Recent Arrivals

Some books have arrived at the Speculator household in the last couple of days that I am treating more as resources than reading material. The first is Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher. It really is a dictionary of terms whose use is founded in the tradition of science fiction. As the title says, this book comes from Oxford University Press, which would indicate some scholarly ambition for the book. Being the word geek I am, I am delighted that it treats its entries as does the Oxford English Dictionary; a definition, and then a chronological listing of the important appearances of the term. Prucher has done some remarkable research for those entries--most of them come from novels or short stories, but he uses genre magazines, mainstream newspapers, scripts of TV shows and movies, and even articles on Usenet newsgroups as his sources. A quick skim of the book uncovered several references to something called The Adventures of Luke Skykiller by George Lucas, for example. Of course the real joy is these listings, but the writer of the foreword, Gene Wolfe, also points out a use I had not considered--they provide some solid examples of the style and content of some things I have never read (and surely even more for someone newly come to speculative fiction) and those help to make a reading list. Like I need the help....

The one drawback of this book for me was the number of typographical errors and layout mistakes. If the book is trying to be reference material, the author and editor are going to have to be far more scrupulous about editing. Otherwise, I did an entire skim of the book, reading through definitions and first uses, and then deeper in to the examples if it was an interesting term. I recommend this book most heartily to either the fan of words or the fan of science fiction. And if you're a fan of both, this book is just a delight.

The second book that has arrived is The Rediscovery of Man, the complete set of short stories by Cordwainer Smith. I already owned The Best of Cordwainer Smith (thanks Mark!) and thoroughly enjoyed what is recognized as the top 12 or so pieces of short fiction by Smith (the nom de plume for Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger). I enjoyed them so much, however, that I decided I wanted to get them all. This is a lovely 600+ page volume that I may not actually get to for some time. I like short stories, but I tend to read collections as filler, a story at a time when I have a few minutes to spare. I am looking forward to this collection however, and I might just end up putting it in the growing reading stack.

I also bought Hominids by Robert Sawyer and Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson in my quest to catch up on the Nebula- and Hugo-award winning novels. Actually, I was looking for The Time Machine in the local used book stores but came up empty on that quest. But since I carry the list of the missing award-winners with me, I was able to pick those two up.

Where's yer head at, man?

My writing production has gone way down since I started this out, and it is not so much the result of bad writing, as it is poor subject matter.

When it comes to comics, I almost exclusively read DC. I suppose there might be a long posting embedded here about the difference between DC and Marvel when it comes to story-telling, but let's just start with my tastes right now. And about a year ago, DC was going great guns--Infinite Crisis was coming to a fairly satisfying conclusion and 52 was making big promises. And in the regular titles, "One Year Later" was going to do some rebooting. But what have we ended up with a year later? Superman has been uneven, first telling how Superman got his powers back, then the global invasion by a giant snake oil salesman, and finally Arion's predictions of the dire consequences of there being a Superman at all. Only the last arc has any long-lasting repercussions with the possibility of an ongoing conflict with the only character that regularly gives Superman troubles, Superman himself. Action has been a throwback to the 80s and 90s, with its event-based storytelling (look at us have a co-writer who has never written a comic in his life! but you will recognize the name!). I've already remarked on my feelings about the whole 3-D glasses schtick, but even that has been delayed as the creative teams have fallen behind schedule. In fact, the title is being forced to go to unprecedented places by breaking up a five- or six-part story with filler issues while things get caught up. And those schedule problems don't come close to what has plagued Wonder Woman, that got so far behind that the first arc will have to be finished in a special issue while a whole new creative team takes over and plots a company-wide event.

Of the "big three," only Batman has really succeeded creatively. Morrison's inspired storytelling in Batman carries that title to some places we've not seen in a long while. Having Bruce Wayne as a character is a joy, and Morrison is nailing the jet-setter characterization that has been missing for decades. Whatever Bruce did to get rid of his demons in 52 seems to have worked, and other than the regrettable all-prose Joker story, Batman is a joy. Even so, it does not hold a candle to Paul Dini's work on Detective, making Batman a real detective again. Dini is delivering single-issue stories that develop both Batman and his supporting cast, making it quite possibly the best title DC has going right now.

Outside the big three, Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, and Teen Titans have really come through. Gl and Teen Titans have the advantage of Geoff Johns' guiding hand, and his record as the deliverer of big stories is substantial. However, Johns is not so good at the small stories, which has long been a part of the Titans' history. Perhaps the new writer there can continue to deliver the big thrills while developing the characters. More stories like the solo Kid/Red Devil, please! And while Green Lantern has been fun, it has been fairly predictable. Green Lantern Corps has indeed been a surprise with its strong story-telling, even though the art has been horribly uneven. I would add Uncle Sam, Justice Society, and the Dr. Thirteen back-up story in Tales of the Unexpected as highlights of the past year. But Justice League? What could have been a great story was drawn out by more scheduling issues, and the energy built-up with the promise a new Justice League has petered out in the weeks between the issues.

I could go on, appearig to bash what is going on at DC, but let me just say that I'm buying more comics now than ever before. I look forward to Wednesdays a great deal. My point is this--I've set myself some standards for writing reviews and one of those is that I don't want to review the same titles every month. But spread these titles over the weeks in a month and I'm left with perhaps one good title and a bunch of mediocre ones to talk about here. And I'm just not up for talking about mediocrity yet. So no blogging in those weeks.

So, I'm going to make a deal with you--if I don't blog reviews for a week's comics, I will still write a blog entry on the state of things.

As for books, well, I'm having a real struggle at the moment. When I was in college and grad school, I made a real effort to buy all the Hugo- and Nebula-winning novels. I felt it was a great way to get a sense of the history of the genres I love as well as visiting the canon of great books. And, if you are a book-lover, you know the joy of going to used bookstores and finding that one book you've been looking for. And I've read some wonderful stuff on that quest--Babel-17, for example. Mars Plus still excites me and I read it more often than I read some Heinlein. But grad school got tough and I had to bear down on getting my degree while working five jobs, and whn the pressure got too much, I had to start a career as a tech writer. So I was poor and couldn't do the book-hunt thing so much.

But recently I was inspired to go back and close the gap, catching up on the award-winning novels. And while I recognize that tastes change, especially mine, I'm discovering the best books of the past few decade and a half are generally nowhere near as good as the classics of the 50s and 60s. The book I've been working on for the past month is a fine example. While it purports to be speculative fiction, I'm finding that there is next to no fantastic in it to sustain my interest, acting more as a romantic peroid piece as we follow a young woman in 18th century France. I've finally reached the halfway point of this 450-page novel, and we have been introduced to exactly one fantastic element--a mermaid. And so far, where the novel is going is ruthlessly predictable and I find myself wondering what else was out the year this won a Nebula that had to suck so poorly. But then, I am only halfway through the book, so maybe it'll pick up so that amazing things happen and I'll find myself healthily eating crow, but right now, calling it a struggle is an understatement, as I put in about five to ten pages in bed before going to sleep. And it is no help that the book is helping to put me to sleep. Even less help is the electronic promise from the British arm of Amazon that a book I've been looking forward to for a year is on a tramp steamer crossing the Atlantic on its way to my doorstep.

I feel a big entry coming up about the weakness of recent books, but I don't want to start it based on my opinion of my current reading material, when I've not finished that book. But I wanted to let my readers know I'm still here, struggling with my sources. I'll write more about those struggles if they continue.

Hey, new comics tomorrow! May my pull-list be filled with instant classics!

The Fountain and Genres

From an article on scifi.com:

Writer/director Darren Aronofsky wants to make one thing clear: His epic film The Fountain is definitely science fiction, he told SCI FI Wire. "I'm glad we're talking about this," Aronofsky said in an interview. "It's a really upsetting thing, because I've met people on the road who go, 'This isn't sci-fi because there aren't ray guns.' They haven't said it that obviously, but that's their point. And the fact that science fiction in movies has been so hijacked by techno-lust and by hardware 'button sci-fi,' as we call it, where everything is, if it's not buttons, it's now holographs."

This is the observation that led me to try to better define the subgenres of speculative fiction, at least in my own mind. I'm reminded of the book group member I wrote of before; the people that Aronofsky describes appear to think that a work is science fiction because it has certain things in it. A ray gun or holographs or aliens equals science fiction, and a sword equals fantasy (unless it is a light sabre). But my training in literature tells me that this can't be right; ray guns and holographs are part of the setting of the book, not what the book is about, right? Honestly, how many genres are defined by where the book is set? Aren't genres defined by what the book is about?

Sure, science fiction (at least in the movies) usually happens in space and usually involves a ray gun, but those things aren't what the movie is about...you know, the theme of the movie. Those things are usually just tools to get to the theme (if the movie has a theme; sometimes those movies have very little thematic going on in them at all). So, what is science fiction about?

The article goes on:

"Believe me, there were drafts of The Fountain where the guy in space had a little holograph," Aronofsky said. "But where we wanted to push our science fiction [was to] push outer space so far, and push technology so far,[to] remove all trucks from space. No more pimped-out cars in space. Return to an organic singularity, so that outer space suddenly becomes inner space. Because I think that's where technology takes you. ... You can't have those tricks. You have to simplify down to something that is absolute, that is mental and [is] no longer electronic. And I think that's where science fiction is going. And it completely is science fiction."

Suddenly Aronofsky isn't really all that different from the science fiction fans he complains about. It appears he is disturbed by the props that viewers use to determine the genre (holograph bad, organic starship good) rather than the real literary component that separates science fiction from the other (sub)genres. Again, what usually defines a genre in literature is what the book is about. And, unfortunately, The Fountain isn't about science or technology. Sure, those things play a part in the storytelling, but the real story is about a man's relationship with his wife under extraordinary circumstances. That Aronofsky can switch out the props in his story without feeling like the story has a different meaning is the true indicator that the movie is not science fiction. In science fiction, how the characters interact with those bits of science and technology is what the story is about. If Tom was attempting to maintain his emotional relationship with his wife via a holograph, that would be science fiction, but that's not what the story is about. (It can be argued that the method by which Tom continues with his relationship is magic, and then by Clarke's law, it is indistinguishable from super-science, but our point-of-view does not really give any indication that this is the case. It's natural, just unusual nature, or perhaps supernatural. Not science.)

Great film, The Fountain, even if its director doesn't get it (just kidding, Mr. Aronofsky--brilliant movie, we just use different tools to describe it).

Genre Speculation

The latest issue of Locus magazine has an interview with China Mieville, part of which I now quote:

I got very frustrated when the whole debate about New Weird was
going on. If it doesn't work, if it's a stupid category--fine, let's
talk about that. But people often say any act of pigeonholing is bad. That is
absurd, for we do it all the time. It's not like labeling in geology,
saying 'This is this type of rock' and that's the end of the story; it's a tool,
and you use it as long as it's useful.

I started a "book group" about five years ago, a bunch of friends gathering to discuss speculative fiction. Every four to six weeks we gather to discuss the latest selection (we're reading Brave New World right now). When we first started gathering, I thought we should read a book from each of the major subgenres--science fiction, fantasy, and horror--so that we could talk about what makes them what they are. The science fiction book we started with was Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and we immediately lost a member, because to his mind, the book was not remotely science fiction. For him, the book was lacking aliens and spaceships and ray guns, and therefore could not be considered science fiction. (I remember asking him how he would classify the novel, but I honestly can't remember his response.)

To some extent, it was this populist definition of science fiction that led me to start the book group and begin trying to build arguments for and against my own theory of the definition of science fiction. Over the intervening years, we have read fascinating works and talked about them, even going so far as to try to place them in genres and subgenres, and perhaps even subsubgenres (scientific romance, anyone?). But whenever the genre question arises, the conversation suddenly goes from cordial and friendly to sharp and formal. I really despise when that happens, but fortunately, we have all been friends for years, even decades, so we work our way past it. And I try very hard to indicate that it doesn't matter what definitions people use, so long as they work for the user.

But it's a funny thing about genres. As difficult as it is to work with literature and the way works sometimes get stuck in the spaces between them, think about music. I used to taunt a good friend who is a classical music fan by challenging him to define "classical music". Think about it for a while--I'm not sure it can be done. I'm a huge prog rock fan, and my wife sometimes says she hates prog rock, and yet we both like Rush. I spent an entertaining tailgating afternoon discussing with another friend "What is Southern rock?". And although I've never been able to reach consensus with anyone about the definitions I'm seeking, every person I talk to holds on to their definitions tightly, not appreciating even the friendly challenges that come from asking what someone's thoughts are.

Part of why I am writing this blog is to talk about the latest things I have read, and part of that discussion will have to include the genre I place it in. But it's a tool; it's my shorthand way of pigeonholing something easily for discussion. I don't ask that you, my hypothetical reader, agree with my definitions of the genres and subgenres, but accept them as the filing device I intend them as. And, to be honest, I will happily engage anyone with a friendly conversation about the genres, all the while trying to hold my proselytizing zeal to a minimum. My own tools will be discarded and modifed as needed, bearing in mind that thus far the tools I have I made for myself.

And if you have a real good definition of Southern rock, let me know.