High school comes after me

[mrissa]

I just got spammed by two old high school classmates who would dearly love to sell me a house in the Omaha area. I couldn't fathom why on earth they would write to me about how they couldn't believe it had been 10 years, since I could barely picture either of them, and then I got to the part of the e-mail where they were trying to sell houses. Heh. Um, no.

In happier high school-related news (and how weird is that), I got another nice e-mail from an old classmate who found me on Google. He was from the class I started with, not the class I graduated with, and he actually remembered that I was a science fiction geek. Apparently someone was paying attention! Lots of the people I've come back into contact with have said they expected me to be a ______ (physicist or other flavor of scientist if they were paying some attention, Supreme Court justice or doctor or corporate bigwig if they apparently just made stuff up about me), and that they "never would have expected!" that I'd write science fiction.* I was apparently much sneakier than I ever meant to be. I never meant to hide my SF geek ways. The fact that I was always toting some speculative novel around with me could have maybe been a tipoff. But apparently people just didn't think I meant it. How very weird. Anyway, Justin did think I meant it, so that's pretty cool.

And entirely unrelated to high school, I have started caring about the characters in The Wizard Hunters, so I will probably end up reading more marthawells books sooner instead of later. And I expect to finish it tonight, and then I think the urge for For the Good of the State will overcome me. I hope you're pleased with yourself about this addiction you created, dd_b!

Oh wait. I know he's pleased with himself. So okay then. Back to my own book.

*It strikes me as extremely pedantic to correct people and say "science fiction and fantasy" when they do not, themselves, give a damn about science fiction or fantasy or what, exactly, the differences are between them or in what proportions and moods I write each.

Comments

[karenmkk-610.livejournal.com]

Lol I got the same spam, and I can't figure out who the heck the wife is...I don't remember anyone with that first name in my class. I remember someone with that first name a year or 2 behind me though, but I didn't think it could be her.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure we had a [hername] in our class, I just never had any reason to know her well, even well enough to come up with a last name. I think she had a dark brown bob? Maybe?

I dunno. There were several consecutive years wherein nobody asked me to care. They were good years.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

I'm a big Martha Wells fan, so yay that there's a new reader! I'm very bonded with The Element of Fire and Death of the Necromancer but The Wheel of the Infinite is excellent as well. I like City of Bones well enough, but I'm not happy with how it ends - probably more to my taste than the actual text.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I read Death of the Necromancer and did not emotionally engage with it in any way. That was frustrating. It took me awhile to get going on this one, but now I'm going, I think. I have City of Bones on my pile of books borrowed from porphyrin, so that'll be my next Wells unless one falls from the sky.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

You mean you don't think it was a genuine and sincere attempt to get back in touch with you?

When I first read your post, I was wondering to myself who it would be. And then, of course, it occurred to me that I probably have the same e-mail in my inbox. And then both lo and behold....

I have no idea who she is.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Karen does, so I'll e-mail you and say.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

If you're not sensitized to speculative fiction, and not a reader, I'm not sure you notice what genre the books somebody else is carrying around belong to. Not that I'm *that* likely to care too much about people who aren't readers; but it can, as you know, happen.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Okay, sure, but if you knew you were not the sort of person who noticed what the nerds were reading, why would you assume you knew what they weren't reading?

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

The fact that I was always toting some speculative novel around with me could have maybe been a tipoff. But apparently people just didn't think I meant it.

I'm arguing that, rather than thinking you didn't mean it, they just didn't notice that the books were SF; or perhaps even that you had books. Some people aren't book-aware.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sure, I know they're not. But in that case, why would they have an opinion about what I was likely to do at all? If they weren't paying attention to my behavior or what I was considering important, why become surprised in the first place? If you don't notice any details of what someone's doing, why tell yourself that you have some idea what they're likely to do next?

[ellarien]

City of Bones was the first Martha Wells I read, and I liked it a lot. Wheel of the Infinite was pretty good, too. Both those have a very vivid sense of place; setting as character, as it were. The people-characters were good, too, but it's the settings I remember.