http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1651341_1659152_1659089,00.html
and/or this one:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/completelist/0,,1651341,00.html
it should then be easy to find where to go from there.
2) i should have put up this video:
and linked to it like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKBnR43-7cI
and let you know that it can also be found by clicking yourself onto youtube through the next link, or by putting said link in the address line of your browser:
http://www.youtube.com/
3) i should have paid more careful attention to what labels i was using, because i missed out on a few useful ones such as:
Q., hackery, The Simpsons, return of the tool, thinking too much and spending way too much time in your own head,
some of which i only made up just now after spending way too much time in my own head.
right. now that's sorted.
working on my current project (really, it shouldn't sound so pretentious; but how else should i refer to it? i'll let you know when it's done.) makes me appreciate how useful it can be to think of what you're doing as 'not SF' when it isn't, even if, from some particularly stubborn perspectives, it might look like it isn't 'not SF'. it is, in fact, at least as useful as thinking of what you're doing as 'not not SF' when it isn't 'not SF'. either of which is only about as useful as thinking about what you're doing at all.
which is apparently--for me at least--almost completely inadvisable. unless you're good at that sort of deliberate tinkering with what you're doing--like Gene Wolfe; or M. John Harrison; or Thomas Pynchon; or Ballard; or Borges. which, as i'm sure i've demonstrated before, i'm not.
and which, to be clear, isn't meant to say 'nay' to SF, or her most fanatical adherents...only to the constant, befuddling insistence on things like 'appropriation' and, less comprehensibly, 'reappropriation'. alors. i'm going to get screwballed for that comment, aren't i?
ah well. bees be. but what am i, in fact, doing, or, to be more honest, trying to do? i know you didn't ask that, but, this being my blog, let's pretend that you did. and to answer that question, i borrow something one of the above (guess who?) said:
'...to claim fiction as a kind of Bedlam in which the inmates communicate with partial success through temporary idiolects bricolaged from both cultures [i.e., 'Science' and 'The Arts' - c]; or a very large alphabet soup in which you could swim & play & act out & generally behave irresponsibly. What we can do now (& what we’ve been doing since Ballard & Burroughs & Gibson) is take advantage of all that potential symbology, all that spare poetry lying around & up for grabs. Why limit yourself ? I don’t neccessarily think of this as a big, clever or serious attitude–no more contributive to the Third Culture project than to any academic or purposive theory-based idea of fiction–but play is, well, releasing. I think keys to my attitude might be discovered in the short story “Science & the Arts” as well as in Light & Nova Swing.' (my ellipses)
Mr. Harrison (of course) said all that here:
http://uzwi.wordpress.com/2007/07/01/cheap-sunglasses/
in the comments section. i must have used that before; can't be helped, or, to be more precise, i can't help myself; i particularly like that bit about 'all that spare poetry lying around'. which i've found a useful thing to keep in mind while writing 'not SF'.
Frank Zappa is another usefully mad genius to listen to, times like these, and sums up what i've really been getting at all along: 'Shut up'n'play.'
currently reading: whatever i feel like reading in the moment.
on the spinner: Tom, Elvis and Camille. and rats.
