Jane Lindskold's Blog, page 94

FF: Interior Landscape

This week I seem to be immersed in stories where the interior landscape is as important or more so than the exterior.  Even the ostensibly lighthearted Frogkisser is about the contrast between the world as the protagonist would like to think it is, and how it really is.

[image error]

Who Gets It First?

For those of you just discovering this feature, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

The Ancient Child by N. Scott Momaday.  Compelling,  well-written with a darkly ambivalent ending.

In Progress:

Frogkisser by Garth Nix.  Audiobook.  Humorous fantasy that nonetheless is sneaking in some serious thoughts about personal and social responsibility.

Only the Dead by Vidal Sundstol, translated by Tiina Nunnally.  Sequel to The Land of Dreams which I read a while back.  Psychological crime novel.

Also:

Continuing my re-read of my own When the Gods Are Silent.  Still feel as if I’m having conversations with a long-ago self, but I think I like her.

TT: Surreal, Absurd, Still Seriously Spiritual

ALAN: When I take my dog for a walk I tend to listen to audiobooks. Recently I’ve been listening to Robert Sheckley’s Dimension of Miracles (1968). It’s a surreal and absurdist comedy which tells of the adventures of Tom Carmody, a man from Earth who wins a prize in a galactic sweepstakes.  By a nice piece of serendipity, I found that there’s one section in the novel which fits quite neatly into our discussion.

[image error]

Teatime of the Sole

Carmody’s prize takes him on a journey hither and yon throughout the galaxy. Among the many people that Carmody meets in his odyssey is a being described by the prize as “…the autochthonous Melichrone who is sui generis (in spades).” The prize goes on to remark that as a race Melichrone is ubiquitous, and as an autochthone he is inimitable.

When I got back from my walk I spent some time with a dictionary and came to the conclusion that Melichrone is both omniscient and omnipresent – for all practical purposes he is a god.

JANE: I’m glad you reached for the dictionary first.  Lapsed English Professor I may be, but I would have needed a dictionary for that phrase, too!  So, what happens when Carmody meets Melichrone?

ALAN: Carmody and Melichrone have a long, complex and very funny debate on the nature of godhood during which Melichrone admits to having transformed himself into entire races that he then encouraged to make war upon each other. He introduced both sex and art to them and divided himself into male and female components so that he could procreate, indulge in perversions and burn himself at the stake. It was a lot of fun.

But Melichrone made the mistake of listening to his priests debate his nature and became filled with doubt…

JANE: Ah, even divinity can’t deal with theology.  That’s true enough.

ALAN: Sheckley seems largely forgotten these days, but without Robert Sheckley I doubt if we’d ever have had Douglas Adams. Their writing style and their obsessions are very similar, though interestingly Adams claimed not to have read any Sheckley.

JANE: And, as a writer, I can believe Douglas Adams.  As I said a while back when we were discussing the Alien Invasion trope, at the time I wrote my Smoke and Mirrors, I had not read either Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters or Finney’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Writers do evolve ideas all on their own, no matter how much this may disappoint Literature professors, most of whom would like to trace all creativity back to a single source.

Maybe they think they’ll find God there…  Hmm…  I’m being influenced by all the theology we’ve been discussing.  Pray, go ahead and talk about Douglas Adams and religion.

ALAN: Adams described himself as a “radical atheist”.  So much so, in fact, that Richard Dawkins actually dedicated The God Delusion to Adams. But despite his own beliefs, religion continually fascinated Adams because of the way it influenced so much human behaviour. He found that supremely irrational and continually tried very hard to understand the contradiction. He pecked away at the idea in most of his books, but it is a central theme in the second of his Dirk Gently novels (The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul).

JANE: Oh!  At your recommendation, I read this.  Actually, I listened to it.  My library didn’t have a print copy, but it did have an audio version of a six episode radio drama, which I think was the original version of the story.

ALAN: No – the book dates from 1988. The radio drama didn’t happen until 2008.  There was also a rather disappointing TV series in 2010 and 2012.

JANE: Ah, my error.  My understanding, based on a Neil Gaiman introduction to one of Douglas Adams’ other books, is that Adams himself preferred writing for radio and other dramatic forms.  I believe (I don’t have the intro in front of me) that Gaiman refers to Adams as an “unhappy novelist.”

ALAN: I suspect that’s true. His first major success, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, was originally a radio series. Eventually, over the course of several years, it was adapted for every other medium (it became a stage play, a novel, a TV series and a movie – not bad going, eh?). But I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that Adams felt most comfortable when working in radio.

JANE: I just looked at Wikipedia and found a comment that seems to support the idea that Adams, while wildly creative, was not happy writing.  It’s so great, I must quote it here:

“Adams was never a prolific writer and usually had to be forced by others to do any writing. This included being locked in a hotel suite with his editor for three weeks to ensure that So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish was completed.”

But there I go, Tangenting off again.  Would you like to talk about the book?

ALAN: The book has a mad plot, not easily summarised. But it begins when the check-in desk at Heathrow Airport’s Terminal Two shoots up through the roof engulfed in a ball of orange flame. Clearly the old Norse gods are to blame. Who else would be waiting there killing time until the 15:37 flight to Oslo started to board?

JANE: Interesting.  The radio drama has a slightly different opening, beginning with Dirk Gently and his secretary.  She quits, because she’s not being paid and ends up working at the very airline desk where the fireball goes up.  Her fate becomes a key element in the story.

ALAN: The radio drama took a lot of liberties with the structure of the book. It straightened out the rather convoluted sequence of events and it introduced gadgets like mobile phones which barely existed when the book was written…

JANE: I actually wondered about the mobile phones…

ALAN: Anyway, whether it be in the book or in the radio drama, Adams comes to the conclusion that gods are created by people’s desire for them. Once a god has been worshipped by someone, that god will remain “alive” forever. It’s not a very original thought – I’ve come across it many times in many books and I’m sure that Adams had as well. But he brings his trademark wit to the idea and makes it both convincing and memorable.

JANE: I agree that Adams’ idea was not unique.  What was, however, was his idea of a holistic detective, which in itself can be looked upon as a religious or spiritual concept.  Dirk Gently runs his detective agency on the idea that, if one can find the holistic connection between various events, then one can solve any problem.  At first, it seems as if he’s merely running a scam but, by the novel’s end, it seems he may be on to something.

ALAN: And yet again, presumably by sheer coincidence, you can draw parallels between the practice of holistic detection and the Theory of Searches in Mindswap, another Robert Sheckley novel that Adams didn’t read.

JANE: Oh, boy.  Dirk Gently would definitely find this a holistic link.

Since we’re talking about influence, I wonder if Adams was influenced in his idea of a holistic detective by a very famous SF novel that includes a similar – although very differently employed – concept.  Because of my earlier tangent taking up so much space, we can’t discuss it now, but let me whisper the title in your ear.

What do you think?

ALAN: Sounds good to me! Let’s do it.

Smoke and Mirrors E-book Available

As I told you folks back in January, one of my goals for 2017 is to make some of my older out-of-print books available as e-books.

[image error]

Smoke and Mirrors: New Cover!

I’m happy to announce that I’ve achieved one step toward that goal.  My 1996 novel Smoke and Mirrors is now available as an e-book.  It includes a new-to-this-edition afterpiece by me, looking back on writing the book.

You can purchase the Smoke and Mirrors e-book from most of the major e-book retailers including Kindle, Barnes and Noble, I-tunes, GooglePlay, and Kobo.

into e-books?  I still have some copies of the original mass market paperback available through my website bookstore.  If you purchase one, let me know if you’re interested and I’ll e-mail you a copy of the afterpiece.

This past weekend, at the event for the Guns anthology, I was chatting with James, a long-time reader of my stuff.  He asked what I had coming out new.  When I mentioned that I didn’t have anything “new-new” but that that Smoke and Mirrors was finally available as an e-book, he looked puzzled.

“Smoke and Mirrors?  I don’t think I know that one.”

I had to laugh.  “It’s an older work, over twenty years old now.”

Talking with James reminded me that while, to me, Smoke and Mirrors has remained a part of my mental landscape these twenty-some years, this certainly isn’t the case for much of my readership.  With that in mind, let me share the cover blurb I wrote for the e-book.

(As a side note, it’s really hard to write a non-spoiler-filled blurb, especially for a short book with one point of view character!)

How do you fight an enemy who can, literally, change your mind?

From the moment she first senses the whispers of the alien mind within the thoughts of her current client, Smokey – touch telepath, industrial spy, and high-end prostitute – becomes an unwitting player in a conflict that may be as old as humanity.

Determined to protect herself and her young daughter, Smokey soon realizes that the stakes are much, much higher.

After millennia of setting up the field, the aliens may be making their final move.  If Smokey is to defeat them, she must win the respect and trust of people who despise her – perhaps at the cost of those she loves the most.

Of course, there’s a lot more to Smoke and Mirrors than just this conflict.  Because I feel awkward talking about my own stuff, I’d like to quote an article that came out soon after the novel’s original release .  For those of you who don’t like spoilers, I’ll warn you that maybe be spoilers – or at least a sense of some of the plot elements  –  so skip if you want to avoid these!  I did cut a phrase here and there to eliminate the most obvious spoilers.

“…Lindskold’s Smoke and Mirrors is a nicely realized examination of a future social order with a highly progressive attitude toward sexuality and the family.

“In Smoke and Mirrors there are a gay married couple, a daughter of a gay man and a bi-sexual woman (who is a legal and highly respected prostitute), a multi-racial marriage, and a family formed from a child and two couples (one gay, one straight).  All of these situations are completely normal in Lindskold’s future society.

“Lindskold also does an excellent job of examining human emotions and the relationships between lovers, and between parents and children.

“Most compelling is her examination of a human psyche under control and struggling against that control.  This material… shapes the novel’s central themes about humanity’s need for spiritual, emotional, and intellectual independence and freedom.

“As well, Lindskold’s exploration of planetary colonization is detailed and thoughtful, with depictions of the societal and scientific aspects of terraforming a desert world and of living on a humid jungle planet.

“Finally, there is what every fine deep-space science-fiction novel must possess, a wondrous evocation of another world spinning under an alien sun, what science-fiction writer Elizabeth Lynn called ‘a different light.’

“And this Jane Lindskold does with great mastery.”

            John Nizalowski, Telluride Times-Journal, January 1997

Now that the e-book of Smoke and Mirrors is complete, I’m moving on to another of my older works, When the Gods Are Silent, a sword and sorcery adventure.

I haven’t given up on writing new work, but I will admit that while I’m still learning the e-pub ropes, this is cutting into my creative energy.  Still, I have at least two, maybe three, ideas nagging at me, not ready to be written yet, but I think that will come.

FF: The Making of Heroes

Here’s additional information about Sunday’s book event at the Jean Cocteau (see my website for details).  N. Scott Momaday, whose piece “The Momaday Gun” was one of editor Gerry Hausman’s direct inspirations for the Guns anthology hopes to be there.  I’m rather awed at the idea of doing a book event with a Pulitzer Prize winner…

[image error]

Kel Gives Us Her Thyme

For those of you just discovering this feature, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

Lamb by Christopher Moore.  Mostly focuses on the parts of Jesus’s life not covered in the Bible.  The ending shifts perception on everything thing that goes before about ninety degrees so don’t peek.  Alan said it was a “funny” book, but this is funny like Terry Pratchett is funny – humor harnessed in tandem with a lot of thoughtful moments.

Knight of Shadows.  Audiobook.  Eighteen episodes of The Shadow radio drama.  Moving on to the close…

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy.  Audiobook.  I think this may be the story that created the trend that would give rise to Zorro, Superman, the Shadow, and Batman in which a heroic figure hides his real identity behind a relatively helpless public persona.  Like Zorro and Batman, the Scarlet Pimpernel has no superpowers, but relies on his wits and skills.

The Time Garden by Edward Eager.  A favorite from my childhood that still reads, for me at least, well today.

In Progress:

This Ancient Child by N. Scott Momaday.  I read the author’s House Made of Dawn many years ago, and intended to re-read before Sunday’s book event, but  when I saw this, I decided to try something new.

Frogkisser by Garth Nix.  Audiobook.  Just starting.

Also:

Starting a re-read of my own When the Gods Are Silent.  I feel as if I’m having conversations with a long-ago self.

TT: Spoiler Alert

JANE: Well, Alan, we’ve come back from Milton Keynes…  Do you remember where we were before that?

ALAN: Ah, tangents. Don’t you love them?  I’m sure I had something important to say before I got sidetracked…

[image error]

From Last Week’s Tangent!

Oh, yes… Gaiman’s writing pal Terry Pratchett has also dipped his toes into the murky waters of humour about religion and spirituality.

Small Gods tells of the god Om who comes back into the world and, rather to his surprise, finds himself manifested in the body of a tortoise. He has only one disciple, a boy called Brutha (which presumably is pronounced “Brother” and which also suggests “Buddha”). The book is a wonderful satire on the role of religion in politics and the practices of religious institutions.

Books such as this convince me that Pterry is not really a writer of funny books per se. In his later novels in particular, he is really writing about deeply serious subjects. It just so happens that the ways he finds to discuss those subjects are hilarious… In the words of the title of a book about his writing, Terry Pratchett is clearly guilty of literature.

JANE: I adore Small Gods.  It is both broadly humorous and deeply satirical.  What makes Small Gods work as a commentary on religion is that it does not in the least attack those who are either truly religious or truly spiritual – Brutha and some of his associates are both.  What Small Gods takes issue with are those who would use the forms of religion as an excuse for doing things (like torture) that are horrible by any measure.

Terry Pratchett doesn’t restrict his exploration of the relationship of God/gods and humanity to the Omnians.   The Rincewind books (a subset of the Discworld books, for those of you unfamiliar with Pratchett’s work) feature of host of gods who are, literally, playing dice with the universe, most particularly with the residents of the Discworld.  Rincewind is the favored playing piece of one deity in particular, and his hopes for a peaceful and boring life do not benefit from that interest.

Okay, your turn!  I see you bouncing up and down over there.

ALAN: If only in passing, I have to at least mention Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys. We’ve discussed it before so I don’t want to spend too much time on it again, but for the sake of completeness I must point out that by using Anansi, the trickster god (a common figure in many mythologies) Gaiman manages to show, humorously, that even the gods need a little anarchy in their lives if those lives are to have any meaning.

JANE: Trickster figures are far more than anarchy – in fact, many people would argue that they are less figures of anarchy than they are emblematic of righting the balance.   Anansi – like Coyote, like Prometheus, and others –  is associated with bringing fire to humanity.

ALAN: This aspect comes out quite clearly in the novel.

Spoiler Alert, since I can’t explain this without talking about plot details.

Following the death of his father Anansi, Charlie Nancy (lovely pun!) finally gets to meet his brother Spider, who has inherited all the godlike powers of their trickster father. They celebrate their meeting with rather too much wine, women and song. The next day, Charlie is far too hungover to go into the office and so Spider, magically disguised as Charlie, substitutes for him. Spider quickly discovers that Charlie’s partner has been embezzling funds from the company. But Spider cannot resist his own nature and he himself steals the affections of Rosie, Charlie’s fiancée…

The Nancy brothers are initially out-maneuvered by Charlie’s partner, which sets in motion a complex chain of events that occupy the rest of the novel. But in the end the balance is properly restored – the embezzler is turned into a stoat, Spider marries Rosie, and Charlie becomes a successful singer. Their dead father Anansi watches his two sons with approval.

JANE: And, it is implied, may have intended this result or something like it all along…

And we can’t really leave Neil Gaiman and this topic without a nod to American Gods.  I don’t want to provide a spoiler – especially since many people are rediscovering the novel because it’s being adapted for television or something – but I will say that by the end the question of what might be the new American Gods is provided with a very provocative answer.

ALAN: Of course, Gaiman and Pratchett et al were building on a well-established comic tradition. In 1907, G. K. Chesterton published The Man Who Was Thursday.

JANE: You mentioned this when we were starting this thread and I just finished reading it.  Wonderful language wrapped around an apparently absurdist plotline that, by the end, has almost too much meaning.  I very much enjoyed the book.

ALAN: Chesterton is perhaps best known for his “Father Brown” detective stories. These are not without humour, and Chesterton also sometimes uses Father Brown as a foil for theological asides which somehow manage to give an insight into the solution of the current case.

These aspects of Chesterton’s writing all come together beautifully in The Man Who Was Thursday and it is his masterpiece. The book tells of a group of anarchists, whose central council maintain their anonymity by naming themselves after the days of the week. Their leader, insofar as anarchists have leaders, is known as Sunday…

Oh, dear, it seems I must issue another spoiler alert…

JANE: Go ahead.  Let me help.  Spoiler Alert, folks!

ALAN: Thank you. It turns out that all the council members are undercover detectives, each of whom has been employed mysteriously, and assigned to defeat the very council of which they are a part! It’s all a devious plot by Sunday, of course. He has set detective against detective, with nary an anarchist in sight. What could his reasons possibly be?

A clue comes on one of the final pages of the novel when Sunday is asked if he has ever suffered. His response is “Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?”, which was the question that Jesus used to challenge his disciples’ commitment to his teachings.

The novel is a Christian allegory (though rather more subtle than many). Its saving grace is that it is very, very funny and the humour has stood the test of time well.

JANE: I would argue that there are many earlier “clues” – including the fact that the group’s leader is called “Sunday” – to Sunday’s probable identity.

What I thought was even more interesting than who Sunday might be was how the numerous, often hilarious, discussions of the value of anarchy versus law or order can be seen as arguments for and against free will.  All the policemen who ostensibly are upholding order thrive in one way or another by being encouraged to take on the role of anarchists (that is, show a bit more free will), while the one true anarchist is – in a very odd way, because he can only exist with Law to act against – the only real advocate of order.

It’s not that simple, but it does provoke thought.

ALAN: Humour can do that to you. It’s a sneaky technique. For example…

JANE: No!  We must stop here.  We’ve already gone on longer than I intended and I need to get some work done.  Please make notes and save it for next time!

My Thyme Garden

News Flash!  This Sunday, April 2nd, at 1:00 pm.  I’ll be joining editor Gerald Hausman and some of the contributing authors to the anthology Guns at the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe.  Plans include a discussion followed by Q&A, culminating in a group signing.  Go here for more details.

[image error]

You Can See the Sundial’s Shadow

This weekend we went out plant shopping.  In the process I managed to combine two of my great loves: gardening and books – of one book, especially, in particular.

Despite my dire predictions last week, we did not get snow.  However, I feel somewhat justified in my doom and gloom because the temperatures did drop, and snow was even predicted for one night.  It didn’t happen, but it was predicted.  What we did get was the horrible howling winds that distinguish New Mexico springs.

By Saturday, the winds had decided to go bother someone else, and the temperatures were predicted to be moderate.  Jim and I saddled up (figuratively) and went on a quest for an apple tree.  Now, as you may know, most apple trees need a compatible tree for reasons of pollination.  Even “self-fruitful” or “self-pollinating” trees do better if they have a partner.

Since our remaining apple tree is a Gala, we were restricted a relatively limited list.  Eventually, at Alameda Greenhouse we found three options.  We didn’t want a Granny Smith because, while those apples are tasty, they’re tart, better for cooking than eating.  (Unless you like really tart apples.)  That left us with Jonathan and Fuji.  The Jonathan trees looked nice, but they were obviously younger, with more slender trunks.  So we settled – quite happily, actually –on a nice semi-dwarf Fuji.

You’d think putting the new tree in would be easy, because we were using the same spot where we had taken out the previous tree.  Hah!  When I went to dig out the area, I found it was completely infested – there’s really no other word for it – with Bermuda grass roots.  Since water is precious here in the southwest, I didn’t really want the new tree to have competition.  So I started digging out the roots.

Several hours and six gallons later – I know, because I was putting the roots into buckets, and those had a measurable volume – the ground was finally more or less clear of Bermuda grass roots.  I then dug a hole twice as wide as the tree’s base and somewhat deeper.  This was then lined with fresh compost from our own bins.

(Jim had been emptying these while I’d been engaged with the Bermuda grass.)

We then set the tree in place, refilled the hole with a mixture of sand (which is what we have here rather than soil) and various amendments, then soaked with a mixture of water and root stimulant.

We’re debating whether to take off an anomalous, but sturdy, lower limb as the woman at the greenhouse said she would if it were her tree.  On the one hand, she’s right, that would encourage the tree to grow a solid upper crown.  On the other hand, that would leave us with a very silly-looking stick with a ball of leaves on top, sort of like a poodle’s tail minus the poodle.

The jury’s out for now, but I’d welcome advice.

While we were out questing for apple trees, I spotted some lovely thyme plants.  Last summer, we finally lost the plants that had flourished at the edge of our tiny pond for several years.  I was determined to plant more – not only because it’s an attractive, heat-hardy plant, but also because thyme is a key element in one of my favorite self-created recipes: Scarborough Faire Chicken.

If you’ve guessed that the key seasonings are parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, you’re right.  The fact that I grow all of these myself adds savor (pun intended) to the mix.  I also use ample garlic powder (not garlic salt) and fresh onion.  Bake covered, skin-side down at 350 for about 45 minutes, then remove cover if you want the onions to brown.  Cooking time, obviously, will vary according to the size of your pieces of chicken and other such factors.

It’s good, though.  Very.

So I wanted thyme.  Why then did I get not just one thyme plant (which would be ample), but three?  And why didn’t I get all of one variety, specifically, the English thyme that has done well at the past?

Blame it on a book called The Time Garden by Edward Eager.  If you didn’t know it already (and I didn’t when I was a kid) “thyme” is pronounced “time.”  And The Time Garden is about three pre-teens and one teen who spend the summer at a house where the thyme garden proves to be a means of time travel.  When you go depends on the type of thyme you pick.

In the best tradition of E. Nesbit style fantasy novels, the thyme garden also has the Natterjack, a guardian who explains – grumpily and reluctantly – the rules of the magic.  A Natterjack, if you don’t know is, as he himself explains, a very superior sort of toad.  This one is descended from a London toad from Covent Garden who emigrated to the New World.  “Any magic as I ‘ave,” he explains, “I puts right into this ‘ere garding.”  The kids are quick to pick up on the hint.

The first thyme picked – appropriately by impulsive Eliza – is “wild thyme.”  After that, although the children take great care with what sorts they pick, they still manage to have some interesting adventures.

When I saw that in addition to the English thyme I’d intended to get, the store also had lemon thyme and gold lemon time (this last with lovely yellow veins in the leaves) I couldn’t resist.  I planted all three varieties near the pond where – just by chance, of course – we have a sundial, and where, again, just by chance, Jim has built what he calls his “toad temple.”

If they take, I’d like to add more. Wooly thyme is lovely, as is silver thyme.

Of course we won’t have magical adventures…  That doesn’t happen to grown-ups, or so I’ve been told.  But then, as the Natterjack says in The Time Garden, time will tell!

FF: Moonstone and Lamb

I’m pretty much healed now, and immersed in work, but I’m still reading!

[image error]

Persephone is a Little Lamb

For those of you just discovering this feature, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.  Audiobook.  Proves conclusively that those who think Victorian fiction is all dry and boring have simply read the wrong novels!

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork.  Not an easy book to sum up, but I can say I very much liked it.

In Progress:

Lamb by Christopher Moore.  I’m impressed with the level of research that went into this.

Knight of Shadows.  Audiobook.  Eighteen episodes of The Shadow radio drama.  Moving on to the close…

Also:

Been spending a lot of time re-reading my own Smoke and Mirrors.  The e-book is in the final stages of preparation.  Sign up for my mailing list (a link is available on my website) to be among the first to hear when it’s ready.

TT: The Omens Look Good

JANE: We’ve talked about the works of both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman at some length in the past, but I would like to note that their collaborative novel Good Omens uses humor to take a look at a very unfunny religiously-charged topic – the end of the world.  One of my favorite bits is the revised Four Horsemen (excuse me, bikers) of the Apocalypse: Death, War, Famine, and Pollution.

[image error]

Which Reveals the Secret of Milton Keynes

Death and War are fairly recognizable evolutions of the classic trope, but Famine is brilliantly repurposed as a fad diet promoter – an excellent commentary on how (at least in prosperous societies) fear of starvation has changed into fear of becoming fat.  Pollution does not so much replace Plague as expand upon the classic concept in that  humanity is presented not only as suffering from illness, but also as inflicting it upon the natural world.

ALAN: The book is so very British in its tone and in its references that its worldwide popularity never ceases to amaze me. Wikipedia informs me that the American edition (which I’ve never seen) has a plethora of footnotes which, I assume, explain some of these things…

For example, almost every British child born between (roughly) 1920 and 1970 grew up reading Richmal Crompton’s William books. They describe the adventures of an eleven-year-old boy and his gang of friends. Crompton’s books are themselves very funny and remain very readable even today. Adam, the Antichrist in Good Omens, is just a thinly disguised version of Crompton’s William Brown – a delightful homage to a British institution.

JANE: I just took my copy of Good Omens off the shelf.  The American edition does contain a wealth of footnotes but, as far as I can tell from a quick skim, the majority of them are typical of the sort Pratchett used in the Discworld books: side comments, often humorous, but certainly not clarifications.

There are a few clearly put in at the request of some anxious editor, such as this one:

“Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham.  It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live.  Many Britons find this amusing.”

I must say, I didn’t feel the footnote added anything that an intelligent reader could not have gathered from context.  In fact, I feel that it actually obscured the point by not explaining why Britons find this amusing.

ALAN: Believe it or not, this footnote is in the British edition as well. It’s not hard to find the reason why. It allows Pratchett and Gaiman to mention Milton Keynes twice – once in the body of the text and once in a footnote – thus making the joke twice as funny!

Would you like to know why Milton Keynes is funny? It’s a bit of a tangent, but the story is far too good to miss out on…

JANE: Hey, we call these Tangents for a reason.  If I’d wanted to be forced to stay on topic, I’d be using my blog to write literary essays.  Go for it!

ALAN: Milton Keynes was formally designated as a new town in 1967. Most British towns are several thousand years old and they were never properly designed. They just sort of grew hither and yon, when nobody was looking. So the idea of having a whole new town, properly designed from the ground up, was quite a thrilling one. But of course, it was designed by a committee and as a consequence the final result was more than a little dull and stultifying. Milton Keynes is not an architectural classic… It’s a beige town, bland and unimaginative, a byword for boredom. As the footnote remarks, many Britons find this amusing.

JANE: They find boring amusing or that planning leads to a boring place amusing?

ALAN: All the above, with knobs on. The town is widely perceived as a waste of a golden opportunity. Nobody will ever admit that they come from Milton Keynes. It’s too shameful.

Bill Bryson notes in one of his travel books that he once took a train to Milton Keynes, but when he got off there, he was quite unable to find Milton Keynes.

In an effort to give the place some character, the city fathers commissioned a herd of concrete cows to be built on the outskirts of the town. Nobody is quite sure why. The cows are world famous in England. People come from yards around just to see them. Sometimes the cows get vandalised (clearly that’s what they are really there for). They have been painted pink, turned into zebras, had pyjama bottoms added to them and one of the calves was once kidnapped (a ransom note was sent to the local papers). History is silent as to whether or not the ransom was paid…

JANE: Is “pyjama” really how you Brits spell “pajama”?

ALAN: Of course it is. Perhaps we should both compromise on PJ…

JANE: PJ it is.  Of course, that’s also American shorthand for “peanut butter and jelly,” but we shall trust to context.

Remind me to tell you about a similar series of art projects here in the U.S.  I can’t remember what the one with cows was called, but there was another called The Trail of Painted Ponies.  It was exceedingly popular and for good reason.

But that’s a huge Tangent.  Let me go back to Good Omens.  In leafing through my copy, I certainly didn’t find any note about the William books.  However, I don’t think this would be necessary.  Although we don’t have “William” books precisely, we do have hosts of books about groups of children, doing the sort of things that groups of children like to do.  It is not a uniquely British theme.

 ALAN: No, it’s not uniquely British. But the William books are a very British institution with a unique place in popular culture. They are known to, and loved by, almost everybody who was born during the fifty years that Richmal Crompton was writing them. I’m sure that there are American equivalents, but William is very recognisably ours.

JANE: I wonder why they didn’t name Adam “William” then?  Were there other cues that Adam was “William,” not just an Everyboy hero?  Maybe his three pals were very like William’s?

ALAN: Quite unwittingly, you’ve hit the nail right on the head. Adam and his gang correspond very closely to William and his gang.

JANE: We’ve taken a detour to Milton Keynes, and it hasn’t been in the least beige.  Still, let’s take a breather and get back to this next week.

Does Spring Seem Ahead of Schedule?

Spring is advancing ahead of schedule, or so it seems here in our corner of New Mexico.   Temperatures already have repeatedly hit the 80’s.  We’ve seen the first toad of the year soaking in our pond.  Last year, according to our records (yes, we keep records of such things), we didn’t see the first toad until well into April.

[image error]

Apple Buds, Ready to Open

All around us we have seen cherry blossoms, pear blossoms, peach blossoms, and even apple blossoms.  Pretty as these are, this is a disturbing development because, if we get a cold snap – and I have recorded snow at my house as late as May – then we’re likely to lose much of our fruit and even some more tender plants.

I’m debating whether or not to plant cold weather crops such as carrots, radishes, and arugula.  Usually I’d wait – mostly because the high winds can bury the tiny seeds if I plant too soon –but I’m wondering if I wait if I’ll miss the best time to get these plants started.  Radishes tend to bolt and go woody if planted when the temperature has already risen.  Carrots don’t do much better.

It’s funny to realize that if I had a chance to gaze in a crystal ball, what I’d want to check would be the temperature trends for the next four weeks.

This winter finally did for an apple tree Jim and I put in over twenty years ago.  That tree had never been strong, but we kept working with it.  Still, this year I could see that the fight was over.  Last weekend, we dug out the base, then loosened up the soil, removing as many Bermuda grass roots as possible.   (No.  I didn’t plant the grass.  It’s the unwelcome heritage of a prior owner.)

We figured that we’d have plenty of time to get a new tree.  Most years, our apple tree doesn’t flower until mid or even late April.  This year, our remaining apple tree is already  budding and looks as if it could burst into flower any moment.  Even if we get a new tree nearly immediately, the chance for the necessarily cross pollination (something that is a good idea even if one has “self-pollinating” varieties of apple) to happen is greatly reduced.

However, when we went out to buy a new tree, we found the garden centers nearest to our house (we checked three) hadn’t yet received their full deliveries of fruit trees.  What they did have were mostly earlier season plants.

Well, I have the arugula seeds.  I can plant those.  Then watch, it’ll snow next week…

Stay tuned!

FF: Medicinal Reading

For those of you just discovering this feature, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.

[image error]

Kel Claims Cat’s Cradle

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams.  Audio of the radio drama.  Enjoyable.

The Venetian’s Wife by Nick Bantock.  More text than his best-selling “Griffin and Sabine” trilogy, but still heavily and creatively illustrated.

Sunchaser’s Quest: Unicorns of Balinor, Book Two by Mary Stanton.  Middle grade “missing princess” story featuring many-colored unicorns.

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.  Definitely related to Alan and my discussion of SF andreligion.

In Progress:

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.  Audiobook.  Many cite this as the first detective novel in English.

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork.  Only a few chapters in, but I already really like Marcelo.  The “real world,” not so much!

Knight of Shadows.  Audiobook.  Eighteen episodes of The Shadow radio drama.  I’m now over the half-way point.  They don’t benefit from too many at once since, like many radio dramas of the time, they rely on set pieces and a lot of repetition.  Still, they made a great amusement amid cold and fever.

Also:

If there’s one good thing about recovering from a cold or flu or whatever it is I’ve had, it’s that I don’t feel like I’m slacking if I curl up and read.  It’s medicinal!