Filed under: Uncategorized
Did a reading in front of people yesterday, very scary but went okay I hope. Also had a workshop in the morning, and one of the exercises was to take your favorite novel and write about what happened before it started. I chose Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut, and wrote the following:
Before I was Timequake I was Kurt Vonnegut. No, wait. Go back you fraud! Vanessa Vitiello is trying to say something about Kurt Vonnegut. Sure she is.
Kilgore Trout, the famous alter-ego of Kurt Vonnegut, the famous alter-ego of Vanessa Vitiello, woke up one morning and decided he was tired of having all the shots called for him. Instead of being written by Kurt Vonnegut he came up with an insane idea to have Kurt Vonnegut as a character in a science fiction story of his own devising. Also Vonnegut’s sister, who committed suicide. So Kilgore Trout came up with a contraption, half-typewriter, half-time machine, half-zombie, to trap Vonnegut as a character in one of his own novels.
Before Vonnegut was Kurt Vonnegut in the not-as-appreciated-as-it-should-have-been novel Timequake, he was a guy called Kurt. Vonnegut, as it happened. But you don’t really believe that, do you?
The zombie/type-writer/time-machine tried to say something deep about the character of human existence. Being a machine it got it wrong, of course, but since the character of human existence is to get things wrong nobody minded.
Also, World War II. Just so you know how serious this is.
Right, that’s it then. Gosh I wish I’d been Kurt Vonnegut, a a writer! I never try to actually write like him because that’s just pathetic, but when I had an excuse I was pathetically eager to try my hand at it.
Geek Tragedy mentioned my blog on their podcast, which was awful nice and made me think I ought to put some sort of recent sci-fi up, on the off chance that someone will expect this blog to contain that sort of thing after they said it did.
So, here’s something I wrote a couple days ago, just a fragment I’m afraid because I’m hoping someone will publish the real work I’ve been doing.
It takes two minutes journey through the snowplain from Antarcticae to Arctica Uno. Two minutes via magway, and the magway doesn’t mind the cold but even for two minutes I sure do.
The only thing more frozen than the snowplain is the sky above it. That sky could suck the warm from anything. It tries to do it too, believe me. By the second minute you’re just about sure your toes and fingers will never move again, and you entertain fantasies about your soul itself condensing and sublimating to join the whiteness of the sky and plain around you. Then finally two minutes is finished and you’ve made it at least as far as to the forest which surrounds Arctica Uno, where there are trees enough to keep a pocket atmosphere, and the atmosphere is sufficient for the magway to be heated.
It’s not a pleasant journey. But if the doctors say the human body can heat itself enough to last two minutes who am I to argue?
Thank you, Geek Tragedy podcast. You sure have good taste in SGOTI science fiction writers if I do say so myself. Also, when discussing sci-fi westerns I was waiting for a Trigun reference, or maybe Cowboy Bebop?
Filed under: fiction
“Excuse me, do you by any chance have cat food, kitty litter?”
“There.” I said, and pointed. I said “there” with as heavy accent as I could inject into a single syllable to make her think that I could not speak English.
“Oh thank you. I just moved down the street. The street, you know, Lawrence Avenue?” She pointed. I said nothing.
“I have a little black and white cat, you see, and I realized that I hadn’t brought his food or anything else for my itsy-kitty-cat.”
I continued to say nothing. This became a victory when the foolish middle aged woman with the frizzy hair turned at last in the direction I had pointed. She came back without another word and put the items on the counter.
“Cash. You see?” I told her, pointing at the number which had lit up on my register. She handed me a $20. I made change and then I put the cat food in a bag and let the silence explain to her that I expected her to leave now.
I only talk to parrots. Eager-eyed American women fail to interest me.
