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[personal profile] jpskewedthrone
Sorry I haven't been all that entertaining lately here on the ole LJ. It's the end of the semester and I'm currently hip deep in finals. In other words, I'm spending all of my time ruining students' lives grading students' papers. This will all be over in another week, at which I hope to be back to normal, with some time to spare. Or as normal as I ever get anyway.

In the meantime, squeezing in an hour here or there, I managed to finish off chapter 19 of the work in progress, aptly titled "Well of Sorrows". I'll post a word count meter at the end of the post, so you can see how out of control this sucker has gotten.

And in other news, an interview with me has been posted at R. Schuyler Devin's blog. I met Mr. Devin at Norwescon, where he asked if I'd be willing to participate in his 6-sided interview at his blog. Of course I said yes. So go check it out. You can mock all of my answers to the question about what books/movies/etc I feel are modern classics. (I hate those types of questions; you'll see why at the interview.) Since I suck at that type of question, I figured I'd throw it out to all of you: What books/movies/TV shows in the SF and Fantasy genre do you consider "modern classics"? And by modern, let's say that had to have been released or on TV within the last 10 years. I'd be interested in what everyone has to say (since we recently had the "must haves" of 80s moviedom discussion here). I'm sure I missed something important and completely obvious in my answer.

And now, here's the word meter for the current update on the writing project from hell. Hopefully, I'll be back to more regular posts in another week.

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
156,250 / 100,000
(156.2%)

Well of Sorrows

Date: 2008-05-09 01:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mindseas.livejournal.com
How many chapters still to go? I hope they aren't too strict about the ms. length.

Date: 2008-05-09 01:31 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jpsorrow.livejournal.com
Um . . . a maximum of 5. I think. But there's going to be some serious word cuttage on the rewrite, so I hope to get it down to about 120,000 words total max in the end.

Date: 2008-05-09 02:31 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] j-cheney.livejournal.com
Firefly?

That's actually about all I'm getting here, because 10 years isn't all that long...

Boy, I feel old.

Date: 2008-05-09 02:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jpsorrow.livejournal.com
I'd forgotten Firefly. Of course, I haven't seen it yet, so . . . *ducks and runs*

Date: 2008-05-09 04:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] j-cheney.livejournal.com
::shakes head::
Cretin....

Date: 2008-05-09 03:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] misunderstruck.livejournal.com
Last 10 years? Here are a couple ideas. (This is a collaborative effort by the way by my wife and I.)

Comic/graphic novel wise -- Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson's Transmetropolitain, which began in 1997 and ran until 2002 or so.

Novels:
Richard Morgan - Altered Carbon

George R. R. Martin - A Storm of Swords if you want one novel, the entire Song of Ice and Fire series (which actually began in 1996) if you want a larger work.

Tim Powers - Declare

Possibly River of Gods by Ian McDonald.

Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan falls just outside the 10 year limit, but will likely endure.

TV:
At least the first season and a half of Battlestar Galactica.

Buffy.

If we move outside the 10 year limit, the books I will always put right up are Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Jr.

Date: 2008-05-09 02:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jpsorrow.livejournal.com
I totally forgot about Battlestar Galactica. I haven't managed to see any of it yet, although I've got the first season on DVD and intend to watch it this summer. I did include George RR Martin's series in my post. But it looks like you've covered more books in the SF realm. I tend to read more fantasy, but I'll add these SF books to my TBR pile. Thanks for the suggestions! (I do have Guy Gavriel Kay's books of course.)

Modern classics

Date: 2008-05-09 04:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] treize64.livejournal.com
River of Gods - Ian MacDonald

The Matrix (first one) - Wachowski Bros.

Re: Modern classics

Date: 2008-05-09 02:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jpsorrow.livejournal.com
Totally blanked on the Matrix. Possibly because I tend to think more fantasy than SF when these questions come up. I'll have to check out River of Gods. Thanks for the suggestions!

Re: Modern classics

Date: 2008-05-09 04:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] treize64.livejournal.com
Also, if you're at all willing to dip into the '80s, might I suggest Little, Big by John Crowley. It is, hands down, the most beautifully written volume of speculative fiction I have ever read. Won the World Fantasy Award in '81, I think.
(deleted comment)

Date: 2008-05-09 02:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jpsorrow.livejournal.com
Ooo, let me know what you find. Or don't find. But hopefully you find. *grin*

Congrats on getting the semester over with. Good luck finishing everything off!

Date: 2008-05-12 03:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jpsorrow.livejournal.com
So did you find Skewed Throne anywhere? Just curious.
(deleted comment)

Date: 2008-05-09 02:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jpsorrow.livejournal.com
I was going to say Naomi Novik, but since she robbed me of the Compton Crook award I let the grudge play out. *grin* I haven't read Tad William's Shadow books yet, although I do own them both. I liked his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series (although not his Otherland novels as much).

I don't think I've read anything of Sean Russell's. I'll have to check him out.

LOTR should become classic movies, and of course Harry Potter will live on forever in both book and movie form (although the book form will outlast the movie form I think). Haven't seen the Nightwatch or Daywatch films.

I've lost track of both Heroes and Lost, and just haven't had the time to watch my Battlestar Galactica DVDs of season 1 yet.

Date: 2008-05-09 11:53 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vcmorris.livejournal.com
Reading the various progress of other writers here in LJ has really helped me not feel so bad when I simply don't have the time to sit down and write myself. I'm quite happy if I am able to crank out a chapter once a week, two chapters in a week is unreal! Hope you are soon able to tip-tap away at the keyboard and get things rolling along again.

The summer always makes me wish I had a laptop so I could work on stuff outside. I hate sitting in the den writing on a lovely summer morning. I'd be so much more productive out there on the porch with a laptop.

Date: 2008-05-09 02:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jpsorrow.livejournal.com
It's been a struggle getting the writing done while working this semester (and I didn't write at all during the fall semester). But I will definitely be writing like a maniac once the finals are graded and grades handed in.

And this is why I have a laptop. *grin*

Date: 2008-05-09 04:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] milbrcrsan.livejournal.com
*to above convo* I'd love to have a laptop so I could do just that. Would be much easier for writing on a plane and such. I dread writing with pen and paper. :p

And I can understand being really busy. I am too, but not school. An overactive kitten is my reason. LOL It seems lately that he's taken an interest in trying to chew on wires. *sigh* He's like a baby, can't take your eyes off him for a moment. :p Oh yeah, and my desk is covered with stuff. lol

So, how's that short story contest going? You have a chance to read mine yet? *bats eyelashes* :p

Date: 2008-05-12 02:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wbm.livejournal.com
It's funny how different people work. I've made a couple of (successful in my estimation) attempts to write on my PC, but it's a very long, laborious & drawn-out (meaning frustratingly painful) process. I spend a lot of time physically doing nothing, just sitting, thinking, conceiving, reconceiving. I find pen-to-paper to be much more intuitive, the ideas flow more easily, but the many ideas tend to be incomplete & sometimes completely ill-advised, necessitating a lot of (satisfying) sweat to rewrite.

Caveat: the straight-to-PC ideas look more like what they do when they're finished (somehow they require less editing), but the 1st draft of pen-to-paper usually sucks (beyond the odd line here or there). Perhaps it's due to a need to see something on my screen of quality, & an innate sense that getting raw ideas down on paper might be a more valuable process in the long run, because raw ideas can be elusive (smoke em if you got em) & it's easy to cull the wheat from the chaff in the transfer to hard drive.

Date: 2008-05-12 03:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jpsorrow.livejournal.com
I couldn't use pan and paper anymore I don't think. But I do spend alot of time "not" writing while at the computer--thinking, playing with ideas in my head, etc. It certainly isn't all typing all the time. *grin*

Date: 2008-05-12 04:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] milbrcrsan.livejournal.com
I have two reasons why I hate writing with pen and paper. One, I tend to grip it too tight and after a short while, my hands hurts. I've always been like that, that's why I loathed notes during high school and junior high. :p Two, I don't writ extremely fast and my ideas come to me pretty quickly, so by the time I'm done writing that one paragraph, I can't remember what else I had planned.

While on my Mac I can type fast enough to where I have to stop and think because I passed what I had planned, which I'm fine with. :p I think the keyboard helps me a lot, because it doesn't take a lot of effort to press the buttons (unlike the PC's keyboard I'm on currently.) But I know one day, I will be forced to write with pen and paper. And I dread the day. :p

Date: 2008-05-12 04:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wbm.livejournal.com
I sometimes get the handcramp, too. And often I end up writing far faster than is legible to read back.

I've been giving an occasional thought to typing without care for spelling/punctuation, & all things that can be corrected after the fact, in my next writing spree. I recognize I've been too anal about spelling off the top, which disturbs the flow of creativity, so I wonder if this approach can improve my straight-to-PC writing.

Date: 2008-05-12 03:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jpsorrow.livejournal.com
I don't think I could use pen and paper anymore. The laptop is a necessity for the writing. Or at least a computer.

I got all the short stories read and rated comments made and sent them all back. I didn't have any names to go along with the stories though, so I don't know which one was yours. *grin*

Date: 2008-05-12 04:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] milbrcrsan.livejournal.com
That's great news! :D I hope you liked mine! It felt a little awkward because I've never written a story that short. lol *crosses fingers*

Date: 2008-05-09 09:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rosinavs.livejournal.com
Total sympathy on the finals. I give mine late next week, but I have piles of homework and projects to grade. I plan on skimming the projects, grading mostly on grammar, spelling and punctuation and whether they remember to put a proof in it. I'll be glad exactly a week from now when my grades are turned in.

Date: 2008-05-12 03:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jpsorrow.livejournal.com
With math, I can just pick out a few problems from the entire set and grade those as representative of the whole in order to speed the grading up. I can't do that with finals though.

Halfway done. Only 2 more finals to grade. And then it's the summer of writing!

Date: 2008-05-12 03:30 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rosinavs.livejournal.com
Yeah, I grade a couple of representative problems for the homework I finished grading yesterday, but it doesn't work for finals or projects. Luckily the projects are biographies of famous geometers with a few on polyhedra. I don't start giving my finals until Wednesday.

Classics!

Date: 2008-05-11 05:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vespican.livejournal.com
My vote for classic books of today would have to go to Naomi Novik's TEMERAIRE series. Why? Probably because my first love in reading is "Naval Adventure," stories such as the HORNBLOWER series by C. S. Forester, or the MASTER AND COMMANDER series by Patrick O'Brian. Ms. Novik convincingly combines (quasi) historical (sometimes Naval) Adventure with Fantasy. I also believe that her books come closest to what I'm trying to write myself. While I see hers as fantasy set against a semi-historical, naval adventure background, mine are Naval Adventure with certain elements of Fantasy or Science Fiction.

But don't worry, JP, I have your books on my list for the next run to the book store! Now that I've finished reading (and editing, and revising) my second book while at lunch at work, it's time to get back to reading other folks real published works.

I've watched various episodes of the new Battlestar Gallactica, and quite frankly I don't like it as well as the original. True, that was a bit campy. I would have hoped that a new series would have stayed a little truer to the original. The new version, in my opinion is too detailed, too deep, and too dark, for me. Special effects are a lot better, but there's more to a series than that. I suppose that's why I believe the original Star Trek to be the best of them all. With the limited budgets they were produced on, the story and the acting had to prevail. Sometimes watching the original series is like watching a filmed stage play. As an audience we have to use our imagination a lot more. That helps draw us into the story.

Dave

Re: Classics!

Date: 2008-05-12 03:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jpsorrow.livejournal.com
Thanks for the suggestions! I've read the Temeraire series (the first three anyway) and I don't know if I'd rate them as classics. Although I'm not exactly biased, since Naomi Novik beat me out of the Compton Crook award for best first novel that year. I may be holding a grudge. (According to the judges, she didn't beat me by much though.)

In any case, if you read my books, let me know what you think! And let others know too of course. *grin*

Re: Classics!

Date: 2008-05-12 10:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vespican.livejournal.com
My B'day and Father's Day are coming up. Perhaps I should hint that I'd like one or two of your books as gift(s). I'm sure my wife and or daughter would oblige. (It seems we all have such a hard time choosing gifts for each other, that any suggestions are usually welcome.)
And given a chance to read one or more of yours, I'll let you know what I think.
Lastly, because I've not yet read any of yours, I cannot rate them versus Naomi Novik's works. To me, the real catch of her stories is the relationship between Laurence and Temeraire.
Dave

Date: 2008-05-12 02:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wbm.livejournal.com
I don't have the same sense of time that a lot of people seem to have. Being 37yo, I consider anything made during my adulthood to be modern. I also have a broader definition of *fantasy*; technically, anything fictional should fall under that title, but I know you mean *fantastic*.

Films I consider modern fantasy classics are Primer, Audition, Unbreakable, American Beauty, Starship Troopers, Punch-Drunk Love, Minority Report, The Lion King, Kill Bill, Storytelling, Zoolander, The Machinist, Waking Life, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Novels (I am not widely read, & tend to read older books that are easier to find used previously enjoyed): Barker's The Great & Secret Show, Weaveworld, Walker's Black Box.

TV: Harvey Birdman, Brak, Spongebob, the last two seasons of Enterprise, Boston Legal.

Comics: Sin City, Marvel's Civil War event, Superman For All Seasons, The Walking Dead, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volumes I & II (PLEASE do not mistake the travesty that was the LXG film as being remotely related to the books - completely different stories), the 2004-5 series of She-Hulk.

I've left off works other's recommended, like 1st The Matrix & the Potter books, etc.

And I must disagree with the LOTR films - despite being excellently written/cast/acted/filmed, I was as bored by them as I was by the brilliant prose that Barker put into the incredibly imaginative but exhausting Imagica. Heh - do I need to duck & run, too?

Date: 2008-05-12 03:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jpsorrow.livejournal.com
Some great suggestions in there! I also loved Unbreakable, and a bunch of the others on your list. There's a few I haven't seen or read though. I'll have to check them out.

I don't think you need to duck and run. But I do think the LOTR films will go down in history as classics, like Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

Date: 2008-05-12 04:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wbm.livejournal.com
Oh yes - sorry - I, too, predict LOTR will be considered classic, I just don't think it should ;)

I have the same opinion of Gone With the Wind the film. Maybe the book is head & shoulders above the rest of it's ilk, but the movie is exceedingly lacklustre when compared to it's contemporary-ishes like Harvey, Citizen Kane, All Quiet On the Western Front & the 1944 version of Gaslight.

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