{"id":2447,"date":"2004-11-23T13:50:56","date_gmt":"2004-11-23T18:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2004\/11\/23\/2447.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:47:26","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:47:26","slug":"a-reply-to-neal-asher-if-it-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2004\/11\/23\/a-reply-to-neal-asher-if-it-is\/","title":{"rendered":"A reply to Neal Asher, if it is him"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Since my blathering has pushed the note off the main page, I feel it only fair to point back to my report<\/a> on The Skinner<\/I>, as someone purporting to be Neal Asher has responded to my mockery. To save y’all an extra click, I’ll repeat his comment below:\n

Vardibidian, 'piscine creatures of the sea' are those that resemble fish but are not fish, not teleosts. They are also distinct from those creatures in the sea neither fish nor fish-like. Best you go find a dictionary to learn the precise meaning of 'piscine'. <\/blockquote>\nAnd since the email addy was phony, I’ll reply here in public. The problem with the phrase ‘piscine creatures of the sea’ is not at all solved by making it clear that what are being referred to are pseudo-fish. That was actually clear. There is an ancient and dreadful tradition of pseudo-fish in sf, also of pseudo-cows, pseudo-cats, pseudo-bears, and in one case I recall, somebody takes pains to point out that the plant called ‘hemlock’ in the author’s world bears no relation to plant on Old Earth with the same name.\n

But once you’ve called them piscine, I think I know two things about them: they are creatures, and they live in water. In context, I knew that already, because the scene took place underwater, and I could easily figure out that whatever it was that was being eaten was not being eaten by houses, starships or the platonic idea of Good. Now, I could turn out to be wrong about those things. I hope I would not have mocked you for writing the phrase “piscine starships” or “piscine houses”; such phrases are evocative, rather than annoying. Even had you written about piscine creatures of the sky, I would (I hope) not have singled out that phrase for mockery, nor yet bovine creatures of the sea, or feline cars of the highway, or ursine starships of the vast empty spaces between the stars. Well, I would hope that the phrase ‘ursine starships’ would accompany some explanation of just how the starships were like bears. I suppose one advantage of the phrase ‘piscine creatures of the sea’ appearing in an underwater scene is that it certainly requires no further<\/I> explanation.\n

Just so it doesn’t go entirely without saying, Your Humble Blogger has no experience whatsoever as a fiction editor, nor yet as a writer. When I say that the phrase ‘piscine creatures of the sea’ is simply a bad one, and that I can’t imagine any circumstances where any writer should use it, and that I can’t imagine any circumstances where any reader would like it, well, that’s what I say, and you know what to make of that, Gentle Reader. The hat I’m talking through is quite a nice one, but then that, too, is my opinion. I stand by it, both about the hat and about the phrase as well as about the book generally.\n

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since my blathering has pushed the note off the main page, I feel it only fair to point back to my report on The Skinner, as someone purporting to be Neal Asher has responded to my mockery. To save y\u2019all…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17210,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447\/revisions\/17210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}