Entry tags:
Evening Update
I just called out to Honey (in the kitchen) that "our girlfriend is on!". We likes our Rachel Maddow Show, we does.
The lungs are settling back into place, the energy levels continue to rise, albeit slowly. Amongst other things, I wrote a 6 page letter in support of one of the "alumni" fellows who is running into some interdepartmental difficulties at a far-distant university. This can be described best as "some people are effing idiots".
Got my copy of Chris Anne Wolfe's "Fires of Aggar" and tried to read it last night. Uh-oh. I may have to spork it. Apparently, she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer just as she wrote the first book, the predecessor to this one, and consequently "resisted any changes" to her no-doubt deathless prose. Only, this was a bad idea.
For example (you knew I was going to do this, didn't you?):
The third sentence in, we read "With a sudden drop, the small winged-cat fell through an air pocket...." Well, no. Air has no pockets, nor pocketses, my preciouss.
A few sentences down, as she described the hellish landscape, we read "There was grit that tasted of carbon and sand." Really? Sand? And what would sand taste like? Perhaps, possibly, like silicon, another element to go along with carbon?
"The smaller of the sandwolves turned and trotted back along the trail while the other continued forward." Redundant, much? An editor could have suggested "One sandwolf trotted back [to do something plotwise]." The very next sentence is "The horses behind were plodding along with heads down bent into the winds, and they paid no heed to the sky above nor to the sandwolf returning from the front." How about "One sandwolf trotted back, passing the laboring [or even "plodding"] horses with their heads bent down against the winds, and [did something plotwise]"?
Because now, we're up to page 2, and I've seen a flying cat, two sandwolves, three horses, and absolutely no plot in this hellish landscape. Why am I reading this? I'm tasting something gritty, all right, and it isn't sand. At least this doesn't seem to have any "tall, dark" women, or perhaps not just yet.
In comparison, the beginning of "California Voodoo Game" (by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes), pulled completely at random from the nearby bookcase:
"Late afternoon shadows crept across MIMIC."
"Built forty miles northeast of Barstow, about twenty miles west of the California-Nevada border, MIMIC looked east with a facade that resembled a nineteen-story rust-colored sandwich board with a vertical convex crease."
"After the Quake, MIMIC lay cracked and rotting for almost 50 years."
After three paragraphs of setting, we get the people, and we're immediately pulled into the complicated world of Game Masters planning the Next Game. Everything's vivid, nothing's wasted, and nobody hits an "air pocket".
OK, lungs are feeling left out of things, so I must go take medicines and crawl into bed.
The lungs are settling back into place, the energy levels continue to rise, albeit slowly. Amongst other things, I wrote a 6 page letter in support of one of the "alumni" fellows who is running into some interdepartmental difficulties at a far-distant university. This can be described best as "some people are effing idiots".
Got my copy of Chris Anne Wolfe's "Fires of Aggar" and tried to read it last night. Uh-oh. I may have to spork it. Apparently, she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer just as she wrote the first book, the predecessor to this one, and consequently "resisted any changes" to her no-doubt deathless prose. Only, this was a bad idea.
For example (you knew I was going to do this, didn't you?):
The third sentence in, we read "With a sudden drop, the small winged-cat fell through an air pocket...." Well, no. Air has no pockets, nor pocketses, my preciouss.
A few sentences down, as she described the hellish landscape, we read "There was grit that tasted of carbon and sand." Really? Sand? And what would sand taste like? Perhaps, possibly, like silicon, another element to go along with carbon?
"The smaller of the sandwolves turned and trotted back along the trail while the other continued forward." Redundant, much? An editor could have suggested "One sandwolf trotted back [to do something plotwise]." The very next sentence is "The horses behind were plodding along with heads down bent into the winds, and they paid no heed to the sky above nor to the sandwolf returning from the front." How about "One sandwolf trotted back, passing the laboring [or even "plodding"] horses with their heads bent down against the winds, and [did something plotwise]"?
Because now, we're up to page 2, and I've seen a flying cat, two sandwolves, three horses, and absolutely no plot in this hellish landscape. Why am I reading this? I'm tasting something gritty, all right, and it isn't sand. At least this doesn't seem to have any "tall, dark" women, or perhaps not just yet.
In comparison, the beginning of "California Voodoo Game" (by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes), pulled completely at random from the nearby bookcase:
"Late afternoon shadows crept across MIMIC."
"Built forty miles northeast of Barstow, about twenty miles west of the California-Nevada border, MIMIC looked east with a facade that resembled a nineteen-story rust-colored sandwich board with a vertical convex crease."
"After the Quake, MIMIC lay cracked and rotting for almost 50 years."
After three paragraphs of setting, we get the people, and we're immediately pulled into the complicated world of Game Masters planning the Next Game. Everything's vivid, nothing's wasted, and nobody hits an "air pocket".
OK, lungs are feeling left out of things, so I must go take medicines and crawl into bed.