Bad Worlds, Bad Language, and Worldbuilding Gone Bad
Recently, I’ve been reading Star Carrier Book One: Earth Strike by Ian Douglas. I was intrigued by the epic military SF setting and decided to plow into it. What begins as a solid piece of action writing, however, quickly dissolves into a linguistic nightmare in the first chapter written from an alien POV. In this chapter, Douglas stops using standard words for time or distance and instead opts for a series of nearly incomprehensible terms: mr’uum, g’nyuu’m, g’nya, g’nyurm, and lurm’m. I’m not sure what these terms actually mean, nor do I care to find out. What annoys me about them isn’t just that they are incomprehensible, but that no other vaguely scientific (or intensely scientific, for that matter) elements are written in this way. Douglas is careful to avoid turning all scientific references into alien gibberish, and yet chooses to turn the simplest of these concepts into words that have no inherent meaning. For me, this is an utter failure to properly worldbuild. If you are going to maintain all the other scientific references so that your audience can understand what the aliens are talking about, then it is absolutely necessary not to disengage that audience from the spatial and temporal logics of the narrative’s world. It is worse still if there is no logical reason for these linguistic invasions. What purpose does providing alien terminology as replacements for human terminology serve? To alienate us? Isn’t that accomplished by providing the perspective of the alien itself? Of course it is. Since we’re already in a futuristic society, taking us into the alien means we can still relate to something. But “mr’uum” has no obvious relation. It is not derived from a language English speakers would be familiar with. After two or three pages of these terms, I decided to read something else. I may not go back. The linguistic intrusions served as barriers to entry for me as a reader. I became overly aware that I was reading a fiction, and especially that I was reading a fiction comprised of words on a page. In other words, escape became impossible. Each new intrusion meant severing me from the imaginative realm of the novel. Once you do that to me a few times in a row, you’ve likely lost me for good. These choices are best avoided. There are better ways to convey the alien; one need not use linguistic trickery to get the job done. Aliens have different physical features, different cultures, and different worldviews. Any of those elements could serve to heighten the reader’s sense of alienation without pulling them from the story. Ultimately, however, there must be a reference, a “thing” for us to cling to so that we don’t get lost in the alien. But more on that another day…
Question: When Will the Tramp-Stamp Urban Fantasy Novels Die?
Anthony Stevens was kind enough to ask the following question my Google+ page: When are the mass-market paperback publishers going to outgrow the cute-young-thing-with-the-tramp-stamp-and-a-sword/pistol/flaming-ball-of-plasma cover art? What comes next to catch our eye? Technically, that’s two questions, but I don’t have a life to prevent me from answering them. First, the “tramp stamp” urban fantasy cover trend is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Why? The simplest reason: they’re selling. The best way to change the way publishers package books is to change the way the public reacts to book covers. Publishers aren’t stupid. When they have a tried-and-tested method for selling books, they’re unlikely or unwilling to give that up just to appease someone’s sense of taste. “Tramp stamp” urban fantasy is just one set of tried-and-tested cover concepts. And that’s the crux of the matter. Publishers don’t really care about the outliers. We’re not the primary market for their books (sad, I know). Second, predicting trends is kind of impossible. What will replace the “tramp stamp” cover? No idea. The interesting thing for me is how women are going to influence this decision. The majority of readers are now women (depending on the study, five times more women read than men), though fantasy readers are evenly split among the sexes. All these numbers really don’t mean, much, though, since demographics are impossible to develop accurately from readers, with the exception of those statistics referring to all fiction readers. But if we take the 50/50 split seriously for a moment, then we can get a sense of how publishers have responded to the urban fantasy boom in light of traditional reading demographics. In the past, men were the readers, and so the cover trends, particularly in genre, had leaned towards supposed male sensibilities (look at some of those science fiction covers from back in the day and you’ll see what I mean). Genre has been one of the stubborn holdouts on the gender parity front — science fiction is the worst of the lot. Fantasy, however, started shifting noticeably a few decades ago. But the covers haven’t. They still feature the “tramp stamp” in urban fantasy and scantily clad ladies and damsels-in-distress in other fantasy subgenres. All of this is an attempt to get to my main point: book covers in urban fantasy, and fantasy in general, are likely to trend towards the slow shift in readership. Unless something major happens among men to convince them to become avid readers, it is likely that the trend in fiction overall will take hold in fantasy and, eventually, science fiction. I think this will mean an artistic shift not to “girly” covers (whatever that means), but to covers which treat their subjects, particularly female characters, as individuals as opposed to stereotypes or stock imagery. What will that look like? Probably not unlike what you see elsewhere in genre, but maybe something else entirely. Then again, I could be wrong. What do you think will be the new trends in urban fantasy covers? Or do you see the “tramp stamp” trend continuing indefinitely? ———————————————————– Note: There are publishers who don’t fit the mold I’ve presented here. Most, however, use covers primarily to sell product.
Gritty Fantasy: Why Do I Love It So?
Today’s post is based on a question from Dirk Reul: What is it that people find fascinating about gritty fantasy compared to the classic story types like The Hero’s Journey? As I noted when the question was asked, I can only talk about this topic from my personal perspective. Sadly, the radiation from Japan’s nuclear power plan problems has yet to give me the ability to read the minds of everyone on the planet. I’m as upset about it as you (admit it, you wanted to get super powers too). First, to definitions, just so we’re clear what we mean (or I mean) by “gritty fantasy.” George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is gritty fantasy. J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and successor works are the classic “hero’s journey” stories. The difference between the two isn’t so much the lack of a quest, but rather a rejection on the part of gritty fantasy of romantic notions about medieval societies. In classic fantasy, death is glory; in gritty fantasy, death is horrible, costly, and deeply personal for the characters. There may be overlap, but I think the absolutism is essential. For the purposes of this post, I will focus specifically on A Song of Ice and Fire (books one and two, which I will refer to as GRRM to save space and my fingers). Expect a few spoilers. As much as I enjoy glorious tales of heroic quests, the gritty realism of GRRM and related works does something else for me: it gives me a sense of insecurity. I know the hero will survive in classic fantasy tales. But I don’t know that is true in something like GRRM, because characters are routinely killed or abused by other characters. Take, for example, Eddard Stark. He is set up as our main hero in A Game of Thrones. We come to love him, flaws and all, and to care deeply for his cause and for his family. But he dies at the end of the book, betrayed by the very people he hoped would help him save the kingdom. It doesn’t get any better for the Starks after that. Sansa is kept hostage by the sadistic King Joffrey; Winterfell and the Starks are betrayed by Theon Greyjoy, their ward, and the city burned to the ground; Arya is forced to skulk through an increasingly dangerous terrain, at first pretending to be a boy; and Catelyn, Eddard’s wife, must watch as her son, Robb, makes war, worried that her two daughters will be killed by the Lannisters (Joffrey at the head), and that her son(s) will die. There is nothing safe about this situation; for me, it produces a sense of compelling dread, because anyone could get hurt at any moment. Likewise, gritty fantasy gives me the violence that is almost always absent from classic fantasy. As much as I love The Lord of the Rings, it is a narrative that, in my mind, finds a kind of honor and glory in war. When I read Tolkien-derivative works, I expect this dynamic, and even enjoy it. Romanticizing war creates an emotional connection to the moment that is two parts hope, one part fear. One of the scenes that makes me cry in the film adaptation of LOTR is the moment when the Riders of Rohan appear on the hilltop looking over the fields of Pelennor, ready to ride into certain death. I love this scene because it is so human. It’s about sacrifice for honor, something I think we’ve lost in this world because we don’t seem to understand what it is that soldiers do — our honoring of soldiers is somewhat empty. But gritty fantasy tends to avoid these glorifications. War is terror. It is blood and mud and guts and death. It is a sea of despair. People die, and they don’t die well, because there is no good death in battle. And death outside of war is equally without glory. Disease. Starvation. Murder. All of it working in conjunction to make a medieval world that feels lived in, rather than ideologically constructed (utopian). GRRM does this remarkably well, taking the piss out of those moments when we expect honor and glory to drive men and women to victory. Instead, they tend to fall, often to dishonorable men. Wars are sacrifice, but whatever glory can be found there is bittersweet. Take the first battles at the end of A Game of Thrones. In one such battle, a small contingent of soldiers is sent to meet Tywin Lannister’s host, but only to distract him while the greater force heads out to take the armies of Tywin’s son, Jaime, and free Riverrun. A lot of people die. But there is no moment of glory for them. There are no beautiful horns chiming in harmony. Whatever stories are told are glorifications, but the narrative itself never gives us that glory (in fact, the battle is show from Tyrion Lannister’s perspective, a mangled dwarf who has never served in battle, let alone been trained for it). Those are two reasons I enjoy gritty fantasy. What do you think? Do you agree? Or are there other things that draw you to gritty fantasy?
Question: Is “Solar System SF” the future of Space Opera?
Paul Weimer (who podcasted a review of Prometheus with me about a week ago) was kind enough to ask the question in the title, perhaps in some vain hope that I actually know what I’m talking about. I’ll start by first saying much of what follows is uneducated speculation, in part because predicting trends in SF is a crapshoot (remember when Mundane SF was the “next big thing”?) and in part because I am not familiar with all the SF novels being published (traditionally or otherwise) simply because it is not my job to be familiar, and I’ve got 20 other things going on — some of them actual jobs or job-related. That said, one of the curious things about this question is that it wasn’t immediately clear to me what Paul meant by “Space Opera.” As a narrative tradition, Space Opera has been identified as the “high adventure” genre, often coupled, in some ways, to Planetary Romance (Burroughs, for example), but with greater reach, greater inherent optimism, and an extraordinary love affair with the infamous “sensawunda” (also: colonialism, but you can read John Rieder’s book for that). It’s a genre that reminds us at once of the great history of SF and all that is wrong with it. But Space Opera does have a newer face. Some call it New Space Opera — a crummy term, to say the least, but effective enough. I see this new type of Space Opera as a more serious version than its predecessor, not in the sense that old form SO lacks seriousness, per se, but more in the sense that New Space Opera, insofar as it exists, seems to be constructed on a frame of complexity and rigor. You might also say that NSO has a serious tone that seems absent from SO, though I am not altogether convinced that this is necessarily true, particularly since some authors identified with NSO, such as Tobias S. Buckell, seem to draw heavily from old SO. In other words: NSO may or may not exist, though there is probably something going on in SO that is distinct from the older form. The community should probably discuss this trend at length (maybe it has). I say all this as a way to attempt to explore Paul’s question, which seems to hinge on a concern with definitions. Since SF based in the solar system (that is, SF in which humanity moves about the solar system instead of remaining stuck on Earth or going elsewhere) has usually remained the domain of hard SF (not exclusively — Burroughs again), I suspect that SO which takes on the traditional narrative forms are unlikely to sustain a movement in solar system SF (these titles are getting ridiculous, I know). It’s not that there can’t be sensawunda and adventure in our solar system; quite the contrary. Rather, it seems to me that SO has a tendency to look to far off, practically unattainable futures in which interstellar travel is a given, aliens (or human factions) are plentiful, and the wonder of exploration to alien (not extraterrestrial, per say) worlds is practically a necessity to narrative. That’s what the community has made SO into for so long, to greater and lesser degrees (for taste, of course). My gut tells me that SO which clutches to local concerns will invariably collapse back into hard SF, though I cannot as yet explain why in any intelligent manner. That doesn’t mean SO in the SS won’t exist — a stupid position to take. It means that such writing won’t take over the traditional form. There’s something else in store for SO. Something that NSO, existing or otherwise, must be leading to. But I have no idea what that will look like in the end. Do you?
Urban Fantasy: Ignoring the big question?
In a recent episode of Read It and Weep, one of the hosts criticized urban fantasy’s strange habit of ignoring what I call “the big question.” The criticism was fairly light — being a humorous podcast and all — but it convinced me to blog about it here. First, the big question: Why do so few urban fantasy novels explore the spiritual, religious, and historical impacts inherent in discovering the existence of the supernatural? This is a huge question for me, in part because it is also a little pet peeve of mine. Some of the least interesting UF novels avoid the question altogether. And they do it at the expense of the smidgen of realism necessary to make such a work, well, work. If your characters go through life believing dragons and fairies and what not don’t exist, why would they suddenly buy into some relatively mundane hints to the contrary? Even big, in-your-face hints (i.e., seemingly irrefutable evidence) would be taken by a lot of us with a grain of salt; many would assume they’ve gone completely mad. But most UF novels don’t bother addressing this problem. Something weird happens; someone waltzes up and says “dragons be real”; and the disbelievers respond with “Okie dokie.” In the real world, this would not happen, unless you magically stumbled upon the very tiny minority of folks who believe such things in our present world. Human beings are naturally skeptical of a lot of long-since-debunked nonsense, with rare exception. Similarly, a lot of UF novels fail to address the religious or historical aspect of the question. A lot of UF novels are set in America with American protagonists and antagonists. This means that it is statistically likely that the majority of these characters are believes in some version of the Christian God. How would Christians respond to the existence of vampires? How would that response vary depending on the denomination or the religious dedication of an individual? One great example is Stina Leicht’s Of Blood and Honey and its sequel, And Blue Skies From Pain, which imagines that the Fae and the fallen angels from the heavens actually exist (the novels are set in 70s Ireland). Leicht actually explores the big question in a unique way: making the Catholic Church part of a war with the Fae (basically); the Church responds by creating a division specifically trained to deal with the Fae, assuming they are all part of the Fallen (angels who led the rebellion against God and were cast out of heaven), thereby keeping the gears of their religion intact and providing the Church a rationale for its power structures. It’s a clever bit of worldbuilding. For me, the failure to address this problem from both sides (the impact of knowledge and the natural inclination for calling B.S. on stuff that lies outside contemporary belief systems) creates a shitty book. You’re already asking me to suspend my disbelief to buy into a world where dragons and vampires and werewolves actually exist, a leap that requires me to shut off parts of my brain to enjoy the ride. But when your characters can’t be bothered to question, as most of us would question in the real world, the events around them, you’re basically saying “Eh, whatever.” It’s lazy and it makes for bad characterization. There are probably a lot of exceptions, though. Great UF books. Great UF writers. And so I’d like to ask everyone this: Which urban fantasy novels actually take the “big question” head on? Suggestions welcome in the comments.
My Current Thoughts on Self-Publishing / Traditional Publishing Gurus
To all the people out there telling me how I should publish my first book: please take your advice and shove it. You have no frakking clue what you’re talking about. Anyone who says “there is only one way to do it” should be discounted as idiots. J.K. Rowling got rich publishing the old fashioned way. Amanda Hocking got rich self-publishing (and now she’s got the old fashioned thing going). Lots of people have got rich doing it either way. Anyone who says “but my way is the only way” is full of shit. WTF do you know? Sometimes there is no right way. You just do what feels right to you and hope for the best. Publishing is a crapshoot. Some of us make it. Most of us don’t. The only sure advice anyone can give is this: if you really want to make it, don’t give up. Keep improving your writing and write better stories. Meh. ———————————————————- That more or less sums up how I feel about it all now. My thoughts have changed a lot in the last few years. Such is life… (Originally posted on Google+)