Friday, 4 May 2018

Review: This is my gun, This is my pen, sir! by Paul Di Filippo

Cartoon angry army drill sergeant shoutingThis is another short story by Paul Di Filippo from his collection Plumage from Pegasus. The story can be found online at https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2000/pdf0008.htm 

A coach load of novice editors arrives at their training facility and are met by God aka Michael Korda who flip flops between pleasantries and sergeant major commands mode “YOU MAGGOTS CAN CALL ME GOD!”

***SPOILER ALERT**** Di Filippo takes a poke at editors generally “let me particularize just a few of the visiting editors who have graciously consented to enlighten you. We’ll hear from Bill Burford of the New Yorker, who’ll instruct is in how to manufacture superstar writers out of wet behind the ears, squeaky-voiced creative-writing graduate students”

ashramblings verdict 3* As a writing student you are always told to consider your title last, after writing the story, so it doesn’t dictate how the story plays out.  This story is a classic example of this. From a reader’s perspective, one reads the title at the beginning and may have even forgotten it by the end. In this story the ending is an unfinished sentence, which leaves us wondering  what was said. Until the penny drops and we realise it is the title itself. Neatly done.

Thursday, 3 May 2018

Review: The Factchecker Only Rings Twice by Paul Di Filippo

This old story comes from Di Filippo’s collection Plumage from Pegasus and is available online at https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2000/pdf0007.htm
The title grabbed me from the get-go,  immediately tickling my sense of humour and of intertextuality.  This is a short story about an established sci-fi writer now having to write under a new regime, COSTIVE, the Consortium of StoryTellers Insisting on Verisimilar Exactitude, which stifles writers’ creative and imaginative qualities.
On a frustrating day when writing is not coming easy, our narrator has a visitor, one Nelson Nibbler,  a COSTIVE operator, flashing his id and requiring revisions to a pre-regime change story  ****SPOILER ALERT**** The ridiculous changes required are outlined, and are met at first by surprise, then irony on our narrator’s part. Nibbler is totally unaware of the destruction his changes are making to the fabric of the story.
I loved the narrator’s explosion about what happened to a whole series of famous sci-fi writers after COSTIVE’s demands for scientific accuracy in speculative fiction – for example ‘Stephan Baxter is writing for Coronation Street’.
Nibbler asks the author to supply peer reviewed citation to support his description of hyperspace as 'an uncanny otherworld, a violent conglomeration of sense-twisting hallucinatory whorls and streamers, a maelstrom of nauseating otherness.'  The narrator’s desperate cry of "Of course not! I made it all up for the sake of the story! The drama, man, the drama of it!"   is only met with the ultimate derision "As we thought. In that case, we're going to have to amend that passage to 'a hypothetical landscape whose qualitative essentials have yet to be determined.' "
His frustration finally get the better of him but once he deals with Nibbler, he returns to his computer and starts a new story with his poetical sensibilities renewed.
ashramblings verdict 5* I was completely with this narrator, both physically, emotionally and politically in the moment with Nibbler.Excellent.

Double dutch by Sheila Ash

First there is one. It’s easy to cope
Then there is two in double dutch ropes
Then we double up for a double tuck
Two jumpers jumping for a double duck.
The double dipping speed of the swishing ropes
Is rhythmically kept by the musical trope
Stakes raised up by a rival pair
Tension filling the evening air.
Doubling up the players with each new round
The neighbourhood crowd looks on spellbound
Practice, practice to get this right
double-double dutching on a Saturday night.

© Sheila Ash, 2018

Performance https://youtu.be/TUUhF-R4V5M
Fast and furious https://youtu.be/iHO9oJHUV5Q
Freestyle https://youtu.be/uRdwTxMeTL8

clip_image002
Double Dutch (detail), 2016 by Robin Rhode
https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8001/Robin-Rhode