Plots Are Not Copyrightable
(I am not directing this topic to any specific event, though I know some of you who read my blog will remember me making this statement in relation to a particular incident; here, I am not making the argument in that relation, but in a more general sense.) As much as writers might want to keep their plots and storylines safe from thieves, the reality is that short of never putting your work in print and keeping it locked in a volt and buried in your backyard forever, you cannot protect your plots anymore than someone can protect their children from experiencing bad things. No matter what you do, you’ll probably find that someone has “stolen” your plot already. Why? Well, because plots are not copyrightable. J. K. Rowling can no more protect the plot of Harry Potter than you can protect the plot of your yet unpublished novel. Rowling, however, can protect what amounts to her intellectual property, and there are instances where she has gone after people for what seem like clear acts of plagiarism (I don’t know enough about them to have judgment, except in the case of that encyclopedia thing that Rowling killed with the power of a lawyer). But Rowling has not won cases against plagiarism by arguing for plot; yes, she has made those arguments, but what has worked for you are a collection of factors (characters looking and acting remarkably like her own characters collected with plot, setting, etc.). If she were to argue that someone had stolen her plot, well, then you’d be opening up a can of worms in the writing community, with everyone suing everyone for supposed thefts. Personally, I think this assumption that one can protect his or her plot stems from an inability to acknowledge that originality is mostly dead. Outside of the “seven plots,” there are far too may near-exact plot replicas flooding the mainstream markets; there are enough Dan Brown rip-offs as there are Tolkien rip-offs (okay, so maybe that’s a bit much, but you get my point) all because of the fact that plots cannot be protected. Maybe they should, but then where would we get our literature from? It doesn’t take a genius to look at a few of the most popular fantasy novels and see where they overlap. Many arguments have been made that Eragon and Eldest by Christopher Paolini are directly taken from Star Wars, which, of course, stole directly from mythology with the help of a fellow who knew quite a bit about the stuff in the first place (Joseph Campbell). But George Lucas isn’t suing Paolini presumably because he’s smart enough to know a bad lawsuit when he sees one (and that might be one of the few things he gets credit for in the smart department, since his directing style, while not absolutely wretched, truly pulls away from the greatness that Star Wars once was—it’s still good, just not as good as it used to be). Plots, to be fair, are simply not original elements by a long shot. They certain can deviate and change little bits here and there, but, ultimately, plots are a constant mimic of themselves, like self-replicating mental machines drilling themselves into parts of our psyches where we have to really dig to be able to yank them out and see what they’re up to. The best kinds of stories are those that can take an overused plot and turn it into a powerhouse fantasy epic (or insert your favorite genre here). Nobody suggests that Tolkien or J. K. Rowling (except Orson Scott Card, who is obviously a very special brand of crazy) be brought up on charges of plagiarism, despite the fact that, if we assume plagiarism to include plot, these two are probably some of the most prominent plot plagiarizers of all time, from the very inclusion of prophecies and chosen ones to evil magic rings and fantastic unintentional allegories about real events. So, either we hold our favorites up to the guillotine just as we hold up the ones we dislike, or we let it all go and acknowledge that we don’t own plots, we just use them. The characters make the world go round, not the writer-as-god-directed storylines that pull them to and fro for no other purpose other than to get to the end (they’re more complicated than that, but that’s for another place and another time). And now I want your opinion. Leave a comment!
Capitalist Fantasy: Where’s it at?
I had an interesting though the other day. With the exception of urban fantasy, which tends to take place in an nearby past or version of the present (with varying degrees of separation), the fantasy genre lacks a capitalist vein. Science fiction, of course, has plenty of this, but why doesn’t fantasy? The obvious answer is: time period. Most fantasy is written in a pseudo-medieval period with significant resemblance to medieval Europe with exceptional variations (the inclusion of magic, fantastic creatures, and different locales). Since capitalism did not exist in such periods, it makes sense that such places would not be run by capitalist structures. To be fair, medieval Europe was not capitalist primarily because of two factors (at least as I understand it): slow transportation and medieval feudalism. It’s difficult to imagine an economic system like capitalism functioning in a place that is not only seemingly run by an authoritarian figure whose personal rules stand for the word of God (more or less), but also incapable of supporting a system that needs to change, adapt, and move at a rapid pace. Fantasy, thus, enacts this real-world lack; capitalism does not exist there because, as in our world, it cannot. But why not? With magic such a prevalent force in many fantasies, why wouldn’t we see more of the capitalist structures that made up early capitalist America (or Britain, for that matter)? Magic lends itself so well to being a commodity, for good or bad. You can look to some of the strongest examples of late in which a market is given shape, and yet nothing in that shape indicates any sort of logical economic type. Harry Potter, for example, has Diagon Alley, and Gringott’s Bank, but yet we hear nothing of wages. We’re told there are rich and poor families, but it seems that the richest families embody the nobility and the poorest seem, more or less, like peasants. All of this is on purpose, I suppose, because capitalism is not a central theme, or even a side theme; capitalism is not important to Harry Potter. But why shouldn’t it be? Why does fantasy have to ignore these significant social issues in exchange for the adventures and prophecies (not all fantasy does this, but the stereotype of the genre is not unfounded). I suppose what I’m asking is: where are my capitalist fantasies? Double entendres are clever!
Entrenched Opposition: A Rebuttal (Part Two)
Riadan, one of the commentators on my recent post on science fiction’s battle against an entrenched opposition had some interesting things to say. Since his or her comments were rather long and deserved significant rebuttal and discussion, I thought I would approach them via a dedicated post. So, without further adieu, here goes a (mostly) line-by-line counter argument to Riadan: No, Science fiction does not have a near impenetrable no-mans land to cross. No, Science fiction does not have an impenetrable social barrier to destroy. Science fiction has grabbed the hearts and minds of the populace. Who these days are not born with the concept that maybe, just maybe, the future will be awesome. Maybe, just maybe, our race will not lob deathweapons at every soul on earth. I know you are a young white male. Who of your peers are not touched by science fiction in a very personal manner? Do you have friends who are Star Trek geeks? Or Star Wars nerds, perhaps. We are fucking science fiction, and many people realize our scientific and technical world. I think we have the problem here of science fiction style. True, science fiction has grabbed the dominant culture fairly easily in recent years, but this is through the medium of film more-so than the medium of books. Film, unfortunately, is not approached, consumed, or even perceived as the same thing as a book, and so is a separate entity. But, film, especially in film studies, has had a hard time trying to make the case for the value of science fiction film, particularly because what has been most successful in film are not those occasional films with something “valuable” to say (making a personal judgment here on “value”), but those films most recognized as flashy or indicative of what Ellison and others have angrily called “scifi” rather than “science fiction.” So, while Star Wars and Star Trek and Transformers and all those other massive franchises, and even small ones like Firefly, et al, have captured the minds and hearts of the general viewer, they have not wormed their way into the esteemed clutches of the academia at the same pace. There is, I would argue, far more work to be done in film than in literature. That said, working back to literature, I think it is fair to say that this assumption of widespread adoption of science fiction literature is not nearly as true as you might think. We frequently see talk of science fiction literature sales dropping (with the exception of media tie-ins); if that is true, then it is hard to say that science fiction has even managed to maintain its own selective readership, let alone been properly exposed to or adopted by those outside of it. What argument are you rallying against?You quote Margaret Atwood without taking into account her context. She does write literary fiction, even though I sneer at her applying such a label to herself. She has never denied that she has written sci-fi novels. Her commentary to Oryx and Crake proves that (forgive me for not citing correctly). Her commentary has never suggested that she calls herself a “science fiction writer.” Quite the contrary. In fact, she goes to great lengths to get around the fact that she does write science fiction by pulling the “furniture” argument or using terminology that was never meant to be used the way she proposes (speculative fiction began as a term to mean science fiction and has since been adopted as the umbrella term for SF and fantasy; she seems to think it’s something else). The problem with Atwood is that even when she seems to be accommodating, she is simultaneously defending her high-brow position of literary quality and other such mumbo jumbo. Take her 2005 article for the Guardian. Sure, she starts to admit, there, that she writes science fiction, but also goes to great lengths to say she does not. She’s saying “you can call it whatever you want, but I call it this, and that’s that.” The fact that Atwood actually does write science fiction, but refuses to use the label herself implies that the little bit of literary snobbery that keeps SF out of the literature party on Saturday nights is still alive and kicking. You do not provide an adequate counter-argument for your statement. There is no pro to your anti. There is no thoughtpolice to your Winston. Instead you fawn over the achievements (and great achievements they are) of the sci-fi greats of the past (though you missed out a few. The genius of Olaf Stapledon, and the portentous paranoia of Ballard and Burgess did well to establish sci-fi as mainstream and as *ahem* winning) and while fawning you provide no counter. What is the counter? Science fiction certainly has made great strides. There are, as I mentioned, a handful of programs dedicated to the stuff and even a research organization, and colleges have begun to include more science fiction curriculum. But that doesn’t counter the fact that science fiction isn’t there yet. It hasn’t secured its place. It has a very big leg in the door, sure, but it has yet to break through with its torso and head. The anti-SF crowd periodically slams that door against SF’s leg just to make a point. I get that SF has come a long way, as a film genre and a literature genre, but coming a long way is not the same as making it. It’s getting there, but we shouldn’t be too secure as SF fans to think that the war is over. The entrenched opposition is waging a fierce battle. Instead you use an “us-vs-them” mentality, which does nothing to forward the so-called “cause” of science fiction. Science fiction was born (as we know it. Fiction magazines of the thirties etc) as a product of the popular.Science Fiction is a Popular Movement. “We” won with the printing of the first paperback sci-fi novel. We won when the first person
Entrenched Opposition: Science Fiction Ain’t There Yet (Part One)
(This is part of a potential new series of posts. I really want your thoughts on this, particularly constructive criticism. If you hate this, say so. I don’t care if you hate it. It’s what’s on my mind, and if it’s leading me in pointless directions, I’d like to know.) When can we say that science fiction has officially crossed the boundary into becoming a legitimate field of study in the eyes of academia (or, at least, the scholars that fill up the positions that, collectively, are known as the literary academia)? Is it possible for science fiction enthusiasts, critics, fans, readers, lovers, obsessives, or psychotics to raise up their hands and say, “Victory?” Science fiction has earned its place in history and in the classroom; we, the science fiction enthusiasts and lovers, know this as well as we know that the sun must rise every day (perhaps only a handful of you would argue otherwise). Science fiction deserves to be taught just as Mark Twain deserves to be taught. These are facts, incontrovertible. And science fiction has, in a way, reigned victorious over the opposition, and has reigned for as long as it has existed as a genre (even hidden and un-remarked-upon by its makers, for Mary Shelley and the handful of others before her could not have known that their speculative visions would have sparked an entire literary movement that stormed onto the scene in the early half of the 19th century and never let up). 1984, we would argue, is science fiction; Margaret Atwood, Mary Shelley, Cyrano de Bergerac, and all those names forgotten by, or never exposed to, public school students have written science fiction, no matter how hard some of that lot would argue otherwise. But, despite all this, despite 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, Utopia, and other “literary” tales, science fiction has not won. Despite the extensive study of the genre in universities across the world, despite the Science Fiction Studies degree program at the University of Liverpool, the Science Fiction Research Association, the Modern Language Association’s inclusion of a science fiction and fantasy discussion board, or the various high-profile literary critics like Phillip Wegner, Frederick Jameson, Samuel R. Delany, Darko Suvin, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., science fiction has not won. The opposition is entrenched, buried like a human being’s personality under a mountain of psychosis. We are the foot soldiers marching across flat terrain to an “enemy” set up in fortified positions, in trenches and bunkers and underground tunnels, who have been preparing for this battle without knowing they were doing so. And they have superior numbers. You see, for all that we have managed to achieve, science fiction has yet to claim “victory.” It can’t, because whenever we say “well, science fiction has been in school curriculum for decades,” the entrenched opposition throws an un-combatable argument back at us: “1984 is not a science fiction novel. It’s literature. It just uses the furniture of science fiction, but it’s not SF. It’s real literature!” (Image found here) Margaret Atwood, bless her soul, has been one of the most vocal about this position, along with Harlan Ellison. They do not write science fiction; they just use the furniture. Interesting how you don’t see it work the other way: imagine a science fiction author being called “literary” and telling everyone, “I do not write literary fiction. I just use the furniture.” Does the argument make sense? Of course not. But if the entrenched opposition made any sense, this “war” would have ended long ago. But these arguments are what maintain the divide. The indefatigable persistence of this position lends itself well to the ears of those who turn their noses at the SF/F community. Science fiction, they say, is not literature. It’s mindless fluff. It’s escapist drivel. It’s nonsense masked by weak prose and hebetudinous style. Therefore, 1984 cannot be science fiction. It’s too good for that label. Margaret Atwood is a literary writer; she does not stoop to that all time low embodied by the science fiction genre. No. We are too good for that. You see, science fiction must combat this entrenched mentality; it must push against the fold that cannot be unfolded, and must learn the tricks that are not tricks. We cannot use their language; we cannot say “it is science fiction, even if you say it isn’t,” because our realities are different. We do not presume to hold science fiction up as perfect. Just as the literary establishment segregates itself from the popular literature (that, they claim, devalues all that is wonderful about the written language), science fiction enthusiasts and critics segregate. We have to, because we are not naïve to think that all science fiction is good or worth subjecting to critical inquiry. Science fiction is a mixed bag, but we seem to have a decent idea on what constitutes good and bad, what is worth more than the label of “escapist fluff.” Some of that fits into the rigid universe of the entrenched opposition; some of that does not. It is that which fits that we must reconcile and drag out of the abyss the opposition has created for it. 1984 is science fiction. It does not “use the furniture.” It created the furniture (dystopian furniture, to say the least) and became a model. The models are our friends, our allies in the fight. But how do we wrestle away that which fits? How do we un-entrench the opposition long enough for them to see that science fiction is not a label of debasement, but a mark of honor? To be called a “science fiction writer” is not to be called “garbage,” but to be seen as worthy of the adoration of a niche, of rabid fans who devour anything under the science fiction label with at least half as much fervor as the fans of Twilight devour Edward. This is the question to be asked and answered. I have asked the question. The answer will come
Science Fiction, Writing, and the Race Gap
I have recently been reading a unique book called Astrofuturism: Science, Race, and Visions of Utopia in Space by De Witt Douglas Kilgore (that name is a mouthful). One of the unique points he tries to make is that science fiction is, in some respects, racist; Kilgore does not argue that the fiction of writers like Clarke, or other more recent authors, supports racism, but that the very absence of people of color suggests, as he puts it, the extinction of non-white, non-European people. To put it differently, Kilgore makes the argument that science fiction in the past, and this is, I would argue, still true today, imagined the white European state as the continued dominant cultural pattern (think Star Trek, Star Wars, et al.). Plenty of other arguments are made in the introduction to Kilgore’s book, but this one is what struck me most. Kilgore’s take on race and how it has been perceived interests me because I have to lodge a disagreement. If RaceFail has taught us anything, it is that writing outside of one’s comfort zone is difficult, if not impossible, and that attempting to do so can lead you into a lot of trouble. One can attempt to write from a black perspective as a white male, but there have been few writers who have pulled off such a feat to the satisfaction of those most vehemently concerned with this issue. RaceFail pointed out the futility of writing PoC. But Kilgore takes all this a step further and hints at an intentional or unintentional extinction of non-white races by the fact that they are, for the most part, practically nonexistent (and when they are present, they rarely have good roles, and are, more or less, there to act as furniture, as if to say “see, we still exist”). This seems too simple. For example, to make such a claim, one must know the psychological conditions that produce these sorts of white-dominated works of fiction (some assumption is made on Kilgore’s part that all the things he has read have all been predominately about white people; for clarification, there is no assumption on Kilgore’s part that any particular author is racist, though some may be). How might where someone is raised influence one’s writing? Could we say that an author living in a predominately white area might automatically be inclined to write about white characters? And on the inverse, could we say that an author living in a more mixed place may be more inclined to write about characters of various races? They say “write what you know,” and I have to be honest in saying that I only just recently began to understand what it is like to live in a place where white is not the dominant color. Coming from California, my exposure to people of other races was limited, particularly in Santa Cruz. There were Hispanics and blacks and Japanese and Chinese, and a few Indians too. Mostly, however, Santa Cruz and all the places I had visited in California were populated mostly by white people. But here, in Gainesville, the story is different. I only realized how different when I actually came here and saw it with my own eyes. In looking back at my writing, this absence of exposure does show up in my fiction. It was never intentional, but the world that I had lived in did not make easy the process of writing about people considered different by skin color (I don’t agree with this, but dominant society does; I think race is a stupid concept anyway). Now, however, I imagine myself becoming more comfortable with the prospect of writing about characters of different colors. It’s not that I did not want to write such characters, but that I never knew how. You can’t tell someone “write a Chinese character now, and it has to be authentic” if that person is not comfortable with doing such things. We write in our comfort zones because those are the spaces we know well enough to remain close enough to reality to be accurate. But there is a lot of fear, too; after all, if you fail to properly portray a character of a certain race, you will have effectively committed career suicide. Once the mob knows you exist, it’s game over. Similar things happen if you don’t write PoC. Maybe this is isolated to myself, though. I can’t say. I know little about the biographical histories of science fiction writers, but I do know my own history. I write in my comfort zone because it’s what I know. I don’t presume to know the “black experience” or the “Japanese experience” or the “Irish experience.” I know my experience. That’s where I write from. And since that is true, then Kilgore would say that my futures are tinged with the extinction of people of other races. That seems unfair. Now it’s time for you all to chime in, because I like hearing your thoughts on things like this. Have at it!
A Modest Proposal (For Literature Curriculum)
(This is a short “essay” I wrote for my pedagogy course. I’m putting it here because I think it might be of interest to you all. No, this is not an “academic” essay. It should be relatively accessible.) Canonical Chronicle: Thoughts of Pop Literature and Literature Curriculum One of the principal concerns I have with the present course of pre-college education in literature in the United States—and elsewhere—is the incessant reliance on teaching literature through the limited scope of the Western Canon. Perhaps in other parts of the world this canonical reliance shifts to accommodate different worldviews or interests, but the reliance is still there; thus, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Western Europe seemingly rely on the Western Canon, the Middle East, India, China, and other Asian nations possibly rely on the Eastern Canon, and those left out of this either have their own unique approaches to literature, no approaches whatsoever, or must adopt the educational perspective of other nations as a means of becoming part of the global atmosphere1. These narrowed approaches leave literature in a particularly nasty place: nowhere. How can literature possibly survive in our youth in such rigid, inflexible systems? True, the Western Canon does, on occasion, change, introducing new works of literature2, but these changes do not seem to have much influence on literature curriculum across the country. The same “staples” of literature—style, approved content, etc.—are invoked in these additions. As a science fiction enthusiast, it has long been an uphill battle—in the snow, during a blizzard—to make the case for popular literature as necessary for literature curriculum in pre-college education. I don’t push for any particular kind of popular literature, even though I see science fiction as one of the most relevant and valuable genres in existence. Instead, my criticisms of modern literature curriculum are with its inability to foster proper attitudes in students towards the process of reading. Standardized education has created a system that relies on repetition, rather than on relevance. As much as Shakespeare, Dickens, Twain, and Austen are important figures in our literary history, they do not hold the same influence on students today as J. K. Rowling, Dan Brown, Stephen King, and others. This isn’t to say that students are only influenced by pop-literature icons; some of these students may find themselves attracted to writers like Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Margaraet Atwood, and others who have stormed onto the “literary fiction” scene in recent years, and who are largely unknown to the majority of present-day readers3. The point is that literature curriculum today is, I would argue, outdated in several ways: 1) in being focused on old, classic literature to the point of excess4; 2) in being largely unwilling to shift to more relevant literatures, such as those written by emerging and powerhouse writers of today; and 3) in being unable to accommodate the incredibly short-focused nature of pre-college students in “modern” culture. The result, based on personal experience as a former pre-college student and as the co-owner of a website for young writers, is that these rigid practices damage reading habits and perpetuate the relative assumption that literature has little meaning in our advanced, technology-driven society. Educational systems that are unable to see this are systems that fail students on a regular basis, creating learning conditions in which students do not see the value in what they are being taught. Why should a student learn about the crusades or world cultures or Charles Dickens when they fail to see the connection of that information to what matters to them now? Learning should be beneficial and self-replicating, rather than seen as a negative force or as simply a requirement that must be fulfilled because adults say so. What can be done about this? It took Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card almost twenty years to make its way into high school classrooms, and yet it is not as frequently taught as books like 1984 by George Orwell or Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, both science fiction texts that, while fantastic and worthy of further study, are still a part of that “old/classical” world. Will it take just as long for books like Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling, or Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie to work their way into pre-college curriculum? Will there have to be a tooth-and-nail fight to get these more relevant books (from the perspective of the students) into classrooms? Finally, there is the question of “how?” One approach, however chaotic, is the remarkably successful one adopted by Lorrie McNeill of Jonesboro, Georgia: The approach Ms. McNeill uses, in which students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading, is part of a movement to revolutionize the way literature is taught in America’s schools. While there is no clear consensus among English teachers, variations on the approach, known as reading workshop, are catching on5. To be fair, the success is not all that surprising, particularly if you’re someone who actually went through the draining experience of high school English. I find it more surprising that schools are only now beginning to adopt such programs. Letting kids choose what they want to read, as opposed to forcing them only to read what is required by the system in place, produces results that are not only not surprising, but astonishingly obvious: kids actually want to read. Why? There are probably complicated answers to that, but the most obvious is: kids who get to make a choice have a higher likelihood of enjoying that choice. The concern, then, is with the process of changing our methods of teaching literature, of meeting the demands of students as they change with the future. The classics should still be upheld, even revered for how they have shaped our past, but mixing the old with the new is a way of creating an amalgamated pedagogical monster that does for reading, and literature