Saturday, April 05, 2008

Fiction Discussion

This is from my friend Rick

For those of you who have an hour or so to spare for a bit of fiction:

My blog post today is about a short story (novelette, actually) by Ted Chiang that appeared in S&SF last year and has now been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards. I'm asking those of you with blogs to make a little experimental space on your blog for the links to the free audio and text versions of the story so that us and your readers can attempt a group discussion of the story -

How it works,
How it doesn't,
Whether it's deserving of the awards,
Whether it showcases modern science fiction as a still-promising genre, etc.

All I request is that you link back to my post and put a comment on mine so other people can find their way to your blog post as well.

For those of you without blogs I'm asking for participation - too much of our entertainment these days is passive. Jump in, read the story, talk about it. If you hate it, then say so. If you love it, tell us and others about it. If this works, I'll find other free - linked stories to try this with and it can become an (ir-) regular feature.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for joining in. The first question is:

"The story I have to tell is truly a strange one, and were the entirety to be tattooed at the corner of one's eye, the marvel of its presentation would not exceed that of the events recounted, for it is a warning to those who would be warned and a lesson to those who would learn."

As an opening, does that hook work? For me it did and yet it didn't really present any of the conflict or the characters. It's a flavor line, a setting or mood . . . and yet it made me sit up and take notice.

Why is that?

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