After the lively discussion the other day I've decided to start writing like Arthur C. Clarke; herewith the results.
http://www.jordanorlando.com/clarke
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Mrs. Simpson, if you set out to push the bile to the tip of my throat, mission accomplished!
I don't get it, but thanks, I think.
cute :)
what comes to mind -- and i'd say this about Clarke's 2001-3001, as well -- is that behind the language, there's an actual story happening. when we read bad writing, if we're distracted by it, we're tempted to dislike the happenings.
but it isn't the happenings fault. and in fact, the happenings themselves might be really great.
i read the 2001 series when i was in college and liked all four books. i wasn't preoccupied with the writing style at all. in fact, a girl i was really into at the time loaned me a copy of Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, and i read it thinking little of it because i thought the science was dumb. needless to say, the girl was unimpressed and i never got to sleep with her.
so i'm reading your passage and i get to the dialogue thinking, "okay, nobody talks like this," which was part of the point of the exercise. and then i think, "jordan doesn't talk like this." and it hits me that buried under bad writing are good characters, and perhaps even good happenings we're not privy to.
anyone who has ever read X-men extensively should read Joss Whedon's run on the comic. he makes all these flashback cuts to things that happened years earlier in the chris claremont run.
claremont's writing isn't very good, and when we read the flashback stuff, written by whedon, we think, "oh, this is how the characters i liked so much were *actually* interacting with each other."
this is what happens: i don't do anything on the blog for weeks, and then i frigging OD
Dude. Right on.
Of course it's exaggerated for comic effect. He's not that much like the caricature. It was very difficult to get into the right headspace because I do not write anything like that.
I had so much fun doing it, I feel like re-writing the same passage "as" Stephen King or whoever. But that's not really necessary. I just have a personal chip on my shoulder about Clarke and 2010 as we've discussed.
To be clear, I'm making fun of the style, but I don't think that the style is what's "wrong" with 2010, nor do I think the style has any relevance. It's the ideas, the storyline and reveals, and the characterizations, of 2010 that I dislike.
Larry Niven, for example, is the most graceless writer you could ever read...he makes Clarke look like John Cheever. But I still swear by all his books because the underlying "Whedon" in your head is adequately conveyed by the "Clarendon" you're reading.
"Caricature" and "headspace" are the two important words here.
Jordan, your skills as a writer are of course unquestioned; of paramount importance is how amazingly accurate your piece is to Clarke's style. I will not ever use the acronym, but I laughed out loud at many, many points. Well done, sir.
I've been through the 2001 series, the Rama series, all his other stand-alone novels, and his massive book of collected short stories. You have captured in eloquent fashion the ability Clarke has to write incredibly stilted dialogue, characters with erudition and nobility that are actually cartoons of those concepts, and an overall evaluation of the world and its technology shoe-horned into the main characters' meandering thoughts between bon mots.
Most important in that discussion of the other day was the notion that Clarke was essentially the Disney Tomorrowland of sci-fi writers: a vision of the future that worked for the 50s (and most of the 60s) - a vision that felt real and possible. Then, eventually he became hopelessly, irrevocably out of date, kitschy, and basically irrelevant.
In my jaded adulthood, I would agree with most of that, in principle if not in spirit. I still re-read his books for the same reason I ride Space Mountain: to recapture that sense of wonder and adventure of going forth into the universe, and that it's actually POSSIBLE. (There was one short story from the 50s where everybody just faxed themselves to each new planet, and the only true explorers were the fax tech guys that went first to set up the receiving station. Good stuff.)
However, I also re-read his stuff because beyond what I mentioned two paragraphs ago as his faults, those are also simultaneously his strengths. There is a majesty to his overall vision of humanity, a notion of It's Possible. Maybe it ends up being corny, and it might not end up ringing true down the ages; obviously in our lifetimes a lot of what he wrote is impossible.
(I am particularly dismayed by the continuing, mounting evidence that space is just simply NOT the place for humans. Bones deteriorate, you get nuclear cancer or whatever from sunspots, and, bottom line, apparently you CAN'T HAVE SEX. Something about blood flow and zero gravity. That was the whole FUCKING POINT of getting into space. Quite literally. Zero-G Honeymoon Suite, baby!
So until we figure out zero-point energy, or how to create gravity, or even why gravity IS, then Space is gonna have to wait.)
However, The Fountains of Paradise made me think that a space elevator was not only possible, but inevitable. The Songs Of Distant Earth made a very plausible story of how humanity would cope with the death of the Sun in 3600, and the novel of 3001 is a total piece of shit.
They download a virus into the monolith. Through Dead Bowman, Spirit of Chandra, and HAL. Frank Poole is revived as protagonist.
Sorry, spoiler alert. But it's a total dud. But he was old.
I could go on, and I will, but not right now...
Oh, and Octo (and everybody), that was Jon Lovitz directing Marge in Streetcar!
But you knew that already.
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