Welcome!

If you're here from Daily Sci Fi, hello!

I blog about a variety of things, but here are the tags for my reviews, links, etc. on:
-sci fi
-fantasy

My favorite of my archives is, I think, this post about Lois McMaster Bujold's "Borders of Infinity" and (glory be!) Bujold's own response to the same.


Hope you enjoy poking around the site and hope - even more - that you enjoyed the story "Expensive" over at Daily Science Fiction. I surely enjoyed writing it!

-Jessica Snell

Weekly Links

My weekly round-up of interesting reading from around the web:


"A Sonnet Is Not a Martini: the Art of the Narrative Turn":

The problem, in a nutshell, is that our minds habituate too quickly to mere escalation. We adjust too readily to the simple addition of orcs. Plenty of films seem not to realize this, relying on faster car chases and more elaborate fight scenes to keep us engaged. Far more effective is a narrative turn.

"Open Letter to a Trapped Wife":

Abigail dealt with her blockhead husband with all wisdom, and everything consequently came to a head. She was submissive to him, up to a point, and went completely around him in another sense. In this way she was very much like her future husband David, who honored the Lord’s anointed, refusing to take Saul’s life when he had the opportunity, while at the same not cooperating with Saul at all. David honored Saul as his anointed king, even while disobeying him. David did not turn himself in. Abigail did the same kind of thing. She honored her husband as her husband, but also did what was necessary to save her household. This was not simply a discrete, stand-alone action, but was rather a step in the story that helped bring everything to a head.

"20 Years":

More than a decade ago, I wrote “Marriage is work. It never stops being work. It never should.” I stand by that observation. Krissy and I were in love the day we were married and are in love now, twenty years later. But that love is not a default state of being. It is a choice we make every day, and work follows that choice. Work is the proof of that choice. Love is the result of that work. Love gives us another day together, and the opportunity to make that choice once more.

"Prepping for an Author Visit? Read This!": for my fellow authors. Good stuff.

A Goodreads Q&A with Lois McMaster Bujold:

"How high is up?" is one of those dangerous questions that each writer must answer for themselves. Setting goals unrealistically high guarantees frustration, too low risks not challenging oneself to do as well as one otherwise might. (As a rule of thumb, it is also better to focus on what you can do, and not on other people's non-controllable responses. "Finish a book" is controllable, "sell a book" less so, "become a bestseller or win an award" still less so. Unhappy is the writer who boards this train wrong way round.)

"The Preach Moment":

And so here's what's wrong with Andy Stanley, and everybody else really, because I know you're longing for my summation of three minutes of TV preaching. Here it is, ready? I Can't Do It. I can't do the work you're telling me to do. I can't be welcoming enough. I can't be happy enough. I can't be positive enough. I can't be good enough. I can't be sinless enough. I can't pray enough. I can't rest enough. I can't do it. I'll just repeat that, as if I were actually saying this to Andy Stanley, I Can't Do It. And you telling me to work harder actually just makes me angry and slightly hating of God. Stop piling work on me. I can't do it.

Links: mostly about fiction (Bujold, Scalzi, and Once Upon a Time!)

Loved this interview with Lois McMaster Bujold from Lightspeed Magazine about Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, especially this part:

I’ve actually done Ivan’s POV before . . . A lot of people who’ve been following him through the series as a secondary character who keeps popping up were convinced that he had hidden depths, but I keep saying, “No, no, Ivan has hidden shallows, and let me show them to you.” 

(To remind you: Bujold is very cool.)

For fellow fiction writers out there, you might want to be aware of the boilerplate contracts from Alibi and Hydra. John Scalzi writes:

THIS IS A HORRIBLE AWFUL TERRIBLE APPALLING DISGUSTING CONTRACT WHICH IS BAD AND NO WRITER SHOULD SIGN IT EVER. 

D'ya think he thinks it's a bad idea? Heh. Lots more (scarily enthralling) details at the above-linked posts.

-I've gotten geeky about Once Upon a Time before, but nowhere near as well as awesomely as Cindy McLennan does in this TWOP recap of the episode "Manhattan":

In the cosmology of Once Upon A Time, True Love serves as the deity -- a.k.a., the most powerful magic of all. Certain things are fated to happen, but that doesn't mean the characters are puppets. It is up to them whether they will work for Team Love or Team Evil. When people say hate is the opposite of love, they're often corrected by those who believe that hatred is passion gone wrong, and that indifference is love's true opposite. I hate to get in the middle of all that, so let's look at it a little differently: If True Love (emphasis on true is intentional and doesn't have to mean romantic love) is the ultimate good, then its opposite is Evil.

Basically, she starts by giving out that her bias is a Judeo-Christian worldview, and then argues that the show Once Upon a Time has its own theology. Which, I think, is right on, because a lot of the point of fantasy, as a genre, is to make little theologies. Fake ones, yes, but authors (screenwriters, etc.) use those little, pretend theologies, to try to figure out something about the real world.

Or to tell really good stories.

Or, well, both.

And I'm stopping there before this becomes a very, very long post about why fiction works the way it does and why it can do a million different things at once, and why it's awesome. No reason to fly all my geek flags at once. :)

Anyway, I'm not advocating McLennan's worldview wholesale, or anything like that, but I think her post is the smartest thing I've read so far about a show I enjoy very, very much indeed.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

A Response from Lois McMaster Bujold about "Borders of Infinity" and Dante

Okay, I just barely resisted titling this post, "Because Bujold is Awesome, That's Why." :D

Earlier this year, I posted my theory that "Borders of Infinity" by Lois McMaster Bujold was at least partly inspired by Dante's "Inferno". A reader of the blog later encouraged me to send my thoughts to Bujold, and, eventually, I did.

She wrote me a fascinating response in return, and kindly gave me permission to share it here.

Here it is:

  Insofar as I can remember what I was thinking back in 1986 when I wrote this novella, yes, the shout-out to the Divine Comedy was intended -- but not entirely consciously, and_ certainly_ not in advance. It came glimmering up out of the material as I wrote, as such things do, and I took what fit and served the story. (As opposed to devising a story to embody some preselected template.) So a point-by-point analysis is bound to fail at some points.

  You can also get a glancing reference to Eurydice out of Beatrice, if you squint. (As, in the tale of Orpheus-and-.) I'm an equal-opportunity culture thief.

  There is certainly a... metaphor? parable? to be had out of the story, if one is inclined that way, about grace having to be something that breaks in from outside; you can't pull it out of your own ear unaided. Or the tale can be read on the surface, skimming along as a straight-up milSF adventure. What sort of reading each reader gets from it will depend sensitively upon the prior contents of each head. Sort of like a Rorschach blot, that way. But that very quality is just what makes books and stories so endlessly debatable.

  Good on you for spotting the Bunyan take. (That passage gave my French translators fits, by the way, Bunyan not being a common cultural reference in France at all. Nor, admittedly, among Americans, but let them hear who have ears and all that.)

  I have an amusing story about the Bunyan quote. I was hand-writing the first draft of this in the Marion Public Library, where I fled to work at this period of my life since it was not possible to do so at home with kids, and came upon that point where I needed something that sounded scriptural but wasn't actually Biblical. I bethought myself of Bunyan, whom I had read some years before, went to the shelves, found a copy (I don't think it had been checked out for quite a while), and flipped it open more-or-less at random to right there, or at least in the first few pages I glanced at. Stole it immediately, slapped it in where needed, and went on. But the story was already partly written and plotted at that point, so any homage was _ad lib_, not designed.

 My initial internal vision of the prison camp was more WWII barracks-like, but first, it wasn't very SFnal, and second, as a person who values and needs her solitude, my idea of hell is to be trapped with a gazillion people and be unable to get away from them. So that dome has to partly be chalked up to my personal taste, as well.

I did have a WWII veteran remark recently that "Borders" was the most perfect WWII story he'd ever read. Still thinking about that one.

Bujold has long been one of my favorite authors, and this thoughtful response just put me over the moon. My thanks to her for letting me share it.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Bujold's "Borders of Infinity" and Dante's "Inferno"

It's pet literary theory time!

Here is my theory - and if anyone besides me has noticed this, I haven't read about it, so it's just begging for a English term paper to be written on it - I think that Lois McMaster Bujold's novella The Borders of Infinity is (among other things) a riff on Dante's Inferno.

Why? (Here there be spoilers. For both works.)

1. The Borders of Infinity opens with Miles Vorkosigan thinking, "How could I have died and gone to hell without noticing the transition?" Hell. Yes. That one word is part of my evidence.  But, folks, it's the paragraph, and it sets the tone for the rest of the story. Miles is in Hell.

2. The prison camp is circular. So is Dante's Hell.

3. There are circles within the circles (see the women's section of the camp).

4. Miles has a literary (okay, at least literature-obsessed) guide. Yes, I am saying that Suegar=Virgil.

4a. You could argue that Oliver=Suegar. Okay, go ahead: convince me.

5. There is even someone running in circles. Yes, I know that sounds more like the Purgatorio than the Inferno, but, you know, it's still Dante.

6. BEATRICE LEADS HIM UP.   Yes, I'm shouting. Yes, that's my biggest piece of evidence. (Term paper folks still with me? Okay, here's your paper topic: why does the Virgil figure go up in Bujold's version, while the Beatrice figure falls?  Aaaa. Yes. Hmm.)

6a. If Beatrice is Beatrice, does that make Cordelia the Virgin Mary? C'mon, you can't argue that that's pretty much Cordelia's place in the Vorkosigan cosmology.

7. Just try to count the references to damnation (all the things the prisoners have done with and to each other), redemption, and sin. Just try.

8. What's the theme? The harrowing of hell. Yes it is. (Term paper people: is Miles a Christ figure? What does that mean for his relationship with his mother? Make sure you use the pond incident from Komarr in your answer. Also, reference his fourteen-shuttle-groups-for-the-fourteen-apostles statement.)

9. The saints (i.e., the Dendarii observers, Elena and Elli) are watching and listening to Dante's (Miles') prayers. (Term paper people: is this evidence against the thesis put forth in point 8?)

10. Suegar's scripture is from Pilgrim's Progress, about when the pilgrims finally make it to Heaven. HA! "HA!", I say.



Hee, hee, hee. Okay, that was so much fun.

What do you think? Did I make my point? More importantly, did I miss anything?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. If you purchase something through these links, I'll receive a small percentage of the purchase price - for my own shopping! :) (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Daybook for November 7, 2011

outside my window . . . it's dark. It's after four'o'clock: of course it's dark.

I am listening to . . . This. You're welcome. (the line that totally makes that song is, "I'm not jokin' any more, girl . . .")

I am wearing . . . My Birch Vest! It's finally cold enough that walking around all day in wool is appropriate. Or at least not wildly uncomfortable.

I am so grateful for . . . not being sick. We were sick here for two weeks straight, and it just wasn't any fun.

I'm pondering . . . I just finished The Curse of Chalion (again) and I'm pondering what it had to say about saints. In that book, the saints are those who open themselves completely to the will of the gods, and the gods pour through the open portal of the saint's person in order to accomplish their works. And the saint sits back and watches in astonishment at what his own hands accomplish when hands other than his are guiding them. He is in the company of his god, and it is enough.

            That is it, that is the theme - and I think it's a true (as far as it goes) reflection of Christian life: that God is enough. He, Himself, is our peace.

            The Christian life is, over and over again, surrendering ourselves to God and finding ourselves again in that place of profound peace (“His will is our peace," as Dante said). And I wonder if that’s not what I’m meant to write about, in the end. But I can only write it if I live it.

I am reading . . . Not Chalion, sadly, having just finished it. I'm in the middle of several nonfiction books, but I'm dithering about a bit for a novel. I might start West Oversea or The Hawk and the Dove, which comes highly recommended from a friend.

I am creating . . . my novel! Which is going swimmingly, just as it's supposed to (my hero and heroine touched for the first time today and I cackled like an old matchmaker at how giddy it made them both), and that unexpected trilogy is getting plotted too, just as it wasn't supposed to (I'm the one getting a bit giddy in that case - it's turning into just the sort of story I love most: "Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...")

("Doesn't sound too bad. I'll try to stay awake.")

I am thankful for . . . Adam.

around the house . . . getting everything shaken back to rights after two weeks of being sick.

from the kitchen . . . my grandma's persimmon cookies!

real education in our home . . . Bess and I are reading Mandy together. It's just about the perfect story for any girl of any age. In making her home, her home finds her. It's very good.

the church year in our home . . . still collecting gifts for the kids for the Twelve Days of Christmas. Pondering what I'm going to do for the Advent fast. (See, that's the fun of being Anglican. If I was Eastern Orthodox, I'd just know.)

recent milestones . . . got the novel to 15,000 words today!

the week ahead. . . I'm having my tooth pulled tomorrow. No, it doesn't sound fun to me either. But I'll be very glad to have it out. It's not where it's supposed to be (and never has been) and it's been a minor irritation for over a decade now.

Can I add that I'm also grateful for dental insurance?

picture thought . . . Here is my terribly blurry proof that I've figured out how to knit cables:

It's a hat for a friend, just before the ends were woven in. Adam obligingly tried it on for me so that I could make sure it'd fit the friend, and now it's in the laundry, waiting to be washed and blocked. But - cables! I'm so chuffed. I love learning new things.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links! Violence, Death, Pain, and More

Another links post, because we've all (well, 5 of the 6 of us) been sick here, and I'm down for the count for a second time, and so I've had way too much time to just poke around the internet, reading.  Here are some of the cool things I've stumbled across:

-I actually caught this interview when it aired on NPR, and it was so good. Interview with the author of "Don't Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America." I know that sounds dull and perhaps depressing, but it's actually one of the most riveting and hopeful things I've heard in a long time. Highly recommended.

-In "Steve Jobs and Death In Medias Res", John Mark Reynolds argues that the saints never die in the middle of their stories, but always at the end.

-Shannon Hale's giving away some ARCs of her new book "Midnight in Austenland" if you like her on Facebook. I do like her and her writing, so I'm passing this one on! :)

-Willa, over at Quotidian Moments, is going to be hosting a slow, thoughtful read-through and blog-through of Margaret Peterson's "Keeping House: the Litany of Everyday Life". I'm joining in and I'd encourage you to join in too; if you go look at Willa's post, you'll see that the schedule she's proposing is really leisurely and doable - and the book isn't very long to begin with. To encourage you further, here's a link to my review of the book from a year ago. As you can see from the quoted sections, it's very lovely, rich, and rewarding reading.

-Jeanne over at At A Hen's Pace has a beautiful and profound post on pain up on her blog.

-Fictional Places You Can Visit in Real Life. Anyone up for a visit to Hobbiton?

-When a motif starts showing up over and over in popular culture, it's smart to wonder why. With that principle in mind, here's another thoughtful analysis on the current popularity of zombies in today's entertainment offerings.  An excerpt:

David has grasped a breathtakingly essential point about zombie fiction: if human beings really were merely animated meat suits, then there would be no moral difference between killing zombies and killing human beings--and, as a corollary, we could kill human beings without remorse or pity simply because they were in the way. The history of the atheistic regimes of the twentieth century shows us what that looks like--what it looks like when a society arises to whom human beings are merely interchangeable animated future corpses, and which treats people as if they have no intrinsic human worth.

But if humans have intrinsic worth--if they are not mere walking bodies, if they are more than merely well-evolved animals--where does that worth come from? If the people we once loved who have died are not merely decomposing flesh, if they, the essential selves, still exist, then where and what are they, and why are they still alive? For Christians who believe in the soul, these questions can be pondered with placidity, gratitude, even joy. For anyone who does not believe in an immaterial and immortal human soul which makes us look like our Creator, though, these questions can only be rather grim to think about.

-And, the best news for last, Lois McMaster Bujold, my favorite living novelist, has finished a new book! Better yet? It's the one about Ivan. w00T!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

the fun of fan fic

I've just rediscovered the fun of writing fan fiction.

Fan fiction was how I started writing, really. Back in the day, as a middle-schooler, I was introduced to Star Trek and fell in love with sci fi. The adventures! The drama! The new worlds!

So of course I invented my own character (an intergalactic space princess*, how else?) and inserted her into whatever that week's episode was and watched how the plot changed as she joined the adventure.

This was how I got through boring classes day after day after day. I daydreamed.

And of course I wrote it all down. That's what you do with stories. How could you grow up in a house with books in every room and not know that?

I even had a friend back then who did the same thing, and we'd write stories together, each with our own heroine, passing a notebook back and forth between classes, taking turns adding a chapter to the story. (The trick with those was always to have your own heroine come out on top in scene, but to do it subtly enough that your friend couldn't complain about how you'd treated hers.)

I never stopped writing fan fiction, really, though eventually several of those stories followed enough rabbit trails and started being legitimate stories of their own, universe included. And developed even further and started having real characters and not just Mary Sues.

(Imagine my joy when I learned that even Bujold wrote fan fic back in the day. That my favorite sci-fi series ever wouldn't have existed without her proposing her own Star Trek what-if?)

But just this week I've discovered a new use for fan fiction, something that's made me fall in love with it all over again: it's a great writing warm-up.

Fan fiction - at least the way I do it, with no audience in mind ever - is just fun. I don't have to worry about it making sense, or about writing the boring parts, or about plausibility. It's just stick-my-Mii-in-my-current-favorite-story-and-run. It's a blast. It's like sprinting.

I imagine this is how other people feel when they write their "morning pages" or their free-writing. But free-writing doesn't get my engine running the same way story does. To take an exercise metaphor: free-writing is static stretching, fan fiction is dynamic stretching. The former actually makes you weaker, making microscopic tears in muscles that aren't yet warm. The latter gets your muscles moving through their range of motion, psyching up the fibers that are needed for movement.

I've always liked writing fan fiction.** But I never realized how useful it is. It reminds me that all of it is supposed to be the fun part. So once I write a page of fan fic, I can go over to my novel and hit the ground running, remembering that the fun of the story is in the characters, the impossible situation and just how fast and how far I can make it all go.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

*I actually still use the same character when I write fan fic now that I did when I was thirteen. She's just grown up a bit.

** Not reading it. Generally, reading other people's fan fiction is deadly. Which is why mine isn't getting posted anywhere.

Cryoburn

Wow. 

I don't know if I've ever read such a thematically perfect book. And I thought Bujold was good with characters.

Go read it! Go read it, everyone, so I can talk to someone about it.

Bujold is a virtuoso.

And she's done it again.

Go read, go read!

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell