Ridley

Transit

Posted on 18 September, 20157 June, 2022 by Ridley

All work and no play makes me pretty much exactly what I am, so we’re taking a much-needed long weekend trip to Denver. It’s been ten years since I’ve been up here, and that trip was all business so I didn’t get to see much of the city. A lot of highways, some of which were incredible (I had to drive to Grand Junction), but not much of Denver. Ever since we watched Gary Huzwit’s Urbanized, I’ve kept an eye out for how cities are put together and run, what works, what doesn’t and things of that ilk. Denver, to a newly-arrived traveller, seems to have some good things going on in the downtown area. It’s one of the most walkable downtowns I’ve visited. Based on what I’ve seen, there are enough support systems to support someone working and living downtown and not having to own a car. There’s public transit, rental smart cars, plenty of bike infrastructure, and there’s an unusual amount of useful shops. I’ve only seen a tiny sliver of the city and I’m sure there are plenty of problems, but they seem to be doing a lot of thing well. Oh, and of course, it’s insanely beautiful outside today. The temperatures are going to be in the 50-70 Fahrenheit degrees range, and the air is a crisp as advertised. We couldn’t have lucked in to a nicer weekend. On the off chance that you’re interested in such things, I won’t be indulging in the recreation which was recently legalized here. It’s interesting, though, to see shops advertising legal marijuana in the central business district. I can’t see whatever disadvantages one might dream up outweighing the obvious benefits, so I imagine this sort of thing will spread wildfire. This being a short trip, we decided to do it up a little* and we’re staying at the Monaco. It’s such a lovely, quirky place, typical of the Kimpton hotels. We have a fish bowl in our room now just because we commented on the one at the front desk. Apparently, this is just a thing they do. Silly, I know, but it’s delightful and there’s way too little delight in the world these days. This being a “recharge the batteries” kind of trip, we have very few specific things planned. We’re going to walk around and enjoy this lovely town, chill in this ridiculous hotel, and get out and about and see a few friends. The rest will be all improv. We’re very fortunate in that we’re both most comfortable handling vacations this way. The real risk, for me, is this: Will I come back from this vacation full of vim** and ready to get back to work? Or will I instead come back thinking, “gee, I could really get used to that whole ‘vacation’ thing?” I think maybe Calvin’s dad was on to something… P.S The image if a stock photo of Idaho Springs, Colorado. We drove up that way to kill some time and determined that, while the mountains are really pretty and impressive, driving through them on the interstate isn’t quite all that. P.P.S. I just finished reading Hermann Hesse’s Sidhartha. Funny book, in the sense that’s it’s very much a post-WW1 German thinker*** telling a very non-German story and it reminded me a lot of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. I like reading purely philosophical novels. Even if I don’t agree with them, it’s fun to work out precisely why you don’t. * “Do it up” did not include the flight. We took Frontier, the Ryan Air of the American West ™. I’m all for bare bones budget flight, but charging upwards of $25 to check or carry any bag seems a little excessive. ** Not vigor. No one has ever described me as especially vigorous, and besides, isn’t vigor just getting by on vim’s coattails these days? *** Oh so many mentions of “nausea.”

Martime and the Dragoons

Posted on 14 September, 20157 June, 2022 by Ridley

This one’s in response to Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge: Your Very Own Space Opera. This promised to be a lot of fun and it was, but man, I had to cut a ton of flavor out to get to the bones of this one and it’s still too long. I have a ton of unused background for Martime and this universe, so I plan to find some way to use that in the future. I like her a lot. You don’t get to know her like I do in this one, but her time will come. Trust me on this one. ——————————————————– The crate held in the clamps of one of her ship’s cargo arms exploded directly with far too much energy to be an accident. This was the first hint Martime had of the Dragooons’ presence, which was big problem. Her proximity alarms were now going berserk, but they should detected the nearby ship or ships several minutes ago. She braced herself for the next shot, but nothing happened for several seconds. The public channel “incoming message” light was blinking, so she waved it in and looked up at her screen. Beyond the wreckage of her cargo arm and the crate it had held were two Dragoon ships: Sleek, fast heavily armed, armored, and ugly as hell. The message played: “On the authority of [some bullshit entity she’d never heard of], freighter A2N of the Banasaic League is ordered to stop and receive a boarding party. You are suspected of carrying stolen cargo.” Somehow, in parallel, several thoughts crossed Martime’s mind at once: 1) “Yep, they’re right. All of these crates are stolen. The entire barge is full of them.” 2) “They’re faster, more maneuverable, and far better armed than I am.” 3) “Why hadn’t Goff, who might or might not be her boyfriend, and who was remarkably well connected with law enforcement, hinted that she might be in trouble?” All three of these threads converged on a single point, a thought which neatly summed up each line of thought: “I am so screwed.” The A2N was nominally a freighter, but it might better be describe as a tug. The ship, with all of the engines, life support, computers, and weapons, was a tiny half-spheroid which had all of the luxury appointments of an efficiency apartment. If Martime weren’t comfortable being alone and in tight quarters most of the time, she’d have burned out at this job a long time ago. “Shit shit shit shit shit,” said Martime out loud to no one in particular. She fired the reverse engines to back away from the Dragoons, trying to buy a little time. Then something clicked in her brain. She didn’t know much about Dragoons, but she knew they were dispatched in threes. “Boarding party?” She waved through a full external hull scan of the A2N and there it was, locked on the bottom of the half-sphere: The third Dragoon. One of the cargo arms was toast, but the other seemed to be fully functionally. Martime waved it underneath the hull and swatted at the Dragoon. The Dragoon was a state-of-the-art military interceptor; the cargo arm was a design older than Martime’s grandmother, but it was built to shift cargo and even barges if necessary. It was no contest. The Dragoon’s grip on the A2N failed and the sleek, black, slightly rumpled ship spun away, thrusters trying to control the spin. “Forget that one for now,” Martime thought and then, unhelpfully, “What the hell is a ‘Dragoon’ anyway? Across between a dragon and a goon?” It was at this time that the entire cargo barge started to explode. The two remaining Dragoons were firing salvo after salvo, starting at the back of the barge and moving forward. “Oh you shits. It is so on.” Martime, all five foot one of her, brushed her asymmetrical bangs from her eyes, made sure she was securely bound in her chair, and waved the release command for the barge. The A2N was still lightly armed and armored without the barge section, but the mass to thrust ratio was suddenly much, much more favorable. She whispered “floor it,” and the A2N crushed her against her chair. Under absurd G-forces, she switched to eye-movement command. She aimed her ship directly between the two Dragoons, counting on them not to fire at each other. Her faith was misplaced. The Dragoons, or at their gunners at least, we good enough to miss each other but not good enough to hit her. She considered throwing her ship into a spinning corkscrew to evade whatever explode-y beams they were shooting at her, but she settled on a slight random wobble so she wouldn’t lose as much acceleration. It must have been enough, as the flashes of light that would have meant the end of her never touched the A2N’s hull. Now that her ship was lighter and had more thrust than her pursuers, they weren’t going to catch her unless they disabled her ship. Martime considered the implications of firing on what were apparently some sort of official law enforcement ships. She weighed this against the fact that they’d fired on her and blown her barge to smithereens and made the only rational decision she could make. “Arm missiles.” Previously-dormant lights suddenly began dancing down the side of a rack of four S2S missiles. When the lights went green, they emerged on an arm from what might was well have been the bottom of the half-sphere vessel, between the lower-left and lower-right thrusters. Using her eyes, Martime set two of the missiles to track each of the Dragoons. The third, the spinner, was so far away she could afford to leave it alone. “Fire.” Deep breath. “Ok, you assholes. You either veer off your pursuit course or you eat a missile at relativistic speeds. What’ll it be?” Her pursuer’s velocity worked against them when they had missiles coming down their throat. The missile’s vector was exactly the opposite of that of the A2N, so dodging meant losing ground in pursuit. One of the two Dragoons had made the U-turn ahead of his counterpart and was significantly closer to the A2N. The captain wagered his ship and his crew’s lives against the chance that Martime’s targeting would be off. Martime’s targeting was perfect. The Dragoon’s nose…

Oldtimer

Posted on 10 September, 20157 June, 2022 by Ridley

The new customer service rep from one of our vendors called me yesterday to introduce herself. I genuinely feel bad for these people. When they take over a new territory, they’re cold-calling a bunch of people whose business and background they only know from a paragraph on a transition email. She opened by letting me know how long she’d been with the vendor, which probably makes sense. What she hadn’t been told, however, was that not only was their software originally developed for a company I was working for at the time and I’d been involved with the first pilot of their software, but I’d previously been employed by this vendor and had family still working there. I said this not to one-up her, but just to give her a better idea of where I was coming from. What this means, though, is that I’ve been in this particular corner of this industry for approximately as long as this corner has existed. I work with people who weren’t alive when I first got in to this business. There are some who weren’t alive when this particular piece of software first crawled out of our office over twenty years ago. Most of the time, I use pop culture touchstones to demonstrate the passing of time. For example, this year’s class of high school graduates weren’t born when Radiohead’s “OK Computer,” Wu Tang’s :Wu Tang Forever,” Foo Fighter’s “The Colour and the Shape” and, Spiritualized’s “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space” were released. The movies “Titanic,” “Boogie Nights,” and “Men In Black?” All after they were born. The difference is that I think those are funny. Watching people realize that their entertainment is now as old to them as their parents’ music and movies were to them is a hoot, albeit a slightly cruel one. On the other hand, realizing I’ve spent this much time in this industry is something that gives me chills, and not the good kind, every time. I’m not sure why. OK, that’s a lie. This is why (ganked from Kuenzer.com.) It’s like hitting “/played” in World of Warcraft and seeing just how much of your life you’ve sunk in to this pursuit. Granted, it’s mostly a pursuit of “having a roof over my head” and “having food to eat that isn’t dried ramen because, dude, you can only eat so much of that and I know exactly where that limit is.” My job could disappear tomorrow and the world wouldn’t even notice. I’m under no illusion as to the importance of my day job. I just don’t much care for confronting exactly how much time I’ve put into it.

Back to normality (and some stuff about Labor Day)

Posted on 8 September, 20157 June, 2022 by Ridley

Beautiful girlfriend is home from her trip and the house feels like it’s home again. A few days ago, my sister asked me what guilty pleasures I planned to indulge in once I had the place to myself, something I wouldn’t do when the missus was around. Her example was “eat an entire bag of Doritos in one sitting” so you can tell we’re a wild family. I couldn’t think of a single thing. I’m not trying to win brownie points or anything like that; I just literally couldn’t think of anything I enjoy doing that I can’t do when she’s around. I don’t know if that means we have an exceptionally healthy relationship or we’re the poster children for co-dependence, but I’m not going to complain. I’m happy, and that’s more than enough. Back to work tomorrow. I know that Labor Day is sort of the runt of the litterwhen it comes to national holidays, but I’ve grown to appreciate it more over the years. I don’t remember hearing many positive things about organized labor when I was growing up, but in hindsight, I think the people who were controlling the narrative were the ones organized labor was vying against, so they may not have been impartial sources. I usually distrust declension narratives, but I get the impression that the gains which organized labor won have been eroded to a greater degree than many people realize. Work weeks seem to be getting longer as the workforce shifts to jobs which don’t provide overtime. I’m not an economist and by that I mean I’m really, really not an economist so I won’t even speculate as to why this is happening or what it means, but it seems, from my vantage, to be something we should be concerned about. Anyway, just like Memorial Day is a great time to reflect on the sacrifice of those who served, maybe Labor Day would be a good opportunity to teach the very important gains organized labor fought for and won for us all. That said, I’m not above taking advantage of a day off to just chill out and enjoy not being in the office. Heavy concepts like the importance of organized labor are great, but so is having a little local Tex-Mex, hitting up a book store, and basking in the joy of having your most favorite person by your side again. Absence/heart/fonder/etc. Turns out it’s true. P.S. Holy smokes, the bed is cold. That’s not any kind of figurative statement; the bed is downright chilly tonight. It isn’t help by that fact that, due to my medical concerns, I have to use a sheet between me and the blanket. This is not my preferred arrangement. I don’t like anything between me and my big, warm, microfiber bundle of joy. Even as a child, I always kicked my sheet to the end of the bed in my sleep. I know this doesn’t make any sense at all, but somehow, having an extra layer of fabric makes the bed feel colder. In theory, or at least my understanding of the theory, an extra layer of fabric to trap my body heat should be keeping my warmer. It doesn’t feel that way. The sheet feels slick and cool and not cozy by any reasonable measure of coziness. Sheets: I am not a fan.

Four updates in one post (warning: some updates my be really short)

Posted on 6 September, 20157 June, 2022 by Ridley

I just finished reading Andy Weir’s The Martian and, on the off chance you’re in to hard science fiction and you haven’t read it yet, I suggest you pick it up. It’s breezy and funny and it moves along briskly and there are tons and tons of math! Don’t worry, though, because Weir does a great job of keeping it at a level that I found easy to follow. I’ve no clue if the movie will be any good or not, but the book’s a keeper. Now isn’t this interesting? New Orleans is making a bid to host Worldcon 2018? There are worse places to visit, and there are worse reasons for visiting a place. 2018 is far enough away I can’t even think about making concrete plans, but wouldn’t it be fun? Speaking of New Orleans, this arrived in the mail yesterday. It’s beautiful, it’s raw, and it’s special. I’m home alone this weekend. You’d think I’d be out doing wild, bachelor things and so forth. Well, you might think that if you didn’t know me. I’ve done a lot of work (because hey, that’s what you do on labor day weekend, right?) and some reading and a little, but not nearly enough, cleaning. The only bachelor thing I’ve done is restrict my meals to “things I can prepare easily and clean up afterwards easily.” That name would look terrible on a label, wouldn’t it? Someone smarter than me will probably come up with something better… That last flash fiction story was a bear. It was a two-part prompt: The previous week, we created a character. Then, last week, we wrote a story using someone else’s character. I selected a fellow who didn’t say much other than a few prophetic in brief spasms. Then I got to work on the story. I had a setting, I had other characters moving around the main character, I had a basic plot outline and even had it halfway finished when I noticed that I hadn’t really done anything with the character himself. Uh oh. This was the point at which I noticed that it’s tough to write essentially mute characters. In theory, I would have recognized this at the outset, but I’d somehow missed out on this vital realization. Four hours, a complete shift in POV, and an kind of a cop-out of an ending, I had it done. Not great, but a terrific exercise and that’s what these prompts are all about. It did, however, lead me to ask myself a question. Let me put on my toga and you can pretend I’m speaking in the voice of some Greek philosopher: “Is it better to tell a great story adequately, or to tell an adequate story skillfully?” Ok, I’ll take the toga off now.* Ideally, of course, you want to tell a great story skillfully. For the sake of practice, I feel as though I’ve been spending too much time and effort trying to come up with a great story and not working as hard at telling it well. So, for the next prompt, my goal is to pay more attention to the technical side of things, the mechanics of it, even if that means I’m not particularly “inspired” by the story. Does that make sense? * Don’t flinch; I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt underneath it.

Because What We Really Need Is More Hugo Awards Drama

Posted on 5 September, 20157 June, 2022 by Ridley

The Sad Puppies are going to make another go of it next year. My understanding is that they are not planning on slate voting this time around, and if that’s the case, I wish them well. A group working to bring more awareness to science fiction and to highlight works that might not otherwise get much attention strikes me as admirable. I feel for the Sad Puppies, because they’re in difficult-bordering-on-hopeless situation. Let’s say that you’re taking a poll of the “six best songs of the summer!” If fifty one percent of your voting population like opera and forty nine percent prefer rap*, then there is a very good chance that every song on your list is going to be an opera song. This is a feature of how some voting systems are set up. Please don’t make me link the “Spider Jerusalem on voting” rant. Another thing which may be working against them is the inertia of familiarity. If a reader likes a particular author’s voice, they will probably prefer that author’s work and cast their vote for that author even if the objective “quality” of that work, however you can objectively definite it, is not equal to that of other works. I am reasonably sure that, if a Terry Pratchett novel were nominated for literally anything, it would take a massive gulf in quality to get me to vote for other works. That’s my own subjective bias. I won’t argue that it’s a good or a bad thing, but it is a real thing and I am certain I’m not alone in this. To me, these two factors are a reasonable explanation of why certain authors and types of books continue to be nominated and win Hugo awards. It strikes me as far more plausible than a cabal of liberal insiders gaming the system. I’m not saying it can’t exist, but rather that I haven’t seen any evidence to that effect. Those were the two problems the puppies faced at the outset. There are now two more, and they’re going to turn an uphill struggle into one that I can’t see them winning. Sorry. It’s impossible for me to think of “rabid puppies” and not think of Old Yeller. The first problem, obviously, is that their name has been soiled. The puppies brand is associated with slate voting, an association that will not serve them well (see below). Even worse, they’re associated with the rabid puppies, and that’s poison. The leader of the rabid puppies has an enormous amount of personal baggage and he has a history of taking groups with a legitimate beef and turning them into frothing partisans. Even if sad puppies 4 try to distance themselves from their earlier tactics and allies, I don’t think people will swift to forget. The bigger problem, and the one which I believe probably dooms the puppies, is that the massive uptick in voter participation at Sasquan was ruinous for their slate. While many of those voters certainly had reasons other than “not liking the books” for voting against the puppies (see above), this suggests very strongly that the puppies do not represent a silent majority. Based on the numbers I’ve seen, I’d expect the puppies percentage of support to scale inversely with the number of voters. Some people have suggested that the puppy slates losing to “No Award” is incontrovertible proof that the puppies claims are objectively correct and the Hugo awards are run by a clique hell-bent on ensuring the political correctness of award winners. That’s not merely hyperbolic; it’s simply not true that the voting results prove anything of the sort. It’s not helpful to anyone to distort the truth in that fashion, and if this kind of rhetoric is indicative of what we have to look forward to for the next twelve months, it’s possible that “No Award” will be the big winner again next year, and no one who cares even a little bit about science fiction wants to see that. Please do not interpret this as an anti-puppy statement. I just happen to be a cat person.

The Bookseller’s Grandson

Posted on 31 August, 20157 June, 2022 by Ridley

Here’s another Chuck Wendig flash fiction special: Pick A Character And Go, Go, Go. The idea was to take a character from another writer’s response to the previous week’s challenge (Time To Create A Character). I went with Christine Chrisman’s unnamed character. He seemed like an interesting fellow to take out for a ride. ————————————– “You sure this is the right place? Looks kinda, you know, shitty, for a guy who has the kinda goods this guy has,” said the man in the black suit, fuchsia shirt open at the neck, and designer aviators. “Shove it Carl. This place fits the description she gave us. This is it,” the older, shorter, and heavier man responded. Mr. Jenkins was wearing what he always wore to work: A baby blue guayabera, Dockers old enough that they may have once had pleats but you’d never be sure now, and a white straw hat. Mr. Jenkins knew that Carl disapproved of his look, but Carl was an idiot and could go fuck himself for all Mr. Jenkins cared. He respected Carl’s work so much that, even though the younger man was the “muscle” on this gig, Mr. Jenkins had a Beretta tucked into his waistband. The sign over the shop read “books,” or might have, if you gave the faded “k” and “s” the benefit of the doubt. Mr. Jenkins gave the outside of the store a quick look before pulling the door open. The windows dingy, which was unusual for a book store, but also free of the tell-tale yellow patina of nicotine, which fit. The display consisted of a dozen or so paperback by authors he’d never heard of (but his familiarity with books was limited to what one would see in airport convenience store, which is to say, Tom Clancy and not much else.) They were displayed on cheap wire stands on top of stacks of other books instead as opposed to, say, shelves. Based on what he’d heard, Mr. Jenkins wasn’t surprised. Mr. Jenkins nodded quickly to his partner and pulled the door open. His serious expression disappear instantly as he greeted the lone clerk behind the counter. “Hiya! Can tell me where your Tom Clancy books are?” The man behind the counter didn’t make eye contact. His head stayed turned to his left, which Mr. Jenkins took to mean the books were in that direction. “Thank you!” Mr. Jenkins ambled to his right, slowly, and not quite directly, keeping his body slightly turned towards the counter. Carl’s sunglasses hid a truly epic roll of the eyes. He hated this role-playing shit and just wanted to get on with it. He stood awkwardly just inside the doorway and checked his watch. Mr. Jenkins got a better look at the shopkeeper. He fit the bill: Forty something, maybe fifty, glasses that would have been ironic on someone cooler, hair a mess, awkward slouch, and suspenders that even Mr. Jenkins recognized as a fashion faux pas. This was him. Mr. Jenkins didn’t pay quite enough attention to where he was going and bumped into a stack of books topped with an impressive stack of unopened mail. He turned to apologize to the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper reached down under the counter. Carl reacted first and pulled his MAC-10 in a way that indicated he’d probably practiced drawing it more than he had firing it. He trained it directly on the shopkeeper. Mr. Jenkins pulled his piece as well, since, well, fuck it, if a gun’s been pulled, might as well put all your cards on the table. “Alright, whatever you’re reaching for, bring it up, nice and slow,” Mr. Jenkins said in a voice that suggested he was comfortable speaking in an environment where guns were in play. The shopkeeper continued his motion as though he wasn’t even aware of intended menace, made eye contact with Carl, and displayed a thin, white plastic bag from a c-store, stuffed full of books, wadded up clothes, and maybe some tupperware, but importantly, nothing remotely threatening. He walked out from behind the counter. Carl looked around and, to his disappointment, noticed there wasn’t a cash register. It hadn’t clicked with Carl that a cash register in this particular shop wouldn’t have much in the way of cash. “Alright pal, you’re coming with us,” Mr. Jenkins ordered the man who appeared to already be coming with them. “And Carl? Put the fucking toy away.” Mr. Jenkins put his gun back in his waistband and followed the shopkeeper out the front door. The man with the stupid suspenders just kept walking, maybe following Carl, but almost like he knew where he was going. “Buddy, you wanna lock up?” The shopkeeper turned around, almost facing Mr. Jenkins, and maybe mumbled something to himself or maybe to Mr. Jenkins, turned back around and continued towards Carl’s Lexus (which Carl most definitely could not afford.) He did not look very much like a man who was being kidnapped. He did not look frighted at all. Much later, Mr. Jenkins would ask himself why this didn’t concern him more. *** The shopkeeper was thinking about King Arthur and about how putting a sword in stones and in lakes was a strange thing to do and then about how the water would taste with a a sword and a magical woman, or at least her arm in it and if you drank from it, would any of the magic be in the water and how you would bottle that water and how long the magic would stay active if you were to try to transport it and… …and then two men walked in the door to the shop. Without staring, he nonetheless saw enough to understand that they weren’t customers. One man dressed in a cheap suit with a big gun poorly concealed under the jacked. The other made an exaggerated attempt to appear friendly, but he had a smaller gun. Neither appeared interested in books. Both appeared interested in me for no obvious reason. The older man continued to feign joviality as he split from the younger, taller man who wore sunglasses indoors, apparently because he liked the look because sunglasses do not work like regular glasses. In most books, people who do this care a lot about appearance. The shopkeeper reached for the bag of stuff he…

What I’m reading; what I’ve read

Posted on 28 August, 20157 June, 2022 by Ridley

My train book this week is Greg Graffin and Steve Olson’s Anarchy Evolution, and it’s turning out to be a very different beast than I expected. I’ve been a Bad Religion fan ever since a co-worker told me he thought I’d really dig a band called Christian Death. I mis-remembered his recommendation and picked up a copy of Bad Religion’s Suffer instead. It turned out to be a very fortunate accident. I wasn’t used to punk albums being so thought-provoking and catchy. For whatever reason, I never got around to checking out Christian Death. Anyway… This book is mostly about Dr. Graffin’s explanation of why the modern synthetic model of evolution is inadequate to explain what we see in species today and in the fossil record. Instead, he proposes the idea that the role of genes has become overblown in explaining how traits are inherited and distributed within populations. His writing is clear and his ideas are intriguing enough keep me turning the page. Turns out he can write, too. Graffin leans heavily on personal experiences in laying out his case. Many of the stories concern his musical career, but it’s the personal stories of his home life as a child and of scientific fieldwork that I find the most interesting and sometimes touching. I’m enjoying this book immensely,even if it hasn’t turned out to be exactly what I imagined it would be. ———————– I’ve also recently finished reading a book I can’t tell you much about at this time. What I can tell you is that it’s good, and even if it never sees the light of (published) day, I expect some parts of it will live on in the future in other works. It’s exciting to be in on a project like this, even as an observer. It’s exciting to get a little peek behind the curtain of where creative people produce honest-to-goodness creative work. Inspiring, too, which isn’t doing my productivity at the office any good, but I’m not at all sure that’s a bad thing.

Answering a question and thinking out loud

Posted on 26 August, 20152 December, 2022 by Ridley

A friend of mine recently posed a series of interesting questions on his blog and, rather than hijack his space, I want to take a look at the big one in some detail (spoiler alert: don’t expect any definitive answers): “Am I really asking what makes great literature great and, if so, what makes great literature great?” What makes literature great? That’s a heck of a question. It’s not a new one by any means, but that does’t mean it’s not worth reconsidering from time to time. My knee-jerk reaction is that you know it when you see it, but that’s a cop-out. How do you know it? What about it makes you recognize greatness in literature? Thinking about this has led me to wander over to Wikipedia, where I ran across the idea of “literary theory.” I’ll grant that my understanding of literary theory is shallow beyond measurement, but I’m pretty sure that it’s not an approach I want to take when addressing this question. Instead, I’ll start with looking at a list of great literature. For no compelling reason other than the fact that I need to start somewhere, let’s look at The 100 Best Novels Written in English, as per Robert McCrum. At this point, there is a pause in my writing as I’ve gone off to look over the list and then look over it again. Thanks to the magic of text, you won’t actually experience this pause, but I wanted you to know that it exists. Ok, now that I’ve gone over the list, I’m not certain that it gets me any closer to my answer. I’ve read a reasonable number of the books on the list, but most of them I read decades ago. I hope that they’d make more of an impression on me now because, honestly, while all of them may qualify as Literature-with-a-capital-“L”, they didn’t leave much of a mark on me. That’s good, though. For something to qualify as great literature, at least using my proto-definition, it needs to leave a mark on the reader. Fortunately, McCrum himself addresses the question as to what make literature great in a related article: “Calvino’s definition – ‘a classic is a book that has never finished what it wants to say’ – is probably the sweetest, followed by Pound’s identification of ‘a certain eternal and irresponsible freshness’…Thereafter, the issue becomes subjective. Classics, for some, are books we know we should have read, but have not. For others, classics are simply the book we have read obsessively, many times over, and can quote from.” A little romantic, and I’m not sure it’s useful if one’s looking for a systematic approach to answer the question, but still, it’s not bad…until he continues with: “The ordinary reader instinctively knows what he or she believes to be a classic.” And now we’re right back where we started. I’ve tried to make a list of the books which I’ve read and consider great, and then list out the defining traits of those books. I won’t both sharing that because it was a fruitless approach. Have you ever tried to decided if you should stay with a romantic partner by listing out their good and bad traits and then adding them up? This exercise worked every bit as well, which is to say, not at all. If I were a literary theorist, I’d suggest that the greatness of literature is an emergent property, but I’m not, so I won’t. So, after all of this, I’m just going to take a stab at what establishes the greatness of literature in my opinion. The book in question is great literature if… * The book sticks with me. If I can’t remember reading it, it may be literature, but it wasn’t great to me. * The book changes the way I look at the world or broadens my perspective in some way. I learn something of value from it. * I enjoy reading the book. This may seem like an extremely lowbrow way of looking for greatness, but it’s hard for me to consider a book great literature if it’s an outright chore to read, no matter how innovative the structure or clever the prose or intricate the plot. * The book is novel. Yes, I did that on purpose, but I mean it. If it seems new and fresh, I’m more likely to regard it as “great.” * Finally, the book needs to end well. The ending seldom saves a poor novel, but if the ending isn’t up to the quality of the rest of the novel, or if the it doesn’t “fit,” it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. These generalization are how I recognize greatness in literature…at least, that’s how I do now. The whole thing is subject to changes. I may someday read something that doesn’t tick any of these boxes and I still think it’s great, which will mean I’ll have to reevaluate the whole thing. Which is fine. I expect defining greatness in literature to be a work-in-progress for as long as I have the wits to consider it. Now, what good is a list like this? For me, it’s a target. When I write, these are the impressions I’d like to leave on the reader: That the work is memorable, that the reader learns something from it, that they enjoy it, and that it offers something different than other things they’ve read. Of course, I’d like to stick the landing as well, My personal example of an ideal ending is Terry Pratchett’s “Small Gods.” I doubt I’ll ever land as gracefully as Sir Terry did with that one, but if I come close, I’ll be more than satisfied. -RK Image from lydiaoutloud.com because it is the perfect image for this post, don’t you think? –

Cecil

Posted on 21 August, 20157 June, 2022 by Ridley

This one’s not a story, per se. Mr. Wendig’s challenge this week is to create a character in 250 words. For once, I’ve actually stuck to the suggested length, although only just. ———————————————————– If you were to ask Cecil to describe himself, you wouldn’t learn much. You’d get awkward, mumbled noises and few phrases designed to hide more than to reveal like, phrases like “I don’t know, I’m pretty average, I guess.” You might better off asking his friends to describe him. If you did that, you’d find out that they all agreed on three things: 1) Cecil didn’t care much for the name “Cecil.” He spent his sixth grade year trying to give himself nicknames, but none of them stuck. His middle name was “Martin,” but even Cecil couldn’t imagine anyone calling him “C.M.” He resigned himself to his fate when he was fourteen, but he’s never been comfortable with it and he jumps a little when people call him by it. 2) Cecil doesn’t like calling attention to himself. He’s not the class clown; he’s the guy who feeds the jokes to the class clown. He’s not the only senior at the school who hasn’t been on a proper date, but you can kind of tell he feels like it sometimes. He’s reasonably athletic and he wouldn’t be too unattractive if he’d do something about that bowl haircut and he could find pants that fit his 6’3”, 140 pound frame. 3) The strange thing isn’t that people tended to wind up doing what Cecil wanted. The strange thing is that they think it’s their own idea. There was not magic to this third item. Cecil was just a very clever boy. No, you’re not getting any hints from the picture. That would be cheating.