Month: April 2007

Clive Barker:

I’m going to stop — I just want to say how proud I am and how excited I am because as I get older and as I make more work and step back from the work and step back from the work of my friends and my associates whose skills are still expanding and still growing, I see that we are a force that will actually, from a distance, be seen as ‘defining’ in some way. I believe there will be people who look back, perhaps at this night and say, ‘Look who was there — ‘ and run off the names and it will be clear that those names together did not represent an island — fuck an island — they were a huge force, they were a continent called the imagination…”

Via Neil Gaiman

Christopher Barzak:

Maybe our best stories are still, in the long view, just more scratches on the cave wall, and if there is beauty in them at all it is not in the product but in the story that the story tells, the one under the surface of what’s written, that someone made this for some reason, stepped away from the business of living and gave a portion of their time in living to make something that might be around for someone else to stumble across now or years later and know that they haven’t been alone in all of this…this thing we’re doing here in the world.

Via the Mumpsimus, who has some additional thoughts on Barzak’s notion of “comfort fiction” or “consolatory art.”

The Friday Random Guess 10:

  1. “Something” by the Beatles, guessed by Thud
    You’re asking me will my love grow
  2. “Helter Skelter” by the Beatles, guessed by Thud
    I’m coming down fast, but I’m miles above you
  3. Every time she rises up the ocean sinks
  4. But I use a pop song to clear my name
  5. I suffer the dreams of a world gone mad
  6. “Night and Day” by Ella Fitzgerald (orig. Cole Porter), guessed by marisa
    Like the tick tick tock of the stately clock
  7. I feel dirty, baby, like this pretty town
  8. Dig this crazy mood I’m in
  9. “Hush” by Kula Shaker (orig. Deep Purple), guessed by Kim
    She’s got loving like quicksand
  10. “Heart of Gold” by Tori Amos (orig. Neil Young), guessed by Betty
    I’ve been to Redwood

It’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Good luck!

Jeremy Tolbert:

A common mistake among new writers is that SF is a literature of ideas. This is not true, strictly speaking. This mistaken belief is why the most commonly asked questions of SF authors is “where do you get your ideas?” I think the reason that many people believe this is due to outdated teaching in literature classes, based on a view of the genre established in the 1950s or earlier.

Via Gwenda Bond