These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife or kids or grandkids. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose. Maybe I can still irritate people while being funny. It works pretty well for John Scalzi! We’ll see what happens.
I hated Westerns – the movies, the TV shows, the outfits (EW!) Cowboy hats and horses (EW! EW!) The whole schmear! I couldn’t stand them – Gunsmoke? Bonanza? The Wild Wild West? Wagon Train? Rawhide? Have Gun – Will Travel?
I loathed all of them and would rather spend my time picking my toenails than watching ANY of them.
Then I discovered STAR TREK (I wasn’t TOS (= The Original Series) because at the time, it was the ONLY STAR TREK. I was a fan from the first show and the influence on my then-11-year-old-mind (I was 9 when ST premiered and my Dad didn’t let me watch it until I was “old enough to watch it”…which was when I was 11-going-on-12 aka Season 3 (and FINAL season). I was in love with it and with science fiction. Imagine my horror when I discovered that Gene Roddenberry had pitched STAR TREK as "Wagon Train To The Stars"!!!!
In the blog I’ve frequently reflected on my launch into science fiction culminating years later in my being a published SF writer (with my upcoming new-and-FIRST-TIME-SELF-published novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY (see post below)).
In an attempt to broaden my reading horizons, I’ve been picking up cheap or free novels and other books when I find them at clearance sales, or at the GOODWILL. I try and grab books I wouldn’t willingly pay money for and maintain some vague hope that “I might read it someday”. So, one day, I (somewhat reluctantly) grabbed a dog-eared copy of a Western book I HAD heard of, obviously, RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE. What I didn’t note above, is that it has the cover flag, “THE GREATEST WESTERN CLASSIC OF ALL TIME!”
OK, I was sold. I brought it home and shelved it, promising to read it “someday”.
A couple months ago, gritting my teeth and wincing at the lurid cover of three cowboys riding horses and brandishing rifles, I cracked it open.
The first sentence did NOT grab me (I leave it to the reader to find a copy and read it (or GOOGLE it)). I kept reading, hoping it would get better. Much to my surprise, it actually DID get better. In fact, by the time I was done, I’d become convinced that it was essentially a SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL.
First of all: alien life forms: horses. I KNOW horses are from Earth! I’ve even ridden one! My brother has a bunch of them and my niece has ridden competitively. But…I’d never really reflected on what exactly a horse WAS. It was a genetically manipulated, living, breathing TOOL. Horses at the time of RIDERS (1912 when Grey wrote it and even MORE so when it takes place, in 1871). 154 years ago were NOT show animals or expensive pets. They were work animals and bred to serve humans in multiple ways and to the best of their deeply bred abilities! They were cared for, but not coddled. They were USED. They were valuable because of what they did, not what they looked like...they were, again, TOOLS.
So, how about this, let’s leap 154 years into the FUTURE: the year is 2179…
Some SF books that take place at that time? NEUROMANCER (W Gibson); GREEN MARS and BLUE MARS (KS Robinson); ENDERS GAME (OS Card); THE CAT WHO WALKS THROUGH WALLS (RA Heinlein) to name a few.
ROTPS is as alien to me as Mars becoming a livable planet, or Earth military recruiting children to fight wars against bug-like aliens.
The world Grey had to imagine was a half-century earlier than his own…
In 1871, Utah was only a Territory! In fact, at the time of the story, there were only thirty-seven US States and California had been one for only a couple of decades. The West was made up of a patchwork of territories and not under US law. They were, in fact, the Wild West. Intellectually, I suppose I knew that – but Grey brings the world of the purple sage to life no less so than Anne McCaffery brought the alien world of Pern to life – and with places, peoples, and incidents even MORE alien that Pern, because I know that Utah actually exists here on Earth.
Example: I suppose I’ll start with the most obvious by first setting the stage: my wife and I love watching movies. We dislike R-rated movies, but will sometimes watch them because of the “historic artistic importance” of them. We recently watched two versions of A STAR IS BORN. We thought we’d start with the newest first – staring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. We didn’t know much about Lady Gaga except her name, but we’d enjoyed several of Bradley Cooper’s movies in the past.
The language? (Let me set the stage here: I worked in an near-inner-city high school and the “feeder” middle school as a classroom teacher (sciences of various kinds) and as a school counselor for 41 years. My son was in the military for 12 years, and my daughter works with teenagers as a therapist. I am no stranger to “the-F-word”). But in this one movie, that singular word is used 74 times. (I’m sure you’d love to argue, so here, write to Hunter Harris at VULTURE (https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/how-often-does-bradley-cooper-say-fuck-in-a-star-is-born.html).
Oddly, even though he’s writing about COWBOYS on the range, not a single one drops an F-bomb. Or an A-bomb. Or an S-bomb...If that’s not ALIEN, I don’t know what is…And there’s not a single OTHER cuss word in the novel. It’s SO squeaky clean (of course the censors in 1912 would have NEVER published a novel with blue language!), that I could give it to my six-year-old grandson to read without fear.
OK – I got that out of the way, so next week, I can delve into the alien world of RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE…and I expect to be just as amazed reflecting back on it as I did as I gradually fell in love with the strange, alien world in this elderly story.
Inspiration: Finally reading RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE by Zane Grey
Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/616z0KpAjRL._SL350_.jpg
In an attempt to broaden my reading horizons, I’ve been picking up cheap or free novels and other books when I find them at clearance sales, or at the GOODWILL. I try and grab books I wouldn’t willingly pay money for and maintain some vague hope that “I might read it someday”. So, one day, I (somewhat reluctantly) grabbed a dog-eared copy of a Western book I HAD heard of, obviously, RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE. What I didn’t note above, is that it has the cover flag, “THE GREATEST WESTERN CLASSIC OF ALL TIME!”
OK, I was sold. I brought it home and shelved it, promising to read it “someday”.
A couple months ago, gritting my teeth and wincing at the lurid cover of three cowboys riding horses and brandishing rifles, I cracked it open.
The first sentence did NOT grab me (I leave it to the reader to find a copy and read it (or GOOGLE it)). I kept reading, hoping it would get better. Much to my surprise, it actually DID get better. In fact, by the time I was done, I’d become convinced that it was essentially a SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL.
First of all: alien life forms: horses. I KNOW horses are from Earth! I’ve even ridden one! My brother has a bunch of them and my niece has ridden competitively. But…I’d never really reflected on what exactly a horse WAS. It was a genetically manipulated, living, breathing TOOL. Horses at the time of RIDERS (1912 when Grey wrote it and even MORE so when it takes place, in 1871). 154 years ago were NOT show animals or expensive pets. They were work animals and bred to serve humans in multiple ways and to the best of their deeply bred abilities! They were cared for, but not coddled. They were USED. They were valuable because of what they did, not what they looked like...they were, again, TOOLS.
So, how about this, let’s leap 154 years into the FUTURE: the year is 2179…
Some SF books that take place at that time? NEUROMANCER (W Gibson); GREEN MARS and BLUE MARS (KS Robinson); ENDERS GAME (OS Card); THE CAT WHO WALKS THROUGH WALLS (RA Heinlein) to name a few.
ROTPS is as alien to me as Mars becoming a livable planet, or Earth military recruiting children to fight wars against bug-like aliens.
The world Grey had to imagine was a half-century earlier than his own…
In 1871, Utah was only a Territory! In fact, at the time of the story, there were only thirty-seven US States and California had been one for only a couple of decades. The West was made up of a patchwork of territories and not under US law. They were, in fact, the Wild West. Intellectually, I suppose I knew that – but Grey brings the world of the purple sage to life no less so than Anne McCaffery brought the alien world of Pern to life – and with places, peoples, and incidents even MORE alien that Pern, because I know that Utah actually exists here on Earth.
Example: I suppose I’ll start with the most obvious by first setting the stage: my wife and I love watching movies. We dislike R-rated movies, but will sometimes watch them because of the “historic artistic importance” of them. We recently watched two versions of A STAR IS BORN. We thought we’d start with the newest first – staring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. We didn’t know much about Lady Gaga except her name, but we’d enjoyed several of Bradley Cooper’s movies in the past.
The language? (Let me set the stage here: I worked in an near-inner-city high school and the “feeder” middle school as a classroom teacher (sciences of various kinds) and as a school counselor for 41 years. My son was in the military for 12 years, and my daughter works with teenagers as a therapist. I am no stranger to “the-F-word”). But in this one movie, that singular word is used 74 times. (I’m sure you’d love to argue, so here, write to Hunter Harris at VULTURE (https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/how-often-does-bradley-cooper-say-fuck-in-a-star-is-born.html).
Oddly, even though he’s writing about COWBOYS on the range, not a single one drops an F-bomb. Or an A-bomb. Or an S-bomb...If that’s not ALIEN, I don’t know what is…And there’s not a single OTHER cuss word in the novel. It’s SO squeaky clean (of course the censors in 1912 would have NEVER published a novel with blue language!), that I could give it to my six-year-old grandson to read without fear.
OK – I got that out of the way, so next week, I can delve into the alien world of RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE…and I expect to be just as amazed reflecting back on it as I did as I gradually fell in love with the strange, alien world in this elderly story.
Inspiration: Finally reading RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE by Zane Grey
Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/616z0KpAjRL._SL350_.jpg
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