Weekly Writing and Reading Update

[die_traumerei]

yay, stuff to talk about! Also the cats are only beating each other up for fun now and everyone sleeps on the bed and they mostly do not sing the song of their ancestors at 3 am. I Require a decent amount of sleep (and am generally a champion at it), and it’s nice to, like, be rested again.

Writing:

A Winter Spirit, A Winter’s Tale: Finished! It’s done! Also, wow, I got a TON of comments this week, which was really cool! I definitely am not as focused on number of comments/kudos as I used to be (I was not a Big Name Writer before taking a long break, and I sure as hell amn’t now), but it was starting to nudge at me a little. But people like this story! Yay!

Of Angels and Knights OK, I haven’t quite finished the chapter I started last week, but I’m  close enough that I feel good about giving chapter 1 a final edit and posting it soon. I’m starting to really fall in love with this story, and think it might turn out to be quite special to me.

Yet Needed Most, I Bring I looked at this a lot? I think I know what I want to happen next, and I have all evening free, so hopefully this’ll get a few more hundred words or so.

Reading:

I finished Frederik Pohl’s Man Plus. It was...better than I expected? I mean it is super super sexist as you’d expect from that age of SF, but the characters were individuals and even some of the women had personalities! It was hard going at first because there is a Lot of body horror in this book, but I quite liked it, once I got used to that. It sounds like this is not one of Pohl’s best, so I’m looking forward to digging up more from him.

Comments

[anelith]

Oh wow I read Man Plus so many years ago! In fact my husband and I refer to that book every so often as shorthand for "bioengineer humans to survive in extra-terrestrial environments." Such a useful concept!

I know I've read multiple Fred Pohl novels (and met him at cons, he was a very courteous person) but Man Plus is the one that stayed in my memory because of the central concept that a human could go through that kind of radical change, and adapt enough to the new environment that he/she could feel at home.

[die_traumerei]

Eee, that's so cool you've met him! I"m delighted that he's lovely, and I really do want to read more of his stuff.

Funny enough, I started working on a project when I was reading this, basically building a tool that would mediate between a person and some data. Really tempted to call it Man Plus because of the book....

[anelith]

He was lovely, but sadly is no longer with us. Your project sounds fascinating! Man Plus would be a great name for something like that. Best of luck with it!