SandF Episode #5.2 (Interview w/ Nick Mamatas) is Live!
Over at The Skiffy and Fanty Show you’ll find a brand new interview with none other than Nick Mamatas, who I am referring to from now on inside my head as Master Splinter. The interview went pretty well and we talked about a lot of fascinating things, such as Japanese SF/F, parasites, and his writing. Check it out and let us know what you think! ———————————————————- In other news: I’m on my desktop again, because the keyboard on the brand new laptop apparently needs replacing. This, needless to say, sucks…
An Interview with Kevin Hearne
Thanks to Kevin Hearne for taking the time to answer my ridiculous questions. Don’t forget to check out my review of Hexed. Now for the interview: First things first: what drew you into writing in the first place, and why fantasy in particular? I was drawn into writing by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. Chief’s voice is so well done and I wanted to be able to grab somebody the way that book grabbed me. I wound up writing fantasy mostly because that’s what I enjoy reading more than anything else. Your Iron Druid series draws heavily from Celtic folklore, including figures like the Morrigan and other members of the fae “pantheon.” Why did you focus specifically on the Celtic/Irish roots for your main character, Atticus? What is so interesting about Celtic folklore for you (and, perhaps, for us)? Part of this comes from my loathing for Disney and what they were doing to “fairies.” My daughter thought fairies were cute and helpful and delicate and it was driving me nuts. But then I realized it wasn’t just Disney — there were any number of other sources that had strayed quite far from the original Irish roots of the Sidhe. I’m an Irish/English mutt, so the focus on the lore was naturally interesting to me. For others, I’d think the mythology would be interesting in its own right, since the Irish didn’t follow the same patterns as others. Most cultures have goddesses of love, not gods, for example, and the Irish god of love, Aenghus Óg, was kind of a dick. An interesting aspect of your novel is that it places limits on the various religious deities and figures. Gods, we learn, can be killed. Every “faith” has a magic system unique to it, which has weaknesses or strengths in relation to other magic systems. How did this world in which practically every deity that ever “lived” actually exists come to be? I asked myself why only the Irish pantheon would still be alive and well in the present day when there were so many other great traditions out there. And what it all came down to was that I couldn’t come up with a reason to make the Irish the “one true faith.” The great truth is that we all construct our own truths in our efforts to improve ourselves, and besides, it turned out to be much more fun to write with an inclusive view of the world than an exclusive one. Were you at all concerned that your audience would be too unfamiliar with the various mythologies Hexed plays with? Atticus does, after all, explain a great deal of things, but it’s obvious that he can’t explain it all. No concerns at all. I respect the readers. Fantasy readers in general have some pretty good brains, and if they want to know more about something, they’ll go learn. As a reader myself, I love it when I find books that teach me something and spark a little personal investigation. Would it be fair to assume that you are a dog lover based on Atticus’ relationship with Oberon? In a lot of ways, the two characters have an intimate connection that most people wish they had with their pets (and dog-like critters appear frequently in your book). Why do dog-like “things” dominate the cast of Hexed? I’m certainly a dog person, but the number of canine characters in this particular book is a coincidence. I didn’t have any particular point to make with them. But I can say this series was spawned around the characters of Atticus and Oberon—it was always a story about a man and his dog. All the rest of it came later: those two characters are the core. One of your main villains, the Bacchants, could be described as the moral antithesis of civilized society. Hexed walks a fine line in regards to their conduct, since a lot of what you describe as their modus operandi is sexual in nature. Were you concerned while writing the Bacchants that you might cross a line for many readers? Yeah, I’m not really one who appreciates play-by-play accounts of sexual encounters, because if I wanted that, I could go grab something out of the erotica section. I’m assuming that my readers would similarly appreciate a couple of sentences to paint a broad picture and then just leave it at that. Hexed does deal with religion(s), and a good deal of emphasis is placed on “dead religions” and Christian faith. Was writing about such things a challenge, especially considering the potential for alienation your religious themes could have? Challenging, sure. But completely and utterly fun. By choosing to be inclusive (the Jewish faith, which is very much alive, is also featured prominently), I’m also choosing to be respectful of all those various faiths. Every one is portrayed as puissant and vital to those who believe in them. I don’t go around dissing anyone, with the possible exception of Thor. So the only bone of contention I’ve heard is from people who are offended that I’m treating all religions with respect, as if their religion is the only one that matters. You can imagine how much I care for the opinions of such arrogant people. All three of your Iron Druid novels came out in quick succession (Hounded in May, Hexed in June, and Hammered in July). What do you think are the benefits and pitfalls of such a quick publishing schedule? The benefits greatly outweigh the pitfalls. I got plenty of attention and lots of fans who jumped into the series rather than waiting for it to end. In terms of pitfalls, the only downside is that I couldn’t keep up with the publicity side of things; I couldn’t write enough guest blogs and so on to keep up, and I was exhausted. Still, it was a good exhaustion, because everything I managed to find time to do paid some sort of dividend.
It’s Still Not New (Literary Genre Fiction — Pah!)
Kim Wright has an interesting article on The Million about why literary writers going out to write genre fiction. Here’s a rather amusing set of paragraphs: It will probably always be open to debate whether these innovations are the result of writers seeking creative expression and wider audiences or a calculated move on the part of publishers who are simply trying to sell more product, even if it means slightly misrepresenting a book to its potential audience. But either way, the future seems to be stories which combine the pacing and plots of genre with the themes and style of literary writing. In other words, this crappy market may actually end up producing better books. Because hybrids, bastards, and half-breeds tend to be heartier than those delicate offspring that result from too much careful inbreeding. Just ask the Tudors. The best commercial writers were moving toward this anyway, creating highly metaphorical fantasy works and socially-conscious mysteries, expanding the definition of their genres even before the ex-pat literary crew jumped on the bandwagon. “We’re going to see more blending as everyone attempts to grab a larger audience,” predicts Patriarche, “and the literary snobs are going to have to stop looking down on genre.” Overall, the article is sound, but it does fall pray to an argument I’ve refuted before. Namely, that the whole cross-genre literary-genre fiction, and the literary authors who have crossed over to write the stuff, is new. But it’s been going on for a while. The only new thing is that people are starting to pay attention to it. And the sad truth Wright reveals is that people are paying attention because of the money: Scott Spencer, who has published ten novels dating back to the mid-1970s, was once able to live exclusively on the income from his books and “make this kind of old-fashioned writer’s life work.” But, noting the inherent contradiction between the ups and downs and further downs of literary writing and his need to make a living, he is publishing Breed There are other examples in the article, including a moment when Wright points out that many literary authors are turning to commercial forms of writing, all of which seems to contradict a statement made by a quoted publisher in the article about how writers just want to write. I don’t want to suggest that wanting to make a living as a writer is a bad thing. In fact, it’s quite awesome to make a living doing what you love. Rather, my issue is the continued colonization of genre history for the purposes of the literary elite. All these literary genre books are following a tradition that has been around for nearly a hundred years, if not longer (though SF doesn’t get codified as a genre as we understand it until the 1920s or so). Literary writers who claim that switching to genre or including “literary tropes” into a work of genre is somehow “new” or part of an “emerging trend” are people who simply don’t know the history of the genre they’re appropriating in order to fill their pockets (though not all literary writers are like this, if we’re being fair). And quite honestly, this all tells me that some folks are doing a piss poor job of learning their literary history. I am a genre writer, reader, critic, and academic. But I’ve taken the time to learn non-genre literary history precisely because I understand that the two forms inform one another. SF/F does not exist without modernism, postmodernism, and the various literary movements that followed, preceded, or lived within those movements. Maybe I’m just rambling and acting the fool here, but it’s high time people start acknowledging that genre has been an active participant in the development of our literary and general culture since its inception. That’s not me saying that science fiction deserves to be loved by everyone. Rather, it’s me saying that genre forms are inseparable from the cultural history in which we live, in which writers write, and so forth. The same is true of non-genre forms too.
Committing Blasphemy Against Doctor Who (or How to Kill a T.V. Show)
I haven’t watched the latest episode of Doctor Who yet. It’s not because I live in the U.S. and can’t afford cable. In fact, I have the episode sitting there and waiting for me. Rather, I haven’t watched the episode because I’ve lost interest. Not entirely, mind you. I know I’ll watch the episode eventually, but it won’t be tomorrow or the day after. It may not happen next week. Who knows? I might end up with all the episodes from the final half of this season sitting on my computer before I decide to watch them. Okay, so that worst case scenario is unlikely to happen, but it is true that the excitement I once held for the new season has waned. The new season isn’t a bad one, so I know it has little to do with the quality.* Rather, I think it has to do with the three month gap between episode seven and eight. A similar thing happened with Stargate Universe. I spent the first half of the first season watching every episode (at the time playing catchup, and then doing the week-by-week thing). But then the episodes dried up and I had to wait months before the rest of the season would play. By the time those episodes appeared, I didn’t care about SGU anymore — at least, not as much as I used to. I’d moved on, or I’d simply forgotten a lot of what had already happened and couldn’t be bothered to watch the episodes again to put everything into proper context. I still wanted to watch the show, but I never did… And that’s where I’m at with Doctor Who. Episode seven left us on a cliffhanger. At the time, I really wanted to know what was going to happen, but as time passed, other things flew into my life — new shows took DW’s place to fill the gap, life got in the way a whole lot, and so on. Now that DW has started up again, I’m sort of apathetic about it. I’ve lost all of the rabid excitement I had when April rolled around and the new season hit the airwaves (or digital stream, if you will). I can’t help thinking it has to do with the time gap, this despite the massive gap between the Christmas Special (A Christmas Carol — which was amazing) and the new season. I’ve never understood why producers and T.V. people insert the gap in the first place. First, it’s unreasonable to assume that your entire audience will have access to digital copies (sometimes those digital versions are only around for a short while before they are replaced and a lot of the time there aren’t any digital copies at all — this, of course, is changing). But more importantly, it’s disruptive. It tears the narrative cohesion by breaking the traditional T.V. season model and filling it with emptiness. It’s a terrible model, and one that isn’t all that new to DW.** To me, the traditional T.V. season model works because the gaps between seasons are book-ended by a reboot structure. The new season of Castle will likely include a first episode which offers something new to the existing narrative in order to draw us back into things. Mid-season breaks, however, don’t do this (at least, not in my experience). They are little more than continuations of the previous story, which works when you only have 7 days between episodes, but falls apart when you insert an enormous gap. Think of it as memory fatigue (or brain fatigue or something like that). The longer you draw out the wait, the more likely it is that members of your audience will get bored and move on. That’s a quick way to kill a T.V. show. I say this knowing full well that DW isn’t going to disappear. It will retain a large enough audience regardless. But it will bleed viewers. Those folks will likely not be super fans, but no T.V. show can survive the long term on the backs of super fans. It doesn’t work. You need the average fans and moderately interested too. But maybe DW is a bad example, since its viewer-base is filled with super fans (or appears to be). It’s a show that survives because so many people love it to do, both because the new show snatched them up and because a whole bunch of people have been fans of DW since the early days. Yet I can’t help thinking that the gaps aren’t helping it. DW has lost a sizable chunk of its viewers already (more likely because the tone/vision of the show has changed — for the better, overall, I think) and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that many folks simply didn’t come back to DW for the latest episode. Not because they don’t like the show, but because they’ve moved on. For me, the gaps are nothing but bad. I lose interest. I lose my love. I move on. And I don’t want that. I want to feel like I have to watch the new episode right away or my brain will explode. The nostalgia of that feeling is necessary — desirable. It’s the same feeling I had when the Star Wars prequels appeared in theaters. The same feeling I have for Castle and, in the past, for Battlestar Galactica. Three month gaps and annoying life are taking that away from me for DW, a show I consider to be the last good science fiction show worth watching on TV (re-runs of BSG don’t count). There’s no viable replacement, and the void is deafening. What do you think? Do you dislike the gaps, or am I just being silly by blogging about this? ———————————————————— *I think the new season has a lot of flaws, but that it still reaches for and acquires the spirit of DW we’ve come to love in the years prior. **I started watching the show when Tennant entered
Promo Bits: Kafkaesque edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly
The wonderful folks at Tachyon Publications are up to mischief again with a new anthology called Kafkaesque, edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly. I’m letting you all know about this book because I want it, and one of you is going to buy it for me for my Birthday, which is on the 6th of October. Seriously. You are. Or we’re not friends anymore, you hear? And I don’t care that the book doesn’t come out until November 2011. You can pre-order it. Or steal an ARC from a reviewer. It’s only wrong if you get caught… Anywho. Enough of that. Here’s the back cover blurb (ToC to follow): Franz Kafka died in obscurity in 1924, having published a handful of odd stories in little-known central European literary magazines. Yet modern culture has embraced the stark ideas and vivid imagery of his work. Even those who have never read a word of his fiction know enough to describe their tribulations with bureaucracy as “Kafkaesque.” Kafkaesque explores dystopian, comedic, and ironic fictions inspired by Franz Kafka’s work. In Philip Roth’s alternate history, Kafka survives World War II and immigrates to America, Jorge Luis Borges envisions a labyrinthine public lottery that evolves into bureaucratically-mandated mysticism. Carol Emshwiller invents an exclusively male society faced with its first (mostly) female member. Paul Di Filippo’s journalist by day, costumed crime-fighter by night, copes with the bizarre amidst the mundane. Also includes Kafka’s classic story “The Hunger Artist,” in a brand-new translation, as well as an illustrated version by legendary cartoonist R. Crumb (Fritz the Cat). Additionally, each author discusses Kafka’s writing, its relevance, its personal influence, and Kafka’s enduring legacy. The table of contents are as follows: “A Hunger Artist” (translated by Kessel) by Franz Kafka “The Drowned Giant” by J.G. Ballard “The Cockroach Hat” by Terry Bisson “Hymenoptera” by Michael Blumlein “The Lottery in Babylon” (tr: Hurley) by Jorge Luis Borges “The Big Garage” by T. Coraghessan Boyle “The Jackdaw’s Last Case” by Paul Di Filippo “Report to the Men’s Club” by Carol Emshwiller “Bright Morning” by Jeffrey Ford “The Rapid Advance of Sorrow” by Theodora Goss “Stable Strategies for Middle Management” by Eileen Gunn “The Handler” by Damon Knight “Receding Horizon” by Jonathan Lethem & Carter Scholz “A Hunger Artist” by David Mairowitz & Robert Crumb “I Always Wanted You to Admire my Fasting”, or “Looking at Kafka” by Philip Roth “The 57th Franz Kafka” by Rudy Rucker “The Amount to Carry” by Carter Scholz “Kafka in Brontëland” by Tamar Yellin Let me just say that the ToC looks bloody amazing. Ballard, Bisson, Borges, Filippo, Emschwiller, Ford, Roth, Rucker, Gunn… What an impressive list, don’t you think? My friend Kendra will hear about this anthology promptly. Because she’s kind of obsessed with Kafka… Admit it. You want this book too…
The Science Fiction Renaissance: Who is Our Messiah?
I had a rather strange and characteristically “me” conversation with my friend Adam the other day about the state of science fiction as a genre. One thing that keeps coming up in our conversations is how fantasy has seemingly abandoned the trappings of respectability for the more lucrative pursuit of market share, while science fiction has done the exact opposite. I’m not sure why science fiction lovers (not all, but a good enough chunk) have doomed themselves to respectability at the sake of readership, nor am I altogether certain that SF is weakened by its bid for respect (in part, yes). But it does make me wonder why there are so many fantasy authors that fans can’t stop talking about, while there are so few science fiction authors who seem to have the same impact. Adam often brings up The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi as an example of SF that could revitalize the genre. But are people paying attention, or are the only ones looking at The Quantum Thief the same people who were looking at SF before? I’d guess the latter, as sad as that makes me about the state of the genre I love so dearly. Perhaps the problem stems from the absence of SF in YA and children’s lit circles. There are hardly any SF novels in those categories, and the few that exist are more often of the dystopian variety than the space opera kind (which seems silly to me when you consider how much space opera is like the epic fantasies that dominate the YA shelves). The question becomes: who is our new SF messiah? Who can revitalize the genre by bringing in new readers and give back to the reading world all that glory and sensawunda that made the genre what it is/was? Or will SF sink into a smaller market share and stay there? I’m not saying that SF is dying. It’s not. It can’t die. Not while a huge chunk of the most successful movies these days are SF. Not while Star Wars and other franchises are doing just dandy. But I do get the sense that SF has become almost elitist in its pursuits. That there aren’t many gateway tales anymore (those we point to as gateway tales are often old, stuffy, and not exactly on the advertising list for publishers). I suppose I’m just worrying that we’re shooting ourselves in the foot here. Maybe this has something to do with what Damien G. Walter said about critics and the Hugos. Or maybe it just has to do with being embedded in academia. I think SF has its respectability. We just don’t need it. We don’t need to keep looking for it and trying to get more of it. What SF needs, it seems to me, is an awakening. A new renaissance.