skyring: (Default)
Skyring ([personal profile] skyring) wrote2006-09-23 07:46 pm

(no subject)

I'm a little nettled. I spent some time doing a review of Dunedin for TripConnect, hit the Return key and very probably lost the lot. I thought, too late, I should have copied the text.

Final day at the Lifeline Bookfair tomorrow. Bags for $10 about lunchtime. I'll stock up on books for BookCrossing. I saw a few copies of Miss Smilla's Feeling For snow there. Not a popular book, but one that has become a bit of a trademark for me.

Last NaNoWriMo we had a meeting to kick off the month, and I left five copies in The Pancake Parlour in Civic, all bought a few weeks previously at the bookfair.

Speaking of NaNoWriMo, I'm thinking very hard about science fiction. I'm pursuing a SF theme this year, and I'm trying to predict trends. Kind of like my grandparents in 1956 trying to imagine what 2006 would be like, I suppose. I've read any number of SF novels since then that have been spectacularly or hilariously wrong. I especially liked Arthur C Clarke's story about a writer on a trip to a Martian colony who brought along a typewriter.

In days gone by, I'd see SF as a writer's best attempt to predict the future, and to write about it. More recently I've realised that this is a preposterous view. SF usually deals with a possible future. Or even an impossible one. I'd hate to rule out faster than light travel, or time travel, because they produce such wonderful stories, but I'd have to say that neither seem at all likely.

Then again, it doesn't matter. A great number of people in today's world believe in things which cold reason would say are most unlikely.

Which is one reason why I don't buy lottery tickets. Sure, the ship comes in every week for some lucky person, but it's like the population of Australia spaced out evenly along the coast of the continent, waiting for their ship.

So I'm not going to be terribly concerned when my predictions don't come to pass. In fact, I'd be astonished if one of the cornerstones of my future world had anything like a real-life equivalent.

My solution to the growing energy crisis is real "franistan" stuff. Nice to have, but unlikely ever to exist. Still, I can create a world around it.

Not sure that I've got a plot to go with the setting. Perhaps it's about time to read "No Plot? No Problem!" in preparation for the effort.

[identity profile] martip.livejournal.com 2006-09-23 10:46 am (UTC)(link)
I keep trying to talk Lou into collaborating with me on a Sci Fi book. He's written some smashing stuff. He can do plot and action like mad - very imaginative that way, he is. Very mad out-there plotting a la Douglas Adams - he has a gift for it. Whereas I'm a fair wordsmith, but can't plot to save my life.

I keep telling him that if he roughs out the story, then turns it over to me to make it readable, we'd have a winner.

[identity profile] sunneschii.livejournal.com 2006-09-23 12:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh... I'd love to read THAT book!

[identity profile] skyring.livejournal.com 2006-09-23 09:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Marti the Martian.

A funloving spacegirl with breasts like twin moons, barely concealed by her thong-style spacesuit...

***
The important thing is to appeal to the teenager market.

[identity profile] sunneschii.livejournal.com 2006-09-23 09:05 pm (UTC)(link)
LOL!;-)

Well.... wait until you see the movie they'll make.....;-)

[identity profile] thebiblioholic.livejournal.com 2006-09-23 04:20 pm (UTC)(link)
I loved Smilla's Sense of Snow as it is called here. I read it this summer during a heat wave. :-)

I've been thinking about NaNoWriMo, but I'm not sure I can carve out enough time to make it work. Not having a plot in mind is a problem too. I just got No Plot? No Problem!, but we'll see.

Good luck with NanuNanu.