Bad books and fan fiction

Independent of one another, thankfully.

I signed up for kamikazeremix. This ought to be interesting.

Usage/typographic conventions question: Italics for non-personal name proper nouns like band names and restaurants in RPF--is this some convention borrowed from entertainment reporting? I’m seeing it in RPF a lot. Did it come from bandom maybe? I can’t lie, it freaks me out because it feels like one more trick trademark owners have pulled, convincing people that their words are super-special and must be treated differently, like they’re untranslated non-English words or something. And now it’s in my fiction.

Five Seasons of Angel, ed. Glenn Yeffeth: This collection is probably the worst one of these type of books that I’ve read. I’m pretty sure that almost all of the essays (save one humor piece and one piece on myths) focus on the author’s favorite character, and I didn’t get any insights, not even about Puppet Angel. Authors whose names I recognized include: Laura Resnick, Roxanne Longstreet Conrad, Steven Harper, Jean Lorrah, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Peter S. Beagle, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Nancy Holder, Josepha Sherman, Laura Anne Gilman, and Jennifer Crusie.

David Gerrold & Larry Niven, The Flying Sorcerers: This is the worst book I’ve read in a very long time (the memory of woman runneth not to the contrary), so bad I’m almost tempted to try to make rachelmanija review it because she could be funny. I thought initially the book might be a parody of the “white man space explorer comes to uplift savage natives” trope, especially when I got to the Wizard of Oz homage, but the book was really just trying to be funny while using the White Man’s Burden as the humorous vehicle. See, they really are savages! His condescension is fully justified! They don’t name their women, they just beat them, until the noble space explorer shows them that women can be allowed to work (and sit while they work) and have names! There’s a Wright Brothers thing with Wilville and Orbur (I’m not lying) building an airship, except not really because the noble space explorer has to teach them what to do, in the process introducing money, betting, and theft, among other innovations, to the savages. The worst part is: I just ordered another David Gerrold book, before I read this.

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