Excuses, Excuses

[mrissa]

I got an e-mail note this afternoon from the historian who wrote one of the books I read earlier this month. She was googling on her book and found my mention of it on my journal, and she wrote to express her surprise and very politely inquire, "What does a young writer of sci fi find in a work of history?"

And I thought, heh, ohhhhh, lady, do you not know anything about this job.

I mean, seriously: for what other profession in the world could reading anything, anything at all, be considered professional development? And yet I am hard pressed to come up with a book that absolutely positively could not relate to my work either now or someday in the future. Whenever I need an excuse, I have one readily available at all times now.

And an Inquisition microhistory is not at all the most obscure volume of history ever read by a young SF writer. Not even by this young SF writer. Possibly not even this month. Why? Because we're geeks, the lot of us, geeks and intellectual magpies.

And it's so much fun.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I haven't read any Flint yet -- or rather, not any Flint fiction, I've read his essays on distribution -- but SF Bantu, yesyes, exactly. Hell, Asimov started out talking about historical perspectives and empires.

You may be the only person on the friends list who doesn't know that my current fantasy novel project has vacuum-tube computing and Kalevala-inspired (-but-warped) mythology in Cold War Finland. Research? Yes, thanks....

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Sounds very cool