Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Ten Wise Ways & Smashing Vegetarians

From Rosaleen Love's story "Two Recipes for Magic Beans," from the anthology of Australian speculative fiction Dreaming Down Under:

"Jinny knew she could handle dragons on account of her knowledge of the Ten Wise Ways, through truth to tell she'd not yet been put to a proper test, not with a full grown dragon. She watched gloomily as the baby dragon lalloped its snivelling way, half flying, half jumping, across the river flat. It was on occasions like this Jinny had to agree with Grandfather that genetic engineering, particularly in the hands of medieval theme park entrepreneurs, was wrong. Especially when the dragons went feral and took off over the electrified barbed wire on top of the battlements."

Same anthology, from Jane Routley's "To Avalon:"

"No one could know Meg for five seconds without her vegetarianism smashing its way into their consciousness. Gina's first experience of her had been pretty typical. At the house warming party Gina and Gary had thrown at their shared flat in Palmers Green, Meg had shown up drunk as the proverbial skunk and told Gina she wouldn't shake hands "because I don't shake hands with cannibals." She had then proceeded to persecute a blind workmate of Gina's all evening about the slavery of his guide dog (a cheerful Labrador with the habits of a vacuum cleaner who was only too delighted to be taken anywhere food was) and to stub out her cigarettes in the pepperoni pizza as a protest."