A Fantasy version of Godwin's Law

I am going to presume that most reading this have heard of Godwin's Law, that pernicious meme regarding the nature of certain internet discussions. What many might not know is that on a few fantasy forums, there is a SF/F version of Godwin's Law that can be applied to the discussion of a writer's merits.

Inevitably, there are going to be disagreements about an author's style, writing, plotting, and even his politics and attire. More and more, especially on epic fantasy sites, things will devolve from analyzing these perceived deficiencies to a state where that author, rightly or wrongly, will be compared to one entity that has become the epitome of suckitude, smug arrogance, uncouth attire, and loathsome ideology.

Yes, Terry Goodkind has become a shortcut to denying the validity of another's arguments regarding another author's talents and abilities. To use Goodkind in the comparative is to imply that other writer in question has questionable merits, if any. Take for example this recent comment on the George R.R. Martin fansite, Westeros, where almost out of the blue a poster decides to deride Michael Moorcock and China Miéville for their prior comments regarding J.R.R. Tolkien:

I'm expecting to get whacked down for this, but I think Moorcock has turned into a mirror universe version of Terry Goodkind. Moorcock wrote entertaining fluff when he was young, but gradually he fell into delusions of brilliance and decided that he should write political didactic fiction to educate us stupid people. Moorcock separates himself from Goodkind by his opposite political views and his tendency to cover his simplistic stories with a thick layer of purple prose and misguided, self-indulged artsy techniques like random tense changes all over the place.

Not-so-coincidentally, both Moorcock and Goodkind hate worldbuilding and requirements for self-consistency, preferring to slap cool-sounding stuff into the story just like that.

Ignoring the near-total lack of evidence to support this assertation, let's look at how this poster uses Terry Goodkind as an ersatz Nazi. We see first "he fell into delusions of brillance," an intended claim to megalomania (one that the SFWA committee in charge of deciding their Grandmasters might look askance at, perhaps). Then it is followed up with the writing of "political didactic fiction," which of course makes me wonder if the poster confused occasional political undercurrents with the subordination of Story to Politics. The "educate us stupid people" bit is something else, one that leaves me with eyes agoged and wondering what sort of janja was being smoked then.

Then there are the obligatory disclaimers, as no-one in his/her right mind would accuse Moorcock of being an Objectivist, only for the thing to have the cherry on top of "hate worldbuilding and requirements for self-consistency," whatever the hell that might mean. While I never thought of Moorcock as being someone who slaved over how to create a non-existent language with 13 variants just so five words could be used in a story that would have the numbing details of a Baedeker's, I can't say I see the comparison with Goodkind either.

But this, of course, is beside the point. Making logical arguments is subordinate to using the new nuclear weapon in these forum debates of dropping the "Tairy Bomb" on someone. Once the comparison to Goodkind, good- or ill-fitting notwithstanding, has been made, the chances of a give-and-take discussion have dropped precipitiously. Might as well have called the other person a Nazi.

Do SF/F authors have to be SF/F fans in order to be good writers?

It's funny how small townish certain things can be. Speculative Horizons rants about comments made around a year ago by David Bilsborough in an interview on Pat's Fantasy Hotlist. Gabe Chouinard reads this rant about a week later and opines about deficiencies in the SH rant, which of course leads to this rebuttal of sorts, followed by discussion on the SF Site's forums. Sounds almost like the SF blogosphere version of which cousin is screwing someone's other cousin, doesn't it?

But buried in all that is an interesting question: Do SF/F authors have to be SF/F fans in order to be good writers?

This of course is predicated on a few things. By "science fiction" or "fantasy," are we referring to 1:1 correlations of say epic fantasy writers with epic fantasy fandom? Or can we have, as in the case of a China Miéville or a Michael Moorcock, to name but two of numerous examples, of writers who are well aware of a C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien but who think that those authors' works are weak, deficient, turgid, filled with nonsense and/or dangerously reactionary ideals, etc. Something tells me that those two authors didn't have to be "fans" in order to write some interesting and compelling fantasy stories based on what influenced them, not on the ossified examples of Lewis or Tolkien.

Yes, often an author needs to have some awareness of the genre in which he or she is writing. However, being a "fan" can be as much of a detraction as an advantage. If a writer is so immersed in his/her fannishness that there isn't an honest look at what deficiencies might exist in his/her chosen form, then what point is it to write in a field if only the same formulae, the same mistakes are copied by rote regurgitation? Would it not be better if an author who is perturbed by said perceived weaknesses decided to explore things, push boundaries, or perhaps (to be a bit blunt) decide to "fuck some shit up"? After all, James Fennimore Cooper did pretty much this when he got frustrated at reading a then-popular author's rather wretched frontier novel. Last of the Mohicans was the result of that non-fan's writing.

While doubtless some will make the argument that this is the exception that proves the rule, I am not so certain. I think it is a rather naive presumption that only those who have immersed themselves in reading hundreds of (epic, since that's the subgenre implied in the SH post) fantasy books can have something to say. After all, some of the more acclaimed writers writing today have utilized diverse genre influences to create something that is more sui generis than the presumed majority of say epic fantasists who read and write within narrow bounds. Does "fandom" have to equate with an almost obsessive reading and then writing in one field? I certainly would hope not.

But perhaps there are other ways of looking at this. All I know is that it seems rather confining to argue that authors ought to be "fans" if they want to write something great within X genre.

Tor's new site: Very early impressions

A couple of days ago, the revamped Tor.com site launched as a combination online story hoster, a blog central of sorts for various writers and industry professionals, and with the beginnings of a sort of social networking among its users.

Reactions have been interesting, especially this one, where there's a bit of a heated debate about the site's merits. I haven't had the time to do more than register (see if you can guess my screen name ;)) and browse a bit, but it seems to be to be a place that'll thrive or fail based on the willingness of everyday SF/F fans to communicate and to be part of a community setting. The blog entries so far are suitable for an opening weekend, but it'll be interesting to see if there'll be much in the way of pointed discussions regarding the usual topics surrounding awards, spec fic as a "ghetto," or racial attitudes among authors and fans, just to name a few hot topics of the past couple of weeks. Likewise, it'll be interesting to see how Tor approaches the marketing of the short stories, as I suspect it'll first be mostly "name" authors to drive readers to keep coming back to the site, with newer authors slowly being integrated into the site. I could be wrong on this, but I suspect this is the basic model.

Anyone else have anything they want to share in regards to their impressions of this new site?

2008 Shirley Jackson Award winners announced

Via Locus Online:

Novel:

Elizabeth Hand, Generation Loss

(Read this one twice in the past year and it certainly is a worthy winner out of a very good group of finalists.)

Novella:

Lucius Shepard, Vacancy

(Only read Živković's entry, but Shepard has released some really good stories over the years, so I hope to read this one in the very near future.)

Novelette:

Glen Hirshberg, "The Janus Tree"

(Haven't read any of the finalists, but am familiar with Hirshberg's 2007 WFA-nominated American Morons)

Short Story:

Nathan Ballingrud, "The Monsters of Heaven"

(While I haven't read this particular story of his, he is an outstanding short story writer and this was a strong field of finalists)

Collection:

Laird Barron, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories

(Haven't read it yet, but I've heard only very positive things about it. Good finalist list as well).

Anthology:

Ellen Datlow, Inferno

(Hope to read this in the near future, along with the other finalists.)


All in all, a solid group of winners here for the inaugural Shirley Jackson Awards.

The ethics of "free" e-books

I rarely read e-books if I can help it, mostly because I've yet to plunk down the money to buy a portable reader (large as my 19" widescreen monitor is, it isn't conducive for reading PDFs for more than 10-15 minutes at a time). However, I recently did a search and found a "free" .zip file e-book. It was for the Spanish translation of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski's Blood of Elves, called Sangre de los Elfos. I had just placed an international order (setting me back almost $50) for the Spanish translation of its sequel, Tiempo de Odio, as I wanted to have the sequel on hand when the English translation comes out in the UK in September.

I very rarely am tempted in the days of Itunes and other music services to go the "bootleg" route; I like the idea of cheaper payments that do at least put some money into the artists' hands. Same goes with books, as excerpts and the occasional full "free" e-book made available by the authors themselves usually leads me to buy the physical copy once it is available. This certainly shall be the case with the Sapkowski, as I like his first two collections (The Last Wish in English, La espada del destino in Spanish) enough to consider paying hefty import fees for owning the entire Witcher saga first in Spanish, then later in English.

Of course there is that twinge of guilt associated with finding this in bootleg format, even though in two months I'll have bought the English translation. But part of me also thinks that as an evaluation tool (and yes, what I've read so far confirms my high expectations) it is a cheap, reliable way of allowing readers to judge for themselves, in lieu of the actual thumbing through the book in the bookstore option, just how valuable the book may or may not be for them.

Recently, there have been postings by a few authors about how e-book availability of their books for various promotions (Tor's just-concluded Watch the Skies program and the one Neil Gaiman had for American Gods) has affected their sales. I am curious, however, about the reader impact. Are the majority of readers of e-books purchasing them or getting them for free in either a legal or bootleg fashion? If they get it for free, do they read the entire book in lieu of purchasing the novel, or is it used (as in my case) as an evaluative tool that then often leads to a purchase of a physical copy?

Just curious, as always.

A religious-type post

J.M. McDermott's post yesterday about the Christian Fiction section of bookstores reminded me of something that had been vaguely troubling me in recent weeks in regards to the relationships that religious faiths (and if I use certain forms of Christianity here and barely touch upon other faiths, it is only because I'm most familiar with it) have with their societies and how such attitudes are expressed in literature.

Over the past twenty years or so (or as far back as I can remember seeing such a development) there seems to be this increased segregation (not saying it wasn't there before then, only that it had become much more prevalent after the 1980s) of "Christian" media (books, music, TV, radio, movies, etc.) from other media forms. But more than that, but such "Christian" outlets started to reflect a tinier and tinier sliver of the religious spectrum. One couldn't be marketed in most "Christian" outlets if one were outspoken in his/her belief that evolution was "true." One could be castigated in certain corners if one had a fairly tolerant (or "permissive," as some commentators would have labeled this) attitude in regards to the LGBT community. And let us not forget the various "street preachers" who would rail, in their best impersonations of the odious Fred Phelps, about how everyone who was not "with them" was somehow "against them" and thus would be condemned to a fiery Hell. And this is even leaving aside the various "missions" to convert Catholics to Christianity...

While there is rightly much to condemn about such attitudes, sometimes I am left wondering if perhaps that vocal minority has been so successful in appropriating the label of "Christian" to themselves as to leave others such as myself, a Catholic convert strongly influenced by Liberation Theology, out in the cold. It is odd, having attempted to read the rather horrid Left Behind series (I stopped after the first; shoddy dialogue, cardboard characterization, disjointed plotting, all of which is topped with a religious theology that insults my own faith at every turn does not make for a conducive reading experience), feeling that there are those who nominally are part of the same religious faith as me who are so strident in their attempts to enforce their own viewpoints that they try to steamroll over 1950+ years of recorded differences in Christian belief and worship in an attempt to proclaim their version of Christianity as the "only true faith."

Irritating as this is, it becomes doubly frustrating when those who are not Christians for whatever reason tend to conflate others such as myself into this same category. Yes, there are those who do differentiate, but often it feels like an afterthought; the main thrust is that the association of "Christian" is with a narrow subset of Evangelical Protestants who deny natural selection, evolution, those whose idea of "pro-life" is to protect the fetus by murdering or condemning those who believe otherwise, not to mention those who use the religious trappings to enrich their bank accounts. Sometimes when I'm reading a story in which religious elements are introduced, I get this sense of a bigoted, narrow-minded faction that is so based on an author's conception of "Christians" (again, the minority strain somehow dominating the outsider's viewpoint of the whole) as to be rather transparent in many cases.

But this post isn't merely one expressing an irritation or one that seeks to have a self-defensive tone. I didn't check in my brain when I switched faiths and became Catholic five years ago (for those curious, it was the combination of ritual and an emphasis on using reason that appealed to me), nor do I believe others who believe otherwise checked theirs in. Religion is one of the most complex and pervasive things in human societies, yet I fear that too often we reduce it to a cipher, something that can be somehow quantified in an "easy to follow" directional approach. Yet such an attitude risks major distortions. I know only a few Muslims, all of them Sunnis. From what I've observed and from what they've told me in conversations, Islam can be quite peaceful, both for the internal state of the believer and also in the societal sense. Yet there are those who associate the religion with violence, because of the actions of those who are so desperate and confused that they act without regard for themselves or for others. This too leaves to unfortunate tarrings, such as the one that was made in the William Sanders controversy a couple of weeks ago.

Sadly, there are those who have concluded that "religion" itself (whatever that might mean) is at fault and in blog posts, forum commentaries, stories, etc., said attitudes are repeated. Yes, I know there is some justification for being sickened and repulsed by the actions of a few, but it does get rather irritating at times being lumped in with the hardcore intolerant zealots just because of a shared general belief in a Trinity. Sometimes, I can't help but wonder if in many parts of the world (not just the US), there isn't as much to gain anymore by sharing in a dialogue with others about differences of opinion, including faith. Armed camps don't make for peace, and seeing "Christian Fiction" sections and the boorishness of a Richard Dawkins being praised certainly doesn't help matters. Makes me wonder if the root of this, both in real-life and in writings on said subjects, is a fear and mistrust of the Other.

Perhaps those reading this will have things to add, things to share? I'm curious and I rarely bite...

Fantasy, SF: Influenced by religious movements?

Since it seems I won't have the time to get around to reviewing Adam Roberts' The History of Science Fiction before the school year begins in a shade over two weeks, I thought I'd throw out (with the unavoidable risk of distorting this part of his thesis) a central argument of his work, that of the religious influences on SF and Fantasy (at least as it pertains to European/American writings).

Roberts postulates that the Protestant Reformation, with its emphasis on a more empirical approach to matters of faith (and ultimately of life) created a climate more favorable to the eventual development of science fiction. However, for Catholics, there was a more mystical, backwards-looking approach that favored a more static society, elements that later were featured in tales by Catholic authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien and G.K. Chesterton, among others.

As I said, such a brief sketch risks distorting Roberts' argument, but I think it can suffice to serve as a ground of debate. Are the elements most commonly associated with SF to be found more often in places where the Protestant Reformation took place? Are there really deep connections between fantasy fiction and Catholicism? And what about the other groups, such as the Jews, Eastern Orthodox, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.? Where would they fall along this?

Just a little discussion thing to start the week, no?