Storyological 1.23 - AN EXCELLENT WRITE-BACK FUNCTION

Storyological

In which we discuss,

1. THE ART OF SPACE TRAVEL by Nina Allan, Tor.com

2. THE FIRST FULL THOUGHT OF HER LIFE by Deb Olin Unferth, Tin House

along with, among other things...

• The thing about MacGuffins

  The MacGuffin is the engine that sets the story in motion. It can be anything, or nothing at all. In The 39 Steps, it is "secrets vital to your air defence"; in Number Seventeen it is a valuable piece of jewellery, while in The Lady Vanishes it is, in the most perfectly abstract of all Hitchcock's MacGuffins, a coded message contained in a piece of music.

• That one book by Ray Bradbury, R is for Rocket, and, in particular, a quote that speaks to Nina Allan’s The Art of Space Travel (emphasis mine)

  • There was this fence where we pressed our faces and felt the wind turn warm and held to the fence and forgot who we were or where we came from but dreamed of who we might be and where we might go…

• Some things concerning Alan Bennett
  • That one episode of our podcast, THE ONLY BEAUTIFUL THING, in which we discussed Alan Bennet’s “Bed Among the Lentils”
  • Talking Heads, his collection

• On Diana Wynn Jones and that one book inspired by Eastercon…
  • Deep Secret
  • Diana Wynn Jones

• Those engineering diagrams where things are exploded
  • exploded-view drawing
  • An iPhone, exploded