(Untitled)

[bluedevi]

I was up marking coursework till nearly 3am last night and now my head is full of wool and my neck feels simultaneously stiff and too wobbly. Today was running up and down stairs chasing more coursework, sending the students out to buy plastic folders and find me the hole punch because surely you're not submitting THAT? It's all in but one now,

Comments

Geoff Ryman

[jackfirecat]

I read first The Warrior Who Carried Life and it instantly entered my Great books, rather than just good books, list and have followed him ever since. He lived in the house on Norham Gardens that used to house the OUFG library when I was an undergraduate, just before I did and just before the OUSFG library was there.

There was a TV show about the writing of Lust which just put me off so much I've never read it. He went to the publishers with 5 ideas and they didn't like any of them, so he picked another out of the air. SEX, with a wish. They said yes. And then involved their editing process so much they underminded what was already a hairline-good idea. Criticizing him to the extent of a 'mixed metaphor' when the original (something like 'he walked like a bag of bones, shaken) was perfect, evocative, and for flips sake he's the writer not your jobbing sub-ed. Get out of his face.

Before CelestialWeasel says it, 253 was CW's favourite ambitious project of that year which eneded up not bad at all.

I liked (loved) the novella which begins The

Re: Geoff Ryman

[celestialweasel]

I have presumably already told you what I think of Air several times (on-line, IRL, using my evil-weasel-appear-in-your-dreams-and-slag-things-off device, sign towed behind plane flying overhead, town crier 'Oyez Oyez, Ryman's latest work is' (etc etc)).

Re: Geoff Ryman

[jackfirecat]

No?

Re: Geoff Ryman

[jackfirecat]

Oh yes, you have. Sorry. At this age it takes a while for the memory to perculate.

Re: Geoff Ryman

[celestialweasel]

Good, saves me looking through LJ to see if it was here. For the benefits of anyone else I would sum it up as 'utter shite', 'so bad it is hard to believe it is the same author as 253 and The Child Garden', 'so bad it will slightly taint your perception of his better work' and even 'so bad I forgot I was reading a Geoff Ryman novel and started to think I was reading a Cory Doctorow one' [that sounds like hyperbole but it isn't].

[Also for the benefit of anyone else, I think Cory Doctorow is a REALLY bad writer]

Re: Geoff Ryman

[hatmandu]

Well, I'm intrigued by this comment - I've not read Air (for that matter, I've read some of 253, but never got round to all of it, and have had a copy of Was sitting unread on my shelves for years - oops), but am piqued by the polar (bear) opposite views you and bluedevi offer. Without spoiling it for me, why do you dislike it so much?

Re: Geoff Ryman

[celestialweasel]

It was astoundingly trite, noble peasants vs the evil Micro$oft telepathy software (I wish I was joking but I'm not).

Re: Geoff Ryman

[hatmandu]

That certainly doesn't sell it to me. I wonder if our hostess can woo me back with a defence..?

Re: Geoff Ryman

[celestialweasel]

Also, there was none of the flair his language usually has, as I said the prose reminded me of Cory (spit) Doctorow.

Re: Geoff Ryman

[bluedevi]

If you like him doing less overblown, you'll probably like Air. The style is mostly quite spare and restrained, in that beautifully simple way some Japanese novelists write. I do love his crazy over-the-top endings, though. They're like that bit when everyone starts waltzing in the train station in The Fisher King.

I can sort of see where he was coming from with the SEX thing. It's the sort of thing I could imagine saying in desperation if my five other ideas had been rejected and I wanted to write a book, any book. And the book is flawed and a bit of a mess, but it's still got some great stuff in it.

Re: Geoff Ryman

[celestialweasel]

I believe Impulse, a 60's SF magazine, was also edited in that house, it is clearly a major SF nexus. I didn't know Ms. W's landlady's relation to the late editor thereof - daughter / wife / sister?
Is Ms. W one of the people who has vanished beyond our ken? Certainly beyond mind.

Re: Geoff Ryman

[celestialweasel]

Or mine, even.

Re: Geoff Ryman

[jackfirecat]

Yes, if I understand you correctly, Catherine W is beyond our ken. She had tea with Geoff before the library moved in. She went with Chris-who-shall-not-be-named briefly and then a bus driver after graduating and there my knowledge ends. Perhaps she will surface as an MP at some point at which point I can sell my 'She had tea with Geoff Ryman!' stories to the press.

Hey, come on, recent BP 'revelations' are not a million miles away.

Re: Geoff Ryman

[celestialweasel]

Yes, probably the most inconsequential 'revelations' of all time.

Re: Geoff Ryman

[coalescent]

He lived in the house on Norham Gardens that used to house the OUFG library when I was an undergraduate, just before I did and just before the OUSFG library was there.

!!!