Saturday, July 25, 2009

Crawling Out of the Pit, It Heaves a Ragged Sigh. . .

Four days is an eternity in the Interverse. It feels like one, at least. I came back here and immediately felt bad that I had not posted more since the FoG link.

Just a few little tidbits for now; tomorrow will be a half-day of writing and I'll at least whip up a flash or two. But for now, these messages:

1) I had fun writing for SFSignal's Mind Meld, about my favorite short stories. My entry is about two-thirds of the way down. I hope to contribute to more Melds in the future.

2) I'm planning my next FoG column, and there are several different topics that I want to write about. Do any of these stand out in particular?
a) A column on Readercon, focusing on how different it is from most other cons and what I gleaned from the panels.
b) The Generation Gap in SF. There was an online poll about this recently that a number of writers responded to, and their answers got my anthropological curiosity aroused, so I pondering writing a column that talks about the differences between younger and older SF fans. My first thought is that there is less of a generation gap than a difference in how people participate in the subcultures.
c) Near-Future SF & Its Anxieties: This idea is an elaboration on a debate that erupted during a talk by David Williams at LASFS. I find the questions raised by this exchange to be intriguing, especially so since I subscribe to Gene Wolfe's notion that science fiction is a form of fantasy that has an aura of factuality about it. Why must Near-Future SF be somehow more precise in its science and political extrapolation?

Off to ponder.

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