My maternal grandfather passed away today, the last of my grandparents to go. He was 91.
Closing comments, not because I’m too upset to deal with them — I’m not; I’m doing okay — but because they just don’t seem right. That social pattern is wrong for this situation, at least in my head.
Adding in some new titles last night, it occurred to me that oh yeah, I have something on my website that could be useful as a racial-diversity resource. Of course, I’ve read only a fraction of the books listed there, so I can’t say they’re all worth reading; some of them may in fact be head-‘splodingly bad. But if you’ve got a hankering for fantasy novels that acknowledge the existence of a world outside of the usual feudal-Celtic-Norse triangle, well, there’s a starting point.
(A perenially incomplete one. E-mail me, or comment here, with others I should include: author, title, and which category they belong in.)
I have a couple of different stories in the pipeline that take place in semi-Chinese societies — specifically, societies where I’ve decided to base the language on Mandarin, at least as far as the phonology of names is concerned. (i.e. I’m neither using actual Mandarin in the story, nor conlanging beyond deciding what to call characters and towns.) IANASpeaker of Mandarin, so my question for those who are is: how likely are you to be distracted by possible meanings for the names I’ve made up?
To put it differently: if I invent German-looking names for a story, I can (and do) check in a dictionary to make sure I haven’t named a character “Elbow” or something like that. And it’s relatively easy to avoid actual words, just by changing a few letters. With the semi-Japanese names in the doppelganger books, on the other hand, I kind of let it go, because any random pair of mora I threw together were likely to mean something in Japanese — tsue is a walking stick, for example, and katsu, depending on the kanji, means “to win,” “thirst,” “yet,” “living,” “cutlet” (when written in katakana) and something you yell at Zen practitioners when they screw up. (Or so my favorite dictionary tells me.) So the Cousin names and honorifics in particular were likely to mean something whether I wanted them to or not.
Mandarin’s more opaque to me, since I don’t speak more than about five words of it, and those very badly. I’m familiar with the function of tones in it, so I suspect it’s likely any random syllable I stick in a name is likely to mean one or more things, possibly incongruous ones. Hence asking the fluent speakers: how badly would that distract you, in a story written in English? Is it something you could just sort of breeze by (provided I don’t accidentally hit upon something flagrantly obscene), or is your brain likely to play the homophone game, coming up with variant translations of the character’s name?
My parents linked me to this cover of Toto’s “Africa” by a Slovenian a capella group (whose great performance is especially marked by its simulated thunderstorm at the beginning), and it made me realize:
I really like good a capella.
And, in parallel with my taste in instrumental music, what I especially like is neither the melody nor the beat, but the stuff in the middle: the harmony, the changing chords in the background, all that good substance. I never really paid attention to that layer of “Africa” before now, but something about hearing it rendered in human voices made it really appeal to me. So help me, o internets: can you recommend good a capella albums that do a lot of that kind of thing? (Not covers of Toto songs; strong and interesting harmonies.)
Just saw the list of recipients for the 2009 Medal of Freedom.
One of the first thoughts I had upon reading it was, somewhere in America, there are people frothing at the mouth because only three out of sixteen are straight white men. (And of those three, one is physically disabled and one is a pillar of liberal American politics. I don’t imagine the people frothing think much of either of those guys.)
[Edited to add: I should have made it clearer in the first instance that the people I imagine are frothing at the mouth are not the entirety of conservatives. I’m talking about the birthers, the Sarah Palin worshippers, the Rush Limbaugh goons and the Freepers, and the rest of the wingnutty base. I honestly think it’s a shame that they have become the vocal face of American conservatism, because they’re doing their best to turn it into the party of racist reactionaries, and that’s an opposition I simply cannot respect.]
Six are women. Three are black. Two are Hispanic. One is Native American. One is Bangladeshi. One is Jewish (at least one — I didn’t check religion). Two are open gays. There are foreigners and the aforementioned disabled guy. Out of sixteen, only Jack Kemp belongs to the core Republican demographic.
And you know what? It warms the cockles of my heart to know that conservative bloggers are probably already bitching about this “affirmative action” list. I want them to be unhappy, because the list they would be happy with is not a list I want to see.
(Not actually true. What I really want is for even conservative bloggers to celebrate diversity. That would be far better than the ongoing fight with people who think the only “real Americans” are the straight white Christian ones. But until we have that, I’ll enjoy this.)
I’d be curious to know how the ratios compare to Bush’s picks, but honestly, I’m too lazy to sort through demographic info for eighty-one more people. At a glance, it looks more white male to me — but it’s hard to tell from just names, and I’m inclined to assume that interpretation anyway, so my glance is admittedly not a good basis for evaluation. Even if Obama’s choices over the next few years aren’t more diverse, people are going to view them that way, because the guy making those choices is black, and so of course he’s probably rewarding all kinds of undeserving minorities while ignoring the achievements of the Great White Male. Right?
<headdesk>
I’d rather focus on the good. Like, now I’m really interested to read more about and by Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow. He sounds awesome — and I’m not just saying that because he’s an anthropologist. <g>
#19 – convincing myself that taking a few days off to regroup and rethink will make achieving my deadline easier, not harder.
Not sure I believe that one. But I’m trying to, right now.
I’ve been so busy this week that it’s taken me days to get this link posted, but: a fellow named Marshal Zeringue contacted me a little while ago with what amounts to a one-question interview question, which was, If they make my book into a film, here’s who I’d like to play the lead role(s).
I cheated a bit and answered for both Midnight Never Come and In Ashes Lie. Head on over there to see who I have faces for in my head (and who I don’t).
(As far as the comet book’s concerned — I don’t have a good visual reference for either Galen or Irrith yet. I should try to fix that.)
It’s International Blog Against Racism Week again, and boy do we have things to choose from — at levels of fame ranging all the way from Sonia Sotomayor and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. down to things like the U.S. cover of Justine Larbalestier’s Liar. (And quieter things than that, no doubt, from one corner of the world to the other, in every city and town.)
Riffling through my brain to see what I might have something to say about, I landed on, of all things, movies. Specifically, the live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Most of my Avatar news has come via anima_mecanique, who has been posting off and on about the head-desk moves of the filmmakers in whitewashing their source. Avatar, if you don’t know, is an animated series set in a fantasy world that I tend to think of as western Pacific Rim in inspiration: the various elementally-themed societies are mostly different varieties of Asian in basis, with the Water Tribes blurring over into northern Pacific natives/Inuit. In other words, not Eurofantasy. But along come the filmmakers with their live-action movie, and suddenly not only is the whole cast white, they’re committing cultural blunders right left and center, like telling people to show up for casting calls in their “traditional cultural ethnic attire. If you’re Korean, wear a kimono.” <headsplode> Well, they backpedaled a little to cast some brown people, like that nice boy from Slumdog Millionaire since everybody likes him, right . . . only last I heard, that nice boy and all the other non-white actors are playing members of the Fire Nation. Who are, y’know, the enemy.
Oh yeah. That fixes everything.
The problem is, I’m not sure what I can do to protest this problem other than make a blog post. Boycotting the movie? Not effective. My one lost ticket sale won’t make anybody take notice, and if a lot of people boycotted it, enough that they did notice, Hollywood wouldn’t say “oh, I guess we should cast Asian actors next time.” They’d say, “oh, I guess we should go back to Eurofantasy.” I can buy the animated series, and I’m going to (I’ve seen the first season and loved it), but after that, it seems like all I can do is talk.
Which isn’t totally ineffective. After all, it was fan outcry that got them to cast Dev Patel (even though he would be way better as Sokka than Zuko). And now that I look on the IMDb, it seems they’ve got a Korean actor for one of the Earthbenders, so hey, there’s one who isn’t on the wrong side of the war. At least some of that has happened because people talked about the problem.
I just wish I knew how to do more. I’ll probably end up going to see the movie, because I suspect that I’ll achieve more by supporting baby steps toward non-Eurofantasy than holding out for perfection, but it’ll annoy me. Especially since it’s pretty obvious that the filmmakers don’t even really get where they went wrong.
Over on FFF, I’ve done a follow-up post to my poll on side stories, examining patterns in the data (both poll answers and comments). If you’re curious how it all fell out, take a look over there.
Why do I have the niggling feeling that I’m arriving late at the party of Understanding That Working For Five Or Six Or Seven Hours On One Story Will Fry Your Brain For Working On Another That Same Day?
1,172 words and one crash course in seventeenth-century telescope design later, I have my first flashback scene.
I’d forgotten how much fun these things are. When I was writing Midnight, flashbacks were my candy bars: nothing but a neat idea, without any need for the kind of set-up or take-down ordinary scenes require. I may try to write another tonight, if I can sort out the details; I still owe this book three others, that need to go somewhere in the stuff I’ve already written.
(There’s another reason I really enjoyed this one, but you all will have to wait until the book comes out to learn what that one is.)
Ladies and gents, we crossed the 70K line today. Which means this is officially Half A Book, assuming I end up in the reasonable neighborhood of my 140K goal.
I may celebrate by spending tomorrow, and possibly the next day, working on flashback scenes. I haven’t written any of them yet, and while I’m not sure which ones I want to stick in which parts of the story, I’ve come to suspect I won’t be able to figure that out properly until the scenes exist as more than one-line descriptions in my head. And while part of my scheduling here involves not counting flashback writing as words toward my daily goal, the early completion of Part Three means I’m still two days ahead of schedule, and spending those filling in other holes isn’t a terrible idea.
(I would do flashbacks and forward progress, but I’m also currently being sisyphized by another project, and three tasks at once is a bit much — even if the sisyphean one is a revision. I just can’t gear-shift that much.)
But hey. Half a book. Yay!
Word count: 70,393
LBR census: It’s going to be blood, if Irrith keeps on being so mouthy.
Authorial sadism: Hey, somebody needs to represent for eighteenth-century English chauvinism.
Long ago, Tantalus turned into a verb: if something tempts you but you’re never allowed to have it, it is tantalizing you. Well, I hereby declare the verbing of Sisyphus, henceforth to be used for tasks which undo themselves every time you finish them.
As you might guess, this is because I’m being sisyphized by something right now. And not just in the usual laundry-and-dishes sense.
(Ixionizing, I suppose, would be when something goes round and round without ever getting anywhere at all, like a hamster on a wheel. Or, well, Ixion. On his wheel.)
Over on FFF, I’m polling people about side stories — pieces of short fiction an author writes that are connected to a novel series. (Like, say, Deeds of Men.) If you’ve got any experience with those, as a writer or a reader, go over and vote.
And feel free to spread this elsewhere, if your LJ readership is interested in this kind of thing. The more data, the merrier!
The VanderMeers, having been given a 13th anniversary ale to try out, decided that of course the thing to do was to see how it went with different books.
It kinda makes me wish I liked beer and/or wine. You could have a pretty ridiculous party, swigging down different drinks, trying to match them up with appropriate books. “I think this is more of a chardonnay kind of fantasy . . . .”
As it happens, Ashes didn’t go well with the beer at all, especially the selection Ann was reading. But she recommends a rich honey mead — Rosamund and Gertrude would approve. ^_^
Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre. Ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime.
Flying Dogs. Or at least dogs in midair, generally looking goofy.
Ten books that could be booted from the literary canon. As evaluated by someone who, from the sound of it, is actually a fan of literary fiction. I must say, the quoted bits make me agree with their evaluation.
Normally I write my SF Novelists posts well in advance, and just set them up to go live when the sixteenth rolls around. This one’s of a more recent vintage: it took me until yesterday to decide I wanted to spend this month talking about villains and antagonists. Go, read, comment over there.
Word count: 60,301
LBR census: There will be blood. (Pity I hated that movie . . . .)
Authorial sadism: Aw, shut it, Irrith. The lunatic hasn’t attacked you. Yet.
The tens of thousands matter. More than a week’s work, unless I’m having a pretty fast week, and there’s few enough of them in your average book that they feel like real milestones.
Also, the next one will be the official “halfway point” of the book, in the hopes that I’m right about it being 140K in total.
In the most recent issue of Locus (requiescas in pace, Charles Brown), Gardner Dozois reviewed Clockwork Phoenix 2 and had this to say about me:
[. . .] Marie Brennan’s “Once a Goddess” (sort of a fantasy version of Ian McDonald’s “The Little Goddess”) is also good [. . .]
Which I bring up because that made me go poking around online, which led me to discover that the aforementioned story is available full-text online. So of course I read it, and it turns out that Dozois is precisely right, perhaps even more than he realized; McDonald’s story is based on the same Nepalese religious tradition, the Kumari Devi, that inspired my own piece.
McDonald plays it closer to home: “A Little Goddess” takes place in near-future Nepal and India, whereas I ran off to a secondary world and an invented tradition only modeled on Kumari. Also, since he’s writing science fiction and I’m writing fantasy, we (unsurprisingly) have fundamentally different approaches to the divinity of the goddess’ avatar. But it was interesting for me to see the places where we intersect, the shared issues of life after divinity — blessings, marriage, and so on. And without giving spoilers, I’ll say that McDonald’s ending is the one I originally intended for “Once a Goddess,” before realizing that just wasn’t the kind of story mine wanted to be.
I definitely recommend his story. It was published June 2005 in Asimov’s, and nominated for a Hugo (in the novella category — it’s also a lot longer than mine). Follow that link above to read it on the magazine’s website, and if you’ve read my story, I’d be curious to know how you think the two compare.
Dear Your Royal Highness Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, Dowager Princess of Wales,
Lady, if your coat of arms looks like this, perhaps it’s time to put down the quarterings and celebrate your ancestry some other way.
Though admittedly you’re not half so bad as the Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenvilles.
Love,
A Writer On An Ultimately Pointless Diversion Through Wikipedia
