Tag: books

A heart-warming tale

Of frustration and giving up:

Somewhere out there is a literary agent (who shall remain unnamed
here) who asked for science fiction submissions on Twitter the Friday
before last. I was in bed at the time, reading my Twitter feed on the
iPad (as one does), so I got out of bed again to send that agent a query
letter that followed the requirements of the agency in question.

I woke up the next morning to find a form rejection in my inbox. That
agent had rejected the query without having asked for sample pages–without even having read a single word of the novel. And
it was a nice, short, courteous, and professional query letter, not two
lines of HAY U WANT TO B MY AGENTZ? CHK YES OR NO LULZ.

I said a very naughty word at the computer screen and felt something
in my head go SNAP. Then I had Scrivener compile the ebook files for the
novel, bought some cover art, made a book cover, uploaded everything to
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing service, and told people on my blog
that the novel is available for sale.

I haven’t read Terms of Enlistment yet, but it came to my attention because apparently some of the people who have been buying The Wardog’s Coin also picked up Marko Kloos’s book and appear to think rather well of it.  (Marko, if you happen to read this, send me a review copy and I will reciprocate.)

I’ve been published by a major New York publisher.  And I’ve been published by a small independent publisher in a manner that very nearly amounts to self-publishing.  And while the people at Pocket always treated me very well, and I have absolutely no complaints about my experience there, I will say that I VASTLY prefer the independent publishing.  Simply the ability to select the cover artists with whom I prefer to work alone makes it worthwhile to me; I’m still convinced that what wrecked the Eternal Warriors series was Pocket’s disastrous decision to abandon the Rowena covers for a stock-photo, pseudo-Left Behind look that only managed to get the trade paperbacks banished from the Science Fiction and Fantasy section.  And it’s wonderful to decide to publish, pull the trigger, and see the book reviews appearing the very next day instead of waiting more than two years for the finished book to be completed.

My support for self-publishing doesn’t mean I won’t ever publish with a conventional publisher again.  I’m talking to a few of them right now since it would be good if there were ways for people to buy the beautiful doorstopper besides sight-unseen from Amazon.  But I’m not in any particular hurry to do so, (my main priorities are a) the game, b) Book Two, and c) the stories for the Summa hardcover), and I’m only going to partner with a publisher who truly understands my objectives and is willing to work with me in the same constructive and mutually beneficial manner that Hinterlands does.

The descent of fantasy

The extent to which fantasy is in decline can be seen in this list of the 20 Best Paranormal Fantasy novels.  If this is the best, one shudders to think what could be the worse:

3. Dead Beat by Jim Butcher (2005)
Butcher’s Dead Beat—the seventh installment in his Dresden Files—was a blockbuster book when it was first released. Not only was it the first Dresden Files novel to be released in hardcover, it was a clear indication of just how much the series had expanded to embrace mainstream fiction readers. The first printing sold out in a just few days! The commercial success of the Dresden Files paved the way for countless other noteworthy protagonists, including Charlie Huston’s Joe Pitt and Mario Acevedo’s Felix Gomez.

2. Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey (2009)
An in-your-face fusion of fantasy, horror, and hard-boiled mystery. It’s Kadrey’s biting wit that makes this novel so unforgettable. His blunt and acerbic writing style makes for simply addictive reading. For example, here’s how he describes Los Angeles: “L.A. is what happens when a bunch of Lovecraftian elder gods and porn starlets spend a weekend locked up in the Chateau Marmont snorting lines of crank off Jim Morrison’s bones. If the Viagra and illegal Traci Lords videos don’t get you going, then the Japanese tentacle porn will.” Classic.

1. For a Few Demons More, by Kim Harrison (2007)
The fifth installment of Harrison’s phenomenally popular Hollows saga featuring endearing gray witch Rachel Morgan and company, this novel was the first hardcover release in the series and, at least for me, heralded its ascension to elite series status. With only two novels to go until the series concludes, there is no doubt in my mind that the Hollows saga will go down as arguably the very best paranormal fantasy series ever written.

Now, I like the Dresden Files.  They’re good.  They were signed by my second editor at Pocket. But they are not great. Harry Dresden’s character development was apparently arrested at the age of 15; the ineptitude of his interactions with women have gone from clumsy and awkward to “I am so embarrassed for the author that it is seriously distracting from the story.” Kim Harrison’s books are not terrible, they are merely mediocre. I have to admit, the Kadrey sounds interesting, but I haven’t read it.

If the very best of the genre doesn’t rise to the level of Agatha Christie – and it does not – there is clearly a problem.

The coup de grace, though, is the fact that Cerulean Sins by Laurell K. Hamilton, (the K stands for Krazy), is actually listed in the top ten.  I actually kind of liked the first Anita Blake book, back when she was a voodoo chick and vampire hunter, rather than the central figure in an ongoing interspecies orgy.  There may be worse books out there than Hamilton’s, but if there are, I haven’t read them.

The fact is that paranormal fantasy is actually much worse, as a sub-genre, than the Regency romances that attempt to pass themselves off as science fiction in skirts.  With a few notable exceptions, it is outright chick porn; the claim that it is fantasy literature in the same genre as Tolkien, Lewis, and even Alexander is about as convincing as asserting that Booty Pirates XII should have beaten out Argo for the Academy Award.

There are few things I enjoyed twenty years ago as much as spending my Friday evenings with Spacebunny, circulating through the shelves at Barnes and Noble armed with fifty bucks and a coffee.  But considering that these are the sort of books they have been trying to push on the public for the last decade, even I have to conclude that the bookseller fully merits its incipient demise. It’s one thing to go out because technology has changed or because an increasingly vulgar market prefers television to books, it’s another thing to do so while trumpeting the merits of The Nymphos of Rocky Flats.

Mailvox: the mileage, it varies

It has been interesting to see the diversity of reaction to the two stories that make up THE WARDOG’S COIN.  One of the ebook’s first reviewers preferred the title story to its accompaniment, and he had some questions, particularly about “Qalabi Dawn”, that I think I can address without any spoilers:

The first story was so good that even the debatable defects of the second made the book merit 5 stars. And at least half the defects of the second may simply be in the intrinsic difficulty of creating understanding of something so radically different. Still: are these cat people merely different tribes? Or different species? I was reading some as tiger-people for quite a while, rather than lion-people. My bad reading? But ignore that; it’s trivial.

I admit I wondered more… you’ve got a Sergent who is pretty rough and tumble. And yet he uses the word “insomnia”? Is this Vox’s voice leaking through the character? Or are you hinting he’s a lot smarter than the average bear? Similarly, the Capitaine is almost too poncily polished. Intended? I assume so, and the diplomatic interaction with the Elven King + battlefield is interesting and beautifully done.

As I suspect many readers are beginning to understand, I’m not inclined to explain or portray things that the perspective characters don’t know or simply wouldn’t tend to think about.  Just as it is said that fish don’t think about water, a Chiu chieftain is not inclined to think about the structure of his society when he has no reason to do so.  That doesn’t mean the structure doesn’t exist, or that I’m not willing to discuss it, only that there are an amount of worldbuilding details that are never going to appear in any one story or novel.  Selenoth is not as grand and finely detailed a structure as Middle Earth, but it is larger in scope and scale than many fictional universes, including Westeros/Essos.

In answer to the question about the catpeople, the Simba
are lion people, the Duma are leopard people, and the Chiu are cheetah people.  (This is confusing for Swahili speakers, as Chiu means leopard, but I figured that English was the primary concern.) All of the Khatuuli are descendants of Baasia; they are quite
literally demonspawn.  The three primary varieties of People are
further divided into tribes with one dominant male, and they are
further divided in that some of them, their elite, tend to be
mchawe, or shapechangers, with three different shapes, mwana, mnyama,
and the common sehumu form.  Their priestly caste, the
Neheb-Kau, are all shapechangers who have abandoned their tribes and given their allegience to the priesthood.  And I’m pleased that the overall sense of the demonspawn is striking at least some readers as radically different; while I am opposed to reinventing wheels, (orcs, elves, dwarves, etc), I hope it is clear that this is not due to any dearth of imagination or creative capacity.

The story of the origins of the demonspawn are told in a novella entitled “The Last Witchking”, which will be published in the forthcoming Summa Elvetica hardcover.

 I think it is naturally difficult to write characters of very different intelligence
than the author possesses.  Mediocre authors tend to make every perspective character into an
idealized version of themselves; one always knows with whom a bad
author identifies because there is that one character who is interminably witty and
always verbally bests every other character with the perfect quip, obscure citation, or Bible verse. Some authors make me suspect that the dialogue in their books is chiefly a vehicle for retroactively winning every past verbal altercation in which they belatedly thought of a killer riposte long after it was over.

That being said, the sergent is intelligent, he simply isn’t educated. I’m not
sure “insomnia” qualifies as an overly educated word, but I have no doubt there are
numerous such slippages with regards to the sergent’s inner
monologue.  The capitaine, on the other hand, comes from an aristocratic family that has seen better days; his backstory would make for an interesting novella in its own right. But despite their observable differences, he and the sergent genuinely like and
respect each other, which is important because the story revolves around their complicity.  In some ways, The Wardog’s Coin is a very dark story,
although I don’t know how many readers will see it in that light.

Since the events of TWC take place before ATOB, it is unlikely I
will bring either of them back in the main series.  However, there is one character
who will certainly appear in Book Two, and as a full perspective character,
no less.  And don’t forget, if you haven’t picked up A MAGIC BROKEN yet, it is still free on Amazon today.

UPDATE: TWC debuted in Amazon’s Top 10 in the War category, which I have to say was rather unexpected. I consider it to be Epic Fantasy myself, but I can see where it might qualify, especially if one is going to count books like World War Z.  It’s also #3 in Hot New War Fiction, behind Neal Stephenson’s third book in the Mongoliad, which I very much hope is better than the disappointing first one.

The Wardog’s Coin

I am pleased to announce that Hinterlands has released THE WARDOG’S COIN, an 85-page ebook that consists of the title novella and a novelette, both of which are set in Selenoth, the world of A THRONE OF BONES.  It is available on Amazon for $1.99.

The title story is about a human mercenary company which finds itself in
the employ of an elf king. Outnumbered and under attack from an army of
orcs and goblins, the Company discovers it is no longer fighting for
pay, but for survival in an alien land. The second story, Qalabi Dawn, features a young
tribal chieftain, Shabaka No-Tail, who seeks to find a way to unite the
fractious tribes of The People before the implacable legions of the Dead
God invade the desert to carry out their crusade of total
extermination. In both stories, the borders of the world of Selenoth as it is known to the reader are expanded to some small extent.

Thanks to Jartstar, who did an excellent job on the cover.  Look very closely at the coin; the level of detail there is remarkable. Thanks also to the four proofreaders; this ebook should be considerably cleaner from the get-go than its predecessors.  Also, to celebrate the new publication, Hinterlands is giving away A Magic Broken for free on Amazon today.

The Secret Names of Selenoth

Daniel reviews A Throne of Bones from a literary perspective:

Subtext flows fast through the story, providing a skeleton that never
shows through the story’s skirts. However, if you want elegant critiques
on the distancing effects of television, the nature of cruelty, the
excellence of warfare, the culture of the Church, the narrowness of
postmodern expectation, the daft inner workings of pseudoscience, the
shortcomings of theory versus application, the invisible nature of
Modalism, or the psychological impact of human flight you’ll find them,
like a rake in his prime, waiting, ready and rich.

But this is a
book designed with a single primary purpose, to revive epic fantasy as a
rooted form, and most readers of fantasy are going to receive this
story as such.

They will not be disappointed.

Names are
important in A Throne of Bones, and I’ll highlight two: Selenoth, the
continent upon which the action takes is, a nod, I believe, to the
element selenium, which occurs naturally in volcanic areas. Considering
the photosensitivity of the material, it seems natural that the land
provides an elemental basis to the development of Selenoth’s primeval
magic.

Even more interesting, however is the name of the main
country: Amorr. Yes, it is a play on the legendary “secret name” of
Rome, which provides a clever signal that this strange society will in
some way mirror the Roman republic. However, more deeply, it is also a
direct tip to the Latin word for “love” and this is where, if the magic
of Selenoth draws the bow, the arrow of Amorr strikes the heart.

Day
is, after all, an incorrigible romantic, and not of the hopeless
variety. The nostalgia, realism and richness of Selenoth is crystalized
through the lens of Amorr, and, to put a fine point on it, love is all
around. Love in degraded, if happy, form in the camp followers and
brothels among the soldiery. Love between sibling reavers on a mission
to draw former victim states into an alliance against certain doom. In a
scene stunning, dreadful, long-coming but still shocking scene, love
grips in stoic, complex anguish.*

The raw and needful love
between man and wife. Long-distance love between the clever (yet
earnest) and the cruel (yet sympathetic). Love of complex relational
intrigues. Love of language. Love of order. Love of family, of honor, of
duty.

Love of dragons. Love of gold. Love of knowledge. Love of
good men, of good life, of good death. A love of the hope that all
things, not some or most, will pass away, and yet that all things, not
some or most, will be restored by the hand of the Almighty. Every page,
for its grit and realism, its tragedy, folly and danger, the thwarted
plans, curses, whoredom, brutality, the death of youth, the loss of
ideals, the temporary victory of murder and evil, is an out and out love
letter to the Immaculate. Death, in all its towering, all-consuming
bleakness, is small, and soon to be swallowed by a love so great it lays
its life down, and in defeat, quite literally overcomes all.

A
Throne of Bones is doorstopping fantasy for far more than its physical
dimensions. Metaphysically, it shuts the door to the world we know and
provides an escape to a better reality, and one far more dangerous than
the one in which we now dwell. It expresses longings (to master dragons,
to find treasure, to save the world on a mission from God, to restore
and enjoy the family, to live abundantly and in reality, enjoy and
defend the relationships that matter, and many, many more) in such
richness of detail.

An aside: fantasists are the bastard children
of organized theology. I don’t mean that fantasy is allegory, and
certainly not direct, symbol for symbol theology. Instead due in part to
the fact that every fantasy, from Phantastes to His Dark Materials, are
created worlds that don’t pop into existence at random. They each have
creators who can’t help that they leave traces of themselves in the
handiwork of their model worlds. While science fiction is typically a
practical exercise or applied thought experiment in galactic or atomic
creation, fantasy distinguishes itself by fabricating the middle ground:
the world as it is commonly known. A Throne of Bones expresses a
theology that views an Almighty who is coming to restore all things, and
the things, even in corrupted state, have their origins in good. Evil
is small and dark and nothing, whose major temporary advantage is its
ability to poison hope and occlude the truth.

Ensoulment, the
major theme of the previous novel in the series, Summa Elvetica, gets to
play in A Throne of Bones in a way that was impossible when it was the
primary pack mule for the plot of the previous work. As previously
established, love is not possible without ensoulment. What is most
fascinating is to see the care in which the author has ensouled each of
his own characters, down to the idiotically short-lived and naturally
evil goblin cannon fodder.

Forget if elves might be ensouled. Can goblins win a fight?

The
book has tremendous surf. There are waves of no fewer than seven
chapters that are powerful, climactic, moving: not just great writing,
but great in meaning. I have been surprised to see (more than once)
complaints about dropped plot threads (such as the dragon) which to me
were quite obviously not dropped, characters that do not naturally
develop (such as Severa) who seems to me to very naturally develop and
comparisons to A Song of Ice and Fire where I see very little
resemblance.

A major criticism I have of the book is something I
naturally expected after reading a chapter or two: music. The book
itself is not lyrical, but technical (though elegant in technique), but
the world of Selenoth, especially with its peculiar response to the
Immaculate, simply cries out for various bits of poetry, hymn and common
song to be in greater evidence. Aside from a muscular (and welcome)
public recitation of poetry (during which Corvus, the listener, falls
asleep!) they are not.

I know, I know. Bad form knocking a book
an entire half-star (out of ten) for what it did not include, but it
really was that noticeable. It isn’t like the author hasn’t included
poetics in previous works: the decision had to be conscious, and all I
can say is that I missed the music. The reader gets smells, sights,
sounds, textures and action, but the lack of music is curious. The
lyrics are there, mixed in with more mundane plot-drivers – they are
simply not drawn out and set to music to make it more obvious for the
reader. There are prayers, but no psalms.

On the other hand,
despite an off-hand reference to musicians, there are also no minstrel
bards to be found, and of that I can’t complain.

Despite its
length, A Throne of Bones is a fast read, and perhaps would benefit from
the occasional gear-shifting song cycle or original poem, just to
remind the reader to linger and look around a moment longer.

Of
course, to truly succeed, the series will need to out-do itself until
the penultimate book (where, if the series is to be great, it must peak,
then echo that peak through the final book and achieve an elegant
slight downslope), which will certainly be a challenge, perhaps an epic
one. However, I simply can’t express the joy in knowing this is a
planned set – a part of a larger story (but don’t worry, this one stands
just fine on its own. Though it ends with a satisfying suspense, it is
no annoying cliffhanger. It will build expectation for what comes next,
but also satisfies.) – and that I have only just begun a lifelong escape
into the reality of Selenoth and Amorr: or, as I think of their secret
names – Magic and Love.

A Throne of Bones (Vox Day, Hardcover Edition)
9 out of 10

*One
note on this, yet trying to avoid major spoilers* – the scene of
anguish is subtle and intensely complex, and argues, in a very brief
moment, a detailed theological argument. I view it as a significant
underpinning to the way the world of Selenoth “works” from a creator’s
point of view – a creator who fully intends to restore all things, and
one who therefore allows space for a man to work out many critical and
seemingly impossible choices for himself.

While every author enjoys knowing that his readers enjoy his work and appreciates support, it is a particular pleasure to read substantive reviews written by those readers who not only enjoy the book, but show a deeper understanding of it as well.  Daniel is too generous, I think, in that while there was some development of Severa’s character it was too crude and clumsy due to the time constraints; I tend to find female characters more difficult to write because their motivations and thought processes are so different from my own.  And his criticism concerning the lack of music is well-placed; there is a distinct lack of melody to accompany the constant rhythm of the legions on the march.

I did, however, agree with him concerning how neither dragon story amounted to any sort of dropped plot-thread.  While I freely admit to favoring subtlety and dropping hints to labored explanations of precisely what happened in all circumstances, that’s not the same as simply leaving a plot point unaddressed. My philosophy is to refrain from telling the reader any more than the perspective character can reasonably expect to know, and I’m not going to divert a character’s inner dialogue for the purposes of exposition any more than is absolutely necessary. 

I was impressed that Daniel correctly nailed both meanings of the city’s name; those who thought it was simply a singularly inept attempt to disguise the name of Rome clearly don’t know much about Roman history.  There are various theories concerning what Pliny described as “the other name of Rome which it is held sinful to disclose except during the rites of the mysteries”; some say it was Amor, others Hirpa.  I incline towards the Amor theory myself, thanks to a number of historical plays on words in both Latin and Greek that juxtapose Roma, Amor, and Eros.

Anyhow, I take this sort of review as a challenge to, as Daniel suggests, see each book outdo the next.  I don’t know if my skills are up to the task, but if I fail it will not be through a failure to try.

In related news, I expect Hinterlands to release The Wardog’s Coin in ebook next week, which will consist of the title story and “Qalabi Dawn”.  For those who would like to obtain a physical copy of the ebooks, Hinterlands will be publishing a hardcover version of Summa Elvetica in May, that will possess a newly designed spine to match those of the Arts of Dark and Light series, and in addition to the titular novel, will contain the following stories: “Master of Cats”, “Birth of an Order”, “A Magic Broken”, “The Wardog’s Coin”, “Qalabi Dawn”, “The Hoblets of Wiccam Fensboro”, and “The Last Witchking”.  I don’t know the exact page count yet, but it should be around 450 pages.

A slip of the mask

I have to admit that I was impressed with this woman’s review of A Throne of Bones, less because she was willing to recognize its strengths while correctly identifying some of its flaws than by her ability to observe what so many other critics simply do not see:

“I hadn’t yet found Mr. Day’s talents to be equal to his claims of superior intelligence. Do pay attention to my verb tenses, please. I had always found his nonfiction articles to lack nuance, but later discovered that this lack of nuance left him open to attacks on his logic, which then created situations of counterattack wherein Day revealed how very coldly logical he was, and in a way that most people couldn’t follow. This led me to believe that Vox Day is a master manipulator, who directs the dichotomous thinking of others [most people, I’ve found, are black and white thinkers, even if they boast high intelligence. And that personality trait is exploitable]”

I think this description is probably a bit too colorful; after all, what sort of master manipulator never attempts to manipulate anyone into doing anything?  I may have some of the abilities and perhaps even the right psychological makeup(1) to be such a creature, but the only thing for which I habitually use my Machiavellian tendencies is to encourage my critics-to-be to expose themselves to an inevitable counterattack.  If you think about it, it’s really nothing more than setting up a defensive position with kill zones, then guiding the enemy’s approach into those zones with the use of misdirection.

However, she is absolutely correct concerning the exploitable nature of the binary thinker.  Regardless of how smart he may be, all one has to do to fatally trap any such thinker is to encourage him to lunge at the lure. Convince him to think that white is black, he will immediately begin to argue in favor of white in reaction, at which point one has no more to do than remove the illusion and he is yours.

Many, if not most, of the questions I initially ask people are simply intended to sound them out.  It’s much more important to know how someone thinks than what they think.  If you know what someone thinks on a certain matter, it may offer a clue as to what they think on another one.  If you know how someone thinks, you can fairly accurately anticipate what they are going to conclude about practically anything, assuming you’re both privy to the same information.

Anyhow, I was particularly pleased to read Mrs. Domschot’s generally positive conclusions about the book because she clearly views the author in a skeptical light.  But one always has to respect those critics who genuinely attempt judge a work on its own merits, regardless of what they think of the author and no matter what their ultimate conclusions happen to be.  Of course, given that she describes herself as a “a non-compliant, anti-authoritarian misanthrope who writes speculative fiction”, it may be that we have more in common than she would like to believe.

(1)After a round of personality tests in high school, the psychologist administering them commented that my profile was an uncommon one as I was unusually high in two areas generally observed to be contradictory.  Apparently it showed that I was an honest and straightforward Machiavellian.

On the book/game front

1. The Wardog’s Coin is finished.  Marcher Lord is presently giving it the editorial polishing and then the novelette will be published in accompaniment with its B-side, Qalabi Dawn.  With nearly 30k words between the two of them; it should be on Amazon for $1.99 before the end of the month.  As with AMB, I’ll be sending out the ebook to those who have promised to review it; if you’re interested, send me an email with TWC in the subject and specify if you prefer epub or mobi format. The title novelette is about a Savondese mercenary who finds himself, and his mercenary company, drawn into the service of the elven king of Merithaim courtesy of an insufficiently researched contract. It is set in Selenoth and introduces a new perspective character who will be appearing in TAODAL: Book Two.

2. A Selenoth-based game will be coming out for mobile platforms towards the end of this year, such as Android and iOS. I won’t say anything more about it now, except that it’s going to be a very different sort of game than anyone is likely to anticipate, and it is going to contain one or two innovations that I expect to be of interest to various people outside of the game industry proper.

3. While Summa Elvetica was a failure in a way that the much less ambitious A Throne of Bones was not, I’m still pleased to learn that SE has its fans who are not put off by its unconventional approach to story-telling.  Seeking the New Earth has posted a nice review of it:

The moment I knew that I did not merely like the novel, but loved it, comes here. I don’t want to spoil it, but I will say this: Marcus discovers evidence that leads him to write the Summa Elvetica, an official treatise on elves, for the church. And what he discovers actually made me cheer. Beale shows his mastery in showing, not telling, in that particular scene, and it lifts the rest of the novel from “pretty good” to “great.”

The conclusion of the novel nearly disappointed me. I thought Beale would go the hackneyed route of, “The church is shown the truth but chooses to ignore it.” Ah, but he has another trick up his sleeve to bring this story to a satisfying conclusion.

Oh! The story ended, but there’s almost a hundred pages left?

Beale actually wrote the Summa Elvetica. He wrote a treatise in the style of the medieval church. It’s included as an appendix. OK, that’s neat and all, but how many of us read medieval religious treatises?

Oh. It’s only a few pages. What else?

Beale includes two short stories set within the world of Summa Elvetica that shine more brightly than the novel. Honestly, the book’s worth the price of admission for either of these two stories. I’m delighted they’re included.

4.  Koanic Soul has posted a review of A Throne of Bones, (warning: considerable spoilers) that is much more accessible and much less insane than one would ever have imagined. Frankly, I was disappointed, as I was expecting long treatises on the conjectured skull shapes and eye sockets of the various major characters.  Or something like that.  Based on the title of his post, it appears Koanic may have reversed the analogy below, but regardless, it’s nice to hear that TAODAR compares favorably with ASOIAF in one way or another.

My preferred form of stimulation is intellectual. Vox’s latest book, A Throne of Bones, is like a 2-day morphine high. Just buy it. If you need convincing, here my review. Vox Day is to RR Martin as a box of pastries is to a pot roast
dinner. One may taste better at the beginning, but the other you
wouldn’t mind eating for the rest of your life.

 5. Speaking of ASOIAF, I was more than a little amused by this discussion on the Martin fan site Westeros.org, which is nominally about A Throne of Bones, but is more devoted to my various ideological and personal shortcomings by Martin fans who haven’t bothered to read the book before opining on the author.  This comment about my discourse with R. Scott Bakker, in particular, made me laugh out loud:

“When you’re the condescending douche in an argument with Bakker you’re in trouble.”

Such is the burden of life as a superintelligence. One ignores at the price of being considered arrogant. One explains at the price of being deemed condescending.

How to write a Great American Novel

I’ve been reading David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, and while it is a well-written and entertaining novel, thus far I have found it to be neither brilliant nor sui generis.  It is intelligent, it features an expanded vocabulary, it is observant, and it is unusually detailed in both physical and psychological terms.

But at least thus far, it is, contra the book’s Introduction, far from unrecognizable.  By way of explanation, I should mention that in the aforementioned intro, Dave Eggers writes:

It’s possible, with most contemporary novels, for astute readers, if they are wont, to break it down into its parts, to take it apart as one would a car or Ikea shelving unit. That is, let’s say a reader is a sort of mechanic. And let’s say this particular reader-mechanic has worked on lots of books, and after a few hundred contemporary novels, the mechanic feels like he can take apart just about any book and put it back together again. That is, the mechanic recognizes the components of modern fiction and can say, for example, I’ve seen this part before, so I know why it’s there and what it does. And this one, too — I recognize it. This part connects to this and performs this function. This one usually goes here, and does that. All of this is familiar enough. That’s no knock on the contemporary fiction that is recognizable and breakdownable. This includes about 98 percent of the fiction we know and love.

But this is not possible with Infinite Jest. This book is like a spaceship with no recognizable components, no rivets or bolts, no entry points, no way to take it apart. It is very shiny, and it has no discernible flaws. If you could somehow smash it into smaller pieces, there would certainly be no way to put it back together again. It simply is. Page by page, line by line, it is probably the strangest, most distinctive, and most involved work of fiction by an American in the last twenty years.

Now, I haven’t finished the book yet, so it is entirely possible that it features depths as yet unplumbed by me.  But since I’ve been reading the book in the awareness of the statements made above, what has actually struck me in reading it is how absolutely familiar it was.

It genuinely makes me wonder if Eggers has ever read John Irving, Tom Robbins, or even Robert Anton Wilson.  While Infinite Jest is much larger in scope and looser in plot than any books I have read by either of the first two authors, and while Wallace is a noticeably more intelligent writer than Robbins and one apparently less obsessed with his formative years than Irving, there are elements in the work of all four writers that are every bit as recognizable as the elements one can recognize is Martin, Abercrombie, Erikson, and Sanderson, in Brooks, Goodkind, and every other would-be Tolkien, in the romance genre, in the wereseal genre, and in the vampire genre.

Take a few quirky but highly intelligent characters.  Go into excruciating detail concerning the minute-by-minute existence of their quotidian routines, especially regarding the sexual or toilet aspects, then throw in some highly implausible gonzo drama produced by their relationships with their cartoonishly dysfunctional families or inexplicably deformed lovers.  Be sure to have a strong amateur sporting element, be it wrestling or tennis.  At all times, be careful to utilize the high-low technique of an unfamiliar and elevated vocabulary taken straight from the OED alternating with the crudest vulgar slang.  The perspective, at all times, is one of vaguely bemused detachment; the narrator is more observer than actor.

The point, of course, is that there is no point, and life has no more meaning to it than the meaning one happens to find in the process of watching it proceed around one.  Now, perhaps I am incorrect about this, at least with regards to Infinite Jest, and I am quite willing to discover that I am wrong.  And yet, if I am not, that should speak volumes about the predictable nature of this supposedly flawless book.  Correct me if I am wrong, by all means, but my initial impression is that this is little more than an oversized member of the Garp genre.

I’m not saying I don’t like the book.  I do.  I’m not even saying it is not a great book that merits all the praise it has received.  I will not have an opinion on that until I finish it.  What I’m saying is that thus far, I am experiencing far too much literary deja vu to consider this anything more than a fine example of its particular genre.

Mailvox: the line between F and SF

An SFWA author writes concerning the upcoming SFWA election:

 I voted for you and my ballot’s going out tomorrow in the mail. I thought your opening statements were hilarious! Outlandish, too….  But anyway I liked most of your ideas for SFWA.

The idea of establishing two Nebula awards — one for SF and one for F is really over the top. They overlap. Just as a good story also overlaps with dark elements. (Which we politely do  not refer to as “horror” but it is.) This is the main reason I’m writing you –I’d like to know just how you would possibly chop SF & F in half –when novels and stories contain elements of both. “Hard” sf isn’t the only definition of Science Fiction. “Hard SF” implies that there is some explicit element of science explained within the story or novel (which Landis and Haldeman do well) but it’s not the only element and anything we imagine becomes fantasy.

This was my response:  In answer to your question, those nominating a novel for a Nebula Award would be expected to indicate that they considered the nominated work to be either F or SF as part of the nomination process.  A novel that received both SF and F nominations would have both types of nominations counted but would be put up for the award in the category that received the most nominations, assuming that it received enough combined nominations to qualify.  If the author happened to disagree with the categorization and the difference between the two categories was between one and three nominations, then the category would be switched at the author’s request.

Obviously, if everyone nominates something that is clearly Fantasy and the author prefers it to compete in the Science Fiction category because he believes he is the second coming of Isaac Asimov or because he thinks it will be easier to beat out Star Trek 562: Spock Takes a Nap than the most recent rewrite of a Brontë novel published by Tor Books, there would be no reason to accommodate that.

But if a book could be reasonably considered to be either science fiction or fantasy, to such an extent that it is unclear to the readers, there is no reason not to permit the author to determine which category the book most properly belongs.

SF/F Corruption: Part II

I had intended to continue on the SFWA theme with which I began the Corruption in Science Fiction series, but a pair of articles concerning the legitimacy of the bestseller lists caught my attention after being featured on Slashdot over the weekend:

The other day, I received an unexpected phone call from Jeff Trachtenberg, a reporter at The Wall Street Journal. He said he wanted to talk about my bestselling book, Leapfrogging. At first, I was thrilled. Any first-time author would jump at the chance to speak with such a high-profile publication. But it turned out Trachtenberg didn’t want to discuss what was in my book. He was interested in how it had made it onto his paper’s bestseller list. As he accurately noted, Leapfrogging had, well, leapt onto the Journal’s list at #3 the first week it debuted, and then promptly disappeared the following Friday.

Suddenly, I wasn’t so thrilled anymore. I was just about to sit down to dinner with my family and now I was being put on the spot to discuss my role in perhaps one of the most controversial practices in the book publishing industry. I was tempted to make an excuse and plead the 5th. But I wound up talking to Trachtenberg several times over the next few days….

Trachtenberg asked me about my experience with a company called ResultSource,
the firm I had hired to help me hit the bestseller list from day one.
Trachtenberg said he had contacted all of the major New York publishers,
but no one would speak to him about the firm or the role of so-called
“bestseller campaigns” in helping authors reach the coveted status. No
comment. Dead silence.

I can’t say I was eager to be the first person to go on the record
about the topic. But then I realized something – Trachtenberg’s
surprising phone call was an opportunity to live up to what I urge my
readers to do in my book Leapfrogging.  I’ve seen the phenomenon of corporate silence repeatedly in my
career. There’s a big, smelly, ten thousand pound elephant in the
conference room. Everybody knows it’s there, but no one’s willing to
take the risk and point it out. As Trachtenberg was discovering,
bestseller campaigns are the unacknowledged pachyderm of the book
business.

There’s good reason why most industry insiders would prefer that the
wider book-buying public didn’t learn about these campaigns. Put
bluntly, they allow people with enough money, contacts, and know-how to
buy their way onto bestseller lists. And they benefit all the key
players of the book world. Publishers profit on them. Authors gain
credibility from bestseller status, which can launch consulting or
speaking careers and give a big boost to keynote presentation fees. And
the marketing firms that run the campaigns don’t do so bad either.

This sort of thing is hardly a new practice; the Scientologists kept L. Ron Hubbard’s books on the bestseller lists for years this way.  Nor is it a surprise to know that there is some hinky business going on behind the scenes at the New York Times; there usually is, and the NYT has gone to great lengths to keep hidden the method it uses to determine its bestsellers.  But it is a little surprising to see that all of the major New York publishers appear to be involved in this practice, at least to the extent that they are unwilling to openly deny that they utilize such tactics in order to market their books.

Now, upon reading this, my thoughts immediately went to a particular publisher of science fiction and fantasy, which just happens to be a publisher that appears to place an inordinate energy of effort into winning awards.  It also loves bestseller lists; here is Tor congratulating itself on its many bestseller listings in 2010 and 2011.

Tor was particularly pleased by its 2011 showing, in which its “30 New York Times bestselling books this year” annihilated their “2010 release list of 20 bestsellers”.  Interestingly enough, however, the Publishers Weekly list of the 115 bestselling fiction novels for 2011 shows precisely one Tor book on its list: The Omen Machine. Terry Goodkind. Tor (108,809).

After reading this, it also occurred to me that despite McRapey’s tale of the starship ensigns who were expendable hitting #15 on the New York Times bestseller list, Redshirts not only didn’t show up in PW’s list of science fiction bestsellers for last year, it’s only #6 on Tor’s own list of its top sellers, behind the immortal Imager’s Battalion by L. E. Modesitt, presently ranked 19,446 on Amazon a month after its release.  And despite being “a New York Times bestseller”, according to Publisher’s Weekly, Redshirts didn’t even make the top ten in the science fiction category in 2012, coming in behind at least three other Tor novels and a novel published in 1965.

Science Fiction

1. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Tor. 100,387
2. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Broadway. 50,593
3. Star Wars: Darth Plagueis by James Luceno. Lucas Books. 31,543
4. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Del Rey. 27,220
5. Star Wars: Apocalypse by Troy Denning. Lucas Books. 26,140
6. Dune by Frank Herbert. Ace. 25,532
7. A Rising Thunder by David Weber. Baen Books. 25,348
8. HALO: The Thursday War by Karen Traviss. Tor. 24,936
9. HALO: Glasslands by Karen Traviss. Tor. 24,932
10. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Ballantine. 24,120

That doesn’t denigrate McRapey’s achievement in selling so many copies of a derivative and mediocre novel, but merely points to the varying degrees of what is claimed to be a “bestseller”.  (One can, indeed, one should have contempt for McRapey as an SF author, but he is without question the finest self-marketer and stunt writer in SF/F today, even if he hasn’t reached the mainstream heights of AJ Jacobs.)  On a tangential note, it’s a fascinating snapshot of the sickly state of science fiction to see how many of its current and confirmed bestsellers are either works derived from games and movies or original works first published between 30 and 50 years ago.  Regardless, the fact is that most of Tor’s “New York Times bestsellers” observably fit what we are informed is the profile of the fake bestseller.  They appear on the list for a single week, only to vanish the following week, never to make another appearance there again.

Here is another observable anomaly.  According to John Scalzi himself, Redshirts sold 26,604 copies in 2012.  That’s very good by today’s standards, especially for a hardcover, but it falls considerably short of the 100,047 copies of Neal Stephenson’s Reamde sold, which novel PW reports as being the 115th-bestselling book of 2011.  And yet, Reamde spent only one more week in the top portion of the NYT bestseller list than Redshirts, (ranking 4 and 12 vs 15) despite selling nearly four times more copies.  Is the latter ranking credible, especially in light of what we now know about major publishers gaming the bestseller lists?  And how did Tor/Forge manage to produce “30 New York Times bestselling books” when only one was listed among the top-selling 115 books published that year?

Keep in mind that The War in Heaven sold 35,000 copies and I never thought that it was anything remotely close to a bestseller.  (It probably could have sold more, thanks to the brilliant Rowena cover, but that was the print run, which sold out.  I’m still convinced that what killed that series was Pocket’s foolish decision to do their own imitation Left Behind cover for Shadow rather than leaving it up to Rowena and me.  I still have the sketch somewhere; it was going to be an awesome painting of Mariel and Melusine in combat.) 

None of this conclusively proves that Tor Books is engaging in the questionable marketing tactics mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article, but it certainly raises some serious questions about the legitimacy of its claimed “bestsellers”, just as there are serious questions about the literary legitimacy of its infrequently reviewed, modestly-selling Nebula-nominated novels, such as, for example, its two 2012 nominees: Ironskin (64 reviews, 3.5 rating, #35,470 in Books) and Glamour in Glass (18 reviews, 4.3 rating, #409,451 in Books).

Because, after all, nothing says “science fiction” like tedious derivatives of Jane Eyre and Jane Austen.