Category Archives: Writing

From Kudzu to Shizu

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This is an account of a trip to Memphis my wife and I made several years ago. It’s relevant for the simple reason that it was my first real introduction to the artifacts and history of ancient China, and at least some of the interest I’ve developed over the years for Asian themes can be traced directly to it. Not to mention stories like “Golden Bell, Seven, and the Marquis of Yi,” (Black Gate, Nov. 2000) “Palace of the Jade Lion” (coming up in Beneath Ceaseless Skies next month) and my Mythopoeic Award finalist novella, The Heavenly Fox. Sometimes research is an Adventure. Continue reading →

Paging Mr. Bradbury

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Fractures on Mt. Sharp

So it’s a little late, but I wonder if he got to see this before he left us. On the left is a picture from the slopes of Mt. Sharp, on the planet Mars. It is described as a strange geologic formation created by internal stresses and fracturing in the Martian surface. And no doubt that’s true, and interesting on the face of it. The gradual fading of the pattern on the perimiter suggests some natural process at work. Yet the romantic in me just cannot stop comparing this photograph to aerial photographs of archelogoical sites on Earth, especially the Southwest and Middle East. And I see walls and alleyways and rooms and houses packed close together for a people who had to cluster together around the site of scarce resources on a dying planet. Part of me, even though pretty much all of me knows better, would like to see this as the remains of a Martian city. I think I can lay at least some of this attitude at Ray Bradbury’s feet. I mean, he wasn’t the only one with such notions. Edgar Rice Burroughs was writing about Martian princesses and four-armed tharks before Ray Bradbury was born. But you obviously won’t find Dejah Thoris hanging out in a dump like that. This is The Martian Chronicles territory.

In a little over a month, assuming all goes well, NASA will be dropping a new robotic rover, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) into the vicinity, a rover with a pretty boring name but much more muscle and payload than Spirit and Opportunity carried. (See full article at Wired Magazine). I’m sure the MSL will get to the bottom of this, since Mt. Sharp is apparently on its agenda. And we’ll discover something marvelous, like a really strange set of perfectly natural formations due to internal stresses below the Martian surface. Perhaps even some insight into how geologic processes on Mars compare to similar ones on Earth. What’s the same, but also perhaps what is totally unexpected, which is the real prize and the sort of thing that usually precedes breakthroughs in our understanding of how the universe works. And I will think that is cool, too.

“Too?” Yeah, I know. But despite the slings and arrows and yadda yadda we all have to go through, I haven’t quite managed to lose that old-fashioned sense of wonder. Granted, it takes a lot these days to pump up the spark, but it hasn’t gone out completely. Still there, still smoldering. I think Ray Bradbury may have something to do with that.

And I’m still holding out for a city.

I Have a Theory….

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“Theory can be quite useful, and can even be fun, and can probably get you published, but sooner or later you have to read the damn books.” – Gary K. Wolfe

Change only one or two words and this, aimed at critics and academics, applies to writers just as well. Anyway, the subject of theory as applied to fiction was somewhat on my mind, mostly as a conscious consideration of a failure of mine.  Confession time–I’m rather weak on writing theory. I’m not proud of that–that’s just the way it is. I have only a vague idea of what “modern” and “post-modern” are and most discussions of “interstitial” fiction leave me either bemused or bewildered, depending on my mood. In neither case can I quite wrap my head around exactly what, if anything, these terms have to do with getting stories written.

Before you start thinking that this is going to turn into some sort of anti-intellectual screed, that’s not it. I’d like to understand the theory aspect of the craft better than I do. I have nothing against being opinionated–shocker, right?– but one thing that really ticks me off is an uninformed opinion. Especially when it’s my own. I mean, I even attempted Farah Mendelsohn’s Rhetorics of Fantasy but had to give up after my eyes glazed over for the umpteenth time. My failing, I hasten to add, not hers. The truth is that I’ll never be an academic writer and I’m fine with that. I don’t teach writing, so explaining different traditions or taxonomic entities is never an issue. Good thing, too.

Even so, and allowing for that one regret, the reason I’m okay with this state of affairs is that  I’m still of the belief that qualifying what we do—aside from basic marketing–is not our job. Per the quote above, it can be fun as an intellectual exercise, and perhaps provide some insight into the process, which is always useful. Yet even Ursula Le Guin, no slouch in the theory department, once used the analogy that if you want to learn about an ocean, you go to sailors and oceanographers and chemists and marine biologists, etc. You don’t ask the ocean, because all the ocean says is “gurgle gurgle, whoosh whoosh.” As with the ocean, we just need to do what we do.

Explaining it is another department.

Hypnogogic Pedagogue

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That’s probably wrong, but it sounds cool. Regardless, I was doing the drifting in and out of consciousness thing a few nights ago and at one point heard my mother speaking to me:

“You have to settle things with your bitter jacket.”

Sure, I’ve had several jackets over the years, some I probably treated better than others, but I can’t recall any with hard feelings toward me or its life as a jacket. I was just awake enough to think, “That made no sense” and just asleep enough to think that maybe it did. Continue reading →