Week of September 4-10

[mrissa]

No acceptances, no rejections, no nothin'. Dry as the proverbial bone around here. Am trying to fight the urge to make up obligations to write more short stories; novel revisions are a good idea, and this is not the time for me to make up new obligations for myself.

I've changed the title and subtitle of this lj, with a bit at the beginning of the bio that makes it a little more sensible. When I got this lj, it was just to read and post on gaaneden's; when I started posting, I thought of it as sort of an annex to novel_gazing, which was of course my real journal, so the title reflected that. Now it looks an awfully lot more like this is my real journal, and besides, the book ksumnersmith sent for my birthday is interesting and amusing me today. Probably more on that sometime soon; some of the lines in it are too good not to share. (The book in question is Tony Griffith's Scandinavia: At War With Trolls, and it's lovely. Nonfiction, not an alternate history.)

(And speaking of which, does anybody else read New Scientist? And was anybody else as annoyed with their totally lame alternate history issue? I'm beginning to think that alternate history should be like driving: you should have to pass some basic tests to be allowed out on the roads with it. Sheesh. I think it's my current nomination for "easiest subgenre to royally screw up," although I will, of course, entertain alternate nominations in the space below.)

Comments

[thesaucernews.livejournal.com]

I had a subscription to New Scientist last year -- unfortunately I couldn't afford to resubscribe, which is sad because it was a wonderful resource.

Alternate history is notoriously easy to mess up, just watch any episode of "Sliders" to see how: you hang some kind of a thematic gimmick onto everything and you've got yourself an alternate universe ("Halloween World", "Medieval But Modern World", "The World Where Everything Is The Same Except There's Still Slavery") and of course the perennial favorite, the "Hitler Won World War 2" scenarios.

I would offer "Romance Fantasy" and "Time Travel" as possibly easier genres to mess up, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I think that "Romance Fantasy" may be a subgenre I just plain don't like. I can come up with something that's more or less Romance SF that I like (Shards of Honor), but Romance Fantasy is stumping me.

I tried several Luna books and concluded that that little symbol on the spine means, "Don't read this if you are a mrissa." I think it's really considerate of them to come up with one, though. (I may yet be wrong, and if Luna keeps publishing people I know and like, I will end up with more data points despite this current belief. Still.)

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I want to like Romance Fantasy. It's theoretically got the ingredients I like (romance and fantasy.) The problem with a lot of it is that the writers have read a lot of romance but have not ready much modern fantasy and seem to think it has no structure or rules. Some writers get it right, though. Nora Roberts has written some decent samples that lured me into sampling her straight romance.

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

I think it's because people don't take cause and effect seriously enough. Like if there was still slavery, *lots and lots* of things would be very different.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Also, too many people may believe in Glorious Destiny: that two people were destined to meet and to marry and to bear a child, who would grow up to be Ben Franklin or someone else we've heard of. And that the people we've heard of were destined to be people we've heard of. BAH, she said. Bah and also humbug.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

New Scientist did *alternate history*? Was this fiction or essays or what? I've been trying to crack them for a couple of years, now. I could have written them some damn alternate history if that's what they want. Sheesh.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It was essays.

Platonist essays.

[gaaneden.livejournal.com]

What is New Scientist?

I know what you mean. I do post more than fluff on my LJ now. I just save more of the introspective stuff for Abstract Thoughts.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

New Scientist is a weekly magazine. British in origin, but they deliver in the US, too. Highly recommended. It's my new favorite magazine, even though they don't print any fiction.