"Spring arose"

[eldritchhobbit]

Happy birthday to sarah531, and happy early birthday to captnofmyheart. May you both enjoy a terrific day and a wonderful year to come!

Thanks for the many good wishes sent my way since my last posts. I am still under the weather, so your kind thoughts are most appreciated!


I have a few links to share:

* My recent interview with Randy Hoyt is now available as "Science Fiction Primer: Interview with Amy H. Sturgis" in the April issue of the online magazine Journey to the Sea. (This issue also includes an article on Madeleine L'Engle's Many Waters and a piece on the way in which authors feel they discover, rather than invent, their worlds and characters.)

* I make a guest appearance on the first episode of the new SFZine.org Podcast. In this episode, available here and via iTunes, I give a fifteen-minute crash-course introduction to H.P. Lovecraft and his writings, specifically "The Rats in the Walls." An unabridged reading of the story by Deidre Green follows my segment. (Links to all of my podcast work are collected here.) If you listen, I hope you enjoy it!

* Alina Stefanescu has compiled The Top 100 Books on Totalitarianism, a list which includes several key dystopian novels. These books were selected on the basis of their contributions to the knowledge, understanding, history, and study of totalitarianism. Over the course of the next year, she will devote a daily post at her blog to one of the books on this list.


"And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Sensitive Plant

Comments

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

Ah, there's nothing like a little Shelley to brighten a day. :)

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed!

[abbie (from livejournal.com)]

Oh goody! Goodies!

I liked the interview.
Re: myths...I'm reading (or am supposed to be reading) Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth for my english writing class. Are you familiar with it?
And another question: would you consider a novel set in the world we know, but where a supernatural event takes place "speculative fiction"? Or is that "mundane fiction"? Mundane has a bad connotation...I don't wanna bore people.

Hey. I wasn't messing around back there, take it easy.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Hey there! Thanks so much for the kind words. The interview was a transcription of a phone conversation, so I wasn't sure how it would read once it was typed up. So I'm glad you liked it!

Yay for Joseph Campbell! Are you enjoying it? I haven't read that one, but I've read his Hero of a Thousand Faces, which is fascinating stuff. (And without George Lucas reading Joseph Campbell, we'd never have had Star Wars!) I'd be interested to know what you think of the book.

would you consider a novel set in the world we know, but where a supernatural event takes place "speculative fiction"?

I guess that might depend a bit on how it's handled. If the supernatural event is never explained away (it was just a dream, or a hallucination, or it had a cause the witnesses didn't know about that fits with what we know of science today), I'd still call it speculative fiction. It might lean closer to magical realism than, say, fantasy (although I tend to think that distinction is more bogus than some others do), but both of those are SF.

"Mundane" does have a bad connotation, I'll admit, but that's a bit of a revenge tactic, I suppose, since critics of big-l "Literature" have historically denigrated genre literature and pushed it to the side. ;) Is this (the work with a supernatural component) something you're writing?

I will take it easy. Thank you. :)

[abbie (from livejournal.com)]

Ah, thanks for the clarity.

"'Mundane' does have a bad connotation, I'll admit, but that's a bit of a revenge tactic, I suppose, since critics of big-l 'Literature' have historically denigrated genre literature and pushed it to the side. ;)"

I knew it! I knew it right when you mentioned your foe, Jane. Snarky McSnarksnark!


"Is this (the work with a supernatural component) something you're writing?"

Maybe. Potentially. I mean...I dunno.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

I snark, therefore I am. *blinks innocently*

Maybe. Potentially. I mean...I dunno.

This is GREAT news! I am so happy to hear this. I'm cheering you on, I hope you know. Go you!

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Have you read Kenneth Hite's Tour de Lovecraft? I gave it to the GM of the Call of Cthulhu campaign I'm playing in, at her annual Cthulhumas party (the one where I got my now defunct shoggoth in fishnets); Ken offers some very intelligent readings of Lovecraft's stories. Though his tastes aren't always the same is mine; my favorite Lovecraft stories are "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Shadow out of Time," with an old fondness for The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (which I ought to reread one of these months).

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

I have indeed, thanks! I read his blog posts when he was doing those entries as he re-read each story, and I thought at the time how nice it would be to have his mini-essays compiled into a volume. And then he did it!

Oooh, I do love "At the Mountains of Madness," especially. What a great work.

[nakeisha.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear you are still under the weather.

*Good vibes and get well soon wishes*

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! They are most appreciated. *hugs*

[sarah531.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the birthday wishes! :)

[sarah531.livejournal.com]

Wow, and a present! Thanks very much for that. *hug*

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Yay! You're most welcome. *hugs*