Monday, August 15, 2005
THE LOG OF THE MUSTANG SALLY
posted 11:01 PM
There's a thread in Random Thoughts about Michael Swanwick's LOCUS review of my unwritten novel, THE LOG OF THE MUSTANG SALLY. I actually did have a contract for this title, with Arbor House, but shamelessly ducked out of it after a disagreement over the dustjacket art for their hardcover of COUNT ZERO. This may actually be how NEUROMANCER became, so to speak, a trilogy. I forget. In any case, the very brief and sketchy outline for TLOTMS, as far as I know, resides today in some zillionaire's private collection. It *really* was envisioned as a space opera of sorts, though space of a dirtball postmodern Sol-centric sort, perhaps not unlike some of Sterling's work of the same period. What I recall most clearly, though, is that I was hoping to lift something of the tone of the thing from THE CHINESE LOVE PAVILLION, an excellent if minor novel by Paul Scott, better known for THE RAJ QUARTET. How the hell I intended to do that, I have no idea. In any case, per Swanwick's review, I opted to stick with affectless junkies and their dead but ceaselessly wisecracking sidekicks, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Monday, August 01, 2005
U2 WIRED
posted 12:00 PM
The August issue of WIRED has my take on U2's uber-technical Vertigo tour. Lots of fun to cover but actually rather challenging to write, as I had to tape and transcribe a number of brief interviews, something I'd not done before. I wish there were a recording technique that only recorded the answers, not the questions. My own recorded voice sounds like worms dying, to me. But fortunately the reader doesn't have to hear it.
