More Than Once Upon a Time

Another book that could have fallen on either side of the ledger. I am not a Mieville fan, and the only reason I read this was because a lot of fellow travelers said it wasn’t a typical Mieville book. They’re right. It isn’t. It’s far more disciplined. By Mieville standards, there’s very little showing off.

Except for the premise, I really enjoyed it. A good detective story, well told. The ending surprised me, but only because it was the very pat ending that I’d already guessed Mieville would avoid. I was surprised when he didn’t.

But don’t get me wrong, I really hated the premise of this book. It’s the sort of premise that only a Marxist could think up. There is no humanity in it at all. The City and the City only works if you think humans can be conditioned into anything - a very Marxist belief, which devalues the individual for the sake of society as horribly as our own American society goes the other way. The whole idea that people can be conditioned into not noticing their neighbors is patently absurd. What about children? What about Alzheimer’s patients? What about dogs? What about communicable diseases? The whole idea would work wonderfully if the novel was about paranoia, but it’s not. It’s a detective story, whch assumes a certain amount of logical behavior from its characters. Yes, the characters in The City and the City behave logically within the world designed for them, but the whole things falls apart when you consider the fact that the world itself has no logic. It’s an artist’s fiat. If people can complain about the lack of logic in fantasy world-building, ie the economics don’t work, then surely the same argument can be used for SF.

Anyway, that’s my rant, and I’m sticking to it.

A reasonable Republican’s take on last night’s vote.

No, No, Really; That’s TMI
Friday 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
How much is too much when it comes to a story? Some authors have tens or even hundreds of pages of notes, but is that all really necessary? What do authors need to know that their readers don’t? How much do they actually need to know and how much can be faked?
Sam Butler, Leigh Grossman, Daniel Grotta, Glenn Hauman, Jane T. Sibley, Ian Randal Strock [M]

Creating Your Own Sandbox
Saturday 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
World-building in your sci-fi/fantasy writing. Geography, society, language… how detailed do you get?
Sam Butler [M], Michael D’Ambrosio, Teel James Glenn, Michele Lang

Anybody Wanna Have Sects Tonight?
Saturday 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
In many sci-fi and fantasy works, the author will invent entire religions for the purpose of plot or flavor. How do we go about creating gods and rites of worship that seem believable to the reader? What doesn’t work?
Alma Alexander [M], Sam Butler, Louis Epstein, Jane T. Sibley, Michael A. Ventrella

Reading: Sam Butler
Saturday 7:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Divine Inspiration
Sunday 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Drawing from parables, myths, and prophecies for science fiction and fantasy. Religious motifs can be seen in many of the major works of literary fiction and mainstream media over the years, from the recurring iterations of Gilgamesh’s Heroic journey to the spiritual and philosophical explorations of Lost and Battlestar Galactica. Why do fans enjoy these religious stories and retellings so much, and what are some iconic myths that have not been retold in recent years that are begging for a new adaptation?
Sam Butler, Ef Deal, Rosemary Edghill, Alexis Gilliland, Elizabeth Glover [M]

Whither Wander You?
Sunday 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
The physical journey can mirror and drive the spiritual journey of the characters, while providing an interesting and amusing source of external conflict. When done poorly, it can devolve into tedium, and wreak havoc on the pacing of the novel. How do you keep one from sliding into the other? What are some of the best travel scenes we’ve written and read? Which have been done poorly? How do you write a compelling travel scene without losing the reader to what seems like a hundred pages of endless trudging through snowy wastelands?
Alma Alexander [M], Peter V. Brett, Sam Butler, Keith DeCandido, Josepha Sherman

Krugman gets it right. Money quote:

“It’s true that if China dumped its U.S. assets the value of the dollar would fall against other major currencies, such as the euro. But that would be a good thing for the United States, since it would make our goods more competitive and reduce our trade deficit. On the other hand, it would be a bad thing for China, which would suffer large losses on its dollar holdings. In short, right now America has China over a barrel, not the other way around.”

They’d face a double loss, because the value of their dollars would go down as well as the value of their treasury holdings.

Latest post is up at SFNovelists.

Check it out.

http://superversive.livejournal.com/85354.html.

I’ve been thinking this for a while. Freddy deBoer says it very well:

Whatever its valuable insights, Marxism has this elementary failing; it is a corrosion of human life to relegate all behavior to the battle for resources and the wages of political war. Yet this is a seduction that movement conservatism has fallen prey to almost entirely.

…are going to end up in Republican Hell when they die, because that’s what they’re vote will effectively be.

Let them play with the 2000 Naderites.

An ecologically sound version of the helicopter toilet. A great idea.

Woke to lights fizzing in the house at 5:30 this morning, even though they were off. Outside the neighbors’ outside lights were flickering, and the streetlights too. (This is a brownstone Brooklyn neighborhood.) I’m going through the fuse box trying to figure out what’s going on (and why it’s snap-crackle-popping at me), when red lights start flashing outside. Five fire trucks in the street. They start going house to house checking for CO levels. Three or four houses get evacuated (it ain’t that cold outside, but it’s cold enough), but we’re lucky. Our CO level is zero.

Turns out the street salt fried the electric lines under the street. It’s back now (otherwise I wouldn’t be on the net.) Kind of spooky for a while there. I’ve lived through all three big NY blackouts (three other stories), and this one was both the weirdest (it took a while to figure out what was going on - at first I hoped aliens were landing in my backyard) and the easiest. No making candles out of jam jars and salad oil.

Nellie the Wonder Dog was scared to death, especially by the big men wearing helmets, raincoats, and carrying sticks who temporarily invaded the house.

I just went back to sleep.