Blood River is a book that describes the author’s 2004 descent of the Congo River from Lake Tangaynika to Boma following the path Stanley took 117 years before. It’s not a particularly good book (I dislike the modern journalistic technique of reporters injecting themselves into the story), but its theme is extremely interesting. Basically the author posits that the Congo is one of the few places on the planet where civilization is going backward.
Horribly so.
The conditions described are so post-apocalyptic they could almost be called SF. It’s not just that most of the Congolese have returned to pre-industrial conditions, but that they are being preyed upon by the remnants of the industrial world around them - their own elites, the various bush military organizations, and mining companies. An awful, bloody mess.
My latest post, Not Yet A Professional, is up at SFNovelists.
The contracts are signed and mailed back to Daw - mine and many others. We’ll all have stories in Daw’s new anthology next spring - AFTER HOURS: TALES FROM THE UR-BAR, thanks to editors (and contributors) Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray. There are several other contributors, but I don’t know the full list yet and don’t know who I can mention. So I’ll only mention myself (and Josh and Patricia (jpsorrow and pbray ).
The idea of the anthology is simple. Gilgamesh has managed to get himself attached to a bar for eternity. Each story will feature the appearance of the bar at some place (and time) in Earth’s history (and future). My own story is titled Why The Vikings Had No Bars and features the All-Father, shapeshifting (of course), and too much aquavit.
Everyone else’s stories will of course be much more interesting.
Check it out through the link! (No cover art yet.)
…that irony is the worst thing that ever happened to fiction.
My latest post is up at SFNovelists.
From a vegetarian rancher, no less.
At the Atlantic.
Author Michael Ventrella has interviewed me at his blog. Seek our wisdom here:
http://michaelaventrella.wordpress.com/
Pretentious. Pompous. Overwritten.
Boring.
At least the first five pages. I couldn’t get into Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter any farther .
I used to like literature. I did. I was a lit major in college. Read everything I could get my hands on. Didn’t like all of it, obviously, or I wouldn’t be the reader I am today, but I liked a lot. Faulkner. Austen. Flaubert. Twain.
But there is something so patronizing about most modern literature. I’d rather read Conan, and I’m not much of a Conan fan. Take this sentence from the second page of the book:
“Why, you might ask, would a man give up a promising literary career–there were some good notices–to become a sportswriter?”
That’s the modern literary worldview in a nutshell. How could anything possibly compete with the wonderfulness of a literary career? Really. Personally, I can think of many reasons why a man might give up a promising literary career (or a woman, but that’s an entirely separate complaint about this sort of writing - note that Ford didn’t write, “…would someone give up a promising literary career...” he’s only addressing men).
The modern literary type can’t imagine anything as sublime as literature. Which is the problem right there.
It’s a failure of imagination.
The Market is full of Idiots. I’m not saying I’m any smarter, but at least I know I’m an idiot.
