"Swimming the 'Net like dolphins"

It's a Monday so I should be working. Instead, I'm surfing the blogs again checking on people. It's slow going at the moment because the internet service is slow.

Hmph. Makes me think that in the future, we'd be diving in and out of sites courtesy of the latest virtual reality gear. However, being in a third world country, I wonder how the Brave New World willl look like if the 'net service is this bad. (Buuuuut thaaaaaat'ssss juuuuust meeeee.)

Anyway, Dean has the TOC of the Philippine Speculative Fiction anthology out and it looks great. It lists:

• Introduction to an in-depth study of The Luminescent by J. Pocholo Martin Goitia
• Walking Backwards by banzai cat
• Tendress by Andrew Drilon
• The Coward's Quest by Jay Steven Anyong
• Room Three by Pauline Orendain
• Regiment by Sean Uy
• The Catalogue of the Damned by K. Mandigma
• In the Arms of Beishu by Vincent Michael Simbulan
• The Life and Death of Hermes Uy by Douglas Candano
• Door by Cyan Abad-Jugo
• “Working Title” by Sarge Lacuesta
• EmberWild by Nikki Alfar
• Lovelore by Francezca C. Kwe
• The Pepe Report by Ian Casocot
• The Family That Eats Soil by Khavn de la Cruz
• L'Aquilone du Estrellas by Dean Francis Alfar

I've included the blogs written by some of the contributors-- hopefully, I got 'em all right. I for one am giddy because it's a great list of stories (not just because it includes moi). For example, Ian Casocot makes a hint 'bout his contribution, a story about our national hero, Jose Rizal:

a piece where they clone Rizal to test his alleged homosexuality, only to be surprised that the petite hero was actually a ... Well, you have to buy the forthcoming book to find out, yeah?

In other news, remember my previous post on "how to read fantasy"? Well, Tor editor Teresa Nielsen-Hayden reiterated her position while writing an intro to her husband Patrick's new antho, New Magics: An Anthology of Today's Fantasy. There, she wrote:

There’s a rule for what makes good fantasy work, and it’s as strange as any riddle ever posed in a fairy tale: In fantasy, you can do anything; and therefore, the one thing you must not do is “just anything.” Why? Because in a story where anything can happen and anything can be true, nothing matters. You have no reason to care what happens. It’s all arbitrary, and arbitrary isn’t interesting.

This emphasizes what I believe in, i.e. just because fantasy means "anything goes" doesn't mean that it does. Like science-fiction, the principle of stringent rules also apply to fantasy in order to make good stories. In other words, a powerful wizard blasting his enemies left and right-- just because he can-- won't make a good story unless some rules apply.

Related to the question of whether fantasy is metaphor or as-is, noted fantasist Ursula K. Leguin says:

Readers—kids and adults—ask me about the message of one story or another. I want to say to them, "Your question isn't in the right language."

As a fiction writer, I don't speak message. I speak story. Sure, my story means something, but if you want to know what it means, you have to ask the question in terms appropriate to storytelling. Terms such as message are appropriate to expository writing, didactic writing, and sermons—different languages from fiction.

Finally, one of my favorite writers, Kelly Link, has an interview over at Maud Newton's blog. The interview gives an in-depth look at how Link-- described by a NY Times reviewer as "a hard writer to put your finger on"-- writes. What gets me in an all happy-happy-joy-joy mood is the fact that I have the same writing practices as Link:

And every time I come back to the story, I start again at the beginning and rework the story down to the place where I have to start writing new stuff. Writing new stuff is very satisfying, but I put it off as long as I can. I’m more a rewriter than a writer, although I’ve tried to limit how much rewriting I allow myself to do. I could rewrite forever.

... and...

As for being influenced, I do read other writers to figure out how to do certain things, or because they’re working in territory that I’m also interested in.

Writing is a conversation. (I’ll probably say this again at some point.) I need to be reading in order to be writing.

... and...

I think endings are terribly difficult, and of all the parts of a story, they seem the least like life to me. I don’t always know the ending when I write, now, which is a relief. I like being surprised by the endings as I’m writing stories! When I do have an image in mind, what makes me want to write the story is wanting to figure out how the character got there, and why it matters that they ended up there.

Of course, I can only dream that I'd be as good as Link. *sigh*

In passing, here's a quote from Link that gave me some food-for-thought (italics mine):

The more that you understand something, the less resonance and weight that thing has for you. We tend to file away the stuff that we understand — it’s finished business, and we can go on to the next thing. I’m interested by the stuff that I haven’t figured out yet. It’s like being scared by a horror movie. You can’t be scared by something that you understand completely.

Up next: the revenge of the neglected book reviews!