Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 30

PW

I guess that after 43 years in the saddle, I'm allowed to be blasé about some aspects of the writing trade.  But I surprised myself yesterday, flipping through Publishers Weekly while I ate lunch.  There on p. 46 was a review of The Best of Joe Haldeman – which is not remarkable, since every book by a trade publisher does get a pro forma review.  What's remarkable, and a little sad, is that I wasn't looking for it.  For twenty- or thirty-some years, when I had a book coming out I would snatch PW from the mailbox for weeks, if not months, in advance, impatient to see the first review.  I think this is the first time I've let one sneak up on me.
 
 
A very positive review, it says that fans of my novels will enjoy the earlier works.  Thanks, PW.
 
 
Joe

back home from Winter Star Party

Back home in Gainesville, warmer than the Keys, I think. I don't think it'
snowed here since the eighties

I do feel for you guys up there in the drifts. But at least you can ski without 
a boat

The trip back was without incident. We're both kind of numb with road fatigue 
and the chore of unpacking after living out of the car, and in a tent, for a 
couple of weeks. Astronomy club tonight, but then we'll probably stay earthbound 
(hey -- good name for a book) for awhile

Mountain of mail. Must get to it

Jo

to thine own self shut up

I got an ad from a How 2 Rite service that claimed it would tell me the "top five death-bed requests of writers."

Niggling questions immediately pop into one's mind.  Do writers have enough death-bed requests to compile a "best of"?  Don't most people say something like "Could I have some water?  A-a-a-ack!"  Or perhaps refer to someone close to them, or to an enemy they hope will follow them soon to the grave.

But no.  They supposedly asked a "group of writers," and this was the answer:

Fellow Writer,

If you went through life without ever trying to get published or paid for your writing, what would be your biggest regret?

A group of writers was asked this question. Here were the five most common answers:

“I’d never know if I could have made it.”

“I’d never find my voice.”

“I’d never get to show others what I’m capable of.”

“I’d hate not having the freedom to do what I want.”

And the top answer of all, was:

“I couldn’t live a life true to myself.”

Some versions of the first four, maybe, though actual writers might be more specific.  But that last Poloniusism is as vile as it is familiar.  How might one live a life not true to oneself?  If you live "falsely," whatever that really means, it becomes your life, and thus becomes what you lived, and therefore true.

Of course in the play, the line is a laugh line, because Polonius is a strutting blowhard.

I suppose you could take a charitable attitude, and interpret the line as "don't kid yourself [about yourself]," which is hard to disagree with – though in fact disagreeing would be a fun rhetorical exercise. 

No time for that kind of fun right now.  On to work.

Joe

blast from the past/rocket from the sea

Gay was cleaning out her desk this morning and came across this blast from the past . . . this picture was taken at the Red Cross hooch in the 6th Convalescent Center in Cam Rhan Bay, Vietnam.  It's Tony Leon, a CO who was assigned there in 1968-69.

Tony was a great guy.  He played all sorts of instruments, including the sitar in the picture.  We'd often borrow instruments after hours and sit down by the ocean and play and sing.  And drink and smoke substances – Tony wasn't exactly a dealer, but he did know where to find anything.  We were already strangers in a strange land, but he provided tickets to stranger ones.

We know now that there were Viet Cong hiding blacked-out on rafts within easy listening distance.  What did they think of us transplanted hippies?  They knew a lot about American culture, at least some of them.  Did they know we were not their enemies, or at least didn't want to be?  We never drew fire, sitting there strumming and smoking, though the enemy attacked from the sea a couple of times a month.

Tony's around seventy now, if he survived the seventies and eighties in Haight-Ashbury.  The Haight, as we used to say.

Can it be 44 years since I took that picture?  Funny how flexible time is.

And how charitable it can be.  I find it a lot easier to go back and join Tony than to go back to the mud and blood and gunfire. 

Going to the VA in a few minutes to have my hearing aid adjusted.

low-tech gun control

Jon Stewart had a great anti-rant about anti-gun control rants online this afternoon –

www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-januar...?

It starts out with some grotesque humor, but then he gets serious, and I think even more effective.  I'm somewhat to the right of him on this issue, since I'm comfortable with guns and have owned them at various times in my life (but have never replaced the last two, stolen during a big party).

I'd go along with the idea of going back to muskets, even with bayonets.  Adam Lanza could shoot one six-year-old with it, and maybe spike one or two more as they ran screaming out of the classroom.  But overall there would be less blood spilled.

Joe

Mark your calendar!

I was well served by coincidence this morning.

About a half-century ago I went to the Naval Observatory in Washington (where our astronomy club maintained a small telescope) the night of a total lunar eclipse.  It had snowed heavily, and when the moon rose, its light turned the landscape blood red.  An amazing, numinous sight.

I was in my early teens, greatly interested in astronomy.  A few years later, I went off to college and majored in that celestial science, at least partly because the eclipse had moved me so.

I'd love to have that happen to my viewpoint character in the current novel, when she was a young girl deciding what to do with her life.  She could be in Washington then, but how often do total lunar eclipses happen at a given place?  My instincts said every couple of years.

I was writing in a café without WiFi, so I couldn't look it up until I got home.

It worked out fine.  My character's born in 2035, and there's a proper lunar eclipse on New Year's Eve, 2048!  Her mother's an astronomer, and might well take her to the Naval Observatory, a small island of darkness in the Washington glare.

Hmm . . . I'll be 104 that year.  Maybe they'll wheel me outside so I can use my cybernetic eyes and enjoy the sight . . .

Joe

funny turtle

It's a characteristic Steinbeckian repetition . . . the second (long) paragraph of the chapter has "His horny beak was partly open, and his fierce, humorous eyes, under brows like fingernails, stared straight ahead . . . " followed by " . . . the old humorous frowning eyes looked about . . . " in the third paragraph, and then "The old humorous eyes looked ahead . . . " in the fourth.  (The chapter has only four long paragraphs.)

Of course, any subtle expression in a turtle's eyes might be ascribed to a writer's stretching rather than a reptile's emoting.

I haven't taught Steinbeck in several years.  He's a lot of fun, though of course the kids find him old-fashioned.

Joe

turtle tales

The turtle murder reminded me of the beginning of Grapes of Wrath, but I couldn't go to it at that early hour – our non-sf hardbacks are in the main bedroom, and Gay was still asleep there.

Found it in Chapter Three.  This made a big impression on me when I was 14 or 15.   A turtle is crossing a country road, and after a long naturalistic description of how it gets up on the pavement . . .

"A sedan driven by a forty-year-old woman approached.  She saw the turtle and swung to the right, off the highway, the wheels screamed and a cloud of dust boiled up.  Two wheels lifted for a moment and then settled.  The car skidded back onto the road, and then went on, but more slowly.  The turtle had jerked into its shell, but now it hurried on, for the highway was burning hot.

"And now a light truck approached, and as it came near, the driver saw the turtle and swerved to hit it.  His front wheel struck the edge of  the shell, flipped the turtle like a tiddly-wink, spun it like a coin, and rolled it off the highway.  The truck went back to its course along the right side.  Lying on its back, the turtle was tight in its shell for a long time.  But at last its legs waved in the air, reaching for something to pull it over.   Its front foot caught a piece of quartz and  little by little the shell pulled over and flopped upright . . . [T]he turtle crawled on down the embankment . . . drawing a wavy shallow trench in the dust with its shell.  The old humorous eyes looked ahead, and the horny beak opened a little.  His yellow toenails slipped a fraction in the dust."

I wasn't a writer yet, but I was a good enough reader to see the plain magic there

Joe

The Right to Keep and Bear Shells

From Care2Causes -- Anecdote, not science, but . . Written by Lloyd AlterGrist points to a study where students put a rubber turtle on the highway and noted that out of 257 cars that passed, seven went out of their way to hit the turtle. That’s 2.7237%. Sarah Miller titled their post People will go out of their way to hit turtles with cars, because people are jerks.That rang a bell; TreeHugger wrote about a Canadian study in 2007, titled Study Proves 2.7% of Drivers Are Stupid Jerks.They alternated between placing a plastic turtle, a rubber snake, a white cup and a grease control line on the centre of the road. The grease line helped researchers know how many drivers passed over the centre line by mistake. They hid in the bushes and watched 1900 cars, and found that 2.7% of drivers swerved onto the centre line specifically to run over the reptiles.Fascinating that two separate studies in two different countries come up with the identical percentage. Take take a lethal weapon that is regulated similarly in both countries, like cars, and the turtle murder rate is identical. Take guns, and the American people murder rate is 8.1 times the Canadian rate. There’s a lesson here

Girls . . . in . . . SPACE!

Phil Plait's "Bad Astronomy" blog has a fascinating personal tour of the ISS, 22 minutes of crawling around the cramped quarters with a good-natured and attractive female astronaut – I guess that's still the proper term, though the people in the ISS don't fly spaceships in the normal course of things.  The tour is wonderfully science-fictionally prosaic.  (People who've traveled in various parts of the world might not be surprised to know that the toilet section has an assortment of different kinds of toilet paper.  Rough for tough Russians and soft for effete Americans.)

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2012/12/15/space_station_tour_commander_sunita_williams_shows_you_her_orbiting_home.html

Joe