The Quiet Guy It Always Was

by John Barnes

Overview

Short story, 5700 words, most people can read it in less than an hour. R-rated if that matters to you, and if it does, you probably won’t like it. Ever know one of those quiet guys who seemed to get around a lot? Ever wonder what it was like to be one? (I know I sure wondered!) Ever wonder what they get out of it? And what if you could get even more of that?Never before published, now from Metrocles House.

Heinlein once complained that he thought he'd written a science fiction story, but the editors who rejected it said it wasn't science fiction. In his introduction to it in one of his collections, where it was finally published, he finished up with a catalog of the scientific and speculative elements, followed by, "Excuse me, I must've been in the wrong church."

The Quiet Guy It Always Was has been turned down by most of the science fiction editors out there in the last few years, sometimes with the note that they liked it but it "wasn't science fiction,"sometimes with the note that they felt it was reasonably good science fiction but their readers never would.

Well, following the model: 'scuse me, but isn't medical technology part of science? And isn't science fiction in part about the human possibilities that are opened up by changes in technology? And aren't the most science fictional choices the ones that don't occur in nature -- the things human beings can do, feel, and be that they couldn't before the technology?

Well, 'scuse me. I must've been in the wrong church.

I do think there's one real reason why this doesn't feel science fictiony to many "sci-fi guys and spec fic chicks" as Ed Bryant calls the literary Usual Suspects... and that is the unwritten rule referred to by two of the famous and frequent rejection slips from John W. Campbell, that said, "You've stated a problem, now solve it," and "Your story should be about the person this hurts most."

In this case, I think I stated the problem and wrote about the person who enjoys it most. I wouldn't dream of solving his problem. Or hers. Or anyone's, when it comes to anything as complex as desire.

Since this is already a very quote-heavy intro, let me conclude with one from James Thurber:

Love is blind, but desire doesn't give a good goddam.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940013882256
Publisher:	Metrocles House
Publication date:	12/18/2011
Series:	John Barnes Short Story Collection , #7
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	141 KB

About the Author

My thirtieth commercially published novel will be coming out in spring 2012. I've published about 4 million words that I got paid for. So I'm an abundantly published very obscure writer.

I used to teach in the Communication and Theatre program at Western State College. I got my PhD at Pitt in the early 90s, masters degrees at U of Montana in the mid 80s, bachelors at Washington University in the 70s; worked for Middle South Services in New Orleans in the early 80s. I do paid blogging mostly about the math of marketing analysis at TheCMOSite and All Analytics. If any of that is familiar to you, then yes, I am THAT John Barnes.

Which, of course, is why you can find my blog at thatjohnbarnes.blogspot.com. On Twitter I am JohnBarnesSF.

There are also many Johns Barneses I am not. I am not the British footballer, the Australian rules footballer, the former Red Sox pitcher, the Tory MP, the expert on ADA programming, the biographer of Eva Peron, the authority on Dante, the mycologist, the travel writer, the guy who does some form of massage healing that I don't really understand at all, the oil executive, the film historian, or that guy that Mom said was my father. I do wish I'd written that book on titmice, though.

I used to think I was the only paid consulting statistical semiotician for business and industry in the world, but I now know four of them. So now I have a large market share of a growing field.

Semiotics is pretty much what Louis Armstrong said about jazz, except jazz paid a lot better for him than semiotics does for me. If you're trying to place me in the semiosphere, I am a Peircean (the sign is three parts, ), a Lotmanian (art, culture, and mind are all populations of those tripartite signs) and a statistician (the mathematical structures and forms that can be found within those populations of signs are the source of meaning). The branch in which I do consulting work is the mathematics and statistics of large populations of signs, which has applications in marketing, poll analysis, and annoying the literary theorists who want to keep semiotics all to themselves.

I have been married three times, and divorced twice, and I believe that's quite enough in both categories. I'm a hobby cook, sometime theatre artist, and still going through the motions after many years in martial arts.