An archive of my old LiveJournal
I usually use an LJ client called Drivel to post from Linux. Like many software projects, they use code names for each release. (1.0, for instance, was also known as “Yeah, it really happened.”)
The latest version, 1.2, appears to be called The Hero of Canton.
(I really need to pick up a Firefly icon or two.)
The challenge: A piece of any genre, 200-350 words or thereabouts, in incomplete sentences. Also questions under six words.
Without further ado:
This morning alenxa asked me if I’d posted anything on comic book time (the effect by which Superman and Lois Lane are roughly the same age now as they were in 1938). I’d actually started writing about it a while back, but never finished it.
Around lunchtime I took a look at the Drafts folder on my keychain drive, and I found it — a lot shorter than I remembered, and a lot more recent. I also found an epic I had written ages ago based on another of our conversations — one wondering about the dearth of sci-fi art films. This thing is several pages long, deals with defining sci-fi, fantasy, and related genres, and doesn’t even get to the art film issue, and predates our group blog by several months. In fact, it’s old enough that the first line starts off, “My girlfriend and I were having a conversation about movies….”
There was a footnote about popular derision of science fiction vs. popular consumption of it that I thought was worth posting on its own, although since it dealt with top movie grosses, it needed a bit of updating. This piece of weblog history can now be seen at Viewing the Impossible.
I dashed off some thoughts on several other half-finished pieces (including the time issue), as well as a new one I’d been thinking about while drifting off to sleep last night (or maybe drifting off to consciousness this morning). I figure on finishing and posting them over the next few days. Maybe I’ll start breaking up the epic and post that too. With a new opening line, of course!
alenxa and I were driving back from lunch when something reminded me of David Bowie’s “A Space Oddity.” This in turn reminded me of a previous conversation — with somebody — about a story or story idea I had read or thought of. The key issue here was the repeated “Major Tom” theme. There are at least the two songs, and I recall hearing that there is at least one more somewhere.
Anyway, the story idea was this: suppose there was some seriously traumatic event – maybe not 9/11 level, maybe more like Challenger, or any of several celebrities who died before their time – that everyone knew about, and everyone was affected by. Now suppose that all memories and records of this event disappeared. But it’s still sitting there, in the back of people’s minds, and every once in a while there’s a song, or a TV movie, or something about this event that no one remembers really happened.
Imagine “Candle in the Wind” without Marilyn Monroe, for instance. Or imagine that an early astronaut really did drift off into space to be lost, and no one remembers Major Tom except a few songwriters, and even they don’t realize they’re remembering his story and not making it up.
Has anyone read a story like this? If not, would anyone like to?
I finally decided what to do with this account (other than commenting and tracking). I’ve got a fairly long-running group blog with alenxa at K-Squared Ramblings, and I didn’t want to move all my stuff off of that. At the same time, I didn’t want to leave this blank.
After tossing out several options, I’ve decided this is where I’ll post memes and at least some personal stuff (not in the way-too-personal sense, but in the I-don’t-think-anyone-who-doesn’t-already-know-me-will-be-interested sense).