(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

[juggzy]

Geoff Ryman is - probably - my most favourite author, for various values of favourite (I have about ten values, so there are ten 'most favourite'). The Child Garden is one of those books I insist people read to the extent of buying them copies, and is also one of the maybe five books (Thinks: The Chymical Wedding, The Alexandria Quartet, Invisible Cities being three of them off the top of my head) that I would quote as having had a very immediate and cognate influence on the way that I choose to put words together. I am encouraged by the fact that you also think that Ryman is a great author. I haven't read the other books, but I'm going to make an effort to read them, now.

[bluedevi]

Hmm, yes, there's an SF Masterworks edition of The Child Garden in Borders at the moment, with a picture of Canary Wharf surrounded by tropical ferns, and I almost bought it so I could give it to some unsuspecting victim. Hmm, maybe I will.

I've bought Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman for two boys now. Though not this one yet, hmm.

[juggzy]

Yeah, I just googled and found it, and was about to send it to two or three people who should read it when I realised that this was solipstic madness, especially given the current uncertainties to my future.

Still, I know what I shall be rereading this weekend in between Other Things.

[jackfirecat]

I wrote that next simultaenously rather in reply, it should be clear.

He also, if you followed him in Interzone, wrote a short story about Lesbian Totalitarians, with 'work camps' for men, on which the comments at the time said, you can get away with that, but no one else could.

I read The Unconquered Country but I recall little other than a thing about counting in 'bunches' which now always pops into the top of my head when I see things about mathematical geniuses.

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.

[the_elyan]

Not a Geoff Ryman post, I fear, but indirectly exploring another great storyteller.

Was thinking about you, and meaning to drop you a line. I owe this evening's reading matter to you, in a manner of speaking, as it was the Kindly Ones, and I discovered (and met) Gaiman while getting your rats drawn.

Hope all is well, and to get over to Oxford some time soon. Prob in London Sun, if you're in the Smoke this weekend. And loved your post about magic realism, and real magic.

I appear to be blathering. Apologies ;-)

[the_elyan]

More prosaically, a guy I used to act with at Nottingham is in 24 Hour Party People. Chap called Enzo Cilenti - no idea who he plays...

[bluedevi]

I find it hard to believe you hadn't read any Gaiman till you went to that signing. Seriously? That's cool, though, the knock-on effect I seem to have accidentally had.

[missfrost]

I read Lust and The Child Garden last summer and loved and raved about both. Thanks for reminding me I wanted to pick up more of his stuff (I have a terrible habit of lapping up everything of a newly liked author in one go, and have tried hard not to do that recently, so now I "forget" who I meant to read more of!)

[bluedevi]

Rah! It's great to see people coming out of the woodwork and saying they've read him.

[verlaine]

I don't think Geoff Ryman has the patent on polar bears?

In fact, I know he doesn't, because I just went and took it out myself. Who owns the Arctic anyway? They owe me big royalties.

[bluedevi]

Well, true, but the ripping-off tendency is deeper and sneakier than that. I had written a whole long chapter of The End of Words which was made up of sketches of people on a tube before I realised I was basically writing 253, but not as well.

(BTW, I'm rewriting it again. But that chapter's gone.)

[verlaine]

Hurray! One day then we might all get to read it!

I have to write 5 minutes of standup for Monday and then a poem for a poetry slam evening (with improv instrumental accompaniment!) for Wendesday. I'm starting with the type of writing that my concentration span can accommodate, and hopefully working my way up from there...