Rosemary Kirstein

Check out this YouTube video of fellow Genrette Delia Sherman and her awesome wife Ellen Kushner, as they discuss fairytale, fantasy, and gender.

However… this is apparently a scene from a documentary called “Mythic Journeys”, which (from the publicity material pushed on you when you check out the website) seems to lean toward the woo-woo at an acute angle. When Depak Chopra shows up, my Skeptometer ™ starts red-lining.

Ellen and Delia, on the other hand, are very wise women, and well worth heeding.

In reply to my “Kindle Greed” post, David said:

Glad to see someone else is experiencing the Robert Charles Wilson love! It was Spin that put me onto him too. And, like you, I then had to tear through his catalog.

To which I replied:

I’ve been trying to turn on all my pals to Robert Charles Wilson — I hope I actually have time to read Bios and Axis. Just the other day I finished the audiobook version of Julian Comstock, which I thoroughly loved.

Usually stories in which the protagonist is a writer turn out shaky at best. But Wilson has such a graceful hand with the point-of-view, letting Adam Hazzard use his very best 19th century styled prose to describe the events both carefully and eloquently — and at the same time allowing the reader to see straight through to everything that Adam is missing! This careful observativeness combined with obliviousness, still including all the information that we need to see what’s really going on — what a tour de force!

Plus: got all misty-eyed at more than a few passages.

Also: laughed right out loud sometimes.

Geez, what more can you ask of a story?

Well, yeah, sense of wonder… but in this book poignant longing for lost glory stood in its stead.   Worked for me.

(Oh, and I must say — the audiobook narrator, Scott Brick, did a stunning job. Adam Hazzard’s voice in my mind is now the voice of Scott Brick. Hazzard’s sometimes over-eloquent prose was delivered with such gentle sincerity that I could not help but love him and his innocent striving for what he viewed as excellence as a writer.)

In other news: I started reading The Habitation of the Blessed: A Dirge for Prester John, Volume One and I’ve already fallen in love with Catherynne M. Valente’s amazing prose — again. I’ll say more when I’m done, but so far, prospects are good!