| sf&f writers' day |
[Jun. 23rd, 2009|11:09 pm] |
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When I was in seventh grade, all of my friends were transferred to the new middle school across town and I found myself lonely, miserable, teased and eating lunch in tears every day. Luckily, I discovered that if I slipped through the back of the cafeteria kitchen, I came to a back hallway secret passageway that led straight to the library heaven without encountering a single hall monitor. (!!!!)
My heartfelt thanks go out to the lunch ladies that conveniently forgot to see me every day, to the librarian who kept on feeding me new books off the SF/F shelf, and the writers who kept me hooked, hopeful, and out of trouble.
(Hey, middle school is hard.)
This is certainly not a comprehensive list, but I hope I can cover most of my crucial SF/F writers & influences -- thank you, Brian Jacques, for Matthias and Mariel and the measure of a hero; Michael Ende, because The Nothing is still the scariest thing ever, Anne McCaffrey, for the dragons, even though I thought Lessa was a little strange; Stephen Donaldson, for my first experience with an antihero; Mary Doria Russell and James Blish, who gave me a senior thesis and kicked off what is going to be a lifelong fascination; Brannon Braga, who ruined Trek for me with his human salamanders (and in the process, showed me what kind of story I loved); Lisa Klink, who first gave me the idea that, ooh, I can do this, too; Harlan Ellison, for... being Harlan Ellison; Sherwood Smith, whose book "Wren To The Rescue" came to my rescue and who continues to write books that dazzle; Connie Willis, whose Domesday Book floored me; J.R.R. Tolkien, and I think everyone here knows why; George R. R. Martin, for the lovely favor of making me scream on a crowded bus because he killed my favorite character (very first writer to do that to me!); China Mieville, whose Perdido Street Station did more to change my aesthetic than any other book that year; Lois McMaster Bujold, whose unimpeachable books I've admired since I was in seventh grade and who was so gracious when I spilled a cup of water on myself like a total noob last Fourth Street when I realized that I was sitting right in front of her; Elizabeth Bear, who doesn't know me from Adam but yet taught me a lot about the sheer importance of a writer's voice and commitment through her blog; Robert Heinlein, for writing the first book that I truly did not understand (and then understood so well ten years later); Flannery O'Connor, for giving me Wise Blood, wisdom and courage; others -- Richard Adams, C.J. Cherryh, John Ford, Guy Gavriel Kay, Sheri Tepper, Tad Williams (who knows how to make a girl who adores long novels faint with excitement); and every screenwriter who tackled the characters of Kathryn Janeway and Xena: Warrior Princess, even if they failed.
And that's only the beginning. I just know I'm missing dozens of writers; I'll wake up tomorrow and say, "what about that one, and that one, and that one," and not to mention everyone else I have met through LiveJournal and the Internet, all of my fellow aspirants, the Third Order writers who keep on surprising me, the awesome Orlando Writing League, the collaborative writers at BD, and those writers I know not through SF/F but through journalism -- thank you!
Finally: If you could be so kind as to link me to some commentary on what computers and communications devices might look like 10-15 years from now, I would be very grateful!
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