Graphic Novels and Novels Are Not the Same
I’m sorry to say it, but even though it hurts that a book that deserves to be on a bestseller list doesn’t get there, if it doesn’t belong in the same category as the other books on that list, then it shouldn’t belong on that list at all. Over at Suvudu this was a point of concern in regards to the hardcover collection of the first four graphic novel/comic issues of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series. The problem? Well, while it sucks that the hardcover collection wasn’t allowed onto the list, I understand why. Graphic novels are not the same as traditional novels. They’re visual and while there tend to be very in-depth and fascinating stories behind those visuals, they simply are not the same as traditional novels precisely because they do not rely entirely upon the writer’s words in order to succeed in forming an image in the reader’s mind. Traditional novels only have words to work with. To try to compare a graphic novel to a traditional novel would be like trying to compare flying in an airplane to riding on a bus. As such, you can’t really put the two on the same list. It wouldn’t be an adequate assessment of the material.That being said, it’s entirely reasonable to desire a graphic novel/comic category for the bestseller list. This might take time, but I would think that such a category would be a good thing. I happen to like graphic novels (and comics, although I’m more favorable towards the former), but I do understand the reason why they don’t end up on the New York Times Bestseller List along with traditional novels. It’s sort of common sense, you know?
The Imagination Problem
It seems fiction has, for the most part, fallen to the wayside in favour of reality TV shows, biographies, ghost-written star stories and factional retellings of stories we’ve heard a million times before. The majority of TV and many of the books in the bestseller list have a compulsive fascination with the ‘real’, attempting a simulacrum of lived truth. But the problem is, these hyped-up, often trashy, lowest-common-denominator stories sap creativity rather than encouraging it. People aren’t encouraged to question, think or imagine, but rather to accept and receive. If it’s true, you don’t have to deliberate, right? Wrong! Who said it’s true? Why is it being presented as truth? Why are you so happy to sit there and take it, and why are producers so happy to dish it out at ten-a-penny? In response to this, however, I have seen a similar trend: a rise in speculative fiction. For a while SF/F was considered geeky and trashy. Much of it is, unfortunately, but not all of it. And it’s become popular again. Even horror is on the rise again. After the 90s when franchises like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween were run into the ground, we’ve seen a spate of new horror films and reworkings of classics to thrill, shock and horrify bored audiences who’ve been numbed by years of processed, production-line ‘reality’. Now we have Harry Potter and the tricksy hobbits entertaining huge audiences. The White Witch and Aslan excite us. Audiences are crying out for imagination. Perhaps this also explains the rise of genres like bizarro, irrealism and avant pulp. People want to throw every semblance of reality to the wind and revel in chaos and pure flights of fancy. On the surface, the realists would argue this is pure escapism. Sure, it is. But so are The X Factor and American Idol. What reality TV doesn’t do that spec fic does, is make you think differently. Even if it’s only to ponder ‘What if . . .’, it’s better than thinking ‘Can I afford to ring that premium rate telephone number again?’ Thinking outside the box is what leads to cures for cancer and HIV. It’s what led to the lightbulb, the aeroplane and the special theory of relativity. Not thinking is leading us to accept a police state, whether in the US or the UK. It’s time to think again. So ditch the tabloid with its sensationalist ‘real’ stories, drop Heat Magazine, switch off Simon Cowell and get imagining again.
Novel Ideas to Feed a Starving Artist
Today I received the latest issue of Sirenia Digest. I love this little journal because it’s a PDF put together by Caitlin R. Kiernan and Vince Locke. Typically it features two vignettes by Caitlin and artwork by Vince. But the real reason I like it is because by subscribing (via PayPal), I’m directly supporting the creators. Sirenia Digest is simply designed (it’s a Word document with a few images in it, basically, that has been converted to PDF) and the stories in it are always a little raw and personal. There’s no editor telling Caitlin what to write; she just writes what she wants. This allows her the perfect medium to experiment and practice her writing. Often, the stories don’t have much in the way of traditional narrative. Such is the way of vignettes. They paint dark, disturbing, usually erotic images, and then move on. Perfect reading for this sound bite generation, methinks. The power of Sirenia Digest, too, is in what it offers the creator. I’m not sure if Cailtin has any overheads, but writing two vignettes a month should be easy enough and, if she’s getting $5 per month per subscriber, it’s a decent amount of petty cash. All she’d need is 10 subscribers to pay for satellite. 100 subscribers for a month’s shopping. 1000 subscribers for a (cheap) car. That’s a nice, easy earner for any writer, for only two stories. To earn the equivalent of a pro sale on each vignette (which are usually under 10K words), she’d only need 100 subscribers. Since most of her stories are around the 2K mark, she’d only need 40. Which doesn’t sound so bad. I’m half tempted to do something similar myself. Of course, I’m not Caitlin R. Kiernan and I don’t have Vince Locke illustrating my work, but it’d help pay the bills. Maybe in the future writers will support themselves in this way, bypassing magazines and publishers altogether and selling direct to their readers. It’s a quaint thought, isn’t it?
Happy Happy Sci Fi
I’ve often wondered why it is that most of the serious science fiction being written today–and by this I mean SF that is taking itself seriously–takes a gloomy approach to imagining the future. I’m not the only one either; Damien Walter over at the Guardian wonders much the same thing. But Walter proposes we shouldn’t be repeating the warnings science fiction has already brought to us, that we should, perhaps, look to the brighter futures of the Golden Age. On the one hand, I agree, and have to agree. We do need futures that aren’t layered with dystopias, religion or science gone bad, or post-apocalyptic imagery, but we also can’t forget that science fiction is about all futures, not just the happy ones.And Walter is right that science fiction has become dominated by the negative, offering us futures that suggest there isn’t truly any hope. There are exceptions, but unlike the Golden Age, science fiction today deals with the dismal more than it deals with anything else. Why?Perhaps it’s because we, as a society, are living in a time that feels like it isn’t going anywhere good. We see our politicians getting away with things the rest of us would be locked in prison for, our environment reacting and changing, and the social framework of our society is falling into disarray. These are the realities of our current world, so it’s no surprise when our science fiction takes these things to heart and attempts to view what could happen next.Perhaps we have largely run out of hope, or can’t imagine a future that is better than it is now. Perhaps science has failed to give us the future we dreamed of 60 years ago. New discoveries that reflect something good seem to get little media attention–or we don’t remember them, for some reason or another–and now we see science bringing us bad news with Global Warming and threats of pandemics.These might be the reasons for our negative imaginative futures. Perhaps science fiction is gloomy because the world we live in is gloomy too. We have to imagine the difficulty to dreaming of glorious futures when the future we can see right around the corner, in this world we’re in now, isn’t the one we were promised or the one we want or hoped for. We should consider, now, that some futures may seem to unrealistic and that people aren’t always interested in unrealistic, happy futures. Perhaps it’s because they don’t want a false hope; they don’t want to dream in a world that could be if everything went right, because when it doesn’t happen that way, they’ll be disappointed, just like a lot of people were when the great things science fiction promised during the Golden Age never happened.Do I think that it’s possible to bring back the glory of the Golden Age? Of course, but it won’t be easy to make it realistic. Space isn’t the world we thought it would be and neither is the world we live in. It’s a different world now where hackers tear down websites or electrical grids and governments violate our civil rights.Perhaps something reasonable is to begin writing stories that touch on grim futures changing for the better. We can’t logically expect this dark period, however mild it may be, to stay consistent. There will come a breaking point, just as there was a breaking put during the Dark Ages, the moments prior to the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, and the breaking points that saw the end of World War II and the breaking up of the Soviet Union. Where are the stories showing that? Wouldn’t that be considered positive views on our future?But then we come into the issue of utopian views, even semi-utopian views, and how no matter how hard you try to create a utopia, someone will be living in a dystopia. Utopias and dystopias must exist together, as balancing factors, if they are to exist at all. 1984 was a dystopia for the ordinary citizens, whose view we saw, but it was a utopia, of sorts, for the people in control, though we never saw this. Perhaps V For Vendetta showed us a breaking point in a world overrun by the an Orwellian government, and also showed what good can come of that, and perhaps the idea of hope as a force to be reckoned with. But that movie was not about ordinary people so much as a handful of extraordinary people who drove others out of their collective boxes to see the light. That might be our future, though I hope without the violent fanfare.As I think more on this subject I start to wonder if perhaps it would be better to ease back into the science fiction of hope. Abrupt changes are never good for anyone. Ask the nations in turmoil as a direct result of the colonists that changed them irreparably picking up shop and leaving. We should strive for a slow transition. And at the same time we should be asking ourselves what it is we can hope for in our future. Where will our society go if things turn out right? And who will it be right for, if anybody? Perhaps someone should open up a panel somewhere and ask these very questions. Then we might have a good understanding of where this is all going and why science fiction has apparently lost touch with its hopeful side. P.S.: It should be noted that I like science fiction in all forms, even the darker stuff. Science fiction that shows a messed up future are equally as entertaining as ones that show a happy future. So, I have no qualms with either form.
What’s in a Review?
I found a rather interesting article on reviews today, and it struck me as a useful tool for any reviewer out there. Check out this link for details. I’d like to know people’s thoughts on this, personally. What criteria do you use to judge a work? Do you consider yourself a critic? What kind of reviews do you like? I personally like funny reviews from time to time. Oh, sure, I want to know if it’s good or not, but I also don’t want to read a dry treatise on a novel/film/whatever. I’m a fan of the Popbitch/Pop Justice school of comment, and that means I like you to take the piss every now and again. If something’s rubbish, say so. If something is so trashy you love it, say that too. Then again, there’s having fun and being cruel. Critics don’t have to be objective, because any critic who pretends to be is lying, but that doesn’t mean a critic should forget a creative work has been made by an individual. Vitriol just tarnishes the reviewer rather than the reviewed. Anyway, thought on the matter are appreciated . . .
I’ve Been Sanderized
So, apparently William Sanders noticed my blog post about him the other day, which was partially in response to some things that Joe Sherry posted. And, in typical Sanders fashion, he’s opened up a lovely discussion about me, even though he claims to not care what I think. We all believe that.I don’t much care to go into a rant about his comments this time around, partly because I’ve already discussed it in the comments section of the original thread he’s upset about. A few points do need to be made, though, but I’ll be relatively brief. I think at this point we’re more than aware of Sanders’s (yes I used the correct apostrophe this time) attitude and the manner in which he addresses people, particularly those he doesn’t like. Sanders may very well be a nice guy in real life, Internet personas being what they are, but professionalism is certainly not his strong suit.So, to the points: Yes, I was aware that the “interview” that Sanders did was a mock interview. That’s sort of the whole point, isn’t it? Am I the only one that finds it remarkably pathetic that someone has to create a fake interview with themselves in order to do whatever it is that Sanders is doing? Setting the record straight, perhaps? Sanders isn’t nearly as clever as the people over at The Onion, who actually do trick people from time to time. But, I’m glad he got a sense of joy out of it, silly as it is. There’s certainly plenty that was not correctly understood about Sanders’s statements in his rejection. Still, the word “sheethead” is not the same as “shithead,” as he so aptly claims, and rightfully shares similarities to slang terms used for blacks or certain groups of Asian descent. Perhaps one should look at the comments in this post to get a clear idea of what “sheethead” means to some people. Sanders may very well think that he’s just referring to a small group of people, but other people can’t possibly know at any time what he’s actually thinking, and for him not to realize that many people are aware of the more negative aspect of the term he used, or at least not to acknowledge it when it was brought to light, is one his failings. So Sanders meant something else by the term, but he wasn’t man enough to acknowledge that other people don’t see it the same way and that it was an error in judgment, or at least a moment of educational clarity and that he was at least sorry for the misunderstanding? Apologizing for something that simple is really not that hard. This is like the Don Imus of the interwebs. Wait, no it’s not. Imus publicly apologized. I did incorrectly state “ads” in my original post. I meant to say links. That was an incorrect assumption on my part when I read a blog post referring to the removal of advertising for Helix. What they meant was link advertising–such as a blogroll. I said “if” Sanders works in this business, not when. Whether he wants to work in it again or not is irrelevant, as is the fact that he’s retired. One can still work and be retired. Helix might have been a non-profit venture, but work was still done on the project. It’s not like Sanders just went, “Poof. There you go.” Unless he’s Jesus or something, which is highly unlikely. I’m actually quite happy that Sanders took the time out of his day to open a discussion about me, being so unknown as I am. I’m glad he got a laugh too. I certainly laughed at his post about me, and the previous things he’s said in regards to this whole issue. He wouldn’t be saying the things he says if he wasn’t enjoying it would he? Well, maybe, but so be it.I also appreciate the free traffic. True, it’s negative publicity, but I checked my feed thing today and I’ve gained several new readers on both email and RSS. So, that makes me happy. I think it’s pretty silly that one of the things being discussed is my first name, as if Shaun is really the worst thing to happen to English-language names. Really, there are worse names to be concerned about, like Apple or Pilot Inspector. Shaun is a relatively common spelling and really not that big of a deal. It’s not like I’m named Schauwnne. I was criticized for my misuse of copyright stuff at the bottom of my site. I admit, I don’t know a whole lot in regards to copyright or Creative Commons. I’ve changed it a bit, but if anyone still has suggestions on how to improve that section, feel free to let me know. I have been misusing the apostrophe. Having been corrected and having researched it, I can say that I was improperly taught on the use of apostrophes at the end of names with Ss. Now I know and knowing is half the battle. Thanks for the help–to the people who left comments on my original post. Mr. Sanders: it’s not too late to grow up, even just a little. Really. I think that’s all. If anyone else has something to add, go for it.