Tangerine: A Book of Hours

4:51 PM, Tuesday afternoon. Things are not what they seem, or: I am who I am but I’m not who you think I am.

Today has a spring-shine clarity about it. It’s warm. The only signs of Winter are timid patches of snow that melt ever deeper into their shady hiding places. There is the feeling that, if you went out and looked carefully, you might find rich green crocus or daffodil shoots thrusting up from the ground. It’s a masquerade day: February wearing the green and pale gold mask of April.

On my answering machine, Mom called to congratulate her son about his new job. Her plane had been delayed but she was still happy -- the subtle hint of a mid-western (or possibly Canadian) accent softly shading her words. She was going to take a day off work and pick Abby up at the kennel. "Love ya!" she said, at the end of the message.

She sounds like a nice person -- of course I really don’t know because, well, she’s not my Mom.

I must sound like her son on the answering machine, though. I think it’s funny and quietly interesting when someone dials a wrong number, gets my answering machine, and goes ahead and leaves a detailed message to someone I’m not. It doesn’t happen that often, but occasionally...

In a way, I feel like I’m eavesdropping, even though the message is on my machine. An oblivious bit of someone’s life has been mistakenly mixed with mine. Sort of cool when you think about it.

It’s easy to forget that there is a whole world full of people having triumphs and inconveniences, doing their respective things, living their lives. Getting a message meant for someone else is almost like reading a person’s online journal: look, here’s someone having a life -- not exactly like yours but not too different, either. You don’t want to be a big-time voyeur but it is nice to know that, even if we’re all not on the same boat, at least we are all sailing on the same ocean.

Just imagine if, every week, you got a random answering machine message meant for someone else. Unconnected bits of other people’s lives presented in all their cryptic glory. I guess that could get pretty annoying -- but wouldn’t it also be at least a little interesting, occasionally inspiring? Maybe even enlightening?

Like a Spring day in the middle of Winter.

Such an intriguing and unexpected thing.

--- JWR, 2/10/98

Posted by The Allurium at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

9:26 PM, Thursday evening. This is the first year that I’ve noticed a large amount of emailed fiction flickering to my desktop at Nebula Awards time.

We had some sleetish-snow here last night and things are cold and wet right now. Depeche Mode is playing on the CD player while I’m typing. I’m in the mood to go out, so I hope the weather doesn’t get too bad over the weekend...

Ever since I became eligible to vote on the Nebula Awards (presented annually by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) I’ve had the pleasure of receiving free copies of many eligible works, starting around this time of year. This is the first time that a lot of the stories have come via email.

As a writer of science fiction I find this to be pretty cool -- new technology, new ways to exchange information, experience art, communicate. I can also understand how mailing out photocopies, magazines, and whole books can get extremely expensive. As a reader, however, I’m less-than-captivated.

I do almost all of my writing on a computer, work on my website endlessly, and roam the ‘Net for hours at a time; but I have to say, a monitor is an imperfect medium for delivering the written word. (I know that I could print out the fiction that comes my way -- but that isn’t the same, either. And, quite frankly, the print quality of my ink jet has gotten downright sucky as of late.)

Print, as in books and magazines, is still my favorite way to experience fiction (or non-fiction, for that matter). I’m not complaining about the emailed stories, though. It is nice to read something I probably would have missed -- even if it does come as an attached file in an email message.

I wonder if not being able to enjoy "electronic" based fiction as much as print fiction is a failure of imagination on my part. Perhaps I’m simply too used to reading paper books and magazines. Maybe I just haven’t given my good old monitor enough of a chance to entertain me in this fashion. Sitting back with a book seems so much more real and intimate an experience than staring at a screen. I’m not sure, however, whether that difference relates more to the medium or to the reader.

The irony is not lost on me that I am confessing my predilection for print in an online journal, and that two-thirds of my upcoming fiction is due to be published in an electronic magazine. But, hey, I never said that I made sense.

On another, slightly different, track: I’ve been reading about the progress of speech recognition software. I find it fascinating and oddly-spooky that I will someday be able to "write" a story by talking to my word processor. Will that method be better or worse? I don’t know -- but I’d certainly like to try it.

Right now I’m going to get back to reading (via Word 7.0) John Kessel’s novelette, "The Miracle of Ivar Avenue" -- an excellent story, no matter how it is presented...

--- JWR, 2/5/98

Posted by The Allurium at 4:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)