I read first The Warrior Who Carried Life and it instantly entered my Great books, rather than just good books, list and have followed him ever since. He lived in the house on Norham Gardens that used to house the OUFG library when I was an undergraduate, just before I did and just before the OUSFG library was there.
There was a TV show about the writing of Lust which just put me off so much I've never read it. He went to the publishers with 5 ideas and they didn't like any of them, so he picked another out of the air. SEX, with a wish. They said yes. And then involved their editing process so much they underminded what was already a hairline-good idea. Criticizing him to the extent of a 'mixed metaphor' when the original (something like 'he walked like a bag of bones, shaken) was perfect, evocative, and for flips sake he's the writer not your jobbing sub-ed. Get out of his face.
Before celestialweasel says it, 253 was CW's favourite ambitious project of that year which eneded up not bad at all.
I liked (loved) the novella which begins The Child Garden more than the concluding second part, which to me went too much overblown, as is his want in endings.
Geoff Ryman
There was a TV show about the writing of Lust which just put me off so much I've never read it. He went to the publishers with 5 ideas and they didn't like any of them, so he picked another out of the air. SEX, with a wish. They said yes. And then involved their editing process so much they underminded what was already a hairline-good idea. Criticizing him to the extent of a 'mixed metaphor' when the original (something like 'he walked like a bag of bones, shaken) was perfect, evocative, and for flips sake he's the writer not your jobbing sub-ed. Get out of his face.
Before
I liked (loved) the novella which begins The Child Garden more than the concluding second part, which to me went too much overblown, as is his want in endings.
Should I read Air then?