"the great clomping foot of nerdism"
Feb. 24th, 2008 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eldritchhobbitHappy birthday to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
homespunheart! homespunheart is new to LJ-land, and I'm glad she's here. Check out pictures of her quilting here and knitting here. May you have a fantastic day and wonderful year to come!
In other news...
* I was thrilled and honored to learned I was featured on the Artists Who Inspire Creativity blog on Friday. Many thanks to independent producer, writer, PR manager, and artist extraordinaire, Rebecca Kirkland!
* The 2007 Nebula Award Final Ballot has been announced.
* The "Philosophy Bites" podcast recently had an interesting installment on time and time travel: read more here.
I stumbled across this provocative quote recently, and thought it was too interesting not to share:
Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.
Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.
- author M. John Harrison, from his blog
homespunheart! homespunheart is new to LJ-land, and I'm glad she's here. Check out pictures of her quilting here and knitting here. May you have a fantastic day and wonderful year to come!In other news...
* I was thrilled and honored to learned I was featured on the Artists Who Inspire Creativity blog on Friday. Many thanks to independent producer, writer, PR manager, and artist extraordinaire, Rebecca Kirkland!
* The 2007 Nebula Award Final Ballot has been announced.
* The "Philosophy Bites" podcast recently had an interesting installment on time and time travel: read more here.
I stumbled across this provocative quote recently, and thought it was too interesting not to share:
Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.
Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.
- author M. John Harrison, from his blog