wishing for "a certain kind of fiction..."

recent conversations with Banzai Cat have led me into taking on the role of detective rather than mere victim to investigate my own growing discontent with Fiction and all things 'literary'.

the answers, apparently, are always here. if never quite complete.

If one removes all the bells and whistles of contemporary genre fiction---the thrills, the suspense, the ghosts in the machines, the machines themselves, from computers to fembots to gene splicers and dicers in the grocery aisles---one is left with very little to entertain or enlighten readers with a taste for transcendence, or even just something resembling Real Life in the 21st century, where the Future butts up against the Everyday, every day.

Elizabeth Hand

from an old review of M. John Harrison's Travel Arrangements, here, at The SF Site.

*

almost forgot, i've been meaning to say: on the spinner:

Badly Drawn Boy, About A Boy
Stephin Merritt, Pieces of April
The Shins, Wince the Night Away

(while i strongly recommend that you get copies of each yourselves, the links point to where you can check each album out here, over at Zen in Multiply?!?)

yes, i know. the movies take another casualty. (for those outside the 'little Zach-Braff-movie-watching, This-American-Life-listening, Frappuccino-sipping demo-ghetto' -- thank you, Amazon.com's Mike McGonigal -- The Shins gained a wider, arguably more 'mainstream' audience thanks to Braff's Garden State; i've been turned onto The Shins since before i saw that one, always, always looking for and listening to their cds in record bars despite keeping them away from the cash counters due to the usual financial considerations, but that scene with Natalie Portman sealed the deal.)

still, i like those films (step away from the comment link, snarks!), and the music is just plain lovely.