APB: All Points Between Science and Literature: Julian Todd

Showing posts with label Julian Todd. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Science Fiction and Mundane SF

"Elizabeth Bear proclaimed that [science fiction] was the literature of testing ideas to the breaking point."

--Lou Anders on Elizabeth Bear on SF, from Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy, edited by Michael Knost

Notes:

Kudos to Elizabeth Bear. That's about the coolest definition I've read.

Lou Anders treats Mundane SF as a subgenre, mentioning Julian Todd and Geoff Ryman, which is cool, but didn't mention my contribution, which allowed for Anders' explanation of MSF differing from hard SF. Thanks to Ted Chiang and other critics--in and out of the group--I milled for years, chiseling out a solid ethos to ground Geoff's manifesto. Should it matter? Probably not. As Kurt Vonnegut said, "So it goes."

Since I'm on the topic of Mundane SF, my contribution to the subgenre in terms of story--workshopped with Gene Wolfe ye these many eons ago--is forthcoming in Eric Reynolds' Global Warming Aftermaths. Bruce Boston, Steve Ramey, Sue Linville, and Julian Todd critiqued it as well--probably others I'm forgetting.

Wiki: Mundane SF:

Trust the manifesto, not the description. We originally intended it to be projected into the far future as well as solar system developments (although a few only wanted it on Earth--you can't get everyone to agree on everything). Future technologies were acceptable as long as it adhered to today's science. Moreover, it was after Clarion that we discussed this, spurred by my idea for the need of experimental SF, and Julian Todd's idea that we don't explore oceans much in SF.

Mundane SF blog :

The blog is largely inactive these days. I had to stop posting when I started teaching, learning on the job. It appears I'd done about 80% of the posts up until that time. Since then, they averaged a post a month. We also had an explanatory website (now Chinese) that got sucked into the internet's black hole of oblivion. I may have access to rough drafts of the original posts if I dig around. UPDATE: Found some old posts from our original group, but Yahoo is a pain in the butt. Maybe I'll access them later when Yahoo irons this out. Leave a note if interested to remind me.

We edited an issue of Interzone and Geoff did his own anthology as well, When It Changed. It's critique was that it was too science-y science fiction, but that sounds pretty cool to a science major/teacher.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Samuel Delany on improving your story -- with a verifying personal anecdote from Geoff Ryman

In About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews, Samuel R. Delany discusses lackluster graduate student stories. When Delany called for better "structural richness and... richness of description of the various interiors, exteriors, and characters," one writer's work was improved with "incidents... [that] had thematic and structural resonances with one another, and the physical description of the places and characters was... richer." He also mentions a novel situation, different from her classmates. She replies:

"I made a geometric picture of how I wanted the parts of the story to relate to each other."

Rick Wilber recently linked to this article in the NY Times about writers doing actual architectural models of stories.

I reminded of Geoff Ryman generously allowing Julian Todd and I to read and critique an early draft of "Blocked," which we thought a step down from Ryman's usual work (I didn't directly state this at the time, but instead actively sought the theme and other working parts--as I would normally do in a critique). The next draft was stunningly improved--largely by following the above--not in huge passages but little details that made the difference. The same story was nominated for the Locus award and appeared in three Year's Best anthologies.