Haha, Los Angeles sucks

While Hartwell managed to stay on task for the most part in the next few chapters, in chapter 6, "Where Do You Get Those Crazy Ideas?" he started to wander again. With that chapter title, his wanderings didn't make much sense. Going into it, you're going to think, "He'll talk about places authors get ideas" and instead he begins to go on about what ideas can do and the purpose of ideas etc. etc. and sort of leaves the wondering reader in the dust about idea origination. I think he could have easily gotten away with it had he just named the chapter something different.

I did like the phrase "Science fiction writers are like magpies." Collecting all sorts of random bits and pieces of information and what might seem like junky trivia to others. I do that all the time. I have all sorts of random "stupid" things in my brain that are just waiting to be used. I think this can be attributed not just to SF writers, but to a lot of writers. Tell me the fantasy writer doesn't soak up crazy information or the horror writer isn't collecting bits of something that might make for one freaky-ass story later on.

The chapter on the use of the term "science fiction" was good. I'd never really thought about it before, but it is kind of oxymoronic. Sort of like creative nonfiction. Haha. The problem is that people automatically think infallible facts with science, and that's not always true. Scientists get their theories disproven all the time, so science is more like the search for truth rather than truth itself. Therefore, I see nothing wrong with science sitting next to fiction. Especially since science fiction writers have come up with ideas that have later become reality, hence the reason the government started asking for the help and creative minds of some science fiction writers. There was a whole article about that, which I thought was awesome.

And yeah, once it becomes reality, it's no fun anymore. Of course, I tend to think that in that moment when fiction is no longer fiction and that invisible vest is actually functioning on a human being, both SF and science are totally kickass. After a while the elation will fade off, but I'll still think of how cool it was when it became real. Execept now we can't write about it like we used to, but oh well. I like to think that will keep the genre fresh and force new ideas to arise. And anyway, you never know what will come next. I remember when they thought they would never invent the gigabyte. Hmm.

My computer has 78 GB. (I could have had around 200 but I didn't have the money at the time).


Currently: Just kinda normal