His stories contain big ideas, thoughtfully dealt with in crisp prose that I could read until the end of time. It’s tough to read Matheson’s stories now because his are the quintessential Twilight Zone type story (they were turned into several of the best TZ episodes) and have been ripped off, parodied and lovingly copied so many times that they feel cliched.īut concentrating on that takes away from the exquisite, concise, clear writing, characterization and big ideas of the original material. Author Julie Duffy Posted on JCategories Reading Room Tags Reading Room, robert silverberg, time travel Leave a comment on Needle In A Timestack by Robert Silverberg Ripples In The Dirac Sea by Geoffrey A.
Read this story in The Time Traveler’s Almanacĭo you worry about reader or posterity when you write? How do you feel about stores that have aged badly in one respect, while still having other features to recommend them? Join the discussion in the comments.
But me? I’m certainly becoming less likely to read and praise them just because somebody tells me I should. The writers were working with what they had. I’m not willing to cut myself off from a world of literary history, just because the writers weren’t inclusive (or not-horribly-racist), but I can’t seem to help having a niggling, deep down dissatisfaction when a good writer excludes half the population or is clueless about basic human dignity.Īgain, I’m glad these stories were written, and I won’t not read them because they aren’t inclusive. I don’t know if I should curse Alison Bechdel for bringing it to my attention, or simply shrug and accept that there’s so much good writing out there no that DOESN’T fail the Bechdel test, that it’s OK for me to be more picky. I’ve never worried too much about older social attitudes that we have, thankfully, left behind, showing up in stories where we couldn’t expect the author to have a more modern outlook.īut in spite of not going around looking for these nits to pick, I am increasingly impatient with stories in which the women are cardboard cut outs. And that’s OK.Īs something of a side note, it’s interesting to go back and read older short stories and find things I wasn’t expecting.įor example, I’ve never worried too much about the sex (or gender) of the person who wrote a story or of the main character. We just have to write the best stories we can, and keep writing them as we change and age. I guess we can’t worry too much about that. Not sure how I feel about that, being an upbeat and optimistic person who likes a laugh, but felt a little cheated by this story. It did seem a little shallow at times, though, because I’m so used to ‘realistic’ takes on doomsday technologies in current stories. It was nice to read a story with potentially disastrous technology that wasn’t completely dystopian. Similarly, these characters simply mention the significance of the sensation the first time and then use it in the story to signal to the reader that someone’s been time-traveling again. It did that every time a friend send what we called a ‘text message’ from a similar device, over the wireless cell network…” No, we’d just say, “My phone buzzed.
Silverberg does a great job of creating signposts for readers that make the effects of time travel seem almost mundane (one character tastes cotton in his mouth when the past has been changed, another gets a persistent twitch under the left eye…).Īs writers today, we wouldn’t have a character stop to explain why the gadget in their pocket was buzzing (We wouldn’t write, “My phone buzzed again. (Compare this to Geoffrey A Landis’s story where nothing the time-traveler did in the past could affect the future in any way.) Adjust through time, and you will be wanting to press PLAY as soon as it finishes to listen to it again.Cute and slightly terrifying story of two men competing for the same woman, but this time they have the power to go back and change the past. If you are into music that rewards you every time you play it, this is for you, even if you don't quite get it the first time around. How he condensed all of those ideas and sounds into 45 minutes is beyond my comprehension. Its not overly long, although at times I wish it would last twice that amount. Make it past this point and you will be rewarded, and on subsequent plays you will learn to love those opening tracks. In fact the first 4 or 5 tracks before Thom Yorke does his cameo are punishing to the un-initiated. However it is a mind-bending experience on the first play. It's a huge 45 minute journey through so many different textures, styles and instrumentation it just dazzles. It reveals layers on each and every play. Its as perfect an album as you could hope for, varied and deep. As I type this I must of played this album 30-40 times so far since owning it.
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