Author Topic: EP131: Hesperia and Glory  (Read 30928 times)

Anarkey

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Reply #25 on: November 15, 2007, 05:06:08 PM
I love this story!  I also thought (as so many others) that the reading was well-suited to the language of the story.  Lovely cadences.

I'd like to politely disagree with everyone who thinks the epistolary nature of the story was not thematically necessary to its telling.  The written word works to fix worldviews.  An epistle is a first person eyewitness account of events, a primary source, as historians would judge it.  It has permanence.  It is a truth.  In a story that questioned the nature of truth and the nature of reality, the formal, written letter was the perfect choice.  It also reinforced the time period of the piece.  Not only that, it was a gutsy choice, since most current day readers have a negative knee-jerk reaction to the "letter as story", considering it old-fashioned and lacking intensity or immediacy.

I find it somewhat surprising that none of our usual "I hate stories where the politics is rammed down your throat" complainers have shown up in this thread, since I couldn't manage an apolitical reading.  Talk about your reality-based community.  I'll chalk it up to Ms. Leckie's skill as a storyteller that the political commentary didn't serve as a stumbling block for anyone. 

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qwints

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Reply #26 on: November 15, 2007, 09:14:31 PM
I think the only reason I enjoyed this story was the brilliant work by the narrator. I tend to agree with the people who didn't like the letter format.

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Swamp

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Reply #27 on: November 15, 2007, 11:49:50 PM
I'd like to politely disagree with everyone who thinks the epistolary nature of the story was not thematically necessary to its telling.  The written word works to fix worldviews.  An epistle is a first person eyewitness account of events, a primary source, as historians would judge it...

Not only that, it was a gutsy choice, since most current day readers have a negative knee-jerk reaction to the "letter as story", considering it old-fashioned and lacking intensity or immediacy.
 


In regards to this story, I agree with Anarkey; I enjoyed the letter format.  Yes, I have seen it done badly; but done right, as this is, I enjoy it very well.  I think it brings me back to the way I feel when I'm reading the classics.  I like it because it is old fashioned.

How awesome is Bram Stoker's Dracula, written entirely as journal entries and letters!  I also like first person as in Wells' The Time Machine, or first person as a witness like Doyle's Watson.

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gelee

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Reply #28 on: November 16, 2007, 01:04:51 PM
Just wanted to thank Steve for introducing us to Hooting Yard.  I would never have found that on my own.  If you enjoyed Frank's narration, (and I think everyone did), you should have a listen, or a read, for that matter.  As far as I can tell, most of the material is posted in print as well.  Great stuff.



hautdesert

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Reply #29 on: November 16, 2007, 01:26:22 PM
Thanks for the comments, everyone, positive or negative.  And also, of course, thanks to Frank for an absolutely wonderful reading.

I do, however, feel the need to quibble with just one thing.  This is in fact the cutest dinosaur drawing ever.

Ann



Roney

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Reply #30 on: November 19, 2007, 12:06:21 AM
I'll second, third, whateverth what everyone else has said: an absorbing narration of an intriguing story.

I wondered if there was a wider point about shaping reality, that I think would be fun to explore: did humans retrospectively create the ancient Martian civilization with their fanciful speculations about Lowell's canals?  If they did -- or even if they didn't, and the Martians had lived independently for millennia -- were the irrigated Martian fields returned to red dust by later, more boring observations that led mankind to believe that Mars was uninhabited?  Was the Martian population simply outvoted out of existence by millions of humans believing that they couldn't exist?

I like the idea that Atkins could have been quite sensibly trying to find a way back to Mars, unaware that we had somewhat carelessly destroyed his planet in the interim.  But as it's a complicated reality-shifting story, and I've only listened to the audio once, my reading of it must remain highly speculative.  I'd need the text in front of me to check whether there are any sentences that rule it out (or back it up).

I like the less genocidal possible interpretations too.  ;)



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Reply #31 on: November 20, 2007, 11:53:44 PM
Really enjoyed it.  Lovecraft meets Burroughs!  Could have been a disastrous mash-up, but instead becomes an engrossing tale, especially in podcast form.



gelee

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Reply #32 on: November 21, 2007, 12:50:42 PM
I wondered if there was a wider point about shaping reality, that I think would be fun to explore: did humans retrospectively create the ancient Martian civilization with their fanciful speculations about Lowell's canals?  If they did -- or even if they didn't, and the Martians had lived independently for millennia -- were the irrigated Martian fields returned to red dust by later, more boring observations that led mankind to believe that Mars was uninhabited?  Was the Martian population simply outvoted out of existence by millions of humans believing that they couldn't exist?
I got the impression that Atkins, was, in fact, nuts.  He could shape reality, but only so far.  Some aspects of reality are just too big for one mind to change, i.e. the atmospheric conditions on Mars.  He could create a well in someone's basement, and make it into a portal to Mars, but he could not terraform the entire planet of Mars with just his solitary mind.  The back-story of his origins on Mars were all imaginary.  When he jumped into the well, what he found was the frozen near-vacuum of Mars, not the Mars he tried to create.
At least, I think that's what was meant.



DarkKnightJRK

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Reply #33 on: November 26, 2007, 04:54:24 AM
It reminded me of Frankenstein, with someone writing a letter and then most of it being written as someone's words.

Cool story, was very interesting. I espicially loved the voice of the man who voiced it.



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Reply #34 on: November 30, 2007, 12:43:30 AM
I really enjoyed this story. I listened to it just after the Pseudopod story of the same week, so I had a hefty dose of English narrator that morning.

I have all the same questions that most others had as well--but sometimes, questions are the universe's way of telling you that you should write a story that answers them.

I enjoyed the letter format. One thing I will add to those comments in support of the letter, is that it provided the perfect excuse to use the narrator, just as, I suppose, its Pseudopod contemporary did for its narrator.

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Russell Nash

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Reply #35 on: December 05, 2007, 10:18:35 PM
There have been several mentions about the language fitting for the time period.  My question is: What time period?  I know this is a 19th century style of writing, but is it a 19th century setting? 

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It is true that ever since my return from the war I have walked with a cane (WWI??)

I marshaled my leaden armies  (my father made lead army figures in the 30's)

I’ve known Mr. Stark since college (not University)

All of this I put down to a long drive in the heat.  (Drive is specific to cars, isn't it)

It all seems early 20th century to me.  I'm thinking between 1910 and 1935 or so.



hautdesert

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Reply #36 on: December 05, 2007, 11:32:48 PM
There have been several mentions about the language fitting for the time period.  My question is: What time period?  I know this is a 19th century style of writing, but is it a 19th century setting? 

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...

I’ve known Mr. Stark since college (not University)

...

It all seems early 20th century to me.  I'm thinking between 1910 and 1935 or so.


The setting is American, and your range of dates is more or less accurate.  It's actually set in a specific year, since I had to know, for instance, what sort of icebox technology was available and, for a previous draft, what sheet music was on the piano. And whether or not there was a Victrola in the house.

There was, by the way, a sort of fad for Mars and things Martian around the turn of the century, and it even affected popular music.  There was a march called "A Signal From Mars" and a stage show that included the tune "The Girl from Mars." (Scroll down.)  I find them both quite charming.

ajames, I forgot to mention that once you've given Burroughs a go, you should read some Leigh Brackett.



ajames

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Reply #37 on: December 06, 2007, 12:57:57 AM
ajames, I forgot to mention that once you've given Burroughs a go, you should read some Leigh Brackett.

Thanks for the tip, I will.  :)



Russell Nash

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Reply #38 on: December 06, 2007, 08:51:44 AM
The setting is American, and your range of dates is more or less accurate.  It's actually set in a specific year, since I had to know, for instance, what sort of icebox technology was available and, for a previous draft, what sheet music was on the piano. And whether or not there was a Victrola in the house.

May I ask what year?  I was going to go out on a limb and say 1928, but I decided to give a range instead.



Rachel Swirsky

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Reply #39 on: December 06, 2007, 09:46:02 AM
Quote
It's actually set in a specific year, since I had to know, for instance, what sort of icebox technology was available and, for a previous draft, what sheet music was on the piano.


I have a vague and possibly incorrect memory of talking to you about this at Clarion West, while sitting on the living room couch closest to the solarium, possibly just after a session of Robot Chicken. I feel like you'd stalled in the draft because you didn't know what year it was and you had to know what sheet music there was before you could continue, and I was like "just write [sheet music] and go on?" -- and there was illustrated the difference between  our writing styles.

Although I also remember that the draft you turned in for CW (Swanwick's week, right?) had a note in it that said something like [stuff about aqueducts] in the middle of a paragraph. I was proud of you. ;-)
« Last Edit: December 06, 2007, 09:49:54 AM by palimpsest »



hautdesert

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Reply #40 on: December 06, 2007, 01:16:03 PM
May I ask what year?  I was going to go out on a limb and say 1928, but I decided to give a range instead.

1922.

The writing style does feel older than that, but reading things from that year, and that period generally, I was struck by how many things felt completely modern in style (Fitzgerald, Mary Roberts Rinehart, etc) and how many seemed, by the style, to have actually been written in the previous century.  (Lovecraft is the obvious example, but not the only one.)

I have a vague and possibly incorrect memory of talking to you about this at Clarion West, while sitting on the living room couch closest to the solarium, possibly just after a session of Robot Chicken. I feel like you'd stalled in the draft because you didn't know what year it was

The draft at CW was set in the present day. But we probably did have the conversation, since I do work that way generally.  It's not that I'm opposed to square brackets--on the contrary, square brackets are my friend!--but it's hard for me to see things without details, and often the right setting or historical information will tell me what the characters are doing, or what's going on.  When that information is missing, nothing quite feels right.

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and there was illustrated the difference between  our writing styles.

Indeed!


Quote
Although I also remember that the draft you turned in for CW (Swanwick's week, right?) had a note in it that said something like [stuff about aqueducts] in the middle of a paragraph. I was proud of you. ;-)

:)  Note that once I knew the setting exactly, and knew what I needed to know about aqueducts, the story improved markedly.

And yeah, that was Swanwick's week.  And he's responsible for it being set in the past.  He read the draft set in the present and took it for a Mars nostalgia story, one of the many that centers around that traumatic moment when we discovered that no, really, there wasn't anything on Mars even remotely like the stories people had been writing and reading.  Since that wasn't my intention at all, I spent the rest of the summer trying to figure out how to not trigger that response.  And once I moved it back in time, not only was that problem solved, but several others were as well.  So I figure I owe Swanwick for that.



StevieA

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Reply #41 on: May 21, 2008, 04:01:47 PM
I'm working through my backlog of Escape Pod, and have just listened to this. I can't believe no-one has commented on the great wheel idea being lifted from Brian Aldiss' Heliconia.



hautdesert

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Reply #42 on: May 21, 2008, 10:23:23 PM
I haven't read Heliconia, but it's possible that Aldiss lifted it from where I did--Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Gods of Mars.



Windup

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Reply #43 on: May 22, 2008, 04:16:46 AM

I haven't read Heliconia, but it's possible that Aldiss lifted it from where I did--Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Gods of Mars.


That's it!!  I knew it was from one of the John Carter of Mars books, but couldn't figure out which one.  Was the whole Martian sequence from Burroughs?  It's been a long time...

"My whole job is in the space between 'should be' and 'is.' It's a big space."


hautdesert

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Reply #44 on: May 24, 2008, 07:19:03 PM
The Martian sequence was meant to be a sort of riff on Burroughs--but it's not Barsoom.  I also put in a few hat tips to Leigh Brackett here and there.



Windup

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Reply #45 on: May 24, 2008, 09:32:37 PM

The Martian sequence was meant to be a sort of riff on Burroughs--but it's not Barsoom.  I also put in a few hat tips to Leigh Brackett here and there.


A Burroughsesque, as it were...  <<ducking>>

"My whole job is in the space between 'should be' and 'is.' It's a big space."


hautdesert

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Reply #46 on: May 27, 2008, 10:46:06 PM
 ;D



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Reply #47 on: March 05, 2010, 02:57:25 PM
This was fun!  I've never understood the general dislike to letter-format for a story.  The very first short story I wrotewas a letter-format and often the rejections for it include "I liked the story, but I don't like the epistolary style."  Maybe it's because I became a fan of H.G. Wells in my early reading days, and much of his stories take a format similar to this.  It triggered all the right nostalgia switches in my brain, so I probably liked it even more because of that.

I've always liked a story stored as a permanent record.  It lends an authenticity.  I got into Dracula very easily because of it.  Because it's a collection of letters and documents, it could've actually happened and been simply compiled by Mr. Stoker into one edition to warn the general public.  The fact that it's published in fiction instead of documentary is not his fault--his publisher refused to believe the truth of it, and though Mr. Stoker did not like it, he was willing to get it published any way he could so that his warning would not go unheard.

Anyway, intentional ambiguity is always a good thing.  The view I choose to take is the one the narrator suggests, that the man is actually insane but with some abilities, and he transported himself to Mars.  The narrator is now taking vigil in his basement because the presence of one who insists there is no well may counteract the well reappearing to Mars--he doesn't know for certain that the other man is dead and he'd like to keep any further visitations from happening.



Yargling

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Reply #48 on: March 05, 2010, 03:12:18 PM
Agreed - this was an awesome story with the perfect voice to go with the character  ;D



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Reply #49 on: March 05, 2010, 06:29:27 PM
Agreed - this was an awesome story with the perfect voice to go with the character  ;D

You reminded me--I completely forgot to mention Frank Key.  Well, as you said, he was perfect for the character.  I always like to hear him read stories.  :)