Another Sky Press Forums Topic: Received my copy today (mod: some spoilers in thread)

Another Sky Press Forums Topic: Received my copy today (mod: some spoilers in thread) http://www.anothersky.org/asp/forums/ Another Sky Press Forums Topic: Received my copy today (mod: some spoilers in thread) en Sun, 12 Oct 2008 05:50:37 +0000 kristopher on "Received my copy today (mod: some spoilers in thread)" http://www.anothersky.org/asp/forums/topic/received-my-copy-today#post-23 Mon, 08 May 2006 10:18:41 +0000 kristopher 23@http://www.anothersky.org/asp/forums/ Heh, for some reason, when you mentioned Bester I was thinking you mean there were stylistic similarities. Bester has that certain rhythmic style to him, almost pulp, almost like a screenplay, at times more visual (including how it's set on the page) than textual. And so when you mentioned him, I was trying to figure out how Click compared to Bester in that way. But yes, now that you've got me thinking in themes, yes, certainly, there are definite similarities. As mentioned earlier in this thread, the ending of The Stars My Destination has always meant a lot to me. It illustrates many of my own thoughts about the risk/value of change... aiming for the postive even though you can never know the results ahead of time. And yes, Click hits that question head on (with slightly different results). But it deals with the same issues, the ramifications of power, of change, responsibility and potential (and responsibility to your potential). I'm glad the ending read to you in that way; it's essentially the intended ending, forcing a reader to contemplate exactly the issues that you mention. That said, the intentionally ambiguous plot/ending allow quite a wide variety of interpretations (also intentional) and some people make up their mind earlier in the book and therefore only 'see' one ending. Which is fine - art is more interpretation than intention, sometimes. But it's always nice to know it works as intended, too, if you know what I mean. And while I never would have linked Click to the movements you mentioned myself (at least in part due to my own lack of knowledge of those movements), I can definitely see what you're getting at. Because yes, Click is a product of its time. Relativity, confusion, memes, language as a means to positive change, media saturation, information overload, the promise of godhood/stardom everpresent yet always out of reach. enjoy your beer! kristopher localroger on "Received my copy today (mod: some spoilers in thread)" http://www.anothersky.org/asp/forums/topic/received-my-copy-today#post-22 Fri, 05 May 2006 19:29:30 +0000 localroger 22@http://www.anothersky.org/asp/forums/ I think there are very strong parallels between Click! and The Stars My Destination. Consider: In TSMD the human aptitude to "jaunte" is discovered because an individual person whose life is in danger does it by accident. The event is unambiguously recorded by the space station security system, and a massive research effort is launched, which involves subjecting volunteers to a variety of intensely lethal situations until someone else gets the trick. The original person never jauntes again, leaving the interesting implication that he would be one of the second-class citizens of the world that evolved thanks to his contribution. In TSMD there is also a great problem, that nobody can jaunte out of the Solar System, and at the novel's climax the protagonist solves this problem in almost the same way that the ability was discovered -- his life is endangered. It develops that not only can he jaunte to other stars, he can jaunte through time, and has used this ability to prep the person who guides him through his sense-scrambled discovery of the technique with the particular cues he needs to make it through. In Click! the protagonist discovers his power by accident, but the difference is the ambiguity about whether the power really exists or not -- even to the first-person narrator. The implication the protagonist draws, though, that his power is one that everyone potentially shares, mirrors the idea in TSMD that everyone could jaunte if they got the trick. Also, Click! ends with the protagonist essentially solving every problem that exists (if you accept that interpretation of the deliberately ambiguous ending). As in TSMD, this is only possible because the protagonist is put up against a wall. I would say that Click! has the same relationship to TSMD that the movie Unbreakable has to superhero comics in general. It's about the discovery of powers as opposed to their ultimate expression. Of course, much of the drama involves the question of whether the powers are even real. The ending of Click is a wonderful dichotomy, either being the salvation of all of us or just another lame suicide. Not much room for interpretation in between. If you choose the former interpretation, it's extremely similar to TSMD. Of course, the fact that the latter possibility remains open makes Click! a much more interesting story to me. This isn't to knock Bester; he wrote TSMD almost forty years ago. It would really suck if nobody had managed to extend its ideas in all that time. It's also worth considering that the idea of a "Click!" cementing a change in one's perspective originated with the feminist movement in the 1970's. This is the kind of idea the New Wavers were trying to anticipate, but their success was mixed. Before the 1960's gradualism was the order of the day in all of the sciences, and it was considered a radical idea that catastrophic change was even possible. This is why it took so long for the most obvious interpretation of the K-T iridium layer to be accepted. And that's just one of thousands of examples of how "acceptable" thinking has changed in the last 40 years. Anyway, I have more ideas but I have an even bigger craving for another beer. Later... kristopher on "Received my copy today (mod: some spoilers in thread)" http://www.anothersky.org/asp/forums/topic/received-my-copy-today#post-21 Fri, 05 May 2006 09:26:04 +0000 kristopher 21@http://www.anothersky.org/asp/forums/ Thanks for all the kind words; I don't even know how to begin to reply. Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination is one of my all time favorites - and your statement "Except that Click manages to do for its entire length what Bester achieves only in occasional passages in, say, The Stars my Destination" has pretty much floored me. It's a grand compliment. I think I had to read it a few times just for it to properly register. That said, I would never have even considered Bester as an influence; a like mind in some ways, sure, but an influence...? But yes, after thinking it through it's rather obvious that he's affected me; The Demolished Man's jingle "'Tenser', said the Tensor; tension apprehension and dissension have begun" still rings through my head sometimes (a classic example of a memetic virus before the concept of a 'meme' was even coined) and well, the finale of The Stars my Destination deserves all the attention the book has recieved. You're likely right about Philip K. Dick, though I've only dabbled in his short stories - but Blade Runner is an all time favorite film. Hunter S. Thompson and Pahlaniuk... all these names you mention are certainly taken as high compliments. I'd add a few more less obvious names to the list; Antoine de Saint Exupéry and Richard Bach, for example. And true, Click is nothing like either of those books... well, at first glance, at least... but I know books such as The Little Prince and Jonathan Livingston Seagull have deeply affected me. Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, too, certainly. The first paragraph of that book is taped to one of my binders; it's my favorite opening line of all time, cryptic and poetic and ultimately a dead on description of all that's to come. Any future work will have to list Hubert Selby, Jr. as an influence - though I hadn't been exposed to his work until after finishing Click. I could go on listing authors... but I'm actually more interested in hearing the comments of other. I'd rather leave a bunch off the list to see who other people might name. As far as keeping the water muddy - again, thanks for the compliments. Strange dreams and stranger lives, kristopher localroger on "Received my copy today (mod: some spoilers in thread)" http://www.anothersky.org/asp/forums/topic/received-my-copy-today#post-17 Mon, 01 May 2006 19:35:11 +0000 localroger 17@http://www.anothersky.org/asp/forums/ No telling when it actually arrived; this was my first day back at the office since last Monday. It was on my chair waiting when I got in this morning. The production job is excellent. It's every bit as good as what Lulu provides, and apparently about half the raw price (though you do have to do your own packing and shipping). The bookmarks and sticker are also cool and you can't do that through Lulu. I also liked the inscription. As for the story -- well, not bad. Not bad at all. I have to admit I groaned a bit when I saw the no uppercase schtick, but after reading a few pages I saw that it actually fits the character. It's a very hard type of story to tell, keeping the waters muddy about what's real and what's fantasy to that degree, and especially to keep them as muddy as they are even after the plot is "clarified" 4/5 of the way through. It is very well done just on a technical level. The story is kind of slow for the first half of the book, but how else could you tell it? This is definitely one of those stories where the payoff is at the end. You could do it faster and clearer and less confusingly, but that would lose the whole point of the POV character. I tend to think of my own book as a collaboration between Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, and the Marquis de Sade. Click definitely has the Dick contribution, though the others -- Hunter S. Thompson maybe? Chuck Pahlaniuk? Alfred Bester is in there, I think. Except that Click manages to do for its entire length what Bester achieves only in occasional passages in, say, The Stars my Destination. In fact, both of our stories remind me of the very height of the New Wave movement in SF, which peaked in the late 1960's and early 1970's with a small number of very daring and experimental works by people like Bester, Michael Moorcock, and the novel Harlan Ellison kept promising but never did write. K.W. Jeter's Dr. Adder was part of that, and probably resembles MOPI more than Click, but after Jeter spent 10 years finding a publisher and then got himself a career his later stuff wasn't like that. Even Norman Spinrad, whose work was never at the outer edge of New Waviness, can hardly get published nowadays. Click isn't as out there with the sex and violence as MOPI, but it has a few passages which I think would curl the eyebrows of a modern day publisher, and which are better left in. (For that matter I bet Stephen King wouldn't be able to get Carrie published nowadays either for the same reason, if he wasn't already the Great and Powerful Stephen King.) You simply can't tell a story about these grand themes without describing the mess. Hell, back before Disney got ahold of them even fairy tales described the mess. Well it's getting late and I'm probably gonna have very strange dreams tonight thanks to this book. Which is a good measure of artistic success. Kudos!