16 Comments on “Dear Lord, I Do Blather On, Don’t I”

1. We like your blathering. It’s what we pay you for. So get blathering, wordboy!

2. Very *interesting* blathering though!

3. Like Chang says, it’s what we pay you for. Well we pay for the books, Whatever is just a free bonus.

4. Great interview! Thanks for linking to the “view all” version rather than the paginated version.

5. You do blather on. But don’t say that as if it were a bad thing. If you didn’t blather so much, what would we read on Whatever?

6. A nice interview, although nothing really new for regular Whatever readers. But it was good to see an interviewer who’s done his homework and actually engages with his subject.

   There at the end you mentioned The Spank Chronicles: The Spankening. Is that The Human Division or the next project?

7. Nicely done!. I want to add that I discovered your novels by way of this web site because you talk about that a bit there. I had fallen out of the SF habit many years ago because so much of it at the time did not measure up to the stuff I had been reading for 20 years. Someone directed me to your interview with the hotel manager in Bethlehem and I fell in love with your writing. As a result I picked up a couple of your books and they reignited my enjoyment of SF.

   Sadly now I find I don’t like it when you publish because it takes you away from this blog 8-{D.

8. Ah, thanks so much for name-checking Steven Brust. (And for linking the “view all” version of the interview.)

9. Not blathering –>you are an interviewer’s dream! I enjoyed it!

10. Great blathering. It was nice to read an interview where an intelligent conversation took place. So many seem to be the KFUB-6 News at Eleven fluff piece airing just before the Jay Leno preview.
    “American sarcasticist.” Love that term!

11. You give good interview. Feel free to carry on indefinitely – Blather, brinse, brepeat.

12. I think you were entirely too gracious in drawing the distinction between “literary” and “accessible” science fiction. The fatal problem with the former is that it emulates what English departments, the Nobel committee and other guardians of “legitimate” fiction have been shoveling for two generations: obscurantism, nihilism, and a general constipation, Thanks for writing which honors plot, character, conflict and resolution in plain English, and for the shout out to Heinlein. I was raised on RAH, Asimov, Blish, Anderson Van Vogt, Zelazny, etc., and it’s sustaining that some writers out there are still in that tradition; Morgan, who you mention, Varley.

13. YAY! That was great interview. I loved that they covered so many aspects of your work and your career.

14. Reading Redshirts. Hilarious. Reminds me of (in a good way, not a copycat hack way) of the Laumer Retief series.

15. Why was Little Fuzzy not under copyright? I had thought that pretty much anything published after 1923 was, unless the author had explicitly taken steps otherwise.

16. I wanted to let you know that I’ve found the idea of being “caught in the narrative” coming up a lot since I read “Redshirts”. Coming out of “The Dark Knight Rises” my girlfriend was asking why Bruce didn’t keep climbing up the very rough wall or use the rope to haul up material to make a bridge. He was caught in the narrative. That could mean that’s the dumb ass way he was written or it could mean that he bought into the story of how it’s supposed to be done. Same thing with why Stormtroopers didn’t shoot the legs off of Luke and Leia when the door separating them only slid up a foot. Caught in the narrative. Bad writing? Or in the minds of the Stormtroopers was that the wrong way to chase someone? Or maybe kneeling in a suit of armor is frigging impossible. Lying on the ground in full Stormtrooper gear could be like flipping a turtle on it’s back.
    Anyway, loved the book. I was expecting something closer to “Sir Apropos of Nothing” where he simply refused to play the second fiddle in his own life. But I was glad to be able to say “I didn’t see that coming” instead of “hasn’t this been written?”. I loved it. I recommend it. And I think I’m going to be using “caught in the narrative” almost as much as I use “all the (things)? ALL THE (THINGS)!”.