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nemesis_dracoI never knew JMF personally (I don't feel I can call him Mike because of that), but I wish I had, and I love love love his writing. I think I own every book he ever wrote, and I am trying to get all the short stories as well. I fell in love with his complex and erudite way of telling a story... however, sometimes this means I don't always understand what he's getting at.
For a while I've been wanting to do a reread of all his books in this community, and I kept putting it off. However, the recent post on Heat of Fusion and Other Stories made me think, hey, an easy way to start this, anyway, would be reading his short stories! Does anyone else want to discuss his books/short stories, and maybe help me to figure out what is going on? :)
Because of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
apostle_of_eris's post I thought I'd start with some of the stories in that book (not coincidentally, the ones that started to be discussed in that post). Here's what I think is going on; anyone want to append or correct me?
"Heat of Fusion": I have physics training, and so I rather like this story, in which I think he gets quite right the way it feels to a scientist to be working on a project with other good scientists. I also get all his physics references because of this (whereas I suspect I miss a lot of non-physics references in his writing).
This is a story about a group of physicists working on a Project, whom we eventually find are in a post-apocalyptic world (day 22: "thick glass of the Surface Station... filtered sun..." and later, talking about Projects who came before, a reference I think to the atom bomb, it is said "We worked not toward their goal-- which we knew only too well was there," implying to me that atom bombs have been dropped in this world) and under a totalitarian State. The nature of the Project is never explicitly explained, but which seems to be a fusion super-weapon (day 14: "It explained... what the Project was... there was an enemy, and if we did not bend the laws of physics to our just and peaceful will..."). From various points in the text (day 6: "If it succeeds, there will be no one to read [this report]" and day 14: "Then I read... nothing at all to fear. It was a naked lie.") I get the impression that the goal of the State is to destroy everything with the fusion super-weapon.
The group of physicists, being scientists, wants to do physics and (mostly) isn't concerned with the ethics of it, and eventually they figure out how to make the Project work. However, the key experiment leads to an accident in which all of the physicists receive a lethal dose of radiation poisoning (hence the narrator referring to himself and Y. as "dead" even though they are still conscious). The narrator is keeping a journal while waiting to die, and at the same time A., a servant of the State, is trying to figure out what they did. Finally, the narrator tells A. to make a particular measurement relevant to the key experiment, but in such a way that A. will set switches that trigger explosives that will destroy the entire Project. These explosives were set by the narrator himself four years ago, presumably because he did have some ethical qualms, even though they did not overpower his desire to do physics at the time.
Wow. Having written all that, I see JMF did a whole heck of a lot in a very few pages, and very allusively (none of the things I said above are really spelled out very explicitly at all), and managed to say things about the interplay of ethics and science in the meantime.
"Preflash": I find this a very dense story. I have read this a number of times and here's what I have so far. Griffin has been a war correspondent, with Carrick and Malaryk. The Nefarious Powers that Be don't like this, so have taken steps to kill all three of them (Malaryk is killed in the last couple of pages of the story). Griffin isn't actually killed, but sustains a weird sort of brain damage that allows him to see how people are going to die. (In the text, the term "preflash" is defined as a way to make film more sensitive and able to film darkness, so I guess that is an allusion to Griffin's new power.) He uses this to watch Carrick and Malaryk, and finds foul play in their deaths as well involving the same henchman, so the reader (and Griffin) knows it is a conspiracy -- but Griffin does nothing about it. He instead takes up a job doing music video with Rain and Suzy, who do not show him video of death because (I think?) they don't care about anything and have no soul (so I infer from the fact that Griffin doesn't see the mouse's death -- either that or Rain is a sorceror, which at least would explain the griffin at the end).
Things I don't understand: How does Rain know about Griffin's power? And where the heck did the griffin at the end come from?? What does Rain mean by saying "It can be more fun than anything"? Or by "Technique"? How did Carrick do it after all? (p. 121 in HoF and Other Stories)
I just realized that the story is told in a lot of flashbacks, which is not directly related to the definition of "preflash" as quoted in the text, but may be an allusion to it?
Seems like this story is about finding meaning in life (when Griffin becomes a war correspondent) and not (when he makes music videos instead). Also, I bet JMF enjoyed writing those song lyrics.
"Chromatic Aberration": I have no idea what's going on here. There's been a revolution from the "ancient world," which I guess is our world, to the modern world, in which colors are named different things and don't depend on wavelengths. Or something. The narrator tells stories illustrating each color in the spectrum, showing that the modern world is just as capricious and cruel as the ancient world, though perhaps in different ways. There is a lot of torture ("repair") going on.
I just don't get anything about this story. What is the point of the "modern" spectrum? Ford knows quite well about defining the spectrum in terms of wavelengths. What is the point of the different stories? "Of all the changes modern times have brought, I think perhaps the most important is the insistence upon diagrammatic clarity in the arts, the presentation of clear moral truths, rather than murky pools in which the patron must fish blindly for meanings. This ancient tactic led to acts of outright madness, such as the reading of secret messages from text, say, in the last word before a line break, or the first word after." Clearly this is meant to be ironic in some way (obviously I find it a murky pool!) but how precisely? Should I be looking for a secret message? Help!
What other books/stories would people like to discuss the most?
For a while I've been wanting to do a reread of all his books in this community, and I kept putting it off. However, the recent post on Heat of Fusion and Other Stories made me think, hey, an easy way to start this, anyway, would be reading his short stories! Does anyone else want to discuss his books/short stories, and maybe help me to figure out what is going on? :)
Because of
apostle_of_eris's post I thought I'd start with some of the stories in that book (not coincidentally, the ones that started to be discussed in that post). Here's what I think is going on; anyone want to append or correct me?"Heat of Fusion": I have physics training, and so I rather like this story, in which I think he gets quite right the way it feels to a scientist to be working on a project with other good scientists. I also get all his physics references because of this (whereas I suspect I miss a lot of non-physics references in his writing).
This is a story about a group of physicists working on a Project, whom we eventually find are in a post-apocalyptic world (day 22: "thick glass of the Surface Station... filtered sun..." and later, talking about Projects who came before, a reference I think to the atom bomb, it is said "We worked not toward their goal-- which we knew only too well was there," implying to me that atom bombs have been dropped in this world) and under a totalitarian State. The nature of the Project is never explicitly explained, but which seems to be a fusion super-weapon (day 14: "It explained... what the Project was... there was an enemy, and if we did not bend the laws of physics to our just and peaceful will..."). From various points in the text (day 6: "If it succeeds, there will be no one to read [this report]" and day 14: "Then I read... nothing at all to fear. It was a naked lie.") I get the impression that the goal of the State is to destroy everything with the fusion super-weapon.
The group of physicists, being scientists, wants to do physics and (mostly) isn't concerned with the ethics of it, and eventually they figure out how to make the Project work. However, the key experiment leads to an accident in which all of the physicists receive a lethal dose of radiation poisoning (hence the narrator referring to himself and Y. as "dead" even though they are still conscious). The narrator is keeping a journal while waiting to die, and at the same time A., a servant of the State, is trying to figure out what they did. Finally, the narrator tells A. to make a particular measurement relevant to the key experiment, but in such a way that A. will set switches that trigger explosives that will destroy the entire Project. These explosives were set by the narrator himself four years ago, presumably because he did have some ethical qualms, even though they did not overpower his desire to do physics at the time.
Wow. Having written all that, I see JMF did a whole heck of a lot in a very few pages, and very allusively (none of the things I said above are really spelled out very explicitly at all), and managed to say things about the interplay of ethics and science in the meantime.
"Preflash": I find this a very dense story. I have read this a number of times and here's what I have so far. Griffin has been a war correspondent, with Carrick and Malaryk. The Nefarious Powers that Be don't like this, so have taken steps to kill all three of them (Malaryk is killed in the last couple of pages of the story). Griffin isn't actually killed, but sustains a weird sort of brain damage that allows him to see how people are going to die. (In the text, the term "preflash" is defined as a way to make film more sensitive and able to film darkness, so I guess that is an allusion to Griffin's new power.) He uses this to watch Carrick and Malaryk, and finds foul play in their deaths as well involving the same henchman, so the reader (and Griffin) knows it is a conspiracy -- but Griffin does nothing about it. He instead takes up a job doing music video with Rain and Suzy, who do not show him video of death because (I think?) they don't care about anything and have no soul (so I infer from the fact that Griffin doesn't see the mouse's death -- either that or Rain is a sorceror, which at least would explain the griffin at the end).
Things I don't understand: How does Rain know about Griffin's power? And where the heck did the griffin at the end come from?? What does Rain mean by saying "It can be more fun than anything"? Or by "Technique"? How did Carrick do it after all? (p. 121 in HoF and Other Stories)
I just realized that the story is told in a lot of flashbacks, which is not directly related to the definition of "preflash" as quoted in the text, but may be an allusion to it?
Seems like this story is about finding meaning in life (when Griffin becomes a war correspondent) and not (when he makes music videos instead). Also, I bet JMF enjoyed writing those song lyrics.
"Chromatic Aberration": I have no idea what's going on here. There's been a revolution from the "ancient world," which I guess is our world, to the modern world, in which colors are named different things and don't depend on wavelengths. Or something. The narrator tells stories illustrating each color in the spectrum, showing that the modern world is just as capricious and cruel as the ancient world, though perhaps in different ways. There is a lot of torture ("repair") going on.
I just don't get anything about this story. What is the point of the "modern" spectrum? Ford knows quite well about defining the spectrum in terms of wavelengths. What is the point of the different stories? "Of all the changes modern times have brought, I think perhaps the most important is the insistence upon diagrammatic clarity in the arts, the presentation of clear moral truths, rather than murky pools in which the patron must fish blindly for meanings. This ancient tactic led to acts of outright madness, such as the reading of secret messages from text, say, in the last word before a line break, or the first word after." Clearly this is meant to be ironic in some way (obviously I find it a murky pool!) but how precisely? Should I be looking for a secret message? Help!
What other books/stories would people like to discuss the most?
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-15 03:55 am (UTC)I thought I'd more or less grasped Chromatic Aberration, and then I read it again. I'm still pretty well convinced that the revolution hasn't changed a damned thing other that the words. Ancient and modern are one and the same. You mentioned "repair;" there's also "correction." Knotsmith, a "leader of the revolution," is passing modern currency to a foreign nation in violation of the principles he reiterates to the Comptroller in the "enblu" chapter. The Night Physician is no "physician" at all, the Artillerist seeks to preserve the old order while the Engineer destroys it.
The moderns can't or won't change the way things /are/, so they resort to changing how they're perceived. All the stories are about perception, and misperception.
For that last passage, read "section break" for "line break." (And thank you for calling that bit to my attention; I'd wondered before if I was missing something and hadn't managed to see it until now.)
The last words before each section break are: what / am / I / not / telling / you. I shall sleep on it and hope I can figure out what it is the narrator (and author) aren't telling me.
The first words after each are: These / Words / Lie / Truth / To / Tell. Which is beautifully ambiguous.
Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.
--William Butler Yeats, "The Great Day"
no subject
Date: 2010-05-07 04:30 pm (UTC)Would be very happy to hear your thoughts on "Preflash"!
no subject
Date: 2010-05-07 06:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-07 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-07 08:14 pm (UTC)And I went through the manuscript of "Last Hot Time" when he asked me to read it, and I told him everything where I was confused, which was quite daunting to do at first, but ultimately a wonderful thing.
As Teresa said, "Mike had a horror of being obvious." And he so was not obvious, the silly man.
*grinning*
no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-07 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 09:15 pm (UTC)mesothelioma symptoms
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