When last we checked, our hero, Cullen of Welltun Care Presents fame, updated his site with a portion of an essay that was loquacious, garrulous, verbose, and one might also say wordy. The Ghost of Polonius, after previewing the missive, was quoted on saying "The writer, if I might use the term loosely, could not have a harder time arriving at a point if he took that same point and thrust it thusly in a direction not towards, nay, even opposite that which would bring it to himself." He then went on to decry curtains as a hiding place and to wonder why the shades of his children refuse to speak with him.
In the whole, that portion dealt with seeing something that inspired Cullen as a writer. This portion of the essay will follow that theme. Assuming the chatty little fool can reach his point.
(It sounds like I'm complaining about writing in volume the day after complaining about writer's block, but I'm not. Well, maybe a little, but it's just that I can't help thinking I should have gotten to the point sooner. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, of course.)
Only a few days ago, I read for the first time Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. It is the story of the computer AM and how he/it spends his/its time. There's more to it than just that, but I come not to spoil but to contemplate.
At the time I was less than impressed with what I'd read. I could give a litany of where the story lost me, but I'm not doing a review of a Hugo winning work. That strikes me as a wee bit too arrogant coming from a man who hardly has boo connected to his name. Besides, I reread it for this little piece and my opinion picked up a bit. I've found that sometimes I need a second readthrough with Ellison before he can work his magic on me. It's not because I'm so dense or any failing on his part; his writing doesn't always mesh with my reading.
No, really. Not dense at all.
Questions about my reading comprehension aside, I was discussing "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" with my dad, and I said something to the effect that I would have preferred the story had it been written by Theodore Sturgeon. Which is still true; Sturgeon could have made the plot sing.
But, then again, I say this as a bigger fan of Sturgeon than Ellison.
Be that as it may, the thought lingered with me. It's not the first time such a thought has come to me. I've wondered what "Lord of the Rings" would have been like had it bee written by various authors, ranging from H. P. Lovecraft to Stephen King to...
Can't tell I've had a Horror bent longer than a Fantasy bent, can you? How about "I Robot" or "Foundation" by way of Tolkien? "Road to Rio" by way of Douglas Adams?
Or we could go obscure. Slasher movie in space (Not Jason X so much as Alien). Casablanca in a future setting (um..Maybe not; that's Barb Wire...) and so on.
It's speculation like this that can lead to Insparation, that lead to new thoughts and ideas. Not necessarily good ones, but not necessarily bad ones, either.
Another part done and more to go. Hopefully everyone's enjoying this as much as I am.
2 comments:
I read "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" back when I was in High School. An excellent piece of work. Oh, by the way, my blog is back. I now have the time to devote to things other than supervising whiney technicians. Yay!
That's great! Unfortunately for ne, my computer's down. I'm posting this and my next entry from my local library.
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