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Sunny Jackson

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction and Fantasy : Another Word: Reading and Writing... - 0 views

clarkesworldmagazine.com/another_word_02_13

Fiction Stories Clarkesworld Magazine

shared by Sunny Jackson on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • We learn about some of the most important things in our lives vicariously through fiction.
  • I’ve known a lot of people for whom books have been profoundly important
  • Fiction isn’t powerless. And if the author just ignores the politics of their work, that doesn’t mean the book becomes apolitical. It just means they wrote their own defaults.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Think Black people are lazy and violent, but your work isn’t about that? I’ll bet you dollars to donuts it’s in there.
  • Reading is the same way.
  • He’s trying to be a better man and to create (in a small way) a better world by the way he chooses what he reads.
  • And it was a moral statement, even if it was mostly a private one.
  • How we read and how we write will always have moral and political implications. The only choice we’ve got is whether they’re unconscious or considered.
  • beautiful and damning distinction
  • best self
  • authentic self
  • Wanting to live in a better world is great. Working for a better world is great. It only becomes a vice when it keeps us from loving the world we’re in—warts and all. My experience is that life is full of strong women and weak ones. Venal ones. Active ones. Passive ones. Complicated ones. Unhealthy ones. Men are just as varied and complicated and screwed-up. Their lives aren’t our societal best self, but they’re who we are
  • Treating moral issues as if they were craft is asking for a literature of beautiful sermons.
  • reading projects that pull you out into different kinds of authors and stories are wonderful so long as the moral aspects of your reading list don’t become more important than the joy you take in reading
  • I would never argue that the power of story—and it’s a real power—comes without responsibility. But I would say that responsibility is both to the better world to which we aspire and also the broken, compromised one we live in now.
Sunny Jackson

Basic Science Fiction Library - 0 views

www2.ku.edu/sflib.htm

Fiction

shared by Sunny Jackson on 15 Jul 13 - Cached
  • BAXTER, Stephen. This British hard-SF writer won the 1996 Campbell Award for The Time Ships [Amazon|Powell's], a sequel to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine
  • BESTER, Alfred. The Demolished Man [Amazon|Powell's]. Flamboyant novel of murder in a world where telepathy is common. Hugo, 1953.
  • The Stars My Destination (also titled Tiger! Tiger!, 1957) [Amazon|Powell's] is another major novel, the Count of Monte Cristo in a world of teleportation.
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  • For his important short fiction, Starlight (1976) [Amazon|Powell's].
  • CADIGAN, Pat. Synners [Amazon|Powell's] won the 1989 Arthur C. Clarke Award, Fools won the 1994 award for this author who won her first acclaim as the only female cyberpunk author at the time; soon after considered the "Queen of Cyberpunk." Patterns (1988) [Amazon|Powell's] was her first major collection of short works, and Mindplayers (1987) [Amazon|Powell's] was her breakout novel.
  • CAMPBELL, John W. The Best of John W. Campbell (1976) [Amazon|Powell's]. Influential, longtime editor of Astounding/Analog, Campbell began as a writer of space epics and then turned to writing the more subtle psychological, philosophical stories collected here.
  • CHARNAS, Suzy McKee. Walk to the End of the World (1974) [Amazon|Powell's] was one of the early post-holocaust feminist dystopias, followed by Motherlines (1978) [Amazon|Powell's], a feminist utopia. "Boobs" won the 1989 Hugo.
  • CHERRYH, C. J. Downbelow Station [Amazon|Powell's]. Hugo, 1982. This former high school Latin teacher writes about carefully designed future civilizations and alien societies, as well as fantasy novels, such as her Rusalka trilogy.
  • CLARKE, Arthur C. Childhood's End [Amazon|Powell's] (1953). A visionary, eschatological novel about Earth's children changing into pure mentality and joining the Overmind. Clarke is one of the three best-known contemporary science-fiction writers of his time (the other two were Asimov and Heinlein) and worth reading in any of his three moods: extrapolative, poetic, philosophical. Other important books: The City and the Stars (1956) [Amazon|Powell's]; Rendezvous with Rama [Amazon|Powell's], Hugo, Nebula, Campbell, 1974; The Fountains of Paradise [Amazon|Powell's], Hugo, Nebula, 1979; and the novelization of the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [Amazon|Powell's].
  • DICK, Philip K. The Man in the High Castle [Amazon|Powell's]. The United States has lost World War II, and Japan and Germany have divided it up, except for the Rocky Mountain states, where a novelist is writing a book in which the United States won the war; one of the best of the alternate-history novels. Hugo, 1963. Dick, who died in 1982, was a prolific author whose books, all of interest, dealt often with the nature of reality: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [Amazon|Powell's] (upon which the film "Blade Runner" was based, 1968); Ubik [Amazon|Powell's] (1969); Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (Campbell, 1974) [Amazon|Powell's]; and Valis (1981) [Amazon|Powell's].
  • DOCTOROW, Cory. Doctorow is an SF author, blogger, and technology activist. He co-edits Boing Boing and contributes to many other publications. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. His fiction has been nominated for all the major awards and won the Locus Award and the Sunburst Award. Doctorow speaks frequently about copyright, technology, and post-scarcity economics. His Little Brother [Amazon|Powell's] won the 2008 John W. Campbell Award.
  • FARMER, Philip José. To Your Scattered Bodies Go [Amazon|Powell's]. The first novel in Farmer's Riverworld series, in which all past human beings are revived to find themselves living along the banks of a long river. Hugo, 1972. The first had Richard Burton as its hero, the second, The Fabulous Riverboat [Amazon|Powell's] (1971), Mark Twain. Farmer is prolific, and delights in reviving old heroes in fiction or fictionalized biography such as Tarzan Alive [Amazon|Powell's] (1972) and Venus on the Half Shell [Amazon|Powell's] (1975).
Sunny Jackson

Defining the Genre: High Fantasy | Fandomania - 0 views

fandomania.com/efining-the-genre-high-fantasy

Fiction Fandom Favorites I've Read ✔ Lord of the Rings Middle-Earth Reading Reading & Writing Speculative Fiction Ursula K. LeGuin

shared by Sunny Jackson on 01 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • the Hero’s Quest
  • Epic Fantasy
  • there is a hero, sometimes of humble origins, who must rise above his or her circumstances and is compelled to act by conditions and/or events outside of their control
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • We see this character grow up and become someone great, defeat the odds, and challenge the evil and corrupt.
  • The hero may not always succeed at first try, but they will find means either within themselves or from outside sources to continue on their quest, which if they fail, would have world-reaching consequences.
  • a completely developed secondary world
  • a portal into another world
  • the “world within a world”
  • series
  • episodic installments
  • high fantasy is often based on myth or legend
  • a hero’s tale
  • Matters beyond him and magic turn his life, which would have been otherwise dull and ordinary, into the stuff of legend.
  • Echoes of these stories have been passed down through the ages and were at one point rooted in local myth, tradition, lore, or legend.
  • These stories still stir imaginations today and influence epic literature by their fantastical nature.
  • High fantasy has roots as far back as fairy tale; they are human stories passed down, aggrandized and lasting.
  • wizard
  • antihero
  • rough around the edges, has a haunted past, and isn’t afraid to do what must be done to achieve his goal
  • may be acting on the “good” side, but he’s not a “good” character even if he does grow in that direction
  • it is possible to bring high fantasy into a more modern setting
  • subgenres are not mutually exclusive
  • medieval type setting
  • how fantasy and the fantastical elements affect the world
  • A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin
  • The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
  • The Once and Future King by T.H. White
  • The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
  • Lord Foul’s Bane and The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series by Stephen R. Donaldson
  • A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
Sunny Jackson

Goodreads | Quotes From My Authors - 0 views

www.goodreads.com/...my_authors

shared by Sunny Jackson on 30 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” ― Neil Gaiman, Coraline
  • “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
  • “The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.” ― Terry Pratchett, Diggers
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  • “It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
  • “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” ― Stephen King, On Writing
  • “We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  • “It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.” ― Philip K. Dick, VALIS
  • “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” ― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
  • “Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
  • “People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.” ― Lemony Snicket, The Grim Grotto
  • “It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
  • “Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.” ― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections
  • “I don't go looking for trouble. Trouble usually finds me.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
  • “Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.” ― Neil Gaiman
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