Different opinions, or why I'd rather sometimes hear the other side.

I've been asked again - no, rather, almost reprimanded, this time - why on earth I have a link to Orson Scott Card's website here. I repressed the urge to say "I'm a grown up and I can do what I like on my blog!!" and reminded my interlocutor that OSC is one of my favourite SF authors and I regard "Ender's Game" and "Speaker for the Dead" as two of the greatest science fiction novels ever written - up there with "The Player of Games", "Body of Glass", "The Man in the High Castle", "The Dispossessed" and "The Left Hand of Darkness"...

But I also like to hear an intelligent arguament that is counter to the normal views of my regular good-lefty tribe. It's good for the brain to engage with different viewpoints, for goodness' sakes! It's also frequently illuminating or startling, sometimes humbling; always interesting. It's a valuable exercise which in my book any self-respecting intelligent adult needs. All question of emotion aside, this is one of the more rational reasons why I miss my father; we didn't agree - about a lot of things - but I could have a real discussion with him rather than being either shouted at or stifled under someone's disapproval. We do tend, once out of the battleground of childhood, to gather with relief into little clumps of like-minded individuals, but it can be self-defeating never to hear anything but ideas you agree with.

And I say this, incidentally, as someone who absolutely loathes conflict. I had enough of it in the first seven years of my life to last me the rest of my life.

So anyway, I was still feeling a little grumbly inside when I happened to find this article, on OSC's website, in which he articulates what I am now trying to say, far better than I ever could. I still don't know how to post a link, so this is something you'll have to cut and paste into the address bar in order to read it:
http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2007-01-28.shtml

I'd recommend scrolling about halfway down and starting at the point where he reviews a novel by John Mortimer, unless you are quite certain you can control your knee-jerk good-lefty reflexes. But please, do read this article, or at least the last third of it. And then stop preaching at me about how I'm betraying my values, my family, my friends, my country and my intellect by trying to be marginally less tribal than you, and remembering that every side of the issue is worth hearing, provided they aren't trying to force their views on me.

Please, miss, I'm c-c-cold...

Monday lunchtime, back at work. The whole of Cambridge Cottage is freezing cold. Something went wrong with the heating over the weekend. In theory it is now working again but as yet there is no discernible difference in the temperature of the room. No-one here has a thermometer, so we can't tell for certain, but my guess is that by the end of the day we may just have reached the legal minimum working temperature. Luckily I come from hardy stock and don't object to working with my coat on...
Had a wonderful Christmas, doing very little, with my mum and elder brother. Ate rather too much, drank relatively little, took EXTREMELY bracing walks on the north Kent coast (in a howling north easterly gale), and talked. Read my Christmas present books (finished one and started the second, out of four, but one is an Editors' Dictionary so I probably won't settle down to read that cover to cover). Caught up on some sleep. Watched the birds on mum's assortment of birdfeeders. Counted the plants in flower in her garden on Christmas Day (18, down from the usual 23 or 24). Peace and quiet...
I've been asked why I have a link to "that dreadful right-winger Orson Scott Card"'s website. Ahem, well; I think he's a good writer and an interesting bloke. And he's fairly centrist, politically. Mormon's don't tend towards socialism, as a general rule, do they? I don't agree with some of his views, being non-christian and a dyed-in-the-wool leftie, but everyone has the right to hold their own opinions, and at least his are thought-through and coherently argued. I'd much rather be able to have an intelligent conversation with someone I don't agree with than be scared of them punching me. Heavens, I didn't agree with a great many of my late father's ideas about life, but that didn't stop me enjoying talking to him, nor for that matter loving him, even when I wanted to yell at him. How insufferably bland life would become if I only sought the company of those who shared my world view in every detail, and did nothing but echo my own words back to me. Not only bland, indeed, but extremely creepy, too. I find OSC's essays interesting, thought-provoking and entertaining.
No-one else has to follow that link if they don't want to. You don't have to follow the Geek, either. If you don't like it, don't look at it.
On the which for-me pugnacious note I'll take my dirty plate (Sainsbury's Instant Curry Noodles, a real cop-out lunch) to the kitchen and get on with some work.

Monday...

I've managed to buy two volumes (the first and third, irritatingly) of what looks like being a very good fantasy epic - one where the characters are strongly drawn and credible and no-one speaks pseudo-biblical or pseudo-Tolkien-esque waffle instead of real english. Believe me, I've looked at so many book jackets with titles like "Gryphon in Gyres" or "Warlocks and warmongers" or "A Princess of the Felalackhit'ii"... So "King's Dragon" very nearly didn't merit a glance, purely for the predictability and banality of the title. However, it has turned out to be well-written, original (not easy, this, in a genre packed to the gills with tripe [forgive the unpleasant anatomical mixed metaphor!]) and gripping.
So - if anyone has the second volume or the fourth onwards of the "Crown of Stars" series by Kate Elliott, and doesn't want them, a) you don't know good fantasy when you meet it, b) can I have them, please?(!)
I've also discovered, sideways from this, that one of my favourite SF authors, Orson Scott Card, has a personal website full of his thoughts and opinions. I've tried to list it as one of my fave bloggs but I don't know if I did it right (given my general hopelessness with computers). If it's there, tho', do have a look. His review of "Mamma mia!" is quite something.
Hurrah for this, too:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/the-outsiders-johnny-marr-on-the-misfits-and-mavericks-who-make-music-magical-1017107.html
Even if you have to cut and paste to get that into the address bar, do have a look at it. Johnny Marr of The Smiths writing incredible inspirational common sense.