Spacers Snarled in the hair of Comets

SPACERS SNARLED IN THE HAIR OF COMETS: By Bruce Boston. Mind’s Eye Publications, 2022, 39 pages. (Introduction by Andrew Darlington).

This latest collection from Bruce Boston contains twenty-two poems, all of which—I believe—have been previously published separately in magazines. Who is Bruce Boston, you ask? Well, he’s my favorite living poet, but perhaps that doesn’t mean much to you. He is also a Bram Stoker Award Winner, a multiple-time Rhysling Award Winner (the highest award given for speculative poetry in the US), and a helluva nice guy. But maybe none of those things mean anything to you.

But do you love language? Specifically, the English language? Do you enjoy science fiction?  If you do, then you owe it to yourself to sample Bruce Boston’s work, and this book is a good place to start. Let me give you a little taste:

Burning green to metagreen,

a rush of colors in between.

Mandalic moons, sidereal seas.

A spacer’s life is ice and fire,

graced by iridescent dreams.

Besides the beauty of the language, Boston’s poems also tell stories. In fact, he’s basically a storyteller and has also written many poetic short stories, as well as a wonderfully complex dystopian novel called The Guardener's Tale. It’s both the language and the storytelling aspects that draw me to Boston’s work. As a writer myself, I find inspiration in his language and the germs of many ideas in his stories and imagery. I jotted down half a dozen ideas for tales just from this collection. I recommend him for writers and readers alike.  

You can find out more about the book at Mind’s Eye Publications here: 

Or you can order the book from Amazon here:

Or from Lulu here: 

For more information about Bruce Boston and his work, you can also check out his website. 

Is Storytelling Failing

I watched two movies yesterday. First, I watched Treasure Planet, an animated retelling of Treasure Island, set in a future with sailed starships. Next, Lana and I watched the recent remake of The Incredible Hulk. I really liked Treasure Planet and didn’t care for the “Hulk.”

Later, Lana and I talked about the movies we’ve watched lately that were “less” than compelling, The Strangers, Mongol, and whatever other ones we’d seen that we couldn’t even remember the titles of. We both decided that Hollywood made better movies in the 1970s and 1980s than today, and I was trying to decide why. A reason occurred to me that I’m throwing out to see what folks think.

I suspect that the people making movies in the 70s and 80s were largely influenced by books, while many of the folks making movies now are influenced by other movies and TV, or by comic books, which are closer to TV/Movies than to regular books. Movies influenced from books seem, to me, to have a better sense of storytelling, of combining all elements such as characters, action, and setting into a complete experience. Movies made by folks who basically only watch other movies or movie-like experiences lack that completeness.

How else to explain my yesterday’s experience? I much enjoyed Treasure Planet, based on a wonderfully fine novel, while with the Hulk I was constantly thrown out of the story by problems with continuity, things that just seemed simple storytelling "don’ts." For example, a chase scene early in the movie, which probably lasts a total of 15 minutes of “real life” time, begins clearly in daylight, and suddenly it is night! Say what? Or another fight scene takes place under a completely blue sky, until suddenly at the end it begins to pour down rain.

Now, Lana looked the Hulk up online and found that they did a lot of neat things to reflect back on the history of the character and on the TV show, and they were the “greenest” production ever in being environmentally friendly, but how could they take such care with these details and let the scene continuity vary randomly? It really hurt the movie for me, and all I can think is that they weren’t quite coming from a storytelling perspective. Rain is dramatic. Throw it in! Night is dramatic. Stuff it here! So it doesn’t make sense? The audience trained on TV and Video Games and comics won’t care. Well, uhm, there are still some of us out here who remember what good storytelling was like.

Nuff said!
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Storytelling Versus Writing

Writing and storytelling are two different arts, although they sometimes exist in the same person. Robert E. Howard was both. John D. MacDonald was. So was Poul Anderson. So is Dean Koontz.

Other writers can be primarily one or the other. Ray Bradbury – primarily a writer. Edgar Rice Burroughs – primarily a storyteller. James Lee Burke – writer. Louis L’Amour – storyteller. Cormac McCarthy – writer. Stephen King – storyteller.

But every individual in my second group above could pull off both elements even while their greatest strength lay in one. Bradbury told some great stories, although it was his luminescent prose that really drove those stories home. ERB told a whale of a story and didn’t seem all that concerned about his prose, but sometimes his spare descriptions were just simply gorgeous. And he often raised action scenes to the level of art. King’s prose is not what I would consider stand-out writing, but he can web you into a story as well as anyone. Misery was one of the greatest page turners I’ve ever read, despite the fact that I hated when he typed stuff in “all caps.”

The reason why I bring this up here is because I’m frequently asked by newer writers to read and comment on their stuff. I often find that the quality of the prose turned out by such writers is outstanding. They are definitely “writers.” They can turn words into poetry, can sling metaphors with the best of them. The greatest weakness I find is usually in the story.

I can empathize because, when I started out, I was pretty much purely a…writer. I could string pretty words together. I could describe images that others could see. But I wasn’t much of a storyteller. Most of my first few published stories were really vignettes, virtually prose poems. The plot was minimal, with one character and often very little to no dialogue. That does not a story make. I think I’ve gotten better. I’ve worked hard at it. But I know that I’m still no ERB or L’Amour when it comes to storytelling. Of course, I’m no Ray Bradbury for writing either.

To truly become a well-rounded writer, we all need to develop both skills. And, in my opinion, storytelling is considerably harder. Yet, it’s the story more than the prose that keeps most people reading.

So think next time you look at your work in progress. How is the prose? I bet it’s fine. But what about the story? Have you worried so much about the way you fit the words together that you’ve forgotten about the core tale? I’ve made that mistake myself. I’ve got some of those “stories” hanging around here. Well, at least if I run out of toilet paper…