Tag: writing

The tedious fruit of nihilism

I appreciate the HBO version of A GAME OF THRONES. Unlike most screen adaptations, it has actually improved upon the books in many ways, and it is likely to continue doing so now that it has reached the second-rate material of the later books. But in this recap of the recent episode in which the Red Viper and the Mountain fight their duel, Andy Greenwald pinpoints the fundamental flaw in the SF/F genre’s nihilism.

It was all quite thrilling, for a time, with the Red Viper leaping balletically through the summery air and Alex Graves’s camera swooping vertiginously to catch him. Game of Thrones has often punched me in the heart, but it’s rarely had it fluttering so mightily in my throat. But then, just as Tyrion was getting his hopes up and Cersei was reaching for her Big Gulp of merlot, Oberyn spiked the ball at the 1-yard line. Rather than finish off the Mountain, Oberyn was just getting warmed up, demanding much more than an improbable victory. Instead, like Tyrion in the garden all those years ago, Oberyn demanded logic and an answer. And we all know what happened next. Kung. Kung. Kung.

Actually, the sound of Oberyn’s head exploding was much more terrible than that. The defanging — and defacing — of the Red Viper was among the worst things I’ve ever seen on a screen, but it was definitely the worst thing I’ve ever heard: It somehow managed to remind me both of my own mortality and of Gallagher. (Trust me when I say I’m not sure which was more unbearable.) And in that gruesome, hideous moment I realized that the real takeaway from Tyrion’s story isn’t that he’s a fool for wanting order when there is only chaos. It’s that we just might be for greedily tuning in to the Orson Hour every week and expecting the same thing.

Look, contra Ramsay Snow, I have been paying attention. I harbor no illusions of a happy ending. But even in the midst of an epic, excellent season that has provided more wit, resonance, and emotion than I had previously thought possible, I am growing slightly weary of being taught the same merciless lesson again and again. I’d like to think that Charlie Brown had some grudging respect for Lucy the first time she pulled away the football. But the fifth? What happened to dashing Prince Oberyn was gripping, horrifying television. But, unlike his skull, it was also rather hollow. Few authors could introduce such a fantastic character with such economy and skill (and fewer showrunners could do the same on television, with even more of both). But only George R.R. Martin would so sadistically run that character into the buzz saw of disappointment and plot that is Game of Thrones just to prove a point — and, I suppose, to tighten the noose a bit more around Tyrion’s neck. Like a beetle, Oberyn was born to die, and in the most gruesome, splattery way possible. And to what end? Shocking us isn’t the same thing as challenging us. A simpleton with a rock might not need to explain himself, but a writer usually does. At this point, the most radical thing Game of Thrones could do is to make the audience exhale in relief.

But it isn’t only George R.R. Martin who is obsessed with making the same point over and over and over. In his excellent collection of essays on science fiction, TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN, John C. Wright makes the vital distinction between a good story and a well-written one:

An artist can draw a picture of the rotting skull of a dead dog on a dungheap with maggots and blind worms crawling on its exposed brains with perfect perspective, shading, composition, and balance of light and dark, and yet it is still a picture of a dead dog.

Lest you think Wright exaggerates the depths to which the nihilistic authors of SF/F habitually descend, consider this, which is the conclusion of the highly regarded, and recently deceased, literary SF author Iain M. Banks’s novel WALKING ON GLASS.

In the grass he saw a magazine lying, torn. He looked more closely at it, saw a woman’s buttocks, over a pair of hairy knees. The woman’s bottom was reddened slightly; there was a hand poised, too obviously posed, not in motion, over her. A small breeze ruffled the pages of the magazine for him as he looked, as obligingly as any Hollywood wind-machine stripping a calendar between scenes. The pictures in the rest of the magazine were almost all identical.

He turned away, disgusted with something other than the pathetic but relatively harmless fetish of the magazine, and saw a flurry of flies swirl into the air from something dark in the grass; it looked like an animal’s leg.

He closed his eyes, willing tears to come, some final part of him giving in only now, wanting the surrender to animal emotion which until now he had fought against, but as he stood there he could feel no tears coming, only a son of resigned, ugly bitterness, a comprehensive revulsion for everything around him, for all the people and their artefacts and thoughts, all their stupid ways and pointless aims. He opened his smarting eyes, blinking angrily.

Here it was; this was what it all really meant; here was your civilisation, your billion years of evolution, right here; a soiled and tattered wanking-mag and chopped domestic animal.

Sex and violence, writ small like all our standard fantasies.

The pain in his belly which had afflicted him earlier returned, sharp and fierce as a rusty blade.

It swelled in him then, like some wildfire cancer; a rapid disgust, a total allergy syndrome directed at everything around him; at the filthy, eviscerated mundanity of it all, the sheer crawling awful-ness of existence; all the lies and the pain, the legalized murder, the privileged theft, the genocides and the hatreds and the stupefying human cruelties, all the starveling beauty of the burgeoning poor and the crippled in body and brain, all the life-defying squalor of the cities and the camps, all the sweltering frenetics of the creeds and the faiths, all the torturingly ingenious, carefully civilised savagery of the technology of pain and the economies of greed; all the hollow, ringing, bullshitting words used to justify and explain the utter howling grief of our own cruelty and stupidity; it piled on him, in him, like a weight of atmosphere, that awful mass of air above for those moments no longer balanced by a pressure within, so that he felt at once crushed, smashed inside, but swollen too; bursting with the sickening burden of a cheap and tumid revelation.

The writing is excellent from a technical perspective. But to the extent that it is more than the picture of a dead dog, the message is poisonous, and, as Greenwald correctly observes, tedious. It is ironic that Banks died as he wrote, of a wildfire cancer that brought a meaningless end to his meaningless life of writing repetitively about the meaninglessness of Man.

But that is the fruit of nihilism: insignificance, boredom, and sooner or later, death.

The dramatic limits of Pink SF/F

I’ve been finding the reading of Scott Lynch’s first two “Gentlemen Bastard” books to be more than a little educational because they are such a strange combination of competent writing with flawed and shallow story-telling. As such, they provide a useful perspective on precisely where and how Pink SF/F goes awry as literature.

Take the following quote from Red Seas Under Red Skies, which shows how a desired concept could have been handled well while simultaneously fumbling the execution:

“When you go to sea, there’s two necessities, for luck. First, you’re courting an awful fate if you take a ship to sea without at least one woman officer. It’s the law of the Lord of the Grasping Waters. His mandate. He’s got a fixation for the daughters of the land; he’ll smash any ship that puts to sea without at least one aboard. Plus, it’s plain common sense. They’re good officers. Decent plain sailors, but finer officers than you or I. Just the way the gods made ’em.

“Second, it’s powerful bad luck to put out without cats on board. Not only as they kill the rats, but as they’re the proudest creatures anywhere, wet or dry. Iono admires the little fuckers. Got a ship with women and cats aboard, you’ll have the finest luck you can hope for. Now, our little boat’s so small I reckon we’re fine without no woman. Fishers and harbor boats go out all the time, no worries. But with the pair of you aboard, I’ll be damned if I’m not bringing a cat. A little one suits a little vessel.”

Now, this is a subversion of the urban legend that women were historically considered bad luck on sailing ships. Fair enough, although it doesn’t address the real reason women were not permitted to serve on ships in the past, the fact that they tend to destroy ship morale and provide a major distraction for the male crew in addition to getting pregnant and rendering themselves unfit for service.

Changing the superstition works. But simply declaring, contra literally everything shown in both books before or after the statement, that women are intrinsically better military officers than men, is absurd and indicates either PC preaching or catering to a specific market that enjoys that particular fantasy. The book would have been much more coherent had Lynch simply ended the first necessity before adding the four sentences about “plain common sense”. Instead of getting on with the story, we find ourselves wondering about the mystery of the general absence of these superior female officers. Indeed, how did it come to pass that the Stragos, the naval commander who is a central character in the plot of the second book, is a man?

The ease with which a single throwaway dog-whistle can render the plot nonsensical points to an inevitable problem with SF/F that is both a) derivative of traditional genre works and b) politically correct. It is fractured by the intrinsic conflict of two contradictory logics, and thus forces the resolution of those contradictions by predictable and usually unsatisfactory means. For example, the preponderance of rape and child murder in modern SF/F is not the result of modern SF/F writers being particularly prone to either sexual assault or violence, indeed, the male writers are probably among the least likely men on the planet to have either had sex with a woman or raised a hand in violence to anyone.

But the ubiquity of rape and attempted rape is the result of the forced marriage of the traditional “rescue the woman’s virtue” trope with the PC “a woman has a right to rut like a mink in heat without being criticized for it” concept. When there is no virtue to be lost or saved, there is no shame or drama in it. All that is left is the lesser shame and drama of the potential violation of a woman’s consent.

In the same way, the relentless Herodianism of Pink SF/F is the result of the forced marriage of the traditional “protect the helpless” trope with the PC “women are equal to men” belief. This means that children now make up the entirety of the classes to be protected in Pink SF/F, thereby requiring them to become the only victims who are capable of generating any sympathy in the reader. Unless, of course, a character is victimized solely due to his race or sexual preference.

And those are the restrictions imposed upon the competent Pink SF/F writers, who attempt to intelligently resolve the logical contradictions. The incompetent ones, (and I note that the failed resolution above stuck out precisely because Lynch is an otherwise competent writer), simply lurch from one leap of illogic to the next, never realizing that they are contradicting themselves and presenting the reader with an incoherent imaginary world.

On a tangential note, it’s not hard at all to understand why Lynch’s books are popular among the Pink SF/F-reading crowd, and at least in the case of the first book, beyond. Despite the fact that the books are repetitively circular from a plot perspective, are subject to the aforementioned logical constraints, contain no drama or pathos, and go absolutely nowhere in any deeper sense, they do provide very well indeed for the wish fulfillment of a certain psychology that bastes itself in its belief in its own cleverness.

Smirkings and quirkings

If I could only give a single piece of advice to a SF/F writer it would be this: excise the verbs “to smirk” and “to quirk” from your literary arsenal. At some point in the last 10-15 years, they mutually invaded the genre and have become all but ubiquitous.

First, note that quirk is not even a verb! It is a bloody NOUN. Seriously. It even says so in the dictionary and everything!

QUIRK noun
1. a peculiarity of action, behavior, or personality; mannerism: He is full of strange quirks.
2. a shift, subterfuge, or evasion; quibble.
3. a sudden twist or turn: He lost his money by a quirk of fate.
4.a flourish or showy stroke, as in writing.
5.Architecture.
a.an acute angle or channel, as one dividing two parts of a molding or one dividing a flush bead from the adjoining surfaces.
b.an area taken from a larger area, as a room or a plot of ground.
c.an enclosure for this area.

How, pray tell, does one “quirk a smile”. How is a sentence “quirked” rather than “said”? I’m not sure who is responsible, but I have the vague sense that David Weber may be the chiefly culpable party. In any event, quirking is the twerking of science fiction and fantasy genre; it is annoying, vulgar, and fundamentally stupid.

Weber’s On Basilisk Station contains 4 quirks.

  1. Honor stood motionless, watching through the armorplast, feeling Nimitz rise straight and tall on her shoulder to join her perusal, and an eyebrow quirked.
  2.  The numeral on her maneuvering display changed to “1,” and she turned to Webster and quirked an eyebrow, waiting out the seconds until he nodded.
  3. Her lips quirked at the thought, and she worked her way more briskly through the traffic.
  4. She paused, eyebrow quirked as if to ask if Honor was with her, and Honor nodded.

Now, at least the smirk addicts use an actual verb as a verb. But they still, for the most part, use it ineptly, even when it isn’t being used improperly. Let’s go to the definition again:

SMIRK verb
1. to smile in an affected, smug, or offensively familiar way.
2. to smile in a manner expressing expressing scorn, smugness, etc, rather than pleasure

Like “quirked”, “smirked” is frequently used as a said-bookism, and an improper said-bookism at that. It is a manner of smiling, not a manner of speaking.

Scott Lynch serves as a good example. He’s considered one of the better “new” writers, and as a pure wordsmith, he’s quite competent. In his first book, The Lies of Locke Lamora, while there are no quirks, there are no less than 11 smirks.

  1. Calo had dark liquor-colored skin and hair like an inky slice of night; the tautness of the flesh around his dark eyes was broken only by a fine network of laugh-lines (though anyone who knew the Sanza twins would more readily describe them as smirk-lines)
  2. “Incomparable.” He coughed, and then, with quick jerky motions, he loosened his black neck-cloths just the slightest bit; the Salvaras smirked charmingly together. “I’m reminded again why I have such success selling gentler liquors to you people.”
  3. Capa Barsavi reached out with his right hand and turned Locke’s head slightly upward by the chin, staring down into Locke’s eyes as he spoke. “How old are you, Locke Lamora? Six? Seven? Already responsible for a breach of the Peace, a burnt-down tavern, and six or seven deaths.” The Capa smirked. “I have assassins five times your age who should be so bold. Has Chains told you the way it is, with my city and my laws?”
  4.  “Consider it my challenge to you, to go hand in hand with my blessing.” Barsavi smirked.
  5.  “The threat of an empty stomach soon rekindles wisdom.” Chains smirked.
  6.  “I shall return very shortly,” said Locke, and he spun on his heel and made for the door. As he left the receiving room, he allowed himself a brief smirk of pleasure; the guards pinning Benjavier now looked almost as frightened of him as the waiter did.
  7.  The sun was pouring down light and heat with its usual intensity, and Locke was sweating hard inside his fine new clothes, but for a few moments he let a satisfied smirk creep onto his face.
  8.  “She is knitting, my lady,” said Reynart, with a smirk that told of some private joke.
  9.  “Now,” said Doña Sofia with a smirk, “it will either be Doña Vorchenza, or it will be a pair of young people doing something they should not….”
  10.  The Falconer stood in the center of the little room, smirking at Locke, his hand folded before him.
  11. “Oh no, Master Lamora.” Now the sorcerer positively smirked.

The disease apparently progresses with time. Red Seas Under Red Skies contains 14 smirks, while The Republic of Thieves features 19 for the reader’s edification and enjoyment.

I have a theory about why pinkshirts are so prone to having their characters not only smirking often, but smirking improperly. The former because it serves as a signpost to the reader that a cleverness has been committed, and the latter because it is the writer speaking through the character, communicating his sense of self-satisfaction with the character’s behavior in the scene.

It should surprise no one to discover there are no smirkings and quirkings to be found in Tolkien.

Criticism

I found this pair of tweets by government-funded wannabe Damien Walter to be more than a little amusing:

You should feel a little pity for Vox Day. He will never have the self-awareness to admit he can’t write, and so he’ll never learn.

I stayed in bed TWO WHOLE DAYS to read the 5th and final volume of The Malloreon. Felt grief, like all my friends had died, when I finished.

It’s always fascinating to see this sort of supercilious superiority from people who aren’t able to publish and sell books themselves. About the only way I could be less concerned about the opinion of someone who considers David Eddings to be the crème de la crème of literature would be if he also turned out to be a particular admirer of Dan Brown.

It would be bad enough if it was The Belgariad that Walter had so admired. My first thought after reading The Malloreon was: “I liked it better when it was called The Belgariad.” My second thought was: “How did he talk his publisher into paying him twice for writing the same thing?”

And then, there is this:

As far as fantasy novels go, I think Pratchett is a better role model for new writers than Tolkien.

The Colour of Magic vs The Hobbit. Ye cats. You have to feel sorry for the poor would-be writers being taught by this poseur. In any event, there is only one real answer to these anklebiters, and that is to simply keep doing what you’re doing. That’s the beauty of writing and publishing these days. You don’t need anyone’s permission anymore.

In any event, since I have the very good fortune to read some of John C. Wright’s work fresh from the pen, it’s not as if I’m under any illusions with regards to my own writing.

A tale of four reviews

It’s as expected as it is informative that “Opera Vita Aeterna” is meeting with entirely different receptions depending upon the reader.  For example, here is a review of the Hugo-nominated novelette from one Nerdvanel:

Apparently “Opera Vita Aeterna” is totally ungrammatical in Latin. I didn’t notice any spelling errors in the story itself, but really, having errors like that in the title is bad enough. People who know anything about Latin should know that it’s an inflected language and therefore those inflections should be paid attention to if a grammatical result is desired. I don’t know if Vox is really that ignorant or if he just doesn’t care.

Then to the epub file… Opera Vita Aeterna has a cover page. On it is a 3d-render of an ominous castle, probably meant to be the good guy monastery in the story. When you look closely, several interesting features appear. For one thing, the castle seems to have been carved from rock as a single piece. They should have used a stone texture that had cracks in it to simulate the castle having been constructed from hewn blocks, assuming that was what had happened. Then, the castle itself is terribly designed. The architect must have been incompetent beyond belief. The castle is incredibly impractical while at the same time being really ugly. I don’t know how those side towers in particular got okayed or whether the explanation for the disparate window sizes is that the perspective is all off or if those lower windows are just unreasonably huge. Also, it looks like the designers had heard that castles have crenelated fortifications but don’t know what they’re for or what they should look like.

The lighting is really weird too. It looks like the inhabitants of the castle like to point multiple searchlights (not pictured) at the clouds. They also have other light sources (also not pictured) pointed at the castle. The light looks cold and artificial, so the universe in which the castle is situated must have at least 20th Century technology or else magic to spare on frivolous things. Neither is exactly consistent with the story.

But enough about the cover. What comes next is a series of praise blurbs for another book by Vox, A Throne of Bones.

The esteemed sources providing the blurbs:
– Two self-published authors I had never heard of, giving faint praise
– Three unpopular blogs ideologically close to Vox, one of which currently has a post on the front page talking about how Vox’s racist statements totally aren’t racist
– Two anonymous Amazon reviews that could have been written by just anyone

Some of the more notable contents in the blurbs:
– Putting Vox on a level with Tolkien (x1)
– Putting Vox on a level with Martin (x2)
– Saying that Vox is better than Martin (x2)

You can judge for yourself how accurate those are.

This was pretty long, so let’s call this post an introduction and move to the novella itself in the next post.

The story begins in what in this world is called “853 Anno Salutis Humanae”, “in the Year of the Human(e) Salvation” according to my research. The term should probably be “Anno Salutis Hominum”, “in the Year of the Salvation of Humans”, but apparently looking that up was too difficult. “Humanus” is an adjective, not a noun. Well, trying to be gracious here, perhaps the author was trying to imply that some unspecified but important salvation had been a humane thing to do or done by humans or that Not-Jesus had been all man and zero God. I think there’s no chance of that though.

You see, Vox Day is a Christian apologist. It would be heretical to have his Not-Jesus not be fully man and fully God as the real-world doctrine has it. Also, now that I pay attention to it, I see that the story has a lot of questionable Latin in it.

And by the way, speaking of potential heresy, I think it’s worth mentioning that Vox Day’s name can be translated as “Voice of Godde”. Vox Day is in English pronounced the same as “Vox Dei”, which is Latin for “Voice of God”. That sounds just a tad arrogant. I wonder what the Inquisition would have thought of it. It’s like Vox is implying that all of his opinions are God’s opinions. But more than that, Vox is making it sound like he is channeling God and Vox’s writings are holy scripture. I thought humility was an important Christian virtue.

We finally get to the first paragraph, and it contains some really “good” material.

Quote : The pallid sun was descending, its ineffective rays no longer sufficient to hold it up in the sky or to penetrate the northern winds that gathered strength with the whispered promises of the incipient dark.

Apparently in this world suns are held up by radiation pressure. It also sounds like it should be dark. Electromagnetic radiation being unable to somehow get through thin air should have that effect, at least in a logical world.

Also, I wonder if the winds whisper different things during different times of the day or if the winds’ verbal communication is limited to always repeating things like “Daaaark… Whooooosh… Daaaark…” Winds shouldn’t have a brain, after all.

Quote : The first of the two moons was already visible high above the mountains. Soon Arbhadis, Night’s Mistress, would unveil herself as well.

Apparently moon rays are more effectual than sun rays.

I don’t know if Arbhadis is the second moon or what. We’re never told. In case it is, I wonder what the first moon is called. Is it Night’s Wife, Night’s Other Mistress, or what? Anyway, apparently Arbhadis is already on the scene, just hidden by clouds, unless you think those mountains qualify as a metaphorical, overly thick veil. Any of this is however doesn’t matter one little bit as far as the story goes. We’ll never hear of Arbhadis again. After this point the author largely stops his efforts to write in an evocative language. Too bad for the lost humor value.

There is more, but you can read it there. So, that’s one perspective. I will merely note that the castle on the cover is not the monastery, it is Raknarborg, the castle in which the events of “The Last Witchking”, the title story of collection in which “Opera Vita Aeterna” was published, take place. I would think that the difference between a castle-fortress and a small rural abbey were obvious, but then, I would also have thought the difference between Latina and italiano are obvious too. In ogni caso, here is a second review, from Chris Gerrib:

Overall, the story is not as bad as I feared, which is small praise
indeed for a Hugo-nominated work. I found the world-building a bit
jarring. How much of that is my dislike for bog-standard Dark Ages
European fantasy I can’t really tell you. I do think the payoff – elf
finishes book – was too light for the story. I had no emotional
attachment to any character, so that didn’t help matters. I also
thought the elf’s response to the slaughter of his friends was weak – no
guilt at not being there to help or blaming himself for putting them at
risk, for example.

And for a different perspective, here is a third review:

It is absolutely brilliant, one of the best short stories I have read in
years. This is why, no matter how much I might disagree with Vox Day
(or, you know, agree with people who think he can be an asshole), I
can’t help but respect the man. He understands pathos, tragedy, and
redemption in a way few modern authors do, and “Opera Vita Aeterna” is a
short piece of great beauty. The pacing was spot on and the emotional
beats hit perfectly.

Finally, a fourth review, which goes into a similar level of detail to the first review, only to reach very different conclusions.

In today’s bloodthirsty fantasy genre, all too often “guy rapes his sister next to the corpse of their murdered child” (and sadly, I’m not exaggerating) is considered the epitome of high-brow artistic sophistication. I find it encouraging and refreshing to encounter an author like Vox Day, who can craft a subtle, complex, and powerful story through the old-fashioned method of plot and character development, rather than falling back on the shock value of depravity to stimulate his readers. Vox Day has helped restore my faith in the possibility of quality contemporary fantasy.

To that end, I’ve signed up as a supporter of LONCON3. For $43, I will be a member of the group that gets to vote on the Hugo award. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to review the other nominated short stories to see if they can exceed the high bar set by Vox Day. I’m also looking forward to reviewing the nominees in the other
categories. Fans and readers who have been turned off by the state of
contemporary science fiction and fantasy may wish to reconsider their
decision. A brash crew of insurgents, like Vox Day, working largely
outside the mainstream publishing industry, are in the process of
reinventing the genre.

What explains the difference between these extraordinarily different reviews of exactly the same literary work? Is it all down to politics? I don’t think that is entirely the case. Certainly politics plays a part in it; it is obvious that the first reviewer is actively hunting for things to criticize. A brief mention of the world’s two moons is hardly the equivalent of Chekov’s Gun. What did he expect to see, Arbhadis colliding spectacularly with the first moon and a chunk of the resulting rubble plunging to earth just in time to kill the evil, hypocritical abbot before he could murder the elf in reaction to his self-loathing over having succumbed to the temptation of elven beauty?

I think the main reason for the fear and loathing seen here is that having amputated themselves from the source from which all love, awe, and wonder spring, they have no basis upon which to judge anything but mechanics and adherence to their ever-mutating principles of the moment. If you’re looking for  literary pyrotechnics or the message that [insert minority of choice] can do anything that straight white men can do, only better, you’re bound to be disappointed. Although I will say that if you don’t see any humor in an overly literal concept of solar supports in a medievalesque story, well, I can’t help you there.

Nerdvanel says he is content to let others judge for themselves whether A THRONE OF BONES is better than A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. I concur, and I’m likewise content to leave it to others to judge for themselves which of these four reviews is the most accurate.

Mailvox: The Greatest American Author

Nate poses the question:

Faulkner?  Hemingway?  Poe?  Some other? Go. I lean towards Faulkner myself… but I am an inveterate southron rebel.. and so I confess bias.  That doesn’t mean I’m not correct.

I have to admit that I admire Faulkner, for his attitude towards publishers and prizes if nothing else. But I am not especially fond of his work.  Hemingway I find to be considerably overrated, more a product of his self-promotion than anything else. His lean, stripped-down prose was innovative and influential, but I think it has had a seriously deleterious effect on literature. One has only to read John C. Wright to lament the world of rich and expansive prose that we have lost.

We are all the children of Hemingway and we are the worse off for it.

I am strongly partial to Edgar Allen Poe, but I am concerned that may be more due to my inclination for the morbid than anything else. Before I cast my vote for him, perhaps we should cast a broader net.

There is John Updike. No, he is too self-conscious, too inclined towards literary posturing. Everything reads as if he is looking expectantly at the readers and anticipating their approval: “look, Ma, I’s writin’!” John Irving has a way with words, but he wrote essentially the same book over and over, and I found his petty, exaggerated absurdities to be insulting. Saul Bellow is boring and tedious. Philip Roth is perverted, self-absorbed, and tedious.

There is O. Henry, whose short stories are among the best ever written, but there is more to literary greatness than tight plotting and clever twist endings.

Neal Stephenson merits being at least mentioned, as I would consider his Reamde to be a legitimate candidate for a Great American Novel. But his grasp of the human condition, to say nothing of his difficulty with endings, is too shaky in comparison with the other greats. Ray Bradbury is the most sentimental American author, and I would argue that Dandelion Wine is the most perfect portrait of the traditional America to which every sane American would like to return, but, like Stephenson, the mere inclusion on the list is sufficient. I would say that Bradbury is the greatest American SF author, however.

I am an F. Scott Fitzgerald fan, but his work is too little and too light to merit serious consideration. I have not read Thomas Pynchon, and I seriously hope that no one would so foolish as to propose David Foster Wallace with a straight face. Tom Wolfe’s novels have always struck me as cartoons, insightful and observant cartoons, to be sure, but cartoons nevertheless. Kurt Vonnegut is an unfunny clown; I put him below Stephen King. Hell, I’d put him below Stephanie Miller and Laurell K. Hamilton. Jack London might be the quintessentially American writer, but his style was far too limited to merit serious consideration.

At the end of the day, I don’t see how it is possible to go with anyone but Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain himself. He had the complete package, prose, plot, characters, and commentary on the human condition, in addition to fully representing the American spirit.

More fun with fake reviews

Dave O’Neill is just tired of all those “sorcerer in a monastery discussing theology” books that so permeate SF/F today:

Overwritten and felt derivative
To be fair, I was interested because of the Hugo nomination and was
curious about the general worlds involved. I made it about 5% into this
on my Kindle before grinding to a halt. Nothing was all that
interesting and didn’t drive me to read more. If you’re looking for
something to read while waiting for more George RR Martin, keep looking
would be my advice really.

I suggest that if you’re looking for something to read while waiting for more George RR Martin, perhaps it would make more sense to try the 854-page A THRONE OF BONES rather than a Hugo-nominated novelette. Good or bad, it’s just not going to take long, not even if you move your lips when you read. What I find amusing about all these hit reviews is that they know they need a few descriptors to justify the one-star rating, but they are seldom smart enough to choose any that actually sound relevant.

So far we’ve seen “incoherent and unconvincing non-story” as well as “adolescent theology”. And now “derivative”. Derivative of what? The Name of the Rose? A Canticle for Leibowitz? Monk literature isn’t what one would call a massive subgenre. What’s next, complaints about how lame the sex scenes are?

You can read better fake fake reviews right here on this blog. Consider Kyle’s: “Why can’t these critics at least be competent enough to complain about
this story in a manner that, while not necessarily hitting the mark, at
least lands in the same galaxy as the dartboard? If I was going to
criticize this (excellent) story then I’d whine about how it was maudlin
and sentimental, a fantasy Thomas Kincade painting, exposing the evil
crimethink purveyor Vox Day as actually being a sentimental wimp hiding
beneath his grandiose bravado projected on the blog.”

Thoughts on the Hugo nomination

  1. SF fandom has no grasp of how small it is. The repeated accusations of cheating by purchasing multiple memberships and ballot-stuffing demonstrate that the accusers haven’t even bothered to look at the Feedburner icon or click on the Sitemeter icon here. Last year it took only 38 votes to make it onto the Best Novelette ballot; the top vote-getting nominee had all of 89 votes. Meanwhile, the vast quantity of upset and offended goodthinkers visiting here via do-not-link to gawk at the evidence of my being “the antithesis of all that is good and decent” led to a gargantuan 6.9 percent increase in traffic here, which is to say, 758 additional Sitemeter visits out of nearly 12,000.
  2. It’s a lot harder to win a Hugo than to get nominated. To win, one needs about 400 votes under normal circumstances. But since the votes are ranked in order of preference and there is an active campaign to vote No Award above “Opera Vita Aeterna”, I’d need more than that. Translation: thanks very much for all the expressions of support, but don’t buy a membership to vote for me unless you’re also planning to get involved on the nomination end next year. If you want to express your support, I’d much rather you spend that money on Castalia House books by John, Tom, and Rolf. For $40 you can buy most of our English catalog… some of it directly from the store we are opening later today.
  3. Win or lose the awards, Sad Puppies has served its purpose. The purpose of Sad Puppies, as Larry repeatedly explained, was three-fold. First, to test if the award process was fraudulent or not. To the credit of the LonCon people, we have learned it was not. Second, to prove that the awards are a mere popularity contest, contra the insistence of those who have repeatedly asserted they are evidence of literary quality and the intrinsic superiority of the nominated works. We have shown that it is. And third, to prove that the SF/F Right is more popular in the genre than the gatekeepers have insisted. We have demonstrated that to be the case.
  4. People hate me a lot more than they hate Larry Correia. This is very troubling to the International Lord of Hate. I suspected as much, but I thought the ratio would be more like 65/35 than 90/10. That being said, I have little doubt that Larry will manage to level out that ratio somewhat by this time next year.
  5. SF progressives believe they are qualified to police race and ethnicity. Many of them can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that I am a Person of Color by every definition. It’s amusing that they think my labeling a lying African-American woman a “half-savage” proves my racism, but them calling a pair of Hispanic men all sorts of names, including “savage” and “uncivilized”, somehow proves they are not racist. 
  6. If they are unhappy now, they are really going to be unhappy in the future. I paid no attention to the nominations last year. The Dread Ilk barely paid any attention to the nominations this year. As we’ve previously seen to be the case, the progressives really don’t understand that their frantic attempts to belittle and disqualify us only makes us stronger, harder, and more numerous.
  7. Many Hugo voters have declared they will not read the novelette and it
    is already apparent that some of those who read “Opera Vita Aeterna”
    will not do so honestly. For example, one “reviewer” wrote: “I skip a little tedious adolescent Theology talk in Act Two, Plus a
    Silly Epilogue that I think VD thinks is Dramatic…. His point (I think) is that God Is Real. And So R Demons.
    The plot is pointless. The writing is dull and bad.”      But anyone
    who has read the story knows that the plot is far from pointless. And
    anyone who is sufficiently educated will recognize that the theology is
    not “adolescent”, it is paraphrased Thomas Aquinas from the Summa Theologica.
  8. I appreciate the nomination. It’s nice to receive the recognition and it is certainly useful in much the same way as my Mensa membership. But, having recently edited two books by a much superior writer who should, by any reasonable standard, already have several Hugo wins under his belt, it’s hard to view the process as anything but seriously flawed.
  9. The Wheel of Time is dreadful. It has always been dreadful, in sum and in part. I find it mildly amazing that people are more offended about my novelette being nominated than that gigantic insult to literature.
  10. The title of the novelette is no more Latin than “Vox Popoli”. It’s a blend of Italian and Latin.
  11. A man is defined by his enemies as well as by his friends. I feel extraordinarily fortunate indeed to have had this opportunity to observe the quality of both. It is not at all a bad thing to be personally disliked and viewed as “a contemptible piece of shit” by the likes of Mr. Scalzi and company. It is the approval of the wormtongues that a man should fear, not their hatred.

Hugo Awards: Best Novelette

Nominations for the 2014 Hugo Awards:

Best Novelette:

“Opera Vita Aeterna” by Vox Day
“The Exchange Officers” by Brad Torgersen
“The Lady Astronaut of Mars” by Mary Robinette Kowal
“The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” by Ted Chiang
“The Waiting Stars” by Aliette de Bodard

Congratulations to Larry Correia, who was nominated for Warbound, and to Brad Torgersen, who was not only nominated for “The Exchange Officers”, but also for “The Chaplain’s Legacy”. And, of course, to Toni Weisskopf.

The Baen Brigade fires back

Another Baen author responds to John Scalzi’s attack on Baen publisher Toni Weisskopf:

Recently, Toni Weisskopf the publisher at Baen Books wrote a guest post at Sarah A. Hoyt’s blog, a re-post of an essay she posted on Baen’s Bar, a forum that requires registration so Sarah’s repost is the public link. 

This post has had a lot of responses ranging from acclaim to hate. That means that in some sense, it’s important.  IMHO, the most interesting response was by John Scalzi in his blog. It’s that post I want to try to comment on.  I choose to do it here rather than in the comments there because there’s a zillion comments on it already, and I’m writing to my friends, not his readers.

Scalzi summarizes Toni’s post as follows:

 “Once upon a time all the fractious lands of science fiction fandom were joined together, and worshiped at the altar of Heinlein. But in these fallen times, lo do many refuse to worship Heinlein, preferring instead their false idols and evil ways.”

Let me make myself perfectly clear. Of all the styles of argument that you can engage in, this sort of straw man argument pisses me off.  It offends me. It makes me want to stand up and scream. The problem is, John’s failed both at the art of summary and at intellectual honesty.  He’s set up a target that he claims is Toni’s work, and then shoots at it, but if you’re going to try to tear apart a writer’s work, it’s important to actually tear apart what they wrote.  John didn’t do that.  He exclusively comments, at length on his summary, not on what Toni wrote, never citing her words or thoughts. This is unjust and unfair.

This is all very well and good, but I think Mr. Boatright is forgetting something VERY important. You see, Mr. Scalzi possesses a BACHELOR’S DEGREE in PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE from THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. You can’t front on that! In the meantime, another Baen author, Brad Torgersen, explains why he went with Baen instead of certain other publishers who have been in the news of late for not bothering to talk to their authors for periods exceeding one year and whose senior editors are chiefly known for sexually harassing women or describing themselves as racists on LiveJournal.

One of the things I found most unsettling about the novel publishing landscape were the numerous first-person accounts I was getting, from authors not too much further down the tracks from myself, about how it was a feast or famine business. You either hit home runs immediately, or you got dumped. It didn’t seem to matter who you published with, if you couldn’t show a substantial profit for the publisher, and do it very quickly, you were done. Likewise, if you were on the midlist and you weren’t showing bottom-line numbers indicating you were trending towards bestseller status, you were done. And not always explicitly either. Often people knew they were dumped simply because responsiveness from editors dropped to little or nothing, and contracts which had been previously promised, never showed up. There was no door being slammed, rather the dumping was done quietly. Sort of like having your utilities turned off at the street.

There was one publisher, however, who was getting consistently good marks: Baen. Authors — even new authors — were reporting that this publisher didn’t expect immediate grand slams. Instead, this publisher would work with new authors over time to grow and develop an audience. Not having landslide sales your first time out of the gate was not going to ruin you. Likewise, this publisher had a very respectable and healthy midlist, while also having very good brand label loyalty among readers. The latter being rare in an era when almost all readers are either loyal to a specific author, or loyal to a specific series and/or franchise. Thus it would be easier (for me as a new guy) to develop an audience, and I wouldn’t necessarily be doomed if I wasn’t cracking the top ten on the New York Times list with each subsequent book. There was the promise of breathing room!

I certainly hope that in the future Castalia’s authors will have similar cause to speak so well of us. I consider Baen to be a model for success in the new era of publishing. And, do you know, I’m beginning to suspect that the Baen Brigade is not fooled by Mr. Scalzi’s patented two-step where first he punches someone in the mouth, then steps back, smiles, and pretends to be best friends with them. He’s just joshing with his very good pal Miss Weisskopf, just like he and good buddy John Ringo were only kidding around with each other about his Participation Hugo.

Sorry, Johnny, but you picked your side and everyone knows it. Now everyone can see the very angry little lefty underneath the clown makeup.

UPDATE: Larry Correia piles on, which if you know anything about Larry, is saying something:

Basically, I love my publishing house. I know a lot of other writers, and I know somebody with just about
every publishing house out there. Hang out with a bunch of writers long
enough and you’ll get to hear them gripe about their publishers and
their editors. And if they’re not a star or a golden boy with their
publisher, then you’ll really get to hear them bitch and vent.  After
five years of this stuff I’ve heard all sorts of horror stories, yet I’m
unable to commiserate with them because luckily for me, my editors
don’t suck, and I haven’t ever felt like my publisher is trying to screw
me over.

Editing complaints are the best. I don’t know how many times I’ve
heard stories, especially from the mid listers at one of the big houses
about how they’ve turned in a book and waited 6 months, 9 months, or a
YEAR to get any editorial feedback. Hell, at that point I’ve already
written another novel and have forgotten the prior one. Then when the
feedback comes back it is “Hey, throw away this half of the book and
write something entirely different, oh, and I need that by Thursday.”
Sorry. Can’t commiserate with you, buddy….
Let me give you an example of what doing business with Baen is like. When I first started out I had absolutely no idea what I was doing as far as business, and like I said, no agent to guide me (got rejected by pretty much all of them, which is funny because I’m betting they’d love to be getting 15% of this action now!) so when I signed my first contract, I gave over things like dramatic rights (movies and TV), audiobooks, and foreign rights to Baen. At that point in my career, I was just happy that anybody was reading my stuff at all, and I couldn’t imagine that people would want to listen to it or read it in other languages.

So then I got approached by my first movie producer. Wow. Didn’t see that coming. Uh oh, my contract turned all that over to my publishing house… The contract doesn’t specify percentage details for that kind of thing. Now, at this point many publishers would have just screwed me over. Nope. One phone call to Toni, she sticks Baen’s Hollywood agent onto it, we talk, and boom, no problem. I’m then getting an extremely large percent of any of that sort of thing. For the last three years I’ve been collecting option money.