Marginalia

[coalescent]

Michael Chabon has posted an update on the 2005 Best American Short Stories: "That is the great thing about genre. It's as much about structures created in the mind of the reader as in the structure or pattern of the text itself. Genre isn't just a box to be stuck in; it's also a window to look through." Gwenda Bond comments on his comments.

benpeek is interviewing just about anyone who's anyone in Australian sf, including Jonathan Strahan, Kim Wilkins and Geoffrey Maloney. Jonathan Strahan also comments on Australian sf and YA sf on his own blog.

The most awesome scale diagram of starships ever.

On the subject of things in space, I finished watching the new Battlestar Galactica over the weekend. It's very, very good--a bit The West Wing, a bit Space: Above and Beyond, a (little) bit Blade Runner. The show has a good website, where you can read Ronald Moore's blog, watch deleted scenes and commentary podcasts for many episodes. I'm sure you're meant to be able to stream the (Hugo-nominated) first episode '33' in its entireity, but I can't find the link for that just now. Still, enough to keep me out of trouble for a while.

We have a cover and blurb for Justina Robson's next novel, Living Next Door to the God of Love. Sounds good. [via Jonathan Strahan]

Different media, different stories; Daniel Abraham writes about a possible reason why movies are more culturally dominant than books (because there are few enough that they can still be a shared cultural experience), and greengolux asks what tv is good at (specifically, standalone episodes or arc?)

And finally: the question of famous opening lines came up during a panel at the Oxford Literary Festival last night. The panel's selections were all fairly obvious; Robert Harris went for 1984, Philip Pullman for Bleak House, Nicholas Evans for A Tale of Two Cities. For me, the opening of Kim Stanley Robinson's Pacific Edge has always stuck ("Despair could never touch a morning like this"), but if I'm ever in a position to be asked I'm going with Bester's 'Fondly Fahrenheit':

He doesn't know which one of us I am these days, but they know one truth: you must own nothing but yourself.

Anyone else got a particular favourite?

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

It's obvious, but I have a fondness for:

The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.

But my absolute all time favourite evah is:

We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

That one about the moon is fantastic. What's it from?

Others that I can remember if I try:

Air: Mae lived in the last village in the world to go online. After that, everyone else went on Air.

The Light Ages: I still see her now.

Ilium: Rage. Sing, O Muse.

River of Gods: The body turns in the stream. ;-)

Favourite first line...

[white_hart]

In Alice Springs, a scorching grid of streets where men in long white socks were forever getting in and out of Land Cruisers, I met a Russian who was mapping the sacred sites of the Aborigines.

Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines. Possibly my favourite novel Evah, and I just love the jumble of ideas that opening sets up...

Re: Favourite first line...

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Speaking of favourite novels, here's that blurb for The Sparrow...

After the first exquisite songs were interpreted by radio telescope, U.N. diplomats debated long and hard whether and why human resources should be expended in an attempt to reach the world that would become known as Rakhat. In the Rome offices of the Society of Jesus, the questions were not whether or why, but how soon the mission could be attempted and whom to send.
      
The Jesuit scientists went to Rakhat to learn, not to proselytize. They went so that they might come to know and love God's other children. They went for the reason Jesuits have always gone to the farthest frontiers of human exploration. They went for the greater glory of God.
      
They meant no harm.

[cellardoor28.livejournal.com]

Not a first line (will have to think about that) but my favourite quote from the blog on the Battlestar Galactica site -

"Why is it that the paper in the Galactica universe has the corners cut off, even the tractor fed printer sheets! i just want to know."

This is a closely guarded secret of the show and certainly not a wacky design element that someone came up with during the miniseries.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Hee. :)

I wonder if they have octagonal sandwiches...

[snowking.livejournal.com]

I KNEW IT.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Living Next Door to the God of Love

The blurb sounds interesting but that is a bollocks title. Interestingly another crossover cover and her first simulateous UK/US release. Breakthrough novel?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was wondering that. But I like the title, too (just on the right side of pretentiously New Wave-y for me).

[rparvaaz.livejournal.com]

It was the day my grandmother exploded.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Good choice!

That Burgess one about a catamyte is canonical. My memory is terrible though so I can't remember it or any others. I seem to remember the first line of Steve Aylett's Slaughtermatic is pretty good.

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

was this supposed to be an instant_fanzine post?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

No, why?

First Lines...

[gummitch.livejournal.com]

One of my absolute favourites: "On a certain day in June, 19--, a young man was making his way on foot northward from the great City to a town or place called Edgewood, that he had been told of but had never visited."

And, of course (though not a novel): "Gummitch was a superkitten, as he knew very well, with an I.Q. of about 160."

Re: First Lines...

[dev-iant.livejournal.com]

Not my favourite first line, although it does set the scene wonderfully, but certainly my favourite novel. I want to go & re-read it now...

Wish I could remember some first lines (or anything else, come to that!)

Oooh!

[xsabx.livejournal.com]

Starship sizes = brain meltdown, when I look at the buildings to scale.

Because I am a heathen and don't read I have no opening line I like, or indeed that I ever remember.

Re: Oooh!

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

No opening line I like

I'll make a special exception for 'it was the dawn of the third age of mankind...' ;)

Since you already stole "Fondly Farenheit" ...

[chance88088.livejournal.com]

"My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Pantagenet and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom, Everyone else in my family is dead."

-Shirley Jackson We Have Always Lived in the Castle

(ok, maybe not my favorite, but it is early and it was the first that occurred to me)

Re: Since you already stole "Fondly Farenheit" ...

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I have never read that. Or indeed heard of it. *is shamed*

[dev-iant.livejournal.com]

On the subject of Battlestar Galactica, I really, really hope that 33 wins the Hugo; it's so much better than the other nominees (although I haven't seen "Lost"). I did laugh myself silly at Showtime, but there's no comparison really.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

For me, 'Not Fade Away' is the pick; even if the rest of the fifth season was all over the place, I think the finale was as good as it should and could have been. It's a neat thematic bow-tie for the whole series. I'm leaning towards putting '33' second on my ballot, though.

'Smile Time' is great, and clever, but in many ways it's not Angel. I'd feel a little resentful if Angel's only Hugo was for a gimmick episode. But I think it will win.

P.S. Do I know you? I see you were at Eastercon, but beyond that...

[benpeek.livejournal.com]

you forgot to mention my obvious insanity.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I figured I'd let people discover that for themselves.

First lines

[greengolux.livejournal.com]

"It was the kind of a night where you lie flat out lost until 2.00am, then sway upright, baste yourself in your own sour brine and stagger down into the great bake oven underground where the night trains shriek in."

(Quoted from memory, so may have some minor inaccuracies.)

It's from Ray Bradbury's short story 'Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds' and my article for the next 'Meta' is on it (well, the whole first paragraph, not just the first line).

[andrewducker]

"Ladies and Gentlemen, in 25 years the penis will be obsolete."

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

I was reading pasrt of my old fanzine stash the other day, and I love this first line from one of Greg Benford's articles:

"I was visiting Charlie Brown recently, at the vast citadel where Locus slouches into being, rough beast that it is."

Neat Spacecraft Chart!

[applez.livejournal.com]

I'm hard-pressed to think of what craft they may have missed. I don't suppose they forgot 'Red Dwarf' did they?

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

I finished watching the new Battlestar Galactica over the weekend

So now that you've seen the whole season, I need to observe that the musical montage which opens the final two-parter is the best thing in the history of TV, ever.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I don't know about that, but it certainly doesn't suck.

[liv]

Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond:

Take my camel, dear," said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.

Something of a cliche but I am rather fond of it. I do also quite like the opening to A Tale of Two Cities.