Sunday morning

[ksmith]

First day of Autumn, so I've switched my LJ theme to "Woodcut Autumn." I like it better than the Summer version. The dark ochre background has a little more definition.

Steel-cut oats for breakfast. Cooked in 50/50 water/milk, with brown sugar and sliced banana as toppers.

Busy morning yesterday. Along with the usual errands--food shopping, bank, etc--picture framing was committed. I finally gathered together the CI cover painting, the Craft "Turandot" print, and the Endgame cover print and went over to Hobby Lobby to see what they offered. Took along a couple of copies of my books, in case the framer wondered why the rear view of the spandex-clad lady with the sidearm and the lady with the knives. Turned out that I needn't have bothered--the older lady working the frame department turned out to be a science fiction fan, who loved all the images**. Thought it was so cool that I wrote science fiction. Said I made her day.

The painting was tricky to frame. I picked a silver frame with a satin finish, and dual matting in light grey and deep red. Not sure about the light grey, but that would be easy to change at some point if I decided it really didn't work. The frame for the Endgame print is gorgeous, an old gold with a branch-like pattern that matches the ancient sense of the buildings and the scene. I choose a pale yellow-brown mat that matches the paler shades of the sand and structures. The frame for the Turandot is also gold, with a raised pattern and black trim that along with the deep red matting works very well with the subject. Overall, I'm happy with how things turned out.

It's cool this morning, 50F or so. Sunny. Normally I'd want to work outside on a day like this, but I want to finish Gideon's never-ending Chapter 2. Need to fit laundry in there somewhere. I should mow the backyard, but I don't want to.

King has taken it into his head that I need to be out of bed by 6am. Isn't that sweet of him?

**but when she talked about the SF she loved, the only writer she mentioned was Isaac Asimov. I didn't have the presence of mind to suggest newer writers, although she did ask for the titles of my books. It's just something I've noticed--many more mundane folk who say they love SF read Asimov, maybe Clarke, and that's about it. Something wrong with that picture.

Comments

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

What qualities would you pick out as representative of Asimov and Clarke? Heinlein seemed a little more definite in that regard. Certain sorts of poli sci fi space opera would be indicative. Asimov and Clarke don't seem as easy to type.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

I don't know. Perhaps that's why we're not marketing stuff as "the next Asimov."

[anisosynchronic.livejournal.com]

what's wrong with this picture?

Given that most people don't do pleasure reading, the fact the the person is reading and reading SF at all, is something of a victory.

Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein to a lesser degree, all had technical backgrounds, were writing for an audience which was or had the conceit of wanting to be technically sophisticated, and were using "plain English." For that matter, they were also all pushing space travel and Progress technologically.

All these days later, the space program has mostly been moribund for decades: it took ten years to get to Luna, and 30 since to fail to get people further up ever again than near earth orbit.... The verve and sense of wonder and idealism and going out in the unknown in the work of Clarke and Asimov and Heinlein, is mostly missing from the contemporary world. Compare e.g. Star Trek the Original Series, with the later incarnations.

There's a lost simplicity and elegance and lost innocence, that just aren't around anymore.

There are works by writers contemporary to Asimov and Heinlein and Clarke, republished by NESFA and other publishers, which convey some of the same atmosphere. But contemporary writing is mostly differently--Clarke and Asimove and Heinlein are "classic" and have withstood the tests of time as regards readability--one can't tell in the present, usually, what will hold up and not become dated/inaccessible/irrelevant from shifts in point of view and changes in experience....

Years ago Cordwainer Smith [two volumes from NESFA Press of his complete works of SF] wrote a story entitled, "The Lady Who Sailed the Soul." At the time, abortion was illegal in the USA, and the protagonist went to a remote location to obtain one... during the 1980s the situation was quite different in much of the USA, but then the restrictions started returning.

But mostly, Asimov etc. were writing out of reference frames that aren't available today, in styles that aren't contemporary ones. Baxter and MacLeod and various other British science-background writers have prose that read to me like the sort of technical writing I read either because I have to read it for work, or for information--not for pleasure of reading. It's loaded with passive voice, as is this sentenced loaded with passive voice. Most of what's getting written today is fantasy, not SF, in the genre and its close relatives. And there's space opera that lacks the feel of having technical underpinning furnishing worldbuilding infrastructure with apparent structure integrity and credibility.

There might be some authors out there anyway, though... G. David Nordley, for example.