smarty pants edge.

Here it is as promised.

Reading
I've discovered something new for the gym: Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. It stays open well. Several fit into the side pocket of gym bag. If story sucks I move on to next one. They seem to be just entertaining enough for that thirty minute aerobical trip. Have I really liked any of the stories yet? Oh, not really. But they're ok. It's kind of like flipping through some tv or something.
I got the new McSweeney's Amazing Stories collection, edited by Michael Chabon, and was quite excited. Chabon adresses the nature or genre in the opening essay and speaks of a need for the short story to inhabit that space between genres. After reading the essay and eyeballing the cover I thought I would be in for some fun genre bending short stories with a kind of smarty pants edge. Turns out there's plenty of smarty pants edge, but not much fun at all. Granted, I've only read four so far so the jury is still out. I've read enough pulpy fiction lately to know that there is an infinite possibility of fun in that kind of fiction, but the writers here seem too intellectually self conscious to allow any of that to creep in. One story has a gumshoe type who happens to be an 'acquirer' of curios. A reasonably good enough beginning. Turns out to be sort of an empty character shell of a sadsack thirty something and a mouthpiece for the author to drop reference to Yukio Mishima. Another finds a retired film editor who is having vivid dreams about a door, which he finds after waking and researching hidden in frames of film. It's always the same door, always in some different film, just in one frame -- imperceptible while the film is running. Not bad, not bad, except the character is this sort of empty shell fifty something sad sack who is a mouthpiece for the author (a film critic) to reference many many films, most a little too esoteric for the casual reader. We do find out the protagonist has had kinky sex with an actress. S and M anyone? That makes for interesting character development.
I'll read some more. I'm reasonably sure the Stephen Kind and Peter Straub stories shouldn't read like enclycopedia entries of the authors' interests. I would really rather read a pointless 20 pages of gunfighting or something than endure another 'story' revolving around intellectual references.
Which brings me to:
X-Men/ Videogames


Kathryn and I got the new X-men Legends video game and we've been playing and loving it. I got nostalgic and ran to the comic store to buy the Essential X-Men #2, with the Dark Phoenix saga. It doesn't seem like it, but I bought and read many of these issues 25 years ago. Well, I fucking loved them. The only reason I don't run out and buy more is because we're supposed to be on some sort of budget and I've got hundreds of things to read around the house anyway. The writers in the Amazing Stories anthology could learn a lesson from the X-men: better to err on the side of melodrama than on the side of smarty pants edge.