This is me. Apparently.

[freckles_and_doubt]

Generous Experiencer

Personal DNA is probably the online personality test thingy that has least made me wonder (a) whether the writers were all 14 years old, and (b) what they were on when constructing it. The way they formulate the questions is very interesting, and the result I felt was not entirely unlike a vague outline of my actual personality ten feet away in a snowstorm. Props to khoi_boi for pointing me to it.

Actually, even more props to him for pointing me to this very bleak Cthuloid spy story by Charles Stross. Bleak. Cthuloid. Fun, in a gnawing-your-own-foot-off sort of way.

Comments

[khoi-boi.livejournal.com]

Pleasure - I found out about Stross because he was in the Midnight Rose writer's collective with Neil Gaiman. Also Mary Gentle and another personal fave, Storm Constantine.

Amusing to me is the fact that Stross looks exactly like a shaven-headed Phleep: The Damning Evidence!

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

OMG, he really does look like Phleep! anyone ever seen them in the same room at the same time...? Mild-Mannered Capetonian Librarian Has Seekrit Identity! Writes well, too.

[bumpycat.livejournal.com]

Mein gott! It's Phleep!

And yes, Charles Stross is very good. He's written an extremely Cthulhu Now/Delta Green-ish novel called Atrocity Archive - and at the end he confesses to have never heard of DG until afterwards. Great minds and all that.

Accelerando (http://www.accelerando.org/book/) is also available for free - a creepy far-future sci novel.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I love the bit of Atrocity Archive I've read online, which is "The Concrete Jungle" (http://www.goldengryphon.com/Stross-Concrete.html): the book is definitely on my To Get list. Accelerando I thoroughly enjoyed for the first five or six sections (I make my third-year sf tut analyse "Lobsters" as post-cyberpunk), but it rather lost me after that - just too fast, too far, too weird, and too scrappily written.

[khoi-boi.livejournal.com]

Accelerando needed a better editor, though. Can anyone tell me what's wrong with this sentence, for example:
"She's immaculately turned out in a formal gray business suit: brown hair tightly drawn back, blue eyes quizzical. And as beautiful as ever: tall, ash blonde, with features that speak of an unexplored modeling career."?
Anyone? Bueller?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

The second sentence is not a sentence, it's a subclause, lacking the necessary verb. This is sometimes permissible in Stross-style, modern, colloquial, choppy sort of writing, but here the effect is rather amateur. Also, in purely aesthetic terms the repetition of the colon in the middle of both so-called "sentences" is inelegant and clunky. I agree on the need for an editor, this is the sort of thing I meant when I said the writing was too scrappy.

Who's Bueller...?

[bumpycat.livejournal.com]

Mein liebe gott! You missed one of the classic 80s films!

I heartily recommend getting your mitts on Ferris Buellers Day Off. It's fantastic - caught the second half on Sky the other day, and it still makes me laugh lots.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0091042/

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I missed many, many classic 80s films. I was too busy being boring for most of the 80s to actually watch movies. Besides, all the superficial signs suggest this isn't my kind of movie. I'm not mad on even good lame teen humour.

[kadekraan.livejournal.com]

Not even good lame teen humour, just good humour :) Very enjoyable film.

[khoi-boi.livejournal.com]

...and here I was just wondering someone can have their brown hair tied back, and simultaneously be ash blonde...

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Good heavens. Then don't put the query on my blog. I auto-scan for grammar, not random aesthetic contractions in plot :>.

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

Good grief, I didn't even notice that, even though I was looking for something wrong. Remind me never to be an editor.

Hey!

[first-fallen.livejournal.com]

Phleep's not that fat! Sigh, time to stop feeding him nice food and concentrate on salad. Tonight's dinner: one lettuce leaf.

Besides, it's just the beard that's similar. That Stross fellow isn't _nearly_ as huggable. And I bet he can't do indecent things to a teapot like my Phleep can.

"..."

[(Anonymous)]

I was all ready to agree with you ("thats no Phleep, its just the beard, really") until you got to the teapot. Now I somehow feel I should keep a respectful silence.

scroob

Re: Hey!

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

You read enough Stross, you come to the conclusion that yes, he probably can do indecent things to a teapot. Probably with nanotech.

Please do not starve our Phleep. We rather like him the way he is.

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting interview with Stross here (http://www.scifi.com/sfw/interviews/sfw10405.html)

And the resemblance to Phil is scary ;)

Rumint

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Oo-er. Interesting interview with an interviewer who used to be in the English dept. with me, and with whom I used to have ongoing arguments about the validity of fantasy (apparently only sf is really real, and then only really if it's by Gene Wolfe, although I suspect said interviewer may have Got Better since those days). Said interviewer also asks the most elaborate and pretentious questions in all his interviews. Somewhere I have saved a lovely interview with Ursula le Guin in which she neatly depresses same.

[khoi-boi.livejournal.com]

He deserves hanging for saying "we'll talk of this anon" in cold blood.