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A Reader’s Manifesto, by B. R. Myers

4 December 2005 by Leave a Comment

Even before B. R. Myers lobbed this magnificent stinkbomb into the mailbox of the New York literary establishment, I think most of us knew what this book tells us. Yes, the emperor has no clothes; yes, the book reviews will praise the most ridiculous tripe rather than risk losing an advertiser, and the bigger the author’s name, the more blatantly they will cringe and fawn. And yes, too many ‘literary’ authors today have inherited all the pretentiousness of their predecessors, but none of their skills. After all, why learn skills when attitude is so much easier?

For readers, this is pretty good fun, and Myers’ caustic wit makes the journey doubly worthwhile. But for writers, it is a message that we ignore at our peril. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Murphy’s Widow

9 November 2005 by Leave a Comment

An excerpt from a work long in progress.

Chapter Zero:
Your call will be answered in the order in which it is received

Life, they say, was simple once.

When Man first appeared, none of the older and wiser animals would have bet a well-chewed bone on him to rule the world one day. He wasn’t as strong as the gorilla, or as sociable as the chimp, and the orangutan was much more handy with his feet. You would never notice this new kind of ape in a mug line, unless you happened to spot the crude wooden club clutched in his hand. A mere detail, said the older and wiser animals. Why, it wasn’t even part of him, not like fangs or claws or a good set of running muscles. How could carrying a silly stick help anyone take over the world?

It was at that moment that Man came up behind the older and wiser animals, swung his club, and smashed their brains into jelly.

As strategies go, this was an all-time winner. In a blink of the cosmic eye, Man conquered the earth. Oh, the club was upgraded a few times along the way, replaced by the knapped flint, the spear, the M16 rifle. But the hand that controlled the tool stayed just the same, and the brain that controlled the hand—well, it could still just about cope with the finer nuances of, ‘Swing club. Smash head. Repeat as necessary.’

Nowadays, life is far too complicated. But the ape with the club is nothing if not an optimist, and still hopes to find some grand theory that will explain everything and make it simple again. Science, religion, philosophy, daytime soap operas, all were created to meet this primal need: the craving to feel that we understand. But of course we don’t understand. So we think there must be something more—a conspiracy, perhaps. There must be someone out there who pulls every string, rigs every game; someone who breaks every gadget the day the warranty expires, and turns every neat square knot into an unsolvable granny. Someone we can’t see; someone very, very powerful. And someone, alas, who doesn’t seem to like us very much. If only this conspiracy could be unmasked and defeated, life would be good, the world would be our playground, and everything would just make an amazing amount of sense.

By a remarkable coincidence, the ape with the club is the only species of animal that gets locked up in mental institutions.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Fiction

To an editor

5 October 2005 by Leave a Comment

Dear Sir: Your silence sets my ears ablaze;
   your spurning pen is eloquently mute. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Verses

Elixir

18 September 2005 by Leave a Comment

I, the forgotten, rejected, the Great Unwanted,
unwelcomed, unmissed in departing, in loss unlamented,
I who have walked in the umbras of wasted seasons,
dwelt in the midden of others’ discarded lessons,
for none of my betters would taste the nauseous wisdom —
only the dying take medicine, and they but seldom,
for attar of funeral roses is sweeter solace —
I, I alone, know such thirst as to drink from that chalice.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Verses

Scribbles found in a margin

4 September 2005 by Leave a Comment

Between the light of purposed action
   and the darkness of the deed,
a shadow falls. All life is faction:
      man and master, fat and lean,
   mother’s love and daughter’s need,
ungrateful as the worm affection
      bred. A shadow falls between
   a poet’s lips and ears that heed. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Verses

The Spam

4 February 2005 by 2 Comments

With apologies to Edgar Allan Poe.

See my inbox full of spam —
Email spam!
What a world of cluelessness in each pathetic scam!
How they babble, babble, babble,
As their packets are discharged!
Now they’re promising me Venus,
But they’re not sure if my penis
Or my breasts should be enlarged!
See them sell, sell, sell,
In a sort of hacker hell,
Texas Hold ’em and Viagra by the kitschy kilogram
With their spam, spam, spam, spam,
Spam, spam, spam —
As my filter fights off gigabytes of spam. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Foolishness, Verses Tagged With: ,

Superversive

19 October 2003 by 8 Comments

The failure of subversion in imaginative literature

‘Do you believe in God, Winston?’

‘No.’

‘Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?’

‘I don’t know. The spirit of Man.’

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Essays Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hentun and the Storm Bear

1 October 2003 by 1 Comment

This is a fragment of a long ballad of the Falo’i Rogon. In The Eye of the Maker, Azakai, the Rogon war leader, sings it to his people as part of their Yule celebration. But he is mortally ill from fighting against demonic possession, and partway through, his strength fails him. 

In the land of Winter’s heroes,
where the great white Storm Bear wanders,
driving drakes with tooth and talon
   from the place of endless snows,
Where the snow falls like the white hair
on the ruff of Khail, the ghost-wolf,
there the Storm Bear roars and hungers,
   and he ravens as he goes. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Verses

Sturgeon’s Law School

13 September 2003 by 1 Comment

Or, Why do people with good taste create bad art?

 

Theodore Sturgeon is the sort of unfortunate author who is far better known for a single pithy aphorism than for all his books and stories combined. His brilliant science fiction is seldom reprinted nowadays, as it requires a certain sensibility and flexibility from the reader, and this is an investment that the big reading public just doesn’t want to make. (It doesn’t help that the publishing industry in general is doggedly averse to reprinting old books, but that’s another rant.) The average sf reader today has never read ‘Microcosmic God’ or More Than Human. If he knows Sturgeon at all, it’s likely to be in the context of Sturgeon’s Law:

Ninety percent of science fiction is crud, but then ninety percent of everything is crud.

Many people nowadays say that Sturgeon was being charitable. And that 90 percent figure leaves out all the vast mountains of unpublished fiction, the stuff that is simply too cruddy for anyone to print. But the crud gets written, and some of it gets published, and hardly any of the perpetrators are aware that the stuff they’re trying to inflict on the world is crud.

Crud happens. Why can’t the crudsters tell? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Essays Tagged With: , , , ,
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