I find that the unfashionable produce the best art. The politiccally correct are too careful. Hat tip to Theodore Beale for finding the short version of this quote, but the language is telling. N. K. Jemisin has won two Hugos. I blog more considered sentences sleep deprived.
What’s your next project? What are you working on now?
I’ve already broken ground on my next series, which I’m planning to be a trilogy, but we’ll see. It will be based on a short story I did through tor.com called “The City Born Great”. It’s going to be set in New York, so I need to do a lot more research on New York. To boil it down, it’s about a group of people who embody the spirit of the city of New York. And they raise the city up into a kind of metaphysical entity that will help to fight against basically Cthulhu.
So if you’re using Cthulhu, are you an H.P. Lovecraft fan?
Oh, hell no.
This is deliberately a chance for me to kind of mess with the Lovecraft legacy. He was a notorious racist and horrible human being. So this is a chance for me to have the “chattering” hordes—that’s what he called the horrifying brown people of New York that terrified him. This is a chance for me to basically have them kick the ass of his creation. So I’m looking forward to having some fun with that.
Truth and beauty do not correlate with critical acclaim or support from big publishers.
The good poets seek truth, and truth is never in fashion. This is from the current year.
I found the book I wished to read
Had never been written, how strange
I know what you are thinking, indeed
I myself at first thought the same;
“surely”, said I, “I thus must need”
“To search better, search night and day”
“In all tongues, that I might say”
“‘I found the book I wished to read;’”I found the book I wished to read
Was not there, though I recalled it
Very clearly, I thought so indeed
But memory’s tricks had forestalled it;
Great grief; great anger, great need
Although I searched not long looking for
My book, I quit quite very long before
I found the book I wished to read;I found the book I wished to read
Would be very hard to find, if at all
I considered the cost, I counted indeed
A new thought came, I now recall
“In finding a story, must one always need”
“To search? As it I’m already looking at”
“In my mind’s eye, So can I say that”
“I found the book I wished to read?”I found the book I wished to read
Was not there either; slipping in and out
Of thought, not clear nor whole indeed
That it ever was before I began to doubt;
Lest it be lost, I gave into great need
And with fire and fury and candle-lighting
It was only therefore in its writing–!
that I found the book I wished to read.E. Anthony Gray
That is simply good. Unlike the aforementioned winner of prizes. Vox Day describes her and her praised colleagues thusly:
… little more than scabrous, over-medicated dung-feeders crawling about the skeletons of their predecessors attempting to scavenge off their leavings, …
But she will have a big advance. At least, like Stross (whom she beat this year for a Hugo he deserved: the last of the Laundry Service is high tragedy, leaving one with ashes in one’s mouth as Bob, the hero, loses his last illusions) she delivers manuscripts on time.
Gray may not be rich. But is work is more likely, like our second poet’s to last.
Who am I to condemn you, O Dives,
I who am as much embittered
With poverty
As you are with useless riches ?Ezra Pound
In this fallen time, the prizes reliably tell you who not to read, to watch, or listen to. Seek the truth instead.