Sable Aradia's Blog, page 59
September 22, 2017
Book Review: giANTS by Edward Bryant
giANTS by Edward Bryant
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Read for the 12 Awards in 12 Months Challenge and the Big Fun in a Little Package Novella Challenge
Winner of the Nebula Award 1979.
I read this in a collection of Nebula winning stories edited by Frank Herbert. I see why it won the award, though this probably seems tropish in the modern era. The 1970s were full of giant monster movies. Various explanations were made for the giant monsters; nuclear fallout, toxic waste, alien invasion.
This story uses an entirely different approach, but it leads you to assume giant monsters. And it keeps you reading until the very end, just to get to the bottom of the mystery.
I don’t think I’m going to give you any more than that, because it will create spoilers, but it’s certainly worth a read while you’re waiting in the doctor’s office! An entertaining tale!
September 21, 2017
September 20, 2017
103 Bracing Quotes to Propel You Through Your First Draft
By M.J. Bush
Tough NaNoWriMo?
Feeling lost and haunted by wordcounts unmet?
Or wishing NaNo was your thing in the first place?
I see you.
There’s hope. Writing doesn’t need a strict timeline to happen. There doesn’t have to be some grand “starting day” for words to start hitting the page, and there certainly doesn’t have to be a designated month when writing happens.
Your story can still get written.
I’m calling it. It’s time, right now, to stop concentrating on the past and start thinking about your story.
Maybe that sounds impossible. You’ve been trying all month to just think about the story, but too much thinking and the wordcount doesn’t get met, or you just end up seeing everything that’s wrong with what you’ve already written. And you’re beyond frustrated.
Yep, I see you.
You need a quick, invigorating shower in the words of those who have gone before.
So get ready to snap your head back into writing-readiness with the advice and encouragement of authors, editors, and agents.
17 minutes, and you’ll be raring to write again.
Read the full article at Writing Geekery.
September 19, 2017
5 Mysterious Time Travelers
Good fuel for stories, whether there’s any truth to them or not!
September 18, 2017
The Art of Writing Short Stories
By C.A. King
One might expect writing a short story to be an easy task in comparison to penning a full sized novel. The age old saying, ‘not everything is as it appears’ definitely applies here. The short story is actually one of the most difficult literary genres for an author to find success.
Read the full article at Books & Quills Magazine.
September 17, 2017
What Happens When a Science Fiction Genius Starts Blogging?
By Roberto Minto
In 2010, at the age of 81, the acclaimed novelist Ursula K. Le Guin started a blog. Blogs never seemed a likely destination for the writer, who by then had a long career in 20th-century traditional publishing behind her. But Le Guin’s new book, No Time To Spare, which harvests a representative sample of her blog posts, feels like the surprising and satisfying culmination to a career in other literary forms.
Read the full article at New Republic.
September 16, 2017
The Moon is Full of Money
By Pope Brock
was slung in my favorite deck chair, drink in hand, having a gawk at the night sky. Andromeda, Pisces … I trawled the constellations, mind abandoned, still aware in some curve at the back of my brain that the world is coming apart at the seams and we’re all fucked, and enjoying the gentle paradox of it, the clink of the ice in my glass and the slumber of the dog.
By and by I found my gaze resting on the moon. There it was, the great provider: breeder of wonder, werewolves, and all those songs. The place where beauty meets philosophy, where hope and despair alike are lost.
Gnawing through the romance though was a little something I’d read not long before. An astrophysicist had claimed that the moon could save our planet.
Read the full article at Nautilus.
September 15, 2017
Developing a Relationship with Death
By Icy Sedgwick
Think of Death for a moment.
Did you picture a tall guy in a hood with a scythe? Or Neil Gaiman’s funky Siouxsie Sioux character from The Sandman? Or was it a more sombre abstract notion of pain and loss?
Death can be, and is, all of these things, and much more. But it can also be a tremendous way to add dimension to your storytelling.
So I want you to visit a graveyard.
Read the full article at IcySedgwick.com.
September 14, 2017
Book Review: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Read for the Women of Genre Fiction Challenge, the Grand Mistresses of Genre Fiction Challenge, and the High Fantasy Challenge.
My reading pace has slowed as writing deadlines have piled up on me. Writing is a bit of a feeding frenzy that way; feast or famine. So I’ve mainly been reading this in the bathroom, and it took a while to get started.
I read this classic novel for the first time when I was about twelve I think? I don’t think I really grasped it then. You would think it would be YA fiction, and it certainly starts out that way, so much so that my interest waned for about the first half of it. Perhaps this is better when you’re younger, I thought to myself, because it seemed the same old formula that was probably new when Le Guin did it but has now become a trope; boy is born a wizard, comes from difficult, poor, and somewhat neglected circumstances to a school of wizards, where he learns the Art and develops a rivalry with a young jerk who is wealthier than he is. Yawn.
But unlike every other novel you’ve read, where the young hero Does Good until finally he defeats the bad guy, this young wizard fails his first test of ethics, and thus is Le Guin’s genius revealed, as the rest of the book involves his efforts to put things to rights. Before our eyes, and in a very few pages, our protagonist Ged grows from a boy to a man, making an adult’s ethical and moral decisions along the way. The ending is as highly satisfying as it is beautiful, and only the protagonist and his best friend know the true story; his fame is not spread throughout the land, but his quiet act of heroism is no less glorious.
It is clear that Mercedes Lackey had this story in her head when she wrote The Last Herald-Mage of Valdemar (a favourite series of mine,) as did J.K. Rowling when she created Harry Potter. Le Guin proves again that she deserves her place among the Grand Masters of Science Fiction, and I can only tip my hat to her in awe.
