My initial response on finishing Coupland’s 2006 novel JPod was less than valedictory, but it deserves qualification: I was relieved to have finished it and glad it hadn’t eaten a large amount of my time, but I’d felt no urge to stop reading it. The fairest and truest thing to say would be that it’s not my sort of novel. Whether this is due to a sort of cultural immune-system reaction to the modern “novel of character” by a mind more accustomed to the biome of science fiction (and its defiantly non-literary concern with plot and story) is an open question. Continue reading BOOK REVIEW: JPod by Douglas Coupland→
Ever have one of those dreams where you’re naked in public? Writing fiction is a bit like having a dream, and some writing is embarrassing because it lays us bare.
I’m talking about the kind of writing where you say something to the entire world that you would prefer not to mention to anyone, just because you want to tell a meaningful story. Or you do something in the story that has very little to do with you personally, that means a lot in the piece you’re writing, but that embarrasses you because you don’t want anyone to think it’s autobiographical. Continue reading Writing Naked: How to Profit by Embarrassing Yourself→
Two-million-dollar cloned camels running races in the desert with robot riders. Makes you think of a science fiction story, huh? But that’s happening now. In an early version of this column, I wrote about the world’s first cloned camel, Injaz. I thought I’d check up on Injaz, and I learned about the world’s second cloned camel, and the hope that Bin Soughan will be a racing sensation (see the Al Jazeera YouTube video on cloned camels for more of the story).
In case camels weren’t enough, we now have a cloned fighting bull. At the risk of observing the obvious, cloned racing camels and cloned fighting bulls are all pretty masculine activities. This feels like cloning for profit and prowess rather than to make the world better. I mean, what will we be cloning next at this rate? Quarterbacks? David Beckham?
JPod by Douglas Coupland
Ever have one of those dreams where you’re naked in public? Writing fiction is a bit like having a dream, and some writing is embarrassing because it lays us bare.
