Games

Though well written and engaging, the main problem I'm having with The Hunger Games is that it seems fundamentally unAmerican. If it were a mythical country it would be more believable, but as a future America it seems to deny what is essentially American. For example, the second amendment. Not to mention religion. it seems more like Dickensian London in terms of characters and culture plus there is a Robin Hood feel to it. There is also the voyeurism of watching teenage girls in trouble, which is kind of boring to an old man like me. The super-strong and brave, yet slight and attractive, young woman is a new kind of American hero showing up in lots of books and movies these days. That's all fine. When I was young there were no girl heroes outside of Nancy Drew. Suzanne Collins does the first person present tense very well. Her writing is good and compelling. It's a regular page turner. The Young Adult genre does seem to have captured the world of American fiction. We are more youth centered all the time.

what the hell I think I'm doing

what I think I'm doing is creating a literature of my own. I don't want to do other people do. I can't do what they do. and since I'm not in it for the money, why should I? my instincts are contrarian. Where I see something obvious coming up, I swerve to avoid it. Where there should be a backstory I stay away from it. I try to stay away from extremes of action and emotion.  Those are not normal. I only want to tell funny and interesting stories.

I don't think we have a right to get to know characters in fiction any better than we know people in real life. My characters are like the people you ride the bus with. My stories have as much detail as what we really know about things. I'm a naturalist in the sense that we live in an unnatural world. at best we have only partial information. at best we see only surfaces. I don't want anyone to identify with my characters. if you want to get to know people, go out there and get to know real people. art is no substitute for life, but the reader's experience is really none of my business. I don't aim to please. I just want to do what I do

metamorphosis

millions of words have already been about Kafka's Metamorphosis. I am now reading it out loud to my son and he wants to be reassured that it's all a dream. stories must make sense. most of us hate it when they don't. even the stories about superheroes. their powers are all intelligible. they can fly or they are strong. Kafka's nonsense is relentless  which is what makes him so frightening. his brutally ordinary heroes are trapped in infinite mystery. in the real world all of us are like this but we live in endless denial. the fact of our existence is miraculous and amazing, but we mostly worry about things like what's for breakfast. Gregor Samsa is a bug, but he thinks he can make the 8 o'clock train. To me this is comedy of the highest order.

Calvino on writing

Usually I carry an idea in my head for years before making up my mind to give it shape on the page, and on many occasions while waiting for this to happen I just let it die. The idea dies in any case, even when I decide to start writing: from that point there will exist only attempts to realize the idea, approximations, the struggle with my means of expression.

For me, the processes of the imagination follow paths that do not always coincide with the paths we follow in life.

Unconventional, eccentric and atypical writers end up being the most representative figures of their time.

Italo Calvino

Nice things said about Ledman Pickup

This nice review appeared on Smashwords today. I think he liked it:

This story raises science fiction to the Neil Gaiman level. No battles, rockets, time travel, or aliens; a contemporary setting instead, and an ending that is JUST open-ended enough to satisfy but still intrigue the reader. The well-controlled satire is aimed at human frailties – and what humans they are too! The author builds 3-D characters by giving us their thoughts and words directly, and the various POV voices are distinct, realistic, and believable. Yes, this is a satisfying science fiction story, but with the extra dividend of highly accomplished fiction-writing. Oh: aside from frequent naughty language and some drug references, there is nothing here to occasion the NC17 warning. (The usual disclaimer: I have never had any connection whatever with this writer.)

Not Giving Up

I enjoyed finding this review of 'World Weary Avengers' on Amazon

  I still don't understand this author, but I'm not giving up! January 31, 2012
This is at least the fourth story I've read by the author and I think I'm finally starting to get a feel for his style. While we typically judge fictional excellence by the ability to create interesting characters and place them in either very interesting or evocative situations, he's after something else entirely. What that is, I'm not quite sure. But he's clearly working towards a different goal than most people writing out there. 

While reading his fiction, you may frequently find yourself not understanding why the characters are acting the way that they are. Not necessarily because it isn't understandable or consistent with their character, but because I really think it doesn't matter to the author why people do the things that they do. Save the world, destroy the world, whatever. They're both motivations and equally valid to the author. Having a character swing from one to the other without any transformative moment is no big deal. Reading this book is like watching a play or movie without adequate exposition. Character A will do something, Character B will respond. But there's no attempt to connect these actions to a framework that the reader can enter into . . . and I think the author means it to be that way. 

 This story is part of the same series as Ledman Pickup (All Geeked Up). They both deal with gadgets, but I'm honestly not sure how else they are related. I don't even know if I think this story is "better" or "worse" than that one. For me, reading this guy is like a reviewer's puzzle. However, I keep returning for more. I'm going to see if I can solve this puzzle.

I wanted to respond:

 Thanks for reading and for the interesting review! I may have a couple of clues to offer, some puzzle pieces perhaps. I worked for many many years in busy downtown bookstores; as a cashier I believe I said "thank you" to complete strangers more than four million times. In this modern urban world, we 'get to know' fictional characters in books and movies far better than we get to know most of the actual people we meet. If novels are intended to mirror reality (as they did, for example, in the 19th century) I think the traditional method no longer does that. Reality has changed.

Conventional fictions give you the illusion that you 'know' their so-called developed characters, but you don't know them. The best of it is at most a convincing lie. In my books you will know them as well as you know your fellow commuters, the people in your office, the people in line at the coffee shop. It often seems that readers want contradictory things - realistic, lifelike characters but also extremes of action and emotion. Why is that? Have TV shows and movies set the standards which most fiction now merely imitates? Guns, explosions and lots of broken glass collide with non-stop sexiness and broken hearts.

.... The typical novel, with its so-called character development, is bogus to me. In real life people don't aim for some target and hit it, and they are not 'formed' by a handful of significant events. Life and the world are far more complex than any fiction or thought can capture or even comprehend. It's all a massive and intricate swirl of colliding trajectories of objects and events. Don't give me any pat little scenarios. I won't believe in it.

We catch only glimpses of the vast mystery that surrounds us. We have so little visibility into it. As one football coach famously put it, "you think you know, but you don't know".

As for me, of course there are plenty of readers who don't like the way I write, but I'm no magician trying to weave a comforting or familiar spell. I don't want to. There's no shortage of the typical conventional. Why write what everyone else is writing? Unless you're doing it for money, which I'm not. Maybe I'm just a fast talker trying to tell a story before I lose interest or forget what I was going to say!

Writing is fun, but only the fun parts are fun to write. I have a bad habit of skipping over the more boring parts (I do that when reading, too). Life is too short :}

Moon Base Twelve

Now available for FREE from Smashwords: HERE

"They weren't exactly the crew the President had in mind when he announced his plan to build a permanent base on the moon so the Chinese wouldn't do it first, but there they were, a boring collection of peaceful, happy settlers who couldn't even get a decent reality TV show rating. Life was perfectly dull until the new guy arrived. Now if they could only find out who he was or where he'd come from."

The Book's Review Of Itself: 

In the hands of a more traditional writer, this could have been a full-fledged novel replete with well-developed characters enduring dramatic interpersonal conflicts portending dire consequences for all mankind. Instead, it's just another silly, light-hearted satirical sketch of the kind its characters have come to expect of their author. Of course there are the usual larger meanings lurking beneath the surface, but you'd have to drill a little to build something out of them. The book may have one possible answer to that infamous question, "can't we all just get along?" Well? What if we could?

cover art images gimped from sources:
http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/24/benchmark-couchsurfing/
http://vintagraph.com/space-photos/apollo-11/5488816
http://www.123rf.com/photo_7384622_reach-for-the-stars-with-space-gridded-starmap-and-bright-destination-star.html

Moon Base update

My new short sci-fi novel, The New Guy in Moon Base Twelve, is coming along quite well. In some ways it's related to Renegade Robot, my Singularity Comedy that hasn't yet reached as many people as I'd like. I was hoping it would turn out to be funny, and I think it has. At least to me. I was laughing out loud the other day when I got to the part where Mister Wonderful appears. It's unlike any "alien encounter" story I've ever come across, so I'll give myself a few points for originality. The first draft is close to complete - just a little denouement is in order now. Then some re-visioning and re-wiring and re-writing, and then it'll be out there ... floating in a tin can ...