Fantasy Worlds: List Universe’s Top Ten
I’d recommend checking out List Universe’s top ten for fantasy worlds. It’s quite a good list, I think. The top ten includes some obvious ones, such as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and some less obvious ones (heck, even some plain fun ones). So go on, give it a look. It’s a good list. Anywho. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Fantasy Is Easy: Ha!
Why is it that some people believe that fantasy is easy?Fantasy isn’t easy folks. In fact, to write good fantasy it takes a lot of thought and, well, talent. Good fantasy is hard. Good fantasy doesn’t take all the major cliches, put them in a book, and say “there you go, an original piece of fantasy literature”. It’s quite the opposite. In fact, to assume that writing–the process–is simpler just because one is writing fantasy is really a plain idiotic thing to say. All writing is difficult. For many, it’s a job, and very few superbly crappy novels–novels which clearly display the writer’s lack of talent or interest in what he or she is doing–are actually published these days (at least, not by real publishing houses). Crappy novels, of course, do exist, but generally crappy novels are crappy because they are poorly written. Fantasy itself is also quite difficult. Remember, fantasy writers are working in created worlds, worlds that do not exist and never will. Such worlds are populated by humans and other creatures, some humanoid and some not, all of which have their own separate cultures (or a collective culture). The result is that an author can’t just sit down and regurgitate a decent, well rounded fantasy world in one go. Readers will catch on; they’ll know that the author didn’t put their all into it. Writers who write good fantasy–the type that has something to say, that addresses issues that don’t rely on common cliches, character ripoffs from other fantasy works, and entirely pointless bits of “fantasy nonsense”–put a hell of a lot of work into their writing. They have a lot to consider that writers in other genres do not: everything from fantasy races to invented cultures. Some writers are dealing with weird forms of fantasy, the kind we’re not really used to (perhaps Jeff Vandermeer is a good example here). You can’t just say “well I write fantasy because it’s easy”. What exactly is easy about fantasy? You can’t just make it all up and think it will work. Fantasy follows rules. Granted, those rules may defy the laws of physics as we know them, but they do follow a set of rules within the created world and good fantasy does not violate these rules. Magic, for example, is only interesting if it has limitations, and what qualifies as a limitation determines the value of the magic to the story. If there are no consequences for the use of magic, what’s the point? Quite frankly, I find it rather annoying when people say that fantasy is easy. It’s a display of ignorance in the arrogant vein and indicative of the narrow-minded mentality that dominates the anti-genre crowd (yes, I am aware that some people simply don’t understand that fantasy isn’t easy and aren’t necessarily “haters”). There are plenty of fantasy novelists who do, in fact, work their butts off to write a good fantasy book. Perhaps some of the people who say that fantasy is easy simply think so because it comes more naturally to them, while other forms of writing are more difficult. But then, that would mean to someone who writes fiction, fiction is easy and essay writing is suddenly not, right? And is that a fair assessment on essay writing or fiction writing? Just because it seems easier doesn’t mean that it actually is. Or, perhaps what people actually mean is that fantasy is fun? Generally when we are having fun doing something, that something is more entertaining and we’re more interested in it. Again, this doesn’t make it “easy”. It makes it fun, and that’s all. You’re exerting energy at a different level, but it’s attached to the happy side of your brain and not the side that is screaming at you that it’s bored (generally speaking, all writing should be fun, even in difficult times). So, let’s think about this folks. Any time you want to say that fantasy is easy, think about it first. Consider why you think it’s easy and assess those thoughts logically. Is something necessarily “easy” because it’s fun, or because it seems easy to you? And then, to those that treat fantasy negatively in this respect, perhaps you should read the genre more before coming to the conclusion that it is easy. Or, maybe you should write your own fantasy book, sell it, and make millions on it and tell us just how easy that was. I can almost guarantee you that it will prove to be very difficult indeed.
Should SF/F authors read in their genre?
Apparently this is the next big issue that people are discussing across the blogosphere, and likely elsewhere. It all started, so it seems, with an interview Pat over at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist did with David Bilsborough. Some people have taken great offense with certain things Mr. Bilsborough said and it has sparked a bit of a feud in the genre world about whether or not authors should read within their genre. Now, to what Mr. Bilsborough said that apparently has some people in a tiffy, and has other people raising their defensive walls: I don’t see why it [fantasy] should be respected. With the obvious JRR exception, (and possibly Bernard Cornwell’s “Starkadder / Vargr Moon”) I have to say that I’m not the greatest fan of fantasy, at least not the swords & sorcery tradition with all its preposterousness and banality. I’ve read a fair few fantasy books in my life, and am always surprised that such stale, hackneyed and vapid pulp should get published at all. I particularly have problems with US fantasy; there are definite exceptions, of course, but in my opinion the Americans just don’t get it, with their phony Olde-Englishness, green tights, bucket boots, square-jawed ‘Rone Garet’ heroes, pretty-but-with-a-hidden-fire ‘Fern Leah’ love interests, hissing insidious black-robed ‘Sith Mordax’ villains, or whatever it is they harp on about in their hollow regurgitations of Conan, Star Wars or Buffy. Is it any wonder spec. fiction has so little respect? This is what has got people upset, and rightly so. What really hits home is his apparent disdain for the genre. He specifically says, “I am not the greatest fan of fantasy.” How much clearer does it have to get that this guy pretty much hates the genre, with some very minor, and, albeit, obvious exceptions. Everyone says Tolkien is fantabulous, because to not do so is akin to telling Christians that the Bible was written by Satan worshipers. And then you throw out Cornwell, another who has quite a bit of respect in the same fashion as Tolkien due to the types of stories he tells. But, anyone can toss those names out without having read them, presuming that liking said authors is an indicator of one’s worth. And then there’s that opening line: “I don’t see why it should be respected.” Excuse me? You’re writing in a genre you don’t feel should be respected? So, by default, we should just look at you as another of those hack writers that you so despise, because, hey, fantasy doesn’t deserve any respect? I don’t really care if you read within the genre. That’s pretty much pointless to me. John Varley told me in an interview he reads mostly mysteries, but he writes science fiction. And he’s good at science fiction. One doesn’t have to be superbly versed in genre to write in it. I simply have problems with this presumption that just because the genre has quite a few writers who basically write derivative garbage that it should be treated with no respect whatsoever, with exception to a pair of writers who only until recently began pushing out of the land of “crap literature” into the literary academia (the supposed “good literature”). If that’s so, then all literature, by extension, deserves no respect. Literary fiction isn’t graced with a tremendous amount of originality, nor has it been founded upon only great books. There are plenty of crappy, completely useless and utterly pointless novels that have been under the label of “literary fiction” (and I have read quite a few of these crappy lit fic novels). The same can be said about every single genre that has been created and will be created. There are great and crappy science fiction novels, horror novels, romance novels, mystery novels, detective novels, etc. There’s no such thing as a genre of perfection, one in which all the novels are great. Yet we give respect to certain genres while shunning others (“we” being the literate and educated, primarily the academia), despite their imperfections and unoriginality. Of course fantasy has an abundance of what one might call “lesser literature”. Yet this is what people want. They enjoy it. It’s entertaining and that’s it’s purpose. Shouldn’t we respect it for that? Just because you don’t like a specific set of writers, or a specific class of fantasy, doesn’t mean we should shun it to the bottom of a well, forsaking it to be consumed by people who, I suppose, have to be mindless nitwits simply because they like such things. Sometimes entertainment is all you need. That doesn’t make those that read it particularly idiotic or mindless. We should be thankful that they’re reading at all, and even more thankful that it’s because of the people reading “such stale, hackneyed and vapid pulp”, as Bilsborough says, that we even have an industry revolving around the act of writing. Entertainment value, no matter how desperately you want to argue against this, is keeping literature alive. So I say celebrate vapid pulp, because without it there wouldn’t be a fantasy genre, or if there was one, it would be so small and under-appreciated that nobody would really care if Bilsborough released a new novel. Lastly, of course, is the comment about Americans, and I put this last for a reason. It doesn’t bother me all that much. Yes, I think it’s rather offensive that because I was born in America I’m suddenly devoid of taste, and that my choice of reading is cause for ridicule. What does being American have to do with it? That’s my question. This is a lot of that “Brits are better” attitude that I find to be rather silly. I think it’s an inborn pride that has never let up, and, of course, Americans have a similar attitude (or some of us anyway). Some of the discussions about the American comment have been somewhat ridiculous, in my opinion. While I would agree that calling Americans phony and essentially useless is offensive, I
Browsing the Aisles: My Fatal Flaw
…or why I, for some strange reason, almost never buy fantasy titles at the bookstore (unless I’m going there specifically to do that). Going to the bookstore is one of my favorite things to do. In fact, I almost never want to go shopping unless I know I’m going to get to go to a bookstore or two in the process. Book shopping is far more entertaining that shopping for anything else and I imagine everyone but my girlfriend hates to shop for books with me because I am a purely calculated book shopper, and, as a result, I take forever to get done. Most of my friends are done after fifteen minutes, but I’ll be there for another forty-five, or maybe even an hour. But I’ve noticed something about how I shop for books: I almost always buy science fiction over anything else.Now, I know that I personally am an SF nut. I love SF in all its forms (for the most part) and eat it up like candy. But I also love fantasy. Some folks seem to think that I dislike fantasy because I tend to be heavy handed on the subject of cliches and fantasy tropes. Granted,fantasy tends to be highly unoriginal more often than not, but a good writer can make me fall in love with the characters regardless. I’ve read many books that weren’t exactly doing anything new, but that were so entertaining it didn’t matter. The problem for me, however, is that fantasy is really hard to sell to me in the book store. Every time I go I look at the covers and read the backs and see the same thing being repeated over and over. Now, of course, most of those books probably are adding new things to the genre (or at least some of them), but how the hell am I supposed to know when everything looks and, from the summary, sounds the same?SF almost never does this for me. Granted, some of the covers do look similar, but when I pick up a book and read the back there are always new and fascinating ideas being presented. The more I pick up, the more I find that I want, and sooner or later I have three or more SF titles in hand and no fantasy titles (with exception to the occasional YA title, because I love YA for some reason). I know this is not a good thing, especially since I do love fantasy and enjoy it very much, but I can’t help it. For me, it feels like SF doesn’t have to work hard, but fantasy does. SF has the ideas right there out in the open: space ships and interesting aliens, space battles, technology, etc. Certainly, these are cliches, but you can do so much with such things and present new ideas within the summary. But the fantasy stuff is either a dragon or the typical fantasy-looking guys standing someplace that looks relatively generic. Don’t get me wrong, such covers are beautiful, but when you see the same thing over and over it’s hard to really differentiate. Then the story is almost always something about some guy who is a nobody who now must become somebody to save the world from something evil that was locked up or thought destroyed from a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away…wait, okay so that last bit was wrong. Point is, the themes in the summaries all sound the same to me and if you can’t entertain me past that point, I won’t even look inside (it goes back on the shelf). Is there some magical trick to finding the good fantasy in a wall of stuff that looks the same (not considering here, of course, those few titles that try to break out of this mold)?Does anyone else have a similar problem when browsing? Setting aside authors you already read, do you find that finding new and fascinating fantasy titles is relatively easy for you?
Does the Genre Tag Matter?
I recently came upon an article featuring Michael Chabon and Jeffrey Ford in which both authors gave some reasons as to why tagging fiction with certain genre tags isn’t really that important. Chabon states that, “the people it matters the least to are the ones who are doing it. In so many other artistic mediums, it’s not weird at all.” This got me thinking about whether or not tagging novels within certain genres really matters and I’ll send the question in the direction of the reader as well. To me it seems like this is a difficult question to answer. To a certain extent the genre tags are important. They help book stores figure out where to put things and are great for categorizing in libraries and online. I think the question applies, however, to the growing number of works that don’t really sit into any one genre. Take Zoran Zivkovic’s work. His work is highly literary, in my opinion, but there is a lot of that “fantastic” element within each story, some more so than others. It would be somewhat difficult to pin Zivkovic’s work into any particular genre. I would call his work “magical realism”, but at the same time it is a bunch of other things. You just can’t pin his work down. However, there are other writers who are easier to pin down (and I don’t mean this in a negative manner). Tobias S. Buckell’s novels Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin are rather easy to define. Well, at least the latter is. The first reads very much like a steampunk/fantasy novel, with SF stuff towards the end, and the latter is very much an SF work. I will concede that there is obviously little need for genre tags for novels that are just too difficult to pin down. After all, I think it is something unfair to stick something into the fantasy section that is also literary, since people who read literary fiction might not read fantasy and therefore wouldn’t find that novel. But I think that the genre tag is more important than Ford and Chabon seem to think. I think writers do have a certain level of interest in how their books are categorized. If you wrote a science fiction novel and they put it in the westerns section, you might be a little miffed about it. After all, you worked hard to write a science fiction novel and now all the people who would be interested in your work won’t find it. Folks who write very specifically within certain genres probably care a lot more than people who don’t necessarily write in a genre. Then what about the reader? I don’t read a lot of literary fiction, except what I have to read for school. I just don’t like literary fiction. It bores me and quite honestly I read to be entertained. Reading shouldn’t feel like a chore to me. So, I don’t go into the regular fiction section or the literary fiction section when I’m at the book store. I have no reason to. I spend my time wandering the scifi/fantasy section, and occasionally I’ll go to the literary criticism section to see if they have anything interesting in relation to SF/F, or into the science section, or something similar. I’m not the only one that does this. There are a hell of a lot of readers who do the same thing. Why? Because many of us simply don’t like anything else. We like space ships and swords and the like. All fiction is escapist. For me, escaping means actually escaping, not pretending that real life is the same thing as an escape. I live real life and quite honestly, I don’t want to read about it. That’s me. If you took away the genre tag I would be extremely irritated. It already takes me an hour at least to go through the science fiction and fantasy sections at Borders or at Logo’s (this awesome used bookstore downtown). What would happen if you suddenly got rid of all the tags? Well, a lot of new SF/F authors might find themselves in a bit of a pickle. The great thing about the SF/F section is that I can find new authors whose work is of interest. If you take away the tag all the authors will simply be put into a giant fiction section. There’s a good chance I’d never find a new author into the field because of this. There is a huge market for SF/F and if there are works that clearly belong in those genres that aren’t labeled that way it can be a big problem for that industry. I think there is a lot of value in having genre tags, particularly for the fantasy market, which has sales through the roof and is showing no signs of stopping. If everything that was fantasy suddenly became nothing, people would actually have to pull every book off the shelf to see the cover to make sure it is what they’d like to read.Keep the tags. They’re useful.
SF/F Links: April Roundup (First Half)
By the way, this is going to be long since I’m pulling links off my desktop and my laptop. So, get ready for a long list of SF/F related links! Universe Today Want to know what happens when two black holes collide? What about three? Sound like science fiction? Yeah, they asked the same question too. It’s not. Intel, being the cool company that they are, have begun devising ways to protect microchips from cosmic rays. Basically, the chips are going to be smart enough to go “hey, that’s not right” and magically fix themselves–in theory. Want to read more about how all life on Earth is from outer space? So do I. Screw E.T. We’re more interesting (well, not really, humanity is somewhat boring to me now). New images of an actual dust avalanche on Mars! Now all we need are skiers. And just to add to this I think a cute picture is needed: the little blue planet and its moon from Mars. I love this planet. We’re so cool. Apparently Saturn’s moon, Rhea, has rings. Who knew? I always thought their relationship was strictly professional. Hubble, being the great piece of machinery that it is, has turned up evidence for organic molecules around an exoplanet! It just keeps getting better and better. Salt deposits discovered on Mars might be a good place to look for evidence of life (fossilized, but still, life is life). I’m skeptical, but enthusiastic. Even if we find microbial life, it’s good. New evidence has been discovered to suggest that Titan has a liquid ocean underneath its crust! Good news? Yes, actually. This has some interesting implications about the possibilities for life on other planets. Did the asteroid impact for Sodom and Gomorrah happen? It’s quite possible. A clay tablet that has been puzzling scientists is believed to describe an asteroid impact a long long time ago on this very planet. So maybe it really happen, eh? Futurismic First flights from Boeing to use fuel-cells! Yeah! Now we are getting closer to the answer to my question: When oil runs out, what happens to airline flights? The lovely folks in the Netherlands have a low-tech way of converting salt water into something drinkable. To add to the frightening change in our cyber-culture, there are now reports of high-tech heart monitors being hacked into. Scary? I think so. Apparently British waters are a great place to get mostly clean energy. Read about it here. Stem cell research shows it can help deal with Parkinson’s. Babies killed to figure that out? Zero. Good job everyone! In a serious note, this is great news for me because I’d like to see Michael J. Fox come back to to TV. We’re one step closer to suspended-animation, since we can now almost completely do it with mice. Yeah, this is good news because now I don’t have to completely BS this stuff. Afghanistan is smart. Now with food prices on the rice it seems that all those lovely opium fields are being converted to wheat fields. Yay democracy, or whatever prompted them to do that. Listverse Top 10 Sciencific Frauds and Hoaxes. A bonus is you get a nice anti-evolution hoax in there. Fun! 10 More Unsolved Mysteries. I’m particularly fond of 5 and 3. Top 10 Bizarre Genetically Modified Organisms. Michael Jackson isn’t on this list by the way. Top 10 Evil Human Experiments. Because we humans tend to be a little screwed up. Top 12 Things You Need to Be a Mad Scientist. Oh yes, now I have a mission in life! Top 12 Dystopian Novels. Also known as the list of really awesome books. Top 15 SF Book Series! Another good list! 8 Atrocities Committed in the Name of Religion. Not a particularly powerful list (missing a few things that need to be there), but certainly one I will give a thumbs up to. Top 10 Interesting Abandoned Places! I love these kinds of lists! io9 This is fascinating. Apparently studies show that dyslexics are able to work comfortable when working in a language other than the one they first learned. So someone who speaks English might not have much problems working in Chinese. The article also talks about why such people are great at computer programming. Need a 20% decrease in fuel consumption on those oil-guzzling transport ships? Well, attach a sail to it. This might be just the thing we need to stick it to them damned oil companies. Apparently some scientists think we might not be that different from aliens after all. Genetic manipulation might be used for good: stopping HIV in its tracks. Yup. New studies show that we are born with a gene that could combat the virus, but that it is turned off. So, should we turn it on at birth? (Note, the gene is present in people infected with HIV) Detailed military specs on how to stop a giant monster in your home town. Yeah, someone has a lot of time on their hands. The survival guide to bad SF movies. Great list indeed! Want to see something scary? The science vs. scientology timeline! Yeah, apparently the Thetans are inside us all. Apparently this lizard can drink through its foot. That has to suck. Google, being so awesome, is teaming up with MIT to design the first satellite that can actually detect small Earth-like planets around other stars. I love you, Google. Apparently this is the new bacteria that will cause the next pandemic. I’m skeptical. It looks like a wimp to me. Menopause sucks (or so I hear). But guess what? You need men even more now because studies show that you can use testosterone to counter the bad effects of menopause! Yeah! Scientists have found a mirror galaxy to ours. Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not exactly like ours, but it shares similarities. Heathrow Airport will now have a new form of transportation from the parking structures to the airport. And it’s unmanned! Awesome!