The Nebula Award nominations have been announced. I expect that American Gods will make it a trifecta, having already won the Hugo and the Bram Stoker.

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“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”

                              –Oscar Wilde.

There are a number of generally-held views of what a writer’s day is like. Sometimes we envision a person doing a lot of contemplation of his or her own navel; other times we envision a skinny person sitting in a bare room banging away on a typewriter at great speed, enhanced by caffeine and nicotine, pausing only to rip the current sheet out of the typewriter, crumple it, and toss it into a wire-frame garbage can the floor around which is littered with dozens of crumpled versions of the same page. We envision something like Wilde’s quote above, a writer poring over many a manuscript, moving single words around in deep concentration.

For some writers, though, it’s actual work. Witness a day in the life of Sheila Viehl.

Of course, all writers are different. Sheila works in several different genres and these days she has a lot of projects going on at once. Not all writers work as hard as she does, but for all writers, it is work. Writing is not sitting around, waiting for the inspiration to show up. Writing is sitting at the desk every day, wringing the inspiration from one’s fingers until they bleed. And if it’s a dry day, with no inspiration to be found, it’s still work.

I came across another nifty quote the other day, but I’ve already forgotten the source: “The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more work.” That applies to everything, really, but it really applies to writing.

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OK, SDB, and another thing….

Well, no, not really. A hearty “Welcome” to those of you perusing here by way of SDB’s link. I hope some of you will take some time to look around a bit and see that I don’t foam at the mouth, generally, except for matters relating to a certain set of space-opera films made by George Lucas. I mean, we all have those little things that launch us into unforeseen rants. For me, it’s Star Wars. For some people (ahem), it’s France.

(Whoa….thank God, George Lucas isn’t from France….the horror!!!)

(Oh, and one other note to newcomers: I don’t talk about politics here very often, mainly because there is a ton of that available elsewhere. Generally speaking, though, I am a liberal, I generally vote Democratic, I have very little use for President Bush, and I support war in Iraq although I don’t really trust our current Administration to not muck up the aftermath of such a war. Just in case anybody is wondering.)

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Wow, I’ve been blogging for one year now. Hoo-ray!!

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OK, time for some geeklike response to SDB’s review of Attack of the Clones:

:: First of all, if you’re already fairly certain that you only want to see a given movie because of a single scene in the movie, why on earth would you buy the DVD? Just go to Blockbuster, plunk down your four bucks, watch that one scene as many times as you want for a week, and then be done with it. Of course, SDB has quite a bit more money than I do, but to purchase a film that one doesn’t particularly want seems to me an odd use for twenty bucks. (Unless, of course, he got a previously viewed copy. He doesn’t say.)

:: SDB makes this claim about the Jedi: “They were selected not on the basis of their ethics but solely on the basis of how much “force” they had in their veins.”

SDB is stone wrong here. The “midichlorian count” is a definite factor, but it’s pretty clear from The Phantom Menace (and the original films, to boot) that there’s more at work than mere Force-potential. The Jedi Council, in TPM, duly notes Anakin’s Force-potential, and still they initially refuse his training and only grudgingly consent to it when first Qui Gon defies them, and then Obi Wan makes clear his intention to do the same. Also, when Luke arrives on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda is very wary and it’s pretty clear that he is far from convinced that training Luke to be a Jedi is a good idea.

:: Then he makes this claim: “It’s really hardly any surprise they got their asses butchered in that battle; they were not only arrogant, they were stupid. This was the cream of the original Republic? Good riddance.”

SDB is wrong here, too. First of all, he’s still showing off his “Look what an expert in military stuff I am” bit, which in the context of a Star Wars movie is a pretty pointless endeavour. But anyway, this is not the cream of the original Republic. Those days are long, long gone. The whole point of Attack of the Clones is that the Jedi have become arrogant and that they are no longer the “cream” of the Republic. How SDB could totally miss the point here is mystifying.

:: “And then they go into a great wild melee with their light sabers, and I found myself wondering: If Yoda can move like that in a fight, why in hell does he need a cane to walk normally?”

Surely this doesn’t take that much thought. Yoda clearly channeled a great deal of Force-power in that duel, and it’s clearly not something he can do for long periods of time, and certainly not for something as trivial as discarding his walking-stick. We get a glimpse of Yoda’s immense skill in Attack of the Clones, but it’s not Yoda at his most powerful. He is not in his prime here; he is, in fact, over 800 years old and is only 40 years away from dying of old age.

:: “Yoda could have thrown his light saber and put a big gash in the side of it to make it not be space-worthy. There was no excuse at all for him letting Dooku get away. Yeah, he was using the force to keep a bunch of debris from crushing Kenobi and Skywalker while Dooku got into his ship, but there was plenty of time before it launched to wreck it.”

Ummmm….sure. First of all, SDB is suggesting that the ship’s hull is sufficiently thin that it would be rendered un-spaceworthy by a mere glancing blow by a lightsaber. Now, nothing ever shown in any of the Star Wars films suggests that a lightsaber, while able to cut through metal, does so like a hot knife through warm butter or a Ginsu-knife through paper. It takes effort — witness Qui Gon’s attempt to cut through a metal bulkhead in TPM.

And for that matter, SDB is assuming that Count Dooku will (a) not notice Yoda’s lightsaber arcing through the air and thus (b) either do nothing to deflect it or be unable to deflect it. If Yoda had done this successfully, it would have been a cheat of mammoth proportions.

Then SDB launches into his DragonballZ stuff, which frankly reminds me of when my college roommates and I would stay up late and, after consuming a number of beers, debate whether or not a Borg ship from Star Trek could withstand a Death Star blast. I can only assume SDB is trying to be funny here, but it just ain’t working, I’m sorry to say.

OK, geek-mode off. I think. (That’s the problem with “geek-mode”. It can be reactivated by the slightest thing….)

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Notes on a couple of books recently finished:

:: Excelsior! by Stan Lee is the autobiography of Stan the Man, the main creative force behind Marvel Comics. Lee created, among others, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and my longtime fave, Spiderman. His highly entertaining autobiography is breezy and fun, filled with neat details about the birth and growth of the comics industry, and Lee writes here in pretty much the same tone that is familiar to anyone who has ever read one of his “Stan’s Soapbox” columns that used to appear in each Marvel comic. (In fact, the book even opens with a special edition of “Stan’s Soapbox”.) Lee’s style includes a lot of exclamation points, and a pretty-much constant sense of a guy looking at you from his perch atop the mountain, grinning widely, and saying, “Jeez, can you believe a guy like me ended up here?”

The book does include some of the “darker” events in Lee’s life, but even those events in Lee’s hand don’t come off as really all that grim — even the Seduction of the Innocent fiasco of the fifties that hobbled comics as a medium for the ensuing half-century. If you want a sense of the history of comics that is more angst-ridden, there is Michael Chabon’s brilliant novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay; Lee is a guy who doesn’t take it all very seriously and that’s how he writes.

(Oh, and after looking at the photos in the book, I have to note: Stan Lee’s daughter is absolutely stunning.)

:: Children with dark imaginations (and like-minded adults, too) are well served by Neil Gaiman in his short novel Coraline. This is an Alice In Wonderland type of story, in which a little girl uncovers a portal into another world, but this is substantially darker than Alice — the focus here is on chills, as opposed to Lewis Carroll’s focus on wordplay and intellectual games. The book is fairly creepy, with some striking images.

Little Coraline lives a fairly boring life with her parents in a new flat that includes a door behind which is a brick wall — until she opens the door and finds the brick wall gone. Passing through, she finds herself in a nearly identical flat occupied by her nearly identical parents, but the differences are terrifying and soon Coraline discovers even darker things about this new place and the force that has brought her into it.

I enjoyed Coraline. Gaiman’s use of small word-tricks is evident here, and his dark imagination manifests itself in the same stark imagery that was so evident in his Sandman comics and in American Gods, although he somewhat “keeps a lid on it”, focusing on atmospheric effects rather than on gore. The story is relatively straight-forward and the book is an easy read. I’m not sure if Coraline is destined to be a classic — I don’t think it’s as good as, say, the best gothic novels of John Bellairs — but it’s quite a good read for someone looking for an alternative to Harry Potter.

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I find it moderately amazing that of all the words spilled, scrawled and spewed by the warbloggers, the best case for going to war in Iraq I’ve seen yet is made by Kevin Drum, and fairly concisely, too. (Not concise for him — for a guy who’s usually a model of brevity this is abnormally verbose, but he doesn’t ramble at all, and the words “Engineerist”, “Jacksonian”, “Idiotarian” and “Evil-evil-France-we-hate-them!” are not to be found. Man, it’s refreshing.)

(The only problem with his essay I can identify is his statement that while India and Pakistan have problems with one another, their region is not a powerkeg. India and Pakistan are their region — the Asian Subcontinent — and it won’t take much to make that region into a powderkeg.)

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For the LOVE of GOD.

I’m not mad that Den Beste didn’t like Attack of the Clones, really. (Well, OK, I am, a little.) And I’m not mad that he repeats the tired complaint about both prequels, “There’s no Harrison Ford!”. (Well, OK, I am, a little. To me, this complaint has always been a little like going to a “Frankenstein” movie and complaining because Dracula isn’t in it.) Hell, I’m not even annoyed at his pretentious closing — “I am harder to please than the masses.” (Well, OK, I am, a little.)

But I’m most definitely annoyed that he is actually of the belief that Star Wars pales in comparison to….

….wait for it….

….Dragonball Z.

I may be completely off-base on this, but SDB strikes me as one of those people who reads one novel every two years or so, mainly to take his mind off the Really! Important! Nonfiction! stuff that usually occupies his time, which he just doesn’t have to spend on such frills as fiction. (As I say, I could be completely wrong here. But somehow, I doubt it.)

(Yes, folks, I know. When I die, if I come before St. Peter and he tells me “You’ve had a good life, so you’re in if you just do this one little thing: Denounce the Star Wars prequels!”, I’m going to have a very hard time making the decision.)

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When Bad Guys Have Great Lines, part one.

I’ve noticed over the years that villains and antagonists tend to have the best dialog in the movies, so I’ll start catalogging some of my favorites.

:: “Love is a dunghill, and I am a cock that struts upon it to crow.” –Cunningham (Tim Roth), Rob Roy.

:: “Why, I have more money than…than…than Calvin Coolidge! Put together!” –Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), Singin’ In The Rain.

:: “I like to play with things awhile, before annihilation.” –Ming the Merciless (Max Von Sydow), Flash Gordon.

:: “I want them alive. No disintegrations.” –Darth Vader, The Empire Strikes Back.

:: “I’ve watched Presidents die.” –Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis), The X-Files (“One Breath”).

:: “All right, we’ll head him off at the precipice.” –Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

:: “They stamped it, didn’t they? Those damned Gideons.” –Jim Phelps (Jon Voight), Mission: Impossible.

:: “It’s K-k-k-Ken, c-c-c-coming to k-k-kill me!” –Otto, A Fish Called Wanda.

:: “The trouble with Scotland is that it’s full of Scots.” –King Edward II (Patrick McGoohan), Braveheart.

:: “Who knows? In a thousand years, even you may be worth something!” –Belloq (Paul Freeman), Raiders of the Lost Ark.

:: “We all have our little faults. Mine’s in California.” –Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman), Superman.

:: “When it comes to brains, I got the lion’s share. But as for brute strength — I’m afraid I’m at the shallow end of the gene pool.” –Scar (Jeremy Irons), The Lion King.

To be continued….

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I’ve been thinking a bit about the “digital distribution revolution” that is unfolding in the music world, and is beginning to bud in the film world — the uploading and downloading of songs on P2P networks, the various copyright issues, and such. While I grant that the industry attempts to stuff the genie back into the bottle are equal parts laughable, draconian and dumb, I also have to admit a certain suspicion of the motives of many who are allied against the RIAA and MPAA. For all the high-sounding rhetoric about “freeing Mickey” (with which I generally agree; copyright was surely never intended to last for periods measured in decades) and “progress” and “the evil record companies” (with which, again, there really can be no dispute, since the RIAA’s typical view of talent is not-that-distinguishable from indentured servitude), it seems to me that the bedrock motive always comes back to money. The RIAA does not want its golden goose killed, and the file-swappers are under the impression that a fabulous new day is dawning when paying for music and movies and whatever else is a thing of the past. “Information wants to be free” has always struck me as a ludicrous idea, especially since the conduct and quick anger of those who insist such never fails to convey the actual message of “I want my information to be free”.

Some other thoughts, largely unrefined, have been stirring about in my brain for a bit, so I’ll just throw some things at the wall. If anyone has answers or thoughts of their own, feel free to comment.

:: The means of distribution affects art in many ways. For instance, every article I read about filesharing and its related issues discusses the shared content in terms of songs. I see this in the Apple tagline, “Rip. Mix. Burn.” I see this every month in WIRED, when some celebrity or important person is asked to list their current playlist, and it’s always a selection of ten or twelve completely different songs. When WIRED recently compared a group of music-download sites, they used a single song as the test case. My point? While I do often speak of individual songs, I’ve always preferred to think of the song as something atomic, with the larger work — the album — as the actual work of art. I may be one of a minority in this regard — I haven’t done any research here — but I wonder if something isn’t being lost when our attention turns from albums to individual songs. I worry that the idea of a great album — say, Brothers In Arms or Led Zeppelin IV or The Wall or Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely — may die out as our focus shifts to finding those songs that we like.

A great album isn’t merely a collection of songs. A great album has an entire character on its own that is defined by the way its constituent songs work alongside one another; how the mood of one song leads into the mood of the next; the ebb-and-flow of the tempi and style of the songs. What place, then, for an album in a world where the song is the standard of exchange?

:: I’ve thought of getting an MP3 player, once in a while, but I’m not at all certain how much mileage I would get out of it. This is because I tend to listen to entire albums, as noted above; but also for another reason: I just plain like CDs. When I read comments in WIRED that imply that the CD has become uncool and square, I really wonder how on earth this can be. I’ve never found CDs to be anything other than marvelous and wonderful. They are convenient; their sound is frankly better than an MP3; and I actually like things like cover-art and liner notes and whatnot. And I don’t like the idea of my entire musical collection existing as nothing more than ones-and-zeroes on a hard-drive, subject to the various problems that affect hard-drives now and again. I like the physical reality of my CDs. Thumbing through my music collection and finding old gems that I haven’t heard in a long while is always a pleasure; although admittedly I haven’t tried, I can’t quite believe that scrolling through a collection of folders and files on my PC would have the same cachet.

:: If the digital realm is really the future of content — music and books and film and whatever else — then I worry even more about the “digital divide”, where so many people in our society are unable to join the online world, whether because of cost or disability or whatever. The Digital Divide is real, and it is large; and it seems to me that if we’re going to transfer a significant part of our cultural expression to the digital realm, then we’d better make damned sure the Divide is reduced to almost nothing, if not eliminated entirely.

There are many people in this world who cannot afford a computer and whose only opportunity to go online is to use a public terminal at a library, if they can even do that. But a person who might not be able to spend $600 on a computer may still be able to scrape together $30 for a bargain-basement CD player. They need not be shut out of our culture entirely, which is what I fear may happen to an uncomfortably large segment of our society as we become more and more digital.

Digital media are wonderful and have stunning potential. But I’m unconvinced that the infrastructure exists to make our digital world a reality for all people, and if we can’t bring the digital to all people, then I am not prepared to allow those people to fall by the wayside, thus creating a caste of Untouchables — perhaps we would call them “the Unconnected” — who are not only divorced from the Internet, but divorced from our culture itself even as they walk amongst us.

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