Marginalia
Apr. 22nd, 2006 11:56 amI've been working through my bloglines backlog, so some of these are going to be pretty old.
From the Guardian: Ursula le Guin on Jose Saramago, Steve Davies (or Stevie Davies, depending on which bit of the byline you read) on Tamar Yellin, and Geoff Ryman on Cambodian writers.
The Accidental wins the Morning News Tournament of Books. Semi-related: beware of the snark.
Farah Mendlesohn on The Big Empty by JB Stephens and, incidentally, character:
John Clute has moved on from livejournal to wikipedia.
Chris McLaren on confusing the art and the artist.
Gabe Chouinard on being a critic of the fantastic.
That can't be all the good stuff, though, so feel free to link me to anything else exciting I've missed in the past fortnight.
From the Guardian: Ursula le Guin on Jose Saramago, Steve Davies (or Stevie Davies, depending on which bit of the byline you read) on Tamar Yellin, and Geoff Ryman on Cambodian writers.
The Accidental wins the Morning News Tournament of Books. Semi-related: beware of the snark.
Farah Mendlesohn on The Big Empty by JB Stephens and, incidentally, character:
This takes us to something I’ve been considering more and more both in terms of YA fiction and science fiction in general. It stems from that whole “sf doesn’t do character” argument. I’m not, here, going to give you a list of the sf writers who do write effective characters, nor am I going to pursue the idea I used in the Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, that the “character” in sf may be the planet or the “what if”. Instead, lets accept that sf characters are often pretty bland. I think there is a reason for this: they aren’t “characters” in the proscenium arch, let’s watch someone develop sense at all, nor are they intended to be. Instead, they are avatars.News of a new bimonthly zine attached to Fantasy Book Spot.
John Clute has moved on from livejournal to wikipedia.
Chris McLaren on confusing the art and the artist.
Gabe Chouinard on being a critic of the fantastic.
That can't be all the good stuff, though, so feel free to link me to anything else exciting I've missed in the past fortnight.