Why This Is Hell

1970s Disney Films. Rather more than I realised. Some of them I have seen. Even in the last thirty years. I thought having to acquire a copy of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was going to be traumatic enough. I hate having to reach for secondary sources but... I remember the Herbie films and The Strongest Man in the World, even have the novelisation somewhere, but... I am going to have to scour charity shop videos in children's sections.

1970 The Aristocats
1971 Bedknobs and Broomsticks
1971 The Barefoot Executive
1971 The Million Dollar Duck
1972 The Biscuit Eater (May bear comparison with A Boy and his Dog)
1972 Now You See Him, Now You Don't
1973 Robin Hood
1973 Charley and the Angel
1974 Herbie Rides Again
1974 The Island at the Top of the World
1975 The Strongest Man in the World
1975 Escape to Witch Mountain
1976 Freaky Friday
1976 The Shaggy D.A.
1977 The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
1977 The Rescuers
1977 Pete's Dragon
1977 Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo
1978 Return from Witch Mountain
1978 The Cat From Outer Space
1979 Unidentified Flying Oddball/The Spaceman and King Arthur
1979 The Black Hole

My sleep pattern is shot again, and the news is depressing. I see Henning Mankell was on the flotilla intercepted by the Israeli. The Israeli state depresses me, especially in the dealings with Palestine. Every time I hear an Israeli spokesperson it turns out that it wasn't their fault, and it was some bastard doing it to them. Sometimes it must be their fault. I gather that it would all come down to proportionality as the flotilla was in international waters; it didn't look or sound proportional to me. Meanwhile, reading old newspapers, I see it was David Laws who didn't appear on Question Time due to Alastair Campbell appearing to promote his new book represent Labour. I wonder if we were spun on the excuse, given the story which then broke?


Some reading on Robert Silverberg - all Extrapolation so far - and a cheat count...

( LXXXV: Heinrich von Kleist, "Michael Kohlhaas (From an old chronicle)" (1810) )

( LXXXVI: Robert Silverberg, Lord Valentine's Castle (1980) )

More about Yes Prime Minister and Henry Goodman and David Haig channeling the late great Nigel Hawthorne and Paul Eddington later, indeed more on John Tunnard. I am excited about rumours of a Frida Kahlo exhibition. I saw a copy of Love Labours Lost, but it didn't meet the £2 rule, nor am I sure that I don't have the Arden edition. I did find a copy of Dying Inside Robert Silverberg.

( LXXIX: Barry Malzberg, Overlay (1972) )

( LXXX: Robert Silverberg, A Time of Changes (1971) )

( LXXX: Robert Silverberg, Downward to the Earth (1970) )

A day off, although I did have a couple of hours reading Shikasta. Odd, and a little round the houses. I wonder who coined "space fiction" and when. Shall look up. The post brought Aurora: Beyond Equality, and Star-Anchored, Star-Angered arrived on Tuesday. US and Canadian posting is slow, although Aurora was last thing ordered.

I nearly talked myself out of going to see Kick-Ass; good job I didn't, too, as whatever you think about Jonathan Ross (and I think a move out of the mainstream would be to the good), his missus is a sharp talent. I am wearing a broad grin, and caught the bus with a couple of mins to spare, after a long wait to get up there.

Meanwhile, I spoke three little words to someone, and ( got the response: )

More to come.

And thus home, and the realisation that I can't go to Chichester for a day because I'm seeing a stand up Saturday night. Will have to think about staying over night (and thus it doesn't have to be a Saturday). Shall discuss this with Tilda.

A productive day, leavened by some bad news. I've also caught up another episode and a half of Ashes to Ashes, which seems to be hinting at the it's-all-a-spaceship solution, and thus more "Major Tom" than "Life on Mars".

I watched - probably rewatched - the first two Omen movies, which would be on the very edge of sf, but for the presumably 1982 (or maybe 1989) setting of Damien: Omen II.

( LXXIII: Kilgore Trout, Venus on the Half-Shell (1975) )

And now the bad news: Tom the Cheese Man is to retire. I shall have to go to Whitstable more to use the cheese shop there, or Faversham market. I am not happy, but unsurprised.

Reads, not rereads, for once.

( LXIX: M. John Harrison, The Committed Men (1971) )

( LXX: M. John Harrison, The Centauri Device (1975) )

( LXXI: Gardner Dozois, Strangers (1978) )

End of week three, and twenty-seven novels read (nine this week). I need to watch some films and tv, and get a bit of a grip on time out.

Seasonally adjusted word count:

46100 / 120000 words. 38% done!

11 October is the projected end date, so I've pulled back a day, but I have some chunks I need to get written.

I got a couple of pieces of good news over the last 48 hours - the one of which I can say unlocked is that Ardal O'Hanlon is going to be performing at a gig near me.

( LXVII: Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker (1980) )

( LXVIII: Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird (1979) )

There's a cost for good fortune - and managing to catch the Darwin bus to the campus on the hill was balanced with there being no 23.50 bus after all and having to get a cab home. Somewhere in that I lost £5-£10, either literally or being short changed. I'm trying to convince myself that in an alternate world I drank it, but it isn't working. Yesterday I got half of The Dispossessed read, and two short stories, but I won't cheat and claim it for the statistics. I also realised, again, the merits of rereading rather than depending on memory.

End of week two, and eighteen novels read (nine this week), two films watched, and one series - The Clangers. Seasonally adjusted word count (a fake 10k for biblios):

42200 / 120000 words. 35% done!

If I write 500 words a day, I finish 12 October, dropping back... I am about to write another two chunks.

In May 1997 I had my hair cut - probably for the first time in two years. Since then - aside from a bit of growing to an inch - I've been no. 4 to no. 0. I don't want have to start growing my hair down to my ass again.

I'm surprised I got anything done today, given a stuff up over the council tax which came to light today. I am still waiting for the council to phone me back.

Mostly today has been reading around feminism, and failing to find all the stuff I was convinced I'd written six months ago. Today's question: who coined the label second-wave feminism and where and when? The first part appears to be Marsha Lear, who so far evades Google fu and doesn't show up at the Library of Congress catalog, nor in Lisa Tuttle's Encyclopedia of Feminism. I suspect I'm also going to need a copy of "The Image of Women in Science Fiction", which ought to be in To Write Like a Woman but isn't. I once had a photocopy, but now? H'mm. A copy of Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives, ed. Susan Koppelman Cornillon will be sought. [Campus on the Hill: PD 826.W6]

Meanwhile:

LVIII: Farah Mendlesohn (ed.) On Joanna Russ (2009)
I suspect that if I'd sat down and analysed the contents page and seen some abstracts I could have predicted the way I'd react to each chapter - I wasn't entirely convinced by Paul March-Russell's connection of Russ and Loy (but perhaps I don't know Loy well enough) and Brian Clarke's Deleuze/Guattari's theories left me cold as always. I didn't expect to like Delany's use of DW Griffith, but he convinced me, but in part the connection didn't matter save as performance. I was amused by one writer quoting Russ talking about how (male) reviewers see her work as violent, and then Jason P. Vest writing about how violent her work is. I spotted a few glitches - Bakhtin 1968 seemed to become Bakhtin 1965, "The Second Inquisition" was 1968 or 1970, Women of Wonder 1974 or 1975. I reread my own piece, and didn't hate it, but it felt a little overpowering. If I recall a reviewer suggested I goofed by saying the narrator murders all the characters in We Who Are About To... - "she is not averse to hastening the extinction of the passengers and crew by killing in self-defense" doesn't say all.

This sounds all more negative than I want - it is a good solid collection, with no obvious gaps - but I took fewer notes than I expected to. I'll be dipping back in, of course, but I didn't quite get what I want for the current project; I'm not sure what I wanted, but... On the other hand, the early chapters about the sf community sparked some useful thoughts, and I will be using that. I need to scratch my head a bit more about Vonda McIntyre.

Here's a thought: I've always had the notion that We Who Are About To... parodies the shipwrecked rebuilding society/crashed spaceship rebuilding the world. One chapter here makes good links to Lost in Space and Gilligan's Island, but surely there's more solidly sf there. I've gone blank. Robinsonades? No reproduction for Crusoe.

You know, I've lost track as to whether I did any writing today... Not a good sign. Tinkering if any. Mostly reading - I tried to watch Heroes but the snooker overran and I only got the first five minutes of the two episodes. Better record them Saturday morning. An unusually Tuesday without the therapy session, and tried to get into town asap after lunch to drink coffee and read, but after paying bills and diversions to Chaucer Books and Oxfam, it was four o'clock. Finished a book and started another, mind. Oxfam finally yielded Ragtime, which obviously I'll read next.

( LIV: C.J. Cherryh, Well of Shiuan (1978). LV: C.J. Cherryh, Fires of Azeroth (1979). )

( LVI: Ursula Le Guin, Lathe of Heaven (1971) )