Geoff Ryman
interviewed by Kit Reed
INTRODUCTION
Kit Reed and Geoff Ryman
met in cyberspace for two real-time conversations in July, 2004. Unlike
email interviews, real-time encounters are spontaneous. The questions
and answers flow as fast as Reed and Ryman can type. They talked on
Wesleyan University's StoryMOO for two hours. The entrance to StoryMOO
looks like this:
Dream Plaza
You are in the center of a dusty plaza where
everything is slightly strange. If you are in doubt, type HELP ME.
To see where you are, type MAP. The plaza is lined with low adobe
buildings-- one on the west carries a fading sign: RedWriter's place.
To the east you see the Semiotic Detective Agency and to the north,
The House of 3. A path leads south to Story Park and at the corners
of the square, four avenues lead out... Type HELP ME to see what to
do. MAP will tell you where you can go.
Weathered signs point to STEIN SHRINE-->
and OVERHEARATORIUM (#323)---> OR
GO NORTHWEST
Tumbleweed drifts across the plaza, rolling
into a crumbling adobe foundation in the middle. Whatever used to
stand here has ceased to exist.
You see Notice and sandwich board on the
homeless man here.
RYMAN/REED, ACT ONE
-->> Geoff (#968) has connected at Dream Plaza (#62)
<<--
Kit says, "Geoff, Thanks for coming to the magic kingdom. To spare
a lot of explanation, I'm going to start by pasting in two banner reviews
of your new novel, AIR, out  from
St. Martin's this August. Then I want to begin by asking you about AIR."
From Publishers Weekly
On the heels of his whimsical fantasy, Lust (2003), British author
Ryman makes a triumphant return to science fiction in this superbly
crafted tale. Life in Kizuldah, a village in Karzistan, has changed
little over the centuries, though most homes have electricity. Chung
Mae, the local fashion expert, earns her living by taking women into
the city for makeovers and by providing teenagers with graduation
dresses. Intelligent and ambitious, this wonderfully drawn character
is also illiterate and too often ruled by her emotions. One day, the
citizens of Kizuldah and the rest of the world are subjected to the
testing of Air, a highly experimental communications system that uses
quantum technology to implant an equivalent of the Internet in everyone's
mind. During the brief test, Mae is accidentally trapped in the system,
her mind meshed with that of a dying woman. Left half insane, she
now has the ability to see through the quantum realm into both the
past and the future. Mae soon sets out on a desperate quest to prepare
her village for the impending, potentially disastrous establishment
of the Air network. For all its special effects, what makes the novel
particularly memorable is the detailed portrait of Kizuldah and its
inhabitants. Besides being a treat for fans of highly literate SF,
this intensely political book has important things to say about how
developed nations take the Third World for granted.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* As pervasive technology ensures the rapid spread
of pop culture and information access, few corners of the planet remain
untouched. One of those is Kizuldah, Karzistan, a rice-farming village
of perhaps 30 families, predominantly Chinese Buddhist but with a
strong Muslim presence, among whom sharply intelligent though illiterate
Mae Chung, who guides village women in dressmaking, makeup, and hairstyling,
is an informal leader. When the UN decides to test the radical new
technology Air, designed to make peoples' minds the receivers of a
worldwide information network, Mae is boiling laundry and chatting
with elderly Mrs. Tung. The massive surge of Air energy swamps them,
and when the test is finished, Mrs. Tung is dead, and Mae has absorbed
90 years of her memories. Rocked by the unexpected deaths and disorientation,
the UN delays fully implementing Air, but Mae sees at once that her
way of life is ending. Struggling with information overload, the resentment
of much of the village, and a complex family situation, she works
fiercely to learn what she needs to ride the tiger of change. Portraying
one world dissolving into another so quickly that only the smartest
and hungriest can keep up, Ryman fills it with intimate, emotional
scenes of love and jealousy as well as such surreal events as a calm
exchange on cosmology with a talking dog. Enthralling. Roberta Johnson
Kit says, "So, Air. Air is tremendous. HUGE. You didn't write it in
ten minutes, did you?"
Geoff says, "Years. I kept getting other novels to write. The tech
kept changing under me. First draft finished in 96!"
Kit says, "I hadn't thought about the tech changing, but of course!
So it was growing and changing while you thought about it?"
Geoff says, "When I started, there was no digital TV. I had to make
up digital TV."
Kit says, "Explain? I'm not sure how anybody invents a technology,
altho SF is a great predictor."
Geoff says, "Well, I knew the UK was going to experiment with digital
TV and were particularly interested in the interactive aspects as a
sort of substitute Web. So the TV in the story, and how Mae was going
to use it needed to be invented. I was making up stuff, like Mae's website
becomes because of its down-home Turkish quality an internationally
popular site... which then happened in reality to this down home Turkish
guy. AIR was also about my efforts to wake up the UK government to the
potential of the web... and about work politics everywhere."
Kit says, "Yes! So the medium caught up with your message...Did the
government pay any mind to you?"
Geoff says, "Basically governments everywhere thought they could use
the Web to cut costs... online forms, info in databases, joined up records...
but it's not so simple when you have thousands of legacy databases already."
Kit says, "The United States government has all its forms posted now,
but people print and fill in by hand."
Geoff says, "The trouble with that is all it does is transfer the cost
of printing to the consumer. There is no cost savings for government
in processing the data, which is done in paper files same as always.
To go back to your previous question, the government did pay some some
mind to me and a lot of other people. There are now roughly 2000 UK
government websites, and some very fine websites among those. There
were some fun years doing a lot of work and finding out what people
wanted."
Kit says, "Endless research then. Interviews or questionnaires?"
Geoff says, "Research was not endless. Very specific, often unheeded,
sometimes too late... better now. F'instance. Profoundly deaf people
have trouble reading... they've never heard and written English which
is a second language for them. Deaf orgs here developing avatars that
read text and then sign it."
Kit says, "Amazing. What made you make the brilliant leap to having
the government invade people's heads?"
Geoff says, "OK, moving on. That came from the need to get a universal
tech. My Dad couldn't type so he never got online. My Mom is scared
of machines in general and leaves things like that to Dad. Everybody
was talking for a while about getting this technology to the have-nots.
Chap One was called Have Not Have"
Kit says, "It's a fabulous invention, but my paranoid nerve is zinging
about now."
Geoff says, "People have this fear of Big Brother. They need to understand
that Big Brother is also the corporations who want to own your identity
and your buying habits. Ordinary advertising is dying out... my Mom
got 6 fashion brochures today in the post. Niche, target, personalised
marketing is what EVERYBODY wants to do, not just govt. Only, govt is
controlled by democracy in theory. Companies aren't."
Kit says, "I think you're absolutely right. Amazon's decided my 'favorites'
are toddlers' books because I ordered three for Christmas. Amazon has
no business deciding who my favorites are. But, about Mae. What inspired,
and I do mean *inspired* you to inhabit the soul of an Asian mountain
woman?"
Geoff says, "I needed someone to be someone we might call a have-not
who was rich in everything our culture lacks. So Mae is her village's
info expert... she knows fashion. She gives up everything to get the
village up to date... the story is about how everybody including her
lovers and friends betray her. This is something a lot of people in
the info business went through about then."
Kit says, "About Mae. You totally inhabit her. You KNOW her. Intuition
or something more methodical?"
Geoff says, "I believe in imagination. It's not a mystery to me that
we can make up poeple outside our experience. Lately, folks mistrust
it. They will soon come to distrust Reality TV more."
Kit says, "Gack, so they should, it's all scripted! I guess what I'm
trying to say is that the whole time I was reading, I was *inside Mae's
head.* Not every writer knows character well enough to do that."
Geoff says, "I'm proud of Mae."
Geoff says, "So anyway, Mae just came to me. It turned out that her
name means something like Have not Have in a form of Chinese... that
was an accident."
Kit says, "That's wonderful. Happy accident that is... You know. I'm
thinking all your work is character driven, it reads to me as though
you, Geoff, *become* the person for as long as that person's on the
page."
Geoff says, "OK, inside a character head is Point of View. It's prose
fiction's secret weapon. Movies can't do that. In prose fiction you
can show the silence, what goes in someone's head. You show what they're
feeling by using the language they would use."
Kit (overlapping) says, "Of course. And if stream-of-consciousness,
determined by character's cadences."
Geoff continues, "It's a narration, held in memory, a series of answered
questions.... just like a story, so a story is like another self. By
the end of a scene, it's stream of consciousness... which is what reality
actually is for all of us."
Kit says, "Yes. As far as I'm concerned, it's the best place to be.
Inside the character's head."
Geoff says, "It's the place that's most like reality. Daniel Dennett
neuro-philosopher says the self is actually made of words."
Kit says, "I love that. Words are what it's about because it's how
we process things. I think we're singing the same song. Beyond that,
did you *research* Mongolian villages or did you just *know* because
you knew Mae?"
Geoff says, "I made every last part of it up. I did have a lot of experience
being in Turkey. So the language they talk is turkish. The landscape
is not so much Mongolia as republics like Khazakstan."
Kit says, "Which you have seen. I wasn't sure and probably because
of an early reading of White Lotus, put it in remotest China. You don't
specify, though, do you?"
Geoff says, "No, it's in a made up country, which gives me the freedom
to be a bit wrong!"
Kit loves that, too. Fiction is made up, so why not?
Kit will now ask, since you brought it up, what's your Mundane Philosophy
about?
Geoff says, "OK, SF content is the future, but the function of most
SF seems to be about avoiding the future. So much of the inherited tropes
are actually highly unlikely. Take faster than light travel... there
is a ghost of a possiblity there, but people have run away with it.
This is because they like it. It seems to open up horizons of adventure.
It also conveys the message, we can burn through this planet and escape
to the stars. I don't think we can. I think we're stuck on Earth. I
want to write stories that are stuck on earth and throw out the unlikely
tropes."
Kit says, "What's mundane about that? It strikes me as completely realistic
in the best sense."
Geoff says, "Well the word Mundane means of the world. So by and large
Mundane SF sticks to Earth or the nearby solar system. For example if
we can't get to the stars, aliens can't get to us. Quantum uncertaintly
works only at the micro level. Parallel universes are unlikely. So two
years ago, out of Clarion a bunch of young writers decided they wanted
to limit themselves to the most likely future. This meant facing up
to what we know is coming, dealing with it and imaging good futures
that are likely."
Kit says, "This is probably where I should ask you what you think the
S and the F stand for. Science Fiction or Speculative Fiction."
Geoff says, "For me right now Science Fiction."
Kit says, "OK, good futures. Good as in happy or good as in accurate
projections?"
Geoff says, "Not so much accurate as more likely futures than bouncing
around star systems talking on the radio.
"Because I think we've been fooling ourselves for a while. I think
we need to face up to the loss of oil and the immense impact that will
have. Climate change, overpop, yeah, need to be faced with tough challenges.
Then we can move on to the life that will grow out of how we adapt,
despite loss. That's a tale of overcoming, new solutions, and a renewed
sense of wonder about truly new ideas. Theres no SoW for me in 40 year
old Star Trek scenarios."
Kit says, "I like it. Dunno how to ask this. OK. Will the next novel
come out of this line of thought?"
Geoff says, "I'd say AIR grew out of similar impatience.
"Next novel is mainstream about Cambodia. After that many stories
that are Mundane. I want to help pull together an anthology of new Mundane
writers. Got a guy called Trent helping me on that. There's a mailing
list. Join by emailing Trent at blzblack@yahoo.com.
There's an underpopulated website to visit, but more stuff will be appearing
on it:
www.mundanesf.com
Kit says, "Terrific. Would love to see it. I knew you were going to
Cambodia to do research, didn't know for what. Is it something you're
ready to talk about or not cooked yet?"
Geoff says, "Novel is called King's Last Song. Half in 12th centruy
Angkor, half now in 2002, treasure and kidnapping and healing after
30 years of war."
Kit thinks meanwhile she's pretty Mundane herself. It's always nearest
of near futures if it's SF. Historical novel, then. Is there a central
character that you love?
Geoff says, "That's the problem. There are two stories each with about
4 point of view characters. And I love them all. Right now considering
new ways into the material. One of the PoVs is Cambodia's greatest King,
King Jayavarman VII."
Kit says, "Brilliant. The multiphasic, if that's the right word, fiction
is always the highest risk. The higher you jump, the riskier it is,
but it sounds fabulous. Maybe it's a saga. There's gotta be a Perfect
Saga out there."
Geoff says, "There's this notion of Queer Time that my work esp WAS
is supposed to embody. It jumps around in time, and uses other ways
of unifying story."
Kit grins at Geoff.
Kit says, "I don't think only gay writers are entitled to Queer Time
:)"
Geoff says, "I hope not, it kinda implies that writing in Queer Time
is in the genes or something. If Queer Time is about living in new families,
which mitigates against Sagas, then lots of folk now live in new families."
Kit sorries the smilies, but messes with time a bit herself.
Kit says, "Do you think webwork and 253 have made your thinking more
flexible, less linear?"
Geoff says, "I was thinking about that stuff before the web, so the
web came and I said that's for me."
Kit says, "In a way webwork, computers, have made a quantum change
in our thinking. The same way movies did when writers learned they could
flash back and cut to the chase."
Geoff says, "We're only at the beginning of that change. The biggest
change I can see is the arrival of meta everything. Music made out of
other music. People keep cutting and pasting, and I think they do this
with fiction now too. Only it gets called plagiarisation. I hated being
sampled when I saw it because it not only took my ideas, it took my
performance, which is all I have to sell. In music they have to credit
the source with ownership. Sampled research or fictions will have to
do the same."
Kit says, "I'm a little scared by what you just said because I want
to run my own shop and not refer or be referred to."
Geof says, "Maybe novels aren't worth stealing ;-)"
Kit hugs Geoff.
Kit waves.
Kit goes west.
Geoff has disconnected.
END OF ACT ONE
RYMAN AND REED, ACT TWO
Once again, Kit and Geoff meet on StoryMOO
Story Park
Trees, grass, benches. This is a large public park. Dogs are walked
here, children play and joggers jog in never ending circuits. This
is what is known as "Parklife". There are muddy fields full of soccer
players engaged in endless games and a Park keeper chasing away trouble.
Please take your litter home with you.
To the west you can see a playground and in front of you is an arrow
that points upwards to a hole in the fabric of space/time.
Buried among the bushes to the south you see a small marble building
with a green metal roof. A brass plaque over the door reads STEIN
SHRINE.
On the southwest corner of the park you see the entrance to Flaky
Groves.
You see Tree here.
s
Hmm. Is there a party in the shrine?
Stein Shrine
You come in to a spare marble room with a granite pedestal in the
middle. On top is the Jo Davidson bust of Gertrude Stein. The room
used to be spare and austere but now it looks a lot like Jim Morrison's
grave. People have left notes, floral tributes, pieces of verse and
messages in bottles. You are invited to add to what you see. Notes.
Presents. Anything you'd like. To find out how, type help @create
The floor is crowded with baskets for Basket and Alice has left a
tin of hashish brownies.
-->> RedWriter (#96) has connected at Upstairs (#103)
<<--
The Front Room
This is where you'll find RedWriter during business hours. Navajo
rug on the floor at the moment, a couple of comfortable chairs. But
that could all change. It takes words to bring a world to life. To
see where to go from here, type @ways.
You see doormat and notebook here.
RedWriter is here.
-->> Geoff (#968) has connected at Dream Plaza (#62)
<<--
Geoff has arrived.
Geoff says, "Hi Geoff here"
RedWriter grins. Who were you expecting?
RedWriter hugs Geoff.
Geoff says, "Kit Reed."
RedWriter says, "Eeek, I wandered away from the keyboard and missed
you on the first round :)"
Geoff says, "Darling it's me, home again!"
RedWriter her very self. Hang on and I'll morph the name. How was your
weekend?
RedWriter grins at Geoff.
Geoff says, "Hot. Full of church and food with my California Mom."
Kit says, "Nice! It's 100 or so in Glendale where our daughter is."
Kit is going there soon.
Geoff says, "Well Oceanside is much cooler."
Kit says, "Great. Are your Mundane people cranked up to come visit
tomorrow?"
Geoff says, "Mundanes. Do they have character names?"
Kit says, "Nope, they're coming as guests. We have gazillion guest
characters because a Brandeis cyberanthro class observed us."
Geoff says, "Here's the dope, seeing Spiderman 2."
Kit has dental miseries at approx 2 eastern, you'll love Spidey but
it gets a little introspective in the middle.
Geoff says, "Not like the hulk I hope!"
Kit nopes, *nothing* like the Hulk. Eric Bana is a black sucking hole.
Geoff says, "I want to marry Eric Bana. The movie was embarrassed by
its subject."
Kit says, "But we should get to proper Q&A as we have entered Act
Two. DON't marry Eric Bana, he has zero screen presence!"
Geoff says, "Not his screen presence that interests...;-) OK let's
go."
Kit is going to drag you like a dog to its bowl. WHEN DID YOU FIRST
KNOW YOU WERE A WRITER?
Kit grins at Geoff.
Geoff says, "Before I could talk."
Kit says, "Of course. When did you first commit words, like dictate
to a parent or what?"
Geoff says, "Well, more like at about 6 when my mom published my first
story in her newspaper column."
Kit says, "Brilliant. What was it about?"
Geoff says, "Sindbad. He takes a pill and gets a tiny fish's head underwater."
Kit says, "Nice. Mine was about a rabbit named Harbor Wilson. I dictated
it to my mother when I was five."
Kit had no 'ins' with print media, however.
Geoff says, "Oh, so you need a devoted mum to be a writer."
Kit says, "Gimme some time to think on that. Emanuensis, let's say,
w/o getting into psychohistory. Mine was baffled that I was in Who's
Who."
Geoff says, "You're in Who's Who? Doesn't that baffle YOU. I'd be stunned
to be in Who's... Darling, you're a celebrity!"
Geoff makes Kit laugh.
Kit says, "As *if*. If you get a Gugg you're automatically in Who's
Who, dunno why."
Geoff says, "I wish I did the same for me."
Kit says, "So on from age six, what was next in your life as a writer?"
Geoff says, "Anyway, writing, it's a hard slog, don't do it, there's
no money in it and the only nice writers write SF."
Kit says, "You can also get kicked *OUT* of Who's Who if you stop producing."
Geoff says, "The bastards!"
Kit says, "Right on all counts. And furthermore it works better if
you go into dentistry or just get a job in a bank!"
Geoff says, "Dentists? How big is this directory?"
Kit says, "oh nooo, not getting into Who's Who, making *MONEY*."
Kit grins at Geoff. Kit does her dragging you back to the bowl trick,
like it or not. Were you writing in grammar school, high school, etc?
Geoff says, "Yes, I kept writing, but I was no damn good. Long answer
follows. The first story I submitted sold, which confirmed every single
bad habit I had. I wrote a huge unpublishable novella with pictures
and equations next, thinking of course I was a genius. Nobody else did.
So I slogged away and at about age 28 I was beginning to think that
dentistry would be an option. Sigh. Then I read Virginia Woolf's letters...
at 28, she was thinking of giving up."
Kit says, "agh, Virginia!"
Kit wonders furthermore when you figured out that you were gay. And
whether what you wrote expressed or reflected that when you were a kid.
Geoff says, "I knew when I was nine. I had the crisis then, and then
forgot about it for a long while."
Kit says, "Or fiction writers had you committing suicide. Did the crisis
show up in your pre-coming-out work?"
Geoff says, "Well there wasn't much pre-coming out work. I guess the
first story just was ambiguous, the second the two lovers were plainly
post-body and could be either sex. No, the crisis at nine consisted
of a sudden realisation in a bowling alley. It totally messed up my
bowling scores and lost me cool points with the gang. After that I forgot
it again, tried to go straight, gave up in late teens."
Kit says, "How old were you when you sold the first story? The second
sounds *very* like an act of transformation, which is something the
best writers do."
Geoff says, "OH I didn't make a pro sale until 21. The second was a
calling card and ended up in the collection UNCONQUERED COUNTRIES...
it's A FALL OF ANGELS... and ultimately was the grandfather of The Child
Garden (the Angels kinda come back)."
Kit says, "Cool. Explain calling card?"
Geoff says, "Calling card... I knew it was impressive. Just not publishable.
BBC said do it as a radio play, this is what we want. I'd show it to
people and they'd react to me as a writer with a future."
Kit says, "Hey, that's *not* such a bad thing. You were living in the
UK by then?"
Kit also wonders if the Beeb indeed *did* said radio play.
Geoff says, "A FALL OF ANGELS had my first lines in which the character
suddenly spoke internally from the heart to themselves, which was a
breakthrough for me... this regarding the transformation stuff. Yeah,
I was living in the UK, much encouraged by Hilary Bailey who was editing
New Worlds by then. BEEB did not do said play. My own take on adaptations
is that one medium is never perfect for another UNLESS the original
was very much less than perfect. F'instance, there was a play version
of WAS that was SO faithful... the acting and direction were fab, but
faithfulness doesn't do it. The script for the movie if it ever gets
made is very different, and the musical version that is coming up is
out of its mind, just wonderful, but entirely different."
Kit says, "I think you're right about adaptations..."
Kit says, "and I'm interested in characters speaking from the heart,
and that the reason I like your work is that it's character driven.
This is going to be a complicated question..."
Kit says, "I wonder if the 'mundane' philosophy springs partly at least
from the fact that most HARD SF..."
Geoff says, "... would meet humanistic SF if the science were good."
Kit says, "i.e. the flying saucer space alien kind is *concept* rather
than idea driven. As in, the mechanics substitute for characters..."
Kit says, "and nothing real emerges in terms of substance."
Geoff says, "I have great faith in hard SF writers, especially if they
wanted to take on playing the Mundane game. Timescape would be a Mundane
novel if Benford had declared himself to be. A story of his I read in
Omni was almost fantasy. So I don't know that hard SF is in a box. In
fact I kinda hope Mundane will be a way for humanistic and hard SF to
become one and the same."
Kit says, "Humanistic SF with science. How does that differ from Speculative
Fiction?"
Kit is thinking all the twice-told subgenres are... well... twice told.
Geoff says, "Good Question. Spec Fic to me is also interested in formalism
as per old New Worlds. They were always playing around with the techniques
of experimental fiction and it was very exciting at the time. I remember
a story (but not the title) by Brian Aldiss that knocked me out. It
was just a series of stunning surreal images.
So for me in Speculative Fiction, the speculation extends to questions
of form, almost like OULIPO. You know people like Georges Perec, Italo
Calvino, Raymond Queneau. I have a feeling that a lot of Mundane fiction
will be classical in form."
Kit says, "By classical you mean what I guess people call mainstream
or 'literary' fiction?"
Geoff says, "Yes indeed, the story telling techniques that get taught
at Clarion or any course teaching the basics of creative writing."
Kit nods to Geoff.
Kit says, "OULIPO fiction, None of them very character driven, right?
All conceptual?"
Geoff says, "OULIOPO is short for something like Ouvreirs de Literature
Potential (pardon my French). They were (still are?) a group that did
stuff like write verse for dogs or in early programming languages. Perec
ended up using the form to get at characters."
Kit rightright, I'm supposed to know these things, but they just make
me cranky.
Kit says, "So you think the Mundanes will be experimenting with form,
substance, i.e. a whole new ballgame?"
Geoff says, "I'm not sure. It will be up to them as individual writers.
I suspect that SF writing needs to convince photorealistically, in the
same way SF art does. So it uses very classical conventional techniques."
Kit says, "I guess conventional is the troublesome part, if you're
talking about conventions as in space-mechanics, how things 'port or
what makes them fly."
Geoff says, "Re Mundanes. Actually, I suspect Mundanes will end up
being very concerned with content and getting visions and ideas across.
I think Mundanes could end up being conservative technically in their
writing. But maybe not."
Kit says, "What I like about what you just said was the word: VISIONS.
The best SF is visionary. Makes a leap to places conventional writers
can't go. And I mean conventional SF writers as well."
Geoff says, "I mean technical in how they write. I hope Mundanes steer
clear of teleportation as it doesn't seem too likely. I hope the Mundane
rules force Hard SF writers to focus on life on Earth lived by people
and force humanists to get their facts right and to do some original
SF speculation. The rules, not the group does the forcing, like a corset
can feel great, liberating as well as confining, as it's more fun to
play tennis by the rules."
Kit stands up, cheers at "force...writers to focus on life on Earth
lived by people." Italicizes *people*.
Geoff says, "But people are of course the key to any story... as is
having the characters make decisions and change."
Kit says, "Exactly! And FEELING what they feel and making the reader
feel it too."
Kit says, "Back when we got talking about transformation I wanted to
ask the following, but we were moving too fast. Does being gay make
you a more empathic writer?
"More in tune with what other people, therefore your characters,
are thinking?
"Am I crazy or are women more likely to be empaths, and are women
and gay men more empathic than straight guys?"
Geoff says, "I've met some pretty un-empathetic gays, and since the
Iraq prison photos I think everyone has to extend their ideas of feminity.
I guess a straightforward answer is no, I don't think being gay makes
me more emphatic... it may shift the focus of my empathy a bit from
where it would be if I were straight. But if I accept that I have a
good quality because I'm gay, then I may have to accept I have a bad
quality because I'm gay. I'm worried that would shift responsibility
for my faults and actions from me and what I do, to some convenient
story. (I'm gay and that's why I forgot my house keys/got stressed/did
a bad bad thing)... I don't think any one has defined the difference
in flavour between being male and female. If they did we would still
have to rememember that there would be women and men who were not in
the middle of their bell shaped curve (tough women prepared to be torturers;
men who devote their lives to nurturing others).
Kit [to Geoff]: Excellent, thanks. Take care. And think of whatever
you want to be your Famous Last Words
Kit hugs Geoff.
WHEREIN KIT AND GEOFF LAUNCH INTO A DISCUSSION OF MOO-LOGISTICS:
Kit teach you one more thing, if you'd like type @addfeature #174
Geoff [to Kit]: I'm ready for my big close up Mr deMille
Kit grins at Geoff.
Kit says, "OK, now type grin."
Geoff grins.
Kit says, "help #174 will show you *all* the other verbs!"
Geoff says, "That what you meant."
Kit grins.
Kit nods to Geoff.
Kit says, "and hug k will allow you to reciprocate."
Kit grins at Geoff.
Geoff pokes.
Kit pokes at Geoff.
Geoff says, "That's rude! Poke means something else in english!"
Geoff grins.
Kit says, "There's gangs more, I'll leave you to it or we don't eat.
Take care. Ewwww! In U.S.-ish it means prod."
Geoff bows gracefully.
Kit eyes Geoff derriere-ily.
Kit eyes Geoff chocolate-eclaire-ily.
Kit [to Geoff]: that's another trick, but not for today. Take care.
Geoff puckers its lips, perhaps expecting a kiss?
Kit hugs Geoff.
Kit goes home.
Geoff says, "Bye!"
Geoff has disconnected.
© Kit Reed 2004.
Kit's Thinner Than Thou
was published by Tor in June 2004.
Air
is published by St Martin's Press (September 2004, ISBN: 0312261217);
an extract is available elsewhere on
this site.
Order online using these
links and infinity plus will benefit:
...Air, paperback, from Amazon.com
or Amazon.co.uk.
Elsewhere
in infinity
plus:
Elsewhere on the web:
|
