Early Isaac

Since I'm in a science fiction-y kind of mood I thought I'd spend some time with the guy who first got me into the genre, Isaac Asimov. Little Glenn started with I, Robot, which I read over and over. I thought that Donovan and Powell were cool. Susan Calvin was beyond cool and well into the icy, but she was interesting. The positronic brain and the three laws were an analog for human ethics. Little Glenn realized that Asimov was dealing with human morality but had separated it from humanity in order to look at it in a new way. I was hooked.

That is the sort of thing the Good Doctor did best. But not everything he wrote was at that level. Some of it was more in the realm of the science fiction action story, with a little romance thrown in. That's okay too. Even weak Asimov is still fun, and The Stars, Like Dust is pretty weak.

I get a kick out of reading old science fiction. In those days the tropes that we take for granted needed to be explained. They don't just say “put us into hyperdrive” or “open the jump gate.” In those good old days the writers would take the time to explain the science behind the imagination. Asimov shows us the mathematics behind celestial navigation. The reader gets the thrills of action, adventure, daring-do, and a lengthy explanation of the difficulties of searching for a star that might have a planet in a large area of space. Fortunately there is a girl along to ask the dumb questions.

That's another thing about reading 50s genre fiction. The girl is there to be beautiful, occasionally petulant, brave and loyal, but in need of rescuing. She also helps out with the exposition, because you've got to explain things to girls, you know. Dr. Asimov was a great and wise man, but at this early stage of his career he had not yet been enlightened by the growing feminist movement.

For an old SF fan like yours truly, The Stars, Like Dust is pleasantly quaint. It's a literary stroll through a simpler, if not better, time.

Edgar Allan Poe Square

This place, the intersection of Boylston Street and Charles Street, has been named Edgar Allan Poe Square. It's not too far from where Poe was born (here's the plaque). I don't know how impressed Eddy would be by this honor. He was never a big fan of his natal city. He considered himself a southern gentleman and liked to tweak the aesthetic sensibilities of the literary establishment in what he called “Frogpondium.” Still, his mother would have been proud. As she lay dying she wrote him a little note on the back of a sketch of Boston Harbor; “For my little son Edgar, who should ever love Boston the place of his birth, and where his mother found her best and most sympathetic friends.”

She still has friends here.

Wallace and Gromit

We've been watching Nick Park movies at our little cinema lately. We started with Chicken Run, moved on to Wallace & Gromit The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, then went back to see A Close Shave, The Wrong Trousers and A Grand Day Out. Cracking good stuff.

Chicken Run was great, of course, charming and very funny. I loved all the movie references. But I was really looking forward to seeing Wallace and Gromit again. I love those guys. Wallace's mad inventions, his child-like enthusiasm, his very Englishness, are all irresistible. And Gromit is just wonderful. I'm probably not the first person to think that he is Buster Keaton, reincarnated as a plasticine dog. He's the best silent clown since the 20s. Which is saying a lot for what is really just a bit of clay, but his animators have given him such a wonderfully expressive face that you can't help but feel for the little fellow.

The problem is that these movies always make me a bit, er, peckish. Cheddar? A nice bit of Gorgonzola? Ah, that's it. Wensleydale.

Gateway

I'm in a science fiction state of mind. I was looking through my many “to be read” lists the other day and was drawn to the SF, and that brought me to Frederik Pohl. Pohl is one of science fiction's Grand Masters, one of the best known names in the genre. The Hugo and Nebula award winning Gateway is one of his best known works. Since it's publication in 1977 it has spawned several sequels and a couple of computer games.

The premise of Gateway is pretty clever. Mankind has found relics of a highly advanced alien civilization that once plied space in our solar system and well beyond. These long vanished aliens, called Heechee, left Gateway, a base built into an asteroid that has hundreds of faster-than-light spaceships ready to use. The only problem is that while we can fly them, we can't control them, we have no idea how they work, and we have no idea where we are going when we get into them. Prospectors, those who fly out of Gateway, could be flying into danger, death, or something really valuable. Every flight is a high stakes crapshoot.

In the hands of a good writer this is a terrific idea for building a science fiction story, and Fredrick Pohl is a very good writer. The novel's structure is unusual. Chapters alternate between the story of the main character, Bob Broadhead, and Bob discussing it years later with his computer-therapist, whom he has nicknamed Sigfried von Shrink. From this we learn early on that something happened on his last mission that left him very rich and very troubled. This device helps to build tension and anticipation as the reader looks forward to what will eventually happen and how Bob will deal with the aftermath. A couple of days ago I wrote that one of the things I love about science fiction was seeing interesting, well crafted characters face challenges beyond the routine. Bob is a fully realized character, occasionally crippled by fear, ridden by guilt, and fully equipped with a set of very human virtues, vices, and flaws.

Pohl sprinkles extra-narrative vignettes throughout the book that give the reader a feel for life on Gateway. The setting, the plot, the characters, the science, it's all there. It's a first rate fix for someone in a science fiction state of mind.

Essential

I've been dragging an old copy of The Essential Ellison around with me for the last month or so. At well over a thousand pages that's a lot of Harlan Ellison. It's a remarkable book. A portrait of the artist, made up of his writing. I think I understand him a little better now. Fascinating character. Hell of a writer too.

For what it's worth, my favorite Harlan Ellison story is “'Repent Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman.” It takes a lot of courage to be the Harlequin, shouting defiance at power that would grind us down and rob us of that which makes us unique. That's how I see Harlan, throwing jellybeans at the world.

Why Not?

Over at Byzantium's Shores I found a link to The World in the Satin Bag in which the question “why science fiction” is asked and answered. And that got me thinking.

Why science fiction indeed? I like it for its flash-bang gee-whiz quality. I like it for the freedom it gives to its creators, unbound by the humdrum world of the here and now. I want that sense of wonder. I want my mind to be boggled by an imaginative work that is not mired in the requirements of realism. I love it when interesting, well crafted, engaging characters face challenges beyond our routine. And while I may not love it quite so much, I rather enjoy it when less well crafted characters do daring battle with evil killbots from the planet Flerm. Enough of my drivel. You want a really good answer, check out what Ted Gioia has to say at Conceptual Fiction.

I rather like that phrase, by the way. Conceptual Fiction. Sounds good.

Glenn's Book of Quotes, Number Nine

"To live a creative life , we must lose our fear of being wrong." -- Joseph Chilton Pearce

More Bookstore Stuff

Yet another new independent bookstore is in the works for the Boston area. Godspeed Lexington Bookstore and Café.

Go Dog Go

A small publisher from Virginia will be first to the gate in the First Dog sweepstakes. Bo America's Commander in Leash will be released next week. This morning it was ranked #2085 at Amazon and the publisher has already sold half the print run. Woof.

Wander Boston – Bring a Book Bag

Boston.com has a nice little guide to some of the used and specialty bookstores in and around Boston. I think I need to do a little shopping.

It's Not The Elements of Grammar

I've seen a lot of people linking to this essay about Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. Other than the fun of seeing someone take a shot at a sacred cow, I'm not sure why. It is one of the most pointless things I've read in a while. Geoffrey K. Pullum wastes several paragraphs to tell us that The Elements of Style is a very poor guide to English grammar. This is something like telling us that Robert's Rules of Order is a poor cookbook, or that a thesaurus is not a good dictionary. While it may be true, it misses the point. The Elements of Style is, in fact, a style manual. It lays down basic rules and advice to get novice writers thinking about how style can be the difference between good and bad writing. It is not a grammar.

I get the feeling that Pullum's beef is with bad teachers who mis-use the book or who apply it's rules as if they were all you needed to know about syntax. He tells us that “(d)espite the post-1957 explosion of theoretical linguistics, Elements settled in as the primary vehicle through which grammar was taught to college students and presented to the general public, and the subject was stuck in the doldrums for the rest of the 20th century.” That is surely an overstatement. While I don't doubt that some students were handed Strunk and White and never told about grammar, I do doubt that it was the “primary vehicle” used to teach it. In the classes I've taken and the books I've read I was always told to read a style manual and consult a good grammar. I'm sure that Professor Pullum is correct in saying that Elements has been misused. That might have been an interesting topic for him to have written about.

Instead we get to read Pullum picking nits about alleged contradictions in Elements where Strunk and White violate grammatical precepts that they have laid down. We get to read Pullum showing us dialog written by famous authors that violates Strunk's rules of grammar. Foolishness. In his introduction E.B. White quotes Professor Strunk on the subject of stylistic inflexibility; “It is an old observation,” he wrote, “that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules.” And I repeat, (at the risk of not omitting needless words) that Strunk and White were not giving us rules of grammar. A style book must, of course, deal with grammar, which is sadly a source of confusion for Professor Pullum.

Pullum tells us that his intention is not to criticize the style manual part of this style manual (sort of like saying that you are not going to review the map parts of the atlas) and then goes on to do just that. He has apparently never read an academic paper, because he feels that the advice to “be clear” is unnecessary, and that “do not explain too much” is self-evident. He tells us that Elements is just wrong when it says that a split infinitive can be used to emphasize an adverb. The adverb, he writes, is best emphasized at the end of the sentence. I think a few Star Trek fans can tell him that when we boldly go where no man has gone before, it is the adverb that is the focus of the sentence.

The Elements of Style lays down simple, pithy, easy to understand instructions to help the writer marshal his words in the most effective manner possible. A good writer should know these elements well enough to use them and to know when to go beyond them. Lazy teachers may have misused it as a grammar. I'm sure it has also been misused as a shim to stabilize a wobbly table. Perhaps someone should write an essay on how Strunk and White have thus done a disservice to American carpentry. It would certainly be as valid as Pullum's essay.

Criswell Predicts

“We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.” I predict that this website is going to be even more fun as we move into . . . the future.
via: Folderol

Compooter

Expensive and annoying technical problems were visited unto me this week. I had planned to spend most of the day writing, but instead I've been fighting some nasty malware. Eternal curses upon the perpetrators of this crap. May pustules bloom on their fingertips, may an infection drive them mad with pain, and may they be taken to a hospital, hooked up to a life support machine, and watch as the CPU that runs it crashes and melts into slag.

I'm none too happy with Symantec either. It not only couldn't do anything about the problem, it couldn't even see the problem. The open source virus zapper I tried could at least find a problem. It couldn't solve it, but at least it could name it.

Oh well. I've got new hardware and new software. I've lost some stuff, but I may be able to recover that later too. Maybe.

OK, that's about it for now. I've got to get this clickety machine working the way I want.

Pack is Back

Lovers of literature and statuary around Boston were stunned to hear that one of the duckling statues honoring Robert McCloskey's Make Way For Ducklings had been stolen. Well, maybe not stunned, as this sort of thing has happened before, but none too pleased. Today we have good news as Pack, the missing mallard, has been found. Word is he'll be back with the family in time for the annual Duckling Day Parade, so everything is just . . . well you know.

Book of Quotes, Number Eight

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum." -- Anonymous

Oh, where would we be without Lorem ipsum? Surrounded by imposing white space demanding real words and sentences. Subject to the tyranny of meaning and clarity. It is a literary landscape too horrible to contemplate. Besides, what would we call the Lorem Ipsum bookstore?

I Love That Dirty Water

Do you know the best thing about living in the Boston area? It really is the Athens of America. Yesterday the Globe told us that independent bookstores are holding their own around here, while the chains are struggling. Today I found out that someone is opening yet another bookstore. In this economy. Crazy? Maybe not. This is, after all, Boston.