155

http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2022-05.html#wjw ( )

http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2022-05.html#wjw ( )

http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2022-05.html#wjw ( )

“Plasm is the most perfect transformational agent of the universe, the thing that can alter matter, alter the fundamental nature of all reality, and they used it with no more consciousness of its significance than if they had been children.”



In “Metropolitan” by Walter Jon Williams



The first time I read “Metropolitan” I rediscovered the sheer joy of getting completely lost in a SF book. It is brilliant. Re-reading it after all these years is... I can't even explain it. What I vividly remember was that on my lunch break from work one Summer day in Lisbon instead of sitting with colleagues at lunch I took myself and my book off to Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian’s garden and became so engrossed, and so desperate to read to the end, that I was half an hour late back to my desk. But my boss at the time didn't mind. In fact I lent her the book and she was already on chapter 3 the next time I asked whether she had liked it… “Metropolitan” is not exactly slow reading, but unhurried reading for pure pleasure - it’s so joyous I want to shout from the rooftops about it! Down with crappy SF, up with SF novels like this one! SF and so on may even have seen a boost on the back of the TV boom as literacy has been aided by the net and admiration spread the nod and the word.

I think style in SF has decayed over the last thirty years in the written word and that's because people are simply no longer aware of style: so they don't demand it. In these soulless times, soulful reading must go against the grain. So it may be looked down upon. Whoever, however, would skim-read the Bible now? And would young people today skim-read “Metropolitan”? I hope not but I‘m not so sure. Kids nowadays are all for Balls-for-the-Walls SF and they just don’t care about the gems lost in a sea of crap… Or maybe it’s just that I put my craving for well-thought-out SF down to too many “plasm” pints over the years…

SF = Speculative Fiction. ( )