End of the Year Noise

Around this time of year there seems to always be a number of interesting discussions going on between authors, industry types, and fans. All the awards have been handed out, there is some industry posturing, the same old debates spring up with new voices, and than suddenly through that dialogue there always ends up some really noteworthy topics/commentary/news. Most people will be familiar with most of the content of this post, but one great aspect about a blog is they essentially act as a personal filing cabinet of links for the author (in this case me) — so indulge me as I add to my personal archives — I have been on mini-vacation for the holidays.

Clarke at Cricked Timber-

Niall Harrison has had some nice pointers of late, most recently this great seminar at Crooked Timber focusing on Susanna Clarke’s Hugo and World Fantasy Award winning novel Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (which for the millionth time I loved). Read the full commentary and Clarke’s response on PDF. Highly recommend for those who read Clarke’s fabulous novel.

The Beautiful Catherynne M. Valente-

No, I’m not pimping - In fact I have never met or seen her in my life, but as I was remarking on a genre board recently, I just read her Yume Me Hone: Book of Dreams a couple months ago, and I have been trying to put in to words since. She is a terrific stylist, who canvases the entire books with prose that’s utterly captivating and full of beauty, starting from the opening line:

“Put a truce to any thoughts of departure. I am she who glides through the sky when the snow is falling fast, the lady of frost and darkness. I am a ghost, which is not to say I ever lived. I am a memory, which is not to say I ever died. I begin at the moment the ice on the river begins to crack like bones of glass. I am a silence written on pulp mash paper, in ink drawn from village wells”

In the process of writing a great article proclaiming her love of the fantastic, she also gives the Bodhisattva its quote of the month. Big thanks to Kirsten for the Valente recommendation - on the money.

‘Venom Cock’-

First, I wasn’t there but it was damn entertaining to read about, and I gather much more worthwhile reading than the book itself*. It’s old, but let me establish my ‘Venom Cock’ file, as documentation is important at the Bodhisattva

To those that don’t know it all stems (from what I gather) of a bit of fun being poked at a recently released book Touched by Venom by Janine Cross. It began with the Kirkus review by John Joseph Adams (or as mortals know him The Slush God), who I think offers outstanding commentary on a consistent basis). The condensed review was:

“Turgid fantasy (first of a trilogy) in which humans worship and have a sexually-perverse relationship with dragons; purile dreck that’s emblematic of everything that’s wrong with fantasy”.

Afterwards, Cheryl Morgan of Emerald City mentions it and Del-Rey publicist/web presence Collen Lindsay replying as well. This is followed by Mr. Adams replying again, and then again here.

After which Nick Mamatas, who besides writing outstanding fiction (see Move Underground) also is always good for commentary weighs in here.

Still not done, author Lynn Viehl responds in defense of Cross (with comments, including from Gabe, who remembers to ask the eternal question, even in face of venom cock, “but Harriet Klausner gave it a five star review. How can people think the book is bad, then?”) and Janine Cross responding herself. Nick Mamatas offers his reponse to both Viehl and Cross here.

Then, Tobias Buckell (who has a forthcoming release that looks damn good, Crystal Rain) throw his hat in after being driven to by comments by E.E. Knight. Vera Nazarian (whose recently released Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass from PS Publishing is hopefully in my mailbox later today) adds her 2 cents.

It didn’t take long until the dragons themselves had to speak out. It’s laid to rest now, but who would have thought ‘Venom Cock’ would cause such a stir. The bottom line really is a that reputable reviewer gave a book a negative review - happens all the time - hell, that probably raises its chance of commerical success.

_{*I actually had ‘Touched by Venom’ in a pile of books I was paying no attention to, but after this episode I will find out myself.}

Science Fiction/Fantasy-

I’m one of those who don’t really give a damn about categories/sub-genres, etc. I have an understanding of them, both there uses from a marketing/publishing perspective, and fan application, but the only time it seems I have to even know them is when I’m talking to others who do care about them. I just make the distinction between what I feel is quality fiction and what isn’t. Dan Brown writes novels that have the value and merit of shit - I don’t feel the need to know what kind of shit it is. Is quality Hard Science Fiction better than quality urban fantasy, or quality examples of magic realism? It’s certainly a debatable issue that will have its relevant roots in preferences, but personally as long it has quality in front of it, I don’t care. Robert Newcomb is not just a remarkably incompetent epic fantasy author, or a god awful fantasy Author, or a pedestrian writer of speculative fiction, he is a piss poor author of fiction period (as a side note I have been wanting to drop this link about Newcomb for some time. This is my view on debates of whether a work is indeed Science Fiction or Fantasy, a opinion that owes some of its existence to the countless times I have seen the question of whether Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun is one or the other, and more alarming the participation and fervor of the combatants involved. In any sensible world there would only be one, unstated, and universally understood reply, that being “who gives a shit?”. Let’s talk about content, and not just for the purposes of determining categorization. It seems a travesty that such a seminal work of fiction, has a huge percentage of discussion pertaining to it, revolving around how to pigeonhole it. Now, all that said, I do love it when the creative people in the industry discuss their ideas and perceptions of their craft. I have seen SF short form god, Ted Chiang’s name invoked more in the last two weeks than I have for the entire rest of the year, but he offer his view here. Chiang was responding to Sarah Monette’s post. Sarah Monette, wrote her debut novel this year, Melusine, which I reviewed earlier this year, and who also was kind enough to be interviewed by me for Fantasybookspot.com a couple months ago.

Also adding to the discussion was Emma Bull, a continuance of the topic here. To bring it all to conclusion Jeff VanderMeer and that Evil Monkey chime in.

More responses, this from Nick Mamatas who disagrees with Chiang, and then, John Scalzi.

To complete the circle, Sarah Monette talks to the evil monkey.

Meanwhile at the Chrononautic Log David Moles offers an opinion, then again here. Alan Deniro offers a piece by the legendary author/critic Samuel Delany, which has spurned me to start collecting articles I like and linking them on my sidebar — ala VanderMeer collecting Manifestos — while offering a more interesting question (and equally unanswerable):

“A lot of the discussion has talked about science fiction and fantasy as methods of writing (inscribed authorial intent). But what about methods of reading?“

Scott Lynch comes in, and left his butterfly net at home. Did I mention I love his forthcoming book? I also want to give my thanks to Nathan for pointing me to the Lynch reply.

Nick Mamatas invokes Lovecraft, and Matthew Stover attempts to end the debate, in admirable fashion:

“The Truth from On High:

Science Fiction is a subset of Fantasy. That’s all it has ever been, that’s all it will ever be.

But then, so is every other form of literature.

Everyone who pretends otherwise is merely mining their own asshole for pseudo-distinctions of no real significance. The urge to Categorize is best left to taxonomists, academic critics, IRS agents, stamp collectors, publishers and any other helplessly obsessive rectal-gazers who have nothing better to do with their lives.

I have Spoken.

Now everyone should shut the fuck up and let me get back to sleep.”

Later Hal Duncan add his always worth opinion here, and then responding to a Lou Anders’ opinion here, offers more commentary as does Jay Lake.

SCIFICTION Love-

Everybody has heard of the demise of SCIFICTIoN and the ED SF Project, a tribute to the stories, and Ms Datlow’s contribution to quality fiction. I am working on an entry myself for an idea that allows both authors and fans to show their appreciation. Some great stuff already posted. Keep them coming!

Dark Echo’s Paula Guran offers an opinion (via Emerald City)

Not Taking Shots at Terry Brooks-

Because the supremely talented Lucius Shepard does it so much better:

“Tannequil (which sounds like a cough remedy), High Druid of Shannara (which conjures up endless parodies in my mind), Brooks doesn’t promote shit. He just upchucks endless wads of verbiage to no salient end (if we start arguing subtext in the Shannara series, I’ll blow up this thread). Colleen reports on a conversation in which TB says in jest that he could probably sell “The Telephone Books of Shannara.” Christ, Telephone Books would be more interesting by a factor of ten than Tannequil. The yellow pages alone with their ads for Shannara businesses would at least be funny. Brooks churns out volume after volume of glutinous prose without an oz. of humor. I’m sorry, Colleen. I don’t think this guy’s done anything other than feed the corporate beast. Whether you use Velveeta or Big Macs as a metaphor, this is corporate publishing at its worst, and I, being a pinko, happen to think that’s not a good thing, that corporations are by nature malignant, that they breed malignancy, that their interests are not those of their customers, that their dream would be a Matrix-like set-up, using people as fuel, as energy, which is, in fact, is more-or-less what they attempt to do. I reject the notion that Brooks been helpful to my career–if I were published by DelRay, a case might be made–but as I’m not, I see no correspondence between us. I doubt that his readers morph into mine or vice versa. The main thing his stuff does, IMO, is create more (to borrow a previously used metaphor) cake eaters who will continue to eat cake for the rest of their lives. Some might argue that’s not a bad thing, but I choose to think it is.”

As well as Hal Duncan:

“This kicks off from the “literary merit is found only in the eye of the beholder” idea, right? Brooks has an audience; his audience considers his work good; saying that his work sucks is really criticising their taste. Fuck it. I’ll run with this and say… well, yeah. It’s both.

I’m happy to criticise the audience’s taste. I’ll be the Bad Man.

If a reader doesn’t mind sloppy writing which, on a pure craftsmanship level, doesn’t hold together in terms of style and/or content, where dialogue is stilted, where pacing is erratic, where the prose is rhthymically clumsy and/or syntactically amibiguous, where — from individual character actions right up to abstract plot structure — motivations underlying interactions are shallow and/or implausible and/or incoherent… where, in short, a work can be evaluated according to some fairly objective criteria (as an act of communication and as an act of intrication — i.e. complex pattern-making) and where, by those standards, it just doesn’t cut it… well, one might argue that the reader who likes such drech is demonstrating certain, um, shortcomings. Clearly, they have a tin ear for prose and little or no appreciation of the complex subtleties of sense that can be constructed using the written language as a medium. Personal taste only goes so far; you can look at something and say objectively “this is drech”. And if the reader likes drech, hey, the reader likes drech. To each his own and all, but, sorry, if you devour that drech in front of me, and look up with a drech-smeared grin, well, I’ll look at you and go “Eeeewwww! You eat drech?!”

Now, I can accept that poncy literary artsi-fartsiness is maybe not what the drech-lover wants, and that’s fair enough; why shouldn’t they simply hold their nose, gulp down the awkward prose, swallowing whole the absurdities and ambiguities, and simply *use* the text to build their own imaginative adventure. It’s a whole different mode of reading, arguably; and where a reader is looking for the clunk-click-fit of fat fantasy fodder — of symbolic formulation — rather than tight prose and plot, solid dialogue and characterisation… well, for them, I suspect, the writing is merely a means to an end, that end being the story-as-experience, as entertainment… and who am I to get all sniffy and snobbish at that?

To use an analogy, if someone simply wants to get fucked out of their tiny little gourd, if they don’t give a fuck whether what they drink has “a delicate balance of flavours” or somesuch airy nonsense, hey, who am I to speak of the superiority of a good dry gin martini over cheap meths mixed with chocolate milk?

Well… when we start talking about “literary merit”, I think it’s fair enough to say, no matter how nice a guy the writer is, no matter how well their books sell, no matter how many other writers got a break because of them, and no matter how well their work gets you fucked out of yer tiny little gourd (and cheap meths mixed with chocolate milk is sure to be much better at this for some folks than dry gin martinis)… is it any good as writing? As something to be savoured for its subtleties, appreciated for the complexity of its articulations, and so on? Or is it something you drink the way a teenager drinks — not giving a fuck for the flavour, really, just out to get fuckin wasted, dude?

At the end of the day, I rather like getting fuckin wasted, dude, I just like getting wasted on quality cocktails, and there’s more to the “palatory merit” of a cocktail than how much alcohol it contains and whether you can down it without vomiting. Cheap meths is cheap meths; and Bombay Sapphire it ain’t.”

Not too long ago Rob linked this discussion from the Nightshade boards. I found it interesting (well more amusing in the way the truth can be sometimes) because around the same time I received an email from a “best selling author” questioning some rather choice words I chose when responding to a message board query that pertained to Brooks. From now on, I won’t have to, I will just link back to this discussion…

Quick Links:

-Matthew Cheney on popular fiction/literary fiction with ‘In Borderlands Between the Clans’

-Gabe Chouinard seems to be back in full form telling us about Urban Drift. It still under construction, but a sneak peak is looking good!

-I recently gave my condensed thoughts (with full review at the beginning of the year coming) on Scott Lynch’s 2006 release The Lies of Locke Lamora, this week he gets Agonized by Rick Kleffel.

-Tobias Buckell forming a gated community of talented types. Sounds like a damn good idea.

-Bad Sex Award (no, not venom cock) includes nominees Rushdie, Marquez, and Updike, reported by The Guardian.

-Richard Morgan has signed on to do a sword/sorcery trilogy, while also working on his next SF release, Black Man (saw this at Forbidden Planet):

“This is a vacation from my Takeshi Kovacs series and an attempt to do something a little different while still working with the tools and templates of future noir,” Morgan said. “The book posits a future about a century from now in which poorly supervised genetic experimentation has left the human race with a series of major legal and ethical headaches, and a massive colony effort on Mars has turned into a political race between reconstituted power blocs. The U.S. has fractured apart along lines which will seem eerily familiar to students of the current political [quagmire], and China has risen to economic and political parity with the West.”

What the Hell I’m Doing-

Although I have nothing tangible to show for it, I have actually been getting some reading done. Last night I finished up Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon, a new series that will have 3 installments released in 2006. Note that in the UK the book is called Temeraire.

I’m going to have a full review in a couple of weeks, and this is a series getting a heavy push from Voyager. The subsequent titles are The Throne of Jade, and Black Powder War. Some initial thought I have is that it’s a bit minimalist, and a rather brisk read, but intriguing in a manner that warranted me to consistently want to continually read it (which isn’t the case with many new books). The setting from our own history of Napoleon warring with England, but Novik implements Dragons as a aerial arm for armies. The generally exclusive relationship/bond between aviator and dragon is fascinating, and how she applies that too society (particularly high society) gives the work a believable quality. Novik describes different breeds of dragons, and how certain countries horde their secrets, and you just have to love a novel where us Oriental’s run shit in this regard. It’s a nice debut.

While spending my Thanksgiving in a snowy Venice I was able to read Martin’s A Feast for Crows and finally got to Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys, and currently loving reading Umberto Eco’s The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, while also finding some time to go through a pretty interesting (in the History of Middle Earth sense) Tolkien companion by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion.

I also have some more interviews in the works (Vera I haven’t forgot about you!). Some of which I sent back to add more questions to as we moved away from the small 7 question feature, to a more longer format to take advantage of having an author’s time, along with having some nes ones planned with authors with big releases in early 2006. This along with a Fantasybookspot.com remodel, we hope will makes early 2006 a great time to be a part of FBS. I also finally have all my ‘lost reviews’ completed that were victims of a PC issue, that I will start releasing sporadically with reviews of newer works.

Bodhisattva Quote of the Month:

From Catherynne M. Valente:

“I am a fantasy writer. I have learned my lesson, and I embrace it. Bring on the metallic gay pirate cowboys.”

That’s just classic.

Tags: books