THE TALE OF THE THREE BROTHERS by Beedle the Bard

This might be cheating, but I just finished Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows and I want to blog about it.

Spoiler Alert

One of my favorite writing tricks is to include a story within a story that develops plot and strengthens the mythology of the fabricated world. It is very human to search for meaning in books and stories. The Old Testament, The Torah, The Koran, The Bothers Grim, and Aesop Fables, are a few examples of books that are full of stories that are supposed to help us better understand ourselves and the world around us.

The collection of stories that enriches the already beautiful world created by Rowling puts this reader completely under her spell. The Tale of the Three Brothers plays a very important role in story. What really great about a myth or fable that becomes true, as this one does, is that there are always the believers and the non-believers. But what are myths and stories but the truth thinly veiled in small beautiful lies. This way the believers can seek with faith and the non-believers can dismiss the story as childish and irreverent.

I won’t go on too much about this plot turning story, just in case; I’d hate to ruin it for anyone. Three Brothers is about three brothers that find themselves confronted by Death. However, they get one up on Death and Death is forced to grant each one wish. Each of the three brothers wish for magical items (that play a role in the lager plot of HP 7) that enable them to evade Death’s wrath with varying degrees of success.

That is it; that is all I’ll say. Enjoy!

Rowling, J.K. The Tale of the Three Brothers. In Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows. New York: Scholastic, 2007. p 406 - 409

I'VE BEEN MEME'D

It feels like high school all over again. The pressure! -Here! I've done it!-

-Start Copy-

It’s very simple. When this is passed on to you, copy the whole thing, skim the list and put a * star beside those that you like. (Check out especially the * starred ones.)

Add the next number (1. 2. 3. 4. 5., etc.) and write your own blogging tip for other bloggers. Try to make your tip general.

After that, tag 10 other people. Link love some friends!

Just think- if 10 people start this, the 10 people pass it onto another 10 people, you have 100 links already!

1. Look, read, and learn. ***
-http://www.neonscent.com/

2. Be, EXCELLENT to each other. **
-http://www.bushmackel.com/

3. Don’t let money change ya! *
-http://www.therandomforest.info/

4. Always reply to your comments. ****
-http://chattiekat.com/

5. Link liberally — it keeps you and your friends afloat in the Sea of Technorati. *
-http://chipsquips.com/

6. Don’t give up - persistence is fertile. **
-http://www.velcro-city.co.uk/

7. Give link credit where credit is due. *****
-http://www.sfsignal.com/

8. Pictures say a thousand words and can usually add to any post.**
-http://scifichick.com/

9. Participating in ‘memes’ is a destructive habit and should be avoided at all costs. *
-http://nethspace.blogspot.com/

10. Don’t hold back.*
-http://www.aidanmoher.com/blog

11. Short Fiction is the bomb!
-http://soullessmachine.blogspot.com/

-End Copy-

I tag: 9 to 5 Poet, Sandstorm Reviews, Howard's Movie Corner, Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, and SciFi Ranter Gril.

Sorry! If you don't like this thing. I don't blame you.

I've got to get back to Harry Potter and I still have one Short Story Review to go for July.

Ugh...When do I get to sleep!

FIRST SHORT STORY TO BE PUBLISHED

I just got an email from the fiction editor of Rock, Paper, Scissors. They are going to take my short story, "The Paperless Doctrine of 2152."

This is my first fiction publication credit.

TOWERS by Sheila O’Connor

O’Connor will be my thesis advisor. She will help me through the Thesis process when I begin in February 2008. I have most of what I’m going to work on written. However, I am open to what will end up in the final manuscript. To help the relationship, or so that I can have a better understanding of where she is coming from, I read her book of short stories.

Tokens of Grace is a novel broken into short stories of between two and five pages each that follow two Irish girls, Ryan and Callie. However, I don’t review entire books, just short stories. My favorite story-chapter is “Towers.”

In “Towers,” Ryan and Callie are in a train yard. They have spray paint and are up to no good. They tag a boxcar with their names. It is not specifically said, but the idea is that they feel trapped; and if they put their names on a boxcar, a part of them can get free. There is also a little hope that the boxcar might visit their father, who their mother has escaped from.

Ryan and Callie get caught red handed by an old guy working the train yard. This is one of the scariest scenes in the book. I thought for sure that they were goners. Instead, they get away, but have to promise each other that they will never come back again. To me, the deeper meaning here is that they have to give up their hope of escaping the town and ever seeing their father again—that this hope is too dangerous to pursue.

If you’re looking to read something Irish, depressing, and full of emotion, these stories are for you, “Towers,” in my mind being the best of the lot.

O’Connor, Sheila. “Towers.” Tokens of Grace. Minneapolis: Milkweed, 1990. p. 115 - 119

PICKMAN’S MODEM by Lawrence Watt-Evans

This story, in my opinion, is a good example of how to bring the Cthulhu Mythos into the present. The horror is still strange. The point of view is still first person, the terrible story of the first hand witness of someone who dies, goes mad, or experiences something far far worse.

Watt-Evans also expresses how I feel about the Internet, blogs, and computers this weekend. The narrator says, “You can waste hours every day reading and posting messages, if you aren’t careful, and the damn things are addictive; they can take up your entire life if you aren’t careful. The nets will eat you alive if you let them.” I couldn’t say it any better. This addiction is just another way for me to avoid working on my fiction.

As the story progress and the narrator, George, has brief Internet encounters with Pickman, the story spirals into the wonderful Mythos pitfalls that ensnare a large number of characters. Pickman and George get together and investigate strange messages. Pickman’s postings and emails are being rewritten after they are sent and before they reach the intended reader.

Pickman’s modem is made by Miskatonic Data Systems in Arkham, MA, and the serial number reads RILYEH.

It might feel gimmicky, an evil modem, but I like it a lot!

Watt-Evans, Lawrence. “Pickman’s Modem.” Cthulhu 2000. Ed. Jim Turner. New York: Del Ray, 1995. p. 52 - 57

The Simpsons

I must interrupt the reviews with a quick note about the upcoming Simpsons Movie. I'm excited. I've also thought that it would be great to be on the show. Now, I can be.

This site will make you over into a character on The Simpsons.

This is what my wife and I look like as characters.

I think that any real fan will want to try this!

The WATER WORKS by E.L Doctorow

I’m not sure I know what happened here. This is a very short story. It begins, “I had followed my man here.” Then the narrator, I’m assuming a woman, gives not a physical description of her man, but tells the reader about his passion for the Water Works and what why it seems to matter to him.

It is a time of house drawn carriages and cobblestone. I know that we are not in the present. The story takes place in the past. What past, I’m not sure. The narrator tries to drop clues, but I’m just not able to put the pieces together. Crazy.

Why then do I like this story? I like the point of view. I like the way the narrator seems to be present in the scene, a person, but none of the other characters ever address her or really notice that she is there. Well, that is until the end. When she is noticed, some joke about firemen and gravediggers is made.

This 5 to 6 pages short story humbles me. I’ve read it a few times now and I know that there is something going on, but I just can’t break through. I want to say that it is about women and how they were present, but absent, expected to be apart of the background. However, after writing it out, I’m not sure and I’m most likely wrong.

If you can find this story, please read it and then chime in on what you think is going on. I just don’t know.

Doctorow, E.L. “The Water Works.” Lives of the Poets. New York: Random House, 1984. p19 – 24

CATALOG OF WOE by Mindy L. Klasky

Both my wife and I are constantly looking for jobs that don’t exist, jobs that fulfill us in ways that our non-work lives do. These jobs would allow us to use our creativity to serve our community, honor our belief in literature (with a capital “L”), and align with our political and moral values. Some would say finding jobs that fulfill those requirements is equivalent with emotional suicide. We choose, perhaps naively, to hope and dream.

Sarah is a librarian for the Jessup Corporation. She is looking at a 500,000 credit bonus for cataloging the known written records of the Mardurans before the deep space mining vessel she is aboard makes earth fall. The hope is that the records she catalogs support classifying the Mardurans as a class-two species, expendable, so that the planet can be striped mined for alethium, an ore that makes space travel and colonization possible.

Sarah wants the bonus money. She wants to retire and never have to make another deep space trip like the one from which she is returning. She wants to live a happy peaceful life with her new romantic interest, Bernard. Bernard is a French scientist whose decision it is to classify the Mardurans status as species. Sarah thinks of sharing her bonus with him and living a life of luxury until she finds out that his decision has been bought.

What strikes me as odd is that Sarah was willing to, as she put it, use her feminine wiles to persuade Bernard to recommend a class-two status for the Mardurans. Sarah was thinking greedily of her well earned bonus. Until, that is, Sarah learns that Bernard is being bribed three million credits to make a class-two recommendation stick. Seeing Bernard’s shallowness must have tripped her moral compass or seeing how much more Bernard was being paid triggered her competitive jealously. Either way, Sarah made the decision to catalog a Marduran document telling the universe that the Mardurans were deserving of class-thee status, raising them to the level of human.

This is a very good read. I hope to run across it anthologized in numerous places as a reminder that just because “they” don’t like us, “they” are also deserving of the same protections that allow us to peruse the American Dream.

Klasky, Mindy L. “Catalog of Woe.” Space Inc. Ed. Julie E. Czerneda. New York: DAW, 2003. p 43 - 62

BLOOD MUSIC by Greg Bear

Blood is so very import. It seems silly that I would say that, but blood is that thing that everyone needs to live. It is not talked about enough. Blood is on my mind. In between tattoos I donate blood. It has been 18 mnths since my last tattoo and Memorial Blood Center has been hounding me for almost a year. It seems that there is a great demand for my blood type: O positive. I have an appointment on Saturday morning.

Donate! You could be saving someone’s life.

“Blood Music” is one of my all time favorite short stories. I came across it a few years ago and I can’t, for the life of me, remember where. It is seems to be about the power of pathogens and how quickly they can adapt and spread from one host to the next. It is also about the power of personal convictions. The main character, a bad employee, was told to ignore his own idea and pursue other ends. His idea was that microbes could be programmed like a computer. He followed his dream and was fired for insubordination.

He was ordered to kills his creations before turning in his lab coat. Instead, he injected them into his blood stream. He only wanted to save the lives he created. The short story ends with a cliff hanger “what if” moment. The reader is meant to believe that the end of the world as we know it has finally begun.

Bear went on to expand this story into a novel by the same title. The novel is good. It takes the premise of the short story and spells out just how the world changes. For me, I prefer the short story, which left me with a sense of “oh, crap!”

You decide! Read both! But if you read one, read the short story.

Bear, Greg. “Blood Music.” The Collected Stories of Greg Bear. Tor, 2003

MOONWALK by Susan Power

There should be more stories in the world like this one. Stories that help us to understand that there is more in life than what gets taken in at first glace. Stories should enrich us and show us the way home to ourselves.

Power weaves this story with might. She begins strongly with, “Margaret Many Wounds was dying.” The rest of the story ripples out from that stone. Margaret’s daughters come home to the reservation and they honor the old ways by beginning to make corn soup. Secrets that were meant to say hidden are finally revealed about Margaret’s children’s father. Margaret’s grandson gets a taste of the truth and magic of his Native American ancestry.

This well crafted story is after a communal experience, family, tribe, spirit. The point of view shifts from Margaret, to her daughters, to her grandson. Each generation sees their culture in a different light. It takes the talent of a grand storyteller to get at the truth behind all that history, all that pain, all that love.

One of my favorite scenes happens in story, after Margaret has passed. Her grandson sees her on the TV. “He recognized her weaving dance as Sioux powwow steps…” She was dancing on the moon. “He waited for Armstrong and Aldrin to see her…” They never did. Some readers might think this magical realism, but I hold it as truth. If Jesus can rise again after being dead for days, then grandma Margaret Many Wounds can dance a Sioux powwow on the moon.

This is a must read!

Power, Susan. “Moonwalk.” Ploughshares, Issue #58, Fall 1992. p. 112 - 132

GREAT SEX by Alice Adams

Sometimes I need a reminder that I am lucky. I found the love of my life in college. We dated, lived together, and eventually bought a condo and got married. We have two cats, a small herb garden. We see movies, go on walks, and find new and interesting restaurants. My wife is my best friend. We have great sex.

“Great Sex” is a sad story about two women, Sheila and Alison, and their relationships. Sad only in the characters admit that they are not happy with how their relationships have turned out. Sheila just exited a relationship of confused political correctness; her lover, white, seemed only interested in her blackness. There are also hints in Alison and Sheila’s dinner conversation that their might have been abuse.

During dinner, one of Alison’s ex-lovers, and father of her daughter, comes in with another woman. This ends dinner for Sheila and Alison. They leave. Alison goes home and waits for a phone call. He calls. They meet. The have great sex.

What is nice about this story is the way the flash backs are handled. They are short, fast, and interesting. They are about Alison’s relationships in which she has “earthquake sex.” The sex is never described, it is had, which disappoints me a little, but fits Alison’s character.

Alison’s story seems timeless. Her story of love, sex, sadness, child, and reunion sex, is one that seems to happen over and over and over again. It seems to say to me, find love and sex where and when you can. It also reminds me just how truly lucky I am.

Adams, Alice. “Great Sex.” The Stories of Alice Adams. New York: Knopf, 2002 p. 529 - 536

SQ by Ursula Le Guin

The mention of Le Guin in my last post encouraged me to pull her off my shelf. And today being July 4th and all, I wanted a story that spoke of freedom in some fashion. SQ solves it for me in one story.

SQ or the Sanity Quotient is a test that the World Government has adopted. SQ was invented by Dr. Speakie. Here is how it works: you take the test, if you score less than 50 you are considered to posses mental health, but score over 50 and you will be relocated to a SQ Achievement Center for rehabilitation.

“Only testees can be free” (p. 72). The story goes so far as to say that only those that posses a mental health score of 50 or less can be said to truly appreciate the meaning of freedom. At one point in Le Guin’s story, more than half the word’s population resides in a SQ Achievement Center, and the other half staff it or provide support.

The story is told from the first person perspective of Mary Ann Smith, Dr. Speakie’s secretary, and the sanest person on the planet. She regularly scores between 10 and 14 on the SQ. However, with first person narrators, the question of reliability always lingers at the back of a reader’s mind. This works here. I trust Mary Ann Smith, but as the story progresses I being to question the reliability of the test because she is able to remain calm as the world as we knew it comes to a halt. She is calm and understates everything. Her narration forces the reader to take a side. However, there is more to this story than that, but you just need to read it to capture its full meaning.

So, Will you choose the calm rational world of the SQ? or Will you choose to accept that we are all a little nuts?

Le Guin, Ursula. “SQ.” The Compass Rose. New York: Bantam, 1983. p. 68 - 78

Ursula Le Guin Fights Back

Cory Doctorow turned me on to this dialogue between so called serious literature and genre, in a conversation we had yesterday. It is well worth your time.

Statement: "God's Frozen People: Michael Chabon carves out a Jewish state in Alaska" By Ruth Franklin

Rebuttal: "On Serious Literature" By Ursula Le Guin

Enjoy!

SECOND PERSON, PRESENT TENSE by Daryl Gregory

You like to get high. It makes you feel free of everything, from your born again Christian parents, from your friends, from school work, and even from yourself. You pop Zen the newest drug on the market. It makes you feel like you’ve taken a back seat to your own life. Your body lives. It walks. It talks. It holds intelligent conversations. You watch yourself live freer than you would ever dare, if you were in control.

---

Gregory knows his psychology or at least he has me convinced that what Zen does in the story is possible. An overdose and you sit shotgun to your life forever as Therese find out. Actually, Therese has to take her psychologist’s and her parents’ word for it. She doesn’t remember being Therese, or, well, remember in the normal sense of the word. She has vague flashes of Therese like a veteran relives a deep jungle fire fight, it’s you, but not you, your safe, but your not.

Zen is one scary drug. The other name for it is Zombie. You’re moving but no one is home. I think that brilliance of this story is the way in which the facts are laid out. It takes talent, and Gregory has ample, to be able to tell more than show. The action scenes are short and simple, conversations mostly, that break up long sections of internal monologue that explain the use and the effects of Zen and the psychology to back it up. I was so interested in the how and the why that these longer sections seemed too short. I wanted to spend more time listening to the internal narration of Therese's character.

I really admire that Gregory has tackled an issue like drug use by taking it into the near future with an imaginary drug. This way the reader can step back and look at the world around them with fresh eyes. Reading, not unlike taking Zen, but when you put the book down, you remember and know who you are.

This is such a good read! Don’t miss it!

Gregory, Daryl. “Second Person, Present Tense.” Year’s Best SF 11. Ed. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. New York: EOS, 2006. p. 29-53

THE SOULLESS MACHINE REVIEW June 2007

FAMILIAR by China Mieville
THE SCHOOL by Donald Barthelme
ANDA’S GAME by Cory Doctorow
THE SAVIORS: A KABBALISTIC TALE by William T. Vollmann
EXODUS: A STORY BY DIRECTOR DENIAL by Chuck Palahniuk
THE SIN EATERS by Sherman Alexie
AIM by Jaye Lawrence
THE NAMELESS SEASON by Alicia L. Conroy
ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGY by Neal Asher
TV PEOPLE by Haruki Murakami