Technical Difficulties

TIME: 25
DISTANCE: 3.1 mi.
TOTAL: 36.4 mi.
NOTES: Yelling at Prof. Rabkin again.
SHIRE-RECKONING: We're keeping off the Road now.

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I disagree with my learned colleague on so many different points that I can't even list them. So let's just go with the one wherein he is conflating "phallocentrism" with "science fiction." Feminism, goddammit. FEMINISM. You can't be feminist and phallocentric, but you can be feminist and write science fiction. This definition is flawed.

Also, please, for the love of rocket ships, do not generalize from NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE to the genre of science fiction. Please.

TIME: 30 min.
DISTANCE: 3.5 mi.
TOTAL: 29.7 mi.
NOTES: Too busy yelling at Prof. Rabkin to go for the burn.
SHIRE-RECKONING: I can see the River from here!

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We've started Part 2 of the lecture series and Professor Rabkin is defining science fiction. He constructs a definition of science fiction in which the prototype has three characterisitcs:

1. claim of plausibility against a background of science (he's also asserted that Star Wars is science fiction, and I'd really like to know where he finds the claim of plausibility in it*)
2. high adventure (at this point, I yelled "MIKE!" at the DVD player, because Growing Up Weightless is brilliant science fiction and not even remotely "high adventure"**)
3. intellectual excitement (I will grant that good science fiction does provide this, but you know, so do mysteries. Fantasy can do it, too--at least I hope to hell fantasy can do it, or what on earth have I been doing for the past fifteen years?)

There's also an implicit, unexamined definition of science fiction against fantasy, whereby science fiction is (a.) for adults and (b.) literature.

And I'm sorry. Taking cheap potshots at the MOVIE VERSION of Dracula (and he doesn't even specify which movie) to assert that Frankenstein is more scientific and more plausible, and he conflates the Karloff Frankenstein with the Shelley Frankenstein anyway, since Mary Shelley very carefully avoids ANY explanation of how Victor animates his creature--I think that was the point at which I descended into name-calling . . . no, sorry, that was when he was expressing ASTONISHMENT that Asimov and Tolkien should be grouped together by publishers. I very nearly stopped the CD at the point where he was explaining prototypical definitions with the example of female beauty. "We look at a woman," he says, and you know what? That "we" does not include any women in it. It's that nice unexamined "the generic pronoun in English is 'he'" kind of misogyny which has no animus against women, and it doesn't matter unless you ARE a woman, in which case you suddenly feel like you've been asked to leave.

Also, when he talked about the types of definition, citing Wittgenstein (prototypical, functional, characteristic, and social) he forgot to mention the other crucial axis, prescriptivist vs. descriptivist. But since he's chosen to make a prototypical definition, he's prescriptivist by default. Which means I will be severely skeptical from here on out.

Also, he's trying to claim The Tempest is science fiction. Where is the science? Where, for that matter, is the claim of plausibility? WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT, OVER.

Um.

Well, you know, it got my heart rate up. *g*

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*My Star Wars canon includes only three movies and does not contain the word "midichlorians" in its lexicon. And Rabkin's only talking about A New Hope anyway.

**Speaking of Mike, I hope he knew about and visited the Mid-Continent Railway Museum. We went last weekend, and I kept thinking, "Mike would love this!"

The Tiptree winner and short list (which they're now calling the Honor List) have been announced.

More books to add to the (10 point, single spaced, 13 page) list of books to look for.

So, as those of you who have been reading this blog for a while may remember, I've been having trouble, the last year or five, with reading fiction. "Trouble" in the sense that I have been finding new narratives simply too mentally stressful to cope with (leading to the VERY WEIRD phenomenon of putting down a perfectly good book because I don't want to know what happens next). This has made me very sad, because reading has been my most favoritest thing to do since I learned to read at the age of three.

(coffeeem, if you're feeling modest today, you may want to avert your eyes.)

I love Emma Bull's books. I've reread Bone Dance more times than I can count, to the point that, as with Watership Down and Dog Wizard and Gaudy Night, I have to ration my rereading because the words are wearing out. So the fact that Emma has a new book out entailed obligate purchase. And then I faced up to myself and read the darn thing.

And then, in the past couple weeks, I've read four more books.

I'm not such a shining Pollyanna-ist as to think the fiction block is gone for good, but I am really enjoying reading for pleasure in the meantime.

( Brief and spoilery--ESPECIALLY FOR THE PINHOE EGG--comments on my recent reading to follow. )

First, Warren Ellis posted the circulation numbers for Asimov's, Analog, F&SF, and Interzone.

Then, Cory Doctorow blogged ideas for increasing the circulation of and/or interest in the quote-unquote Big Three.

Whereupon John Scalzi asked, Why bother?

Meanwhile, Jeff VanderMeer got people talking this weekend about the other kind of Death of Short Fiction.

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I was called for jury duty yesterday. Empaneled, even, and dismissed after the voir dire. Without going into details, let's just say that it was a salutary reminder for me of how few people are even aware of short fiction, in or out of the speculative fiction genre, much less concerned about its vitality and quality-of-life.

We are in a very small teapot, ladies and gentlemen.

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I have noticed that the Death of Short Fiction is a topic that comes around pretty regularly in the sff community, like periodically we have to look up and go OMG TEH SKY IS FALLING!!! OH NOES!!!11!1! There are other topics that do the same thing, and really I think it's the mark of any community that lasts more than a couple of months: the things we can't solve, we keep coming back to. --Is the sky still falling? --Yup. Sky's still falling. The fact that we reiterate ourselves doesn't mean the sky isn't falling; it just means that it's falling very slowly and we still haven't figured out a way to prop it up.

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I agree with Cory and benpeek that a big part of the problem is that the culture of short fiction in sf is an endangered species. (Notice what I said: "the culture of short fiction in sf.") The soi-disant Golden Age of Science Fiction (to generalize grandiloquently) was a time at which sf readers and writers and editors were building community via the magazines they read and wrote for (both pro and fan). It was the only game in town. Now, as Cory says, if you find a story in a print magazine you like, your ability to build a discussion about it is seriously constricted simply by the fact that the medium of reading and the medium of communication are no longer working at the same speed. It's like the Heinlein story about the twins, where one gets sent out to colonize the stars and the other one stays on Earth and every time space-faring!twin gets to communicate with his brother, at subjective interludes of what, a week? a month? his brother is years older and more bitter. You can't have a conversation like that.

Also, I think, part of the niche that short fiction once held in sf culture has been taken over by TV. Not in the barbarians-at-the-gate sense, but just because, if you like a TV show, you know that when you watch it (or, you know, within a certain period, TiVO willing and the creek don't rise), the other people who like the show are also watching it. The next day, you can find people discussing it--either online or people at work or at school, depending. Add spoilers to taste. Once again, the nature of the medium makes the generation of conversation natural and relatively effortless.

To reach a wider audience, short fiction in sf needs to shift its model of transmission. This is not an insoluble problem, although--as John points out--it is up to the magazines to follow that decision tree.

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The other question that's lurking about in these conversations is, what is it exactly that writers think they're doing when they write short stories?

Which is a good question.

We certainly aren't doing it for the money. Even at the most generous rates, you simply cannot sell enough short stories in a year to make it financially rewarding. There aren't enough markets; there aren't enough readers; and--the ironic underbelly of the Death of Short Fiction discussion--there are more than enough contributors. (I would love to see comparisons on submissions and subscriptions in a year, if someone could figure out how to crunch the numbers.) Economically--as Stephen King points out in the introduction to one of his short story collections--short stories make no sense.

John, as ever, is thinking about the matter very pragmatically, in terms of career. I think, and have thought for some time now, that the myth of building a career through short fiction is just that. A myth. I think the world of short fiction is a great place to learn to be a professional writer--in the sense that it teaches you how to deal with rejection and the nuts and bolts of the business side of things, which at the rate book-publishers move ... well, let's not go there. Certainly, some short fiction sales can boost your confidence, and certainly they give you some publication credits to put in your letters to agents and editors, and maybe--MAYBE--they'll generate you some name recognition when the envelope gets opened at the other end. But you can't cash in your short story chips at the novel table. A career as a novelist is dependent on--wait for it--your ability to write a novel. Which is not the same thing as writing a short story.

These days, if you want to create a name for yourself, you're better off starting a blog.

But, okay, I write short stories, and I have to admit I was reading John's post going, Career? This was supposed to be about my career? Because that's not why I write short stories, and it's not even why I sell them.

(I should say here that I adore John Scalzi. It was truly a privilege and a pleasure to lose the Campbell to him. So the fact that I disagree with him should not be read as some sort of anti-Scalzi slam. Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.)

Of course, it's also true that I write a great many more short stories than John does (the count of short stories sold stands at either 32 or 33, depending on whether you count the two co-written with matociquala as one each or a half each), so it may be that he can regard this particular corner of the genre with better detachment than I can. Or it may be that I don't think, most of the time, in terms of having a career. Even though, yes, I do, and I know it. I'm not disingenuously claiming that I am an artiste and above such things. But as far as short stories are concerned, I think in terms of "I can write stories and people will pay me for them. And then other people will READ them. And maybe even LIKE them. OMG." Because, really, for me that's what short stories boil down to. I write them because I love them; I sell them because I can, and even getting paid peanuts is better than nothing. And because they do find readers.

And because, if you do something wild and daring in a short story, and it's a miserable failure, that's a lot easier to recoup from than the same phenomenon in a novel. Short stories are a playground, a dance, a carnival. You can try on every mask in turn. And I would love for sf culture to find its way back to watching this Mardi Gras parade.

Over on his extremely cool site, Jeff VanderMeer is having a guess the author contest for the New Weird anthology he and Ann are editing for Tachyon.

I think this is an exceptionally cool thing to do, tho' I am ineligible for the contest as I do in fact have a piece in the anthology.

Locus has recommendations.

I'm there, so is matociquala (twice!). And papersky, autopope, scott_lynch, ellen_kushner, jaylake ... basically, more really cool writers than you can shake a hippopotamus at.

I am bemused and delighted to be one of them.

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Today, I have grandiose plans of finishing Chapter Three. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Powers, Tim. On Stranger Tides. 1988. Northridge, CA: Babbage Press, 2006.

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I love Tim Powers' plots. There's a kind of excitement that's generated simply by watching the gears line up and mesh into action that just fills me with delight. On Stranger Tides has that, plus pirates! Zombies! The Fountain of Youth! A sorcerer named Woefully Fat!

In other words, it's a hell of a lot of fun.

I was disappointed in the ingenue--or, rather, I was disappointed in her relationship with the hero. All of the villains have excellent reasons for wanting Beth Hurwood for their very own, but as far as John Chandagnac is concerned, we get some vague philosophizing and the narrative's blithe assurance that of course he's in love with her. He's a guy. She's a pretty girl. Why wouldn't he be? The problem being that we see no reason in the text that he would be in love with her, and given the sixty-nine different kinds of hell Chandagnac goes through on her behalf ... I would have been happier if I'd felt there was something beyond narrative convenience between them.

(N.b., this is a problem that other Powers books do not have--a problem that in fact he deconstructs very handily in Dinner at Deviant's Palace.)

It isn't an insurmountable problem; the book after all is an Errol Flynn (or, latterly, Johnny Depp) vehicle with swashbuckling galore, and as that, it succeeds admirably. I merely grumble around the edges.

Sunday, I turn in The Mirador. Monday, I come down with a cold.

The universe just LIVES for moments like this.

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I've been meaning for a while--like, say, a month--to make a post about prologues in fantasy novels, and now that I have a head cold as an excuse for any really wrong-headed things I may say, I'm gonna go ahead and do it.

The short version: Don't.

( The long version: It is, of course, more complicated than that. )

What the story needs should always trump what the genre wants.

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¹Unless you're J. R. R. Tolkien. In which case, all bets are off.
²Please notice the unexamined assumptions I've assigned to the hypothetical reader in this case. I personally believe that fantasy novels are real novels. They're just not realistic.
³I've had to train myself out of establishing shots, because in a novel--as opposed to movies and graphic narratives--there's no way to use the medium itself to de-emphasize certain segments. All five letter words take up roughly the same amount of space.
⁴One word: tobacco.
⁵There's a whole 'nother jeremiad about the things the fantasy genre has talked itself into believing it needs, but that's a post for another day.

Over at themollyhouse, ladyjaida is trying to get a queer sff book discussion group going.

I think this is a fabulous idea.

They've chosen to start with Mélusine, and I've offered to do a Q&A in the interests of launching themollyhouse's maiden voyage with what imaginary champagne I can provide. I'll post a link to that when it happens; this is just a Hey! Look over there! Shiny thing! announcement.