Fictional Me: A Daydream Game

This is taken from the collection Lat's Lot, copyright 1977 by the Malaysian cartoonist Lat. Lat's work is just wonderful, the kind of thing I periodically force down people's throats.

Anyway, I'm not the only one who plays this game! This is a panel from a cartoon Lat did on the same subject. I remembered it while writing, and was able to track it down.

It's been a while since I did something properly goofy. Just for fun, here's one of my daydreams.

Hey, writers? I have actually gotten a number of stories from this little game. And if you read this blog for soap-opera purposes, I will no doubt make some truly unfortunate unconscious revelations here, along with some tragic misapprehensions of self. Should be good for a laugh.

Here we go:

If I were in a thus-and-such type of story, what would it be like?

And to clarify, the whole thing has a casting sort of quality to it -- there are roles that I've played in certain books, I can always get work standing in the back of a Viking scene, that kind of shit. Remember -- daydream.

Hard-Boiled Detective

I'm starting here because in this genre? I am not the lead. I'm the guy who knocks the detective out. You can tell it's me and not just a random thug if there is --

-- a revelation of unexpected depth of character lending a tragic tone to my inevitable demise.

-- a hint of sympathy directed toward the detective.

-- I turn out to be a sadistic intellectual who smugly torments our hero.

(As an aside, I also play this basic role in a number of Daniel Pinkwater books, but I'm a butler for one of the heroes in those ones.)

Police Procedural

An amusing witness or suspect. Really, not a whole lot of point to me in this genre. I'm just another one.

Cozy Mystery

I hate cozies. Hate, hate, hate 'em. The domestication of murder for the amusement of human housepets rankles severely.

Too bad, because I am custom-made for cozies. I'm a fact reservoir, a detail-noticer, a loveable good-natured eccentric, and when that one little moment comes when violence is threatened? By cozy standards, I am a warrior king. Thankfully, I am also bound and determined to mind my own damned business.

But as all fiction writers know, that just means I'll be dragged into the mystery kicking and screaming against my will. How? The writer's groups. The band. My attempts at breaking into the arts. These all provide interesting points of contact with the world that could fuel a series.

But worst, and most obvious of all?

The missus. She throws herself into the middle of every dramatic situation that comes along because if it interests here, then it's her business, isn't it? And yeah, we do in fact banter amusingly, bicker ceaselessly, and come to one another's rescue on a regular basis.

I really wish I liked cozies, because that series writes itself.

Adventure SF

I'd be good here, but nothing special. I'd fit in all kind of roles. One of the settlers on another planet, a field illustrator in a time travel story, the guy the aliens first contact, all that stuff. Unfortunately, I'm too quirky for the starring role in this stuff. Fine with me, he said huffily, you're all a bunch of dummies anyway. (I'm just bitter because I wanted the male lead in a Stanley G. Weinbaum planetary romance, and the woman has to be the quirky one in those.)

I'm putting this here because of the psychic powers in Known Space, but Larry Niven could get a good alien race out of me.

Hard SF

Similar, but with less scope. I'd be the one who asks the questions the reader wants answered. Maybe if I'd had more study skills when I first tried college...

Quest Fantasy

Again, a tooth-gritter. No really good roles for me. I might be like Beorn from the Hobbit or (oh, I hate this) Tom Bombadil. The good-natured outsider with an uncanny link to the natural world, who provides both a place to rest for the heroes and a vague sense of menace.

Or I'd be an orc, or a troll. Ah, well. It's work.

Heroic Fantasy

God help me, this would be the perfect fit. If you've ever read blurbs describing characters like Conan ("A man of great mirths and great melancholies...") or Kane ("Half-savage, half-savant, with a dash of Satanic seasoning..."), well. Jesus. Have you ever hung out with me?

I even have a knack for swordplay -- when I studied fencing in high school, a number of instructors gave me free lessons, and I kinda got the impression they thought I might go somewhere with it. Too bad money issues ended that.

My main problem with life is that it isn't sword-and-sorcery fiction.

Memoir

It's been done. I'm The One That I Want by Margaret Cho. My brother Duncan is a major character. I'm the briefly-mentioned bit player who means nothing to the reader but the writer needed to acknowledge. At least I can walk into bookstores and see my name in print.

Mainstream

Well, you should be able to figure this out. I do not have a mainstream life, my life's subject matter has been strongly genre. So I'm stuck in an outlying subplot -- 'Whatever will become of our beloved shining nutjob?' I wind up dead in a lot of these, usually suicide. I blame society.

Underground

Do I look like an idiot? Ask me in person. You might want to get some booze in me first.

Superheroes

Okay, three ways to go. In mainstream comics, I'm definitely a Marvel guy -- I'm uneasy with the ideas of good and evil as supernatural forces influencing the world, and there's a lot of that lurking in DC's mythos.

I'd start off as one of those guys who comes across as a villain at first because he's too caught up in his cause. I would guess an endangered species of some kind, probably a reptile. My costume would be one of those ones that looks dorky in a comic, but might be okay on Halloween. First appearance would be written by Don McGregor or Steve Gerber. The Avengers would have second thoughts after beating the shit out of me, eventually I'd lead the team for a brief run, and my unsuccessful limited series would feature me getting made a fool of by a sexy supervillainess in a complete tonal about-face from any prior appearance.

In the movies? Costumed adventurers would be all supervillains initially, carving the world into despotic city states. I'd be a man with nothing to lose, who in a moment of desperation finds that he once had powers, and they've been stolen from him, and he can only get them back by killing the bad guys one at a time. This one is just oodles of fun. I might write it someday.

Independent comics? I'd be a quirky, humorous hero along the lines of the Badger, Flaming Carrot, or maybe an oddly dramatic one like Kevin Matchstick in Mage or Go-Man. The book would be rough during the first few issues when the focus would be on me, but then I'd start taking a back seat in an ensemble piece.

I'd be an unbelievably neurotic hero for hire, whose staff manages to keep him in line enough to be a force for good, mostly, by cuddling, cajoling, badgering, threatening, teasing, and general bullyragging. It would be about the idea that it takes a dozen or so people to actually make one superhero -- or regular human being -- work. This one might get written as well.

Romantic Comedy

An unexpectedly good fit. The difference in appearance between me at my seediest and me at my best totally satisfies the ugly duckling requirement. My general emotional neediness and neuroticism make me a hard but satisfying nut to crack, romantically (the missus has a well-rehearsed performance on this subject), which is good drama. I can provide pratfalls and physical comedy, then turn and provide a strong masculine presence. I am easily flustered and embarrassed and given to blushing, and I have been given the impression that while in that state I am most amusing.

Truth be told? I tend to view my life as a humorous horror story, but it has a strong romantic comedy element as well.

Thrillers

I'm two guys here. The one who raises the monster and is heartbroken when it turns on him just as the story gets going, and the cannibal genius psycho-killer. The first one depresses me, and the second one has been thrown in my face on a regular basis since childhood.

When I read Silence Of The Lambs, I knew it was just a matter of time before someone said I reminded them of Hannibal Lecter, and I was right. It was amusing the first few dozen times it happened, but now when some distant acquaintance comes up to me and says, "I read a book/saw a movie last night, and there was this character who really reminded me of you," I just feel creeped out.

Horror

Oh, this is such a natural. There are two main roles for me here. The misunderstood monster, and the shapeshifter slowly devoured by the beast within. I could do a little mad science, if it was required. Maybe bravely allow myself to get killed so the lead could get away.

Situation Comedy

Like romantic comedy or sword and sorcery, a totally natural fit. But while I find it easy to put together something where I'd be the lead, I'm actually more a side-character. I'm the one who periodically sums up the situation in a bafflingly hilarious statement that turns out to be either dead accurate or utterly incomprehensible.

And so on. The fun part of this game is when the rules of the genre force you into a role you may not care for -- or which surprises you with its aptness. Yeah, it's fun and, if you write down what you daydream, do it well, and sell it, it's profitable.

There are times when I wouldn't trade being juvenile for anything in the world.

It's Magic Realism

I don't even know why I hang out with these guys.

One issue that I've been concerned with as regards my novel has to do with marketing. Or taxonomy. I've written about genre before, on its origins, its relationship with literature, and some of the things I like about it. But last week, when an agent asked the question, "What genre is your novel-in-progress?" on his blog, I had no good answer. Here's what I wrote in a comment on his post.

I think my novel holds together as one solid entity but when I analyze it in terms of genre?

Total schizophrenia.

My main interest is in character and prose style, so maybe it's literary.

But it's based on my life experiences, so there's a strong element of confessional memoir to it.

It does feature adventures in which an alternate fantasy world is saved, so it's obviously quest fantasy.

But the fantastic elements are rationalized in a speculative fashion, so it might be science fiction.

It deals intimately with the nitty-gritty details of life at the bottom of the blue-collar ladder, so it's social realism.

Much of the material is disturbing on levels ranging from the spiritual to the physical, so it's horror.

It's intended to be funny and there's rarely a lot of space between jokes, so it's humor.

One of the central themes is redemption through love, so it's romance.

The plotting and a storyline involving a drug deal are clearly noir.

I was once asked to describe the damned thing in five words. What I came up with was, "Autobiographical horror with sick laughs."

And that's the thing -- since I started the novel by wandering blindly through the wilderness, I wound up chucking in elements from sources ranging from mythology to pop culture. I put in everything I love in a book. Hell, in my comment I didn't even mention that the influence of cyberpunk -- "How fast are you? How dense?", cute fat chicks, ultraviolence, speculative evolution, coming of age, mental illness, garage bands, drug culture, art, moral issues, and surrealism are all important parts of the book.

When his follow-up post pointed out that if you couldn't say what genre you wrote in, other people were going to decide where it was shelved in the bookstore. I had an answer to that -- it gets shelved with Jonathan Carroll, Christopher Moore, and Neil Gaiman.

But what he said made me nervous because I didn't have a name for what I'm doing. You need a label when you enter the marketplace -- and I am bringing this work to the marketplace. Without a label it's hard to sell a book, hard to place a book, and it's much easier for a book to disappear into the cracks.

Well, last night in my writer's group, Deborah said something to the effect of, "My favorite kind of book is magic realism, and this is perfect magic realism."

Click.

Of course, this is kind of an abject realization for me. Because I've spent a certain amount of time bad-mouthing magic realism. Basically, my position has always been, "Magic realism is just a pretentious word for fantasy. Don't fucking try and tell me that Fritz Leiber and Avram Davidson deserve to be stuck in the genre ghetto while the fucking Magic Realists get accepted as valid literature."

But recently I've taken to referring to myself as pretentious. Because I am trying as hard as I can to write something of literary value. My focus is on character first, prose style second, and vision third. By vision, I mean the creation of images in the head of the reader. The fantastic elements are there because I love a monster -- but artistically, I'm drawing from mythology, psychology, and surrealism to create my world rather than just, well. Writing up my D&D campaign or doing another fucking vampire novel. Most of the art I've done in the past two years has had the intention of inspiring the novel.

Like I said, I've become a pretentious son-of-a-bitch. And like I said, Magic Realism is pretentious fantasy.

So that's what I'm writing. I'm a Magic Realist.

I feel so dirty. Can I call it Gonzo Magic Realism? Please?

I Really Shouldn't Do This: The Guardian's Science Fiction And Fantasy Novel List

This is the piece that's in the art show tomorrow and is being printed in the Laney Tower today... Hmm. That makes it my most-published work of art.

Over at the Biology In Science Fiction blog, Peggy has responded to a meme -- The Guardian published a long list of must-read novels and included one hundred and forty-nine SF and fantasy novels. See her post for more details.

Anyway, I read down the list and found myself thinking -- so here's my annotated version. The novels I've read are in bold. And having gone over the list, I'm not fond of it. It smacks of committee work -- one guy is interested in proving that some of this stuff is Real Literature, someone else is fixated on Klassic SF, another person it way totally Goth...

And if you're going to do a representative list of fantastic literature, you need to include more stuff from outside Europe and North America. Where are the Latin American Magic Realists? (Although where I come from, we call those guys fantasy writers.) Where's Amos Tutuola? Where's A Voyage To The West or The Ramayana? And why aren't there more children's books?

And I was irked that my favorite group of North American fantacists, the Weird Tales crowd, got totally shafted.

My main complaint was that this was restricted to novels. One thing that really bugged me was the continual inclusion of second-rate novels by people who should have been on the list for their short fiction.

And the methodology behind the listing seemed weird -- some series were included under one heading, others were broken up, others had a couple of books from a series listed seperately. Like I said, this feels like the effort of a poorly-coordinated group.

Oh, well -- this was still a fun little stroll down memory lane. Perhaps I shall construct my own lists -- Ten Worthwhile Supermarket Horror Novels, Ten Genre SF Books That You Don't Have To Be An SF Fan To Enjoy, Ten Fantastic Novels From World Literature, Ten Novels That Gave Birth To Modern Genre... It's something to think about.

Now, on with the kvetching!

1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
Kinda cute. If you like this, read Robert Sheckley instead.

2. Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
It was okay -- his Hothouse and The Malacia Tapestry were both a lot more fun.

3. Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
I tried but I just bounced off of it. I dunno; I'm just not that crazy about Asimov's stuff. I loved his robot books and Lucky Starr novels when I was a sprat but as an adult, eh.

4. Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
5. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
I've been meaning to check these out for a while but have been put off by the whole, "I am a writer, these are not science fiction," schtick.

6. Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
Been meaning to get around to this guy, too. Got one of his books on the shelf.

7. J.G. Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)
8. J.G. Ballard: Crash (1973)
This one's sitting on the shelf. Ballard is one of those people I'm supposed to like more than I actually do.

9. J.G. Ballard: Millennium People (2003)

10. Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
One of my favorite books. I must have been through six copies of this and I currently don't own a copy -- people borrow them and I never get them back. Good-natured nastiness with a curiously domestic edge, perfectly captures the vibe of 'child as a compulsively superstitious religist.'

11. Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
It was okay, I guess, if you like big loud noisy weird space opera.

12. Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
I have yet to read a Barker novel that was anywhere near as much fun as The Books Of Blood. His first was more controlled; this one wobbled around a bit.

13. Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)

14. Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
A real hoot, especially for those of us who are Morlock sympathizers. (My first Thaumatrope submission: "You do understand," the Morlock said, "that it's in very poor taste to fuck them.")

15. Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)
A ridiculous premise, competently executed. I've read a bit by Bear but aside from Blood Music I've never had much enthusiasm. I'm just not in his target audience.

16. William Beckford: Vathek (1786)
Great, great fantasy, wonderfully decadent. It's Arabian Nights stuff written by a brilliantly degenerate nobleman.

17. Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
A hoot and a half. The beat version of Cyberpunk, fast dense high-tech lowlifes.

18. Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
In the second and third grades I went through a phase where I read nothing but Ray Bradbury. Now the only stuff I can take is The October Country. Another guy who's really worth listing because of his short fiction, although I've come to find his use of metaphors hooty in the extreme.

19. Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
Read some of her short fiction; hipster stuff, kinda bored me. Isn't she the one who wound up with a suicide-scented edition of one of her books, due to an immolation in a warehouse?

20. Charles Brockden Brown: Wieland (1798)

21. Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
Tried it; it was impenetrable. Another writer I wish I liked.

22. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
Hilarious stuff but I just didn't get the connection between the main storyline and the Pontius Pilate flashbacks. Well worth reading, though.

23. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
This is the kind of thing I wonder about -- is this here because it's a readable novel, or is it here because of its historical significance?

24. Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
Not the most impressive of Burgess's works but a mean little bit of lit-flavored pulp. I used to have a sheet that my brother handed out to his friends containing all the terminology from this, 1984, and Brave New World.

Duncan also went through a phase where the only shirts he wore were Clockwork Orange T-shirts based on the movie poster. Once in public I pointed out to him that his shirt was actually a Sigue Sigue Sputnik shirt; he tore it off of his body. I mean, tore -- grabbed the chest in both hands and ripped. God, I miss that stinky bastard.

25. Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
I went through a Burgess phase when I was twenty-three -- it was his book on Napoleon that ended the binge.

26. Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912) 27. William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
You want an explanation for me? In the fiction section of the Richmond Public Library these two authors were mingled together indiscriminately and that's how I read them. Nowadays, with my visual imagination Edgar reads just as pornographically as William -- 'naught but a sword-belt' translates to 'pretty much butt-naked.'

Naked Lunch was one that I put off reading for a looooong time and when I got to it, it was just as hilariously appalling as I'd been told. I have very mixed feelings about WS Burroughs, though. On one hand he's a childfucker who shot his wife in Mexico; on the other hand I've found him one of the most useful writers I've run across, in terms of expanding my creative toolchest.

But if I only allowed myself to appreciate art by genuinely good people, I'd be shit out of luck, now wouldn't I?

28. Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
This one's sitting by the side of the bed right now. I've got a hell of a lot of respect for Butler's work. She never takes the easy way out; her depth of thought is admirable and her work is strongly moral.

29. Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)

30. Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
I've got a copy of Cosmicomics that I've started any number of times. It seems great; I have no idea why I've never gotten more than ten pages into it. Perhaps that says something...

31. Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
I went through a Campbell phase as well; my favorite is still The Face That Must Die. Quite unpleasant in a good way; this guy knows his crazy.

32. Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) 33. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
These were childhood obsessions; my mom paid me a buck to memorize Jabberwocky when I was three and it's still on tap at a moments notice.

I'm also in the habit of picking up the various differently illustrated editions -- Barry Moser, Ralph Steadman, etc.

Shame about the whole pedophilia thing; that does give it a taint. See Burroughs.

34. Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
35. Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
I've got a copy of The Bloody Chamber on the shelf. She's one of those writers I'm supposed to love, so I'm feeling a bit hesitant about actually cracking the covers.

36. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
Right, so was this SF or fantasy? I'm still irked at Chabon's disingenous introduction to Thrilling Stories -- he acts as though plot-oriented short fiction was dead when he knew damned well that genre fiction is the Serenghetti of the short form. He's good, though.

37. Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
Loved Clarke as a child and still take great pleasure in Tales From The White Heart.

38. GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
This reads like the work of a very nice fellow indeed.

39. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
It's sitting on the shelf.

40. Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)

41. Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
The Mojo Nixon cover of the song of the same title rocks.

42. Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
Again, on the shelf, but it looks like one of those books where sooner or later you have to get up and go to the bathroom in order to read a reverse-printed passage in the mirror and life is fucking short, you know?

43. Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)

44. Samuel R Delany: The Einstein Intersection (1967)

45. Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
46. Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
Delany and Dick are both writers I ought to like but don't. (Not entirely true -- I have thoroughly enjoyed short fiction by both.) See Angela Carter; this is why I'm shy about her.

47. Thomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)
Someone else whose best is their short fiction. Pretty decent poet as well. This one is great until the cop-out happy ending.

48. Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)

49. Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)

50. John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
This one's on the shelf. The missus recommended The Sot-Weed Factor as well.

51. Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
He's developed into a quite decent novelist; his single issue stories in the Sandman comic book series remain his strongest work. He's someone who works the same field as magazines like Unknown; his agriculture improves the quality of the topsoil, if you'll forgive me the hooty metaphor. (See Bradbury.)

52. Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)

53. William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
When this came out I was going through my above-mentioned Ramsey Campbell phase. I was sick of science fiction and getting deep into punk rock. When I read about this the phrase cyberpunk thrilled me so much that I avoided reading any so that I could just mentally riff on the concept -- here's some of what I came up with.

Another Duncan memory -- we had a power struggle for a while. I wanted him to read Neuromancer; he wanted me to read this story he'd found in an old Omni called Johnny Mnemonic. Each of us knew we'd found the best SF ever. Duhr. More a phase than a great work; still great fun.

54. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
The Yellow Wallpaper is bone-crushingly miserable and transmits massive testicular guilt.

55. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
I read it in one period in high school -- one of those assigned texts that just captured me. For that hour I lived that book.

56. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
Read it a couple of times; kinda sorta liked it.

57. M John Harrison: Light (2002)
Sitting on the shelf.

58. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
I tried to reread Tanglewood Tales recently -- god it was awful. Rapacinni's Daughter is great, though.

59. Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
I like me some Heinlein when I'm in the mood but this was just plain bad. The Dawn Of The Horny Heinlein. And not horribly entertaining like Farnham's Freehold; it was dull as well as dirty. Not hardcore porny; dirty minded masquerading as wholesome.

60. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
I read this while my family was driving back and forth to Oregon; it was worth the carsickness. I'm gonna try it again but I'm afraid it might not hold up.

61. Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)

62. Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
I've had two copies of this and have never read the damned thing.

63. James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
Man, I loved this one. I should go back to it soon. Realistic, visionary, full of the whiff of true madness. Funny as fuck, too.

64. Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
Dude wrote an asinine self-satisfied rape of H.P. Lovecraft that made me want to smack him. Fuck you and everything you stand for, Houellebecq. It's your kind that gives hyperintellectual solipsistic nihilism a bad name.

65. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
Read this again recently; not bad at all.

66. Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)

67. Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
She's so good -- but the works of hers I love the most are her humorous domestic memoirs, Raising Demons and Life Among The Savages.

68. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
Tried reading The Golden Bowl; I could not care about his characters and I did not like his prose. Boredom carried to an exquisite pitch.

69. PD James: The Children of Men (1992)

70. Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)

71. Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
I keep getting her mixed up with Diane Wynn Jones, which certainly isn't fair to either of them.

72. Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
I haven't read enough Kafka but what I've read I've loved.

73. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
It jerked my tears when I was eight or nine; doubt I'll ever want to read it again.

74. Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
Still haven't seen the Kubrick film based on this one... I enjoy King but he needs either discipline or an editor with a chair and a whip and a pistol loaded with blanks. I'm of the opinion that he could be a lot better than he is -- that he has chops he hasn't used yet.

75. Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)

76. CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56)
I heard one of these as a book on tape a little while ago; genuinely hateful. The racism and misogyny in his works are not fucking subtle. I have to wonder whether or not he was a dick in person.

77. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
I need to check out more of this guy's work -- ever read Carmilla? Ooh-la-la, that one carries an erotic charge.

78. Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
Haven't read this one but The Cyberiad is one of those books I read every few years. Funny, funny stuff, both clever and smart, full of remarkable wordplay. I really should read more Lem.

Interestingly, a work pal once recommended the writer Michael Kandel to me. I loved Strange Invasion but found it strangely reminiscent of The Cyberiad. That was because Kandel was the translator.

79. Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990)
I read and loved the first three when I was in Jr. high; I've been saving the more recent ones for a binge when I'm emotionally vulnerable enough to really appreciate them.

80. Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
I'm supposed to read this one, aren't I?

81. Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
My Independent Study sponsor in high school gave me this one. I really owe that woman a debt; I can see her face and hear her voice but her name has been stolen by the years. Man, she had to put up with some ugly shit from me.

I found this alternately fascinating and frustrating -- I was a lot more genre-oriented at that age and her refusal to play by the rules bugged me.

82. MG Lewis: The Monk (1796)

83. David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
Sitting in a stack of books at the top of the stairs.

84. Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
Loved his first four novels, liked his next three, haven't read any since. Why are so many of the best SF writers Scots socialists?

85. Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)

86. Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)

I've read a couple of books by him; not bad, not good.

87. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
Another writer with a half-assed novel on the list and brilliant short fiction that should be here instead. Why the fuck did the specify novels?

88. Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
Sitting on the shelf.

89. Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
Loved it -- brutal and depressing, just like me. But it's a realistic story -- why the hell is it on this list?

90. Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
Someone else I'm supposed to like -- it's Blood Meridian that I really want to read.

91. Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)

92. China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
Lousy prose, many dull passages, both more than compensated for by brilliant moments of visionary imagination. Hmm. Kinda like The Night Land, now that I think of it. My favorite of his thus far. For a while I thought he was the next Gene Wolfe; then I noticed the prose. But hell, Gene Wolfe isn't the next Gene Wolfe anymore.

93. Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)

94. Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
Sitting on the shelf.

95. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)

96. Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
I've read a good chunk of Moorcock and I just am not that crazy about his stuff. I suspect I'd like the man, though.

97. William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
I dug The Woods Beyond The World but I was in the mood for it. More interesting than good.

98. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
Sitting on the shelf.

99. Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
The missus has been reading Murakami; she was surprised to find out that Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World was one of her first presents to me. I really dug it and should read more of his stuff.

100. Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
Got a copy of Pnin on the shelf; have been hesitant.

101. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)

102. Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
Loved it as a kid, it's influenced me strongly. Great, but not very good. I read Niven with the same feeling I get when I eat candy, and do neither very often. Still, he's influenced me.

103. Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
I tried reading this one. Just not good.

104. Flann O'Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
One of my absolute favorite writers. But again, it's his short work I love the best. The twist ending here is predictable but the side-trips more than justify the book.

105. Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)

106. George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
Like everyone else, I reread this in 1984. Been meaning to read Down And Out In Paris And London.

107. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
I just don't like his stuff. I dig shock value but gimme a break, you've got to have something else there. But people I respect love his stuff so I'll probably try it again.

I do like the movie based on this book, though. More than I ought to.

108. Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)

109. Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
Haven't read the second two; loved this one. He writes like an artist but in a good way.

110. Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)
Reread this recently; just wasn't as crazy about it as I was when I was a kid. Kornbluth wrote some top-notch short fiction, though.

111. John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)

112. Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- ) (A few of them)
More substantial than Douglas Adams; still, it seemed more like product than literature. Not bad, though. I'll probably read more. His Strata was a nifty riff on Ringworld.

113. Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
Really well done but it seemed to labored to be truly entertaining.

114. Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000)
I really enjoyed these but I felt that they fell apart at the end. His shorter novels like Clockwork are among the most strongly plotted fiction ever. Every writer should study them.

115. François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
Whenever I've sat down to read this one, I've found myself incapable of resisting his exhortations to the reader to drink. So I've never finished it.

116. Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

117. Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)

118. Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

119. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)
I can't even remember if I gave up on these with the fourth or the fifth volume. At one point I was reading a collection of old Robertson Davies newspaper bits from the fifties and he included a deconstruction of a play with a hoary old cliche plot dating back to the 1800s. It was the plot of this book.

120. Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)

121. Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
Again, ought to try him.

122. Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)
Read Alyx recently; eh.

123. Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
When I was a kid I hated this for being sad but read over and over again anyway. I hear it's a fuck of a lot better in the French.

124. José Saramago: Blindness (1995)

125. Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)

126. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
Read the version illustrated by Bernie Wrightson for the pictures; found myself empathizing more with the creature than with any other literary figure I'd read to that point.

Imagine you're the creature. You're living in a shed, you're held together by stitches, and you're teaching yourself to speak and read with the help of a book.

That book is The Sorrows Of Young Werther. Bummer, dude.

127. Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
I tried but I just couldn't do it. Seemed like a Gene Wolfe ripoff; I was probably unfair to Simmons, who has written stuff I've liked.

128. Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
Sitting on the shelf.

129. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
His lead character is named Hiro Protagonist. You just can't lose with that sort of thing.

130. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Amazing. Structurally fascinating. Really, this should be much more highly regarded.

Of course this was written on a coke binge and I've had to deal with some coke freaks in my life so I may be biased.

131. Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
I've tried. I picked up an Edward Gorey-illustrated version at a yard sale recently so I suppose I'll try again.

132. Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)

133. JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937) 134. JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
Massively influential in my life. My first book was The Hobbit, which provided the key cultural reference for most of my childhood. TLOTR was my grandmother's favorite fiction.

Shame they aren't all that good. TLOTR in particular doesn't read as though it was meant to be read. I'll give Tolkien this much -- he may not have known a damned thing about women but unlike Lewis, at least he thought they were probably a good idea. Sorry, Inklings.

135. Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)
Really sadistic at the end. Loads of fun.

136. Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
Sitting on the shelf; my favorite is still Cat's Cradle.

137. Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)

138. Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)

139. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
Her Kingdoms Of Elfin was brilliant; I need to score another copy.

140. Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)

141. HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895) 142. HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
Most of his stuff still works quite well -- he's a genuinely good author. Very fond of this stuff. I'm thinking about doing some illustrated editions for self-promotional purposes, actually.

143. TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
Sitting on the shelf; was read to me aloud as a child and I loved it.

144. Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)

145. Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
I was fixated on this one for a while. One of those brief, "This is the best book ever," things. I've been meaning to go back to it...

146. Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)

147. John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
Decent prose but a ridiculous plot. Still, he's always good for an afternoon's light reading.

148. John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)

149. Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

Bah! I've Got To Stop Writing Bar Stories

Now why I'm keeping this secret when most of the people reading this know exactly what's going on is a source of bafflement to me...

But there's something going on. I'll tell you that much. On March First everything changes. Okay, not everything. But there'll be something.

Cumulative evidence, both internal and external, has convinced me that I need to dump the bar series. (For those not in the loop on this one, I've written some stories set in a bar. They're weird SF, very old-fashioned in the way they work the initial concepts, and are told by barflies.) Here's why.

The main problem with them has always been integrating the setting into the story in a way that makes sense. Problem number one?

The setting doesn't need to be in the stories I've told.

When John Shirley -- he's got some readings coming up, and I'm planning on attending the one on February 28, click for further information -- read the first story in the sequence, he said that he'd have shown at least some of the real action in the story happen on-screen. I suspect diplomacy on his part.

I gave a long defense of my approach, based on the fact that the story was written specifically because I wanted to write a bar story. Which was true.

Which didn't mean that Mr. Shirley was wrong. The core of the story was right there from the first draft. All the major changes that the piece went through during its numerous revisions had to do with the packing material, with the parts of the story that were actually set in the bar.

The central and (to some degree willfully) unrecognized problem with those sections was that they didn't fucking need to be there in order to tell the story.

But I remained in denial, despite what I'd heard in my writer's group. What I'd heard from other readers.

Well, this morning I got an email from Allison Landa giving me her critique of the most recent story in the sequence. Among other things, she said...

I don’t consider the bar setting relevant and, in fact, it distracts from the meat of the story.

She also pointed out some cliches that were built into the setting. On some level this wasn't news to me but this time I found myself wondering if maybe everyone was right...

Then I got this comment from Rob Pierce regarding the Free Story I pimped yesterday.

Enjoyed it, of course, but it doesn't feel fully realized. There's a guy in a bar telling a very strange story so matter-of-factly that even when the thinking cap is revealed it doesn't seem dramatic. The whole thing for me felt like a concept, like you were saying "hey I've got this really cool idea for a story." And despite its publication, that's what I think it remains.

(For his full statement, see the comment on yesterday's post.)

Ooooooh, shit. The other other shoe just dropped.

Okay, folks, clue delivered.

The method of telling the story -- having a third person tell it to the 'voice' character, who then repeated it to the audience? Can you say insulation? One of my main concerns in my fiction is delivering something as close to a direct experience as I can get. This technique does the opposite. Fuck me.

But I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't have any reasons. And now that I know that the approach is broken it's pretty clear to me what's going on here.

First off, I really love bar stories. I may not be good with them but I love them. Of course, I hate drinking in bars and that was one of the things I wanted to get across -- but that's not what I'd call a major theme upon which a body of literature could be built. Farewell, Jorkens and Mr. Mulliner. Gavagan's Bar, the White Hart, farewell. I'd rather drink alone anyway.

The next one is a little tricky, but it's essentially conceptual. In all three of these stories I had a basic idea --

The whole planet is covered in invisible bugs. What if some of them were intelligent and we were committing genocide on a daily basis just by wiping counters and cleaning toilets?

Rational thought is the product of discipline, and its most refined forms are skills derived from a tradition that has been built over the course of history, something that must be taught. It's unnatural, an artifact. What if you could do something to the human brain to make it more predisposed to rational thought?

Why the hell are raccoons stockpiling concrete on the roof outside my studio? Are they trying to make the jump to tool use?

-- and in all these cases the basic idea was something I had lurking in my head for a long, long time. Years. And they hadn't gotten anywhere near turning into stories.

The bar acted like a mental Petrie dish. In each of these cases, I had the experience of running over a particular thought like this and then saying, "Hey. Let's put it in the bar."

And when I did, all I had to do was sit down and start writing and the story just came. Clever little details and hooks produced themselves without the need for elaborate planning. The pattern in the critiques that I've gotten on these stories has been tons of red ink during the sections set in the bar, then little or nothing during the actual narrative.

There's another clue for you, Oafboy.

I think the key there is that I was imagining someone telling me the story. So all I had to do was listen. And since that was the way I imagined the stories -- and they came so easily, they were fucking gifts -- that's the way I wrote them. Stories don't come to me every day so I tend to take what my imagination gives me.

Time to start developing my creative techniques, he said.

And finally, there's a far more crass reason. The damned things sell. Both finished stories have been published, one twice in hypothetically-paying markets, and both have been posted on line. The Little Things even got praise from Biology In Science Fiction. There's a motive right there.

But more than that, the spoken-word format allows me to write the stories in a much shorter form than would be possible if I were to include things like, oh, I don't know.

Character. Setting. Description. That kind of thing.

Most of my short fiction has been at a length that rides the border between a short story and a novella. Seven to nine thousand words seems to be my sweet spot. (Now that I think about it, I've read the critical claim that the novella is the perfect length for a science fiction story...)

That length is pretty much unsellable. Almost all markets are closed to work that's longer than a short story and shorter than a novel.

But I've had just about everything I've written make it out into the public eye (and I still hold out hope for some of the pathetic crippled monstrosities thumping around my story trunk) and anyway. Who worries about the money when you're writing short form works? That's what novels are for.

(And the occasional collection. I figure that I'll put out a collection of my short fiction at some point in time. I've got just about enough to put up a self-published on-demand collection at Lulu. Hell, I want to do it just for the chance to design a book, now that I've done a magazine properly.)

So by taking the fast and easy route when I write these stories, I'm cheating them. If I want to build up a respectable body of work I can't be pulling that shit.

I need to just write them as well as I can and fuck a bunch of commercial motivations. If someone wants something commercial from me I'm happy to do it -- but to write commercial stuff and then hope to sell it? That's not the game I want to play. (Puts on his grease-stained cardboard crown.) I am, after all, a literary artist of the highest water. Belles-lettres, motherfucker.

So I guess I'll have to go back to the raccoon story and write it like a fucking story. At least I've got a solid notion of the events, characters, and setting of the story, of the basic narrative arc. Now to turn those into a plot.

Damnit.

Thoughts On Genre 3: Some Things I Like About Genre

Come on, it's an Allosaurus fragilis. Everybody loves Allosaurus!

This next may be taken as a statement of purpose or a pathetic confession.

I write for a number of reasons and if I fail in any of them I don't like what I've written. I write to express myself, to make my weirdo perspective on life intelligible to others. I write with the intent of conveying a moral or ethical position. I write in order to develop and display some degree of craftsmanship -- for the sake of making something and making it well.

And I write to entertain. This is what I love about genre fiction -- for the most part it is unabashed entertainment. If you study genre fiction it can teach you how to take your audience for a ride.

It's been said that all stories are mysteries. I don't buy that -- but the pursuit of a secret and the aftermath of its revelation are at the heart of mystery fiction. And a hell of a lot of other fiction as well. If you read mysteries you'll be able to learn how to control the flow of information to a reader in order to maximize the effectiveness of the fictive experience.

And mysteries provide a perfect form for the exploration of an unfamiliar setting. The investigative mode allows the writer to convincingly engage a wide variety of characters, to move around the world of the story in a way that helps to explain that world.

Other genres like thrillers and horror and romance are focused on particular emotions -- emotions that have their place in fiction of all kinds. This is a limited approach, of course, but you can learn a lot about evoking those emotions by studying the genres devoted to them.

One aspect of writing that I am absolutely fixated on is the visionary. To be able to show a reader things that they would never see otherwise. Science fiction and fantasy at their best give you revelatory glimpses of other worlds -- and this expansion of imagination is one of the greatest gifts an author can give to his readers.

This can come at a cost, of course. Much of my favorite SF plunges you into those new worlds without warning or preparation and forces you to figure out what's going on from context. This is a pleasure specific to this kind of fiction and those who haven't learned to appreciate it -- and this kind of extrapolation is a learned skill -- find this approach to fiction alienating, even angering.

The audiences that support genre fiction frequently have more of a sense of the history of their reading than mainstream audiences do. It's more likely for a classic work of genre fiction to be reprinted and read than for a comparable work of mainstream fiction -- and this tendency seems to be growing stronger.

Right now the tropes and forms of genre fiction are spreading out of the genres. Look at the bestseller lists. Look at the movies that have made top dollar. Even more tellingly, look at the growing acceptance and appreciation of genre fiction in some academic and literary circles.

This is great. But if you're going to use these tropes and forms it's a damned good idea to read widely enough to know something of the history of those forms and what others have done with them. It's a matter not just of respect but of craftsmanship.

And I guess I've said all I need to on this subject for now.

Thoughts On Genre 2: On Literary Fiction, As If There Could Be Any Other Kind

Here's the finished version, finally ready to print. I might be bold and print it large on good paper for a change.

Well, that title's a little off unless we define 'fiction' as referring specifically to prose fiction. That said, yeah, I mean it. The notion that there really is no real fiction outside of the world defined by magazines such as the New Yorker or Granta or the small press literary magazines like (ahem) Monday Night is indefensible. To claim that popular fiction is outside the scope of interest of a serious writer...

(A series of profanities alternating with vicious and complicated physical threats, punctuated by the sound of battered fists pounding wallboard.)

Oh, it drives me nuts. The thing is, is that the current conception of 'literary fiction' is one that has been shaped to a great degree by its need to distinguish itself from genre fiction -- which turns out to include virtually all popular fiction, which effectively means dramatic fiction.

I've got to say something here. I'm not going to be able to write about literary fiction with the same confidence with which I address so-called genre fiction. That's because I'm less interested in it -- its rewards can be deep, but its scope is narrow.

But can I defend my claim that 'literary fiction' is a genre?

If you accept my definition of genre fiction, then yes.

Does it have a label? Yep.

Does it have a self-identified readership and a market to serve them? Yes, indeed. They may not go to conventions -- but if you want to go looking for them you can find the Cheever T-shirts.

Does it have a set of traditional forms? Oh, hell yeah. The stereotypical example of this type of fiction would describe an individual engaged in routine activities coming to an emotional epiphany. To say that this describes all literary fiction is horseshit, of course.

But as a genre literary fiction tries as hard as it can to be all bread and no circus -- because the circus is low-class. (And if you think that the desire to define oneself as having literary tastes isn't a class issue you're nuts.) This strikes me as a weakness in any form -- when you start defining yourself by what you ain't instead of by what you is. And while literary fiction acknowledges the presence of drama in life it would prefer to show how people react to it rather than show the moment when the drama occurs. (Just as dramatic fiction can be cheesy, literary fiction can have a dry bran-muffin quality.)

And does it have a body of jargon associated with it? Well, if I describe something as a 'New Yorker-type story' you've got some idea of what I mean. Epiphany. Denouement. Yeah, I think we got us some jargon.

Interestingly, there seems to be a bit of a divide between academically-approved fiction, which is chasing after postmodernism and multiculturalism (the first an interesting blend of insight and nonsense, the second of great importance and utility when regarded from the perspective of inclusionism, a pain in the bee-hind when used as an excuse for the rejection of works of proven value). Literary fiction takes a lot of its leads from academia but it still is intended to be read -- which is anathema to current cultural theory. Academic literature has a strong bias for works which require analysis, which are tough enough to support hours of classroom discussion and pages and pages of critical writing.

Let me be clear. You wanna give me a Thurber, a Jamaica Kincaid, a Yannick Murphy? Great! Bring 'em on! My objections to literary fiction (like my objections to science fiction) are based on the culture that defines the genre, not the works done in it.

It's the self-righteous parochialism of many readers, writers, and critics that makes 'literary fiction' a term of abuse in some circles, some of which I frequent. The phrase itself seems to cast all work outside the charmed circle into the subliterate depths. When you run statements like this --

Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it.

The reason this statement is so offensive is that it implies that genre fiction is at a dead end. Never mind that genre fiction is a very, very broad term. Never mind that the vast majority of short form fiction, especially novellas and novelettes, is genre fiction. Never mind the steadily increasing importance of genre fiction in popular culture. Never mind the influences that genre has outside of fiction, extending into music, fashion, design, and on and on...

Genre fiction must be dead; serious writers have buried it.

It's very frustrating for those of us who are aware of the vital literary tradition that has been part of genre fiction from the beginning and which is currently thriving. The best genre writers have always been aware of and influenced by the larger literary tradition -- and they are a valid part of that tradition.

I have to say, this statement was probably made for effect, since later on the writer (Ruth Franklin, in Slate.) also states --

With The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Chabon has finally made the only use of genre fiction that a talented writer should: Rather than forcing his own extraordinarily capacious imagination into its stuffy confines, he makes the genre—more precisely, genres—expand to take him in.

She's absolutely right -- but her statement applies to the extraordinarily stuffy confines of literary fiction as much as it does to any other genre. Hell, it applies to any given art form. It's a truism, but it's not a bad thing to state a truism every once in a while.

But there's something weird happening in the literary world. The kind of broad reading that I've practiced all my life seems to be popping up in some fairly elevated circles -- there's a volume of H.P. Lovecraft in the Library of America collection. The third volume of Clarke Ashton Smith's collected stories has an introduction by Michael Dirda.

I'm not entirely convinced that this is altogether appropriate -- much as I love and have been influenced by the Weird Tales writers, Lovecraft's prose is dreadful and the fun of Smith's is that it goes past purple and well into ultraviolet -- but I can only approve of anything that breaks down the barriers between genres, that allows readers and writers more freedom and more access to works and traditions that will bring them pleasure. In the words of a murderous phrasemongering tyrant, "Let a thousand flowers blossom."

The various tropes, methods, and forms developed in the trenches of genre fiction are tools that can be very useful. However there is one aspect of genre fiction that really is too specialized to be widely useful. I'll be talking about that one tomorrow.

Next time I'll talk about what I like about genre and how it's inspired my own writing. Specialization can be a curse but it does have its benefits...

Crit List 4: Here They Come and Old Man's War

This one really didn't want to scan -- and I'm too lazy/pressed for time to feel like giving it a full-on Photoshop.

Say what you will about the McSweeney's team -- they produce some gorgeous and well-designed books. The endpapers on this one are really pretty as well as appropriate.

Just to start out. The books I'm looking at this time around are going to get rougher treatment than they merit when examined on their own. I enjoyed both despite the fact that neither was entirely to my tastes and it's entirely likely that I'll read more by both authors.

(Look, as a nascent critic I think I need to make it clear that whether or not I like something is not a good indicator of its absolute value. If it was, they'd be teaching Flaming Carrot and Harry Adams Knight in upper-division literature classes and Henry James's grave would be crusted with dried urine. And that would be wrong. As I've stated before my critical perspective is that of a fledgling writer trying to find out how to better his own work, so expect some odd and very personal angles.)

Thing is, is that I read these two books in conjunction with one another and they made me think about genre. Again. These books were both loans from people who were enthusiastic about them. Here They Come came from my sister and Old Man’s War from my pal Lew. (I also bought this one at a bookstore – I’ve been reading Scalzi’s blog for some time now and wanted to know what his fiction was like so I ordered the book from a local store – and then Lew passed me his copy and a copy of The Ghost Brigades as well. I figured that I’d be a jerk to make a special order and not pay for the book. Oh, well.) These are representative of my sister and Lew’s respective reading habits. One of them is straight-up literary fiction and one is straight-up science fiction. On Sunday mornings I stay in bed with the missus instead of jumping up to get to work; a few Sundays back I needed something to read and I wound up going through these two books in the same day.

As I said, I enjoyed both; neither left me satisfied. I think that has something to do with the way genre works.

Let's get a little nomenclature out of the way here. 'Literary fiction' is not the same as literature. Literature is something going back (literally) thousands of years and encompasses all of human culture. Literary fiction is specifically a product of marketing and academia. It is a genre and a particularly limited one. Most of the great works of world literature would not be regarded as literary fiction if brought to market today. Think of it this way -- in subject and treatment, The Iliad is much closer to Old Man’s War than it is to Here They Come.

Anyway, right now genre in fiction (and when I say fiction I mean storytelling in any form) strikes me as being part and parcel of our current age of specialization. People are finding niches and burrowing deep into them -- and this is neither good nor bad. It's just how it is.

So.

Here They Come by Yannick Murphy is a look at the life of a family living in poverty in New York. This isn't exactly a new subject -- but this is a fresh work. The family is a really interesting group of people and while you can recognize types, the specificity with which the characters are described brings them to life and makes them unique. The interest of this book comes from the characters and from Murphy's prose, which is lovely intoxicating stuff.

And that's what literary fiction regarded as a genre has to offer the reader -- a glimpse of life beautifully written. Ms. Murphy brings more than that to the table, though. Some of the observations and perspectives of her narrator say some things you won't here in many other places. For instance the character John could easily have come across as a creepy child molester -- and in a lot of books his presence would mandate making him the center of a plot.

Instead, while the creepy molester vibe is in place at times, John is alternately a source of comfort and aid, a pathetic victim, a wise man, a fool, and it's plain that the narrator is using him as he is using her. This bothered me -- hey, I've got kids in my life and I'm as fond of simplistic moral hysteria as anyone else -- but this kind of nuanced view struck me as true to life.

Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi, isn't just a straight-up SF novel; it's one belonging to a very specific sub-genre. It’s military SF. Even more specific – it’s Robert A. Heinlein-influenced military SF. Which means that it’s influenced by a specific Heinlein novel, Starship Troopers.

(Just as an aside, Starship Troopers is one of those novels you read when you’re a kid and it thrills you no end. Then you grow up and it’s hilarious and irritating. Or at least that’s how it worked for me…)

I’ve always been a little puzzled by the cover-band impulse – but I could totally see being in a band that fashioned itself in the image of the Ramones. (As an aside, The Hanson Brothers are my favorite non-Ramones Ramones – and what makes them really crank is the way they bring in another influence, which would be hockey.) Heinlein falls into the same category. I can totally understand the appeal of trying to match what he did in his young adult novels.

But Scalzi isn’t just doing a cover here. There is criticism of a lot of Heinlein’s more grotesque assumptions lurking below the surface. His ideas regarding the development of human personality stimulate thought. And his willingness to suggest that his characters might be in the wrong so far as their actions go shows a political astuteness that seems quite appropriate for the times. A lot of SF is about the present when you look at it closely, and Old Man’s War (and to a greater degree The Ghost Brigades) is, subtly, a product of the Bush years.

And the same way The Hanson Brothers sound like the Ramones, Scalzi reads like Heinlein. Good, solid workmanlike prose, a tone of voice that’s easy to trust. It’s almost like reading a reference volume – if he says it, you believe it. It’s this Now-Let-Daddy-Explain-It-To-You tone that let Heinlein get away with a lot of nonsense. (And I’m not by any means saying Heinlein was always full of shit – but when he was it was some ripe old shit.) Here, the voice of authority seems to be a little more well earned.

Old Man’s War gives the reader action, likeable characters, some interesting twists on the technology and economy of interstellar warfare, and a fistful of oddball aliens. And those are the rewards this genre offers the reader.

So why, despite the pleasure they gave me, was I unsatisfied with these two books?

Well, first off, they both struck me as being a wee tad weak in the plot department. Both of ‘em struck me as being more about one goddamned thing after another than they were about any central sequence of events. (Mind you, these were some pretty good goddamned things – they kept me turning the pages.) Old Man’s War used a narrative thread involving lost love to hold things together; Here They Come introduced a sequence involving the search for a missing father well into the book. Neither seemed strong enough to me. Either thread could have been eliminated without making a crucial difference in the books in question – their real virtues lay outside the plot.

And I think that’s the key issue. The virtues of these books are specific to their genres – and as well as the authors did their thang, I wanted more than they offered. They both were lacking in story, in strong plot resulting from characters expressing themselves in the context of a situation. I felt as though the characters were just doing things imposed on them by circumstance, that their actions and decisions were in the end inconsequential in their own lives. (Scalzi’s book is further away from this than Murphy’s is – but the plot hinges on a major coincidence, which strongly weakens the sense that the characters are leading the action.) A book exploring that idea, which dealt with someone either coming to terms or failing to come to terms with that idea would hold my interest. And there does seem to be an element of that in Murphy’s book but if it’s there intentionally it’s played way down low.

One thing that I found interesting and instructive was that some elements that I tend to associate with their respective genres were flipped. Scalzi was able to take scenes like an assault on a city of half-inch aliens and make them as convincing and tangible as a trip to the grocery store; Murphy was able to make a life of squalor into something dizzying and fantastic. In terms of tone, Scalzi was the realist and Murphy the fantasist – and that was all about prose style.

So at the start of this I mentioned that reading these books together made me think about genre. Here’s the thought, which while not new to me or to the world is still worth consideration.

The virtues or elements of appeal associated with specific genres are not limited to those genres. Beautiful prose shows up in the most unexpected places, as do tight plots, well-drawn characters, arresting imagery, surprising insights into human nature, explorations of social milieus, archetypal stories, etc, etc – all of the reasons we read are not specific to any genre or writer. Genre work is almost always going to be unsatisfying unless on some level and in some way it reaches out of its genre, whether that genre concerns itself with quotidian daily life or space opera. It’s easier to produce a perfect work in a particular form – and I regard both of these books in that light, as being note-perfect examples of their forms – than it is to produce something that is essentially outside of those conventional forms, regardless of how close to perfection it may be.

Hmm. I think I need to talk a bit more about genre in another post.

Crit List 2: The Land Of The Lost

Ah, how rarely do we get to recapture the dreams of childhood!

Only a total dick would neglect to post a dinosaur (Gorgosaurus libratus) image along with a Land of the Lost post. And only a total dick would fail to acknowledge that he totally swiped the pose and proportions from one of Gregory Paul's skeletal diagrams.

There are a lot of people in paleo art who really should cut Mr. Paul a check... I don't steal from him in my serious pieces but can you spot him in my sketchbooks? Yes, you can.

Well, I hadn't intended to revisit another childhood memory for a while but Brian Switek's post on the upcoming Land of the Lost movie was too opportune to ignore. Let's talk about the original Land of the Lost.

See, back in the day I was a fan of the original show and I've watched it recently -- and it's worth discussing here.

When the show debuted in '74 I was a ten year-old Edgar Rice Burroughs fanatic. His Pellucidar series, set in a hollow Earth filled with a mishmash of prehistoric animals ranging from labyrinthodonts to mamoths, was my particular favorite.

(I might go into Burroughs in another post -- but I have to confess that I lost interest in his work for decades after a particular passage in Tarzan at the Earth's Core where a stegosaur gnashes its flesh-rending fangs and folds its plates into wings, using them to glide down a mountainside in order to attack Tarzan. I closed the book -- all the Frazetta-painted buttocks in the world weren't sufficient motivation to read Burroughs after that.)

Anyway, as soon as I was able to read I systematically hunted down every lost world fantasy in any library to which I had access. So when I started seeing the Saturday morning TV ads for Land of the Lost I was in heaven.

And the show did not dissapoint -- it seemed to me to be real science fiction, the characters were involving, and I was fascinated by the world they created. It was produced by Sid and Marty Croft, whose other shows like H.R. Pufnstuf and Sigmund the Sea Monster had always impressed me as kinda dorky and creepy -- but here, the creepy vibe really worked for me.

Flash forward to a year or so ago when I had been dragooned into going to Best Buy, where I spotted the first season of Land of the Lost. After a brief and pathetic tussle with economic reality and the question of whether or not this was something I needed to own I grabbed that sucker. As soon as I got home I put it on to play.

My first thought was that the effects were shockingly bad -- the rafting trip that runs through the credits is hilarious. And the overacting was pretty amusing as well. They only had a few clips of rubbery malformed dinosaurs in action which they repeated over and over.

But I kept watching. And something strange happened.

I started to enjoy it not just as camp but as adventure fiction. As science fiction. The kids started to ask for it when they came to visit. The missus started wandering away from her video poker and succulent websites when I was watching it.

This was the H.R. Pufnstuf take on The Lost World and it was, in an admittedly very limited way, good. How the hell did that happen? How did they do that?

Hey, if anyone associated with the entertainment industry is reading this, it's simple. Two words. And with these two words you can conquer any production limitations that have been placed on you and produce something entertaining and involving -- something that has a legitimate shot at success. Those two words?

Good writing.

I'm not talking about great writing. I'm talking about solid conventional storytelling coupled with a degree of genuine creativity. Good, professional commercial fiction. Land of the Lost had the perfect TV combination of the big overarching story and complete stories in each individual episode. Series like Lost and Heroes could benefit from the study of Land of the Lost.

And if you're a SF reader, here are some people who wrote scripts for the show. Ben Bova. Larry Niven. Theodore motherfucking Sturgeon! Of course as the story man for the first season David Gerrold deserves the lion's share of the credit for this.

(Hey, if you aren't in the know, Sturgeon at his best is one of the best short fiction writers America has produced thus far. No shit. Vonnegut fans, think of the name Kilgore Trout. Then read the name Theodore Sturgeon. Then hie thee to a bookstore or library but pronto.)

There are a few specific factors in the writing that are worth pointing out. First off, while the show had a very conventional moral center (which isn't an issue for me -- there's nothing wrong with the perrenial values of love, humanity, and self-sacrifice) it allowed its characters a degree of moral ambiguity you rarely see in storytelling addressed to children.

The characters could be short-tempered with one another. They could have moments of despair and fear. They could be unreliable allies -- and allies didn't have to be friends. And friends weren't always allies.

Also, the mythology of the show, the world it built, showed a quality of depth and imagination that was really involving. The slowly revealed nature of the technology behind this strange artificial world and the story of the mysterious lost race that built the land were actually interesting. They could easily have been used as the basis for a story for an adult audience.

There was a willingness to put the characters in real danger that I never saw in any other children's show. It had a quality of high drama that really impressed me as a child -- and that quality was still there when I watched the shows again as an adult, once I got past the cheesiness and found myself sucked into the story.

Speaking of cheesiness, the hilarious overacting I mentioned at the start of this? Turns out it's very effective. It's not the work of amateurs. It's a different style of acting and one that works in this kind of thing. More stage acting than film acting, if you know what I mean.

When the characters fight with each other, especially the two juvenile leads (Kathy Coleman and Wesley Eure, for the record), you get the sense of a real squabble. And Coleman's scream comes from the Fay Wray school -- she sounds scared and that makes things scarey.

All the actors were able to portray fear, anger, and concern in a way that brought (and brings) an unexpected emotional weight to the show.

Again, this is strictly on a pop-culture Saturday-morning level of achievement but it's still worthy of respect and appreciation -- if this is the kind of thing you like, you'll like it.

Crit List 1: The Borribles (expanded as of 12/16/08)

These covers were painted by Don Maitz. If there's any objection to my posting them by anyone associated with the books, I'm happy to take them down.

When I started this site I intended to do a fair amount of reviews and criticism. When I did my piece on Jurassic Fight Club I wound up backing away from that. First off, I found that I was doing the standard web snark attack -- and I found that I didn't like being that kind of person. When I realized that my snotty remarks were being read by creators who had worked hard and honestly it made me feel like a shit.

And the fact that it garnered me more hits than anything else I'd done took me aback. First, I want people to come to this site to see my work, not to read amusing slams on someone else. Second, I'm kinda self destructive and when I saw that I was achieving some kind of success I scuttled away from it as fast as I could.

See, this is a site about being a creator and about trying to make the move to being a pro. So any reviews or critical pieces need to be done from that perspective.

So I'm going to throw myself back into the fray and talk about a series of fantasy novels that have been a source of pleasure to me for decades. They've also given me a lot of help on my novel. Let me tell you about it.


When I was a kid there was one fantasy series that my family was familiar with -- The Lord of the Rings. It was my grandmother's favorite. She was one of the few who read it when it was first released and it was her favorite book. The Hobbit was the first book I had read to me as a child.

But as important as J.R.R. Tolkien was to me, he never really spoke to my life. That was part of the pleasure -- he took me entirely out of my world. But even as a child I was disgusted by the nationalism and classism inherent in his work. (How can anyone not cringe at the relationship between Sam Gamgee and Frodo Baggins?) That's not to say that he was a bad person -- but his world view was not one that I could accept without criticism.

When I was in high school, I found a fantasy book that took place in a world that was very, very close to the one that I lived in. That was Michael de Larrabeiti's The Borribles. This was a fantasy contemporaneous with and parallel to punk rock. It had heart and it had guts and it spoke to me in a way that no classic fantasy novel ever had. It was bitterly satirical, strewn with trash and covered in graffiti. This was a world where I belonged, where my friends belonged. It was fantasy in the gutter, in the alley, in the dumpster. It was grim and ugly and violent -- but it was redeemed by humanity and love. This was a world I could live in.

The basic idea behind the series is that children who for one reason or another live on their own and take care of themselves turn into creatures called Borribles. Borribles don't age, they don't grow. They can be recognized by their pointed ears, which they usually cover up with a watch cap or long hair. While they sometimes mingle with normal children they've established their own society, a varied collection of tribes usually organized along racial or cultural lines, named for the territories they inhabit.

Their enemies are the forces of conformity and heirarchy. Specifically the police (having grown up in a predominantly black community where the police force contained a racist gang who called themselves the Cowboys, I could relate to this) and the non-human Rumbles. If you have any familiarity with the Wombles of Wimbledon you won't have any trouble recognizing the Rumbles...



Here's a dirty little secret. Writing -- or, rather, editing -- fiction has ruined my appetite for reading. I read everything with an eye toward how it could be improved. Commas, dialogue attribution, point of view -- I can't let go of the technical side of writing.

But a few months back when I was in the thick of writing my novel I reread the Borrible books and found that they sucked me right in and still moved me. I was conscious of the crudity of the prose -- I wished I could take a red pen to them. The point of view is an omniscient one broken up by passages told from the perspectives of various individual characters and the shifts in POV frequently seem capricious. There are any number of moments where emotions that are made clear by the speech and actions of the characters are explicitly described by de Larrabeiti.


But as I read the books I dropped my mental red pencil as the simple power of direct storytelling over-rid my critical stance and swept me away.

A big part of this has to do with the intensely imagined quality of the work. The characters and settings are tangible, vivid, odiferous -- the continual appeal to all of the senses immerses you in de Larrabeiti's world.

His sense of action is very instructive to anyone who anyone who writes adventure fiction. His fight scenes are absolute classics -- if he hadn't been in a few fights himself I would be greatly surprised. At the end of volume two there's a scene I've jokingly described to friends as the greatest shovel fight in world literature. It's actually in strong competition for best fight scene, period, right up there with the fight between Flay and Swelter in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast.

Spoiler Alert! For those who are interested, James Benstead of Tallis House publishing very graciously sent me this manuscript page from the third draft of the above-mentioned shovel fight from The Borribles Go For Broke. Caution -- contains climax!

But most importantly, the characters were all acting from strong, believable motivations. With a few plot-enhancing exceptions you know exactly what all the characters are doing and you know exactly why.

And that helped my novel. Here's how.

In the Borribles the motivations for the various characters are so clean-cut as to be diagrammatical. The bad guys want to either take advantage of the lead characters or they want to crush any sign of social deviation. The values that the good guys (and these books) hold dear are simple ones: Make a name for yourself. Live free. Don't let anyone get away with fucking with you. And above all else take care of the ones you love. Any death, any suffering is preferable to failing to live up to that creed.

If you've got a problem with those values, I have a problem with you. Those who think these books inappropriate for children must imagine that being a young person guarantees a life without hard decisions, without threats. This simply isn't true. I'd rather the kids I love be ready to face the world with open eyes, strong hearts, and a willingness to either stand tough or make sacrifices when the situation demands it.

When you put those motives together in opposition you inevitably get a story that's clean, involving, and moving. It's mathematical, mechanical -- and yet organic.

So after re-reading these books I went back and asked myself what my characters wanted, what their values were -- and how those values would bring them into conflict with one another. It brought my book to life.

The Borribles trilogy is available in both individual volumes and a single-volume compilation from Tor Books.

Michael de Larrabeiti died last April. I wish I'd had the chance to meet him and say: Thank you, Mr. de Larrabeiti. Don't get caught.

(Click here for a look at Journal Of A Sad Hermaphrodite, a very different and more mature work by de Larrabeiti.)