Linkage

[coalescent]

Following up on conversation with the geekstalt at the ton (tun?) last night: This is the Jonathan Lethem essay in question.

In 1973 Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow was awarded the Nebula, the highest honor available in the field once known as "science fiction" - a term now mostly forgotten.

Sorry, just dreaming. In our world Bruce is dead, while Bob Hope lurches on. And though Gravity's Rainbow really was nominated for the 1973 Nebula, it was passed over for Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama, which commentator Carter Scholz rightly deemed "less a novel than a schematic diagram in prose." Pynchon's nomination now stands as a hidden tombstone marking the death of the hope that science fiction was about to merge with the mainstream.

I've also recently stumbled across s1ngularity, a collaborative genre criticism/review-blog thing. The contributers are not afraid of being, um, equally direct:

In simplest terms, there are apparently two sorts of criticism. One sort is the 'review', which is usually used to entice people to read a particular book (or not read, as it may be), and which is meant to be read before reading the book. On the other hand is the 'critical review', which is usually a deeper examination of the book, and which is meant to be read after reading the book, in order to enhance one's enjoyment of the text.

Personally, I think the first sort of 'review' is just a cop-out excuse, written by people that have no developed critical skills but who want to share their personal thoughts on something... no matter what that something is.

Oof. Anyway, I've LJ'ed it as s1ngularity for those who may be interested, although it doesn't seem to have updated itself yet.

Oh, and following on from the LJ movies thread over at snowking's place, casting details and a teaser trailer for Almost fanboys have been released. It all amuses me far too much.

Lester Bangs (Tim Minear): "Of course I'm home. I'm always home. I'm uncool."

Comments

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I think that there is a genuine place for the "review" type of critism which he doesn't really acknowledge. Many people, like me, only have a very limited amount of time available for reading and hence use reviews to pick and choose the best. The ability to write good review type critism is also a skill in my opinion. There is a lot of it out there which isn't very good, but when it's well done, it's valuable.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

To be fair, I'm fairly certain he's being deliberately provocative. It sounds like he's mostly angry about the lack of serious sf criticism, and that he thinks that's (one of) the big barriers to more widespread acceptance of sf. Which may or may not be true, but I think by attacking fan reviewers in the way that he does he vastly overstates their importance. My own position is probably closer to this:

Trying to write about why I review or write criticism reduces me to centripetal stumbling. Book reviewing always struck me as just what one did: it’s part of being an evangelical reader. "Here, read this one…." "Don’t leave the store without at least buying one…."

[(Anonymous)]

ton (tun?)

Quoting from Mr Langford's article on Jargon In British Science Fiction Fandom (http://www.galactic-guide.com/articles/2R38.html):

One Tun: site of monthly London SF pub meetings until driven by the landlord's rampant homophobia to the Wellington, which see. Rather too many fans who were used to speaking of the Tun meetings now get all twee and call (and spell) the new place the 'Ton.

So, Tun or 'Ton, as you like, but better just to call it First Thursday, or perhaps now the Flo.

-- Tom

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

Or 'London Circle'

[wg.livejournal.com]

i tried adding singularity to my rss reader, but i get this when i try and read an article, which might be why it aint updating for LJ too.

"We're sorry but the Username/Password combination you've entered is either invalid or you don't have permission to access this Blog."

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Gah. Frustrating. And bizarre, since I can view the XML, so it's not like it's hidden or anything. There's even a note at the top saying 'this is meant to be viewed in a newsreader'!

[wg.livejournal.com]

i've had that with several blogger sites, not a clue whats going on there

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Similarly not working here. NewsNetWire "can't find the feed".

[(Anonymous)]

Could this be because it's an Atom (http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/FrontPage) feed? I can both wget it (showing the URL is legit) and parse it using my 1337 feedparser.py (http://diveintomark.org/projects/feed_parser/) skillz. Sadly (since i cannot currently be arsed to write more than two lines of code in a row), this means i can only actually read the feed by vgrepping Python data structure dumps, but there you go. It's some kind of pretentious meta-SF wank anyway, so it's probably for the best.

-- Tom