Someone kinda got in my face with the argument that if a person is not actively trying to write and publish fiction, they do not have a valid skill set to review fiction.

Mah brains ‘sploded and I valiantly stuttered in her face, the great hero rising to our mutual defense.

More or less my hot flame of indignant rage ashes out to: I can damn well understand what I enjoy reading and am willing to pay for; however I may not have the skill set to write about it. heh!

Anyway, I thought I’d present that here and let you all chew on it for a while.

I invite you to write a response on your blog, if you are interested.

Copyright 2013 by Paula S. Jordan

Chaucer

A brief addendum to last week’s post:

I said much earlier in this series that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles were a source of story ideas for Shakespeare and Chaucer.

Well, maybe.

The most likely answer, I have learned, is “no” (for Shakespeare) and “possibly” (for Chaucer.) I base that “possibly” on the discussion of St. Brendan’s voyage and similarities to it in two of Chaucer’s female characters, and the “no” on the following conversation.

In the course of my research on the Chronicles, Google led me to a blog called “Distractions from the Present,” by the Red Witch, and a post entitled “The Anglo Saxon Reeve and Chaucer’s Pilgrim.” I asked her about Shakespeare, Chaucer, and the Chronicles, and received the following reply.

 I don’t think the Chronicles were a source of inspiration for Shakespeare or Chaucer. Chaucer used Jean de Meun’s Romance of the Rose and Boccaccio’s Decameron as his main sources of inspiration and Shakespeare used Hollinshed’s history as well as Ovid and Michel de Montaigne as inspiration.

I doubt the Chronicles were read much in the 14th century and even less in the 16th. French displaced so much of the Old English words, and spelling being not standardized, things were spelled in the local dialect. Few people could read the texts although they were dutifully copied by the monasteries. If you look at the Pearl or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which was written around the same time as the Canterbury Tales, you will see that they look almost like completely different languages.

Very interesting insights on several levels, and I am grateful to the Red Witch for them.

Shakespeare

I did do a bit of research on the Hollinshed work. Its language and its publication in 1577 (when Shakespeare was in his teens) do make it the much likelier source.  And it is true that the extensive lists of known and surmised sources for Hollinshed do not include the Chronicles. Still, I cannot in my heart of hearts believe that absolutely none of those many sources harked back to knowledge originally recorded in the older work.

So while my intellectual head agrees with the good witch, my romantic heart tells me there must be some place for the Chronicles in the literary heritage of the Bard.

I did not think of the Hollinshed when planning this Quest. Next trip (dreaming here!) I will most definitely try to see it.

The SF community is caring and generous.

Jay Lake’s fundraiser has doubled already: http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/Sequence-a-Science-Fiction-Writer/38705

We’ve seen Saladin Ahmed raise money for a new computer. The annual Rothfuss/Heifer Int’l fundraiser is totally bonkers. The Science Fiction Writers of America has a fund for medical expenses for SF authors.

What others have you seen?

Warning: “whore cake”.

I’ve recently been asked to produce an ebook for UFO Publications. The book is called Unidentified Funny Objects and is a collection of science-fiction/fantasy funny short stories. As per my norm of not taking on work that I don’t believe is worth my time, I’m letting you know that I really enjoyed reading these stories and thought you might like them too. Alex Shvartsman is the editor and contacted me out of the blue to do the ebook for them. I was skeptical at first, as usual (“who are you and why are you asking me to do this?”) but was Amazed! and Surprised! at the quality of the stories and the diligence that the editing team put into copyediting, layout and design of the book.

There’s comics interspersed between the stories. The stories range from silly slapstick to multi-lingual, philosophical humor, and they might bring a smile to dreary cloudy winter days. One story in particular is told through a Twitter feed, and explores the new grammar and language we’ve developed through that media, such as the use of the hashtag.

There is a very high-quality print book and the ebook is readable. They are available from http://www.ufopub.com/.  Oh! they also offer one free funny short story every month, that archive is here: http://www.ufopub.com/stories-archive/

When you read these and get to the word “Whore Cake”, send me a postcard and let me know. =)

http://darkcargo.com/2012/06/04/kindred/

I did in fact manage to complete a few books this year, but the most important of these for me was Kindred by Octavia Butler.

It took me three months to work out what I wanted to say about it. Butler taught me to think in a different way, this wasn’t just an adventure story.

Sitting here sweet and happy in the future, it’s easy to be grateful for my human rights, list them off like ingredients on the nutrition information panel. It’s easy to imagine that, if born in another time, I would be totally intolerant of my doomed lack of education, my subjugation to others, etc. But you know what? Probably not. I would likely be a completely and unrecognizeably different person. My morals, values, rights and beliefs would be alien to the person I am now.

2011′s “that one book” was Beloved by Toni Morrison. This year, it was Kindred.

Here’s the post from June. http://darkcargo.com/2012/06/04/kindred/