APB-SAL is a blog about education, science, science education, fiction, science fiction, literature, literary stories, poetry, and anything else that strikes the blogger's fancy.
NOTE: This blog interrogates art. It rarely make moral proclamations. For that attend the church or politician of your choice. This blog concerns aesthetics, not propaganda. Consider this as interviews with books where the interviewer presents interviewees, so you get what you need to do your own thinking.
James Gunn was a science fiction writer, an educator, an advocate for science and all points between. No one quite codified the field as this man did. His life spanned nearly a century: from flappers to the Depression and WWII, to the economic boom of 1950s (including the proliferation of SF magazines) to Vietnam and counter culture, to the New Wave to the Cyberpunks, all the way to the present. He'd seen much.
He started in radio and moved to SF, publishing in Startling and Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1949. Considering the flowering of the field, it was the perfect time to enter. His first big sale would have been the next year to John W. Campbell's Astounding, the leading SF magazine of the time, and in Amazing, the oldest SF magazine.
Comparatively, it was a strange time to publish SF. Novels were not as common as the magazines, so one could find a home for their stories and later reassemble them into novels. Once the book market opened a lot of writers did that, so that it seemed the best way to make novels (Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, for instance, was sold as a novel, but was really just a collection).
Throughout Gunn's career, this was how he often built novels. He considered the novelette the ideal length for SF, and would publish them first in the magazines, later as a novel. Sometimes the stories were more successful as stories, sometimes as novels. Usually, the first story in the series got him the most attention. Examples:
"The Cave of Night" opened Station in Space and was reprinted by Judith Merrill and Isaac Asimov as among the best of SF published that year.
"Child of the Sun" opened Crisis! and was reprinted by Arthur W. Saha and Donald A. Wollheim as among the best of SF published that year.
"The Listeners" of the novel The Listeners was up for the Nebula award and reprinted by Poul Anderson as among the best of SF published that year. [The novel was the runner-up for the Campbell award]
"The Giftie" of the novel Gift from the Stars was up for the Sturgeon award and won the Analog reader's poll.
The novel The Immortals is sort of an exception where Barry Malzberg thought the opening novelette, "New Blood" was an important work of the 50s, where as Isaac Asimov thought "The Immortal" was an important story of the year. It became a TV series of the same name. If you want SF built for fun, this is probably the best place to start.
"Breaking Point" from the collection of the same name is another starting place if you like short stories. It's a kind of Twilight Zone in space, if memory serves. Brian Aldiss collected it for his Space Opera anthology.
While he wrote fun stuff, his main aim, it seemed to me, evolved until his goal was to make SF realistic. How might it really happen? He liked the fun stuff, but he wanted to make SF serious (contrast this with the image above--fun, absurd, and perhaps helpful for sales off the magazine rack, but it undermined the serious intent that some wanted to invest in the field).
He won a Hugo for his scholarly book about Isaac Asimov, Foundations. Asimov's SF, the magazine, will be publishing the last story he wrote next year. They also have an essay about religion and SF. The marvel of Jim Gunn--one of the reasons many called him a gentleman--was that everything was up for discussion, in person, in stories. You could disagree with him, and it did not affect your friendship. It will be good for humanity if we could have more of his kind on the planet.
I studied under him several times both online and in person: to learn about SF and stories. When it came to SF, his advice was always wise.
I restarted his online classes, and he tasked me to round up students. To make it happen, I had to use myself twice, once as myself and once as a pseudonym. I divided my artsy self from my science-y self and wrote SF and speculative stories. I varied my critiques, likewise. My critiques for myself, which might seem to be tricky, weren't too hard as they described what I intended to do in the next draft. I pulled off the pseudonym so well, that when I admitted to what I'd done, he didn't believe me. I pointed out that I paid for "both" students, which I think I must have originally explained that "he" didn't have a checking account. Electric Velocipede, a fun little zine sadly no longer in print,published the story under my real name.
As Bishop earlier pared master/disaster opposites in union, so she does again with "seem" and "really." The first confirms appearance, the latter expresses actuality. Also the phrase "to be meant" gives will or intention to the inanimate, or perhaps the person or thing that lost them had designs.
Start slowly will you, keep, a face, a gesture
Once again, we enter recipe territory with the first two. But we gain the speaker in the second two "will you" as if the "you" is in a hurry to lose things and the speaker is trying to slow the person down. This could also be the speaker addressing itself.
With extra commas, it isn't clear what she means by "keep." It may be an accident, a path she intended to head down, or a way of keeping something in play, maximizing possibilities she may put the word to use. It appears that she might be trying to introduce the lost loved one early, advising the listener to keep the things that memory is losing "a face, a gesture"
Stood with your glasses
Reading-glasses, car–keys, you can master
easy things.
Here Bishop again reaches for the casual tone, returns to the simple, the easy, the natural. The images, all common. She seems to want the opening to feel as as normal or universal as possible.
Look! I myself have lost or
next to last, at least, houses and
Although this part occurs later than the next, it repeats some of what I said. The common parlance of "Look!" and "I myself have," trying to ally the reader in her cause, empathizing. The following phrases would seem at first glance to be stutterings, unsure where to go but maybe the where is dependent largely on the connecting phrases, so she is trying each one on as different garments before a mirror. What she wears may dictate where she goes next. Although it seems she has been working with the same general concept, she is still keeping her options open.
The practice brings losses, lose them faster,
forget the faster-money, home, intent,
the mastered art of losing’s no disaster.
"The practice" makes this a game we're preparing for, a clinical occupation, a way to prepare, a way to master. She likes "practice" well enough to try it again in the next draft but without finishing the phrase, hoping it would come to her later (most of the next "draft" is a sketching of the end word of the poem): "Practicing my... / and possibly will end disaster." As you can see, she dwells in possibilities, doesn't nail things down.
She flips "lose them faster" on its head. She wonder if she or the reader should "forget the faster." Considering Bishop's penchant for erasing or honing as she writes, these become the reader, the writer and the poem become one and the same. What may be a note to herself may just as well become a line of the poem. It's almost as if she brings the reader into the making of the work.
the art of losing isn’t hard to master: so many things seem almost to be meant to be lost, that their loss is no disaster.
Begin with car keys I’ll never the art of losing isn’t hrd to master
The practice brings losses, lose them faster, you’ll find your time well spent the mastered art of loss is no disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop has moved toward the villanelle form (see Poets.org for description and examples). Perhaps the earlier repetition put the form in mind. Or the rhyme of "master" and "disaster" is too perfect to pass up--"master" suggesting in control, "disaster" suggesting out of control.
She sets up the lines with these rhymes and roughly sketches in other lines--or perhaps only adds notes of what she should do: "Begin with car keys"--returning to the idea of starting small and building large. The rhymes turn out to have variations that can endure a nineteen-line poem.
She likes the three ideas in lines seven and eight, but she will separate them to lines four, five and seven, especially since the verb "lose" doesn't match the noun "practice."
the art of losing isn’t hard to master so many things really seem to be meant to be lost, and the loss is no disaster —
She plays with the idea that these objects mean or intend, anthropomorphically, to be lost, so it's okay to accept their loss. She alters this with different qualifications "almost seem" to "really seem," but the first lines are close to their final form. The rhyme, though, of the second line is moved around, probably to avoid repetition of "meant" is needed most, and another "-ent" rhymed word could be move into its place.
Note the change of "well spent" reverses to "badly spent," flipping her original intent due to the poem's strange logic that she establishes in the second line: Looking for something becomes time badly spent since looking for something that intends to be lost is wasted time.
The thing to do is to begin by “mislaying”. Mostly, one begins by “mislaying”:
The title has evolved from a recipe, to becoming a gift/talent, to ending up as an art--an idea that flows naturally from the last. The title will move to the first line--a line so memorable that we remember it more than the final title. The recipe is still here: "The thing to do is to begin by."
The text is strewn with colloquial phrases like "The thing to do" perhaps Bishop is striving for natural speech, or maybe she is just letting what comes naturally to flow out. The phrase suggests etiquette, but it is loose. These two lines may be two failed attempts at beginning the poem and they may serve as much to get one's self to start writing--"The thing to do is to begin"--to get words on the page. The second line may be a rewrite of the first. While the adverb is weak, it's an interesting reminder of Bishop's penchant for qualifying. Why "mostly"? It may just be a marker reminding herself to revise or qualify within the text.
She puts "mislaying" in quotes, calling attention to the term--for herself or a future reader cannot be determined. It is a real term (first use in 1614), but perhaps it feels awkward. Perhaps it is sexual. It may just be part of a kitchen-sink method of getting ideas on the page, throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.
keys, reading-glasses, fountain pens
– these are almost too easy to be mentioned, and “mislaying” means that they usually turn up in the most obvious place, although when one is making progress, the places grow more unlikely
The banal list of common things lost grows with "keys." She turns them into a list instead of ballooning them out with an instance or explanation. Note the next comments on the previous line's banality "almost too easy"--almost, another qualifier. She tries out mislaying again--clearly fascinated by the term and follows that with an observation, humorous if not common, so she adds a line about places growing more likely. The places we search, or the place the keys end up?
– This is by way of introduction. I really want to introduce myself – I am such a fantastic lly good at losing things I think everyone shd. profit from my experiences.
These are ways of introductions--an inflation deflated by self deprecation. The tone here seems to be one of self-help or perhaps an essay.
You may find it hard to believe, but I have actually lost
I mean lost, and forever two whole houses, one a very big one. A third house, also big, is at present, I think, “mislaid” – but Maybe it’s lost too. I won’t know for sure for some time. I have lost one long (crossed out) peninsula and one island. I have lost – it can never be has never been found – a small-sized town on that same island. I’ve lost smaller bits of geography, like a splendid beach, and a good-sized bay. Two whole cities, two of the world’s biggest cities (two of the most beautiful although that’s beside the point) A piece of one continent – and one entire continent. All gone, gone forever and ever.
The hyperbolic self-agrandizement is blown out into ever larger proportion. What started as simple and small has become absurd. The way the text shoots over it, one might miss the power of losing a "house" although one might claim that losing a continent has power (never visiting again?), but the house is more intimate. Over-shooting the important stuff occurs in the next section as well. There's a lot of repetition in these that one suspects that she is looking for the best way to phrase a thing.
One might think this would have prepared me
for losing one averaged-sized notespecially——— exceptionally beautiful or dazzlingly intelligent person (except for blue eyes) (only the eyes were exceptionally beautiful and But it doesn’t seem to have, at all … the hands looked intelligent) the fine hands<
Here it is: the reason for writing--a loved one lost--appears in the first draft. She appears to search for good descriptors. One suspects this was the reason for writing all along, but the way to telling it slant took several drafts. Here it is mostly baldly told. The final draft hardly mentions a person at all--someone suggested that one might claim isn't present in the final text.
a good piece of one continent and another continent – the whole damned thing! He who loseth his life, etc… – but he who loses his love – neever, no never never never again –
This seems to overshoot the reason for writing, but perhaps it is just revising the continent and plays with a famous if uncommon Biblical quote. The poem is still searching for its way of saying.
One might begin by losing one’s reading glasses oh 2 or 3 times a day–or one’s favorite pen.
I don't consider this a draft. It's a scrap scribbled on a cocktail napkin or grocery store receipt while waiting at the doctor's office. It's a poet's notebook that may prove fruitful with the right tool. It's a concept--no more.
But it's interesting what she does with the concept. She writes a few rather banal losses, but common ones, ones readers might identify with. She is trying to make a quick catalog of ideas of where to go and perhaps came up short.
The most fascinating aspects are her titles. The first suggests that we need help with her expert guidance. The second suggests it requires a kind of talent to lose things.
What inspired this idea? This could have been initiated in at least three different ways.
She recognizes she loses objects. Then she tries to find a unique way of looking at this (titles), turning this common occurrence to have a curious spin, tries to show us the common inside a new, unusual frame.
She begins with a humorous observation with an unusual frame and starts to list common misplaced things.
She has a loss in mind already, a human one, and tries to reframe that experience, coming up with a list of commonly lost objects.
The human element appears in the first full draft, so it's possible she knew what she wanted to address and was only sketching out supporting details. Or conversely, the human element suggested itself after sketching out the concept.
However, it occurred we have 1) something common, 2) made strange, and 3) the human or emotional element to be added soon.
Interesting that the editor of the trailer chose to follow the Lynch trailer.
Supposedly, no publisher liked the book, and it couldn't get published except by a publisher of car manuals. It later won a Hugo and Nebula. And then it was beloved. As a child I struggled to get into the novel but succeeded on the second or third try, loved the wonder and political intrigue. Perhaps I was too young.
Supposedly, no one liked the first film, claimed to be confusing, and Lynch disowned it. I understood it and loved it.
The second was supposed to rehabilitate the book's image the Lynch mauled. At first critics claimed it did, and later it was also proclaimed a disappointment. And then critics came out saying that they actually liked the Lynch film better.
I found the debates strange as I liked all three: book, movie, miniseries. Movies are an odd translation, especially with anything so complex as Dune.
What is confusing is how people can judge a movie based on a trailer. Some trailers suggest a bad movie if you can't figure out the general plot.
However, it's difficult to get the general idea of the plot out of these trailers--probably due to the complex plot--although they do touch on some of the wonder.
Here are two of William Blake's most famous poems in his inimitable drawings (if you find them difficult to read, here are text versions of "The Tyger" and "The Lamb").
These were published in William Blake's 1789/1794 Songs of Innocence and Experience. These often but not always had mirrored poems, where one upon reflected upon another, setting up the contrast of innocence and experience, which is probably the most useful tool in examining these poems. The book's subtitle, as seen here, is another, underutilized tool:
"Shewing [Showing] the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul"
"The Lamb" illustrates innocence, "The Tyger" experience. Commonly, "The Lamb," which the persona addresses to the lamb itself ("Little Lamb who made thee"), is seen showing God's sweetness in giving
clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice
God himself became a lamb.
By contrast, "The Tyger" is commonly read as at least a tentative questioning if not a critique of God. How could this fearful deadly predator be made by the same hand that made the lamb ("Did he who made the Lamb make thee?")? How can the God who makes good also make evil?
It may be saying these things, and I think it is important to keep in mind, but take a closer look at "The Tyger." The first stanza is the same as the last. In other words, it has symmetry. Within that symmetry, poem asks, "What immortal hand or eye, / Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?"
What hand or eye? Why, Blake's obviously. He just did it.
We have a frame followed by what one could describe as the wildfire of the Muse. The whole centerpiece is less a description of a tiger than the a poet's process:
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart...?
Did he smile his work to see?
Art? Work? What else would God, a creator like the poet himself, do but smile with pride on his creation?
Do you doubt this interpretation? Try the next line:
"Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"
Why, yes. Blake wrote both "The Tyger" and "The Lamb."
How about the subtitle of the collection: "[Showing] the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul"? He may be talking about God but more pointedly about humanity. So the same critique one just applied to God has to be applied to himself.
When we turn to the question of "The Lamb" [Little Lamb who made thee], we have to ask what a lamb is. Yes, a wooly animal. Yes, as stated in the poem itself, God (at least in Christian terms). Also, believers. And a child, too, is considered a lamb--a usage still somewhat common today. Now these lines read differently:
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
God is a child, the lamb is a child, the poet narrator is a child, and all "called by his name." So God is a child is a lamb is a poet/creator. We all have the same name.
"Why, the nerve! Calling himself god and 'immortal!' "
That does take some balls. Maybe Blake is egotistical, but it makes the poems fascinating. For now we see our humanity reduced to contraries--formed of opposite poles. These aren't poems about innocence and evil--at least not so much--but of innocence and experience. Does the tyger have less right to exist? It does exist. It's already here, and it exists within us, next to the lamb. Are they at war? Are we at war with ourselves, our contraries? Let's rephrase our critique of God and point it at ourselves: "How can we who make good also make evil?"
Much as these poems seem simple, simplicity isn't Blake.
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin is free to watch in the United States through August 30. It's a discussion of her work and thematic preoccupations.
Writers were quoting her saying stories make their own rules that you cannot break.
Another good quote:
"Imaginative fiction trained people to be aware that there are other ways to do things and other ways to be, that there is not just one civilization, and it is good, and it is the way we have to be."
The poem opens "A storm mixed and fell upon the lake." We have three figures, presumably all men are stuck during a storm while having a boating mishap. The first two seven-line stanzas describe this outcome.
The volta comes at the beginning of the third and final stanza: "Then a great voice said, 'Rub-a-dub-dub!' "
The trick of this multiple it's a shift in tone--referencing a nursery rhyme where three men are out to sea. One version calls the men "fools": They are, after all, not sailors but men of other professions trying to sail in a tub.
The final line claims: "And we sailed off believing, believing." There are a number of ways to read this transformation:
Straight. Three men are inexperienced sailors who fear drowning until they encounter a "great voice" [God or something like a god]. This reading fails to take into account the tone shift with "Rub-a-dub-dub!" however. Perhaps God is amused at their ineptitude. Their belief is real. Perhaps God sees them as absurd and foolish.
Imaginative. Three young boys imagine themselves out in lake, shower head raining down on them and their imagination leads them to despair until a parent reminds them of who and where they are. The main tone, though, undermines this reading unless the boys are imaginative. Their belief is both absurd and real. Parents provide illusory protection.
Both interpretations simultaneously. These men are boys, fools, but God makes them feel secure as if parent talking to them. Their belief is both absurd and real. But should they be believing? Or was it just their imagination? Maybe their fear was absurd. They are, after all, on a lake, albeit in a leaky boat.
What makes this one fun are the multiple possibilities in delineating what's happening too much. Some details make it seem real, others do not. The possibilities make it a tantalizing joy to read.
Paul Zimmer calls the poem "kind of irreverent," which perhaps shuts down reading #1, but maybe not since God is unlikely to quote from a nursery rhyme. He does, however, mention that it's original inspiration is based on an event that occurred in reality, which bolsters reading #1 or #3.
David Wong's unique, humorous voice is a major draw for his fiction. He wrote the strange paranormal investigator series, John Dies at the End (the last book, What the Hell Did I Just Read, reviewed here).
His best characters are deeply flawed and have a modus operandi, a philosophy for living.
Zoey's father, a deadbeat beat dad who happens to be a famed rich inventor, has just died, which means that people are trying to kill her since she has the key that everyone wants to unlock some technological wonder. The novel opens enticingly enough:
The radio had stopped working years ago, and so Zoey made up for it by singing a hit pop song from her time called "Butt Show (and I Don't Charge Admission)" while she plugged in the strand of Christmas lights she had tacked around the top of the car's interior. She peeled the lid off her chili, watched steam waft into the frigid air, and decided that things really could be worse. Zoey always tried to appreciate the little things in life, like the fact that just a generation ago you couldn't devote both hands to eating a bowl of fast-food chili while the car drove itself (how did people use to eat car chili? With a straw?). She had also recently upgraded her phone to one that displayed a little holographic image of the caller, but so far she had found this feature was only useful for terrifying her holophobic cat, which hardly justified the cost of the upgrade. However, a moment later that feature did allow her to see that the call that saved her life came from a man who was fond of wearing fancy suits.
And we're off to the races in her Toyota with her hopeful would-be abductor trailing close behind.
Zoey isn't sure whom to trust--just as she finds someone to trust, even becoming attracted to him, he's dead. Somehow Zoey has to get past those who want to kill her, and those who want to use her for money for the technology she unwittingly has the key to.
Part of the pleasure of the novel is the near-futuristic milieu--a city so deeply rich in money and technology that we join a wide-eyed Zoey at the surprises that await her. Everyone's online and recording everyone, so that it's impossible to run away and anonymously melt into the crowd. She hates her father's absence and resents his using her this way, but she becomes accustomed to the lifestyle as she sticks around.
Part of the mixed pleasure and pain is that the author may love Zoey too much. She isn't terribly flawed in a significant way. Occasionally her personality takes off when expressing her desire for what clothes she'll wear, but as is, she's a little too idealistically drawn. In the John Dies at the End series, the female protagonist is defined by her contrast with her boyfriend. Zoey doesn't really have a companion here to be defined against.
Her antagonist is powerful and possesses a most wondrous reason for being--wondrous, not in that he's agreeable but fascinating. Unfortunately, he is so generously mocked, we don't quite believe he's a real threat to our protagonist.
It may be that since Zoey Ashe has a whole series planned around her, the author has a long-range arc laid out for her that isn't yet visible. She does become a master of her destiny near the end of the novel, but one can hope for an increased dynamic in the next novel of the series. Still, with Wong's skill for odd-ball characters, readers should look forward to the next novel, soon to be released--October 13, 2020.
I, more or less, agree with the New York Public Library on which books to start with. Allow me to add a few, small explanations:
If you're more of the character- or literary-type, start with Kindred. It deals with an African American in an interracial relationship. She time-travels between the antebellum South and the twentieth century.
If you want speculative wows, go with Wild Seed. It's been awhile since I read it, but it was a strange kind of love story between two god-like immortals.
If you're a writer or you want to get a sense of the author, your best bet is Blood Child and Other Stories.
I met Butler at and was drawn to the Clarion Writer's Workshop, in part, to study with her. One of my favorite photos of the time was a picture of her and me walking back from the workshop through Seattle. The sky, usually overcast and rainy, was a bright blue. She stood tall with her short-cropped head tilted back in a laugh, I was absorbed by the sidewalk, head down in concentration. I may have told a joke and forgotten about it as quickly as I'd told it--as I tend to do, especially then--and moved on to the next thing.
We got along well, and I recorded an interview with her which I still hope to someday locate (I had moved around frequently after the interview). She had a soft, back-of-the-throat voice. As I told her then, her characters have much to be admired.
She had won a MacArthur Genius Grant and smiled that she thought she knew who gave her [nominated her for?] that.
Her finest ability as a mentor was to inspire. Much of what she told us that first day, she covered in the essay "Positive Obsession"--a goad for writers to keep trying. Not included in that essay, she talked about how she'd watched The Devil Girl from Mars, and she started writing because she knew she could write something better than that. She would have been seven or eight at the time. I always wanted to watch that movie to see what the young Butler saw as a child.
The essay is worth reading whenever a writer needs a pick-me-up.
They say she was twelve when she watched Devil Girl, so she must have watched it in some rerun form in the late 50s, not during its original release. I'm not sure how common that was then. Possibly she saw it on TV.
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Photo By Nikolas Coukouma CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=602976
Some writers spend a great deal of time developing and describing their worlds. Butler, instead, focuses on her characters and allows the world's strangeness to be viewed through them.
Here's her opening line from "Blood Child":
"My last night of childhood began"
We are clued immediately into a coming-of-age tale. In the next paragraph, the family relationships (three characters)--over whether one sips an egg--are laid bare:
I lay against T'Gatoi's long, velvet underside, sipping from my egg now and then, wondering why my mother denied herself such a harmless pleasure. Less of her hair would be gray if she indulged now and then. The eggs prolonged life, prolonged vigor. My father, who had never refused one in his life, had lived more than twice as long as he should have. And toward the end of his life, when he should have been slowing down, he had married my mother and fathered four children.
We aren't told why the world is what it is, but we gain glimmerings and sense a tension between the different characters over whether they would sip from an egg.
In "The Evening and the Morning and the Night" she again simultaneously shapes two characters in one tiny paragraph:
I won't describe the ward. It's enough to say that when they brought me home, I cut my wrists. I did a thorough job of it, old Roman style in a bathtub of warm water. Almost made it. My father dislocated his shoulder breaking down the bathroom door. He and I never forgave each other for that day.
We have two characters responding differently to the same things. Note that she doesn't describe the ward. Description isn't Butler's thing. Besides, we've seen wards before. Readers should supply their own. Instead, the world is experienced through the bodies of her characters.
A similar but different scene occurs in "Speech Sounds" where in an apocalyptic world a cop and a bus passenger meet and exchange communication through a series of hand signals since they cannot communicate otherwise. They each have a slightly different approach to the other--at first. Gradually, we learn why they are wary.
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When Octavia Butler gave a reading after our workshop, a young African American man stood to ask a question. Deferential, he clearly respected her. I forget his exact question, but it was political, Usually so sweet, Butler became aggravated, not quite angry. Perhaps she was tired of having to represent in a certain manner. Instead, her answer turned what was an overly simple perspective into a complex one.
Much as I felt for the young man, I loved her answer. You can sense this aspect of complexity in her two later narratives--"Amnesty" and "Book of Martha." When people try to pin down her characters, they shift perspectives into complex positions, so that over-simplification is difficult. I recommend these stories for those more interested in Butler as a person than as the stories being exemplars of the field.
These two factors--characterizing deftly and not surrendering to simplicity--are two key strengths that contribute to her being well esteemed. It's nice to read writers who field a few strengths well, so writers realize that they don't have to be perfect at everything.
Two more factors pushed her good works into being her best: First, her characters were poised in a barrel about to tumble over a great waterfall. And second, by the end, we'd feel like she'd examined an issue with every possible lens, from every possible angle. Could there be anything simpler or harder to emulate?
If you haven't done so yet, you can download for FREE and in three digital formats Lightspeed Magazine's People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction, as well as two other volumes in the groundbreaking book series. Nalo Hopkinson and I selected the short stories for the original fiction section of POC Destroy SF, which went on to win the British Fantasy Award for Best Anthology in 2017. The books can be downloaded here [at destroysf.com].
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Be careful of graphics like this. Do you see the problem?
We have percents but no sense about what kinds of numbers they refer to. Cut 1000 by 50% and get 500. Add 50% to 10 and get 15. Which number is greater? 500 or 15? [In my classroom if a student left a number like 500 unlabeled, I'd ask, "500 what? Ostriches? Hippopotami? Orangutans? But here I'm leaving open possibilities and assuming that 500 and 15 represent similar comparable figures.] Look at the number and the trends. Kansas is going up, but 50 new cases per million is actually better than most states. Hawaii is up, but they've been super low (less than one case per day on average). They shot up, sixty times where they were. Yes, 60. But that's stll low in comparison (7 or 8 cases per million per day, which is far better than nearly everyone in green). 50 seems to be a dividing line between states that have work to do although, of course, we'd like the numbers to be zero, but is that realistic? Discussion about this later.
I loved the first three books of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy although I was just a kid when I'd read them. They had grand imaginative scope. I'm not sure how they'd transfer to screen, but as a series, this sounds like it might be promising.
As you've probably heard, new cases are on the rise in the U.S. although some states are trying to curb that rise.
What you may not know is the new deaths have been on the decline--even with the rise in new cases:
Now I graphed this out: New Cases/New Deaths (weekly average) over time. NOTE: The following graph approximates a trend but is problematic. The deaths could come at any time after someone is diagnosed. It likely would not occur at the same time although it might in a few cases. If I could match the diagnosis with deaths, the graphs would be highly accurate. If I could find the average length of time between diagnosis and death, it would be close. If I get an average, I will modify the graph at that point. However, until that time, this graph should still show the general trend.
Also note that these numbers deal with averages to remove spikes that might be artifacts of differences in reporting. Moreover, the percentages would be lower still if we could factor in those infected by COVID-19 who remained asymptomatic.
It seems that at one point, Day 45, we peaked on the percent [7.6%] of those who contracted and also died, noting the above caveats. The opening numbers probably do not reflect accurate numbers due to the delay between contracting and passing. When I get an accurate average, I will shift the data.
Here's what it would look like if the average death occurred five days after diagnosis (please assume same labels):
Seven days:
Ten days:
As I suspected, the opening parts did not match, but the ending parts do correspond well--numbers approach two or three percent. The numbers for ten days seem to start too steep, so that seems improbable (one out of three patients died at first?), but it isn't our place to question the data until we get a better average.
