Mindy Kaling: romantic comedies are a subgenre of sci-fi
I love this bit from the intro to the “Types of Women in Romantic Comedies Who Are Not Real” chapter from Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
I simply regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world. Then I just lap it up. There is no difference between Ripley from Alien and any Katherine Heigl character. They’re all participating in the same level of made-up awesomeness, and I enjoy every second of it.
So true.
Italo Calvino, Bakhtin, permanent revolution
In his essay collection The Uses of Literature, Italo Calvino writes about his reaction to reading Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism. The essay was published in 1969. In it, Calvino has an aside about why he reads criticism:
If I continue to read books of criticism, it is because I always hope they will give me surprises of this kind. The greatest of all was to find, hidden in the pages of Bachtin’s Doystoyebsky, a model of “permanent revolution” (seen as typical of antiquity and the Middle Ages) which could very well be suggested as the society of the future, the only model that would respond to all those requirements that we cannot make fit together: a society based on the regular alternation of destructive periods of consumerism and carnival spirit with periods of productive austerity. (58-59)
I will not subject you to a long rant on the social, political and cultural events and trends since this was written that suggest to me that Calvino was on target with that observation. I will also spare you a rhapsody on the joys of Bakhtin (when read correctly). Rather, I would point to science fiction and fantasy (especially all of the various permutations of fantasy from the past three decades that are not high fantasy) as fascinating, effective vehicles through which to both remind us of our condition of permanent revolution and give us glimpses of actual revolution. Both, I think, are necessary tasks. One can either fight/engage the twin poles of consumerism and austerity by going narrow and precious — the little epiphany; the static suspension of character; the annulment of reading pleasure; the quiet desperation; the sterile play — or you can go big, bold, beautiful (even if darkly so) and fun.
Of course, I’m the madman trying to cross-breed the two, but that’s neither here nor there.
Yet.
The Writing Life: what I want in a text editor
A screen shot of my humor piece "Liberating the Joycean Corpus" as composed in gedit (click to see full size)
I do the bulk of my writing, including fiction, in a text editor. I like the simplicity of text editors. I like the fact that text files, even large ones, open quickly. I like that I can sync my text files with Dropbox and open and edit them on any phone and any computer and any tablet (although I don’t have a tablet yet) regardless of operating system or platform. I use gedit on my home Linux desktop and work MacBook and Notesy on my iPhone. Both are great tools. But I’d love to see a truly multi-platform text editor that was especially geared towards writers.
Here is what I would want in such a text editor:
Comprehensive dictionary
For writers, it would be useful to be able to peg the spellcheck to a specific dictionary and even edition of that dictionary, especially if you’re working with a defined house dictionary/edition. This would, of course, require paying licensing fees, but if they were reasonable, I’d be willing to pay.
Customizable colors
Being able to customize the color of the background and type is a must for me. This is an option on most desktop text editors — less so (or limited on) on the mobile ones. My preference is white on dark blue. It’d be cool if a multi-platform editor not only allowed customization (via a color wheel or sliders) but also came with several pre-sets.
In-document section breaks
It would be great if you could use some sort of tag plus number and or file menu tool to break chunks of text into drafts, chapters and/or sections. I currently keep every revision of a work in the same text file. It’s very handy, but, admittedly, it does lead to a lot of scrolling sometimes (although I insert manual tag cues that allow me to use ctrl+f to find the beginning of each draft). To me, such breaks are much more natural units for thinking about the text (and navigating through it) than pages.
Customizable navigation pane
One of the reasons I use a text editor is that when you have it open there’s very little stuff you have to work with — no toolbars or ribbons or whatever. What I would like, though, would be the ability to open up a navigation pane/sidebar that would display the draft, chapter and sections of the open document. Even better would be if you could customize the sidebar to also list supporting text files (worldbuilding stuff, list of names, etc.). It would sort of be a minimalist Scrivener, but since everything lives in text files, you aren’t locked in to any one platform or even one way of organizing the information. If you want to make a bunch of separate text files for a writing project, you could do that. Or if you want to keep everything in just one or two, that would also work.
Extra word count features
All text editors can do a basic document or selected text word count. I’d like expanded word count features such as a wordcout countdown (for writing sprints) and chapter or section word count (see above).
Word frequency tool
I’d also like a word frequency tool that generates smart (as in, it leaves out words like ‘and’ or ‘or’) word frequency lists for a document, draft version, chapter, section or chunk of highlighted text. Reading level/readability analysis would also be interesting, but wouldn’t be a high priority for me.
In conclusion
The problem with most text input programs is they are overkill — they try to also be layout programs. Text editors are minimalist, which is awesome. But with a few extra, non-obtrusive tools, they could be ideal for writers. Now, I realize most writers aren’t going to break their MS Word habit. And it’s true that once you get to the submission stage and/or to the stage where you’re working with an editor, you’re going to need to layout it out in Word and, likely, use track changes. But there’s no reason everything up to that point can’t be done in a text editor. And I, at least, find that I’m productive working that way. In fact, since upping my output of fiction, I’ve found it quite lovely. Uncluttered is awesome. Now if only there were just a few more writerly-oriented, non-screen-cluttering features and a truly cross-platform/device option.
Anthologizing: Nebula Awards Showcase 2010
Here are some rough, quick impressions from my reading of the Nebula Awards Showcase 2010.
MashUp That Worked: the novelette “Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel. This is a form that was already hackneyed the first time you even heard Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (and, of course, there are similar mashups that predate that phenomenon), but just because it’s a MashUp, doesn’t mean it’s not good, and this collision of the worlds of Jane Austen and Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) worked for me. In particular, Kessel exquisitely details what it’s like to have an attraction that is doomed not only because of who the two people involved are, but also because of the choices they have made in their life. And even if you know how it’s likely to turn out, it all unfolds nicely.
Shoulda Just Been a Novel: the novella “The Spacetime Pool” by Catherine Asaro. I liked the adventure and the romance (although the deliverance from the final difficulties seemed to come way to easy), but even more than that I really enjoyed all the math and physics references and clues about what the alternate world that the heroine is transported to. And yet we get so little answers and pretty much no payoff from all those hints and references. This should have been bumped up to 70-120k words and delivered with a real conflict and some world-building payoff.
Best Retrospective: this volume has several retrospectives of the field in earlier decades. Contributors include Robert Silverberg, Frederick Pohl and Elizabeth Ann Hull, Kevin J. Anderson, and more. The best of them is David Drake’s look at the Golden Age and what it made it so and what didn’t make it so. But really, all the ones up through the 1960s are worth reading. The latter decades, less so.
Cute and Precocious or Not so Much?: I can’t decide which when it comes to the excerpt from Flora’s Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) by Ysabeau S. Wilce. The freakiness and frenetic pace appeal to me, but I wonder how it stands up over the course of an entire novel. I may or may not investigate further. If I recall correctly, I did enjoy her story “The Lineaments of Gratified Desire”.
Cracked Me Up: the Selected Commentaries from Algis Budrys. Budrys (among other things) was a editor and critic of science fiction in the 1960s. In these commentaries he writes about the current state of the field, the already nostalgia for the golden age, the state of the slush pile, etc. with wit, authority, cynicism and world-weariness. I found his commentaries amusing and informative and, although this the cliche, they are a reminder that when it comes to writers and editors and the market, the more things change; the more they stay the same.
Harder Than It Looks: the excerpts from the script for Wall-E are deceptively simple. Now, of course, much of the success of an animated film comes from the art, voice and sound work, and editing. But that makes the script all that more important and one thing that really stands out is the verbs — and that economy and clarity and crispness very much translates on to the screen.
Liberating the Joycean Corpus
The recent entering of James Joyce’s oeuvre into the public domain has led to a surge of renewed interest in his writing. The following excerpts have been pulled from just a few of the many exciting new editions of Joyce’s most famous works that publishers the world over have planned for the coming weeks and months:
From The Barefoot Schoolhouse’s illustrated copy of “The Dead”:
Yep, the TV weather guy got it right: it is snowing lots and lots all over the land of Ireland.
From the Little Debbie Appreciation Society’s YouTube! video “Molly’s Soliloquy”:
…yes first I gave him the bit of Banana Pudding Roll out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my Gosh after that long kiss I ate a whole box of those Zebra Cakes and yes then there were the Star Crunches and they weren’t melted one bit and oh yes the Swiss Rolls so many Swiss Rolls…
From the Life Affirmations pamphlet “Araby”:
Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a valuable, lovable person driven to succeed and destined to manifest my dreams; and my eyes misted over with courage and positivity.
From the CleanReadz version of the Nausicaa episode of Ulysses:
O — all your — – — I saw — – made me — – — we two — — — she — – — – — met him — – — – — – — your wife — – — – — – young eyes — – — dreams return — – — – — – — – next year — – — – — – — – –.
From the Lola loves Max 4Ever Press version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
16 April: So outie!
The music be pumpin’ over in Amsterdam. I hear they voices hollerin’ ‘Get ya’ bad self on over here. It’s time to get sweaty on the dance floor. It’s time to shake you’re groove thang. You one of us now.’
26 April: Ma is packin’ my new pimp threads. She’s gettin’ all up in my face about learnin’ something and absence makes the heart grow fonder. Whatevs. I’m gonna go tear up the continent. I’m gonna represent.
27 April: Irish and proud, yo! It’s go time.
From the ending of Pageant Pride’s version of “A Mother”:
They thought that they had only a girl to deal with and that therefore, they could ride roughshod over her. But she would show them their mistake. They wouldn’t have dared to have treated her like that if she had been a man. But she would see that her daughter got her rights: she wouldn’t be fooled.
So she made a big fuss, and the promoter gave her daughter four more concerts, and a talent agent was in the audience for the second performance. And then three talent agents the next night. And then fifteen for the final performance. And after that there was a bidding war, and her daughter signed a huge contract with CAA, and she was officially made her daughter’s manager with business cards and everything, and eventually the two of them also got their own reality show. And her daughter had a successful career, but everybody knew it was all thanks to her mom. The end.
From 17th Earl Publishing’s version of Ulysses:
Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proved by algebra that Edward de Vere’s ghost is Hamlet’s grandfather.
NOTE: the Dothraki translation of Finnegan’s Wake has been stalled by a dispute over whether or not animacy, which affects noun declensions, should be ignored or not when dealing with the many portmanteaus in the original text.
Dear readers: stop whining about cliffhangers and unfinished series
I’m a voracious reader. I understand that it can be frustrating when a two-part book or the first or second book in a trilogy ends on a major cliffhanger. And I read a lot of epic fantasy so I also understand the frustration with series that are unfinished, expecially when more than two years lapes between volumes. But even with that understanding, I have a request for all those posting to blogs, Amazon, Twitter, forums, whatever: stop whining about cliffhangers and incomplete series. It’s lame. It’s ignorant. It’s selfish. It accomplishes nothing.
More precisely:
1. It dampens the enthusiasm of other potential readers, especially casual readers/fans. The best way to ensure that the publisher remains committed to a series and an author is on fire about it is for the most recent book to sell a lot of copies and fans to be enthusiastic about it.
2. It ignores the realities of the writing process. Others have said this better, but it bears repeating: writing is difficult. Different writers have different methods by and rates at which they can write and rewrite. Not everybody can be Brandon Sanderson.
3. Learning to live with the hunger is good for you. The world of cultural and media as currently configured serves up narrative in huge heaping piles and we, rabid beasts that we are, slurp it up. It does your soul good to have to wait. To be able to brood for awhile on what you have just experience and what is left to come. To let the anticipation build and swirl.
And hey, at least you get book 1 in all of its 200, 300, 700 pages. Try living back in the 19th century where works were serialized in weekly or monthly journals/magazines.
4. The strongest argument that fans make is that when they buy a book in a series, they are entering into a relationship with an author (and that author’s publisher) and that that relationship comes with it certain expectations and should be a two-way street. I think that there is some merit to that idea. And i certainly have no sympathy for publishers. But I do have sympathy for the authors. Until you do it yourself, you have no idea of the emotional and intellectual energy it takes to produce good fiction. Because of those requirements, it would be impossible to set up a system whereby every author could produce an entire series before it was published. And even if you could, it’d be better if the first book or two in the series could be edited by a top-notch editor and revised and polished so that the author has those changes and skills in place for when he or she writes the following books.
Here’s the thing: fiction is a risk. It’s a risk to write, to publish and to read. The best response to that risk is not to whine or grow apathetic, but to revel in it. Embrace the anticipation. Embrace the risks of unfulfillment. Embrace the cliffhangers and the drawn out series. It makes the rewards all the sweeter.
This is me getting serious
I produced about 12,000 words of creative writing this year. That’s actually a pretty good year for me. And, of course, if you add in all the blogging, posting to Twitter, Facebook, G+ and forums as well as all the writing I do for work, the word count would be impressive. It takes a lot of effort to keep you all entertained. But as important (and fun) as all that other writing is, it doesn’t matter if I’m not also producing fiction. It just doesn’t.
So I suppose the time has come for me to get serious. And that means the setting of a goal and the public stating of that goal. It’s a modest goal, but if I reach it, I’ll have increased my fiction output considerably.
Here it is:
4,000 words of fiction
8 story ideas (no matter how silly or half-baked)
per month
I’m making it retroactive to the start of December. My current total is: 1,125 1,034* words of fiction and 7 story ideas. I have some ground to make up and I may weasel out of it because the zeal didn’t really start until half-way through, but I also have time off next week so, we’ll see (to be fair, I’ve also been doing a lot of revising this month, but I’m not going to count that. It has to be new words set down on the page).
In order to reach this goal, I’m going to need to write for at least 2 hours a week. Probably more like 3. Again, small potatoes compared to most writers, but it’ll be a stretch for me. And I went ahead and set a story ideas goal because I keep finding myself not writing down story ideas because I always think: I already have so many projects I’m not working on, why bother? That’s stupid, of course. That’s a surefire way to get stuck in “not working on the same two or three stories forever” mode.
So that’s the plan. As of now, the focus will be on short fiction (some speculative; some literary fiction; some Mormon-related; some not; plus some humor), but there may also be a novella happening. Wish me luck!**
* I counted wrong. It was actually 1,034.
** of course, it’s not about luck. It’s about discipline. But it’s kind of weird to wish people discipline. Unless, well, you know… but let’s not go there.
The future in A Visit From the Goon Squad
I began Jennifer Egan’s Pulitizer Prize winning linked stories collection/novel as a skeptic, but was won over by the third or fourth story in. What really got me, though, was the ending. In particular, the final two stories, which take place in the future. I was not expecting the turn to speculative fiction. And it’s not mind-blowing speculative fiction, but in the context of the collection it does something very interesting. The second-to-last story “Great Rock and Roll Pauses” is told entirely in PowerPoint style, with a heavy emphasis on the use of infographic shapes (you can view it here). It’s a clever way to conjure up the future [and it gains context with the final story "Pure Language", which shows how the internet (and more specifically some major scandals related to the internet) as well as a not entirely identified eco/energy disaster complete changes the discourse of the youth and how humans relate], but more importantly it acts as a defense of literary discourse itself. That is, it’s a cute, even effective experiment, but it also creates a sense of loss because Egan has already ably taken us on a journey through standard fictional prose. And it’s doubly-so because her fiction is very much about music, about how it is created and marketed and consumed. Thus, although the PowerPoint slides are about the pauses in music and noticing them and how that illustrates how this mother, father, sister and autistic brother relate to each other, they are invoking the reduced form of discourse that is more fully explained in the final story.
As Egan writes in an interview on her publisher’s website:
The point of connection between music and language is that both are deep and basic forms of human expression. At the moment, they both feel imperiled, from a business standpoint (will there still be publishing or a music industry in the future?) and, more ominously, from a creative standpoint (will language and literary creation be debased by texting shorthand and the plagiaristic ‘sampling’ mentality of Web culture, as the music industry has been?) Culturally and humanistically, these are vast, gaping questions.
Luckily, she was smart enough in her work to bring in the ambigiuty expected of literary fiction so rather than a luddite-esque rant, we are treated to this projection (perhaps even a prophesy) of the future. And it also may be that she is also hopeful about the future. She writes in the same interview:
But what I often end up feeling, even as I experience vertigo at the thought of the future—is that human beings are immensely resourceful, and capable of great beauty and genius, and that language and inner life will survive and even thrive because of those qualities, whatever threats they may face.
By extending her cycle of short stories into the future, Egan attempts to do what science fiction does: tell us something about ourselves in the present time by extrapolating from present technologies and social conditions. And even if the actual extrapolation isn’t quite as fully realized as one would expect from a masterful science fiction writer, it’s good enough to reverberate back through the other stories and give them more import, and more importantly it brings the characters that thread through the earlier stories to a more satisfying end.
Future fatigue and science fiction
In Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past, Simon Reynolds exquisitely details the various manifestations of retro that have plagued pop and rock music for four decades now (especially the most recent one). He also brings in other art forms at times, including near the end of the book, science fiction. In a section title simply Future Fatigue, he summarizes a 2001 essay by Judith Berman called “Science Fiction without the Future”. He writes:
“…Bernab surveyed the state of her genre, breaking down the contents of recent issues of leading SF magazines and discovering a preponderance of short stories about ageing, nostalgia and fear of the future, with a surprising proportion actually set in the past or having a disconcerting ‘retro’ flavour. What she considered ‘real futures,’ involving speculative extrapolation from present tendencies, could be found in only a quarter of the stories.” (396)
Reynolds then goes on to discuss William Gibson’s turn post-2000 from speculative near future fiction to fiction set in the present as well as Gibson’s assertion that the “the most intelligent twenty-first-century fashion strives for a radical atemporality” (397). It’s an interesting aside in a book that’s mainly about music, but I’m not sure I’m completely buying this particular section. For two reasons:
- Speculative extrapolation can extrapolate not only “real futures” but also “real anxieties” or “real hopes” or “real trends in society” or “real responses to previous visions/executions of science fiction”. Which is to say that retro isn’t always retrograde — sometimes it’s critique; sometimes it’s prophesy; sometimes it’s pointing out what is currently lacking. Real futures is only part of what science fiction does, and I don’t see any reason to privilege it over other approaches. Rather we should worry about what the works themselves accomplish in terms of the craft of fiction and the riffing off of/with science and engagement with the future can manifest itself in a variety of ways.
- Until such time as technological process majorly slows or techno catastrophe occurs, the overall feeling in relation to the future is of it hurtling toward us (or us toward it) rather than atemporality (which I suppose means a type of dynamic stasis where all histories and styles are present). I haven’t done an exhaustive study to prove this, but when talking about science fiction, part of what needs to be mentioned is not only the narratives themselves, but also how they are delivered, discussed, and lead to further creative activity. Which is to make the trite point that there is a lot of talk about near futures and semi-distant futures on the internet and much of it is informed by current (and, yes, past) works of science fiction.
Margaret Atwood’s In Other Worlds
It is somewhat fashionable in genre circles to bash Margaret Atwood’s attitude towards science fiction and fantasy. Perhaps it’s because so many of us were forced to read The Handmaid’s Tale in high school English (I escaped that fate, and, full disclosure: haven’t read any of her fiction). Or perhaps it’s because of her remarks over the years that seemed to place a barrier between her work and those of us reading and writing in the genre ghetto. Or perhaps it’s because the literary elite adopted her into the canon (making her the next chain in the line that stretches from her through Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury and George Orwell). Or perhaps it was her notorious “squid in space” comment. Whatever the case because I am a) not familiar with her work b) in spite of that fact, somewhat widely read in both literary and genre fiction and criticism and c) I wanted to see what the fuss was all about, I decided to read her recent essay collection on science fiction.
What’s fascinating to me about Atwood’s collection In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination is that it appears that Atwood thinks she is on the side of the speculative rather than the literary. While true that she doesn’t back down from her distaste for space opera, she reduces her spat with Ursula K. Le Guin to a misunderstanding over terminology (and, I might add, her own idiosyncratic use of terminology).
The problem is that again and again, Atwood shows no understanding of contemporary genre fiction. Other than Le Guin (who, again, barely counts because her work is acceptable in academia [although, unlike Atwood, she is still beloved in genre circles]), Atwood doesn’t discuss anything that’s happened post Orwell and Huxley, except for one outlying feminist novel that is clearly steeped in the same background as Atwood. What’s more Atwood situates all of her reading in childhood (especially of the more pulpy stuff like H.G. Wells) or adolescence (Orwell, Huxley) and then discusses it using analytical tools from the pre-postmodern turn in literary criticism.
The result is one of diminishment of the genre even as she appears to be treating it seriously. One comes away with the impression that genre novels are for children; that genre fiction is for making political points (it’s all utopias and dystopias with her); and that nothing much has happened (other than her own work) since 1984 was published. Some of her writing related to genre and feminism is interesting — in particular, her essay on H. Rider Haggard’s She — but even that seems as old-school as The Handmaid’s Tale appears to be. That, in addition, the fiction outtakes she provides at the back of the book are, to be blunt, unimpressive doesn’t make me want to explore her three science fiction novels. In fact, I hate to say it but except for a few 9/11 references, the entire collection reads like it could have been published in 2001 or 1991 or even 1981 or 1971.
But none of that in and of itself is all that annoying. What is annoying is that Atwood has this particular tone that comes through in her writing. There’s always an extra little adjective or a cutesy way of phrasing things or a shrugging of shoulders or an over-explanation. It’s like she’s trying to treat it seriously, but can’t. And yet it’s not just that she comes across as solely dismissive — as just a snob — rather the overall effect is one of shallow engagement. I came away feeling like Atwood doesn’t really know anything about genre fiction beyond what she recalls from childhood.
I don’t mean to condescend (although, hey, in this case it appears to be a two-way street), but going in I was expecting at least some juicy, relevant opinions that I could dig into. What I found may be of interest to some Atwood fans, but I can safely say that the readers of this blog can skip the collection.
And now, having, dismissed this collection, I suppose I at least should check out Atwood’s fiction. It may be a few months, but I will do so and report back.
NOTE: now that I’ve recorded my reaction, I have dug a bit into what others have to say. Jeff VanderMeer’s post is the best place to start and has links to some of the other notable reviews. I would only note that while he makes a good point that what Atwood is really talking about is “Dystopias and the Human Imagination” and so that collection may hold merit for those interested in that topic, even taking the collection as that, your mileage may vary widely in how much you get out of it, depending on what you’ve already read in the field.
WHM on Twitter- WmHenryMorris: @robisonwells That makes sense. The brain is a very weird, obsessive thing -- for good and ill. 2.22.12
- WmHenryMorris: @robisonwells Not remotely analogous, but I have purposefully stayed up too late at times so I would be tired & thus distant from the world. 2.22.12
- WmHenryMorris: @robisonwells What's awesome is not only how open you are, but the clarity you bring to describing what you are experiencing. 2.22.12
- WmHenryMorris: @bengreenman @caleb_crain It's the main plot threads for the next season of Downton Abbey! 2.22.12
- WmHenryMorris: I had no idea an Otherland MMORPG was in the works: http://t.co/rggbC01I 2.22.12
What I’m currently reading:
