Proximal Eye – Page 16 – Mark W Tiedemann

Inside Outside: Two Views of Science Fiction

April 5, 2014 3 Comments

Histories and analyses of science fiction are often fragmentary. Like histories of rocknroll, there are just too many different facets to be meaningfully comprehensive. That is not to say there arent excellent works that manage to deal with essential elements of science fiction, only that inevitably something will be left out or overlooked or, now and then, misunderstood. I recently read two books about the subject that represent the poles of such analysesthose done from the inside and those done from the outsideand between them a clarity emerges about the fundamental misunderstandings that abound about the nature of science fiction. Brian W. Aldisss almost majestic Billion Year Spree was published in 1973, a good year to attempt an overview like this, which covers precursor works as well as traces the development of the specific qualities of the genre through the 19th Century and then treats the major corpus of what we have come to recognize as science fiction from the

The Visceral and the Vast

April 1, 2014 1 Comment

One of the ongoing struggles with what might be called epic science fiction, of which “space opera” has been a mainstay for many decades, is finding the balance between the plausibly human and high-tech melodrama. Science fiction was born out of a passion for innovation and event which often overwhelmed or even shut out attempts at telling human stories. It was a genre of heroes, villains, and grand conflict. In the wake of the New Wave movement of the 1960s, certain forms diminished in prominence for just this reason. Writers wanted to connect with their characters, tells stories that mattered on more than an adrenalized level, do work that might attain to the standards of literature, which meant more modest scales, closer scrutiny of the human heart, and a muffling of melodrama. The lesson, unwelcome as it sometimes seemed in certain quarters, was learned and work produced after the 1970s reflected a shift in focus from the grander to the

Light Goes On

March 10, 2014 1 Comment

George R. R. Martin has become nearly ubiquitous since the advent of his massive, multi-volumed and cable-networked Song of Ice and Fire, more commonly known as The Game of Thrones (even though that is only the title of the first book in the series). Before that, he successfully helmed a network television series, Beauty and the Beast, and before that he worked on the excellent reboot of The Twilight Zone in the mid-1980s. Even before that, however, he was establishing a reputation as a fine writer of speculative fiction and fantasy with a handful of novels and short story collections. His first novel, Dying Of The Light, published in 1977, demonstrated his strengths and served notice that what would follow would be worth anyone’s time and attention. Returning to early work like this can sometimes be a dubious exercise. Writers grow into themselves, rarely doing anything approaching their best work in the beginning. But sometimes the talent and skill are

The Wimsey Principle

March 1, 2014 2 Comments

Recently I read my first two Lord Peter Wimsey novels. An acquaintance has long held Gaudy Night to be an exceptional work, so I settled down to indulge a period mystery, only to discover a very different sort of work full of surprises of remarkable relevance. Finishing that, I picked up Whose Body?, the first Lord Peter novel. What I found between the two was a substantial exhibition of intellectual and emotional growth. It is always striking to encounter a character at two far-removed periods. Reading novels in a series in the order of their appearance can have a leavening effect of the profound changes visible. You grow along with the characters, if there is growth (and too often, it seems, in murder mysteries there is little growth in the principle character—but then that’s not what such series are about, is it?), and what may be striking changes seem natural, depending on the author’s skill. In this instance, Sayers’ skill

Turning The Wheel: Principle At War In Iain M. Banks Consider Phlebas

February 3, 2014 1 Comment

Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you. T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land “Consider Phlebas…” The phrase focuses attention and sets expectations. As the novel progresses, we are primed to consider. And yet, it seems to be little more than a big, yawping space opera, set during a war, with a lot of zipping about, fighting, explosions, deaths, intrigue. All of that, to be sure. What is there to consider? Iain M. Banks loaded the dice before the first page by taking his title from an enigmatic stanza of a famously complex modern masterpiece. He has claimed in interview that he “just liked the sound of it” and had to use it as a title in something. An easy, dismissive answer to a question that begs for something more. Consider Phlebas opens with an escape. In the midst of combat, a self-aware ship fashions a new

Mary Poppins and Mr. Banks

December 18, 2013 No Comments

(I am cross-posting this from my other blog, the Distal Muse, as it relates to the theme of this one.) There was a hardcover copy of a Mary Poppins book in my grade school library. I remember finding it and being very excited. Naturally, Id seen the movie and I was already discovering how much better the books from which films were made could be. So I checked it out and took it home and that night opened it up and Took it back the next day, unfinished. To say it was nothing like the film is beside the point. To say I found no magic in it would be closer. But frankly, the Mary Poppins of P.L. Traversof which we now are so vigorously concerned of lateI found to be a cold, humorless drudge who was obsessed with discipline. She was more like Mr. Banks from the film, who had to be saved from his stern, business-before-all attitude

Mixed Signals

December 15, 2013 2 Comments

I listen to music every day. Intentionally. I choose something to set my internal harmonic brainscape and listen. It was a difficult and startling revelation to me back in my youth to realize many people don’t. That is, even when they have music playing, they don’t listen. For many, it’s wallpaper, and this just struck me as sad. But it explained what I thought of then as the execrable taste a lot of my acquaintances seemed to display in music. I have never cared for so-called Top 40 tunes, with rare exception, because in my experience such songs were either the least interesting pieces on their respective albums or they were the zenith of a mediocre musical imagination. Boring. Listen to them three or four times and their content is exhausted. I also used to have an absolutely absurd prejudice that if I could manage to play it myself, on guitar or keyboard, with only a few practices, it was

Quantum Branching…As Literature Embraces Science Fiction, the Past is Again and Again

November 5, 2013 1 Comment

Kate Atkinson’s latest novel, Life After Life, is a remarkable achievement. It’s several hundred pages of exquisitely controlled prose contain the story of Ursula Todd, who is in the course of the story, born again and again and again. Each life, some so very brief, ends in a tragic death, accidental, malevolent, heroic, painful, and each time she starts over, comes to the point where that mistake was but is now sidestepped, turned away, avoided. She lives multiple times, each one different, and yet she remains herself. The novel opens with a shocking scene—Ursula, a young woman living in Berlin, enters a café wherein she finds Adolf Hitler, surrounded by sycophants, enjoying his celebrity. She pulls a pistol and takes aim, Then she is born. It is 1910, in the English countryside, and snowing heavily. The scene is reminiscent of Dickens. She is born. First she dies from strangulation, the umbilical cord wrapped around her with no one around who

Mark W. Tiedemann

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