Latest ten days of posting

Weblog | I don't like the word blog, it's ugly. Anyway, new content happens here. (Swedish dito)

About me and the site | Twenty-something male who likes text. Obsessed with things such as books, reality, communication, and one or two tv-shows.

Archives | Things written here since... well, 2001. Some of it is good, some is utter shait.

Books | Books read, not books written. So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.

Photo | I like my camera and it likes me.

Links | Outwards, away, flee.

e-mail | J. Nicklas Andersson

Search the site

2001-06-27

It feels empty somehow. It didn’t come as a surprise, well it did actually, but more of a small one. The signs where there all along the last few months, adding upp to each other until the strain was to much. Elfwood is officially offline. Down. Perhaps not buried but I guess the time has caught up with it, the period of greatness is over and nothing will ever be the same again. No matter what they say, it will never be the same again. The memory of what was will always be there, haunting the fabric of the web.

And all this for two crimes; being free of charge and grown to big for one man to handle. One of the two is okay — it works — but when those two joins together, the outcome leaves a bleak taste of doom afterwards. It’s just not fair. Especially not to Thomas who created it and cared deeply, the time spent will be lost though the fond memories will remain vibrant and flamboyant.

I don’t want it to end here, not like this. It deserves better.

I sat on the porch, the weather was decent and the sun was about to set. The sky invoked thoughts within me; this could be the last time I got to see it. Freak accidents happen all the time, although I don’t plan to leave the material world behind me anytime soon. After all, I’ve got to experience how it is to be a mean old man with a stick before that airplane runs me over — hey, I like to plan what matters, and how I die matters to me. It’s also the only thing I’ve planed in years, but rest assured, I don’t think of death often, five times a week at most. Except around Christmas when I pray — despite being a die-hard atheist — several times a minute for five hours that a huge meteor should crash down and destroy my relatives, all in one swift blow.

But this was none of the things on my mind this evening. Instead I thought about books. Besides being an atheist, I’m also a experiencing the neverending joy of being a biblioholic, so yes, I think of books fairly often. And I came to the conclusion that Norman Spinard was right in his essay “Science Fiction Versus Sci-Fi”, a small part in the book “Science Fiction in the Real World” (Spinards Philip K Dick-essay is well worth the money all by itself). The genre lacks true tragedies. Steven Brust almost gets there in his Vlad Taltos-cycle, although the end is still far away so it’s all a bit uncertain.

Even Stephen Donaldson, whose work can drive the happiest human alive to the verge of slitting the wrists, manage to fail and produces a upbeat ending. Wait! Oh my. I got one sf-tragedy, by Jeff Noon. Damn. Why didn’t I think of “needle in the groove” before? I mean, the book got my hooked on playing bas and literary experiments. I think this means it’s time for a re-read soon, after I’ve finished Wilton Barnhardt. Oh yes.