Hi Folks, John from Grasping for the Wind guest blogging for SMD. I wanted to let everyone know about a super secret little surprise. Don’t tell anyone, but Last Argument of Kings is already available for sale at Amazon, a whole month early!
Ah, magic, the one thing everyone loves to have in fantasy. I’ve been thinking quite a lot about this, mainly because in my world there isn’t a whole lot of magic, or at least the magic is more of less uncontrolled, or unaccessible. So, yesterday my girlfriend and I were walking to one of the national parks around these parts and I started thinking about it. My world is quirky as it is (what with there being evil gnomes in New Timberfax and haunting, man-stealing faery creatures in Barksville). That very quirkiness means my magic has to match it. I can’t have stuff that will seem too, well, magical when everything else is magical in a strange way.So, let’s get down and dirty on the whole magic thing. Who has it?Only non-human creatures, specifically spirits, faery, sprites, and other such mythical critters. Humans themselves have no innate magic, meaning they aren’t born with it and can’t “magically” gain magical abilities. There are no human wizards shooting fireballs in this world. How powerful is it?Depends. For the most part magic is relatively low key. There is lots of manipulation of the mind and the environment, but again, no fireballs or crazy magic (at least not intentionally). I don’t want magic to be a force that can essentially destroy the world through a single creature’s hand. No evil magic-weilding overlords and stuff. Can non-magic folk use magic?Yes, actually. Even though humans don’t have magic, there are elements within the world that contain magic within them. Gnomes, for instance, cannot come to life unless they are built by human hands; the clay itself is magical. Then there are other substances that can be manipulated using alchemy/chemistry, which produce results that can, for the most part, be controlled. Healing potions exist in Altern.Having said that, I do have one substance that I’ve created that will have unstable results: CacticlesVery similar to cactii. They’re sort of a mixture between a vine-like plant and a cactus. Cacticles, however, contain properties that are completely unstable and, for the most part, uncontrollable. Every time you use cacticles for any purpose, the results are random. A person chewing on the plant might light on fire, or turn to stone, or float away, or explode, or a number of other things. As a result, when experimenting with the plant, a lot of precautions are taken. For instance:A person chewing the plant will stand in a bucket, be chained with thick metal that can’t be burned or melted (and so the person can’t float away), then be surrounded by thick walls, in case of explosion, etc. Every time a new result is found that is potentially hazardous, a new element is added into the mix to prevent damage to innocent bystanders.So, the point is that cacticles are extremely potent, making them exceedingly valuable for study, since the potential of the plant itself is limitless. The problem is that controlling it is just about impossible (or so the human folk think). So, magic can be in the hands of the non-magical, just not in a way that is controlled by the individual, but controlled externally through chemical means. Why do I want it like this?Well, to be honest, I’m about sick and tired of all the fireballs and super magicians. I’m more interested in making the human more of an outsider, sort of how we might be outsiders in this world if magic were ever to be proven to exist (or mythical creatures for that matter). Or perhaps the magic folk would be the outsiders in this world? Well, in my world, the outsiders are the humans, since they are the ones mostly out of touch with the natural elements surging around them. As a result, they become isolated or targeted by the magic community. I wanted magic to be limited on purpose, because I don’t want there being the possibility of super overlords and what not.Humans will, of course, have ways of using magic, just not directly. They’re means of magic is limited too, since it revolves around understanding natural elements and plants and being able to manipulate them to do what one wants. One can’t just go “abracadabra” and make a magic healing plant. It takes time and dedication to find the right formula. Cacticles may have immense power, but that power is uncontrollable. One would have to have tremendous luck to use it for evil means and not explode or die in some other horrible manner. I think that’s more than enough on magic for the time being!
I just wanted to let everyone know that I am going on vacation tomorrow. There are several guest bloggers lined up for the days I’ll be gone. I’m not sure how many posts will be put up while I’m gone, so if you see a reduction in daily posting, it’s cause I’m gone. No worries, though. I imagine some interesting content will show up from Tia and John and what not, since both of them are fantastic bloggers that I follow on Google Reader fairly regularly. Thanks to them for volunteering to help me out. There are some others I’m hoping will accept my invitation soon too, and if they do while I’m gone, thanks for blogging for me! Anyway. I will be gone for about a week. I’m going to Oregon with my girlfriend to see some of the family and to take a little roadtrip. We’re going to see some neat stuff, and a certain special location located in Portland that she’ll be excited for. Anywho!
Everyone else is talking about it, so I figure I should throw in my two cents. Firstly, I’m not going to go into the giant rants that others have, because I think the majority of what needs to be said has already been said. If you want in-depth discussion of this, then go here, here, here, or here.My thoughts on this are as follows: Should we be basing any of our discussions on voting population? I’ve never once voted on the Hugos and never really wanted to (no offense to the writers, I just don’t want to pay to be able to vote for a book). How many people are the same way? Also, in reference to the graph, that doesn’t really cover anything beyond a basic representation of the facts, and leaves out the fact that there aren’t a lot of writers in their twenties or thirties in the first place.I do believe there is a generation gap, but I think it will be nearly impossible to pin down to an exact percentage or number. There’s no way to be entirely certain that old folks only read old folks and young folks only read young folks. Heck, did anyone consider that a lot of readers might not even know what the hell the Hugos even are? Seriously. I didn’t know what the Hugo and Nebula awards were until I picked up a copy of Ender’s Game and read it on the cover. Even then I just went “oh, it’s an award, cool!” It wasn’t until my early twenties that I knew what the awards were and started to become more involved in the writing world. A lot of people may not even know the Hugos exist. After all, it’s not like the Hugos are on television or on the radio. The only time you hear about them is online or on a book and very rarely in regular conversation with folks.There are just too many factors in all of this for us to be even remotely capable of pinning down what the generation gap actually is. There probably is a gap, but I don’t know if it’s a significant one. It might be, though. Granted, I don’t know everything and perhaps I’m missing some valuable points on all this. What if the gap is accidental? It’s not like writers advertise their age’s, unless they happen to be very young and it’s needed to boost sales. I read just about everything, regardless of age, but I’m also not the average reader, I suppose. What do you all think about this? Do you feel there is a big generation gap in SF?
Possibly the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen done with water. Discovered this video via i09. Strange, eh? Anyone know of any other bizarre art forms? (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
I was recently reading this post regarding what might be a change in the way publishing works around these parts (these parts being everywhere) and it got me thinking: maybe there will be a change, but that change might actually be a bad thing.The author of the post I linked sites examples within music (Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead) in which the musicians bypassed the traditional route (record labels) and recorded/published their work themselves. The problem I see with the argument is that these aren’t good examples of “self-publishing” within the music industry. Both NIN and Radiohead were popular before they broke from their labels. Granted, NIN had a lot of issues with the music industry from the get go, but they were still popularized while with a label. They’re not good examples of folks bypassing traditional routes and becoming popular. But that’s really not directly related to what is being argued.The argument is that the introduction of services like Lulu and Amazon’s version of self-publishing (plus loads of other sites offering free publishing services using a POD model) now allows a lot of folks to publish without incurring the cost during the process (mostly, since you do have to pay a small fee to be able to distribute via Amazon and what not). But will this become a means by which everyone goes to bypass publishing traditions? Even a better question is whether it should?Well, for obvious reasons the first question is pretty much answered. Folks are using Lulu and such. They are self-publishing their work and distributing it. This is good and bad at the same time. It’s good because there are authors who simply can’t get with a traditional publisher because they write niche stuff, and now such authors have a place they can publish without paying a year’s worth of wages for printing. I just finished a book that had this very issue that was self-published and it was actually a fantastic read, in all honesty. But that also means that loads and loads of horrible garbage is printed that wouldn’t be picked up by a real publisher even if it were the proper genre/style. I’ve been exposed to this too. In fact, there has been a recent feud over at YWO regarding this very subject: one young author published his book and could not take the criticism offered by those that did not share his enthusiasm of greatness. This author has, of course, gone off the deep end and begun attacking me on Twitter as well, seeing how I was apparently the most brutal of the bullies, when really I only submitted that his book was horribly written, because it was (it was practically unreadable and just because you self-published something doesn’t make you a great writer).I have a lot of issues with the inclusion of the ease of self-publishing. My main problem is that it’s a self-damning process. Yes, there are going to be a few fantastic books done through Lulu, and likewise there will be many good books, but for every one fantastic book there are about two hundred wretched books, and that leaves it to the customer to wade through all the crap just to find something that is even readable. At least when you go to Borders or B&N you know that the vast majority of things in the store are at least edited, copy edited, and basically readable. But with self-publishing you’re basically taking a wild gamble no matter what you buy. Maybe you’ll get a good book, but most likely you’ll end up with something under-par, something you’d rather not have wasted $17 on in the first place.So, I see problems with the self-publishing model, especially the fact that it is so easy, and I see the change as more negative than positive. If more folks were spending the appropriate time and cash to edit their novels, it might be different (and Lulu offers these services for a fee, by the way), but practically nobody is doing this. We’re left with unedited tripe that floods the self-pubbed market and makes it impossible to wade through. I’ve never bought anything directly from Lulu because of this very problem.Perhaps we’ll see more authors taking control of their work, but will this be a good thing overall? Perhaps for popular authors, ones who already have a following, but I don’t see the self-publishing model improving in quality, just in quantity. Yes, Lulu is a great service. It’s wonderful if you need a printing for something you want to put out and don’t want to spend thousands of dollars. Lulu has also made it tremendously easy for folks to print works as the “publisher” rather than the author, which is fantastic for the rise of independent presses. The problem, however, is that such things are a rarity, and that is perhaps because many of the folks who would be up for such a thing are burdened by the negativity that comes with vanity presses and even Lulu. Lulu is great, but we all know it’s a self-publishing firm and that there are thousands of hopelessly terrible books floating around in its catalogue.The question now is whether I truly feel there will be a change in publishing. Yes, and I’m very much against it. I fully and totally agree that the current publishing models adopted and desperately clung to by the larger publishing houses is outdated and is in great need of adjustment not only for the sake of publishing in general, but for readers and writers alike. But, and this is a big but, if changing means reducing the quality of literature–and by quality I mean simple things like writing that is readable both stylistically, grammatically, and spelling based–then we are going to deal with what might be the first actual death of literature. Do any of us honestly believe that people will keep reading if all they get is garbage? None of us like wading through trash to find something we’ll
