First, it’s been forever and a day since the last time I saw the original, and so the news that Hollywood is remaking this classic is both exciting and terrifying. While the trailer looks gorgeous, it could turn into another of those films that is only that (i.e. like Transformers 2). We’ll see if they turn it into something more than just another flashy action flick with no point. Here’s the trailer:
I’m finding myself becoming more and more bored by the style of prose exemplified by the contemporary mainstream publishing model. Not all of it bores me, and I don’t think most of it is bad, per se, but there are times when I will read a book and find myself wondering why I’m reading it at all. I’ve always read to be entertained, but lately some of the books I’ve tried to read have failed on that mark. I lose interest in the prose, not the ideas being expressed (although sometimes the ideas cause me to roll my eyes, which is, perhaps, an unavoidable symptom of having “seen it before and in better form”). I suspect a lot of this has to do with a change in tastes. No, I’m not becoming a weird “literary” reader (though I like me some literary fiction in the SF/F vein), but I do like the novels I read to have prose that does more than just “get the job done.” I want the prose to say something to me, to show me things, rather than tell me they exist. Words like “intricate” or “stiff” are meaningless if I don’t understand the context, or see what it is the author is trying to say. I understand the impulse to have prose that isn’t flowery, but sometimes a little flare to one’s prose can make for a more enjoyable experience. The kind of prose I’m talking about here is weak prose. The author forgets that they’re not just telling a story, but showing one. It happens a lot, and for many readers, that’s good enough–for publishers too, because they sell a lot of books with weak prose. But, this sort of bare bones prose is, to me, a waste of paper. Stories deserve more. They deserve a little description, some clever uses of prose, or a little more than two-dimensional character development or plots. Liven things up a bit, folks. It’s okay, really. Readers will love you for it if you can make your writing a little more interesting. If they don’t, then hit them with a cumbersome object.
Some interesting things have happened today. First, there is an interview with me up on the Outer Alliance blog that you all might want to check out. They asked me some questions about dealing with anti-gay hatred and Survival By Storytelling Magazine, among other things. It’s fairly brief, but well worth checking out. Probably the biggest news for today, though, is the story of the apparent beating and abuse of Peter Watts by U.S. Border Patrol on Tuesday. He has since been released and is back in Canada, but he has to return to Michigan to face trial for what seems to be a trumped up charge that could not only land him in prison for two years, but get him banned from the U.S. for life (he’s charged with assaulting a federal officer, which is apparently adequate reason to beat people with clubs and pepperspray them these days; here I thought these folks were supposed to be protecting us…Watts was on his way OUT of the country, not into it). In any case, Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing has posted a lot more detail about this here, but what is most pressing right now is that Mr. Watts needs money. He has acquired a good criminal lawyer, but because such trials can often run for extended periods of time and he isn’t exactly Stephen King, he needs a burst of financial aid to pull him through. So, if you can help out by donating a little bit of money, I’m sure Mr. Watts, his family, and his fans would be grateful. Donations can be sent to donate@rifters.com. Update: Peter Watts has broken his short-lived silence here. Update 2: The Toronto Star has a more detailed explanation of everything, which further shows that the border patrol folks are total assholes. That’s all I have for today.
(I’d like to add that @maplemuse from Twitter has a blog post that actually takes a very level-headed approach to the Black Matrix problem. I agree with most of the assessments made there, to be honest. The distinction between 4theluv and profit is important to make in this case.) A lot has been said recently about pay rates and what’s wrong with them. Scalzi has chimed in by ripping into a particularly small pulp magazine paying what everyone agrees is a crappy rate, and has even gone after folks who defend lower rates. Others have added their opinions, but it is Scalzi that has had the most impact on it all. And, honestly, great, fine, that’s wonderful. Scalzi has every right to say whatever he likes, but there are few times when I actually disagree with the guy. In this case it’s not because he has the general idea wrong, but because his method of going after the problem is somewhat idiotic and I think it’s about time Scalzi took a step back and shut up. See, Scalzi has never had the same sort of career the rest of us writers have or are trying to have. He admits this. He is in a position in his career where he can get paid loads of money for his short stories; the notoriety of his name makes it possible. (Edit: Oh, and it should be said that the guy deserves it, because he writes good stuff.) But everyone else doesn’t have that luxury. Of course writers should get paid fair rates, but the reality is that there are no fair-paying short markets for SF/F anyway. Even the pros pay crap compared to the highest pay non-genre markets (and by crap, I really mean crap, because there are some literary fiction markets that pay dollars per word, rather than cents). Whether it’s five cents or three cents, it really doesn’t matter, because neither rate is a good one. If Scalzi is going to rip into Black Matrix, then he should probably rip into the whole of the genre short market for its dedication to paying next to nothing for a whole lot of work. If this were still 1930, five cents a word would be great, but it’s not. This is 2009 and even the highest paying, genre-specific pro market barely pays enough to allow a writer to live remotely comfortably for a month in this country. (Clarkesworld, for example, pays 10 cents a word with a 4,000-word limit. That amounts to $400, which is well short of being able to pay my rent, and I live in a fairly cheap area. That’s not to say they’re a terrible mag–there’s a reason they can’t pay $10 a word–just that even the highest paying SF/F short fiction markets don’t pay all that well at all.) On the other side of this, however, are arguments that, to me, make little sense. Some folks out there actually think that pay rate determines the quality of the fiction published; at the same time, though, these same folks acknowledge that, hey, even big name genre writers will submit to a low-paying market for a variety of reasons. Don’t they see the hypocrisy? Let’s dig into the truth: yes, a lot of low-paying markets also print a lot of not-so-great work. But, hell, so do the pro-paying markets. There’s a reason I don’t subscribe to a lot of the big boys, and why their numbers of falling. But some of the lower paying markets also print a lot of excellent work. What about places like Lone Star Stories, Abyss & Apex, GUD, Ideomancer, Electric Velocipede, Shimmer, etc. All these markets pay lower rates than the big boys (and in some cases significantly lower rates), yet are also known for printing great stories. Some of the aforementioned magazines have been nominated for awards or have had stories they’ve published printed in “Best of” anthologies. Such things are indicators of quality. So the idea that pay rate has something to do with quality clearly is not true of all publications (though probably true of many of them). I can’t help feeling that all of this discussion is doing the SF/F community no good whatsoever. It’s another attempt to create a divide over petty nonsense (i.e. pay). I’d love it if every magazine could afford to pay at least pro rate, but the only way that will work is if the market is big enough to accommodate the increased rate. It’s not, and most of the pro markets are fairly specific in the kinds of work they publish. Not all of us write that stuff, leaving smaller, lower paying markets for more unusual or niche short stories. Now, maybe Black Matrix, the market Scalzi has torn to shreds, is one of those crap-paying, crap-producing markets. Maybe. Or maybe it’s another one of those markets that has the potential to be great, that is just now getting its sea legs, and might become something better in the future. I don’t know. I’m not trying to say that pay rate isn’t important. I submit a lot of work to the higher paying markets specifically because they tend to have larger readership, but I submit to smaller, lower paying markets too, some of which have fairly large readerships. Mostly what I care about is getting my work out there, but in markets that seem to matter. What do you all think about all that has been going on? Do you care about rate?
Something I am starting to get really irritated about these days are books with ridiculously small font. I can understand the need to use small font for particularly large books, but I cannot for the life of me get through books with fonts so small I have to wear my glasses in order to see the words (I’m near sighted, so this is particularly bad). Yet, publishers keep doing it, and I’m finding myself more and more incapable of even bothering to pick up books with tiny fonts. There’s another reason too, and that has to do with my interest levels in books. When I read, I like to feel like I’ve accomplished something in a half hour of reading. I’m not a fast reader, so when I spend time reading, it’s nice to know that I’ve gone farther than five pages in a ten minute span of time. If it takes me an hour to get through a relatively small chapter, then I start losing interest in the reading. There is a book I currently have on my review shelf that suffers from this, and the result is that I’m no longer reading it. I might try again in the future, but for now, I can’t be bothered with it. It’s a 6×9 trade paperback with font this size. Or maybe smaller. I don’t now. How big does that little bit look on the screen? On the other side of things, though, there are books with font size that is too big. For children’s books, this is perfectly acceptable, since kids really can’t be bothered to read normal-people font anyway. For adult books, however, large font is kind of cumbersome. I don’t think I’ve ever dropped a book that had large font, but it can still make you a little irritated when you bought a 300-page novel only to find out that it’s actually 150 in more traditional font sizes. So, to anyone publishing books out there, please use a reasonable font size. I know you want to save paper and all, but what is more important: a book that becomes a nice door stop, or a book that gets read all the way through and enjoyed for what it is, rather than hated for how it was put together? What other pet peeves do you all have about the design of books? Let me know in the comments!
I’ve been expecting a couple packages the last week or so and, to my surprise, today I received an interesting little postcard from UPS. Here’s what it says: We are unable to complete delivery because:CORRECT STREET # NEEDED. NOT DELIVERED. The curious part? The postcard came to my mailbox, the same address the package in question should have been delivered to. So, the question of the day is: how did they manage to deliver the postcard to me and not the package? Clearly they know where I live… And you thought USPS was bad.
