TEC at Joseph Mallozzi’s blog
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 9:26 amThis week, The Etched City is on the Book of the Month slab, courtesy of Joe Mallozzi, writer and executive producer for Stargate SG-1 and Stargate:Atlantis.
Discussion here, and more here. I’ll be answering some of the questions tomorrow-ish. I’m agog at the detailed responses. If I’d ever imagined that the book would earn this much thought from readers, I would have spent an extra year making it better.
My thanks to Joe and his book club. Since I rarely make it to conventions, I feel privileged to be able to have an online discussion with readers.
July 9th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Blame Joe. He started it.
July 9th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I *really* loved it, and hope you write another one of similar style. TEC landscape also reminded me of Australia; perhaps the next one will resemble SE Asia.
DD
July 10th, 2008 at 5:28 am
Narelle - he’s going to fossick out the questions for me, I think. Your own question about helping sex workers in Thailand deserves a considered response and I will try to give it one.
drldeboer - thanks! Glad it worked for you. The Copper Country owes quite a bit to two road trips I made in Australia - a bus from Melbourne to Perth (ah, the memories - running out of petrol in the Nullarbor in the middle of the night…) and car from Melbourne to Alice Springs.
July 12th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
It’s strange, but the first few times I read TEC (I tend to reread good books a lot- it’s like visiting old friends) I didn’t really have any questions. I still don’t have all that many because TEC always seemed to be primarily a surreal book, and when it comes to surrealism the answer to “Why?” is very likely to be “Why not?”
This may seem to be lazy thinking on my part and possibly you’d be right; I do question most of what I read, quite extensively and often ruthlessly to the point of rudeness and over interest, but when I read something that I really, really enjoy I don’t feel the need to question; I can enjoy it as it stands, as a beautiful and thoughtful work. Occasionally I’ll hunt down someone else’s essay or two if I’m feeling really confused (I just finished the ‘Revolutionary Girl Utena’ anime, for example, an excellent example of surrealism that has resulted in me hunting down every essay I can find) or would just like to know what someone else thinks but generally, if I really, really love a book I don’t feel the need to pick it to pieces. Weird, because I’ll happily do it to anything else. That said, there doesn’t appear to be a huge amount of detailed analysis of TEC out there.
Reading everyone else’s questions on the Mallozzi was interesting; fun that so many questions are to do with Australia. Even though I am Australian, I have never found TEC to be a particularly Australian book. Maybe I’m blind through constant exposure. And the part about Gywnn resembling V from the Alan Moore comic made me blink.
Since everyone else is asking questions, I feel a need to conform. May I?
July 12th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
The answer, of course, is “Fish!” (Does that joke still exist?)
Yeah, I’ve been asked the Australian thing a few times. I never thought about until anyone asked, then I started identifying where some Australian influences came from. Gwynn’s initial appearance in the black domino possibly owes something to Ned Kelly, too. Gwynn would admire V’s dress sense and way with words.
Conform away! There are, of course, two of me here. One of us always tells the truth, and the other lies. (Actually, there are three, but the third one doesn’t say much. She hasn’t been right in the head since the incident with the tennis net, the Drano and the secondhand dictator we bought at a clearance sale.)