Reading: misc pulps
Music: Utopia: "Live at the Royal Oak" and "Redux 92 Japan"
TV/Movie: Tolkein: Master of the Rings
Link o' the Day: Internet Speculative Fiction Database

More work. More work. More.... work.

But it's good work and while I'm going to have a very busy weekend, it's going to be the sort of productive weekend that will find me Sunday night basking in an inflating sense of self-satisfaction. So there!

I finished the story in Astonishing Trap Door Tales by Gordon Eklund and enjoyed it quite a bit. If anyone here reads either Fans! or It's Walky, they'll recognize some of the characteristics of recursive science fiction--that is, science fiction about science fiction. Radical concept, eh? Barry Malzberg is generally touted as the master of this art form with such works as Gather In the Hall of Planets and Herovit's World (both being available in the collection The Passage of the Light from NESFA Press.

One of the first stories I tried my hand at after I took up writing a couple of years ago was recursive science fiction. I just didn't know the term for it. It was a fictionalized con report for "Barcoon", the Barsoomian Worldcon on Mars in 2500. I had never attended a con before, but I'd read enough con reports for earthly conventions that I felt confident enough to take a stab at it. It wasn't too bad--but lordie, it weren't good neither. It's one of those stories that will likely never see the light of day. (I have a couple like this.)

So why write something like recursive science fiction to begin with?

Easy enough to answer. I can't think of a single genre that has the variety of interesting characters and insane behavior as the science fiction genre. Sure, the horror folks, mystery folks, and western folks have their quirks and such, but they're somewhat a mystery story set among mystery writers seems a bit hackneyed and a slasher at a horror convention is a bit cliche.

What if you had a story about a man who had to identify a disguised alien at a science fiction convention and the fate of the world depended upon it. But you can't figure out who's alien by their behavior--they're just about all acting outlandishly. And you can't go by sight alone. Did Asmiov's sideburns look human? Didn't Heinlein's head look a little too dome-like? And Harlan... well...

I rest my case.

But I wasn't writing recusrive stuff today. Today I got a good chunk more work done on my Tecumseh story.

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Today's link is the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, a useful tool for anyone who wants to quickly look up the bibliography of just about any author involved in speculative [sic] fiction. It's far from complete, but it's more comprehensive than the it looks. It's always the best place to begin looking when looking up author works.

Cheers!