Why This Is Hell

I spent half an hour going through the book this afternoon, looking for the key word - although it took a while to find the Googlebooks edition. (There's a Scribd one, but it doesn't seem searchable.) I have some juicy quotations, and found even more when I searched for another word. I like my quotes.

The trick now is to make sure the texts I'll be writing about fit them.


I can't help but feel it's the wrong way round...

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I can't access this on my computer, bloody modem, but can on my phone and 49th on the list is Zoo City - but can you guess what the other three books by women are? Given the inability to spell confrontational, can they spell each of these three titles correctly?


And another list of fifty that can't count.

Let's see if I can keep on top of this. I need a separate file...

( I: Alfred Bester, Extro (1975) )

( II: Alfred Bester, Golem100 (1980) )

( III: Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising (1973) )

( IV: Susan Cooper, Greenwitch (1974) )

( V: Gore Vidal, Kalki (1978) )

( VI: Robert O'Brien, Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1972) )

( VII: Brian Earnshaw, Dragonfall 5 and the Royal Beast (1972) )

( VIII: John Brunner, Total Eclipse (1974) )

The Anifest kept me indoors for most of Saturday, aside for a brief period of reading on the balcony of Albatross House and an hour in Caffe Nerd, so I was afraid the weather would be against me on Sunday. As things turned out, it stayed clear, and I headed east, pausing for a discount brand store. I fancied Widders Bel, but the coffee is better in The Ram, and I was at the mercy of whichever bus turned up first.

They came at the same time - but Widders Bel was a better bet, transport wise. Up north we went, and there is indeed an original for Bollock Stones, outside Horney Boy. I was thinking about potential for walking - but if I went to Reakys Over I'd have to go back as well. Next time. Eventually I ended up in Widders Bell.

The tide, fpor once, was in, but no swimming gear. Ho hum. Browsed the market, had an ice cream, hit the cheese shop. An Ashmore Cobble and a local Brie, and a lovely goats cheese. Yum. I clearly have a pusher there. Then the bookshop - nothing I wanted, thankfully - and a walk down the high street to the second hand shop. Yes, the very Quintan Jardine I bought on Friday and a pound cheaper. Damn. No more, though. A John Connolly I don't have, but I'll need to wait for a book tidy to track down where the intervening volumes I've yet to read are. And thence to Costa, for a coffee and a read in their garden. Bliss.

But a shame just to sit - so I set out along the Saxon Shore Way, past Peter Cushing's house, across the golf course and over the railway. A tad inland. All too soon half an hour was up, after about thirty minutes in fact, and I turned off the way to Joy Road and past Valkyrie Avenue to discover a bus stop which would take me back to Cambry.

I appear to have forgotten to do this for July. Ooops.


Ah well.

( That To Read List )


I'm cheating on Gravity's Rainbow - I have 80 pages to go, and coffee to drink this am. Is it just me, or does this look doable? The madness sets in.

Drum roll:

91200 / 120000 words. 76% done!

I've done a little bit of trimming, as the chapters are still coming in long even after losing a whole chapter, so I have written more than that would suggest. There's a fluidity created by the bibliography, so I'm not doing deep trimming yet. But there are some stark choices when I realise that I only have 900 words for Doctor Who, 700 for Blake's Seven and I still have to deal with Anderson (I've squeezed in an obscure series, if only because it has a character named Blake... I am still convinced there is a link from William to Roj, but I haven't spotted it yet.) Darling of the Month: "The UNIT narratives provided Britain with a role in world affairs without anyone having to go overseas (although occasionally they did get to leave the planet)."

Meanwhile I will have to write up the Leuven paper for the collection, discover whether I'm still doing another chapter for a new companion and need to sort out some comedy research.

Into deeper time: there is a potential book contract for next year if I sit down and do a proposal (next week?) and I appear to have had the idea for the next book, something which has been hovering around my head since about 2003, and which is not on comedy. If I'm smart I'll work out how to do articles which would be the building blocks of it, although I can see how the so-what may well come into play for sections. I definitely need to sit down and down a comedy article. Meanwhile I spy three areas that would repay articles from the seventies materials unused. No rest for the idle.

Or, getting real.

87300 / 120000 words. 73% done!

I seem to have written 2,500 words today, mostly on Vietnam.

Edging towards a darling: "Why Are We in Vietnam? asks Norman Mailer. Because we were always already there."

Unused citation of the day: “Trees are trees in their own right."


What were they thinking quotation of the day: "[the novel] might have been put together by a committee composed of Ursula Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey and Joanna Russ, with a little help from Ms Delany.” I think I count three knives there, but I may misunderestimate.


I've also been dividing the remaining chapters into chunks with word counts to try and keep chapter word counts to six thousand. (What I really need to hope is that I've overestimated the bibliography word count, because stuff can go in.) It's scary how little will fit in, especially given how long the reading list still is. The Where Next For the New Wave looks like it will be a male-only ghetto; Pamela Zoline's timing seems likely to be off, Carter would be specially pleading; is this where Emma Tennant ends up? But she needs to be after feminism is dealt with. Le Guin and Russ already have homes elsewhere, so I can't bring them in, although the free pass (but small word count) given to Ellison and Malzberg doesn't limit me to New Worlds. Trawl through the New Writings again. Hey, looks at the Andromeda anthologies for women... The first has a Naomi Mitchison story in. The other two... male only preserves.


Meanwhile, I need to select reading for between 24 August and 9 September - and am pondering a pile of doorsteps I'm unlikely to read unless there's nothing else on hand, with the thought that I could leave them behind. Probably to write a hundred words on each. Maybe this is the time I finally read Gravity's Rainbow. Need to dig out the to-get list:


Arthur Byron, Autumn Angels
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
George Alec Effinger, What Entropy Means to Me
Richard A. Lupoff, Sword of Demon
Larry Niven, Ringworld Engineers
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Inferno
Robert Silverberg, The Book of Skulls
Robert Silverberg, The Stochastic Man

There's more, of course, Bryant's The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You. Whichever ever one of T'City I don't have, making having the other two pointless (I think I have two Multifaces). More Kate Wilhelm. City of Cain, The Infinity Box, The Clewiston Test, Fault Lines. A Saxon (I think I'm missing Group Feast and The Weltenschuung of Ms Amelia Whatsit. Ah that's a subtitle of Vector for Seven) The Mortonhoe sequel. I thought there was a wikipage for 1970s sf novels (there's one for film).

I have been reading, just not the books on this list... Three down. I'm hoping two days in Chichester will help the count, but actually four of those are Octavia Butler's work, not on the list...

Reading list
( cut for sanity )

76200 / 120000 words. 64% done!

Forgot two:

CX: Leigh Brackett, The Hounds of Skaith
CXI: Leigh Brackett, The Reavers of Skaith

Two late novels, the conclusion of the Eric John Stark (or is it John Eric Stark?) trilogy begun with The Ginger Star. I can't say this science fantasy/planetary romance does much for me.


( CXII: Barry Malzberg, Phase IV )

I have put flour and stuff in the breadmaker, in the hope of having a breakfast to sleep through.