopher and I have talked about this a lot. There's this tendency since writing and editing are so solitary, and all these wonderful talented people are so cool, to try and break out of that solitude whenever possible. To workshop, or hang out, or make little webrings, to feel together like a part of something big that you really love even when everyone is not sharing a time zone.

Nattering without enough caffeine aside, congrats to the Strange Horizons crew and Tim Pratt on the Neb nomination. Neb and Oscar nominations on the same day; a happy speculating girl I am.

G

http://bondgirl.blogspot.com

Hey, Susan! Nice crowd you've got here, every post fascinating, fun or both.

Um. Content?

"I suppose I should give up writing, since I've learned from experience never to dance in public."

~ and ~

"I owe you money. How should I remit?"

Alan's right, by the way. It all comes down to the dancing, and knowing how to throw a good party. That's why the Ratbastards will always have my heart.

On the technology front, sure sure. I would argue that cheap photocopying was the more important step to where we are now, since zine culture predates desktop publishing--hell, even I was publishing zines before I had desktop publishing. Computers just level the playing field in terms of slickness of presentation, so that we can all look like professionals while secretly working out of our living rooms.

Definitely, every push forward or reassesment in writing could very well be traced to some sort of technological advancement. E.g., the old saw about Gutenberg hastening the adoption of Protestantism. (Crank out those cheap vernacular bibles, baby.)

The social aspects play a big part, too--I couldn't imagine my (as of now, relatively short) writing life without the people I've met, drank with, played mafia with, etc. at Wiscon. Finding a like-minded-ish community of writers is huge.

And dancing. It all comes down to dancing.

All the cool kids hang out on Susan's message board. Spread the word!

Nick, I particularly liked this comment of yours: "people ... started up doing the 60s thing over again, [but] with a bit less earnestness and a bit more finesse." Yeah. Well-put.

I also like this (among many other things) from Alan's latest quasi-manifesto (hey, Alan -- have you submitted that to SH or Locus or NYRSF or LCRW or the SFWA Bulletin or anywhere else?): "The genre's new shape might be less of a centralized state and more of a Hanseatic League, a confederation or constellation of different styles, techniques, and even audiences." That's definitely how it looks to me, though I don't think I would've thought of that. (And it ties in nicely with Nick's Culture Blobs.) (That oughtta be a band name.)

One thing that's been getting a little clearer to me (though still far from entirely clear), based on Rich Horton's followup comments in response to my comments to his comments about what he calls "soft slipstream" (I'm not thrilled with his labels here, but they're convenient so I'm using them for now) is that there's a distinction between the writers and the styles. Some of y'all writers are writing both the (shall we say) Radical Hard Slipstream of _Rabid Transit_ and _Fantastic Metropolis_ and _Lady Churchill's_, *and* the perhaps more accessible but perhaps less daring "soft slipstream" that we at SH are more fond of. (...Okay, that *I*'m more fond of; I think Susan's experimentalist boundary is further out than mine. Not sure where Chris falls on that spectrum.)

Some of these writers are slipping out into the high-profile magazines as well: Ben and Charlie in F&SF, half a dozen people in Asimov's (including Elliot Fintushel, who I don't see mentioned nearly often enough), Ray V. and Greg Beatty in Sci Fiction, Paul Park (who I also don't see mentioned nearly often enough) in Interzone, various people in Realms (someone's slip-of-the-tongue the other night made me want to start a new magazine called Reams of Fantasy), et alia. And in some cases they're writing very different things for these different markets. (And in other cases, as with Ben's upcoming woodpecker-sex story in F&SF and "Milo and Sylvie," the Fintushel story I read from Asimov's, they're bringing a rather offbeat sensibility into the less-experimental markets.) (About Fintushel, Gardner (http://www.sff.net/people/linn/fintushelpage.html) sez: "His work goes beyond the Cutting Edge to what tomorrow's Cutting Edge may well turn out to be." Whereas I think "Milo and Sylvie" falls pretty squarely in what I'm temporarily calling soft slipstream.)

So maybe one way to categorize (if one's inclined to categorize) is by tone and attitude and sensibility, while another orthogonal categorization system is by authors. Alan, I think you're one of my main examples of this: you're doing stuff in a wide range of levels-of-experimentalism (and incidentally publishing great manifestos about where the field is and could go), and I like your and Nick's notions of a sort of a decentralized set of wavelets or Blobs. Rich H. may be right that SH's sensibility doesn't quite match LCRW's, but I think what that says more than anything is that the authors we share are nicely versatile.

But I'm not sure I'm making any sense or heading for any particular point, so I'll stop now.

Actually Susan, I think the small press stuff fits rather well into my analysis. Prior to the network revolution was the desktop revolution after all, which allowed a new generation of zines and small presses to proliferate. They (very very incompletely) filled the low-tide left behind by the recession, political reaction and conglomeratization of the 70s-80s. The web ended up energizing them as well, a most zinesters devolved into making occasional perzines (zine as correspondence rather than publishing) or Luddite nonsense (barcodes and ISSNs are signs of the devil sellout).

Kelly Link, for example, isn't all that much older than I am (34, I'm a week from 31) and from the discussions I've had with her and Gavin (I interviewed them for Poets & Writers last year) I can definitely see them as involved in the same type of thing and coming from the same type of space as I described below.

Of course Link first made her bones in Century, which was at the time designed for stories that Omni couldn't publish as they were not marketable enough to take the place of ad pages and really made a splash when "The Specialist's Hat" hit Event Horizon and showed that web-based SF could be critically viable.

Also, without the Web, I'd suggest that LCRW, the Rat Bastards, and the other desktoppers wouldn't be making quite the splash they are now.

(And natch, nor would the principles of the Amorphous Blobs even be having this conversation ;))

Edited by author 02-10-2003 04:10 PM
I am very attracted to the idea of defining a literary movement as a group of like-minded people who have similar interests, similar (or, at least, compatible) approaches to life and to work, and who get together when they can to enjoy one another's company.

Journaling and blogging is a huge part of this. Having an already-formed posse to hang with at World Con really did make me feel as though I were part of something special.

As for an actual literary movement, I think Richard Horton is the closest to describing something that actually exists. And, in that case, it's a movement as much defined by editors as it is by writers.

Hi Susan, it took me a little while for my brain to register that you in fact had commenting capabilities. Which is cool.

I just finished up an essay that gives my take on the whole thing, on the SF side of the tracks. I've been working on it off and on for about a year, so I hope it's somewhat topical. And of course, nothing set down here is set in stone...a very tenative proposal which I hope will be useful in some small fashion...

http://www.taverners-koans.com/ratbastards/dream.pdf

Congrats to you, the rest of SH, and of course Tim for the Nebula finalist thing. That completely rocks.

A.

Not to be ominous, but what it reminds me of most is what happened to poetry in the 20th century.

Nick--I'm glad we can count on you to keep us honest, you know? Bringing the wild flights of fancy down to earth, etc etc. It's a good counterbalance. I'm wondering where the Gavin-Grant-style small-press zine influence fits into the analysis, though. With stuff like Lady Churchill's, the "Say..." series, Polyphony, and the ever-proliferating chapbook scene, I think there's something else going on. You're getting a set of writers who are kind of sidestepping the standard market forces.

Which is not to say that they're avoiding market forces entirely, or that no one has ever done this before, but just that I think it's a mistake to ignore that segment of the community.

Well, the original style monkeys, in Jay Lake's coinage, were the editors, not the writers.

And I like to think of my work as extremely morphous.

Ah, I think monkeys wouldn't really be that consistent in writing style.

I pitched this to Jasper previously on the HWA boards:

The Amorphous Blobs.

The problem with movementism, as others have sort of alluded to, is that the stuff happening now is always happening. The problem is that in the past 20 years, publisher consolidation, the simultaneous absolute expansion and relative "shrinkage" of the midlist (long story short: numbers of titles are rising more rapidly than number of readers) and the obliteration of the little magazine led to a low tide in spec fic. Stuff, some of it important, fell right out of print, and the new stuff had to hew tightly to what WAS being published in order to be published.

Thus, military pornography, endless tilting against dark lords, hyuk hyuk punnery, and the like.

At the same time, realism exhausted itself for similar reasons, but its publishers responded the way better capitals do: diversification of market concurrently with rationalization of production. So, Foster Wallace, Will Self, Jeff Noon, and other people were sold as quirky weirdos to mainstream audiences, and the risk of doing so was mitigated thanks to pure economic muscle and the ability of the mainstream to integrate these weird concepts without having to change how books looked or were sold.

Then the Web showed up and the people who read Ellison in libraries started up doing the 60s thing over again, and through reading the non-realist mainstream or at least absorbing the cultural elements of it (Twin Peaks, Re/Search books, fanfic and other detournings, Sandman, Barnes & Noble paganism) did it with a bit less earnestness and a bit more finesse.

Blobs of culture, expanding and contracting, filling up the dead beach where the tides were once high. Not a wave because the lake is too filled with carcinogens to be anything other than a slimy pool, but we're jiggling enough so that some people are noticing.

I also dislike style monkeys because the style is very uneven so far, if only thanks to a drag on its progress in attempts to catch the eyes of leading short fiction editors.

Edited by author 02-10-2003 10:39 AM
(Slaps forehead) The T-shirts! Damn. I knew there was something I forgot to turn in last semester.

On the subject of the Chouinard piece —

"Where are those editors now? Where are our idiosyncratic madfolk, pushing and shaping and molding writers into coherent pieces of a whole? Everyone recognizes a Campbell story when they see one. Do we similarly recognize a Gardner Dozois story? A David Pringle story? An Ellen Datlow or Terri Windling story? A David Hartwell story?"

— I don't know about all those, but I think I'm starting to be able to recognize a Hartman/Groppi/Heinemann story.

Every generation gets to say they're unique, because of the billion and a half variables attached to each situation.

I agree about the wanting to be part of something to fight off loneliness. That's the sort of thing that leads non-writers to do things like join the Rotary club or the Scientologists, of course.

Frankly, despite my single Strange Horizons pub and general online associations, I'm not sure if I qualify as part of this new Movement. As Trey said, I feel more footnoteish (footnotish?). Perhaps it's because I haven't gone drinking with you people in Real Life. Drinking at the keyboard seems less effective somehow.

Maybe it should be called the Hotel Bar Gang.

The problem with Movements(TM) is lag time. By the time something's been written and published and lumped into a movement, the writer's moved on and is doing something else.

But yeah, it's cool being part of all this. Strange Horizons, to me, is the common denominator in all this talk, I think.

That, and China Mieville. ;)

Ah, but you see, when we're the up-and-coming group, I think it's our right and privilege to deny that anyone else has ever been Quite Like Us.

No, I think it's just the sense of wanting to be a part of something. You've got six people hanging out in a hotel bar at a convention, and you know that you're not going to see each other for probably another year, if it's even that soon. Claiming some kind of more formalized group identity makes it less lonely, after you've gone home and it's just you and the computer.

Edited by author 02-09-2003 11:56 PM
But if you wanna be really, really cool, you have to deny that you're in a movement, even when you're secretly pleased that someone's willing to let you be in a movement.

I still don't really have a handle on this whole movement thing. There's a lot of interesting work being done, I think, and there's a group of interesting new writers coming up, but when has that not been the case?

If we do have to have a movement, though, I vote we call it the Self-inflated Neopros.

Link's in the sidebar now, by the way.

You know, I'm starting to think that I like talking about this "literary movement" stuff so much because I'm not actually writing anything. Editing, sure, but that's not where the cool stuff happens. It's kind of like, if I make enough sweeping pronouncements, the cool kids won't argue when I try to hitch my wagon to their star, you know?

I think ours was more in mind of a potato howitzer. And happily, the building we were aiming at was brick, so only vegetables were harmed.

I second Jed's motion, by the way. Move this link to the top so everyone can play.

My sister got me a potato gun for Christmas, but I don't think it has a range of 200 meters. I got gypped.

P.S. I'm jealous of Greg and Mike's conversations, too, for what it's worth.

Hmm. Seems to me if you want people who missed the original entry to come by in the future, you'll have to include a link to this (board? forum? space? what do you call this thing?) at the end of each entry, or else in your sidebar.

Thanks for the info on subscribing via email, Heather! I had no idea you could do that. I'll have to consider it.

As for potatoes: watch out, them things is dangerous! In Germany, they've got potato guns that have "a range of 200 metres [and can] split a man?s head at 15 metres and penetrate a wooden wall at 90 metres." Ouch. (Link courtesy of Boingboing.)

I suspect you have to actually *be* Barzak. I think he carries his own effects with him. Like, everyone's standing around morosely talking about academia and then he walks in and suddenly the soundtrack cranks up the beat, a disco ball starts spinning overhead, and everyone's got cherries on their tongues. As far as he knows, parties are always like that. It probably gets him a lot of invitations, anyway.

And this one was a reception, not a party. Receptions happen in the early evening, and have professors at them, and there's wine but no one drinks too much of it.

The grad school parties I've been to have had, well, more wine, and a lot of people talking about how much of their time they spend doing schoolwork. Once in a while someone will try and plan a group outing up to Sacramento to watch a basketball game. I'm pretty sure there are fun parties being had, but I don't get invited to those, alas alack.

What I want to know is how I get in on grad-school parties like Barzak's been having.

Don't worry. Grad school parties are almost always naked and boozed up. They usually end with everybody piled up on someone's double bed, with the coats pushed indecorously off to one side, and bras and underwear strewn everywhere.

Or, wait wait. No. I'm confusing those with the orgies. My bad. The grad school parties are just drunken, and occasionally painfully pretentious. Which is almost as good.

We're talking about drunken potato catapulting, and you're going to bring down the level of discourse? How?

Seriously, it's for fear of just this sort of thing that I won't set up shop with JournalScape or QuickTopic. Well, that and I'm lazy.

Ok, maybe just the laziness.

Oh! You've got one of these. Now I can come over here and blab! Blabby blabby blabby!!! Wooo! Bringing down the level of discourse, blabby-blabby! Wheeeee!!!!

Nope. IU Bloomington.

(All right, I'll admit it; I exaggerate for effect. Drunken potato catapulting certainly wasn't the only thing to do. But it was amusing.)

Now, Jon, I grew up in Indiana and . . .

Ok, you're right. There isn't much to do.

My guess, though, is that this was Ball State? Or that one in Terre Haute, um, Indiana State? Don't go telling me that it was at IU Bloomington, because Bloomington is the only truly interesting/ fun town in the Hoosier state.

(It also happens to be the one place I applied to where it snows. It's that cool a place to live and it was the off year for fiction up in Madison.)

What can I say? It was Indiana. There wasn't much to do.

Seriously. Bad enough he's got these visions dancing in his head of grad school parties replete with nakedness and booze, but now he's going to expect potatoes too... How can reality possibly live up to such an ideal?

Oh, and Jon, please don't encourage Tim. ;-)

Personally, Jed, I like the one unified comments system (I'm the one who gave Tim the idea to combine them all instead of having a bunch of different ones, btw). It's less work to maintain, and it's less work to keep up on as a reader. One of the reasons I'm so fond of doing this, especially with Quick Topic, is that I can subscribe to the message board (and read comments in email) and not have to keep clicking through a bunch of links to see what folks are saying. With something like JournalScape's comment board, it just takes too much time to keep up with all the individual threads for all the individual journal entries in all the different journals. Bah. Time is too precious.

Oh, I don't know, Tim. I attended a number of parties in grad school that had quite a bit of alcohol involved. A couple of them ended with people out on the front lawn, using a giant slingshot to hurl potatoes at a grocery store a half block down the street, trying to nail the coke machine. Fortunately, we were usually too drunk to aim properly at that point.

Ah, good times.

I've been thinking a lot about comment systems lately -- the whole lack-of-threaded-comments thing that people keep objecting to both at SH and the Rumor Mill. And one or two people have told me they want a comments system attached to my journal. (I think I'm just a control freak -- I didn't provide an interactive comment system for my column, either, which on the one hand means that I'm two or three years behind on posting comments that people emailed me, but on the other hand means that I got to pick and choose carefully what I wanted posted and what I didn't. Like one of them old-fashioned letters-to-the-editor thingers.)

So do you think it makes more sense to have one unified comments system, like this one or Tropism, or a bunch of tiny little threads attached to individual entries, like oh I dunno boingboing or LiveJournal or JournalScape?

So that's what grad student parties are like. Erudite conversation complete with visual aids. I'd hoped there'd be more nakedness and booze, since Heather might be going to grad school. Ah, well.

I'm convinced that that guy TRAINED the spider to pop onto your head at just the right moment.

Ooh, spiders. Tim's convinced that they were biting him during the night, which isn't so far-fetched as we do have quite a few 8-legged roommates. I can't bring myself to kill them, as they actually contribute to keeping the ant population down; I've found little piles of dessicated ant bodies littered under their webs and have even, on a couple of occasions, witnessed a spider attacking and mummifying an ant. Seems like a lot of work for such a little meal, but I'm not complaining. It's like having a little piece of wild kingdom in your home.

Edited by author 02-04-2003 12:44 PM
You're worried about a flamewar in here? But we're all so polite. And besides, I believe (as topic moderator) you have the power to block ruffians. Or at least delete their posts.

I'll also ignore your insinuation that libraries aren't interesting. See? Told you how polite we are.

Jon, I'm a little wary of the whole thing, you know? What if you guys start a fight or something?

Actually, that might be cool. It would at least be interesting. Now that I'm spending every day locked in a library, I need to grab interesting where I can find it.

Edited by author 02-04-2003 11:18 AM
Hey, look: Susan's letting us comment. I'm so pleased.

Re: spiders, at our house I'm always finding little dessicated spider remains smooshed against the walls. Nobody in our house smooshes spiders, and they're up too high for the cat, so it's a mystery.

If spiders represent the condition of one's soul, I'm not sure what it means to have them plastered all over one's house. Probably not good.

Coincidentally, I work in the town where Jonathan Edwards preached lo so many years. He was forced out after people got sick of hearing about how all, all of them were most likely going to hell.

So it turns out that switching to a blog format doesn't automagically make a person post five sassy perky li'l entries a day? But, but.

Susan -- always interesting to read your entries, especially the one about Huck Finn and spiders!

That's the great thing about these web journals/blogs -- you get to look at life from someone else's point of view.

And it's a nifty way to stay in touch!

Edited by author 02-04-2003 01:36 AM
Me? Oh, hangin' in there.

Yay, Susan has a discussion thingie!

Not, of course, that I have anything particular to say. I'll let you know when I think of something.

How're y'all doing?