Compliment from PNH
In the comments to Scalzi's blog entry about the Hugo award victory of "Spin" by Robert Charles Wilson, Patrick Nielsen Hayden says he wants to have my children. This is the most... interesting compliment I've ever received.
Thanks, pnh! Regrettably, you may not bear my offspring, nor can you. But I'll settle instead if you will consent to letting me schedule you on panels at Penguicon with Scalzi, Nick Sagan, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette and Sarah Zettel!
The opinion he approved of was as follows.
I immediately said "What? A book defeated Accelerando for the Hugo? How is this possible?" and rushed right out and bought Spin. It is giving me what I want with precision guided targeting. All due respect to La Gringa, the bookshelves are clotted with soap opera light reading full of characters you can care about. I'm sick to death of it, and I'd give up fiction and go back to reading WIRED and Popular Mechanics instead, were it not for Charlie Stross, Robert Charles Wilson, Vernor Vinge, Cory Doctorow, and most of all Greg Egan.
In an interview with a blogger concerning his book signing in Second Life, Cory Doctorow said the following:
"Well, the most important moment I had in writing instruction was while I was at the Clarion workshop in 1992. My instructor, James Patrick Kelly, listened to my fellow students praising a story I'd written, and when they were done, he said, 'Cory Doctorow, you are an a**hole. You've managed to write a completely vacuous piece utterly devoid of any emotional oomph, but with enough clever that it's convinced these people that it has merit.' He told me that I needed to learn to sit down at the keyboard and open a vein."
I say, screw that! That's not what I loved about "Jury Service" or "Appeals Court" by Doctorow and Stross, where they played to their strengths. James Patrick Kelly is usually a brilliant SF writer*, but have you read his "Dancing With The Chairs", or "The Ice Is Singing"? I got to the end thinking what, that's it? Nothing but the same old people having the same old emotions they've had in literature since the invention of the alphabet, with a vaguely Twilight-Zone window dressing. I don't know who reads those or why they're written. It's got it's place I guess, but there's no shortage of it on SF bookshelves. There is not enough candy with a crunchy technological coating and a chewy philosophical center!
* Disclaimer: It may not sound like it here, but I am a Jim Kelly fan. I became so by buying every single ebook he put up on Fictionwise. Kelly, and my handheld computer, got me back into science fiction after a college-and-post-college hiatus of several years. He's so prolific I was bound to dislike something eventually, and they are few and far between. Also, he gives away free audiobooks which I listen to every day, and that makes him the friend of readers everywhere.
Thanks, pnh! Regrettably, you may not bear my offspring, nor can you. But I'll settle instead if you will consent to letting me schedule you on panels at Penguicon with Scalzi, Nick Sagan, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette and Sarah Zettel!
The opinion he approved of was as follows.
I immediately said "What? A book defeated Accelerando for the Hugo? How is this possible?" and rushed right out and bought Spin. It is giving me what I want with precision guided targeting. All due respect to La Gringa, the bookshelves are clotted with soap opera light reading full of characters you can care about. I'm sick to death of it, and I'd give up fiction and go back to reading WIRED and Popular Mechanics instead, were it not for Charlie Stross, Robert Charles Wilson, Vernor Vinge, Cory Doctorow, and most of all Greg Egan.
In an interview with a blogger concerning his book signing in Second Life, Cory Doctorow said the following:
"Well, the most important moment I had in writing instruction was while I was at the Clarion workshop in 1992. My instructor, James Patrick Kelly, listened to my fellow students praising a story I'd written, and when they were done, he said, 'Cory Doctorow, you are an a**hole. You've managed to write a completely vacuous piece utterly devoid of any emotional oomph, but with enough clever that it's convinced these people that it has merit.' He told me that I needed to learn to sit down at the keyboard and open a vein."
I say, screw that! That's not what I loved about "Jury Service" or "Appeals Court" by Doctorow and Stross, where they played to their strengths. James Patrick Kelly is usually a brilliant SF writer*, but have you read his "Dancing With The Chairs", or "The Ice Is Singing"? I got to the end thinking what, that's it? Nothing but the same old people having the same old emotions they've had in literature since the invention of the alphabet, with a vaguely Twilight-Zone window dressing. I don't know who reads those or why they're written. It's got it's place I guess, but there's no shortage of it on SF bookshelves. There is not enough candy with a crunchy technological coating and a chewy philosophical center!
* Disclaimer: It may not sound like it here, but I am a Jim Kelly fan. I became so by buying every single ebook he put up on Fictionwise. Kelly, and my handheld computer, got me back into science fiction after a college-and-post-college hiatus of several years. He's so prolific I was bound to dislike something eventually, and they are few and far between. Also, he gives away free audiobooks which I listen to every day, and that makes him the friend of readers everywhere.