weird sudden entry
I haven't posted in a zillion months, but suddenly here I am, doing it. I'm about to go see a Special Advanced Press Screening of LOTR! Mwah mwah mwah. I'm so excited that I can't do any work.
To distract myself, I'm trying to write a pitch letter to some editor at some magazine who will probably ignore me. I'm also reading Mary Doria Russell's "The Sparrow," which is the fifth alien contact novel I've read in as many weeks. My friend Scott, who is not on LJ and wouldn't write under the name Scott anyway, told me the other night that he'd been reading obscure British police procedural novels from the 1960s "by real policemen." I think the problem with science fiction is that you can never play the authenticity card -- "This novel is by a person who has had REAL contact with aliens."
Nevertheless, all my favorite SF novels are about aliens. When I was in high school, I learned about sex from reading Rudy Rucker's "The Sex Sphere" (alien invasion by creatures made out of sexual organs -- you gotta read it). In fact, I interviewed Rudy once and explained the pedagogical role his fiction had played in my life, which I believe he found funny and sort of scary. Another big alien sex-ed book? John Varley's Gaia series, especially "Wizard." He invents a species that is pretty much designed to have group sex, which is always nice.
Speaking of SF and sex, I'll be in Boston for Arisia from roughly Jan. 15-Jan. 20. Can't wait to visit the land of snow, good Italian food and orgasmic ice cream.
To distract myself, I'm trying to write a pitch letter to some editor at some magazine who will probably ignore me. I'm also reading Mary Doria Russell's "The Sparrow," which is the fifth alien contact novel I've read in as many weeks. My friend Scott, who is not on LJ and wouldn't write under the name Scott anyway, told me the other night that he'd been reading obscure British police procedural novels from the 1960s "by real policemen." I think the problem with science fiction is that you can never play the authenticity card -- "This novel is by a person who has had REAL contact with aliens."
Nevertheless, all my favorite SF novels are about aliens. When I was in high school, I learned about sex from reading Rudy Rucker's "The Sex Sphere" (alien invasion by creatures made out of sexual organs -- you gotta read it). In fact, I interviewed Rudy once and explained the pedagogical role his fiction had played in my life, which I believe he found funny and sort of scary. Another big alien sex-ed book? John Varley's Gaia series, especially "Wizard." He invents a species that is pretty much designed to have group sex, which is always nice.
Speaking of SF and sex, I'll be in Boston for Arisia from roughly Jan. 15-Jan. 20. Can't wait to visit the land of snow, good Italian food and orgasmic ice cream.