Thursday, March 12, 2009

Ron Miller Channels Pel Torro

There's a famously bad SF-novel description of clanking robots -- from some particularly lousy Lionel Fanthorpe novel, I believe -- which culminates in a cascade of repetitive metaphors. I heard Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden do a dramatic reading of it at a Boston convention about a decade ago, and it never fails to raise a giggle. (This seems to be it here.)

Well, it now has competition.

One of those LJ creatures with weird names, Vaniel/Vandonovan, has posted scans of two pages of exceptionally very repetitive and repetitious words and sentences and paragraphs, full of metaphors and similes and descriptive language, describing a scene, an event with many, myriad descriptions of body parts and limbs and torsos and naughty bits...all from the novel Silk & Steel by Ron Miller. And I think Mr. Fanthorpe has been bested.

Go there and read. I dare you.

One short snippet:
Her arms were a corral, a fence, an enclosure; they were pennants; they were highways. Her fingers were incense. They were silver fish in clear water; they were the speed of the fish; they were the fish's wake. They were semaphores; they were meteors.
(Note: Ron Miller has done some very good astronomical art, among other things. Perhaps he was having a bad day when he wrote that scene. But it's so far over the top that I hope he did it on purpose.)

3 comments:

Cheryl said...

Miller did covers for some of Fanthorpe's books. That passage was so Fanthorpe-like I'm sure there must have been some connection - possibly even ghost-writing.

Kaz Augustin said...

By the sounds of it, Miller only lapsed for a couple of pages. Fanthorpe, otoh, could keep it going for an entire novel. Sorry, Andrew, Lionel is still Teh King!

Btw, "Her face had the fragrance of a gibbous moon"? I thought the "leopard's tongue" reference was my favourite till I read that one. Classic. I think vandonovan should be thanked for bringing this once more into the light. And congrats, I think you've just created another "meme" for all sf geek bloggers out there.

Anonymous said...

Is it shameful to admit that I actually own this book? Never read it, though, and I haven't a clue why I bought it in the first place. Anonymity saves the day.

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