So, herewith, a link to a kickstarter project/pre-order for the work: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1431077765/140-and-counting-an-anthology-of-twitter-literatur

(It’s great to see the initial finding target has been met.)

If there isn’t a fortune cookie bearing the legend “Treasures can be found in unlikely places: check your trash and spam today”, there ought to be.

• A Picture is Worth 20,000 Words from Peter Watts
• A partial outline of Shattered Pillars from Elizabeth Bear

Lovely pictures of planning and building. (Would it be really mean of me to wonder just a tiny bit what would happen if some virtual hand could emanate from each laptop and grab a couple of pieces to play swapsies with. Ooh! what an idea: authorial nuggets trading cards!)

First off, a fairy tale: Spindles. I always enjoy retellings and reworkings of fairy tales. This one has elements of Sleeping Beauty, as you’d guess from the title, and also Bluebeard. The “bad guys” get their come-uppances, but the ending is more interesting than that: the potential victims become something other, more complicated than sacrificial pawns. To say more would be to spoil the tale: go read it

Best TV viewing of the month has been Næturvaktin (“The Night Shift”). Like The Office, but stranger and more uncomfortable. Jón Gnarr’s Georg is more of a monster, but also more credible, than Ricky Gervais’ David Brent. I note other folk have likened Georg to Basil Fawlty or the central character of The Brittas Empire. It’s a distinct archetype in TV comedy, the monster boss as central character. I never found The Brittas Empire particularly engaging or funny, but apart from his Petruchio in the BBC Shakespeares 0f the early 1980s, I’ve always thought Basil Fawlty was John Cleese’s finest performance. What Basil has in common with Georg is the feeling I get that, underlying the bullying and inadequacy, there’s deep suffering that, whilst it can’t ever make the characters likeable, can render them more human–monstrous but human.

I also read Rigging screws, size 1 3/8 inch, galvanised by AJHall. I generally only read the discussion of fanfiction rather than the stories themselves (meta fascinates me, and I gather I’m not the only one), but sometimes I do take a peek. This is a stonkingly-good story, well-written with drama, tension, humour–and the modern Sherlock.

Other short fiction: Inquisition by David L. Clements.

And my final recommendation is an animated history of the Framlingham Castle and its owners. Stylish, informative, and terrifically funny. The castle itself’s a great place too.

Paint me hugely pleased!

(Yup, this is merely a “testing” post for the new set up

Zombie cats limp out to play:
The gibbous moon will light your way.
Shed your whiskers, and drop your teeth,
Unwind your intestines along the street.
Come with a screech, come with a yowl,
And we’ll strike terror with every howl.
When civilisation’s against the wall,
Mankind’s brainz will sustain us all.
You grab wealth, and I’ll seize power:
We’ll bring the apocalypse in the hour.

I don’t often do recommendations (of anything, to anyone). Fresh Snow by Jessica George leapt out of the mass of things to read this morning. If you can make the time to read any fiction today, this would be a good choice.

A gem.

It’s lovely too to see a successful writer of the small being celebrated.

It does lead me to wonder why some art forms are more easily accepted in a small form and others are not. Poetry is generally short these days (but not too short**); the epic on the scale of Troilus and Criseyde or Don Juan is almost no more (I can think of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy and Clive James’ comedic outing Peregrine Prykke’s Pilgrimage***, but nothing more). Novels have become more and more brick-like; the demise of the short story is regularly reported.

ETA 10/08/10: Review in the Grauniad too.

===

* I love that last name: it’s immediately called up the image of a large helicopter landing on ice.
** Too short and not a haiku and it’s got to be funny: limerick, Clerihew? I’m sure the serious haiku’s only acceptable because it’s an import.
*** Is there a rule that creating at the “wrong” length can be rendered acceptable if we’re funny about it? Is this rule related to the one that says all sf on the radio has to be funny?