Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 61
June 18, 2011
TFW sculpture
Let me see whether I can post a picture of the Forever War sculpture in front of the University of Iowa library . . . .
Done by Jim Kelly
Done by Jim Kelly
Look! Up in the sky! It's a Spielberg movie!
Went to see Super 8 with Bob and Patience Mason. Good skiffy movie fun. The homage to Spielberg was a little thick, but evidently it’s meant as a sincere “thank you” from director J.J. Abrams, who’s worked with Spielberg since, at age 15, he spliced together the old man’s childhood Super 8 films.
It’s a fun movie for kids of all ages, homage or hommage or whatever notwithstanding – I had to think about how throat-grabbingly dramatic George Pal’s War of the Worlds was when I saw it at ten or eleven, and could still feel some of that thrill here. I hope kids that age aren’t too jaded to jump at a sudden monster shot nowadays. And it has the best train wreck scene ever. And really cool pyrotechnics, both miniaturized and life-sized.
Abrams wisely resisted sexualizing the boy-girl friendship here. I mean, their parents have enough to worry about with Martians fucking up the countryside and the entire 9th Infantry Division encamping overnight in their back yard.
The film’s set in Ohio in the 70s, and is a convincing reconstruction. A couple of times the kids’ dialogue and attitude seemed a little 80s or even 90s.
My parents forbade me to see War of the Worlds in 1953, too scary . . . wonder if anything would have been different now if I’d obeyed them. It gave me wonderful nightmares for I don’t know how long. (Wonder whether Mother noticed that the comic strips I was drawing suddenly were full of death rays and flying saucers. She stitched them together for me, on her sewing machine, I think without comment other than motherly praise.)
Joe
It’s a fun movie for kids of all ages, homage or hommage or whatever notwithstanding – I had to think about how throat-grabbingly dramatic George Pal’s War of the Worlds was when I saw it at ten or eleven, and could still feel some of that thrill here. I hope kids that age aren’t too jaded to jump at a sudden monster shot nowadays. And it has the best train wreck scene ever. And really cool pyrotechnics, both miniaturized and life-sized.
Abrams wisely resisted sexualizing the boy-girl friendship here. I mean, their parents have enough to worry about with Martians fucking up the countryside and the entire 9th Infantry Division encamping overnight in their back yard.
The film’s set in Ohio in the 70s, and is a convincing reconstruction. A couple of times the kids’ dialogue and attitude seemed a little 80s or even 90s.
My parents forbade me to see War of the Worlds in 1953, too scary . . . wonder if anything would have been different now if I’d obeyed them. It gave me wonderful nightmares for I don’t know how long. (Wonder whether Mother noticed that the comic strips I was drawing suddenly were full of death rays and flying saucers. She stitched them together for me, on her sewing machine, I think without comment other than motherly praise.)
Joe
June 17, 2011
I love Paris in the summer
Interesting coincidence yesterday. I finished reading Tender is the Night – a pretty good novel with a hell of a good ending – and then went to see the Woody Allen flick Midnight in Paris, a pretty good movie with a good ending, where F. Scott Fitzgerald is a minor character. If perhaps a major influence.
Scott and Zelda are sketched out pretty well in the movie, but for some reason the guy who plays Ernest Hemingway does a slapdash, forced job. Chronology shot to hell, referring to things he did and wrote much later. Maybe I’m more familiar with EH than FSF, and didn’t mind or even see the shortcomings in that characterization. Kathy Bates makes a fine Stein, and the quick sketches of young Salvador Dali and Picasso are a lot of fun, and good walk-ons by people like T.S. Eliot, Josephine Baker, Cole Porter, Djuna Barnes, Man Ray – the folks who show up when the absinthe starts to flow.
For me the movie comes really close but doesn’t quite work. There is some lovely time-travel twisting, that I won’t go into detail about, except to say that everybody thinks their own era sucks, no matter what that era is, and wants to go back to when things were peaceful and/or exciting and/or at least different.
I get the lesson. But I still want to go back and swill icy gin with my heroes and listen to jazz till my ears bleed.
Joe
Scott and Zelda are sketched out pretty well in the movie, but for some reason the guy who plays Ernest Hemingway does a slapdash, forced job. Chronology shot to hell, referring to things he did and wrote much later. Maybe I’m more familiar with EH than FSF, and didn’t mind or even see the shortcomings in that characterization. Kathy Bates makes a fine Stein, and the quick sketches of young Salvador Dali and Picasso are a lot of fun, and good walk-ons by people like T.S. Eliot, Josephine Baker, Cole Porter, Djuna Barnes, Man Ray – the folks who show up when the absinthe starts to flow.
For me the movie comes really close but doesn’t quite work. There is some lovely time-travel twisting, that I won’t go into detail about, except to say that everybody thinks their own era sucks, no matter what that era is, and wants to go back to when things were peaceful and/or exciting and/or at least different.
I get the lesson. But I still want to go back and swill icy gin with my heroes and listen to jazz till my ears bleed.
Joe
June 15, 2011
pioneers and sons of pioneers
(Responding to a sff.net post about finishing EARTHBOUND . . . )
Blues, EARTHBOUND is the last volume of the MARSBOUND trilogy, with STARBOUND in the middle. It’s, um, about people from MARS who went to the STARS and came back to EARTH.
It’s sort of the third installment of a century-long coming-of-age saga. Sort of about the future of the human race, which looks dim for awhile. But does brighten up toward the end, if that’s not too much of a spoiler.
I just finished going through the final copyedit for the book, on the plane back from Iowa, so have a real sense of relief and separation about it. Energies completely devoted to WORK DONE FOR HIRE now, with its more mundane tropes of assassination and casino gambling. Can’t spend all your time destroying and rescuing the human race. (Unless you’re E.E. Smith, Ph.D.)
Hmm . . . Doc “Skylark” Smith died in 1965, born in 1890. I wonder if anyone else reading this column ever had the privilege of meeting the old guy. Gay and I had dinner with him in New York in his last year, at a banquet table, I guess at a NYCon.
Doc Smith was embarrassed when John W. Campbell made him use the “Ph.D.” on his byline. He complained that his Food Science doctorate was in “doughnut chemistry,” not exactly rocket science. But then how often do you have a rocket with your coffee in the morning?
There were jiants in the earth in those days. We met Edmond Hamilton, too, the Galaxy Smasher. He rolled his eyes at that cognomen, which I think was given to him by Amazing editor Ray Palmer. Both he and Doc Smith were quiet modest guys when we knew them. Lord, forty years ago.
I guess the oldest pioneer we’ve met was Will Jenkins, “Murray Leinster,” who started in 1916 with a story in Mencken’s Smart Set. When we visited him in his crumbling Virginia mansion in the 70s, he was cranking out a Planet of the Apes novelization on a manual typewriter. He didn’t know exactly how many books he’d written; more than a hundred. More than two thousand magazine stories. He had a walk-in closet full of ancient yellowing pulps in no order, one each of those stories.
One of the great things about being a science fiction writer is this sense of continuity. To Will and Ed I was just another member of the fraternity, even though a half-century younger. I try to remember their graciousness when I run into the young whippersnappers who are competing with me for book contracts!
Joe
Blues, EARTHBOUND is the last volume of the MARSBOUND trilogy, with STARBOUND in the middle. It’s, um, about people from MARS who went to the STARS and came back to EARTH.
It’s sort of the third installment of a century-long coming-of-age saga. Sort of about the future of the human race, which looks dim for awhile. But does brighten up toward the end, if that’s not too much of a spoiler.
I just finished going through the final copyedit for the book, on the plane back from Iowa, so have a real sense of relief and separation about it. Energies completely devoted to WORK DONE FOR HIRE now, with its more mundane tropes of assassination and casino gambling. Can’t spend all your time destroying and rescuing the human race. (Unless you’re E.E. Smith, Ph.D.)
Hmm . . . Doc “Skylark” Smith died in 1965, born in 1890. I wonder if anyone else reading this column ever had the privilege of meeting the old guy. Gay and I had dinner with him in New York in his last year, at a banquet table, I guess at a NYCon.
Doc Smith was embarrassed when John W. Campbell made him use the “Ph.D.” on his byline. He complained that his Food Science doctorate was in “doughnut chemistry,” not exactly rocket science. But then how often do you have a rocket with your coffee in the morning?
There were jiants in the earth in those days. We met Edmond Hamilton, too, the Galaxy Smasher. He rolled his eyes at that cognomen, which I think was given to him by Amazing editor Ray Palmer. Both he and Doc Smith were quiet modest guys when we knew them. Lord, forty years ago.
I guess the oldest pioneer we’ve met was Will Jenkins, “Murray Leinster,” who started in 1916 with a story in Mencken’s Smart Set. When we visited him in his crumbling Virginia mansion in the 70s, he was cranking out a Planet of the Apes novelization on a manual typewriter. He didn’t know exactly how many books he’d written; more than a hundred. More than two thousand magazine stories. He had a walk-in closet full of ancient yellowing pulps in no order, one each of those stories.
One of the great things about being a science fiction writer is this sense of continuity. To Will and Ed I was just another member of the fraternity, even though a half-century younger. I try to remember their graciousness when I run into the young whippersnappers who are competing with me for book contracts!
Joe
June 12, 2011
thoughts on writing
Some answers to a questionnaire for a Spanish project, Jorge Mangas Peña’s “Album of Alchemies” (Álbum de alquimias) – in this form, call it “random responses about writing” . . . .
I started writing poetry “seriously” when I was nine or ten. Didn’t really start writing fiction, though, until my last semester in college. I wrote two short stories for a writing class. I graduated, was drafted, and sold one of those stories just before I got out of the army.
[My usual routine is to ] bicycle a few miles to a coffee house (there are nine or ten I choose among) and write in longhand, with a fountain pen, into a bound blank book. Every few days I type the text into the computer, rewriting slightly. I write slowly and don’t have to change much.
[About a story’s structure . . . ] Every story finds its own way. Sometimes I outline or draw a physical diagram (which I may follow or ignore) – and sometimes I just start writing, to see what will happen . . . Sometimes an idea will appear out of thin air, but usually I’ve doodled around with a story’s ideas for awhile before I start the text.
. . . . Sometimes you want to shut down the internal censor and just write whatever comes into your head – I think most writers have this as part of the creative process in some stage. My process may be more formal than most. Drawing diagrams of the story’s actions, themes – even pictures of the characters, as below --
. . . . Of course a prudent writer censors out libelous material, unless he wants to experiment with writing behind bars. On a few occasions I’ve decided to leave out of my stories detailed descriptions of techniques I learned as a combat demolition engineer – I don’t want to make a story cool by, for instance, detailing ways to make huge bombs out of everyday materials. (People of normal intelligence can find this stuff out by themselves; I’d hate to be the one who gave an idiot specific directions for mayhem.)
. . . . I suppose my ideal reader would be a person pretty much like myself, who doesn’t need a lot of stuff explained. I do have faith in my reader’s intelligence and don’t “dumb things down” for the sake of clarity. That becomes boring.
. . . . I [am] a science fiction writer who occasionally writes other things. I sometimes take on long projects, like trilogies, because readers and publishers seem to like them. If I didn’t have to make a living at it, I’d write a lot more short stories and poetry, and my novels would usually be stand-alone works.
. . .. I don’t really have [“writers’ block” as such]. I always work on my novels at various levels, and if the text is “resisting” me, I can go to writing notes about the plot or background or characters. Stepping outside of the story that way will usually get me back into it within a day or so.
. . . . With only a few exceptions, it’s really important to work every day. The usual advice is to always work at the same time, same place – that’s advice I’ll give even though I don’t follow it any longer. (For my first fifteen or so books, I always got up before dawn and, sitting always in the same place, wrote for several hours, finishing in the early morning. I chose houses where I could be isolated and work that way.)
Nowadays I like to bicycle to a café a few miles away. The exercise clears my mind and being away from home (where the computer is always begging for attention) helps me stay focused on the work.
I do have a love/hate relationship with the computer. If it was there when I was trying to write, it would offer all manner of easier and more fun things to do.
Joe
I started writing poetry “seriously” when I was nine or ten. Didn’t really start writing fiction, though, until my last semester in college. I wrote two short stories for a writing class. I graduated, was drafted, and sold one of those stories just before I got out of the army.
[My usual routine is to ] bicycle a few miles to a coffee house (there are nine or ten I choose among) and write in longhand, with a fountain pen, into a bound blank book. Every few days I type the text into the computer, rewriting slightly. I write slowly and don’t have to change much.
[About a story’s structure . . . ] Every story finds its own way. Sometimes I outline or draw a physical diagram (which I may follow or ignore) – and sometimes I just start writing, to see what will happen . . . Sometimes an idea will appear out of thin air, but usually I’ve doodled around with a story’s ideas for awhile before I start the text.
. . . . Sometimes you want to shut down the internal censor and just write whatever comes into your head – I think most writers have this as part of the creative process in some stage. My process may be more formal than most. Drawing diagrams of the story’s actions, themes – even pictures of the characters, as below --
. . . . Of course a prudent writer censors out libelous material, unless he wants to experiment with writing behind bars. On a few occasions I’ve decided to leave out of my stories detailed descriptions of techniques I learned as a combat demolition engineer – I don’t want to make a story cool by, for instance, detailing ways to make huge bombs out of everyday materials. (People of normal intelligence can find this stuff out by themselves; I’d hate to be the one who gave an idiot specific directions for mayhem.)
. . . . I suppose my ideal reader would be a person pretty much like myself, who doesn’t need a lot of stuff explained. I do have faith in my reader’s intelligence and don’t “dumb things down” for the sake of clarity. That becomes boring.
. . . . I [am] a science fiction writer who occasionally writes other things. I sometimes take on long projects, like trilogies, because readers and publishers seem to like them. If I didn’t have to make a living at it, I’d write a lot more short stories and poetry, and my novels would usually be stand-alone works.
. . .. I don’t really have [“writers’ block” as such]. I always work on my novels at various levels, and if the text is “resisting” me, I can go to writing notes about the plot or background or characters. Stepping outside of the story that way will usually get me back into it within a day or so.
. . . . With only a few exceptions, it’s really important to work every day. The usual advice is to always work at the same time, same place – that’s advice I’ll give even though I don’t follow it any longer. (For my first fifteen or so books, I always got up before dawn and, sitting always in the same place, wrote for several hours, finishing in the early morning. I chose houses where I could be isolated and work that way.)
Nowadays I like to bicycle to a café a few miles away. The exercise clears my mind and being away from home (where the computer is always begging for attention) helps me stay focused on the work.
I do have a love/hate relationship with the computer. If it was there when I was trying to write, it would offer all manner of easier and more fun things to do.
Joe
no man is an iowan
Haven’t been posting the past couple of days because I’ve been completely absorbed in the 75th reunion of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Old pals and famous writers new and old. Some of the old pals have become famous writers, at least in the literary microcosm. Alan Gurganus and T. Correghessan Boyle came out of my workshop (’73-75), and they were both here and properly feted. Some people even recognized little old me, though not many – and of course not officially. The stigma against science fiction, commercial fiction, is still strong in this tradition-bound literary “frontier.”
When lists were intoned of mighty writers who have passed through these halls, Vonnegut was sometimes mentioned.
(They did have a panel on “How Can Literature Imagine New Futures?” and the third speaker did mention science fiction. The other two were all about guerilla poetry, Lessing, Atwood, Shirley Jackson. Two males, Orwell and Updike, merited mention.)
It was a pleasant time, and a very well-run celebration, even if I sort of passed through it like a neutrino. That’s not inappropriate, though. I’ve written very little that thrives within the walls of their carefully tended garden. But I do think that literature includes the jungle outside.
At least the library knows I exist – even the workshop library has about a yard-long section of my books, and to the university library I’m a writer catalogued among other real writers. Going out this morning to see the sculpture exhibit there that includes THE FOREVER WAR; will take a picture to post in LJ.
Joe
When lists were intoned of mighty writers who have passed through these halls, Vonnegut was sometimes mentioned.
(They did have a panel on “How Can Literature Imagine New Futures?” and the third speaker did mention science fiction. The other two were all about guerilla poetry, Lessing, Atwood, Shirley Jackson. Two males, Orwell and Updike, merited mention.)
It was a pleasant time, and a very well-run celebration, even if I sort of passed through it like a neutrino. That’s not inappropriate, though. I’ve written very little that thrives within the walls of their carefully tended garden. But I do think that literature includes the jungle outside.
At least the library knows I exist – even the workshop library has about a yard-long section of my books, and to the university library I’m a writer catalogued among other real writers. Going out this morning to see the sculpture exhibit there that includes THE FOREVER WAR; will take a picture to post in LJ.
Joe
June 8, 2011
vocabulary
Just got the copy-edited manuscript for my next book, Earthbound. It’s interesting to look through the “style guide,” which includes a list of “PA,” per author, words, some of which are science-fictional inventions – ayhole, bullet-brave, cuntsuit, fleshtape, hellbombs, land-pirate, motorsled, rent-a-body, robot-voiced, whish-_bang_.
“The bullet-brave land-pirate fixed her cuntsuit with fleshtape and shouted, robot-voiced, ‘Ay-hole! Get your rent-a-body away from the motorsled!’ Whish-_bang_.”
Nothing to this science fiction business if you don’t have to make sense . . . .
Joe
“The bullet-brave land-pirate fixed her cuntsuit with fleshtape and shouted, robot-voiced, ‘Ay-hole! Get your rent-a-body away from the motorsled!’ Whish-_bang_.”
Nothing to this science fiction business if you don’t have to make sense . . . .
Joe
June 7, 2011
the fire this time
When I went out to get the paper just before dawn, the air smelled like a new campfire built on the wet ashes of an old one, a mixture of acrid new smoke and wet smoulder. There are over two hundred fires burning out of control between here and the Atlantic coast.
They’re sort of like peat fires in England and Ireland. Lightning strikes in the swamp and starts a fire hot enough to propagate in the damp underbrush. The fires can go on for weeks or months in areas so remote that heavy equipment can’t reach them. (A regular forest fire can be attacked from the air, by dumping water and retardant. Doesn’t work on these already-wet kind.) Strong winds from the east have made it worse.
I suppose on a secondary level there’s an economic force at work. If this were happening to billion-dollar real estate, they would find a way to go in and put it out. That boggy scrub-pine land won’t grow anything but cockroaches and rattlesnakes, so the hell with it. When cropland starts to smoke they’ll be all over it like a cheap suit.
Joe
They’re sort of like peat fires in England and Ireland. Lightning strikes in the swamp and starts a fire hot enough to propagate in the damp underbrush. The fires can go on for weeks or months in areas so remote that heavy equipment can’t reach them. (A regular forest fire can be attacked from the air, by dumping water and retardant. Doesn’t work on these already-wet kind.) Strong winds from the east have made it worse.
I suppose on a secondary level there’s an economic force at work. If this were happening to billion-dollar real estate, they would find a way to go in and put it out. That boggy scrub-pine land won’t grow anything but cockroaches and rattlesnakes, so the hell with it. When cropland starts to smoke they’ll be all over it like a cheap suit.
Joe
June 6, 2011
Bourbon Street Blues
Someone on the radio noted that it’s the 66th anniversary of D-Day, which brought me up short in a peculiar way. The last girlfriend I had before Gay was Suzanne, in New Orleans, who was a year younger than me, born on D-Day. I was a big college kid, old enough to drink (18 in New Orleans), and she was merely seventeen.
I haven’t seen her since. She’s probably a grandmother now, but of course in my mind she is and always will be seventeen, a giggly pert redhead. The idea that she could be 66, if she is even still alive, is elusive, illusive. Maybe she’s out there somewhere – maybe still in New Orleans – and maybe she has a vague memory of the gangly 18-year-old visiting from Oklahoma, with whom she got tipsy on somewhat legal beer.
I guess watching Treme has reminded me of the magic that New Orleans was when I was a teenaged clarinet player, going bugfuck on Bourbon Street. No better place to be young and silly. To be young and have big dreams. I was torn between writing and jazz for awhile; in another two years it would just be writing. You can’t play clarinet and sax if you don’t play all the time – lose your lip – and after my sophomore year I guess I put them away in favor of the typewriter. (In fact, my musical interests had shifted from Dixieland jazz to guitar and folk music, where they remain.) But it still gives me shivers to hear.
Joe
I haven’t seen her since. She’s probably a grandmother now, but of course in my mind she is and always will be seventeen, a giggly pert redhead. The idea that she could be 66, if she is even still alive, is elusive, illusive. Maybe she’s out there somewhere – maybe still in New Orleans – and maybe she has a vague memory of the gangly 18-year-old visiting from Oklahoma, with whom she got tipsy on somewhat legal beer.
I guess watching Treme has reminded me of the magic that New Orleans was when I was a teenaged clarinet player, going bugfuck on Bourbon Street. No better place to be young and silly. To be young and have big dreams. I was torn between writing and jazz for awhile; in another two years it would just be writing. You can’t play clarinet and sax if you don’t play all the time – lose your lip – and after my sophomore year I guess I put them away in favor of the typewriter. (In fact, my musical interests had shifted from Dixieland jazz to guitar and folk music, where they remain.) But it still gives me shivers to hear.
Joe
Watch Mr. Lizard
I’ll bet no one else here has beaten four lizards in a road race recently.
I was biking down the sidewalk coming home from writing in Newberry, and suddenly I flushed four lizards out of the grass. Must have been deep in conversation. They tore ass down the concrete for four or five feet, keeping pace with me, and then dove back into the grass.
Maybe they were playing chicken. Nyah, nyah, big ole mammal can’t catch me. I do hope I at least brought some excitement into their reptilian lives. (If they were playing chicken, does that mean they’re evolving?)
Newberry’s pretty far, a 29.9-mile round trip. Nice cool ride when I took off, but pushing 90 when I came back, just before noon. Think I’ll stick closer to home. Got three pages written, though.
(I know, Mitch, most people pushing 90 can’t even ride a bicycle.)
My usual loop to work is either a short 3.4-mile one, up to the nearest coffee house, or eight miles to the Starbucks on campus at Santa Fe Community College. Or twelve miles to Kay’s, if I have time. Kay’s, not a chain, is run by an old Chinese guy, who I guess is named Kay, who has good pastry. Twelve or thirteen miles in the opposite direction, town and back, takes me to Coffee Culture, the best place. But I don’t like to go to the same place all the time. And I save an hour riding time ( = lose an hour of exercise) going to the nearby one.
Somebody said well, you must think a lot about your writing while you’re on the bike. Actually, I don’t; I sort of watch where I’m going. Every now and then something will percolate up through the subconscious. Maybe a half-dozen times in the past twenty years, I’ve stopped to write down a note.
The writing on Work Done for Hire has been going well, a few pages a day. Nice to be home for an extended period.
Had the gang over for A Game of Thrones last night. Continuing to be excellent television. Reading Tender is the Night, which takes a while getting started, but suddenly shifts into high gear and is hard to put down.
Joe
I was biking down the sidewalk coming home from writing in Newberry, and suddenly I flushed four lizards out of the grass. Must have been deep in conversation. They tore ass down the concrete for four or five feet, keeping pace with me, and then dove back into the grass.
Maybe they were playing chicken. Nyah, nyah, big ole mammal can’t catch me. I do hope I at least brought some excitement into their reptilian lives. (If they were playing chicken, does that mean they’re evolving?)
Newberry’s pretty far, a 29.9-mile round trip. Nice cool ride when I took off, but pushing 90 when I came back, just before noon. Think I’ll stick closer to home. Got three pages written, though.
(I know, Mitch, most people pushing 90 can’t even ride a bicycle.)
My usual loop to work is either a short 3.4-mile one, up to the nearest coffee house, or eight miles to the Starbucks on campus at Santa Fe Community College. Or twelve miles to Kay’s, if I have time. Kay’s, not a chain, is run by an old Chinese guy, who I guess is named Kay, who has good pastry. Twelve or thirteen miles in the opposite direction, town and back, takes me to Coffee Culture, the best place. But I don’t like to go to the same place all the time. And I save an hour riding time ( = lose an hour of exercise) going to the nearby one.
Somebody said well, you must think a lot about your writing while you’re on the bike. Actually, I don’t; I sort of watch where I’m going. Every now and then something will percolate up through the subconscious. Maybe a half-dozen times in the past twenty years, I’ve stopped to write down a note.
The writing on Work Done for Hire has been going well, a few pages a day. Nice to be home for an extended period.
Had the gang over for A Game of Thrones last night. Continuing to be excellent television. Reading Tender is the Night, which takes a while getting started, but suddenly shifts into high gear and is hard to put down.
Joe
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