Month of Joy: “Growing Up w/ Genre and Singaporean SF/F” by Joyce Chng — @jolantru
I grew up with genre. No, seriously, I did. It all began with a book of children’s stories complete with shape-shifting and transformation. The girl turned into a fluffy plush-tailed cat… and I was hooked. And it just kept on coming: Star Blazers (Battleship Yamato), Battle of the Planets (or G-Force), Robotech (Macross – Southern Cross – Mospeada), Star Trek and the list continued. I fell in love with science fiction and it opened a whole world of possibilities for a lonely little girl who had nobody but herself to amuse herself. That’s right: I am an only child. Then as my reading hunger grew, I feasted on epic fantasy and Dungeons & Dragons. Mind you, I was the only girl in the group of boys and I played a cleric. I explored Krynn when I bought the Dragonlance books and went on further to read Frank Herbert’s Dune, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series and so on. I thought I was the only girl reading science fiction and fantasy. I felt alone and lonely. Where in the world were the rest of my peers? Singapore seemed so dull, so empty – and I went on searching for that elusive geek girl (or nerd girl). For a while, I did find her, a good friend of mine who read the Pern series. Around this time, I had started writing. Short stories. Fan fiction (even though I hadn’t heard of this term until the Internet came about). The stories found their way in school magazines and I had people who told me I wrote well. I started topping the standard for English composition. Yet, I still felt… alone. Now, thinking back, I feel as if things are at least changing. There is a community of SFF writers here in Singapore. Trust me – they are elusive, like unicorns and phoenixes. But imagine my relief when I found them. Mind you, it felt like trawling the sea for that single needle. At the moment, Singapore SFF is slowly taking off as people find each other and their own voices. The Singapore SFF writer seems to be a quiet breed… but we are around. When I returned from Australia after seven years of undergraduate and postgraduate study, I thought I was the only SFF writer around. That was how isolated I’d felt. Then, I found out about the Happy Smiley Writers’ Group, got involved in Nanowrimo and suddenly, they are there! Singapore SFF writers. And illustrators. And creators. And readers. This book came out of the Happy Smiley Writers’ Group! Singapore SFF started to coalesce a few years ago. Still nascent, still growing – but becoming stronger. My only hope is that it grows bigger and more prominent, that SFF writing (heck, writing) isn’t looked down upon or mocked at. Asian mentality sees writing as a job that doesn’t pay at all and I get those pointed questions from my folks who think that I am still going through a phase (and I am in my late thirties, for crying out loud). As I sit before my laptop, staring out into the nightscape, I wonder how Singapore SFF would look like in five years’ time. And then, the deeper and harder questions: Will I continue writing? Will I end up throwing in the towel and walking away? These questions hover in my mind. But at present, I am happy at what I am doing: writing. Be it wolves who walk on two legs, phoenixes who hide in human form or a human A.I who pilots a warship, I will continue to create new worlds. ————————————————— Author’s note: This post is a tribute to Han May, whose book Star Sapphire captured my attention a long time ago. ————————————————— Joyce Chng lives in Singaporean and is proud to be Singaporean. Her fiction has appeared in Crossed Genres, M-BRANE SF and the Apex Book of World SF II. She also writes urban fantasy under J. Damask. Her writerly blog exists at A Wolf’s Tale. Editor’s Note: You can check out my mini interview with Ms. Chng for the Week of Joy feature here.
Week of Joy (Day Seven): “The Wonders of Whimsy” by Adam Callaway
Whimsy is important to me. Most everything I love about art — music, movies, books — comes down to one aspect: whimsy. I appreciate technical masterpieces like a Rachmaninoff concerto or a Joycean short story. I enjoy gritty realism like Law and Order or Lord of the Flies. However, my love lies with those pieces that make you wonder and smile, that turns the mundane into the fantastic with a turn of phrase or a splash of color. Whimsy is one of the most difficult aspects of art to quantify. It’s one of those “you know it when you see it” things. It’s a butterfly landing on the rim of a lemonade glass or a wind-up toy that never dies down. Whimsy is why Miyazaki movies are so compelling. Whimsy is the noise Totoro makes when he opens his mouth and the castle floating in the sky. Whimsy is the feeling of the uncanny when the mundane is melded with the fantastic. It’s the bright colors in The Yellow Submarine. It’s the surreal made comfortable. It’s what made Harry Potter a phenomenon. It’s the feeling you get when you look out on a lake and imagine a mermaid swimming right below the surface. Whimsy is the green apple in Rene Magritte paintings. It’s the extra-dimensions of Escher. Whimsy is reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, pretending you’re looking over the shoulder of Willy Wonka as he gazes out on his candy empire. Whimsy is one of the reasons we start reading and telling stories in the first place. It’s why children can have imaginary friends with no sense of self-consciousness. Whimsy allows us to believe in the unbelievable, to suspend our disbelief in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Whimsy is the reason why we can be scared by ghost stories. Even in the most different of secondary worlds, it’s why we can sympathize with characters that are nowhere near us. Whimsy is a powerful tool. A lot of adults lose it as they age. And that’s a real shame. Without whimsy, life becomes dull and gray. Without whimsy, the problems of how to pay a mortgage or hospital bills become the reason we wake up in the morning instead of looking forward to the new experiences a day will bring. Whimsy is important. I think most of us forget just how important it really is. —————————————— About the author: Adam Callaway is a science fiction and fantasy author who spends his days dreaming about tentacles and secondary fantasy worlds involving magic cooks and flying monkey overlords. His work has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Flurb, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror and many other wonderful places. You can find out more about him on his website. Editor’s note (i.e., Shaun): Go read his short stories. They’re really good.
Week of Joy (Day Seven): “The Genre Books That Influenced & Inspired Me to Read & Write” by Stina Leicht
It’s funny. While I’ve always loved books, I don’t remember the moment when I decided I wanted to be a writer — not any longer. You see, originally I wanted to be an artist, but during seventh grade I decided that writing was what I wanted to do more than anything else. From the moment I forced myself through the process of learning to read[1] I loved books. Books were safe. Books were also adventure. So, I quickly found favorites. Zilpha Keatley Snyder was the first author that I actively tracked down in my local library. I read everything I could find: The Changeling, Season of Ponies, The Witches of Worm, The Headless Cupid, The Velvet Room, The Eyes in the Fishbowl — most are out of print now. Some were Newbery Honor Winners. I think she was the author that gave me that first spark, that first thought that I could be more than just a frightened little girl. I remember wanting to be ageless, free, and spritely like Ivy in The Changeling. I wanted to be mysterious like Amanda in The Headless Cupid. I wanted to ride standing on the backs of graceful, magical, cantering circus ponies like Pamela. It’s good that I found Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s books before I found Francesca Lia Block’s — otherwise, I’d have searched the world for a pair of cowboy boot roller-skates, wore layers of wispy mismatched skirts with fairy wings, played with glitter, pierced my nose, and painted my hair purple long before I reached voting age. And my mother would’ve killed me. A lot. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get glitter out of things? Then there was Joan Aiken. I still say Lemony Snicket wishes he were Joan Aiken. She totally and utterly rocked my world. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Blackhearts in Battersea, and Nightbirds in Nantucket combined fantasy and history — technically alternate history — and hapless orphans who triumph over e-vile caretakers out to do… well… evil, of course. It was heady stuff. Throw in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle and I was gone, gone, gone. Meg’s mother was a scientist! It was the first time I’d come across such a thing. I remember thinking how awesome that was. I wanted to be a scientist for a whole month because I knew right then it was possible. I wanted to cook dinner on a hotplate in a laboratory while working on something really important. Something about that seemed so cool. The first book to spirit me away into the adult section of the public library, however, was Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.[2] My father read it aloud to me when I was twelve. I remember being frightened that the Library Police™ would find me among the adult book shelves. Because surely there was some sort of alarm that sounded when kids wandered in there. You know, I’m not entirely sure what I thought they’d have done if they had found me. I lived in terror of librarians. To be honest, I pretty much lived in terror of everyone in those days. I was a very shy, very skinny kid with frizzy hair, after all. The main thing was that I didn’t want to be thrown out. The library was my world. I loved the smell and the feel of the books and the hushed consecrated ground. Now that I think back on it, The Sharpstown library in Houston wasn’t very big — one floor, a dozen long shelves in the center of the building, and a magazine section. They didn’t separate the SF novels from the rest of the books in the adult section either. (I’m sure it was because they didn’t have enough to warrant it.) I remember asking the librarian[3] where the SF books were and being overwhelmed by the concept of sorting through all of the books to find what I wanted. Unlike the children’s books, I’d have to rely on the card catalog. The book covers weren’t as much help. It wasn’t long before I’d read everything they had that Bradbury had written. Then I moved on to others: Joshua Son of None by Nancy Freedman, Dune by Frank Herbert, Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clark, The Anything Box by Zenna Henderson, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien — I wandered all over until I found Stephen King. Then I kind of parked there for years like I did with Zilpha Snyder. But really, I think it was the combination of Zilpha Snyder, Joan Aiken, Stephen King, and Ray Bradbury that made me think about writing my own stories. They were the first to open the doors of my imagination. The were the first to open up my mind to the possibilities. ————————————- [1] I’m dyslexic. [2] You should be sensing a theme here. If it was mildly spooky, off-beat, or magical, I was all over it. [3] When I finally got up my courage to do so. I was shocked to discover that the librarians were thrilled to death that I wanted to read adult books. Of course, by that time I’d already discovered Dickens and Twain. About the author: Stina Leicht is the author of Of Blood and Honey and And Blue Skies From Pain, urban fantasy novels set during the Troubles in Ireland. She is a two-time Campbell Award nominee and lives in the great old state of Texas, where she actively causes trouble (because she’s awesome like that — love you, Stina! :P). You can follow Stina on her blog and find out more about her work (such as where to buy it) on her profile. Note from the editor (i.e., Shaun): If you haven’t read Stina’s work before, you should do so immediately. Her Ireland novels are bloody amazing. We interviewed her twice about them on The Skiffy and Fanty Show. You can find every episode she’s ever been on here. But first…buy her books! Additionally, Stina
8 SF/F Writers Who Changed My Life (#WeekofJoy)
Books change lives, right? Well, they certainly changed mine. Books have been a part of my life since I was a kid, though I honestly didn’t understand their true value until much later in life. They were entertainment in my younger years. I read Goosebumps and Hardy Boys because they provided quick, fun narratives (and some of the former were actually kinda scary at times — they seem ridiculous today, of course). I even read comic books as a kid, for the same reasons everyone read comics in their youth: fun! But I wasn’t a literature nut in my younger years. I wanted to play video games or do stupid things on my bike — I honestly don’t know how I survived childhood, because I used to do some monumentally stupid things on my bike. Despite all of that, books eventually smacked me upside the head and changed the way I viewed them and the way I viewed life in general. I read or discovered these books during what I would consider to be pivotal moments of my life. Some of those moments were dark times; others were quite happy and exciting. But none of them were exactly same. In chronological order, here are the eight science fiction and fantasy writers who changed my life: Richard A. Knaak The first adult fantasy book I ever read was Richard A. Knaak’s Dragonlance novel, The Legend of Huma. I won’t pretend it’s a great work of art, or a great piece of fantasy (well, it’s a fun piece of fantasy, but Dragonlance isn’t exactly known for the best writing in the universe). I would later go on to read his DragonRealm series — a much more interesting and well-written set of relatively short fantasy novels. I think it’s fair to say that I was always a reader or viewer of genre fiction, having watched Star Wars so many times as a child that I eventually had to justify owning three different VHS copies to prevent ruining my really good copy (the Leonard Maltin versions, which I still own). But I had never really grown fond of SF/F literature. That was until someone introduced me to Dragonlance. The Legend of Huma introduced me to a whole new sea of stories, and reading that particular book would one day give me fuel for an interest in writing genre fiction (I’ve never wanted to write anything else, really). Without that book, I don’t know what I would be like today. A genre fan? Probably. A scholar in the field and a wannabe writer of SF/F? Probably not. (This is a familiar narrative, no?) George Orwell I also discovered the wonders of science fiction in high school. However, rather than having George Orwell’s incredible and canonical novel 1984 thrust at me by my friends, I had the novel thrust on me by a teacher (duh). And lucky me. I attended two high schools as a teenager: one in Oak Harbor, Washington, and another in Placerville, California. Of all the English classes I took while in Oak Harbor, only one managed to make reading interesting. That class had us reading things like Watership Down by Richard Adams, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, and, of course, 1984. And since that class, I’ve re-read Orwell’s novel at least six times. The book made me realized that literature could have depth, that re-reading a work could actually change your experience of it. That book also helped turn me into a science fiction nut. And every time I re-read the book (less frequently now than when I was in my early 20s), I discover something new. That’s the mark of a good book, if you ask me! I think it’s safe to say that my interest in literature as an academic subject began here. The Person Who Wrote Beowulf The short version of the story goes like this: during my senior year of high school, my English teacher assigned Beowulf, as often happens in high school. Instead of having us write straight literary analysis, however, she asked us to take the core themes of the story and come up with our own poetic versions. Thus began a month-long journey to rewrite Beowulf (with a friend). The weird part? We actually took it quite seriously, while others in our class sort of dilly daddled the way a lot people do when it comes to these kinds of assignments. We went to the library and looked up British history (the place where we intended to set our version of the story), dug up maps of the pre-Norman-invasion British Isles, and tried our best to fit our re-worked version into that new world (Grendel’s lair ended up on the Isle of Man). We plotted the entire story, developed all of the characters, and then I started writing. And then came the all-nighters. After a weekend of intense writing (in what I then thought was proper “Old English” style — heh), I strolled into class on Monday with a 31-page epic poem in tow. I still have a vivid memory of my teacher’s eyes opening wider than should have been humanly possible at the sight of our work. She had expected something like 5-10 pages, not 31. And we got an A. You might be wondering how this changed my life. Throughout my youth, I recall writing a lot of stories. For the most part, these were horror stories (I still think that movie with the evil severed hand somehow stole my ideas); they weren’t very good. But it wasn’t until that Beowulf assignment that I realized I really had the writing bug. From that point on, I started writing with more fervor. Clearly that bug never truly left, because I still write fiction as often as I can (not as much right now due to PhD work, though). Without Beowulf, I’m not sure I’d be where I am right now: an English major and a published writer. Alan Garner I’ve written about my experiences with cancer here,
Genre Books for Non-Genre People: Still Missing the Point, Folks!
The other day, Damien G. Walter posted the following on his Google+ account: Now that Fantasy / SF is taking over the mainstream, which books do you recommend to people who have not read it before? Thus far, two people have responded with posts of their own: my friend and podcast co-host Paul Weimer and John Stevens. Each list has a particular perspective for the textual choices, and each is valid in its own way. But they are also effectively useless lists without a pre-defined “non-genre person.” Whenever lists like this come out, that perspective is almost always ignored. Nobody seems willing to address the fact that non-genre readers are not a homogeneous group. Paul’s list, for example, includes the following: Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey The Warrior’s Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold The Hammer and the Blade by Paul S. Kemp Storm Front by Jim Butcher Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman. The only mention of an audience in his post is a throwaway line about people who read novels. There’s no mention of the things they like to read. Are they Clive Cussler fans? Do they prefer the prose of Amy Tan or Ian McEwan? What about Jonathan Franzen or Ernest Hemingway? Are they fans of modernist writing, or are they more into the postmodernist crowd? Or maybe they don’t like any of that. Maybe they’re romance readers, or they prefer political thrillers, or regular thrillers. Or they read Dan Brown or James Paterson (they’re both basically genre, I guess). The point: his readers could be anyone, and that makes his selections functionally useless. Unless you suggest these works to someone you can reasonably expect to enjoy them based on what they already enjoy, you’re basically flipping a coin. You might get that one reader who devours these books the same way Paul clearly has, or you might get that one reader who views these as the reason why genre fiction is worthless. The more problematic issue here stem’s from the list’s clear conscious or subconscious assumed or intended readership. While the invoked audience for these works is overly broad, the actual works presented here fall within a very particular camp of readers. These are not what most would call “literary novels.” They are, in the most loving way I can say it, pure genre. Gracing the list are a high-octane space opera (Corey), a mostly fun urban fantasy (Butcher), a rip-roaring fantasy adventure novel (not unlike Indiana Jones; Kemp), a military SF novel (Bujold), and a fantasy epic (Gilman). Understandably, I’m describing these somewhat unfairly. They are more complicated than the simplistic generic traditions with which they are identified, but the ease with which they can fall into these categories presents a crucial problem: they are not novels that will appeal to the widest range of people, generally speaking. I stand by that. Some of the folks who might start with these novels may find themselves less willing to try again. Why? The simple fact that these books aren’t really for “non-genre” people; rather, they are more fairly aimed at those who may not read genre yet, but whose literary sensibilities lean toward the genre camp. For that group, these novels will suck them in (I hope, that is). For everyone else? Flipping a coin. Stevens’ list presents different challenges. His selections are actually more grounded than Paul’s (this might have something to do with a tweet by Damien G. Walter that I have yet to see). Rather than providing a nebulous intended audience, Stevens specifically identifies his audience as “those who are new to the genre.” While this doesn’t narrow the focus or define these new or incoming readers in terms of their previous reading interests, it does establish a better foundation. With that perspective in mind, Stevens suggests the following: Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin There are definitely some great authors here (I haven’t read them all). The problem? In my experience, Robinson’s Three Californias best fits among the (to use a pointless term) “literary crowd.” I taught The Gold Coast last year and discovered that it didn’t sit well with students who came in with certain expectations of genre. That doesn’t mean The Wild Shore or any of the Three Californias novels are bad or unworthy of suggestion; rather, I say this in order to suggest that Three Californias deserves to be suggested under entirely different conditions: namely, ones in which you have a far more specific understanding of what someone likes. Compared to the other works on Steven’s list, Robinson’s stands out as the one most likely to appeal to audiences who don’t have experience with generic traditions. The Lindholm, Aaronovitch, Bujold, and Jemisin are all writers whose work, in my mind, will have greater effect on those who are already reading things that are similar enough to genre. In that respect, they fit quite well into Steven’s list, as they are works which are geared towards “new readers of genre.” But, again, it all comes down to what we mean by “new readers.” What are they currently reading? Who is a “new reader”? Does someone who reads Salman Rushdie, Jane Rogers, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez qualify as a “new reader of genre”? Or are we talking about people who have, for example, started reading genre because they saw Game of Thrones and wanted to read the books? This distinction is crucial. Even more crucial, however, are the additional distinctions (distinctions upon distinctions) — there are fantasy readers, SF readers, SF/F readers, urban fantasy readers, readers who hate fantasy, readers who hate science fiction, readers who hate X, Y, or Z (or even Q). The reader is everything when it comes to suggestions. Are readers are naturally conservative (i.e., they don’t like to try new things)? Not necessarily. What I’m concerned with here is the desire to
SFWA, Sexism, and Progress (A Response to Jason Sanford)
(Note: I originally intended this as a short comment on this recent post by Jason Sanford. In his post, he basically suggests that the men in our field need to stand up and say “no” to sexism; his post is, I think quite obviously, a response to the SFWA Bulletin kerfluffle from this weekend, which he also wrote about here. Both of his posts are worth reading. In any case, my response will maintain its original format, so assume the “you” refers to Sanford.) I’ve found it rather frustrating to hear people defend some of these sexists (or people engaging in sexist activity) against attack (I’m not using any particular individual in this comment, even though I think it’s obvious that your post is in response to the SFWA Bulletin thing). They often say things like “attacking the person is wrong” or “they are really nice people” and so on and so forth. I don’t doubt that a lot of people who say or do sexist things don’t realize that what they’re doing is, in fact, sexist (not all, but some). Some of them have always done these things and probably haven’t been formally challenged before; their responses, in many cases, are not unusual in that respect. When you’ve done something your whole life, and have never been properly challenged for that behavior, a shift in the dialogue surrounding said behavior may seem like an attack on one’s person. I am, of course, speaking from my own assumptions and from my own experiences as someone who considered himself a pro-women’s-rights-but-not-a-feminist man who subscribed to a number of sexist concepts/ideas/assumptions without realizing they were sexist. Granted, I’ve never seriously suggested anything quite as batshit as we’ve seen among the radical contingent in SF/F (i.e., the Vox Days). But there comes a point at which we have to demand change. Just because you are a nice person and you do nice things for writers and what not is not an excuse for us to ignore other poor behavior. Bad behavior is bad behavior. Holding our tongues just because someone is a nice person or because it’s supposedly “civil” will not change that behavior. People who defend the sexists in our midst sometimes don’t understand that leaving such behavior unchallenged actually validates it. It reinforces the behavior. While it’s a nice thought to suggest that women should have stood up for themselves back in the day, we have to remember that a lot of the ideas we’ve seen raised in official SF/F platforms are descended from a time when women didn’t have the political authority to change things from the inside — not if they wanted careers in SF/F. In some respects, that’s still true (as you noted when you pointed to Ann Aguirre’s disheartening post about her treatment as a woman in our community — the hate mail is horrifying). SF/F is getting better, but it is not helped by leaving sexism or any nasty ism unchecked. And that means telling people off for shitty behavior. I’m not sure how you do that without making those individuals realize that there is a social cost for said behavior, which is where I tend to disagree with some defenders who call foul on ad hominem attacks — if the statement is true, then the fallacious form does not arise. Another thing that annoys me about this discussion is the odd, and sometimes occasional, double standard. For some reason, we’re supposed to accept sexist behavior as “something you wave off,” whereas other isms are unacceptable. If X spends an entire column saying anti-Semitic or clearly racist things, we are right to look down on that — you don’t talk about *insert racial slurs here* in our community without paying the social cost everyone else pays. But if X say a bunch of sexist things, suddenly you can’t go after them. We just have to realize they’re nice guys, and we should show them the same respect they…don’t show to women? (See N.K. Jemisin’s comment below for why everything in this paragraph is bullcrap.) I think that’s bullshit. There isn’t an easy way to point out sexism without going after the person. Behavior comes from within. Good people look at criticism of their behavior and learn from it. They don’t self-censor. They learn. I’ve learned a hell of a lot the last few years, despite having always been a feminist (sorta — see above). And it has made me a better person, because I recognized my own failings, my own sexist inclinations (inherited from a still largely sexist culture), and I worked on them. That’s not censorship. That’s not thought-policing. That’s what we do when we want to make for a better world. We try to be better people. I think it’s fair to say that you and I (or anybody) are not expecting perfection.* We are expecting some semblance of growth, though. It’s no longer acceptable to say “back in my day, we could do whatever we wanted and nobody said a thing.” That kind of logic allows one to support all manner of poor behaviors. Progress doesn’t happen when we are stuck in the past. It happens when we learn from the past and try to move towards something better. Humanity is an imperfect beast, and part of life, in my mind, is trying to reach the next step on the way to perfection. It’s like a ladder to the stars: each new rung brings us closer to the nearest star, until finally we reach it and realize there are other stars to reach, and so we continue putting up new rungs. I’m rambling. The point is that I agree with the notion that we all need to speak out against this behavior (though some of us never will). We need to support the people who have already spoken out, whether they are women or men. Sexism is wrong (obvious statement is obvious). No. It’s bullshit. We should call it out when we see