"Oh, few have seen it, but everybody talks."
The sun is back, but the temperatures should stay coolish. The high today is only predicted to go to 84˚F.
And today is the twenty-first anniversary of Elizabeth's death.
I have to write.
There's a very nice write up on Two Worlds and In Between and Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea in the latest Strange Horizons (18 July 2016), written by Roz Kaveney, whom I first met in London in October 1997. She concludes:
Kiernan's slow progress from conventional elements and standard tropes, however well done, to meditation on what story is and what it is for and why we seek it out is one of the most radical things that is going on in the fiction of the fantastic right now. What is remarkable is that she was not content with accomplished dark fantasy narratives like Daughter of Hounds and has moved on to novels like The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl with their public examination of personal trauma and their inventive post-modern exploration of text and authoritativeness. She is one of the most serious artists working in our field today and these two collections are arranged to, as our infant school arithmetic teachers used to say, show us her workings.
How can I not be very pleased with such an appraisal? How can one not fairly beam? But, I admit, I did find myself wondering if the worlds I've spent more than two decades weaving are, indeed, as grim as Roz says they are. At one point she writes, "Kiernan shares with M. John Harrison a sense that all is for the worst in this nearly worst of all possible worlds - worst would at least be vaguely glamorous." It's a sobering sort of thought. And a little disarming. But Spooky says that's just the way it is, and who am I to disagree? I'm only telling it the way I see it. I only have this one point of view. It's all I have to share, and my only value to the world and to myself lies in my willingness to be true.
Also, thanks to the help of Cam Collins, I think Aunt Beast's Salt Marsh Home Companion's going to happen after all. Keep watching the skies.
The List has reached 1970, with 233 American and British films.
Later Taters,
Aunt Beast
And today is the twenty-first anniversary of Elizabeth's death.
I have to write.
There's a very nice write up on Two Worlds and In Between and Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea in the latest Strange Horizons (18 July 2016), written by Roz Kaveney, whom I first met in London in October 1997. She concludes:
Kiernan's slow progress from conventional elements and standard tropes, however well done, to meditation on what story is and what it is for and why we seek it out is one of the most radical things that is going on in the fiction of the fantastic right now. What is remarkable is that she was not content with accomplished dark fantasy narratives like Daughter of Hounds and has moved on to novels like The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl with their public examination of personal trauma and their inventive post-modern exploration of text and authoritativeness. She is one of the most serious artists working in our field today and these two collections are arranged to, as our infant school arithmetic teachers used to say, show us her workings.
How can I not be very pleased with such an appraisal? How can one not fairly beam? But, I admit, I did find myself wondering if the worlds I've spent more than two decades weaving are, indeed, as grim as Roz says they are. At one point she writes, "Kiernan shares with M. John Harrison a sense that all is for the worst in this nearly worst of all possible worlds - worst would at least be vaguely glamorous." It's a sobering sort of thought. And a little disarming. But Spooky says that's just the way it is, and who am I to disagree? I'm only telling it the way I see it. I only have this one point of view. It's all I have to share, and my only value to the world and to myself lies in my willingness to be true.
Also, thanks to the help of Cam Collins, I think Aunt Beast's Salt Marsh Home Companion's going to happen after all. Keep watching the skies.
The List has reached 1970, with 233 American and British films.
Later Taters,
Aunt Beast