Venture capitalists Menlo Ventures have released what purports to be a survey: “2025: The State of Consumer AI”. That is, chatbots. [Menlo Ventures] The subtitle is: “AI’s Consumer Tipping Po…
@V0ldek This is a hill I will die on: the passive voice ABSOLUTELY does not belong in a work of fiction. (Academic papers and reports are another matter entirely, but fiction: no.)
Section Three of the Official Secrets Act (1916) is our principle weapon in the endless war against security leaks. It was passed during a wartime spy scare—a time of deep and extreme paranoia—and it’s even more bizarre than most people think.
The Atrocity Archives, p. 13 of the Ace paperback edition
The glamour’s still there, masking her physical shape, but what I’m seeing now is unfogged by implanted emotional bias.
The Jennifer Morgue, p. 92 of the Golden Gryphon hardcover
I just found out, that a girl got killed here last week, and you knew it! You knew there was a shark out there!
Is it true that most people get attacked by sharks in three feet of water about ten feet from the beach?
The torso has been severed in mid-thorax; there are no major organs remaining… May I have a glass of water, please?
What we didn’t know… was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent.
I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up… bobbed up and down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well… he’d been bitten in half below the waist.
The quest for the Grail is not archaeology; it’s a race against evil! If it is captured by the Nazis, the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the Earth! Do you understand me?
I can see that my 50,000 a year has been well spent.
Donald, Donald… This park was not built to cater only for the super-rich.
This isn’t some species that was obliterated by deforestation, or the building of a dam. Dinosaurs had their shot, and nature selected them for extinction.
Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together.
T-Rex doesn’t want to be fed. He wants to hunt.
Unless they’re continually supplied with lysine by us, they’ll slip into a coma and die.
I was overwhelmed by the power of this place. But I made a mistake, too. I didn’t have enough respect for that power and it’s out now.
It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.
If I may say so, sir, I noticed earlier the hyperdrive motivator has been damaged. It’s impossible to go to lightspeed!
Captain, being held by you isn’t quite enough to get me excited.
We’re going to get pulverized if we stay out here much longer.
“You said they’d be left at the city under my supervision!”
“I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”
Doing the tour of other fiction books within arm’s reach…
My name is Hermann Soergel. The curious reader may have chanced to leaf through my Shakespeare Chronology, which I once considered essential to a proper understanding of the text; it was translated into several languages, including Spanish.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Shakespeare’s Memory” (translated by Andrew Hurley)
When her father had been executed, her aunts and uncles on both sides of the family had declined to speak out against his killers, and Nasim had been so angry that she’d cut herself off from everyone, even before she and her mother had fled.
Greg Egan, Zendegi (this, like the Jennifer Morgue example, was on the page to which I opened at random)
Now the mayor’s cousin has been arrested for murder.
John Chernega, “Almond”, in Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die
Older books, also within arm’s reach, also opened at random…
Whatever was thought, whatever was said, I had my full reward in John’s friendship. This friendship was the more precious for its tenderness being intentionally concealed, especially when we were not alone, by that gruffness which stems from what can be termed the dignity of the heart.
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
I was set apart by Nature to live alone, and draw comfort from her breast, and hers only.
Perhaps the Mysteries’ secrets could be learned, and their powers could be thwarted.
Bill Watterson and John Kascht, The Mysteries
The girl and her companion obediently fell silent then, realizing they had been heard through the microphones embedded in the walls of the dining room.
Only a few of them had been wounded; here and there you saw one stepping gingerly, leaning on a crutch or two canes, but so far on toward recovery that his face had color.
Dorothy Parker, “Soldiers Of The Republic”
Suppose they never get counted—what’s the worst that can happen? If the number of imaginary sheep in this world remains a matter of guesswork, who is richer or poorer for it?
“The Little Hours”
In her twenties, after the deferred death of a hazy widowed mother, she had been employed as a model in a wholesale dress establishment—it was still the day of the big woman, and she was then prettily colored and high-breasted.
The crowd would have engulfed the platform and the open space as well if it had not been held back by the triple row of Sebastian soldiers on Pilate’s left and the soldiers of the Ituraean auxiliary cohort on his right.
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor)
The plodding pace she was forced to set—for the road was too narrow and winding to pass safely—allowed time for meditation.
Elizabeth Peters, Naked Once More
Outside the window the cry of gulls could faintly be distinguished as they swirled about aimlessly in the gloom.
Nicholas Meyer, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
The device had been constructed by a master craftsman, and the riddle was this—that though he’d been told the box contained wonders, there simply seemed to be no way into it, no clue on any of its six black lacquered faces as to the whereabouts of the pressure points that would disengage one piece of this three-dimensional jigsaw from another.
Clive Barker, Hellbound Heart (second sentence of first paragraph)
Skimmed by the savage Seneca from the waters of Pennsylvania’s great Oil Creek, mister.
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine
Only those with unshakable psych profiles were assigned to the outlying agronomy posts; the screening was almost as rigid as that for deep space.
Margaret Wander Bonanno, Strangers from the Sky
One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came from from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (opening line)
My immediate gut reaction to a rule as general as this is that there’s fat chance it’s universally applicable, there will always be cases where active would be clunky.
Like I can’t imagine an RPG protagonist exclaiming that “Someone trapped this chest!” instead of the 100% more natural “This chest was trapped!”
@V0ldek That’s an RPG protagonist protagging. Not prose fiction. (This thought brought to you b/c I’ve lately been reading a multivolume LitRPG epic that I had to bail on midway through book 3 because the author dropped into passive voice with extreme clunkiness at random, infrequent intervals, making for a jarring read.)
@V0ldek This is a hill I will die on: the passive voice ABSOLUTELY does not belong in a work of fiction. (Academic papers and reports are another matter entirely, but fiction: no.)
The Atrocity Archives, p. 13 of the Ace paperback edition
The Jennifer Morgue, p. 92 of the Golden Gryphon hardcover
Doing the tour of other fiction books within arm’s reach…
Jorge Luis Borges, “Shakespeare’s Memory” (translated by Andrew Hurley)
Greg Egan, Zendegi (this, like the Jennifer Morgue example, was on the page to which I opened at random)
John Chernega, “Almond”, in Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die
Older books, also within arm’s reach, also opened at random…
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure
Bill Watterson and John Kascht, The Mysteries
Lois Lowry, Son
Dorothy Parker, “Soldiers Of The Republic”
“The Little Hours”
“Big Blonde”
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor)
Elizabeth Peters, Naked Once More
Nicholas Meyer, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
Clive Barker, Hellbound Heart (second sentence of first paragraph)
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine
Margaret Wander Bonanno, Strangers from the Sky
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (opening line)
My immediate gut reaction to a rule as general as this is that there’s fat chance it’s universally applicable, there will always be cases where active would be clunky.
Like I can’t imagine an RPG protagonist exclaiming that “Someone trapped this chest!” instead of the 100% more natural “This chest was trapped!”
@V0ldek That’s an RPG protagonist protagging. Not prose fiction. (This thought brought to you b/c I’ve lately been reading a multivolume LitRPG epic that I had to bail on midway through book 3 because the author dropped into passive voice with extreme clunkiness at random, infrequent intervals, making for a jarring read.)