Number Two contd.

[greygirlbeast]

Soooooo...there were some last minute corrections to Sirenia Digest #2 (an extra space on p. 5, that sort of thing), which is why you don't have it yet. But as soon as the final PDF comes in, which should be any moment now, Spooky will be e-mailing them to the subscribers. I am very happy with "Pony" and "Orpheus on Mt. Pangaeum." Also, note that the next issue will be a Valentine's Day special with three vignettes and two illustrations (by Vince). Also, because I have a certain sort of disdain for Valentine's Day, I'll be running a contest to find the sickest Valentine's Day card. It can be something you find in a shop. It can be something you make. Whatever. But you'll have to send it to me at lowredmail@mac.com (or post it somewhere and send me the URL) by February 10th, whatever it is. Please note that submissions will not be returned. The winner will have her or his Valentine featured in the digest and will win a free one-month extension to their subscription. So get crackin'. Also, I'm hoping that the digest will be getting a facelift with No. 3 and the design will henceforth be somewhat less Spartan. And, because I have been such a tardy nixar, it's still not to late to subscribe and get Number 2. Do it today, and I'll throw in a free copy of the trade paperback of Silk.

I've been so wrapped up in the process of getting the digest out the door (so to speak) that I completely forgot to mention the launch of the New Horizons spacecraft last week. The craft will pass Jupiter in 2007 and, even traveling at more than 75,000 km/hour, it won't reach Pluto until 2015. After Pluto and Charon, it will continue into the Kyper Belt and begin a four-year exploration of KYOs that will end in 2020. With luck, there will even still be people on this rock in 2020 to get whatever signals she sends back. There's a special Nebari prayer for spacecraft, but I'm too sleepy to type it all out. It's the thought that counts.

My comp copy of the new sf anthology Futureshocks (edited by Lou Anders) arrived yesterday. I'd forgotten how pleased I was with "The Pearl Diver" (my contribution), as it was written in the summer of 2004. That summer already seems a decade ago, there's been so much in between, a change of dwelling, tons of newer stories, all manner of personal trails and tribulations and dren. Mahesh Raj Mohan has reviewed the antho for Strange Horizons and has very nice things to say about "The Pearl Diver."

Meanwhile, Orson Scott Card continues to make an ass of himself.

Yesterday's post also brought me the new Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, which is always a good thing, but is even better this issue as there's an especially large number of papers on dinosaurs. The only one I've had time to look at so far is the description of three small, early ornithischians from the Middle Jurassic of China — Agilisaurus louderbacki, Hexinlusaurus multidens, and Xiaosaurus dashanpensis.

There have been some very good comments to the LJ lately which have me considering not only the role and expression of the "supernatural" in my fiction, but also the distinction between that which is inexplicable and that which is merely unexplained. It has occured to me that it might be useful and important to distinguish between these two things and that I usually mean inexplicable and not unexplained. It's the difference between that which can probably never be explained by science and rationalism as it exists beyond the realm of rational thought and that which will probably be explained eventually. Anyway, just a half-formed ponderation. I'll come back to this later on, after I've had more time to consider about it all in more detail.

The vignette poll continues. Please vote if you've read Frog Toes and Tentacles Thanks.

Comments

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

The obvious beginning question I would pose, if you are interested in answering, is where do you choose to mark out "Fantasy" and "Horror" on the continuum of "weird stuff happens" fiction? I know that question's a pain, and I'm not sure how I would answer, or if the answer would ever be the same twice. My usual thought is "if the protagonist has powers, too," then you're moving toward fantasy, though I don't think that's always the case - Dunsany comes to mind to blow that one out of the water right away, and Lovecraft's dreamlands work isn't too far behind.

Then again, it seems that everything was a lot closer together back then...

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

The obvious beginning question I would pose, if you are interested in answering, is where do you choose to mark out "Fantasy" and "Horror" on the continuum of "weird stuff happens" fiction?

Well, on the one hand, I'm usually of the mind that all fiction is, on some level, fantasy, and that categories aren't very useful things in fiction. On the other, though, there's the question of the intent of any given piece of fiction. I tend to favour Doug Winter's proposition that "horror" isn't a genre, but an emotion. So, that fiction which seeks to evoke the horrific (and I think "horror" can be broken down into a number of sub-emotions: wonder, fear, awe, etc.) might be considered, from the POV of intent, to be "horror." Some of this fiction contains fantasy elements, but a lot of it clearly doesn't. Do The Silence of the Lambs and Pet Sematery belong in the same category? Generally, I'd say no, they don't, unless, perhaps, one considers them from the perspective of their intent.

My usual thought is "if the protagonist has powers, too," then you're moving toward fantasy,

That's an interesting thought...

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

That's a much more useful way of looking at things than what I was working with and an interesting thought about Silence of the Lambs and Pet Cemetary how they can be linked and unlinked in categories.

It leads to another question of how a work of fiction becomes a genre? I suppose that has a lot to do with the business of publishing and selling books, but those decisions that the publishers and agents and all those folks make has to be based on something that led them, or their predecessors to divide up work and authors into genres.

I'm taking the long way around the barn, I guess, but I think that I'm wondering where the genres came from, why we have the ones we have, and what balance of the unexplained and inexplicable causes readers to categorize you in one of them.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

It leads to another question of how a work of fiction becomes a genre? I suppose that has a lot to do with the business of publishing and selling books, but those decisions that the publishers and agents and all those folks make has to be based on something that led them, or their predecessors to divide up work and authors into genres.

Well, as for "horror," I don't believe that genre horror existed, as we think of it today, prior to the 1970s or so. It arose as a marketing strategy on the part of publishers who wished to capitalize on the success of a small handful of bestsellers. I think it's safe to say that "horror" owes its genrefication to industry. There are other genres which seem to represent more natural groups (sorry, it's hard for me not the think like a biological taxonomist sometimes). Westerns, for example. Romance. But no genre is immutable. All the lines are fuzzy. There are always crossovers. Mostly, I just think it's an enormous waste of time to go on and on about what constitutes a genre or whether something is fantasy or sf or horror. It's all fiction. All fiction is fantasy, to one degree or another. I don't get hung up on the plausibility of one fantasy as compared to another, as it seems a dubious enterprise. The Lord of the Rings is no less false and no more true than, say, Light in Augsut. I try to leave it as that. Other will disagree.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Fair enough; and thanks. That was quite helpful.