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Thursday, July 23, 2009

A foreign country

I saw Harry Potter and the Whatever this weekend and was thinking about writing a review but... eh. I guess I had my fill of boarding school stories when I was young (thanks, Enid Blyton) and I didn't get past the third HP book. I also skipped a couple of the movies.

Looking back now, I think I know how my love of boarding school stories (The Naughtiest Girl and Malory Towers series) morphed into a love of science fiction. I enjoy imagining new worlds, alternative societies and strange cultures - preferably in plausible settings. Boarding school was a big romantic mystery to me. My only source of information about the concept came from Ms Blyton, and those books were written in the 40s. ("The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."*) (I also like history books but my brain is like a sieve when it comes to remembering anything about history.) I guess I could've got hooked on travelogues to get my culture-shock fix, but my left-dominant brain also likes science. Mix the two together and you get speculative fiction.

Back to reality: The monsoons are here. It's hot and humid and our air con is broken.

*One first line I've never forgotten - from L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between, which we studied in Year 11 English lit.

2 comments:

Tez Miller said...

Arizona's like a desert, right? desert without air-con...Holy freaking feck, lass, you need to bring the family home to Oz! ;-)

Anonymous said...

Yes, but it's a dry heat.

:D

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