But farewell, Angelina, the sky's embarrassed

[sovay]

Somebody want to explain to me why I dreamed fanfiction for Phyllis Gotlieb's A Judgment of Dragons (or Emperor, Swords, Pentacles or The Kingdom of the Cats—the point is, Qumedni and Solthree leopards and Ungrukh) last night?

I mean, I am occasionally not human in my dreams. But I am not usually an alien-abducted big cat. And I didn't even realize whose future universe I'd been in until this afternoon.

Right. I didn't think so.

Comments

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

I so love cinema movies like that, with weird characters. I'm not having them as often as I used to. It better not be a side effect of aging.

[kraada.livejournal.com]

I found that writing down every scrap you can remember about dreams in the morning will really help you remember more. It takes a couple of months to start working . . . but it makes for hilarious reading a few years down the road :)

[sovay]

I write down those dreams where I wake up and think that in five years, I might want to do something with this imagery. I've gotten at least two stories that way. And as for the rest, as least I have records of weird imagistic dreams. It's just the fanfiction aspect that worries me . . .

[kraada.livejournal.com]

Okay, so what happened was that someone downstairs was sharpening knives with intent to dissect aliens. The problem is, they lacked the aliens. So they had been spending their weekends playing poker with demons in order to aquire enough kittens to attract the aliens to perform the dissection. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to our erstwhile biologist, the cats were actually the aliens. Once the kittens realized what was going on, they called on the mothership to save them. Alien cats teleported in and attacked the neighbor in question, but the neighbor did manage to deal significant damage to one particular cat. That cat then had an out of body experience before being rescued and returned to the mothership to be healed. The odd thing about alien out of body experiences? They also take over the minds of young women sleeping nearby (hence a large chunk of the unicorn mythology). Conveniently, you happened to be the only young woman leeping nearby, ergo: dreams of being an alien-abducted big cat. (From the cat's perspective, of course, we are aliens. But from a cat's perspective, it is still a cat. Who wouldn't want to be a cat? Even if you did happen to be an alien . . .)

[sovay]

From the cat's perspective, of course, we are aliens. But from a cat's perspective, it is still a cat. Who wouldn't want to be a cat? Even if you did happen to be an alien . . .

Well, this bit actually makes sense . . .

[time-shark.livejournal.com]

Awesome choice of music. I love that movie.

[sovay]

We got my father the soundtrack for his birthday, and I promptly purloined it to my computer. I have fond memories of the heroic grandmother and Fred Astaire being eaten by his tap shoes.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

I love the brief cut back to the pedalo rental man looking at his watch and staring out to sea.

It is one of the perfect movies.

The version of the film released on DVD, at least in the US, took out some of the shots showing the inhabitants of Belleville in their most monstrous obese grossness, when the grandmother and the dog go to the lunch counter, which I thought was very funny.

[sovay]

I love the brief cut back to the pedalo rental man looking at his watch and staring out to sea.

Yes. That was brilliant.

The version of the film released on DVD, at least in the US, took out some of the shots showing the inhabitants of Belleville in their most monstrous obese grossness, when the grandmother and the dog go to the lunch counter, which I thought was very funny.

Oh, damn. Has it been unaltered in other releases?

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

I suspect the European-format release would be intact, as their sensibilities would not be offended by seeing Americans portrayed as obese gluttons engulfing enormous food portions. But I don't know that for sure.

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

Are those books any good? I've never read them...

[sovay]

They are quite good: a loosely linked science fiction trilogy, about two or three hundred years in our future, involving telepathic big cats and inscrutable energy beings; and none of which works out the way you would expect from the above descriptions. A Judgment of Dragons itself is composed of four interrelated novellas, of which my favorite is "Son of the Morning," the story of two telepathic big cats, one inscrutable energy being, and one nineteenth-century Eastern European village—from one angle it's pure science fiction, and from another it's pure Yiddish literature of the fantastic. Emperor, Swords, Pentacles follows the daughter of two main characters from the first book, and The Kingdom of the Cats continues with the next generation; both are full novels and mysteries, although the mystery is much less important than the characters, the world, and the language. In one of her other lives, Phyllis Gotlieb is a poet, and so her prose is always spare, compressed, and detailed. She can create an incredible amount of worldbuilding in very little page-space.

She has also another trilogy in the same future, set perhaps a century later: Flesh and Gold, Violent Stars, and Mindworlds. Of these, I much prefer the first, but I may be biased. And a few years ago I finally managed to locate her mainstream novel, Why Should I Have All The Grief?, which is excellent. I only wish I owned some books of her poetry. She's definitely worth looking into.