| Some thoughts on the line between Fanfic and Original Fiction |
[May. 25th, 2012|11:39 pm] |
A caveat, before we begin: Not only am I speaking in generalities, but I haven't kept a close eye on fan studies for the past few years. So this may well not be as novel or useful a perspective as I think it is.
Anyway, I've been suspicious of the claim that there's no fundamental difference between fan fiction and original fiction for a while now, in large part because many of the examples people invoke to blur that line strike me as dubious. That said, I was only recently reminded of how I articulated it to myself a while back, which is that I feel like works like Wicked and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead have a fundamentally distinct attitude towards their source material than much-- perhaps even most-- fan fiction.
Fan fiction, in general, is invested in a particularly mode of engagement with its source text. Reverence doesn't quite describe it? But there's a concern for forms of textual (or emotional) fidelity to the source material in even the most deconstructive and recombinatory works-- a sense that even if you took Shinji Ikari and Asuka Soryu Langley and made them the Eleventh Doctor's companions, they should still be recognizable as themselves, via some combination of reference points. If you're doing a Tough Guide pastiche, you need to hit the right tone and textual form. Etc.
How I interpret this is that in fanfic, direct discourse with the source material is important, as is shared knowledge between the author and reader. In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, it matters that the protagonist isn't just some random kid-- he's Harry revised in a specific way. If you add Ensign Mary Sue to the Enterprise, it matters that it's the Enterprise, however AU everything else is. You can't or don't want to file the serial numbers off of most fanfic, because they matter: they're why readers care about the work in the first place.
When work is less engaged with one or more specific texts and more about a larger genre or sub-genre discourse, when reverence and the specifics of textual derivation and deviation cease to be important... That's when I feel works cease to function as fanfic. I can describe A Choice of Damnations as "Isildur and Boromir team up with the Nazgul to take on Morgoth/Cthulhu", but that's not actually what's going on in the book-- it's a gesture at presumed common reference points, not a marker saying that the book is a direct response to Tolkien, because it's not.
Obviously other people can and do feel differently about this topic. But in light of all this, I don't feel like Rosencrantz & Guildenstern is about Hamlet in the way that most Harry Potter or Twilight fic is about the source text in question. For the much same reasons, I don't feel like Wicked is all that concerned with fidelity to Oz. To my mind introducing them into discussions of fanfic is both a bit of a red herring, and an attempt to leverage taste hierarchies to give fanfic a better reputation. (The latter isn't necessarily illegitimate, mind you-- most criticism is an attempt to skew the conversation in a way that strikes the critic as congenial-- but it's as blatant a grab for social capital as claiming Frankenstein as the first SF novel.)
Anyway. That's where I'm coming from on this one. Hopefully someone other than me will find this useful or thought-provoking. |
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| Books, April |
[May. 24th, 2012|08:53 pm] |
This post is so horrendously late it's not even funny, but I guess it could be worse - I actually still have the list of books I read in April.
Elizabeth Bear, Range of Ghosts: There's been a lot of good things said about this one, and I'm going to echo the praise. This is a good, fun fantasy epic that draws on real-world cultures and myths in interesting and enjoyable ways. I think my favorite detail was the heavens changing to match which deity held dominion over a particular bit of territory, and the bit with the moons vanishing from the skies when one of the Khagan's descendants died? But yeah. Hungry ghosts! Wizards who don't necessarily get magic! Awesome steppe ponies!
(I will admit that I got a little twitchy about the Song script, but I acknowledge that not everyone has my hangups about ideographic language and how it affects a culture's worldview. Nor should they, probably.)
Tim Eldred, Grease Monkey: This is a collection of comics which Mr. Eldred wrote and drew over the course of a decade (1992 to 2002), following the lives of an uplifted Gorilla flight mechanic (Mac) and his teenage human assistant (Robin) on a space station. I can see why it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but there's a bunch of stuff I found cool, with squadron rivalries and gambling and race relations between humans and the uplifted gorillas. I also (like ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) mrissa) found the fact that the mechanics stayed NCOs and mechanics, instead of having to climb into fighters to be part of the action. There are some plausibility concerns with the spaciousness of the station/ship, and the military command structure is a little widgy (you have a Colonel and an Admiral in the same service), but overall I felt this was fun.
The first book is available in hardcover or TPB, or you can read it and the sequel online.
Tim Eldred, Grease Monkey Book 2: A Tale of Two Species: ...and of course, A Tale of Two Species steps in one the main things I liked about the first book, which was that Mac & Robin don't get shoved onto the front lines. There's a sense in A Tale of Two Species that Eldred was trying to make the story more actiony and marketable: more action-movie, if you will. And he succeeds at hitting that mark, introducing a plucky junior pilot to be Robin's foil and to drag him out into space combat as her gunner, but the problem was, I liked what he'd been doing in the first book better. If you like Grease Monkey, it's still worth reading A Tale of Two Species, but don't expect the same level of textual density, as it's just not there.
Randall Garrett, Too Many Magicians: Read as a part of the Lord Darcy omnibus, which I still haven't finished. I will confess that I have no idea who most of the '60s era detectives that Garrett was referencing with his characters were, but that didn't really impede my enjoyment of the book. That said, the revelation of the original murderer at the end of the book felt a bit like it was cheating.
Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock: So I read this in large part because swan_tower cites it as the primary impetus for her becoming a writer, and while I can totally see how it would have done that, I found it a very strange book. Given Thomas Lynn's name, it's probably not a surprise or a spoiler to say that this is a Tam Lin story? But it's a very odd sort of Tam Lin story, with the majority of the book happening in flashback as Polly remembers the things that she'd been made to forget, as well as using forms of magic and relational logic that didn't make much sense to me while I was reading about them, and which actively annoyed me once I read Ms. Jones's explanation for them in the essay included in the Firebird edition.
Part of this, I think, is that one of the levels on which I approach reading is as a structural/intellectual puzzle: What is going on? What tricks is the author using, and which stories are being invoked, and how does all this cool stuff work, under the hood? And "cursing you so whatever you make up becomes true somehow" strikes me as quite enough of a curse without adding on the rider that "and no, you can't ever use your powers for good, no matter how clever you are." That honestly felt like cheating to me; the cold dead hand of the author coming down and forcing her story to conform to an allegorical configuration, rather than following the internal logic of her own invention wherever it led.
(As an aside, I recently realized that my core narrative process is that I give my protagonists what they want and make them suffer the consequences. This is essentially the improv method, where instead of saying, "No, but..." you say "Yes, and...", and then clobber your character over the head with the implications of the magical power they used to avenge their dead comrades or save their girlfriend or whatever. Just because people want something doesn't make it what they need, or mean that they'll be happy once they've got it...)
I'm not unhappy I read Fire and Hemlock, mind you - it has lots of shreds of invention that are lovely - but the reversal of the usual "holding on" scene at the end didn't really do it for me, and I wasn't even really all that impressed by the structural tricks and trios of characters.
Honestly, I'm starting to think that I just not going to like Diana Wynne Jones's work as much as most of my friends do. I like the earlier Chrestomanci books, and Howl's Moving Castle, but the Tough Guide to Fantasyland doesn't do much for me, and I've never read Year of the Griffin because Dark Lord of Derkholm annoyed me so much.
Sherwood Smith, Banner of the Damned: Sherwood's books, on the other hand, do not leave me cold. Banner of the Damned is a kinda-sorta sequel to the Inda tetrology, which I loved to bits, and while I didn't imprint on Emras and Lasva and their associates the way I did with Inda and his friends, I still had a good time returning to the world of the Marlovans and Norsunder and the Sartoran Mage's Guild.
One of the things I liked best about this book was even though I spotted who a pivotal character was very early on, and guessed at large portions of their agenda, it didn't ruin the resolution for me. This is something which I feel more authors should do - that is, putting stuff in to make a book enjoyable even if your reader already knows how everything is going to turn out.
Another of the things about Banner of the Damned that impressed me was that I empathized fairly strongly with several characters who in many novels would have been portrayed as straight-up villains, and that the text supported me. (Part of that may have been the "Here, have what you want! It won't make you happy!" elements to one of those characters' arcs, of course.) One of the things I appreciate most about books is when they feel humane, and allow their characters the opportunity to grow and change, and that quality is very much on display here.
Some of the metaphysics and geopolitics of Sartorias Deles don't really work for me (I have a hard time believing in the treaty banning arrows, for example), but the many strengths of this book more than outweighed the handful of moments I blinked at the page and had to turn my cynicism meter down a notch for the duration. Recommended, though I really do suggest reading the Inda series first.
Ursula Vernon, Digger Vol. 1: I actually read the first 3 chapters online, but shh. That's 1.5 books about a wombat exploring a world of talking statues of Ganesh, tribes of warrior hyenas, libraries with library mice, and other really cool stuff. Digger is up for the Hugo this year in Best Graphic Story, and I'm not yet sure if I'm going to be voting for it first or The Unwritten Vol 4: Leviathan, which is a pretty big deal, since I really really really like The Unwritten. So yah. Very good and well worth your time and attention. |
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| The opposite of a killer app |
[Apr. 13th, 2012|03:27 pm] |
Posting to LJ from a smartphone sans keyboard is like engaging in continent-spanning races involving cars and planes and helicopters with a bicycle. You can do it. It's just not the optimal strategy or a very good idea. (Don't even get me started on the IPhone LJ app's message functionality. The message field *doesn't scroll*, so you're typing *behind* your keyboard. Gaaaaah.) Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. |
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| Books, March - Addendum |
[Apr. 4th, 2012|08:58 pm] |
So, um. I totally forgot that I read C.J. Cherryh's Intruder this month as well, which brings the books read count to 4 women of 9 authors. Yay! This matches my intuition about what the ratio should have been much better.
C.J. Cherryh, Intruder: This the 13th of Cherryh's Atevi books, and I feel it does a much better job at being an individually worthwhile book than Betrayer did, in addition to having a title that doesn't make me want to shout, "Traitor! The word is Traitor!" There is a lot of interpersonal stuff, and political maneuvering, all of which is worthy and good, but the big news is that Bren gets his apartment back. (Seriously, the poor guy hasn't occupied his own apartment since Defender [Book 5], or maybe even Precursor [Book 4]. That's a long time to be living out a suitcase!*)
Intruder is also one of my favorite installments in the Atevi series because of what it doesn't do, which is have the climax hinge on violence (or, y'know, poisoning). Now, if you've been reading my book posts for a while, you will not be surprised to hear that there are many books I enjoy that have violent climaxes. That said, the Atevi books are about diplomacy and politics. I have wanted one of the Atevi books to have its action resolved politically for quite some time now, and Intruder is it! Plus Cajieri gets a pet, and there is wrangling about the Aiji's heir, and lots of stuff about ceramics and politically motivated gifting... Um. Yes. I liked this book a lot, is what I'm trying to say. Go totally-not-Japanese space elves.**
*: May actually refer to several trunks, maintained by his ever-vigilant staff.
**: One of the main Atevi characters is named Banichi - as in, Ichiban with the characters swapped around. Cherryh is real subtle about the totally-not-Japanese thing... |
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| Books, March |
[Apr. 3rd, 2012|09:25 pm] |
In light of this bit of number crunching on correlations between a reviewer's gender and what they review, I was trying to read more female-authored books after the start of March. By the time I read that (on March 7th), though, I'd already read 4 novels by men, and had a book by Chesterton to read for my book club.
I'm hoping the gender ratio for April will end up skewing the other way, and having sartorias's Banner of the Damned and a bunch of Karen Traviss books on my stack should help with that.
Anyway. To the books!
Dan Abnett, Know No Fear: Another Horus Heresy novel, recounting the Battle of Calth (well-known to Warhammer 40k grognards, but pretty much new to me). One of the things I like about Abnett's Horus Heresy books is that he writes them in such a way as to make them comprehensible to readers who don't already have a ton of grounding in the setting. I don't know all the specifics of how the Word Bearers fell to Chaos, and I didn't need to. All I needed to know is that they betray the Ultramarines, and that there will be lines like this:It starts raining main battle tanks. And there were lines like that, as well as mass mayhem and lovely corroborating details, and the Alec was pleased.
Lauren Beukes, Zoo City: Zoo City has a lot of things going for it - its worldbuilding is cool and interesting, its depiction of squalor and grit feels less gratuitous and a hell of a lot more authentic than a lot of such depictions in the genre, and Zinzi has a strong narrative voice - and yet I don't feel like it really holds together in the end. The resolution to the book's core mystery felt structurally obvious, the big climactic sequence felt like it had been transplanted into Zoo City from a less interesting novel, and the lack of any kind of explanation of the resurgence of magic and Hell's Undertow was a nagging irritation. I don't want to diminish everything Zoo City gets right, but I have reservations about recommending it to anyone.
G. K. Chesterton, All Things Considered: Read for my book club. There are definitely times when Chesterton wanders off into la-la land and left this reader going, "Wait, what?", as well as times when he made me grind my teeth with rage. He also had some really great lines, though."True religion, perhaps, is above idolatry. But you are below idolatry. You are not holy enough yet to worship a lump of stone."
"Beware, then, of the really well-bred and apologetic gentleman whose clothes are at once quiet and fashionable, whose manner is at once diffident and frank. Beware how you admit him into your domestic secrets, for he may be a bogus Earl. Or, worse still, a real one."
Also, I learned about the Koepenick Incident from Chesterton. So he's not all bad.
Jon Courtnay Grimwood, The Fallen Blade: I kind of wish that Grimwood hadn't felt it necessary to transplant the typical "vampire vs. werewolf in physical as well as romantic conflict!" thing to his alternate Venice, even if he wanted to have the werewolves as well as the vampire. Seriously, can I just have a Dark Ages-influenced vampire novel without the likes of Anita Blake and Twilight creeping their genre conventions into my assassinations and politics? That said, there are a lot of assassinations and politics alongside the (apparently de rigueur) Twilight-derived love triangle and Game of Thrones-derived sexing, and the pacing is swift to the point of abruptness once Tycho's training is done. Guardedly recommended for fans of Renaissance intrigue and/or enthusiasts of Vampire: the Dark Ages.
Sandy Mitchell, The Last Ditch: After crash-landing their troop transport into a frozen lake, Ciaphas Cain and the Valhallan 597th find themselves menaced by both the Orks they were called there to fight, and another far more menacing alien species awakened by their landing. The Last Ditch is a return to form for Mitchell after The Emperor's Finest, which I felt was a bit of a step down from his usual standard; while not the equal of Cain's Last Stand, which had the advantage of Cain actually interacting with students in the course of saving the world, resulting in genuinely interesting character moments, The Last Ditch mixes claustrophobic horror with a truly over-the-top finish. Recommended if you like the idea of Flashman in space, though this is not the place to start.
Jeff Smith, The Complete Bone: I bought this as a part of my ongoing campaign to support the Other Change of Hobbit, and it turns out that the people who were talking up Bone all those years ago actually were on to something. I never really got into Bone despite working at Comic Relief for several years, because A) the beginning read kind of silly to me, and B) it was the favorite comic of my nemesis in junior high.
Anyway, it turns out that once you get past the more blatantly comedic bits of the opening and the stakes start escalating, Bone is a weirdly enjoyable mix of Duck Tales, and a traditional fantasy secret-heir story (with several tablespoons of Lil' Abner mixed in for flavor). There are some really effective running gags (Quiche!), as well as genuinely endearing characters. The agricultural logistics of the Valley (to say nothing of its shifting scale) don't really make much sense, but I liked that Smith didn't flinch overmuch from the scope of the devastation he unleashed mid-series.
Scholastic has since released colorized versions of the original 9 graphic novels, but I'm of the opinion that this version of the series is the definitive version.
...also Amazon informs me there's a sequel trilogy? Written by some other dude but illustrated by Jeff Smith still? We'll just be ignoring that, thanks.
Karen Traviss, Aspho Fields: This is the first of Traviss's Gears of War tie-in novels, and while it shares some of the same flaws as Republic Commando: Hard Contact (for much the same reasons - it's rough trying to tell worthwhile stories with characters whose characterization to-date consists of "blond, mean, sarcastic" or "former !Football player, says 'baby' a lot"...), it's ultimately a more effective book. In addition to being structurally more robust than Hard Contact (Aspho Fields flashes back & forth between a post-Gears of War 1 period and the end of the Pendulum Wars), Traviss does a great job of breathing life into characters who were nothing but cardboard before she got to them: Colonel Hoffman, for one, and Marcus Fenix (the Gears games' gruff and grizzled protagonist) for another.
Not a ton happens in the novel's "present", plot-wise - the good stuff was being saved for Gears of War 2 - but this is a promising start to Traviss's work in the Gears universe, which was apparently solid enough that Epic let her write the third game.
Walter Jon Williams, Deep State: Dagmar from This is Not a Game gets into espionage and international geopolitics in the wake of a coup in Turkey. I was moderately surprised by some of the later structural choices in this one (though I'm pretty sure even a second-tier Turkish hit squad would carry SMGs or ARs...), but overall I just wasn't as impressed with Deep State as I was with This is Not a Game, in part because the ARG gimmick was wearing a bit thin. (NB: ARGs? Only really appeal to hardcore web nerds. They're not the gaming wave of the future. Just saying.) From what I've read of The Fourth Wall, WJW realized this too-- and then took things in a direction that I'm not terribly interested in. Pity.
Patricia C. Wrede, Across the Great Barrier: So apart from some wobbles re: the different kinds of magic (what the heck is that modifier doing preceding "Cathayan" magic...?) and an opening that felt like it took a little too long before Eff got to go on a ranging beyond the Wall-- er, beyond the great barrier, I mean-- this was a really fun re-envisioning of exploring and attempting to colonize a magical wilderness that wants to eat you. The faux-historical setting where no First Nations people crossed over to the Americas via the Bering land bridge or other means does have its issues, but honestly I found it much less troubling than the likes of Shaman's Crossing (which has drunken natives in shantytowns, among other such wonders).
I really enjoyed the mix of magical and non-magical creatures cooperating that Eff encountered, as well as the results of her brother's overconfidence at school, and the course of their encounter with the unknown monsters at the books' climax. This isn't my favorite of Pat Wrede's books (that would be Mairelon the Magician, or else Sorcery and Cecelia, with 1crowdedhour), but it definitely reminds me why she was once my favorite author, bar none.
...not counting Bone (methodology taken from the post I linked at the top of the page - basically the American comics industry skews so male that including comics distorts your stats badly if you review them at all), that's 3 of 8 books by women. Got to keep working on that. |
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| Some notes on Persistence |
[Mar. 24th, 2012|10:22 pm] |
Some of my VP classmates who haven't made their first fiction sales yet have been talking about getting rejections lately, and I wanted to discuss how long it took me to sell anything (tl;dr - ages) and make a few points that I think are pertinent. None of this is meant to be authoritative; it's just my experiences and opinions.
( 16 years and 100+ rejections... )
Look. Getting fiction published is a hard slog. For me, it was harder than getting into MIT, or getting a job in the games industry. I don't buy into the idea that anyone who can be discouraged from writing or publishing should be (not least because I was one of the people who got discouraged). Trying to get stories published isn't going to affirm you or make you feel good about yourself unless you're either incredibly lucky or a masochist. It's maddening and frustrating and tiring, and people will condescend to you in ways they never would in other contexts. More, the specific challenges of selling short stories or novels change from decade to decade. There are a lot more places to send stories now than there were when I started sending stuff out. There are also a lot more people sending stories and novels to editors and agents. There's increased variance as a result.
The only advice anyone can give that's worth anything, to my mind, is: keep writing good stories and keep sending them out. Keep doing the best work you can, and have one or more readers who believe in you and can provide a sanity check when you need one. Not every story you believe in will sell. Not every good story will sell. Try not to take it personally. (I suck at that part.) And seriously, don't give up on a story until you stop believing in it or run out of places to send it. I know of two stories that sold to Tor.com after their authors had sent them everywhere else. Two. No fooling.
Write good stories. Send them out. Repeat.
I'm not saying "that's all there is to it".
That's just all there is. |
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| Books, Late February |
[Mar. 12th, 2012|06:02 pm] |
I actually liked all of the books I read at the tail end of February, which makes the timing on this book post particularly egregious. Alas! Being sick stinks.
Kameron Hurley, Infidel: So I said this in my later Hugo nomination posts, but at the risk of repeating myself, Infidel is better than God's War. Part of that is not having to carry the load of introducing the world and the characters for the first time, of course, but it goes much farther than that. God's War was essentially set in cities and the desert wastes outside them, while Infidel ranges through a much broader range of locales. Instead of limiting itself to the warring states of Nasheen and Chenja - which felt physically very similar despite their cultural differences - Infidel spans Nasheen, urban Tirhan (which is totally at odds with the grungy feel of Nasheen/Chenja), and the contaminated (giant-insect infested!) wasteland of Tirhan's wilds.
I haven't mentioned the prose yet, which is a grave omission, because Infidel's is much less jagged and more assured than that of God's War. Kameron doesn't flinch from sentence frags when they're appropriate, but I found the book much easier to read. And then there are the characters (better grounded and more defined - instead of thinking of, say, Khos as "the shifter", I have a clearer sense of his personality), the scope of the action... the list goes on and on.
God's War is going to get all the attention because it was Kameron's first novel and it came out much earlier in the year. And it's good - I don't want to sell it short. But Infidel is really good, and the church sequence at the end was made of win.
Ari Marmell, Thief's Covenant: Um. Thief's Covenant is good too! I really don't want to sell Ari's book short, but Infidel is a tough act to follow here.
Reprising some of his 'protagonist with voice in his/her-head' tricks from The Conqueror's Shadow (this is a good thing), Thief's Covenant follows Widdenshins - formerly Adrianne Satti, a rags-to-riches heiress - who survived a brutal massacre two years ago and is making her living as a daring (some would say reckless) teenage thief. When the head of the nation's church comes to town, events come to a head, and Widdershins must outwit the city watch, the thieves' guild, and the order of assassins who nearly killed her 2 years before in order to survive.
There's a lot of lovely swashing and buckling and magically-enabled acrobatics in Thief's Covenant, and it's a solid Renaissance-styled YA fantasy. Some of the prose was a tad uneven/on the florid side early on, but as the pace of events pick up, things improved (or else I was so focused on the story I overlooked any infelicities). Recommended for anyone who could use more rapiers, thievery, and daring escapes in their literary diet.
Ed Brubaker, Incognito: Bad Influences: Brubaker reprised the idea of Sleeper in the first Incognito graphic novel, albeit in a world of pulp "science heroes" and villains instead of superheroes. Incognito ended on a somewhat upbeat note, so of course (Brubaker being Brubaker and noir being noir...) Bad Influences had to tear that down a bit.
I enjoyed following the further adventures of Zack Overkill as he fights his way through the science villain underground to reach his objective, and I get why Brubaker chose to end the series on the note he did. That said, the end of Bad Influences is one hell of a downer, and unless he and Sean Philips get to come back to continue or finish the series, it's frustratingly inconclusive as well.
Mike Carey, Lucifer, Vol 3: A Dalliance With the Damned (re-read): Lucifer, as a series, started out in the shadow of Sandman, and took a bit to hit its stride narratively. I can't pinpoint exactly where I feel that happened - somewhere in Children and Monsters (Vol 2), probably - but A Dalliance With the Damned is very firmly Carey doing his own thing, in ways that I actually enjoy more than Sandman at this late date.
The art in some of the collected issues is pretty godawful, unfortunately. Still and all, Carey's Lucifer is a glorious bastard, and the title sequence is one of my favorite stories from the early portions of the series.
Mike Carey, The Unwritten, Vol 5: On To Genesis: Speaking of art, Peter Gross was always the most consistent of Carey's artistic collaborators on Lucifer, which makes his part in The Unwritten since the first issue a nice stabilizing influence on the comic's look. On To Genesis covers two stories - a specialist's auction where the lots may end up including Tom Taylor, and a longer arc that follows Tom's investigation into some of his father's things that he and his friends retrieved from the auction.
More of the workings of the series' magic system are laid bare here, but I have to differ with those of my friends who think that The Unwritten could end in the next few volumes (short of premature cancellation, which seems unlikely, given that previous trades have apparently hit the NYT Bestseller list). Based on the pacing of previous Vertigo series, and rather expository/tangential nature of the whole Tinker plotline, I'd say that we're at or perhaps a bit past the halfway point of the series, rather than close to the end. Personally, I look forward to however much more Carey can give us, since I trust he'll be able to keep the series interesting for a while yet. |
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| Story! |
[Mar. 12th, 2012|12:57 pm] |
So I didn't realize it would coming out so soon due to being sick and having reduced reading comprehension, but my story "Empty Houses" is up on AE - the Canadian Science Fiction Review.
Go! Read! Marvel at the violence inherent in the system! |
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