I know what you mean about parody. A friend of mine self-published a book of his short stories that involved characters from Gilligan's Island, The Incredible Hulk (Bruce Banner in line at the DMV), Calvin & Hobbes, etc... He's also begun a comic book dealing with the epic battles between the breakfast cereal mascots, Breakfast of the Gods. All of this he's doing with the "it's fair use/parody--please nobody sue me" attitude.

a slash parody bit about Kirk and Spock giving birth

oh, yik.

(i got my small beer books in the mail yesterday, myself. yay liz hand! yay interfictions!)

will you guys be at wiscon?

damn that i won't see you guys, but yay for eventual brownies. and yeah, go ahead with the recipe as written. this particular cutting-out doesn't apply to homebaked goods.

p.s. if there are any books you want, ask me.

Thanks for the encouragement, Matt.

I would say that "oh, yik" is about the response I expected. That's the real reason why the work is pretty much unpublishable: it not unreasonably calls down snarky comment from folks who have not read it, and who might otherwise have thought well of me. It drags my name in the dirt. It shames my forebears. It reminds me that, however carefully I write, basically I am a person who will never claw her way up into literature.

However, I am cheered by the nice things that you and L. Timmel Duchamp said. Also by the reactions of the 200 people at Writers with Drinks in San Francisco and the 30 or so at The University Bookstore in Seattle. Laughter, I think, is even more sincere than imitation. Or yiks.

I may stick with using it as a performance piece, though.

Eileen

I don't actually "play" anything as humor. To me, humor is integral.

There's lots of bad writing that calls itself humorous, so I don't understand why, if slash is yikky, that calling it satire automatically makes it harmless. Also, I don't much see the use of writing that is harmless.

I do understand now why the person who asked me to write the piece (as a birthday present for his wife, who wanted an anthology of unpublishable stories) told me that it would blacken my name forever.

Eileen

But you're saying you can accept a story you haven't read. If you haven't read it, why judge it one way or another? Maybe it's really stupid, even if the writer was trying to be funny.

Since I don't actually read slash, I am not qualified to tell anyone what it's about or why anyone would care. People take pleasure in it, but I don't know whether the pleasure is more in the writing of it or the reading.

I was thinking of reading the piece at Wiscon, Sharyn, so if you're awake at midnight on Saturday....

All I can say in its defense is that it's very short.

No need to feel like an idiot, since you so obviously are not one. And isn't being judgmental part of your job description?

No harm done. As I said, I fully expected that my reward for writing the story would be expressions of horror and disgust from people who haven't even read it. I just wasn't expecting to be rewarded so soon....

Since Rudy Rucker will be publishing it in Flurb, I can now expect brickbats from people who have read it.

Cheers,
Eileen

Do re-read the whole sequence first. I did that recently, and apart from the inestimable pleasure of revisiting the first three books, it really provides the context you need for Endless Things.

Matt, I took your encouraging words of Friday night to heart, and Saturday morning I submitted "No Place to Raise Kids" to Rudy Rucker for Flurb. Sunday morning, he accepted it.

I'll let you know when it goes up. Thanks for the encouragin' urgin'!

Cheers,
Eileen

Thanks, Johnzo! I can truly say that this is a story that would never have been written had it not been for you and Victoria.

Let's not get carried away....

Matt, if I can intrude on your blog one more time: the new issue of Flurb is up now.

Cool stories by Rudy Rucker, Kris Saknussemm, Marc Laidlaw, Paul DiFilippo, Charlie Anders, John Shirley, and more.

And me. Thanks to you, I got in just under the wire!

I'm now faced with the wonderful dilemma of whether to read Endless Things immediately or go back and reread the rest of Ægypt first.

You should definitely read Endless Things first and then go back and re-read the entire quartet beginning to end.