Performance Art
The good folks at Starship Sofa have posted a podcast of my longish-story "The Second Coming of Jasmine Fitzgerald", read by, er, me. You can listen to it over here if you're curious about the sound of my voice, if you want to check out the shots I take at the "Mundane SF" movement in my introductory comments, or even, I suppose, if you're interested in the story. Be warned, though: it's fifty minutes of your life that you won't get back. I will not be held responsible for the crushing post-hoc realization that you could have been getting laid or drinking a V8 instead.
Labels: writing news
posted by Peter Watts at
8:33 AM
11 Comments:
Well, I'm throughly disappointed. I had imagined your voice as being like Barry White's until now.
A solid, evocative story, but the way you subtly switched vocal inflections for character dialog threw me a little, especially with Jasmine.
Maybe others will disagree.
--
Brian Prince
This comment has been removed by the author.
Holy brain cheese!
This is the exact thing I would think would pilot a lifter.
AR said...
Well, I'm throughly disappointed. I had imagined your voice as being like Barry White's until now.
What, you mean it isn't?
Brian said...
A solid, evocative story, but the way you subtly switched vocal inflections for character dialog threw me a little, especially with Jasmine.
It's a problem with live readings — without the telltale quote marks and line breaks, it's easy to lose track of who's saying what in the dialog pieces. I tried to make the voices distinguishably different for that reason.
You're lucky I didn't have a tank of helium handy. Jaz would've had a much squeakier voice.
Nicholas said...
This is the exact thing I would think would pilot a lifter.
Old news, dude. The guys at Technovelgy gave me props for the call ages ago.
2004?!?! wow, that IS old news. I wonder why I'm only hearing about it now.
Hey, that didn't suck. Very moody and interesting.
Thanks!
Unlike ar, I had not specifically imagined your voice, but it fits utterly with your impression on the printed page. I was delighted that your accent is so heavily Canadian. It added to the story, to the feeling of The Author Reads His Work.
The reading also explains all those darn italics in Blindsight, which had puzzled me - the way in which the dialog is emphasized carries alot of the meaning, makes it more naturalistic, and you need that when characters are reeling off lots of technical data and science factoids.
This story was much more clear in its building of the visual universe in which the action takes place than was Blindsight, which had very clear visuals in some places, and was confusing to me in others. It's harder, I know, to trigger the audience's imagination for a deep space story, because the background objects and places are so foreign. I love stories that paint a mental picture for me, and this was very fleshed out visually.
To be clear - she cut him open physically to remove her "fixes"? Or did I miss the point on that?
Was Miles pure imagination? He reminded me of a psychologist I know.
At the time I wrote the story, I was dating a woman doing postgraduate work in forensic psych. Miles' personality isn't anything like hers, but she filled me in on certain stock responses that shrinks use to keep control of conversations with potential head-cases. So I guess that would make them all sound similar, at least in an assessment setting.
*nodding slightly* Go on ...
(Sorry, I couldn't resist it.)
The person it reminded me of wasn't doing criminal justice stuff, but he did do stuff at the VA, and does marriage counseling, both of which would require that everyone keep somewhat caaaalm. I assumed you had personal experience with this, given the level of detail.
Nice job on the story.
Just wanted to say that I listened to this today. Was a fantastic story. I just now started reading a collection of your writings and I have to say that I'm loving all of it.
Fantastic work, and I'm looking forward to works both new and old that I haven't read yet.
Why, thank you. I always thought that my manly, nasal baritone would carry a certain charm if anyone would just listen to the damn thing.
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