June 2012

SF/F Commentary

Question: When Will the Tramp-Stamp Urban Fantasy Novels Die?

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Anthony Stevens was kind enough to ask the following question my Google+ page: When are the mass-market paperback publishers going to outgrow the cute-young-thing-with-the-tramp-stamp-and-a-sword/pistol/flaming-ball-of-plasma cover art? What comes next to catch our eye? Technically, that’s two questions, but I don’t have a life to prevent me from answering them. First, the “tramp stamp” urban fantasy cover trend is unlikely to go away anytime soon.  Why?  The simplest reason:  they’re selling.  The best way to change the way publishers package books is to change the way the public reacts to book covers.  Publishers aren’t stupid.  When they have a tried-and-tested method for selling books, they’re unlikely or unwilling to give that up just to appease someone’s sense of taste.  “Tramp stamp” urban fantasy is just one set of tried-and-tested cover concepts. And that’s the crux of the matter.  Publishers don’t really care about the outliers.  We’re not the primary market for their books (sad, I know). Second, predicting trends is kind of impossible.  What will replace the “tramp stamp” cover?  No idea.  The interesting thing for me is how women are going to influence this decision.  The majority of readers are now women (depending on the study, five times more women read than men), though fantasy readers are evenly split among the sexes.  All these numbers really don’t mean, much, though, since demographics are impossible to develop accurately from readers, with the exception of those statistics referring to all fiction readers.  But if we take the 50/50 split seriously for a moment, then we can get a sense of how publishers have responded to the urban fantasy boom in light of traditional reading demographics.  In the past, men were the readers, and so the cover trends, particularly in genre, had leaned towards supposed male sensibilities (look at some of those science fiction covers from back in the day and you’ll see what I mean).  Genre has been one of the stubborn holdouts on the gender parity front — science fiction is the worst of the lot.  Fantasy, however, started shifting noticeably a few decades ago.  But the covers haven’t.  They still feature the “tramp stamp” in urban fantasy and scantily clad ladies and damsels-in-distress in other fantasy subgenres. All of this is an attempt to get to my main point:  book covers in urban fantasy, and fantasy in general, are likely to trend towards the slow shift in readership.  Unless something major happens among men to convince them to become avid readers, it is likely that the trend in fiction overall will take hold in fantasy and, eventually, science fiction.  I think this will mean an artistic shift not to “girly” covers (whatever that means), but to covers which treat their subjects, particularly female characters, as individuals as opposed to stereotypes or stock imagery.  What will that look like?  Probably not unlike what you see elsewhere in genre, but maybe something else entirely. Then again, I could be wrong. What do you think will be the new trends in urban fantasy covers?  Or do you see the “tramp stamp” trend continuing indefinitely? ———————————————————– Note:  There are publishers who don’t fit the mold I’ve presented here.  Most, however, use covers primarily to sell product.

SF/F Commentary

The #1 Thing I Want on Extended Cut or Special Edition DVDs

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By “Extended Cut” or “Special Edition,” I am referring to any DVD release which includes additional footage in the movie itself or special features which otherwise are not available in previous versions. And what is it that I want from these special editions? The Theatrical Version! One of the things that drives me up the wall with DVDs is when the extended cut doesn’t come with the original theatrical release. If you go mucking about with a movie, I still want to be able to enjoy the film as it was seen by movie-goers. Star Wars fans were pissed off when George Lucas released the original trilogy on DVD without the original versions; we didn’t want the Special Editions that were released in the late 90s, and we definitely didn’t want a heavily edited Special Edition (remember Hayden Christensen put in place of Sebastian Shaw?). Even something like Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings runs into this problem.  The extended editions replaced the theatrical release with an extended cut.  They’re incredible movies in either for, but sometimes all that extra footage doesn’t make for a better movie; it’s there to make fans giggle inside. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these changes, even when those changes are kind of stupid.  But sometimes the theatrical experience is the better one.  Plus, I like being able to ignore the changes without having to buy two different versions of the DVD.  Seems like a really simple thing, but sometimes movie studios don’t give you both versions on the same DVD.  And it’s really annoying… What about you? What is the one thing you want in a special edition release of your favorite movie?

Book Reviews

Book Review: Silver by Rhiannon Held

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Every time I read an urban fantasy, I remind myself that I am not the primary audience.  After all, much of what I dislike about urban fantasy are the very things I dislike about bad books.  Stereotypical characterization, repetitive narratives, and repetitive tropes (if I see one more tramp stamp cover I’m going to blow a gasket).  But Rhiannon Held’s Silver bucked the trend, taking what should have been yet another stupid werewolf novel and turning it into a rigorously constructed sociological foray into a potential werewolf culture. The novel’s focus, oddly enough, is on Andrew Dare, not the character from which the novel draws its title.  A werewolf pack enforcer, Dare discoveres Silver wandering in Roanoke territory, seemingly delirious and injected with, well, silver (the connection to her name is explained in the novel).  Silver’s condition reminds Dare of a past that he would rather forget, and one which we discover through him as he battles against the memories.  Working to uncover those responsible for Silver’s torture, Dare must confront the demons that make him anti-social and unwilling to lead. One might say that I’m an unusual reader when it comes to urban fantasy.  All those flashy monsters and the like really don’t mean much to me if they are substitutes for character development.  What is powerful about urban fantasy for me isn’t so much that it is the fantastic littered in contemporary spaces; rather, it is that urban fantasy seems like a perfect space for examining the relationships between characters, human and otherwise.  Silver is such a novel, with a tangential focus on plot.  What centers the novel, and made it work for me as a fantasy, are its characters.  Dare is sympathetic and mysterious; reading about his development as a character, moving from a man afraid of responsibility to a man who must take it, was refreshing, in part because it meant the story needn’t reduce itself to a long series of random werewolf fights in order to explore a set of themes (in this case:  haunted pasts, torture, pack culture, etc.).  Likewise, Silver, the second POV (less focused in this novel for reasons that become obvious as you read), suffers from similar traumas.  Though her development is less pronounced than Dare’s — it is partly her past that Dare is trying to uncover — Silver’s growth as a character offers a emotional exploration into psychosis and werewolf phenomena. Readers expecting an action-packed novel would do best to explore elsewhere; this is not that kind of story. Perhaps the novel’s greatest strength lies in Held’s attempt to take a fantastical concept — the existence of werewolves — and put a soft science spin on it.  Much of the novel draws attention to the dynamics of werewolf packs and the power struggles that exist within them.  While the idea is likely not original, it is one that Held handles well.  Rather that infodump, the pack dynamics play a central role in the plot, allowing the reader to see the interrelations between packs, the ways in which individuals maintain pack dominance (including Dare’s struggles with his own alpha nature), and so on.  One might look at Silver and call it anthopological urban fantasy.  That would be a fair assessment considering that Held has argued in interviews that the world of Silver is more science fiction than it is fantasy; the werewolves have an implied evolutionary origin in the novel, which will play a more important role in future novels.  Whether her universe can be conceived as a science fiction one is up to speculation; regardless, the rigor with which Held constructs her werewolf culture means the story never takes its fantastic elements for granted.  That’s something I can appreciate as a reader.  The werewolves don’t exist just for the sake of existing, as is sometimes the case in urban fantasy.  They exist because there’s a seemingly logical reason for it.  I sometime call this “building a world that feels lived in.”  Silver brings us that world:  a lived-in-world in the present, with a definable, if not mysterious, history. My largest criticism of Held has to do with what she does not adequately cover.  One of the subplots is the expected development of a relationship between Dare and Silver.  While Dare struggles against his instincts, feeling that even a sexual flirtation with Silver is a violation of his ethical code, he eventually gives in, and it is implied that they will remain mates (in werewolf terms) for future novels.  What troubles me about this is what it says about the characters, and what is not said about how others view their relationship.  In other words, their relationship is, to put it bluntly, troublesome for precisely the reasons Dare cites:  Silver is disabled and still psychologically unable to cope with what has happened to her, even though we see her move away from that weakness towards the end of the novel.  In a very real sense, her ability to consent should be questioned, puzzled out, and explored in more depth.  While Held does attempt to explore this social dynamic, Dare seems to give in too easily to temptation, and not enough resistance, in my mind, is provided by the secondary cast.  Perhaps this stems from Dare’s alpha nature.  If so, I hope future novels will delve into the problems of their coupling. Overall, though, this is a solid first novel.  Even if what Held does is not wholly original, her ability to craft a werewolf mythology that is more anthropoligical than paranormal is commendable — and certainly appreciated by this reader.  Silver is the kind of novel that shows an author’s strengths.  Held handles the character drama with focus and molds a fantastical present worth exploring further.  She has a lot of potential as a writer, and I sincerely hope Silver does well enough to warrant future books, whether in this series or otherwise. If you want to learn more about Silver, you can check out the publisher’s website or Rhiannon Held’s page.

SF/F Commentary

10 Things I’ve Learned From Prometheus (Or, Prometheus: A Testament to the Stupidity of Mankind)

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Because everyone is poking fun at Prometheus, I’ve decided to join in on the festivities. Here goes: 1. Only an American-based expedition could be based solely on the personal beliefs of someone claiming themselves to be a scientist. The Evidence: Shaw and Holloway, the two archaeologists responsible for the Prometheus mission, have nothing but a handful of cave paintings to suggest that aliens visited Earth in the past. The rest of their hypothesis (aliens seeded Earth and left markers to convince humanity to find their makers) are based on absolutely no scientific evidence whatsoever. And the fact that the characters are from a variety of nationalities is irrelevant, since the entire mission is funded by a rich American businessman who has bought into the evidence-less hypothesis. In other words: America’s pathetic tendency to base political and social decisions on the whims of “beliefs” have so tainted the future that the term “scientific exploration” is more ironic than anything else. Thus, the only science in this movie is tangential. 2. In the future, medical pods will remind women that they aren’t important. The Evidence: The one automated medical pod in the movie is designed for the male anatomy. Why? Some argue that this has to do with Peter Weyland’s selfishness, but considering that the pod is perfectly capable of performing surgeries on women (Shaw uses a “foreign body” program to perform a Cesarean section), what this really tells us is that Scott’s future is a patriarchy for the sake of being a patriarchy. Considering that half the planet are women, it is absurd to think that medical pods are not being programmed for women; and if they are being programmed for women, then it really doesn’t make any sense to create two different kinds of pods when you could save considerable amounts of money on production to make one pod for practically all situations. After all, the pod in Prometheus can already perform the necessary surgeries on a female body anyway, just not under the appropriate surgical subheading. 3. Scientists are incompetent in the future. The Evidence: The geologist uses several orbs to map out the interior of the alien ship, but is completely incapable of using that map to find the exit. This is necessary for the plot, in which the geologist and his not-really-a-friend scientist buddy get lost and are then destroyed by evil alien snakes from hell. Likewise, there’s Holloway and Shaw, who refuse to observe quarantine procedures. Worse yet, Holloway decides that because the air appears to be breathable inside the alien ship, it is perfectly reasonable to remove his helmet. No worries about microbes. No attempt by an authority figure to reprimand him. In fact, it doesn’t seem like anyone put much thought into this mission at all. Oddly enough, the only technologically competent people in this movie happen to be the captain (Idris Elba) and his mini-gang of ship people. All three can read the geologist’s map, pilot the ship, use little computers and gizmos with expertise, and so on. But, hey, when you put together a mission based solely on the whims of a bunch of new age archaeologists, I guess you can’t expect to nab a few decent scientists to tag along. 4. Humanity hasn’t learned anything from all the science fiction stories they’ve written. The Evidence: Thousands of movies and books and short stories have been written in the last 100 years alone about robots, androids, and other synthetic beings going slightly mental, and yet we have not taken any of that into account in the world of Prometheus. Case in point — David (Michael Fassbender). Here’s what he’s responsible for doing in the movie: a) Invading the dreams of humans in suspended animation. b) Infecting Halloway with an alien sludge, resulting in Shaw’s impregnation with a mutant alien baby from hell and the death of Halloway. c) Denying Shaw the right to terminate her mutant pregnancy by using medicine (drugs) against her. Why? I don’t know. The movie never tells us his motivations for any of it. So either David is just naturally curious, and therefore dangerous to human beings, or he’s insane. Neither of those options sounds good to me. 5. The Roman statues were based on aliens. The Evidence: The Engineers (Space Jockeys) are all white as stone, perfectly sculpted, and surprisingly shaped like this guy: Some have criticized the film for its strange magic-Aryan-sperm-seeds-the-Earth ideology. I think it’s weird enough that humanoid aliens shaped like Roman statues could only seed other planets with their DNA goop by committing suicide. Seriously? You’re an alien race capable of interstellar travel and you can’t figure out how to stick your DNA into the lifeless streams of Earth without killing yourself?? You’ve got hands…just sayin’. (Yes, I’m aware that the concoction the Engineer drinks probably does something to his DNA. It’s still stupid.) 6. There are no female aliens. The Evidence: There are no female aliens. Seriously. None. Not a single one. Unless Scott is suggesting these nearly-human aliens reproduce asexually, like bipedal amoeba, then what we’re left with is an alien race that believes its lady aliens need to stay home and do whatever it is lady aliens are supposed to do. They don’t eat food, so maybe they just tend to the house (or whatever they live in). Why are there no lady aliens? Seriously. Are the man aliens the only ambitious and batshit crazy, dickish members of their species? 7. Two obviously different species can be the same species. The Evidence: We’re told in Prometheus that the Engineers are us, and we are the Engineers. On top of that, we’re shown it on a screen, where two strands of DNA (human and Engineer) are matched up. And guess what? We’re 100% the same! Wait, what? Have you seen an Engineer? They’re two or three feet taller than us, naturally muscular, and slightly off looking. Just look at him: He’s like Eugen Sandow on PCP! If that isn’t enough

SF/F Commentary

Mid-Year Movie Roundup: My Brief Thoughts On What I’ve Seen So Far This Year

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Thus far this year, I have seen the following movies: Chronicle The Hunger Games The Avengers Prometheus John Carter Snow White and the Huntsman American Reunion The Cabin in the Woods Not many, I know.  Most of them are genre fiction, minus American Reunion.  There are two proper science fiction movies (The Hunger Games and Prometheus), one that could very well be science fiction, but treats its universe like a fantasy one (The Avengers), and some that are technically science fiction, but really fantasy with some technological wonders (John Carter and The Cabin in the Woods).  The last is a pure fantasy (Snow White and the Huntsman). The movie I liked enough to see it twice falls to one film: The Avengers. The movies I thought were quite good: Chronicle (one of the few good uses of shaky cam I’ve seen), The Hunger Games (solid acting with a cool, slightly used-up idea), The Avengers (so far the best movie of the year — Joss Whedon at his best), John Carter (beautiful film with a decent little story), The Cabin in the Woods (Joss Whedon at his best again, ripping apart the tropes of the horror genre). The movie that were better than I expected: Snow White and the Huntsman (some really nice twists on the classic story).  The movies that were so-so overall: Snow White and the Huntsman, American Reunion (they tried to take us to a new level, but didn’t quite get there; still, it was a fun movie). The greatest disappointment: Prometheus (in fact, the more I think about this movie, the more I really hate it) Have you seen any of these movies? If so, place them in the categories I’ve given above and let me know what you think!

SF/F Commentary

First Novels: Are They Forgivable?

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While listening to SF Squeecast’s discussion of Kameron Hurley’s novel, God’s War, I was struck by the suggestion that the novel’s perceived faults were forgivable because it is a first novel. Not having read God’s War, I cannot speak to the accuracy of the suggested faults, and therefore cannot directly discuss Hurley’s novel. However, the question raised by the hosts compelled me to consider my own position on first novels. Are mistakes in first novels forgivable? If so, when do we start to fault an author for not being up to par? There are no quick and easy answers to this question for me, in part because I don’t think a first novel is a relevant starting point for the discussion. What matters, in my mind, is the reader’s first experience with an author, which may occur with that author’s first novel, or may occur at any other point in the author’s career. From my own experience, once I’ve read a bad book by an author, it casts the rest of their work in a different light. If I happened to have started with better work, then I can probably forgive that author for a crummier novel, regardless of when it arrives in their career. But if I started with a crappy novel, it becomes very difficult to convince me to try something else, perhaps because my experience has already been tainted by a negative. There is always the chance that I’ll try something else by that author, but perhaps only with a lot of prodding. After all, there are so many good books already out there — waiting to be read.  For proper first novels, the process is largely the same for me. If your first novel is crap, then it’s not likely I’ll return to your work. But so far in this post, I’ve taken as a given that the negative experience is the result of a truly awful novel. Can I forgive minor mistakes if the overall product is good? I don’t know. Maybe? That might depend on the author. Myke Cole’s first novel, Shadow Ops: Control Point, is far from a perfect novel, but you’ll be hard pressed to convince me to ignore anything else he writes (unless he turns into some kind of foam-at-the-mouth crazy person who thinks we should cut off the left foot of every first born son or whatever).* How much do I care about the flaws in his work? Where is the line between “reasonable flaw” and “complete disaster”? I’m not sure I can define the line at this moment; I’m still stewing over the idea. In other words: it really depends on the situation. Are first novels forgivable? Maybe. But that probably depends on the answer to this question: What makes the novel needing of forgiveness? If the writing is atrocious, then forgiveness may not be forthcoming. Minor plot holes? Who knows… What do you all think about this?  ——————————————————- *Control Point is a pretty good book. Lots of action. A nice take on superhero abilities, and so on. Plus, Myke is a wonderful human being, as I discovered when Jen and I interviewed him here and brought him on for a discussion episode here. Note: I’m using “forgive” rather liberally here for lack of a better word. There are very few instances when a bad book causes offense. So take my use of the word lightly.

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