Ford, Gaiman, Chiang, Le Guin
Dec. 21st, 2006 03:44 pmJohn M. Ford, From the End of the Twentieth Century
Of /course/ it's brilliant, of /course/ you should find a copy and read it. Pieces that made a serious impact include:
Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things
I dunno. Nothing hit me as hard as the pieces from Smoke and Mirrors. It may be that I'd seen some of the strongest pieces elsewhere ("Study in Emerald," "Monarch of the Glen," "The Problem of Susan"), or maybe just that I've moved beyond. "October in the Chair" was good and atmospheric, as was "Miss Finch." Mostly they just felt lighter than I'd wanted. Nothing as impressive as "The Goldfish Pool" or "Murder Mysteries," or even "Chivalry." Oh well. Still good stuff, but not amazingly so.
Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
An eight-story collection with three Nebulas and a Hugo (and a withdrawn Hugo nomination as well). So, yeah, pretty much everything in here is brilliant. The first story concerns the building of the Tower of Babel, in what looks an awful lot like a Ptolemaic universe. There's also one that does /very/ interesting things with golems and the concept of sperm as tiny people brought to life and sentience by a womb, one that explores what happens if arithmetic is proven demonstrably false, and a beautiful exploration of religion in a world where "faith" isn't an issue. Having read this, I understand why, as John Scalzi put it, "every SF/F writer gets all hushed and respectful speaking Ted Chiang's name." The guy is /good/, in the same way that water is damp.
Ursula K. Le Guin, Searoad
A collection of stories about a small village on the Oregon coast. Reading it I was constantly struck by a sense of unrelenting bleakness. I could practically see the cloud-dark sky over the beach, the wind whipping the reeds, the harsh chill of the breakers. The people have an underlying despair that they don't even recognise. They can see the need to do something different but they can't possibly change anything about their lives. The last piece, a long one, follows several generations of women from the last 1800s through about 1973, and is the least bleak of them: there's still not much hope but the people are cheerier about it. In general this was a difficult book to read. Very good, wonderfully human characters, but difficult. Or maybe I just should have picked up something else while waiting for Granddad.
Of /course/ it's brilliant, of /course/ you should find a copy and read it. Pieces that made a serious impact include:
- "A Little Scene To Monarchize," in which various Elizabethan playwrights perform poems and songs in the guise of monarchs from the Wars of the Roses. Richard III's "A Usurper's Lot Is Not A Happy One" may be the best of the bunch but it's a close thing.
- "All Our Propagation: A Play for Instruments," which is what you get when you write about Voyager as though you're writing Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood." The language is of course a bit difficult, but bits of it delighted me roughly every other line. "Forgot me already, did you? Well. Hugs parallel to all my prosy robots. Remember me, forget death."
- "The Lost Dialogue," alternating speeches by Daedalus the artificer and his presumed-lost son, "Lefty." Made me catch my breath a few times.
Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things
I dunno. Nothing hit me as hard as the pieces from Smoke and Mirrors. It may be that I'd seen some of the strongest pieces elsewhere ("Study in Emerald," "Monarch of the Glen," "The Problem of Susan"), or maybe just that I've moved beyond. "October in the Chair" was good and atmospheric, as was "Miss Finch." Mostly they just felt lighter than I'd wanted. Nothing as impressive as "The Goldfish Pool" or "Murder Mysteries," or even "Chivalry." Oh well. Still good stuff, but not amazingly so.
Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
An eight-story collection with three Nebulas and a Hugo (and a withdrawn Hugo nomination as well). So, yeah, pretty much everything in here is brilliant. The first story concerns the building of the Tower of Babel, in what looks an awful lot like a Ptolemaic universe. There's also one that does /very/ interesting things with golems and the concept of sperm as tiny people brought to life and sentience by a womb, one that explores what happens if arithmetic is proven demonstrably false, and a beautiful exploration of religion in a world where "faith" isn't an issue. Having read this, I understand why, as John Scalzi put it, "every SF/F writer gets all hushed and respectful speaking Ted Chiang's name." The guy is /good/, in the same way that water is damp.
Ursula K. Le Guin, Searoad
A collection of stories about a small village on the Oregon coast. Reading it I was constantly struck by a sense of unrelenting bleakness. I could practically see the cloud-dark sky over the beach, the wind whipping the reeds, the harsh chill of the breakers. The people have an underlying despair that they don't even recognise. They can see the need to do something different but they can't possibly change anything about their lives. The last piece, a long one, follows several generations of women from the last 1800s through about 1973, and is the least bleak of them: there's still not much hope but the people are cheerier about it. In general this was a difficult book to read. Very good, wonderfully human characters, but difficult. Or maybe I just should have picked up something else while waiting for Granddad.
