Friday, July 28, 2006
More Than Science Fiction
Categories: Books • Life • Movies • Religion • Technology • Writing
I enjoy reading Science Fiction. I think it would be a safe bet that roughly 75% of the novels I read would fall under the Science Fiction genre. I find the ideas and situations that are explored in Science Fiction to be incredibly interesting. Things can happen that never happen in traditional literature.
Yet, despite how much I enjoy reading Science Fiction I'm sometimes embarrassed to admit it to people.
Why would that be? Lets explore the issue.
Science Fiction immediately makes people think of Star Wars. And if they aren't thinking of Star Wars they are thinking of Star Trek. In either case great literature is not the thing that comes to mind. Even before Star Wars and Star Trek the genre had a bad rap. Science Fiction was relegated to the Pulp Fiction level. It was viewed as juvenile. And much of it was. The predominant reader of Science Fiction was the young male American of the 1950's. It was even at one time extremely difficult for female authors to get published. Alice B. Sheldon an early female author in the genre actually used the Pseudonym of James Tiptree Jr. and was very successful. So successful in fact that prominent critics and readers of the time often used her as an example of why men were better Science Fiction authors then women. Of course that audience did eventually grow up and as a result the genre grew up too. Not that anyone noticed.
There authors who are considered to be both Literature and Science Fiction. These authors seem to have transcended the genre and become well known names in literary circles. George Orwell and Ray Bradbury come to mind, though the latter only considered one of his novels Science Fiction (Fareheit 451). Mary Shelly is often cited as an early author of the genre though again I doubt she would have considered herself such and the genre didn't really exist during her time. And of course, there is always Jules Verne the venerable father of Science Fiction. And to round off the name dropping Poe is often cited but again really existed before the genre had truly taken hold.
Why did the above authors succeed in literary circles when others did not? I think it is because they wrote Science Fiction before people really knew what it was. Now that people think they know what it is they blithely ignore it. It isn't really literature. Its just a bunch of laser gun fights and space battles. Nothing deep can be confronted by that. Nothing worth an intelligent person's time.
I've heard some authors who published their first novel as Science Fiction comment that they wish they had never done it. The reason being that the literary cognoscenti have decided that it isn't worth paying attention to. Science Fiction has its own prestigious awards within the genre The Hugo and The Nebula. But if you want a literary award that people know the name of? Here is a little advice. Never publish a Science Fiction novel. Once you have you are marked, for life. A well known and incredibly successful Science Fiction auther named Orson Scott Card has published upwards of 5 or 6 novels (that I know of) that are not in the Science Fiction genre. Where will you find those novels? In the Science Fiction section. Where will you find reviews of those novels? In the Science Fiction magazines. Who published those novels? A Science Fiction publisher.
One of my favorite authors is Mary Doria Russell. She wrote two Science Fiction novels and then a Historical novel about WWII in Italy. Where did I find a copy of her 3rd novel? Not where I looked the first time. Amazingly enough she managed to get nominated for a Pulitzer. Which is, I think, a sign that people are beginning to realize that there is more to Science Fiction, or at least to authors who have chosen to write Science Fiction, then laser guns and space battles.
However, thats quite enough of my complaining about the treatment of my favorite genre. I obviously think the genre as a whole is very much worth a person's time. But what books do I think transcend the genre itself? Are there any that weren't written be the ancient names above?
Of course there are. And in no particular order, and with the knowledge that I'm going to inevitably leave out some very deserving books, these are the ones I feel deserve to be recognized.
Read More...
Posted by Jamie at 09:29 PM
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Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Feeling Giddy
Categories: Life • Technology
I just finished working on a portion of a project that has been driving me nuts. As a result I'm feeling a little giddy. I need some friends nearby that aren't busy so I can have a night on the town.
Speaking of friends, I got to spend a bit of an evening with Joshua (Not to be confused by my friend Joshua from Sitka) and his wife Rebecca this last Saturday.
Joshua is a friend I have known for going on 8 years? now but hadn't met until about 2 years ago. How is that you might ask? Well, we met on the Internet through a common interest in Sixpence None the Richer.
I recently heard about a study that claimed people didn't build real friendships anymore because the internet caused us to have online friends. The obvious intimation being that you couldn't have a real friendship with someone you met online.
I agree to an extent because I think it is hard to truly know someone you haven't met. But I think its safe Joshua and I could be pretty good real friends if given the chance. His wife Rebecca is pretty cool too.
Posted by Jamie at 08:05 PM
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Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Variety Blogging
Categories: Life • Religion • Technology
Geek Speak
I've been doing lots of PHP coding lately. I've noticed a marked improvement in my coding ability as a result. It tends to take me about half the time to work through the logic I need to get my desired result and I spend a lot less time debugging. I was also introduced to a neat little trick at the pMachine Forums that makes debugging a ton easier. Its a simple trick, too simple really, but I hadn't read it mentioned anywhere in all of my searches for PHP debug tricks so I thought I would mention it in more detail.
PHP has no built in debugging abilities beyond using the echo() and print() functions to spit back variables at different points to get an idea of what is going on within a piece of code that isn't working the way you want.
This works great, most of the time. However, I find myself often writing pieces of code that are embedded in larger pieces of code. The issue here is those echo() and print() functions don't show up in those cases. So what I used to do was rewrite problem code separately using dummy strings that I hoped would match the real world situation so that I could run them on their own to debug.
So where does the trick come in? At a spot where you want to get your variable spit back you use an exit() function immediately after it on the same line like this:
echo $debug_variable; exit();
When the larger script runs and it pulls in the smaller chunk of code and hits that exit function the whole thing stops and you get just the debug variable as the output. If I had known I could do this years ago it would have made life so much easier. So thats it. I can hear all the real programmers groaning at my silly excitment over something they probably think I should have already known. Oh well. I refuse to not be excited.
Stupid Dumb Christians
I've recently been watching ReGenesis a TV show made in Canada about the near future where genetics and diseases are the next big thing (of course they already are kind of the next big thing). Anyway, the show is great and deals with some interesting topics in pretty even handed ways.
Even handed that is until it gets on religion.
I know I shouldn't allow myself to be bothered. And it doesn't really bother me in a real sense because I know the portrayal is silly. But it saddens me a little to always see Christians presented as idiots. It isn't that I don't know some stupid Christians. It isn't that I haven't had moments where I myself have thought, "why are my fellow Christians so stupid?" However, I know Christians that are intelligent. I know Christianity itself is not incompatible with science. There are plenty of scientists who are themselves Christians. But they don't make very much noise. And sadly they are overshadowed by the ones who do make alot of noise doing idiotic things.
Oh well. :)
The Fourth In Portland
The last 4th of July that I watched fireworks on was in Sitka two years ago. I stood on the bridge connecting Japonski and Baranof islands with two of my childhood friends and watched the city sponsored displays reflected on the water. It was one of those moments that felt oddly poetic. This 4th wasn't nearly as beautiful in that way. But I can't complain with a nice walk in the dark to the sound and colors of the local amateur fireworks displays.
Posted by Jamie at 01:03 AM
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