The Harry Potter Fiasco
To be honest, I’m a little sick of Harry Potter right now thanks to all this recent news. I have good reason to be. I have no problem with a character being homosexual, and that isn’t what this rant is about, but I do have a problem with begging for media acceptance and manipulating the public simply because you have the audience. The sad part of this is that J. K. Rowling has the power of a god among kids, so for her to say “being gay is cool” would be instantly accepted by millions not because they truly believe that homosexuality is okay, but because someone else told them so. Morality is not determined by those with knowledge, but those that don’t understand immorality. To simply tell people that something is right or wrong does nothing but implant an idea with nothing to support it.Another thing is that everyone is playing this off as a big victory for the gay community when if they really thought about it they’d realize that it is far from the truth. First, Rowling never made it even remotely clear that Dumbledore is gay in the books. All the little passages being analyzed and flouted as being ‘hints’ at his gayness are nothing short of ambiguous–well, sorta. If I told you that when I met my friend Kyle we took to each other fast, you could take that as either he and I becoming fast friends, or that it was a gay relationship, but the more likely solution is that we were good friends. There’s little in that phrase that implies homosexuality. I particularly like this quote: There are not enough gay characters in literature, the argument runs, especially in children’s books, which reinforces the view that being gay is unusual and not normal. I’m sorry, what? How does having a character that is gay hide the fact that he is gay doing anything short of reinforcing the idea to children that being gay is strange/abnormal/different? Or alternately, how does not making it clear as the writer that the character is gay do anything but reinforce the idea to children that homosexuality is strange? That sentence makes absolutely no sense. To add, the text doesn’t do anything but prove that people in power who happen to be homosexual should make sure to keep that part of them hidden. What kind of victory is that? It’s not. It’s a step in the wrong direction for the gay community, but is anyone thinking about it? In fact, if Rowling had not said anything, most of us would have just thought him a nice old man and only a small, minute group of us would have fantasized–these being the same people that romanticize relationships between Ron and Harry, Malfoy and Harry, among others. I see this as a media ploy by Rowling, which sickens me. Maybe she thought of this all along, but to me, it doesn’t feel that way. Why didn’t she reveal it sooner? Why hide something like that? Would your poor sales have hurt because the Christians who read your book might suddenly avoid it? It’s as if this was all a forethought that Rowling thought she’d use to milk a little more out of her fans. The fact that she called it ‘fan-fic worthy’ despite her dislike of the dirtier side of fan-fic is a clear indicator of this. If she had truly thought of Dumbledore as gay, then why not put that in the book? Why? What is the purpose of keeping it hidden if it is such an important part of the character? The truth is, there isn’t a reason for it, and the likely reality of the situation is that Rowling just threw it out there because she, like the rest of us, realize that she’s done. There are no more HP books, and nothing more to add to the universe that won’t hurt its integrity.Shame on your Rowling. Shame on you.
Cover Designs: Yet Another Take
This very subject has already been discussed here and here. Given that, I have to say that I have always thought about covers, not necessarily because I care how a book is packaged so much as I care about what is inside that particular book, but because I am one of those types that pays attention to a cover when I walk through a book store looking for something new to read. Maybe this makes me a terrible reader, but I can’t help it. The way a book is packaged influences whether or not I pick something up, especially if it is a new author or an author I am not familiar with.But I also realize that a cover does not bear any significance in relation to what is found within the pages. We should all realize that. A book could have a cover that could win an art award and still have a terrible story, or be poorly written. But, there is no doubt that more books are judged by their cover than by anything else.Current trends find that science fiction and even fantasy are frequently being packaged in a more mainstream sense. There are good and bad things with this. The good part is that the book is suddenly open to a new range of readers–the mainstream. And if they like it, they might be inclined to ignore their preconceived notions of what science fiction is–which more often than not is that stereotypical idea that SF is Star Wars and Star Trek remakes, only worse–and perhaps buy other books in the genre. There’s nothing wrong with that. Drawing in new readers is a good thing. The downside is that people unfamiliar with the authors being packaged as more mainstream might not ever look at the book. If they are anything like me, they go straight to the SF & F section to start looking, or alternately they go to the new releases section, which is right there in the front of the store at Borders, and look at the books.To give you an idea of my usual book experience, here is a typical book-buying day. First, I go to the store. Duh! I can’t buy books if I don’t go to the store. I usually only go to Borders. There is a good reason for this: Santa Cruz, California, despite being the home of Heinlein for many years, has absolutely no respect for speculative fiction whatsoever. The local stores carry little SF & F, and of the stuff they do carry, it’s generally unorganized and rarely books of significance, or at least books that would interest fellow genre readers. So, I go to Borders because it is the only place within thirty miles that has a decent enough section of SF & F. Second, I peruse the new releases section, the bestsellers section, and the on sale section (4 for 3 deals, 40% off, and the like). This all is usually right down the middle of the store and starts in the front. If I find nothing here, I go to SF & F. Third, I look at covers and titles and authors. If a cover doesn’t catch my attention, then I look at a title, and if that doesn’t work I look at the author. I am a speculative fiction reader at heart. When I peruse these books I look for the ones that look as if they are genre. That usually inspires me to pick up the book, read the back cover, or the inside cover if it is a hardback, and go from there. More often than not I put a book down and think about it for later. The sad thing is, I rarely pick up books that look as though they are mainstream. Why? Because I just am not attracted to those sorts of covers. I like spaceships, dragons, and other nifty stuff that is clearly genre. I can’t help it. More often than not the cover of a book will get me to dig into a book to figure out what it is about. Seeker by Jack McDevitt and Old Man’s War by John Scalzi were both buys that were the result of my looking more into the book after seeing the cover. The title of the book becomes meaningless to me because the cover has already captured my attention and hopefully the synopsis did too.But if the cover hasn’t caught my attention, perhaps the title or author will. The sad thing is, I don’t generally buy books by the title or the author. In fact, unless a book comes off to me as genre, I probably won’t even look at it. That’s just the way it is and the way it is for a lot of people. For me, the trend of making books look more mainstream isn’t working. I’ve never read a Neil Gaimen book because of the way they are packaged, and as I’m learning, that is a very horrible thing. I saw the Stardust movie and it was one of the best films of the year–yes, it was that good despite what the stupid box office reported for sales. I should have read the book, and his other novels too, but I never have because the covers never strike me as fantasy. If Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card had not had this cover:I would have ignored it entirely. Hopefully at the end of my perusal I have looked at enough books to satisfy me and I can move to step four. Fourth, I buy whatever it is that I was really interested in. I hate leaving a bookstore empty handed. I love books. You all should see my collection. I have almost 1,000 books and I’m only 24. I certainly have not read them all, and almost all of them are SF & F–a good chunk are Golden Age SF–but I love books so much. Books are fresh, new, and fascinating. A movie can never fully
The First SF & F Canons?
I wish. Despite there being plenty of recommended reading lists from organizations, authors, and fans, there has yet to be an actual SF & F Canon. This is of course from my understanding. Perhaps someone has written their own canon, but from what I can tell and from what I know there is no official canon of SF & F works.Well, I wonder if this is because people don’t care or because nobody has taken the time to make their ideas reality. I cannot no more say that I am qualified to create a legitimate canon, but I certainly know that I can be objective enough to be involved in deciding what novels make it into such a list. There are plenty of novels I have read that were fantastic, but I know do not deserve to be in a literary canon because they are not, generally speaking, a work of literary merit, or at least not necessarily a work that will greatly influence the genre. There’s nothing wrong with such books at all. You can read a book that you really enjoy and it is still literature, but you can see immediately that such a book just isn’t a book you would put on a list with some of the greatest works in the field. The same thing happens with regular and literary fiction too of course.So, I was thinking hard on this subject while trying to find some sort of personal canon that someone had put up. Alas, I could find none. There were a few discussions on the subject, but it seems as if no real list has been made, or at least no list that could be considered to represent a significant portion of speculative literature. Why has an organization like SFWA not set out to make an official list? Certainly they have the authority, or at least seem to have the authority to do such a thing, and with an enormous list of members–all published authors–they should easily be able to get input. But from what I can tell they haven’t worked on creating a canon. Maybe they don’t see a point in it. Well, I do! We need a legit canon–desperately. I propose creating one, but there have to be specific guidelines to how books are selected. Perhaps this will all flop, but there is a desperate need for a collaborative effort to create a literary canon of science fiction and fantasy. The guidelines might be as follows: PopularityThis is not what it sounds like. No books should be chosen purely on the fact that everyone out there bought it, read it, and loved. At the same time, though, the book has to have had a mark on the public to even be recognized and have influence. A book that is read by five people has just about no influence on the genre. But popularity should be taken with a grain of salt. There are plenty of books that are popular, but are at the same rather lax in literary merit (perhaps the Da Vinci Code would be an example). LongevityThe novel or even novella, since we should not exclude works that today would not be considered novels, should have stood the test of time. It has to have had a lasting influence. Critical SuccessIt has to be recognized in some way for its importance. This could mean it has won awards or simply has been analyzed or referenced. There may be many novels, particularly older novels, that would not have won awards but still have influence. InfluencePretty obvious since I’ve mentioned it already. It has to influence other writing. That influence has to be genre defining, powerful. Not simply that it made people buy books in that genre, but that it actually changed the direction of SF & F literature in some way. Perhaps there is need for more criteria, but perhaps those four are good enough. In any case, i think it’s time to begin paving a way towards a literary canon for science fiction and fantasy. So, who’s with me? Leave a comment! Add new criteria, edit my criteria and explain why, and let’s get this thing started!
Killing Speculative Literature
In the last year I’ve been realizing some growing trends that have made reading very difficult for me. Some of these trends have been in books that have gained popularity and the worst part of this is that these books become examples of good speculative literature when in reality they are not even good literature to begin with. We should not accept these trends, or allow these trends in any way to shape the direction of speculative literature. To do so could very well kill the genre, or at least kill its chances to be accepted by the academic world. It is already difficult for the literary academia to accept science fiction or fantasy as true literature and they will have no reason and no desire to accept it if they are forced to sift through dozens of books just to find one that is written well. So here they are (feel free to add to this): POV ViolationsI’ve read two books now that violate POV. One time I can accept, even two times doesn’t bother me too much, but when it becomes common it drives me up the wall. I had to quit on a book recently because it constantly jumped around the POV in the midst of fight scenes and places where you have to be very focuses. I can’t stand it. What exactly has changed in our society to make this acceptable? Are we lessoning our standards? Why would an editor let this garbage slip by? Why would a writer or a copy editor let this slip by? Every time I see a POV violation in a book, I have to put that book down. POV has rules. If you’re not going to follow them, don’t write and while many rules can be bent, you still cannot expect me or anyone with a literary mind to take your work seriously or to even finish it if you randomly switch POVs. You can have multiple POVs without switching in the middle of paragraphs or scenes. As an example, read Ragamuffin by Tobias Buckell (yes, I’m using you as an example again Tobias). Great use of POV. He doesn’t randomly switch in the middle of a scene, everything is divided appropriately so you know to expect a potential POV switch.Follow the rules. They were made for a reason. Even literary fiction doesn’t break this rule…as a rule at least (play on words there). Unrealistic FantasyFantasy writers, I think, have the hardest job of all writers. Why? Because they have to take something that isn’t real and never will be real. Science fiction writers are able to write things that could potentially be real; they have science behind them. But fantasy writers don’t have that luxury. At most they have access to medieval history, but that generally doesn’t help someone develop vast fantasy worlds like Tolkien.Given that, a fantasy writer absolutely must make his or her world believable. The creatures in it have to make sense. Mostly this applies to fantasy for adults simply because adults, in general, don’t have the wild, illogical imaginations of children.Unfortunately, some books don’t do this. They create creatures that are unbelievable. Four-winged dragons that have thoughts are not realistic. The only creatures on our planet that have four wings are insects, and insects can’t really think. Most birds are not intelligent in the sense that they have significant reasoning power. How is one to dispel disbelief if the very world he or she is trying to imagine doesn’t even make sense? Unbelievable CharactersThis applies to all literature. Characters have got to be believable. We have to look at what they do by the end of the novel and understand the reason for it. Their actions must make some sense, even if we don’t agree with it. Even aliens must make sense so far as we have to understand that their actions are simply alien, but at the same time there is a reason for it that is logical to that alien species.To sacrifice characterization for style should never be acceptable. Yet there are many books now out there that seem to ignore characterization. Why? Science fiction and fantasy are less about the worlds they are set in than about the characters that populate the story. Lack of characterization hurts the value of literature. SeriesI think other people have had this issue with fantasy already. One thing that is really hurting fantasy is the series. There are countless multi-volume series out there, all going beyond a simple trilogy. People are going to get sick of it. Generally we all don’t want to have to wait until the next volume to find out what happens. And what about the unfinished series? The unfortunate thing about series is that it takes a long time to do. Robert Jordan left an unfinished series behind and so did Roger Zelazny. It’s unfortunate that those two authors died before finishing, but I also feel sorry for the fans who will never have closure to the story. Hence why shorter series–trilogies or quartets–or even single volume books will do much better in the future. Complex ScienceThe good side of science fiction is that it is constantly being renewed as science advances. The bad side is when science fiction writers let science get in the way of the story or even in the writing. Most people who read books are not scientists, most people who read science fiction are the same. There is no need to bog down prose with references to things that people won’t understand, especially if you don’t intend to make it clearer to the reader. Just because Quantum Physics makes a marginal amount of sense to you doesn’t mean it will make sense to your reader. The reader needs to understand. That’s all I can think of right now. Any other ideas?
Will Science Fiction Die?
The short answer is yes. But I’m not here to give a short answer. Instead, I intend to try to explain why science fiction will find itself in a terrible bind at some point in the future. The sad part of this is that many of us may watch science fiction die, or perhaps our children will witness that, and for those of us who are in love with the genre it will come as a crushing blow.The sad truth is that science fiction cannot survive forever as it sits right now. There may come an opportunity to change directions, but when that happens it ceases to be science fiction and becomes something else. Science fiction is not dead now, and isn’t dying now, and issue I’ve already addressed. The fact of the matter is, science fiction is surprisingly fascinating right now not because it’s necessarily predicting unimaginably beautiful futures, like in the Golden Age, but more or less taking the world as we know it and bending it to give a new perspective on our species and the complex issues that plague us. But that cannot hold forever. It’s disturbing, considering how science fiction has come from nothing to what it is today. It started as novels of truly imaginative appeal, an appeal that found itself attacked by academics everywhere. Science fiction has struggled and fought tooth and nail to get where it is today and it still has one good fight left in it–the fight that will bring it permanently into the literary canon and ultimately into the academic world.There will, unfortunately, come a time when science fiction will not have a future to talk about. Once we, as a species, figure out how to go to the stars, begin creating vast interstellar empires, and meet aliens, all the stories that once addressed those subjects will either become fascinating reality, or forgotten relics, much as it seems the Golden Age of science fiction has. Science fiction writers will not longer be writers of science fiction, but simply writers of fiction. It’s unavoidable. This truth must be realized by all of us. While the literary academia fights hard to keep science fiction out of classrooms, the world around us is changing. One day we’ll be telling fictional tails of space battles from a realistic perspective–because in reality, it might have already happened. What will the literary academia do then? The death of science fiction, whether that be in one hundred years, or two hundred, or more, will also be the rise in its acceptance. To deny its acceptance would be paramount to blinding oneself of truth, an idea that seems to permeate the fabric of our society as we continuously make uneducated decisions in regards to laws and politicians.I do wonder what will become the new genre of fascination when science fiction loses its status as a precursor to the future. What sort of novels will we see that break the conventional mold that will be created? Who will be the new voices of that future? Will there be a future literary form as distinct as science fiction or fantasy, or will literature find itself in a bind as technology and the death of the genre push it into the background?
Dystopian Commonalities in SF
…or why dystopian fiction is so common We all know what the model dystopian novel is, since we had to read it in school. Some of us enjoyed it immensely; some of us hated it with a passion. In either case, we were presented with 1984 by George Orwell as the first true dystopian novel. Few of us probably questioned this, as many students seem apt to accept the almighty wisdom of their teachers. The truth of the matter is that dystopian fiction had already been invented before Orwell ever wrote 1984–a fact we have to accept because Orwell drew heavy influence from We by Zamyatin–and in a lot of ways, the idea of a dystopia is endlessly entwined into our literature no matter where we turn.But, that aside, it has been an interesting phenomenon to watch as science fiction paved the way for grander concepts in dystopia. Many who read science fiction and understand what a dystopia is will say “that sounds like half of all the science fiction books I’ve ever read”, or at least something to that effect. Those who criticize science fiction, for whatever reason, might be apt to use the common placement of the dystopia as a means to hurt the credibility of science fiction as literature. All of us should take a step back, however, and not criticize science fiction writers, whoever they may be, for their supposed lack of new ideas, but commend them for unintentionally realizing that you can’t escape the dystopia.Taking the definition of what a dystopia is–a work of fiction describing an imaginary place where life is extremely bad because of deprivation or oppression or terror–we have to come to the realization that we live in a dystopia. While some of us live in what we might call a utopia, or at least as close as we as a society could come to such a thing, great masses in the world are living in a dystopia. You could say, then, that science fiction writers are not writing some unimportant, overused idea, but rather taking something that is common place in normal society and stretching it into the vastness of technological advancement. Science fiction writers tackle issues that plague us in our everyday lives, some more so than others.The fact of the matter is, if true literature must take from real life, must draw upon social or cultural issues of the times, then science fiction is doing this better than any other literature. Books like The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, while now considered a classic, took our world, flung it into the future, and showed us what could happen to a world subjected to militaristic capitalism and ultimately what a society could become if it succumbed to extremist genetic manipulation–a veritable utopia where war and hatred have been bred out of the human race. But, to add to the tension, to draw upon the idea that one man’s utopia is another man’s dystopia, we get to see what happens to the poor individuals who aged mere years in their long, faster-than-light travels, while the rest of society grew by centuries. How would someone who grew up in a world not far from our own deal with returning to a place that no longer resembles home? And how would one react to knowing that you are a relic of a time when to think andfeel as an individual was common, a relic of a time long lost? How would you adapt? Certainly, the end of The Forever War presents a position we might consider utopian, but to look deeper into the position of the characters, which we followed from the start of the book, we have to agree that they are not living in a utopia. They can never live amongst what has now become ‘regular people’ because, in essence, they are the abnormal ones and to agree to sacrifice what makes you who you are seems an idea of lunacy to them. Thus, they are outcasts who know are outnumbered by a population of ‘humans’ who can easily replicate themselves as super soldiers many times faster than the significantly old-fashioned population.Any time a character is placed in a position where things seem particularly bad, that is a dystopia. It doesn’t matter than the rest of world might be moving along normally, for that character normalcy no longer exists, only pain and suffering. One might look at Andorra by Max Frisch, a play written some years ago presenting a unique take on racism, anti-semitism, and anti-individualism (I made that one up). To live in a society where to be Jewish is cause for unnecessary stereotyping and maltreatment would be dystopian on both ends. The play begins simply as stereotyping, with the main character refusing to accept that he is different, but everyone else treating him as the adopted Jewish child. For the main character it becomes impossible to lead a normal life as the rest of society pressures him into certain life paths based on Jewish stereotypes–money, sensitivity, etc. For the main character, things seem rather dystopian, but it becomes clear that he is not the only one suffering this condition. The end of the play shows this perfectly when the “Blacks”–the people of a neighboring country that oddly feel like Nazis–invade, as feared, and take complete control. Only the main character seems solid in his attempts to maintain his individuality, while most everyone else has given in without a fight, despite their earlier claims to do otherwise, in one way or another. For the main character, a world that is slightly dystopic, comes fully into its own as a modern dystopia. For the others, their sacrifice of their individuality for social order brings them into an unimaginably strict and immoral society where the destruction of a people is accepted as a means to preserve the whole.In essence, one must realize that the dystopia has always been there. Science fiction, while more flamboyant–for lack of a better word–in its endeavors,