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Fringe and the Sarah Connor Chronicles are no longer Yuletide-eligible. This is both good (many stories exist!) and bad (I can’t ask for them any more!).
Typo that I love for Dean Winchester: fistborn of John & Mary Winchester. If the punch fits …
Political fan fiction, or political tinhats?
This story on writing instruction is interesting in itself, but also fascinating for how it suggests that the tools that make people competent writers are also the foundations of the most compelling storytelling, as Film Studies Hulk (with an assist from the South Park guys) argues—you can scroll down to point 24 if you don’t have a lot of time.
Michael Marshall, Killer Move: As Michael Marshall Smith, Marshall writes sf/horror I really enjoy. As Marshall, he writes thrillers whose implausibility lies more in serial killer conspiracy theory than in high technology or eldritch visitors; this leads the thrillers to present an especially grim view of human nature. This one involves a shallow everyman with ambitions to be More (more of what is not something that crosses his mind) who starts to find little things changed around him, with the message “modified.” This quickly escalates from pranks to something much worse. Marshall is always a sharp writer; I particularly liked the description of a Ben & Jerry’s as having “the air, as usual, of having recently withstood a concerted attack by forces loyal to some other ice cream manufacturer.” I’ve been to a few Ben & Jerry’s stores like that. As much as I like the writing, I wish he’d write more as Smith.
Makoto Yukimura, Planetes vol. 1: Three space debris clean-up workers, one of whom lost his wife tragically, one of whom is an ambitious young man, and one of whom becomes a hero because she very very much wants to smoke a cigarette, try to figure out what they want out of life (at least the first two do; the woman has a family back on Earth and seems to know exactly what she wants) and struggle with the constant physical dangers of space. There was a fair amount about the Meaning of Life and the virtue of Striving, but this manga wasn’t for me.
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games: Okay, I know I’m the last to read these, and I did so only after seeing the first movie, so my experience was shaped by that. I ended up liking the movie’s portrayal of Katniss more; the lack of a first-person narrative and the need to convey Katniss’s thoughts through expressions rather than dialogue really worked for me. But in both versions I liked the constant grind of reality-TV expectations on any authentic reaction Katniss might have. Of course she has no idea what she feels for Peeta; being seventeen alone would be enough reason for that, but the glare of scrutiny and the mortal danger overdetermine her uncertainties, and I really liked seeing that convention of the romance (danger brings us together) undermined.
Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire: Spoiler: Katniss makes it out of the Hunger Games. Except that the way she did so angers President Snow, who determines to put her and Peeta in mortal danger yet again. I saw this sequel as a technical challenge: how do you give people more of what they liked about the first installment without boring them with a retread? Collins is the Gamemaker, and it’s not that easy. One tried-and-true tactic is to raise the stakes, but where is there to go after “your life and the life of the one you [maybe] love”? The answer here isn’t terribly surprising, but I thought the game structure was well-executed and I’m looking forward to finishing the last book, which seems to have made some big modifications in the format, to continue the metaphor.
Typo that I love for Dean Winchester: fistborn of John & Mary Winchester. If the punch fits …
Political fan fiction, or political tinhats?
This story on writing instruction is interesting in itself, but also fascinating for how it suggests that the tools that make people competent writers are also the foundations of the most compelling storytelling, as Film Studies Hulk (with an assist from the South Park guys) argues—you can scroll down to point 24 if you don’t have a lot of time.
Michael Marshall, Killer Move: As Michael Marshall Smith, Marshall writes sf/horror I really enjoy. As Marshall, he writes thrillers whose implausibility lies more in serial killer conspiracy theory than in high technology or eldritch visitors; this leads the thrillers to present an especially grim view of human nature. This one involves a shallow everyman with ambitions to be More (more of what is not something that crosses his mind) who starts to find little things changed around him, with the message “modified.” This quickly escalates from pranks to something much worse. Marshall is always a sharp writer; I particularly liked the description of a Ben & Jerry’s as having “the air, as usual, of having recently withstood a concerted attack by forces loyal to some other ice cream manufacturer.” I’ve been to a few Ben & Jerry’s stores like that. As much as I like the writing, I wish he’d write more as Smith.
Makoto Yukimura, Planetes vol. 1: Three space debris clean-up workers, one of whom lost his wife tragically, one of whom is an ambitious young man, and one of whom becomes a hero because she very very much wants to smoke a cigarette, try to figure out what they want out of life (at least the first two do; the woman has a family back on Earth and seems to know exactly what she wants) and struggle with the constant physical dangers of space. There was a fair amount about the Meaning of Life and the virtue of Striving, but this manga wasn’t for me.
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games: Okay, I know I’m the last to read these, and I did so only after seeing the first movie, so my experience was shaped by that. I ended up liking the movie’s portrayal of Katniss more; the lack of a first-person narrative and the need to convey Katniss’s thoughts through expressions rather than dialogue really worked for me. But in both versions I liked the constant grind of reality-TV expectations on any authentic reaction Katniss might have. Of course she has no idea what she feels for Peeta; being seventeen alone would be enough reason for that, but the glare of scrutiny and the mortal danger overdetermine her uncertainties, and I really liked seeing that convention of the romance (danger brings us together) undermined.
Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire: Spoiler: Katniss makes it out of the Hunger Games. Except that the way she did so angers President Snow, who determines to put her and Peeta in mortal danger yet again. I saw this sequel as a technical challenge: how do you give people more of what they liked about the first installment without boring them with a retread? Collins is the Gamemaker, and it’s not that easy. One tried-and-true tactic is to raise the stakes, but where is there to go after “your life and the life of the one you [maybe] love”? The answer here isn’t terribly surprising, but I thought the game structure was well-executed and I’m looking forward to finishing the last book, which seems to have made some big modifications in the format, to continue the metaphor.
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