Blade Runner

I finally watched Blade Runner (the final cut version), and ... wow. Dark and disturbing and, definitely, a masterpiece of sci-fi film-making (in details ranging from the not-quite-human behaviors of the replicants to the score). Then this dark jewel from Rutger Hauer at the climax:

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain ..."

Two thumbs up.

Food for thought

I came across these lines in the story "Gift from a Spring" by Delia Sherman (Realms of Fantasy, April 2008):

"Isn't that what art is?" I asked .... "Making things up?"

"No," she said. "That's what commerce is about--identifying a market and satisfying it. Art is about seeing the truth and revealing it, as beautifully and forcefully and honestly as you are able."

Amen.

One more, with feeling ...

The Return of the Sword has garnered one more excellent review, and the reviewer named "To Be A Man" one of his favorite stories in the anthology. Pura vida.

In other news, the dominoes appear to be falling in the right pattern for me to participate, likely as a guest lecturer, in the exciting Shared Worlds Camp, the inaugural session of which begins in July. I'll know more soon.

In more or less random thoughts, Tori Amos's Little Earthquakes strikes me more and more as a work of genius each time I listen to it. I aspire to such emotional power in my own work ... and likely have much more aspiring to do. ;)