56 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
56 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
From rssfeeds@jmason.org Mon Sep 30 13:43:38 2002
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From: boingboing <rssfeeds@spamassassin.taint.org>
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Subject: Turkey City Lexicon
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Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 08:00:32 -0000
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Content-Type: text/plain; encoding=utf-8
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URL: http://boingboing.net/#85506002
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Date: Not supplied
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After the talk at UT Austin, I spent Saturday at the Turkey City science
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fiction writers' workshop at Bruce Sterling's place. Turkey City is a venerable
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science fiction workshop that has spawned many good writers and a lexicon of
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science fiction critical terms that is the de facto standard for understanding
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what works and what doesn't in a work of science fiction:
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Squid on the Mantelpiece
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Chekhov said that if there are dueling pistols over the mantelpiece in the
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first act, they should be fired in the third. In other words, a plot
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element should be deployed in a timely fashion and with proper dramatic
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emphasis. However, in SF plotting the MacGuffins are often so overwhelming
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that they cause conventional plot structures to collapse. It's hard to
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properly dramatize, say, the domestic effects of Dad's bank overdraft when
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a giant writhing kraken is levelling the city. This mismatch between the
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conventional dramatic proprieties and SF's extreme, grotesque, or visionary
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thematics is known as the "squid on the mantelpiece."
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Card Tricks in the Dark
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Elaborately contrived plot which arrives at (a) the punchline of a private
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joke no reader will get or (b) the display of some bit of learned trivia
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relevant only to the author. This stunt may be intensely ingenious, and
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very gratifying to the author, but it serves no visible fictional purpose.
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(Attr. Tim Powers)
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I had the cold from hell all weekend and I'm jetlagged, but I wanted to get
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some links up before I hit the sack. Until tomorrow! Link[1] Discuss[2]
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[1] http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html
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[2] http://www.quicktopic.com/boing/H/cgivZf3AAhKkk
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