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WK33
Jun 8, 2022 23:21:26 GMT
Post by guevara on Jun 8, 2022 23:21:26 GMT
“The Fartian Chronicles” lost me from the first word. Something every writer should know: scatological humor is not funny! Well, I take that back: Chaucer’s “Miller’s Tale” used it pretty well; but I don’t know of anything written in the last four-hundred years since then that successfully uses that particular trope. So naming a race of beings after a fart is not a good way to start thing out.
The story follows a pattern we get a lot in science fiction: an inhabitant from another culture come to Earth and stands in stark contrast to the foolishness and shallowness of Terrans. A prime example of this sort of fiction is El Disaque la Tierra se Detuvo wherein a being named Klatu arrives in a flying saucer. He is kind, loving, considerate—exemplary in every way and stands in contrast to the violent, suspicious, and destructive people of earth, who eventually kill him (he is raised from the dead) and warns us we need to change our ways. "The Fartian Chronicles" uses that same genre of sci-fi, but its use of it is way, way out of line.
The inhabitants of earth are idiotic, shallow-mind, consumeristic and just plain stupid. All of this presentation is introduced as a way to satirize the people of earth; to point out how we only think of music, TV and movies, eating out, celebrities—these sorts of things. Satire of this sort can be effective, but only when used properly.
Let me momentarily play el professor (which I was for many years). Satire is great, deriving from the ancient traditions of the Roman poets Juvenile and Horace, and the Greek playwright Aristophanes. But satire is not sarcasm. And what we see in this story is not satire. True satire points to the absurdities of a society in the hope that by pointing them out and making people see their ridiculousness some change might come about; people might see the absurd behavior of fellow-citizens and try to change or amend it. Satire always has a constructive aspect.
In this venture, the absurd behavior of the people of Earth is depicted as mere absurdity. There is no hope that peoples’ behavior might change. The is no salutary reason for presenting their behavior aside from getting a few cheap laughs. And, as I said, the venture isn’t even that funny. The extremity of Terran behavior places the planet outside the hope of ever changing.
As we say where I come from, Esa es mi opinión, y me quedo con ella. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking with it.
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WK33
Jun 9, 2022 14:03:54 GMT
Post by guevara on Jun 9, 2022 14:03:54 GMT
“Mr. Blythe and his Cinderella” was well-written, the prose clear, the characters well-drawn. Yet it was a plot that has been written and re-written many times. The Italian literary critic Umberto Eco once commented, “All books speak of other books and every author tells a story that has already been told.” Yes, this is true. Accordingly, an author must tell the repeatedly-told story in a way that is unique, compelling, and interesting. He must do something to make the well-worn plot stand out; make it somehow unique. Eco himself did this in his international best-seller The Name of the Rose by taking the plot of a who-done-it murder mystery and placing it in a medieval monastery; his detective in the story is a monk named William of Baskerville (of course, his name immediately suggests the Sherlock Holmes story, “The Hound of the Baskervilles” and makes the main character a Holmes of sorts). This connection with Victorian Literature and with a familiar detective character but set in a unique place and time makes his who-done-it story fascinante e interesante.
The main thing I see about “Mr. Blythe and his Cinderella” is that it does not do this sort of thing. It is an old plot—guy hitting on girl is double-crossed, loses everything. There is nothing to make the venture notable. It is a set in a small town and centers around a restaurant owner and his staff; but there is nothing unique about the town, Mr. Blythe the owner, or the restaurant itself. And, as I noted, the plot is one that has been done over and over in reams of stories; that is not bad if the author gives it some sort of unique twist, as Eco did; but in this case, there is no uniqueness to bring the venture to life. It ends up being a predicable plot, however well-written.
Also, calling Cindy—the waitress Mr. Blythe is hitting on—“Cinderella” raises expectations that are not fulfilled. If an author refers to a well-known myth or fairy tale in the title, the reader expects something in the venture to reflect the myth/fairytale referred to. This is especially true in this era of “revisionist” myths: retelling of familiar tales we heard as kids but putting some sort of quirky twist on them. An example would be the popular cartoon movie Shrek, which tells the tale of “Puss in Boots” from the ogre’s point of view. This literary technique is popular today, and the title of the venture raises an expectation that is not fulfilled. Cindy does not resemble Cinderella in any way, nor do the things in the story that happen to her reflect very much of the original tale, even if it is a revised version.
As I pointed out, the prose is nicely done, the writing is good; it is in the area of plot that the venture does not live up to expectations. Perhaps some revisión is in order, but as it stands now the plot does not carry any surprises; no “ah-ha” moment for the reader; just a chronicle of a womanizer who has the tables turned on him.
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WK33
Jun 9, 2022 16:30:18 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jun 9, 2022 16:30:18 GMT
(Damn, this is turning into one long-ass week.)
Was thinking this morning that writing is the most literal art form, and wondered if that's why it's sometimes called literature (or vice versa?). Observations, thoughts and ideas are (or probably should be) expressed much more directly and exactly than in, say, music, which gives its audience more leeway (except maybe hymns). So for writing to evoke truly deep stirrings, it has to have non-literal, figurative or metaphorical, components and layers. These allow (force) readers to tailor a work to their own biases and needs, i.e. to disturb and comfort.
Tried to read Landes' Turn Heel. Maybe not as hard as Guevara tried to read that fart cap, where, from his critique, I got the feeling he'd read every stinking word. I feel like Dep reads all her assigned cap. Even the ones she finds distasteful she coerces into something beautiful by mating it with her poetic musings. So I feel a little bad for the VCs whose work gets tossed my way. Like this one. Because even though it's probably better written and more mature than the one the G-man just very eruditely portholed, I started skimming after a dozen or fewer pages, and eventually just skipped to the end. I have things to do, to learn, a misspent life to reflect on.
I liked how it hit the ground running, put me in a bloody cage fight. But then all it seemed to be was fighting. Well... fighting and talking. Lots of talking too, but only as a prelude to more fighting. Which is great, I suppose. Isn't that pretty much all humans do anymore anyway: talk and fight? Unfortunately for this yarn, as with, say, the thing between Ukraine and Russia, I really didn't care who prevailed, just wanted it over with. I got that the protagonist wore some sort of high-tech servo armor in the cage, which begged the unanswered (as far as I read) question: just what are the rules regarding weapons in these fights? Like how much of the conflict can be delegated to machines? Even in war, even if no one follows them, there are rules.
This early sentence's square-bracketed inserts gave me hopeful pause:
He launched through the air, sticking a strong forearm out and clipping [the man called] Ox in the throat, flipping [him] the man backwards onto his stomach.
Sure they're superfluous, unnecessary. But they suggest voice, the sort of authorial insertions Wallace sometimes liked to employ. Alas, the technique is never followed up on, making me wonder if they were just notes the author neglected to cut.
A few other nits maybe worth mentioning:
a short stint to tie him over before he could move back.
tide
Ox nodded. “Suplex?” he asked The Wrath. The blood came rushing back to his head. He winked at Ox. Time for the finale, he thought.
Okay, Ox nodded, then spoke; The Wrath (assumedly) winked. But whose head did the blood rush back into? And who thought it was time for the finale? With some effort and concentration, this can all be figured out from context, but the reader shouldn't have to.
The Wrath stomped on Genghis’ foot hard. He winced in pain...
Again, one can conclude that it was he whose foot got stomped that winced in pain, even if the grammar suggests otherwise.
Mohawk stared at Steve, begging him to do something with his eyes.
Begging him to do what? Cross them?
He turned to find Genghis had arisen and was throttling towards him.
throttling?
The final sentence switches to present tense.
This cap reminded me a little of one I subbed here under a pseudonym many years ago (which most of us do here now and again). In mine, fighters entered the cage naked. Think international waters or deep space. Legally, the cage was a country with no laws, which fighters immigrated to and emigrated from. Teams of doctors with high-tech machines and spare organs and whatnot were on hand to resurrect combatants, usually the loser. The protagonist, now an old man near death, reminisces to his many progeny how he met their matriarch in the cage, how they somehow wound up fucking instead of fighting to the death. It's a great story: poignant, exciting, funny, poetic and chock full of deeper meanings. Dep didn't like it though. Replied with a very thoughtful rejection letter. Was afraid I'd have my feelings hurt in the Terminal, as I recall.
In the end, there's no accounting for taste. I'm sure Landes understands this.
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WK33
Jun 17, 2022 16:34:48 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jun 17, 2022 16:34:48 GMT
I like cap that's got voice, is unafraid and non-woke (e.g., check out the Monkey's blog: rorschalk.substack.com/).
I once started an alternate history, steampunk thing where the South had won, tentatively titled, "The House Nigger." I know the Civil War (not actually a civil war since the South just wanted to secede) wasn't about slavery. Lincoln, as racist as the next guy, had offered them slavery in perpetuity. It was the tariffs, the economic sanctions, they objected to. Besides, slavery was never abolished. It just changed form, targets a different demographic now, is wealth instead of race oriented. A couple months ago, the company whose mostly crap software I'd been slaving over for 34 years, encouraged and supported by our government, decided everyone had to submit to an unsafe, experimental medical treatment or be terminated without severance. There was a time when I'd have had to comply, as some did. I had student loan debt, a mortgage, and kids, who, like me, enjoyed food and clothing and whatnot. Finding another master probably wouldn't have been an option, since most plantations had similar mandates. I bounced my house nigger idea, where slavery had taken a different course, off a writing colleague, who insisted I change the title to, "The House Nigga." So I never wrote it.
I found it refreshing to read a piece, and without even skimming, where Blacks, not Jews, were God's chosen people. It's right in the Bible. I like how it's peppered with niggers, albeit only via dialectic dialog, of which I'd guess it's about eighty percent comprised. Twain, Steinbeck, Vonnegut, they all went there. But, aside from its argument, its I suppose shocking to some premise and vernacular, I never really gleaned much story. The MC has an artificial leg that his wife likes punitively to hide, and which is just begging to rise to metaphor, but then, for me, never does. In fact, in the somewhat beatific ending, she promises never to take it again, exhibiting the only character growth in what I found to be a fun but static piece. So it is with a modicum of guilt and uncertainty that I'm portholing, with appreciation, Lampley's The Chosen People.
Wasn't wearing my editor hat, but saw one typo:
Tale a man's leg.
Take
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WK33
Jun 22, 2022 14:30:37 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jun 22, 2022 14:30:37 GMT
This Beside the Sickle Moon cap is impressively well written, maybe not surprising given the VC's CV, except that prose of this caliber is always a little unexpected. Another personal plus is that it's near-future sci-fi, the prognostic stuff I usually go for. It's set in the Middle East, mainly in the open-air prison that is Gaza, but incorporates some broader world building. Guessing it's a few years old since there are no pandemic influences. Water scarcity is a thing though.
Technically, I thought there were some comma faults, and better use could have been made of hyphens. But writing at this level is allowed, even expected, to bend the rules.
Only flagged one minor verb misconjugation:
“We’ve gotta go,” I shout just as the pop of teargas turn into the crack, crack, bang of live gunfire...
pops (or turns)
I did start to skim toward the end. I don't think it totally works as a "Self-Contained Novel Excerpt" (as advertised on the title page). In the greater work, I imagine this author was able to bring readers to care about the narrator via his biases and backstory, but the action (albeit very well done) to character development ratio here struck me as too high. I wonder if the novel is written in 1st person, present tense. Even in this excerpt I was starting to overdose on "I" and immediacy. It ends so abruptly that Hussien might want to consider chopping it off mid-sentence, suggesting the MC took a bullet or something.
But the description, authenticity, future building, quality of writing, even the antisemitism (as in anti Israel) are all too good for me not to let it ascend to the denizens of the Terminal here.
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WK33
Jul 1, 2022 1:34:37 GMT
Post by guevara on Jul 1, 2022 1:34:37 GMT
“Ganymede” is hard science fiction—a thing we don’t see a lot of these days, and this is part of the charm of it. Many know, but for those who don’t, “hard” science fiction is the older style of sci-fi from the days of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein that incorporated the language and the logic of science into the venture. Most of the features that make up a venture in hard science fiction are based on existing technology extended to what the writers assumed would be achieved by continued scientific research. They did not make up things like warp speed, replicators, or transporters to facilitate their stories. They were based on current science perfected in the future. “Ganymede” resembles some of these older ventures and the early sci-fi of the fifties and sixties—not exactly, but it is resonant of the older traditions in that genre of writing.
And the tale is intriguing. Something has happened on Ganymede, one of the moons of Jupiter, and a team of scientists has arrived to investigate. The people on the colony there have experienced a disaster involving a breach in their walls and the infusion of a dark liquid. The liquid, deadly, has killed many of the citizens of the colony as it made its way through tunnels and corridors; contact with substance causes “uncontrollable coughing. Spasms. Nightmarish delusion. A bluing of the flesh, along with a tendency to bleed from the nose, mouth, ears.” No es una forma agradable de morir—not a happy way to die; at least I wouldn’t want to die like that.
The investigation progresses. There is discussion of various space gadgets can create rooms and tunnels. Again, the “hard” science fiction shows its charm. It pulls the reader in as the cause of the problem is discovered.
The liquid, they at last discern, came from a meteorite that smashed into the small moon. The phenomenon of panspermia explains the disaster. Panspermia is “the theory that life on the earth originated from microorganisms or chemical precursors of life present in outer space and able to initiate life on reaching a suitable environment.” The scientists conclude that a meteorite slammed into the settlement on Gandymede and released viruses that had been traveling in space thousands or millions of years. When it hit the new environment it released microscopic creatures and the medium that held them. The ending of the venture (I won’t ruin it) centers on this.
There are some weaknesses. The main characters are a bit stereotypical. The young male military figure is un egoista conquetos and constantly hits on the young female doctor who is, of course, bonita y sexy. He is punished by receiving an infection from the interplanetary-going viruses. Still, the overall venture is a good one. It is heartening to read a venture that still believes in the beneficence and efficacy of science. I vote yes!
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WK33
Jul 8, 2022 12:58:24 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jul 8, 2022 12:58:24 GMT
Murray's Alley Cats was an unusual read for me. I took it on pre-caffeinated the other morning. The markets were tanking (again). Some Canadian medical poobah had just decreed we're all expected to take the rona jab every nine months until forever now in order to be considered "vaccine" compliant, which, even though I'll never willingly take poke-1, added to my shitty mood for how incredibly fucking stupid we've become. So, 9 out of 10 caps, I'd probably have just glanced at the first few sentences and bailed. But, somewhat to my surprise, I read the whole thing without skimming, actually kind of almost savoring. I'm a sucker for relationship themes, the dialog is snappy, and the writing's overall clean. So thanks, Mike, for the distraction.
So why am I portholing it? Been asking myself this for a couple days now. I don't think it's artistic envy or jealousy, though this is always a possibility. I know it seems picayunish, but the following was an early "Oh-no" for me: Charmagne drapes her auburn hair... I hate how so many writers feel the need to slip in eye and hair color like this. Who cares what fucking color her hair is? It in no way develops her or anyone's character... maybe unless she's dyed it or the dude has some sort of auburn hair fetish. This technique always makes me wonder if said character has another head of hair of a different color. Then, a few pages later: The breeze snaps her auburn hair... Really. Maybe best to just consider all our characters Asain.
But such minor snafus as the redundant use of a widely employed descriptive technique is in no way enough to warrant my shitcanning a well written and entertaining story, easily on par with many a bestselling author's. Not to be a lit-snob, but it just didn't, when all was said and done, offer much of anything. It didn't inform or embiggen me. I didn't wish I'd written it.
Dwane's a dude. His girlfriends are hotties with nice racks and tight asses. He's long overcome some seemingly serious psych issues, so there's really no conflict, almost no plot, just incidents, a lot of backstory and clever banter leading to a happy ending that felt a little truncated in an enough-already sort of way.
I've never said this before, but: Sorry, and, Keep up the good work.
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WK33
Jul 15, 2022 13:50:15 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jul 15, 2022 13:50:15 GMT
There was, as far as I could read, which was not terribly far, technically nothing wrong with Honovich's Cheshara's Ribbon novelette. The 1st person narrator's provincial voice, for me, grated a little, but was strong and consistent. The details are credible in a generic sort of way.
Lying abed this morning, I asked Ms. Rocks if she thought "half dead" was an idiom or a cliche. She was probably still a little pissed at me for not calling when a jam session in the mall ran a little longer than I'd anticipated last night. Wasn't until my cell phone's alarm beeped that it was time for her warfarin that I realized how the time had flown. Her "I don't know [care]" suggested all was not yet forgiven, so I opined that it was both. But then most idioms are. In the cap under discussion here, a stranger and his horse are described as "half-dead," which is why I recount the above fascinating exchange between Ms Rocks and myself. Though, upon reflection, "half-dead" was repeated efficiently and effectively enough as an adjective. So now I'm thinking most adjectives, indeed words, are idioms, language itself a broadly adopted cliche.
So why did I stop reading a perfectly good yarn on or around page 5 (of 30)? Personal tastes, of course. I'm just not into made up stories in general and fantasy in particular. For me, fiction must not be... well... fictitious. Though lots is. But my personal biases and jadedness re most things literary is unlikely to be of any help or inspiration to the VC.
I guess this cap just felt derivative of a plethora of similar entertainments, albeit of which I am similarly (and mercifully) not familiar. I did, years ago, as a boy, try to read Lord of the Rings, and had even less success than I have every time I've tried to read any version (even the supposedly humorous ones) of The Bible. Made up shit, true or not, just bores me. I need firsthand knowledge and/or research that inspires real suspension of disbelief and imparts knowledge and understandings in excess of my own. I think it was Vonnegut who advised, "Don't waste your reader's time." So an 11,000+ word story has to be a lot stronger than a, say, 5000 word one for me to push it up to our overworked terminali. Therefor, this is a hard pass.
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WK33
Jul 15, 2022 23:20:26 GMT
Post by guevara on Jul 15, 2022 23:20:26 GMT
The venture titled “Dewey Hits the Lottery” had a lot of potential and might have made an interesting and absorbing venture but that it wandered off course, not forming a coherent narrative, ending up as three or four separate narratives strung together. When this happens, of course, there can be no unity in it. It becomes a shapeshifter, transforming into three or four short tales that are not related very much and have no point as a venture. In Hemingway’s “The Killers” Nick learns how nasty and vicious life can be and that there is nothing one can do to change this. In James Joyce’s “A Painful Case” the main character realizes that he has cut himself all from human love and affection and is alone because of this. Both stories develop a plot and take the reader through a series of events that reach a conclusion.
This project never quite succeeds at doing so. It focuses on a single character but does not form a unified narrative that comes to a conclusion so that readers know something about the character and about the nature of choices and the consequences they bring about. This could have been an important point and generated sympathy for the main character, but it is not developed. Dewy has a disability, is scorned by his fellow-workers, and drinks too much. Little is made of this. He loses his job and then wins the lottery.
I thought at this point the venture would turn to something exciting. I thought he would use his new wealth to hire some mafia thugs to rough up the guys who were unfair to him or finance some other sort of revenge. But no. He goes off with his money. This is another matter that leaves gaps in the story. We are never told exactly how much he won and it turns out not to be a big factor in the narrative. So, as a reader, I was left flat. The venture set up expectations but did not use them to enhance the action or develop the plot line. Dewy then gets involved in a business venture that turns out to be a drug ring and comes up with an elaborate scheme to get out of it—again, this shift does not bring resolution to the story.
So the whole thing rambles, does not solidify into a plot, and fails to set out a strong line of action that carries the venture along. It is, in fact, rather like a loose compendium of two or three narratives that start out and go nowhere. Too bad, because the idea was good and had a lot of potential; but, as it stands, the venture does not have the strength to carry the reader and or create curiosity about what will happen. Too much happens and all of it seems random and never makes a thematic point. It promised but did not deliver; or, as my native tongue says much more eloquently, Prometió pero no cumplió.
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WK33
Jul 28, 2022 12:48:56 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jul 28, 2022 12:48:56 GMT
Dear VC, Before spewing venomous bile in yet another "literary" diatribe, I again feel the need to qualify or temper any hurtful or insensitive remarks with the assertion that I don't know you, nor you me. That you've taken the time and effort to write and submit your imaginings, and that I'm taking time to read (or at least peruse) and comment on them, I suppose implies a commonality of interests. But it's not enough. If you were my brother, or lover, or even a close web friend, I'd try to find uplifting things to say. You obviously enjoy writing, and this, if for no other reason, is enough to continue. The purpose of a reject slip is not to teach creative writing. But then this is not a rejection, it is a review, a critique. A rant. And not a very good one.
I think Lampley's Escape might be the fastest I've ever been able to read a story without really missing anything. Technically, as in grammatically, it's fine. So maybe I'll blame Grammarly, or Word, or even Gmail's editing.
A tip for writing in first person: try not to begin most of your sentences with I. This POV is a one-sided conversation. So overuse of the pronoun, I, comes across as dull and a little rude. Another suggestion for first person would be not to employ a lot of verbatim dialog. When we narrate events to others, we narrate in the first person. Next time you're telling someone about how you beat a traffic ticket, or told your boss to fuck off, or climbed Mt. Everest, or banged some hooker, or escaped from juvenile detention, notice how little you recount what others have said word for word. You paraphrase. You summarize. But mostly you just omit because the vast bulk of what people say isn't that memorable or idea-rich (which is why it's so easy to write).
Writing is extreme fantasizing. Reading less so. So, as pleasurable as it might be to nestle your face between the guy who picked you up hitchiking's girlfriend's breasts, it should not comprise a significant segment of your plot arc. Also, a story needs to have a point of some sort. Running away from juvie, enjoying some chit-chat and an erection compliments of the dude who's giving you a ride's girlfriend, only to finally be caught and promised further abuse, to me is kind of pointless.
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Post by guevara on Aug 14, 2022 1:26:51 GMT
“The Big Bust” is properly titled. The story rambles in a confusing manner. I never figured out if the protagonists who form a world police force and set out to institute justice, equity, and financial fairness throughout the globe are dogs, people, animals, computer geeks, or a combination of these. They manage, somehow, though, to take control of the power structure of the world (it has something to do with computers, I think). At any rate, they do so swiftly, efficiently, and with little opposition, which strikes me as odd. Those who hold power in the world—the figures the world police begin to round up and disestablish—usually are not so passively willing to give up their power and, very often, will get rather nasty in the act of preserving it. The bankers, movie stars, film producers and directors, real estate magnates, politicians, and other power grabbers in this venture collapse before the onslaught (though it’s a rather ho-hum onslaught) of the liberators. The liberators seem to do it through some sort of (once more) unexplained magic.
So the entire venture is a description of these liberating creatures, whatever they are, taking power, arresting those who are exploiting “the people,” punishing them, destroying the system that created men and women who are rich and exploitive, and correcting them by painless coercion. If you remember Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World you will see echoes of it in this. No one is hurt. No one is punished. It is not conquest and retribution by real violence and painful chastisement. In Brave New World, the police use squirt guns filled with a liquid that tranquilizes people. Criminals are not punished but sent to communities filled with people who are quite like them—the very sort of people they love to be with. This kind of benign chastisement also exists in “The Big Bust.” The trials, sentences, and punishments are given over peoples’ cell phones, and no one is hurt or deprived of freedom when they are sentenced for crimes. They are kindly, lovingly purged of their faults.
The venture could be attempting a more subtle form of satire. If you know anything about political satire, you know that it often mocks the present. Many people thought that Huxley’s novel and its darker companion, Orwell’s 1984, were dire predictions of what was coming in the future. In fact, both novelists were suggesting that the things that went on in their works of fiction represented how things in fact were at the time they were written. This is suggested in the story we are looking at when names are given of the people removed from power: Betsy DeVoid (Betsy Devos), Sin Hannity (Sean Hannity) and so on. Satire is quite funny, but this sort of thing seems less satire and more unimaginative name-calling—worthy of the kind of mocking banter one hears in a high-school boys' locker room after gym class, but not funny or even enjoyable to read.
The world is taken over by “advocates for the common good” who liberate “the people.” Folks, this has been tried several times, a couple of them very recently. The result was war and genocide. Even if a bunch of dogs with high-powered computers attempted it again, the same thing would happen. The story is long, rambling, and does not successfully satirize anything. Simplemente no funciona. It just doesn’t work.
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WK33
Aug 19, 2022 12:57:04 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Aug 19, 2022 12:57:04 GMT
I rarely open a novel racked in Zehrs or Wal-mart. They're almost all Big Name Authors like James Patterson (though you have to look at the tiny-font name after the "and" at the bottom to find out who actually wrote it). Even when I'm perusing the bookshelves at the secondhand store, except for Ian McEwen, if I don't recognize the author, and the author's name is smaller than the title (art must transcend the artist), and there's no plug by Kirkus Reviews, and it's not the author's second or third book, or another book with too similar a title, or sporting a blurb by some Big Name Author, or a New York Times "bestseller," and the accolades on the back aren't too heartwarming and don't contain too many cliches (e.g., "page turner"), then I might read the first few sentences on the off chance I'll be willing to gamble a dollar on it. Like Wednesday I bought Sweeney's The Nest, her first novel, and Malkani's Londonstani (got a bit of an Irvine Welsh vibe from the first half paragraph).
And that's kind of how I vet here, these unfortunate submissions that fall into my much neglected Inbox. I examine the title, the author's bio and CV (where less is generally more). An exact word count (e.g., 7,832.5 words) is a minus for some reason. Summarizing the plot/themes/characters also detracts. I almost always read the first few sentences. If intrigued by some concept, information or idea, I'll continue. In Payler's The Rumble of Heat Lightning Above the Deep Midwestern Woods, I read with care a few pages at least before picking up the pace. The prose is clean and the rock band realities and music lore held my interest, though I did begin to wonder if it hadn't been crafted to some contest's overly specific guidelines. The plot per se seems to present sometime after the halfway point where a drug deal goes south, resolving in a murder, and then the sort of open poetic ending that I myself will employ when I've had enough of a work and feel the need to stick a fork in it.
I'm impressed with my colleague Guevera's deep reads and erudite analyses of stories assigned to him. If I ever sub anything under a penname (as all of us have done here) I hope it lands on his desk. Though Dep's nice, too. Please, just not me. I will on occasion read a cap in its entirety for entertainment purposes. Otherwise, I consider it my job only to determine whether it warrants further attention from our overworked Terminalis (just as it is their job to decide if the Monkey's consideration is required, and the Monkey's to decide if it deserves reading by the small handful of readers we like to imagine frequent this webzine), which this band story, I believe, just might. So up it goes.
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WK33
Sept 4, 2022 13:20:25 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Sept 4, 2022 13:20:25 GMT
The lawyer who handled my parents' estate used to write in his emails, "If you have any questions, just ask myself." Because he billed at 400 per, and his minimum time slot was 12 minutes so that just him or his secretary's opening an email or answering the phone cost upwards of 80 dollars, I almost never did. Though I did once reply to him that one does not after, say, discovering one has made an incredibly stupid mistake exclaim, "Fuck myself!" but rather, "Fuck me!" (or some variation thereof). See, only you can ask yourself. And though I think he billed for his time in considering this edit, he never changed his grammar.
I relate the above fascinating anecdote only because Tom Hooke's The Neuroprojector suffers from a similar literary bent, which, even though the voice is quite well done and reminded me of something I once read of Poe's, where some poor schmuck gets bricked behind a wall in some revenge seeker's basement (wine cellar, I think), distracted a little. Not, in and of itself, enough to porthole the work. One (i.e., Hooke) could even argue that the mistakes were intentional, in voice, in character. The first person narrator in Wallace's brilliant Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature refers several times to his own "literary bend."
The challenge with writing in a strong voice that is (probably) not one's own (but rather gleaned from others' writings) is in staying concise and interesting. The voice cannot overshadow the tale, which, in this historical sci-fi (steampunk) yarn of a brilliant neuroscientist who invents a machine that can play videos of people's thoughts, therethrough allowing his partner (and narrator) to solve his (said brilliant neuroscientist's) own murder, does, and so drags and repeats at times, lending to the prose the kind of stuffiness that wears. I seem to recall the partner being opposed to the machine before the murder, but almost overly supportive of it after, which, given the speed I was reading, might not be a plot hole, but was still a head-scratcher. So, no. TQR will not be publishing it. And so there is still hope.
I'm tempted to apologize for taking so long to "review" this and other submissions. Since retiring, I've had much less free time. But then I remember from my own days of copious subbing, that quick turnarounds (so quick at times you just know no one read your work) while you're still very close to the piece, can be most discouraging. Whereas long waits beget long periods of hopefulness and anticipation, which when eventually disappoint have all but been forgotten.
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WK33
Sept 23, 2022 21:32:42 GMT
Post by guevara on Sept 23, 2022 21:32:42 GMT
“Blackridge” started out on an odd note and with an odd sentence—never a good thing. “The wound burned hard for a few hours.” Do wounds burn? I suppose to some degree they do; but mostly they hurt, throb, and cause pain. The story is a story about the military, but about a future military, or a military in a different galaxy or planet than the one we live on now. Well, maybe, I thought. Then I read the line that the distant mountain “watched us all like depraved parents of perverted children.” In English this is called “the pathetic fallacy.” It is called this not because it’s pathetic in the sense we usually use the word—deplorable, worthless, pointless—but because it gives human characteristic to inanimate things (“pathos” means "feeling" in Latin). One does not attribute human traits to inanimate things. A baseball we miss doesn’t sneer at us. The root we tripped on does not chuckle at our stumbling. Mountains don’t watch us like “depraved parents.” I saw many obvious stylistic errors in this effort. I wondered what lay ahead.
A lot lay ahead, and most of it was not that good.
This is a military presentation about an army and war. You read about soldiers, medics, maneuvers, and you experience the kinds of things soldiers endure in wars. This makes for good copy when done right. There are the dangers of war and of combat; the absurdity and incompetence all armies seem given to; and there is your sympathy as a reader for the soldier caught in the midst of all this. Some great writing has come out of this scenario. A couple of titles I think of are To Hell and Back by the World War II soldier Audie Murphy; and The Things They Carried, a set of short stories about Vietnam by Tim O’Brien. This story, though, does not stack up to these literary works and falls short of good military fiction in many ways.
First, there is a lot of odd terminology. Medical personal are not “medics” (what they Army calls them) or Corpsman (what they are called in the Marines). They are called Apothecary. They are attended by “handservants.” They put poultices on wounds—it seems like a kind of medieval set-up but this endeavor obviously exists in modern times. This could be a unique take on army medicine, but it turns out only to be confusing and puzzling. Later in the story, officers are called “Master.”
I don’t think there has been an army that called officers “Master.” Even in the Roman Empire there was what I call cortesía de rango—courtesy of rank; that is, an officer, a general, and a private are all part of the army and treat each other with respect. A general speaking to a corporal does not consider himself a “master,” and, as I said, I don’t know of any army in history where that has been the case. Now, this story may take place in the future or on another planet, but it still doesn’t work. Who wants to read about an army where there is no camaraderie and where the common soldiers are something like slaves? And these sorts of things, plus the previously mentioned grammatical and stylistic failures, are found throughout the whole endeavor. All of this ruins the story as a military tale. Given the diction and the unattractive portrayal of the military, the story does not offer much that appeals.
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WK33
Oct 2, 2022 13:18:49 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Oct 2, 2022 13:18:49 GMT
I read Shell's The Typewriter over a month ago and have been letting it fester, as I am increasingly wont to do, since. I'm not sure where the line between adult and young adult lies, but am pretty sure this cap falls well on the youthful side. Generally (only generally) I find the age of characters, particularly the main character, indicative of the target audience. I was going to suggest Catcher in the Rye or Lord of the Flies as exceptions, but then realized I read them both in high school. Shell's predominantly high school characters struck me as immature, even for that grade.
The plot was predictable from the get-go. Of course it's going to be a magic typewriter. Of course it's going to rain down shit upon the wholesome, nice, lovestruck protag's evil, bullying classmates. What kept me reading was wondering how it would end. For me, the characters were too black and white to believe in, and so care about, but, as a once aspiring writer myself, I was curious as to how the author would wrap things up. Convention would have the magic typewriter turn on its possessor, except that here said possessor struck me as too clueless and innocent for that sort of justice. So its instead hooking her happily ever after up with the dreamy boy she has a crush on makes sense, probably works for some young readers. Though I was disappointed. Anyway, TQR has never published YA fiction, and will not begin here.
PS I have a question for Guevara, my fellow floorite, here: How is personification different from the pathetic fallacy?
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