james_nicoll ([info]james_nicoll) wrote,
@ 2009-04-17 14:22:00
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Entry tags:memetic prophylactic recommended

More things I found without particularly looking for them
Norman Spinrad has made the first third of his Osama the Gun available here. As he explains:

Frankly I am making this portion available as freeware as widely as possible because publishers have been rejecting OSAMA THE GUN the completed novel for reasons I dare to suggest are largely political, and for reasons that will I believe be obvious to anyone who reads even this portion, they are the same reasons this novel needs to be published and read.


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[info]carloshasanax
2009-04-17 06:45 pm UTC (link)
... Spinrad is of the generation which believed that crazy sex was a socially transformative experience, isn't he. Oh you Boomer types and your naivete.

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[info]james_nicoll
2009-04-17 06:48 pm UTC (link)
He's not a Boomer. Yes, I see "types" but not everything is the fault of the Boomers.

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[info]carloshasanax
2009-04-17 07:08 pm UTC (link)
I know, I checked his birth date (1940). But I've read the "repressed Spinrad character has CRAZYSEX (TM) and learns something important" plot line before, several times, and Spider Robinson's versions too (1948), and Ted Sturgeon's, who I can't claim was a Boomer (1918) no matter how much I would like to stretch the definition to include all that is evile in the world.

But people who use this device tend to leave out the part, "and they woke up the next morning and they were still screwed up," which is where my personal disbelief sets in.

At least Orson Scott Card doesn't use it.

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[info]james_nicoll
2009-04-17 07:24 pm UTC (link)
This would an example of a set that obviously isn't necessarily cohort defined, in as much as two of your three examples don't belong to that cohort. I suggest the alternate phrase "mediocre sex-obsessed writers whose best days are long in the past.

Also, focusing about the Boomer writers takes valuable fist-shaking time away from the Beats.

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[info]jhetley
2009-04-17 08:02 pm UTC (link)
Besides, it's really our parents' fault.

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[info]carloshasanax
2009-04-17 09:35 pm UTC (link)
I think I can put a terminus ante quem on the cohort for 90-percent-plus instances of that particular story line in SF. Unless it involves sex with a vampire, of course.

Apologies for lumping Boomers with mediocre sex-obsessed Silents and Jonesies and X-Men and Ross Douthat. But I would never mistake the Boomers for the Beats.

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[info]davidwilford
2009-04-17 07:18 pm UTC (link)
I see types of people too, but Boomers aren't a type as much as a granfaloon.

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[info]beamjockey
2009-04-17 09:15 pm UTC (link)
But they're MY granfalloon.

(P.S. "Granfalloon" is spelled with two L's. Googlefight concurs. "Karass" has only one R, though.)

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(Anonymous)
2009-04-17 07:56 pm UTC (link)
Hyde's rule:

"Any statement including the word `boomer' will inevitably contain at least one errror".

Including that one, of course.

William Hyde

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[info]fridgepunk
2009-04-18 12:03 am UTC (link)
For one thing, "voomer" is the correct spelling.

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[info]tekalynn
2009-04-19 08:41 pm UTC (link)
Lord, I haven't seen that catfight for twenty years.

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[info]montoya
2009-04-17 07:01 pm UTC (link)
Seems like Spinrad's been releasing rejected novels for free since there was an internet to dump them on.

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[info]james_nicoll
2009-04-17 07:27 pm UTC (link)
I see he makes sales to French publishers when he can't to American ones. Are his books being translated into French? That would at least catch the misspellings in the version he supplies.

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(Anonymous)
2009-04-18 01:54 am UTC (link)
I have met two Frenchmen (well, one a Frenchwoman), both literate and intelligent, who insisted that _American Psycho_ was a fine book. Having had the misfortune of reading it (I was stuck in the desert with no other reading material but a generator manual, which I'd already read) I was of course dumbfounded. I assume that the French translation must have greatly improved on the original. Perhaps Spinrad has similarly benefited.

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[info]icecreamempress
2009-04-18 02:02 am UTC (link)
French people love American Psycho because it confirms their prejudices about said Americans. This is my belief. I have never encountered a French person who did not think American Psycho was fabulous.

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[info]andrewducker
2009-04-18 09:48 am UTC (link)
I've met several literate and intelligent English people who will insist that it's a work of genius, myself amongst them :->

So it's not just the French.

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[info]icecreamempress
2009-04-18 02:01 am UTC (link)
You can translate this crap into beautiful French. I'm sure every other sentence starts with "Or".

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[info]joenotcharles
2009-04-17 08:05 pm UTC (link)
I read the title as "Obama the Gun" and was preparing myself for a completely different sort of horribitude.

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[info]heron61
2009-04-17 08:24 pm UTC (link)
Indeed, after seen the title, I wondered if he's been eaten by the right-wing brain-eater rather than (as it seemed from very briefly skimming the book) simply a total lack of talent.

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[info]machineplay
2009-04-17 09:20 pm UTC (link)
i can't believe he stole the title to my futuristic spec fic with a gunslinging Muslim hero standing up against the House of Blackwater in the dirty streets and juice saloons of Afghanistan.

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[info]icecreamempress
2009-04-18 02:00 am UTC (link)
publishers have been rejecting OSAMA THE GUN the completed novel for reasons I dare to suggest are largely political

Really? Because I would dare to suggest it's because you wrote the talkiest, stagiest novel since Bulwer-Lytton. Hooray for characters who exist only to spout the broadest caricature of political positions to which the author is opposed! Hooray for characters who, speaking in their native language, sound like a horrible translation!

The 19th century is over, Mr. Spinrad.

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[info]tekalynn
2009-04-19 08:44 pm UTC (link)
I took one look at the keywords and said NO.

If he'd made it the todtentale of the [insert mishmash of Arabic, English, and French words] I might have been tempted.

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