Congratulations! I can't believe you got married when you were 10 years old. What activist mayor issued that license, anyway?
You are a great couple and superb bloggers.
As for the assumption of people involved in SF/F isolating themselves from the world, this is proved absurd by the very environment of this weblog.
Agreed. And as a friend of mine also pointed out, "Being obsessive about the minutae of sports, to the point where you memorize the stats of all the players, and take as much or more pride in your favorite team's accomplishments as your own is perfectly normal and not escapist in the least."
OK, this is war.
Now it's not just panning the genre, but deciding that Science Fiction will ruin our country.
excerpt:
But the criticism of science fiction and fantasy fans - that we are infantile and escapist people, and socially inept to boot - sadly has a little more truth to it. Of course, there are many pastimes that people pursue obsessively, and it may seem a little unfair to stick the boot into sci-fi geeks rather than car fanatics, opera buffs or stamp collectors. But of all the hobbies and interests out there, being preoccupied with the details of otherworldly settings and characters, at the expense of being engaged with the world you actually inhabit, does bespeak a certain retreat from society into the safety of one's imagination.
Link:
Click here for the full article.
You go, John. Send him your novel and ask him if he needs any advice. Maybe you can get him an educator's discount if he orders in bulk.
You might even be free to guest lecture his class on the merits of ignoring bad advice and making a career as an author.
I'm coming into this a bit late, but I have to respond to A.R. Yngve.
Even if Tolkien was scared of women and Ender's Game was had a homophobic subtext, which by the way, I don't see in either, that wouldn't invalidate their contributions as literature. Lolita had overt misogynistic themes and worse, and it's a fantastic book. If a well adjusted narrator with a politically correct view of the world is necessary for good fiction, why are so many great works shot through with neurosis, loathing, fear, hatred, and all the stuff that's much more fun to read about than it is to experience?
Your argument is totally bogus. I love SF and I love so-called literature. The difference to me is indistinguishable. If a book bores me, it bores me, I don’t care if it has spaceships or accountants. Although I do really dig a spaceship now and then.
The demarcation of the genres is utterly arbitrary. Kavalier and Klay was fantasy. The Life of Pi was fantasy. I loved the latter, was bored by the former.
As for the OP, when I was a young writing student, I dutifully carried Sartre around in the cafes and read Science Fiction at home, hiding my shame. It took me a few years to realize that if Kafka can turn into a cockroach, then Ender can exterminate him. A good book is a good book. We might not agree on which books are good, but to malign a so-called genre with which one is clearly unfamiliar is cliquish, childish, and absurd. It’s also a symptom of one of my least favorite intellectual positions: contempt prior to investigation.
I love this. Remember when the Republicans were all about states' rights? Then along came Elliot Spitzer and now the mayor of San Francisco. They never imagined that states rights would mean that all their pals would get prosecuted for corporate malfeasence and that gay people would be getting married.
Donald,
Interesting points. I'll never forget Alan Alda's character in Crimes and Misdemeanors saying "Tragedy times time equals funny! Aside from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
First of all, callous cleverness can sometimes be excused when the cleverness is actually clever. Let's not overlook the fact that the statement in question is not funny, it's dumb. If he'd made a joke that was genuinely hilarious, probably impossible to do given the fact that genocide is the topic, then I might be more forgiving. But it's a dumb remark, and in my opinion, if you're going to make a joke and risk it failing, why not make a joke about something that won't make you look like a total ass when it fails? Not easy to do, but leaving genocide off the yuk-yuk roster seems pretty obvious.
Well, as a green, I'm certainly eager to put the wreckage of the past behind me and pull for anyone ANYONE who has any chance of beating Bush. We've suffered under the lash long enough.
The Clean Air Act has been defanged, and they're taking on the Clean Water Act next. The new prescription drug package that was just passed bans drugs from Canada, so my friends with HIV just saw their drug costs go from $1,200 a month to $2,000 a month. For now they're still getting the drugs from Canada. We'll see how Ashcroft actually enforces this one. It's a horror, that's for sure, and the left needs as little divisiveness as possible.
I first registered Green when I was 18. I'm 34 now and I voted green in the last election. Nader's metaphor was horrible, and I won't vote for him if he runs again.
That said, the Democrats lost the last election all by themselves last time. If they actually lost it, given the Supreme Court nonsense. Gore was an admitted Born Again Christian, and pro-death penalty, and just as steeped in oil money as Bush. Even though Bush was anathema to me, Gore crossed too many lines for me to vote for him, even if he was less evil than his opponent. I'm sure I'll be shouted down for saying this, as I am every time I say it, but that's what I believe.
The democrats are blowing it again. They will lost to Bush in a landslide and they won't have the Green party or the supreme court to blame this time. I will vote for the Dems because I can't stand Bush. But I think they have done a pretty poor job of defending our democracy and upholding our rights in the face of Ashcroft's onslaught.
Self-deprecation is my schtick. Not that I'm any good at it.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 7 |
| 2003 | 4 |
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