Quotes from the Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, Part Three

So I was reading the Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction again these past few days. Despite trying for a long time now, I have yet to actually finish this dense, gigantic tome.

I have posted random quotes from it before here and here.

I felt inspired to read the feminist theory chapter. It was written by Veronica Hollinger.

Although sf has often been called ‘the literature of change’, for the most part it has been slow to recognize the historical contingency and cultural conventionality of many of our ideas about sexual identity and desire, about gendered behaviour and about the ‘natural’ roles of women and men.

See, if it really was the literature of changes (or ideas, which I have also heard SF called), you would think odd and new ideas about gendered behavior would be right up SF’s alley. Don’t you think? It shouldn’t have been slow to recognize things like that.

Feminist theory contests the hegemonic representations of a patriarchal culture that does not recognize its ‘others’. Like other critical discourses, it works to create a critical distance between observer and observed, to defamiliarize certain taken-for-granted aspects of ordinary human reality, ‘denaturalizing’ situations of historical inequity and/or oppression that otherwise may appear inevitable to us, if indeed we notice them at all. The concept of defamiliarization – of making strange – has also, of course, long been associated with sf.

This, yes. As a writer, I don’t believe lofty goals like this should be the first aim of fiction (any fiction!). IMHO, the first aim of fiction is entertainment. But this makes a dandy secondary goal to shoot for. How to do it is another question . . .

It is also significant that many challenges to the conventions of male/female relations have focused on a radical critique of these relations as based in the inequities of what Adrienne Rich first identified as ‘compulsory heterosexuality’.

I am not entirely what this means, but it sounds interesting.

Book Expo America 2013, Day 1

I went to the BookExpo today. I got there later than I intended, but I am okay with that.

I got on the line to for Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas. The line was gigantic. One of the staff pointed us in the direction of the real line and told us the line had been building for the previous hour – and I got there exactly on time. It took pretty much the whole hour to get to the front and I think they were almost out of books. The staff started counting people (I suppose to match the number of books remaining). LOL

on line for Crown of Midnight thirty minutes and the beginning of the line is not yet in sight

I got a few of the author signings I really wanted – Brandon Sanderson, Sarah Mass, Susan Cooper.

I did get some interesting titles from authors new to me as well.

1. The Returned by Jason Mott – something about dead people coming back to life
2. Dark Lord: A Fiend in Need by Jamie Thomson – interesting back cover blurb
3. Constance by Rosie Thomas
4. Born Wild by Julie Ann Walker
5. Inhuman by Kat Falls – Inhuman had no back blurb, but the cover was interesting and looked fantasy-ish.

 

Shapes of Stories Infographic

Just saw this breakdown of the different types of stories by Kurt Vonnegut. Someone called Maya Eilam actually created. I’ve never read any of his stories, but it’s interesting. I am trying to decide which shape my WiP fits. Man in Hole? Boy Meets Girl? Boy Meets Girl doesn’t have to romance, I don’t think. I am tempted to graphic it. LOL

In any case, I am going to go look for his rejected thesis. It’s an interesting idea.

Does knowing the ending ruin a story?

I am reading a story and these two guys are out on a date and they are arguing about   whether or not knowing the ending ruins a story.

I am reading this and thinking: not! But, maybe yes.

Then I ask myself: when was the last time knowing the ending put me off a story?

Answer: pretty much never.

I mean, when I don’t like the ending, that’s different. Sometimes I don’t want to finish (reading the book, watching the TV show/movie). But that doesn’t happen a lot.

I rarely go looking for the ending, but I usually don’t put any effort into avoiding finding out what the ending is either. Other people do. They’ll ask me not to tell them the ending of the next movie they haven’t seen. Or, when I ask, they’ll stop at a certain point because they don’t want to ruin the ending for me. Which is nice, except knowing rarely ruins anything for me.

Maybe I am odd that way. Maybe I am not. If I am odd this way, why do television studios play reruns of the same show over and over and over again. And then when the show is canceled, it goes to a different station.  If people didn’t watch the reruns, why air them at all? So I am thinking enough people must watch again to make it worth their while.

And I reread books a lot too so . . . okay so a lot of people don’t reread books, so maybe I am odd.

The ending is only one part of a story. The other parts are just as nice and worth revisiting. More people ought to get that.

 

Teaser Tuesday: The Road

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

Still reading The Road. It’s good, but it’s taking longer than I thought.

Inside the barn three bodies hanging from the rafters, dried and dusty among the wan slats of light. There could be something here, the boy said. There could be some corn or something.

- The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Related articles

• Teaser Tuesday: The Road (storytreasury.wordpress.com)
• Teaser Tuesday: The Road (storytreasury.wordpress.com)
• Teaser Tuesday: The Eyre Affair (Jasper Fforde) (myjourneywithdepression.wordpress.com)

 

On Skipping Scenes When Reading

I’ve skip scenes when I read sometimes. I do this for several reasons: 

1)       Because I want so badly to find out what happens next I skip some of the intervening scenes and go to the result. (I usually go back and read the scene afterward.)

2)      The author switched the POV and I don’t like the new character and I want to find a scene with the character I like. (Sometimes I go back and read the scene afterward.)

3)      I am bored.

I skipped for this last reason last week and it’s bothering me now. It was one of the Percy Jackson books, the second or third one, I don’t remember now and I was thinking: Go one, let’s move on to something more exciting already.

I skipped pretty much the last half of the book and went straight to the end. Usually, if I am that bored, I abandon it entirely. I don’t know which is better. I don’t even know if I missed anything, but I don’t feel like I did. Not even I read the next book (which was a lot better, and one where I did no skipping.)

But I am still thinking about it, a day after I am done with all of the Percy Jackson books. It was a middle book and showed rather boring syndromes of the middle book. I am not actually tempted to go back and reread. I don’t even know why it’s still, still bothering me.

 

Teaser Tuesday: The Lightning Thief

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

“Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavors: the immortal gods of Olympus. That’s a smaller matter.”

- The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

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• Tuesday Memes (Book Related) (drpepperdiva.wordpress.com)
• Teaser Tuesdays (Jan.8) (shouldbereading.wordpress.com)

Book Review: The Siren Depths by Martha Wells

The Siren Depths is the third in the series and I think it’s probably my favorite in the whole series. It might be confusing without reading the previous books.

The word is gorgeously described and very, very imaginative, just like in the first book. And it just keeps getting better. I love it.

I love the characters, too. The main character, Moon, finds the family that abandoned him when he was born. Apparently he’s the spitting image of his father.

Moon was born a consort in a winged, matriarchal race. Consorts are the only males that can breed with a Queen. There are rules to govern the behavior of Consort. But Moon, having grown up in the wild, never learned any of the rules. Indeed, he never knew the name of his race until half way into the first book.

Because of the rules governing the life of a consort, Moon is forced to go back to his family. The relationship rules are kind of complex, IMO. But explained because Moon is an outsider. (I think trying to explain the rules to the reader if the main character were not an outsider would very, very difficult.)

Because of the life Moon had (he has been wandering the world ever since he was a child, always hiding, always ready to move on) trust is difficult for Moon. Very, very difficult. There is lots of action, lots of drama, but Moon’s insecurity about his place always pops up. He even says something like that to his new-found mother: if the Fell treated me well and told me I belonged with them, I would have.

The Fell are the enemy, and very, very different from his own people. Any physical similarities are misleading. It highlights how Moon felt in the first book and though he has learned to trust a little, he still has a long way to go.

The one thing that is clear to me at the end of this book is that Moon will never, ever be like a normal consort of his people. He can pretend for a few hours maybe, but in the end, he will always do something no other consort would ever do.

His Queen accepts that, which is just as well.

I don’t know which is my favorite scene in this book. There are so many good ones, I just don’t know. Nothing stands out for me right now.

Definitely worth reading, but after the first two in the series. I am pretty sure I will re-read this again. I will figure out then which scene I like best.

Teaser Tuesday: To Kill A Mockingbird

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I am reading To Kill A Mockingbird for the very first time in honor of Banned Book Week. My teaser:

I was bored, so I began a letter to Dill. Miss Caroline caught me writing and told me to tell my father to stop teaching me. “Besides,” she said. “We don’t write in the first grade, we print. You won’t learn to write until you’re in the third grade.”

- To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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• Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird (kprudchenko.wordpress.com)
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• To Kill a MockingBird (vandysnape.wordpress.com)
• Eastern Iowa libraries plan programs, displays for Banned Books week (thegazette.com)
• Banned Books Week 2012 (storytreasury.wordpress.com)

Do you take notes while you read?

I just read this post on Should Be Reading where MizB says she takes notes while reading. Me, I don’t understand that at all. At least not while reading fiction and most non-fiction. I only ever took notes when I read books for class. Once, I was even inspired to highlight when reading a historical/economy/business book for the book-club. (But the book was on my kindle, so nothing was damaged.)

You see this book? I could never markup a book like this. Never.

I’ve never written in a book itself, not even for school. I took notes in my notebook and stuck them in between the books’ pages. It feels a bit sacrilegious to actually make notes in the book itself. I rarely even highlight anything and when I do, it’s only as a last resort.

It’s different with books on the kindle. There, I don’t mind if I highlight passages – doing so makes finding certain paragraphs easier. Faster than using the search function. Truthfully, I feel freer to highlight books in the kindle.  I feel like it damages the book less.

Which may be a silly reaction. Maybe not. Definitely not when it comes to library books and textbooks I intended to sell after the semester. But otherwise? Maybe being unwilling to mark up my books is silly.

The other thing I only took notes on books for school. It’s not something that comes naturally to me for pleasure reading. Never, for fiction books. Only occasionally for non-fiction. I suppose I associate all note-taking with school, which casts an unpleasant pallor over books I mean to read for fun.