February 2009

World in the Satin Bag

The Facebook Fiasco Has Ended: Terms of Service Back to Normal

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Well, it looks like all our kicking and screaming has paid off. The Facebook folks have gone back to their original ToS. Additionally, discussions on the issue have caused the following bits to be written for clarification purposes: 1. You own your information. Facebook does not. This includes your photos and all other content. 2. Facebook doesn’t claim rights to any of your photos or other content. We need a license in order to help you share information with your friends, but we don’t claim to own your information. 3. We won’t use the information you share on Facebook for anything you haven’t asked us to. We realize our current terms are too broad here and they make it seem like we might share information in ways you don’t want, but this isn’t what we’re doing. 4. We will not share your information with anyone if you deactivate your account. If you’ve already sent a friend a message, they’ll still have that message. However, when you deactivate your account, all of your photos and other content are removed. 5. We apologize for the confusion around these issues. We never intended to claim ownership over people’s content even though that’s what it seems like to many people. This was a mistake and we apologize for the confusion. Looks like it’s all back to normal! Good work everyone!

World in the Satin Bag

Atwood Boycotts Dubai

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Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature in Dubai will now be down one world-class author after it banned a book containing a gay character. Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale, was to be amongst over 60 prestigious authors attending the event, but since the organisers decided to ban Geraldine Bedell’s The Gulf Between Us. In a calm, to-the-point letter, she explained she cannot condone censorship and therefore had to decline involvement with the festival. I’m with Atwood on this one. Of the 5.6m inhabitants of Dubai, the majority are foreigners, and in recent years EU and US citizens have been arrested for having LGBT relationships. This book was banned under the same anti-gay laws. Whether you’re pro- or anti-gay rights, there’s an argument against censorship here. A book shouldn’t be banned just because you don’t like what it says.

World in the Satin Bag

Ten Things That Make Me Stop Reading

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Hinging off Matt Staggs’ recent post on the same subject, I thought I would talk about what elements in a novel make me stop reading.I’m a notoriously picky reader, especially when it comes to novels. Some of my TAs at school have learned this, and others are probably oblivious, but when I’m not entertained by a book, it instantly becomes a chore and, thus, difficult for me to actually get through (sometimes I stop reading entirely, even though they are school books). Since I already have to read so many novels, I find myself largely becoming uninterested in books that don’t immediately grab me and, thus, I develop a more sophisticated (not necessarily better) taste in literature.Here are ten things that will almost always make me toss a book across the room: Unrealistic Sex ScenesI realize that the uber dork meeting an attractive woman and then having an all-night-romp of passionate, intense love making is appealing, but it’s also incredibly unrealistic and somewhat pathetic. What about nerves? What about guys who aren’t reincarnated sex machines? Most men aren’t super lovers who can go seven times in half a day (I’m looking at you, Greg Bear; that scene in Blood Music was absolutely absurd and seemed too much like a personal fantasy). Of course, most men won’t admit this, but that’s not the point. The point is that sex isn’t perfect. Not everyone who is inexperienced will magically be good at it. Most will suck. Let’s put some of that into our novels, please. The unrealistic inexperienced lanky guy who gives his partner five O-moments in one night is a bit, well, overused and easy to see as poorly disguised personal fantasy. Rape (Used Poorly)Any time when rape is used for shock value, I’m out. The same can be said for scenes following a rape in which the victim seems relatively un-phased. I don’t find rape entertaining; most people don’t. Rape should be put into a story to serve a purpose. This is why I couldn’t stand The Hills Have Eyes 2: the rape scene was there only to be shocking, not to develop a character in a certain way or drive the plot or anything (it was an opportunity to do something disgusting in order to make our skin crawl). I will drop books that do not address rape as an important and emotionally devastating thing. It’s no walk in the park and I want to see that in the writing. Violence For the Sake of Being ViolentI don’t mind blood and gore. But just as with rape, it has to have a purpose. If you’re just showing me limbs being chopped off because you like it, then I’m likely to drop the book. I want violence that takes itself seriously, that tries to convey a scene realistically and with logical consequences. If a character is involved in a war and manages to survive relatively unscathed after seeing all his friends get chopped to bits, how does he respond to that? If your answer is anything like “he goes off and dances to lively elven music while remarking how awesome the battle was,” then I’m out. Being Artistic For the Sake of Being ArtisticConsider this literary snobbery, if you like. I absolutely despise novels that try to do new things with language or story for the purpose of being artistic. The problem I have with a lot of literary fiction is that most of the people who write that stuff are so focused on the art form that they have forgotten how to tell a story. Literature is here to tell and show us stories. Novels that don’t give any attention to the story and all the attention to language and style are ones that eventually get dropped by me. Entertain me with your pretty language; don’t bore me to death. Laggy BeginningsIf it takes more than fifty pages for something to happen that is interesting, then I’m not likely to finish the book. In a 300-page novel, it’s not much to ask for a bit of action or something in the beginning, even if it’s something small. Set up a question or show me something crazy. Do something. You’ve got more space to get me interested in the rest of the book than you had with your editor. The ending shouldn’t be boring, period. Crappy WritingThis one is pretty obvious, right? I’m going to lob all forms of crappy writing in there: bad style, lots of spelling/grammar errors, poor plotting, etc. I don’t think I need to go beyond this except to say that how you tell a story is extremely important. If reading a work is like trying to decipher ancient hieroglyphics, then clearly whatever it is I’m reading doesn’t deserve to be published. Poor Science Played Off Like Legit ScienceI’m perfectly fine with letting slide things like faster-than-light travel, aliens that look human-ish, etc. What I don’t like is when a science fiction author writes a story filled with explanation about some “new” science that, in reality, is actually a load of absolute nonsense. If you want to write fantasy, then write fantasy. If you want to write hard SF, then stick with sciences we know. The one thing that non-hard SF writers do successfully is represent their “fantasy” tropes as just that: tropes. FTL for them is simply there, thus allowing them to focus on the story rather than trying to explain how their FTL works without violating the laws of the universe. Don’t explain to me how FTL works, just tell me it does and move on. Confusing Names and Other Bad Worldbuilding CrapNames need vowels. Fjfjcbvyx is not a name; it’s what happens when your cat runs over your keyboard. The thing that bothers me about some fantasy novels is the endless repetition of the unpronounceable name. This alone isn’t enough, though. There have to be a collection of worldbuilding-related things working together to get me to drop a novel. These include, but

World in the Satin Bag

Facebook: The ToS Adjustment That Violates Your Privacy

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If you’re a Facebook user, you might be interested to know that they have recently changed their terms of service and didn’t tell you about it. This might not sound like a big deal, except it is. Why? Because Facebooks’ new ToS gives them full rights to all of your uploaded content, including, but not limited to, picture, notes, RSS feed information, and personal messages.The actually paragraph reads: You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses. Basically, they can use anything you put on Facebook for anything they want. And they no longer need your personal permission to do so. These are scary times…

World in the Satin Bag

SoD Chapter Three: Of Ocean’s Fury and the Hunt

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James slammed into the railing of the Luu’tre, his face stricken with terror after seeing Laura plummet over the edge. He barely held to the wooden edge as the ship rocked like a teeter-totter, partially settled in the giant reef below.“Laura!” he screamed over and over, his voice becoming a hoarse cry of despair.Captain Norp bellowed orders at the other end of the ship, but James could see that little could be done with the Luu’tre tilted thirty degrees on the port side. Two sailors at the other end of the incline lost their footing and slid wildly. He watched them, praying that they wouldn’t plunge into the sea and breathed a sigh of relief when someone managed to snatch the rope the two sailors held on to from the air and tie it to a beam. Both men jerked upward; one of them lost his hold and continued downward. He smashed into the railing and by a stroke of luck managed to hang on. Another sailor repelled down from the mast and eased the poor wretch into a safer position. The fallen sailor clutched his ribs, groaning.“James!” Pea cried from behind and then appeared at James’ side. “Do you see her?” The Littlekind peered over the edge between the ship and the railing.James watched the waters spraying white vapor and smashing against the reef. “No,” he said. He couldn’t see anything in the rough seas. A violent riptide ran through the narrow passage. Laura was somewhere below and the thought of her drowning brought such pain to his heart that he clutched the railing until his hands bled. Where is she? He wanted to scream he was sorry, even though he couldn’t explain why he felt that way.Scanning the waves, James searched for anything that looked like a person. The frothy waters made it hard to differentiate the coral from the water and the water from anything else churning below, especially under the shadow of the storm. Winds ravaged the ship, rocking it against the coral now, splashing water high across the bow and forcing the crew to wrap the sails lest they be ripped completely away, dragging the masts along with them.Then something caught his attention. A strange shape that stood out against the frothy waters. Maybe it was Laura, or maybe a bit of coral that had been dislodged by the rough seas. It bobbed in the water along the edge of the coral, a pale thing barely visible against the waves. The sea pushed it against the edges of the coral.“There!” he screamed, jutting his hand out and thrusting a finger down. “I think I see her!”“Are you sure?” Pea said.James looked over at the Littlekind; Pea returned the gaze. He tried to tell Pea that he wasn’t sure with that look, only, what difference did it make? They didn’t have much time either way and if it didn’t turn out to be Laura she would be long dead soon enough.“Alright.” At that, Pea slipped away and Darl slid into view.“If that’s her, we’ll get her,” the old man said, clapping James hard on the shoulder. James bit his lip, stifling his cries of pain as Darl continued to bat his shoulder. His shoulders ached as if the wounds on his hands had moved there too, but he wouldn’t tell the others that—couldn’t tell them.A moment later and Darl left, replaced by Iliad, who skidded down the wood surface of the Luu’tre and appeared by James’ side, carrying with him his bow and a single arrow attached to a rope. “We’ve got one chance at this,” he said through gritted teeth, “and then she drowns.”“What are you going to do?” James said, pursing his lips in anticipation.“It’s called being insane.” Iliad drew the arrow and let it fly. The rope hissed as it was dragged through the air, jerking violently one way or another as the wild winds of the storm blew against it. The arrow curved suddenly, yanking the rope into a wide “u”, before crashing through a foot of water and making contact with the reef. Iliad gave one quick pull on the rope and said, “And I don’t recommend it.” He immediately walked away, leaving James to stare down into the turbulent sea and the long rope that was now being pulled taut—though, despite that, it still wobbled in the wind and dribbled rain.James turned around and almost wished he hadn’t. The rope had been tied in an endless collection of complicated knots around the central mast of the Luu’tre. To make matters more complicated, four of Captain Norp’s crew were now holding the rope firmly as if playing a one-sided game of tug-o-war. Iliad was nearby, fastening a pair of thick leather gloves—a mottled brown and gray color that made them look particularly old—over his hands.“You’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do?” James said, widening his eyes as it dawned on him what was going on.“Depends what you think he’s going to do,” Pea said, scurrying around the mast and double-checking the knots—an occasional burst of silver magic forced the rope to re-knot itself, becoming even more tightly bound. “I’d hazard to guess that tap dancing and aggressive berry picking are not likely to be what he’s going to do.”“To answer your question,” Iliad broke in and turned to face James. “Yes. I’m going to do something I probably shouldn’t do. And it will probably kill me.“Dare I ask if it will succeed?” James smiled faintly, recalling the last time he had asked a similar question.Iliad got the joke. “Only if you want the truth, James. I’m afraid I’m in no mood for a good fib.” Then Iliad held out a strip of oiled leather, gritted his teeth and slid down the tilted ship, reaching out his leg at the last moment to propel himself over the edge. James could only watch helplessly as the nimble man disappeared. He closed his eyes tight and held his

World in the Satin Bag

Popular Literature: Will it die?

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It’s interesting what you find on the Interwebs these days. Not too long ago Stephen King went on record saying some rather entertaining things about Stephanie Meyers and J. K. Rowling: King compared the Mormon author to JK Rowling, saying that both authors were “speaking directly to young people”. “The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good,” he told an interviewer from USA Weekend. This is being likened to a virtual bitchslap and it created quite a response both in the news and in the blogosphere, including some interesting points about who has authority in determining what is good literature. Julia Weston says that all of us have authority in that (readers, writers, academics, etc.). But what’s more interesting about Weston’s blog post is this: I agree that as a population we’re too heavy on the “pop culture” right now, but I believe that – just like the economy – this type of thing runs in cycles. Eventually the majority of us will get tired of easy-reading pop fiction and long again for literary substance. The reality is that this will never happen. I know, I’m saying “never,” and you should never say never, right? But that’s just it, popular literature isn’t a form that arose because it was a get-rich-quick scheme. Popular literature arose because it had something to offer to a public that wasn’t necessarily educated, or perhaps didn’t enjoy reading because much of the “good” literature was too complicated or dull. These were folks that, while not simple, were looking for more simplistic prose styles to make the process of reading faster, smoother, and simply more entertaining. It’s not that folks who read popular literature don’t know what a good book is, it’s that they see literature for what it really is (entertainment) and have very specific opinions on what constitutes entertainment. There will always be a massive readership for popular literature (whether it be romance or mystery or science fiction or fantasy–in their “popular” formats, I mean). It’s not going to go away as Weston suggests. I think she places too much importance on “literary substance,” something nebulous and rather pointless as a descriptive term, and not enough importance on the power of a good read. Literary folks don’t have to like popular literary forms, but they do have to acknowledge that more people read it because it is less convoluted and more direct. It gets the job done without dragging the reader around on a leash. Because of that, it’s a form that will be with us for a while. There will always be people who read popular literary forms (and it will always be a large group). If it were just a fad, you would think that it would have died out a long time ago, but it has been going strong for almost a hundred years now and has only grown. It will continue to grow, too. Some readers may find their tastes changing, becoming more in tune with this “literary substance” thing; but they’ll be replaced by floods of other readers who are only interested in a fast, enjoyable read. We may not find the works they read of quality, but that’s based on our individual perspectives. Individuals only decide quality for themselves (and, in all honesty, there is no real way of determining quality beyond that). At most, we can expect certain factions of it to shrink. The Twilight and Harry Potter fans may find themselves unable to fill the void properly, resulting in some dropping off or being consumed by other popular novels. The only things that truly die in literature are isolated fads: urban fantasy will hit a ceiling and taper off (it will never go away); YA fantasy will likely remain a large entity, but will probably splinter into subgroups, some larger than others, some shifting in and out of the popular sphere; science fiction will shrink and expand as old genres are revitalized or lost. But popular literature isn’t going anywhere. We’re stuck with it, for better or for worse. If you enjoyed this post, please stumble it, digg it, tweet it, and leave a comment. Thanks for reading!

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