A sci-fi fantasy fan's lament...in a kitchen sink post

[shadowkat]

[Ah, finally found a single meetup group for the 40 and over crowd. Yay. Even though still 39. But helps to be prepared. Not that I'm adverse to dating younger men, just well, it helps if your significant other remembers things like hating Ronald Regan, when Cheers was the best comedy on, and what it was like to fear a nuclear holocaust at the hands of the Soviet Union. Not to mention little things, like Air Supply, ABBA, Pink Floyd in concert, seeing Star Wars as a little kid in a big theater upon its release for the first time ever, before special effects became the rage, and a world without cell phones, the internet, or cable tv. ]

Have a reviews of a new comic I picked up.


1. First - Spike:Asylum, written by Brian Lynch and drawn by Franco Urru. Best freaking Spike comic I've seen yet. And yes, I sampled all the other ones, including the somewhat lame Old Wounds and Spike vs. Dracula. This one actually manages to stick to the whole noir world a bit better than the others, better even than Whedon did at times, letting Spike be a sort of reluctant Philip Marlow or Sam Spade. And he's not shown so much as a hero, as a more grey ambigious sort - and I like my Spike grey. Heroic Spike just feels off somehow.

Here - I'll give you a sampling of two bits of writing I adored: " I've never seen the girl before in my life. But it doesn't matter. Over the years, I've learned one thing - before I was sired, after I was sired, soul or no soul, every single mistake I've ever made was because of a woman. Some I tried to save. Some I tried to kill. Not in that order, but...Forget sunlight. Forget stakes. The fairer sex will always be my achilles heel."

Then just a few pages later, we get this gem, it occurs after Spike tries to walk away from the assignment, and the client says, oh - we'll go find Angel then.

"Forget Sunlight. Forget Stakes. That Whiny Git is Officially my Achilles Heel."

LOL! This one has the humor many of the other ones lack and the suspense. Also Franco Urro's artwork? Amazing. Spot on. The best I've seen so far. The pages glossy like a graphic novel. The colors clear. Great use of shadowing.

Am definitely getting the next issue. Best comic I've seen on Spike to date.

Question? Should I hand in my sci-fantasy membership card? The only tv shows I'm watching with a sci-fantasy element at the moment are : Eureka, BSG, Heroes and Lost. The last one is a bit on the mainstream side of the fence. BSG is cult. I can't get into the others. And haven't read much of it in a while. The problem with sci-fantasy is well, don't hurt me for writing this but:


1. The fans. The fans tend to be a little crazy. Obsessive. And over the top. ("Trekkies? Anyone?") They also for reasons I'm not sure I understand tend to stick with one writer or story so that's all you can find in bookstores. Shelves upon shelves of novelizations of Star Trek, Star Wars, BSG, Buffy, Angel, Dragon Lance (a role playing game), Star Gate... You don't really get this level of obsessiveness outside the genre.

2. Finding the good stuff is almost impossible. You have to know where to look and be able to order online and get deliveries sent to your house or have the patience and wherewithal to order directly from a bookstore - which means knowing the author's name and the name of the book - and what it is about ahead of time. If you are like me and tend to figure out what you want to buy by just browsing around the bookstore shelves, reading backs of books or the first chapter and middle one - pre-ordering or ordering does not work. To find out about them? You need to read listserves, visit sci-fi sites and really look for it. Unlike the other genres - romance, mystery, noir - which you can just haunt a bookstore for - sci-fantasy requires more work and time. It's like an exclusive club that you can't find a dang thing in unless you know someone. And you don't dare admit you're a member because people will think you read the crap that haunts those bottom shelves in the small bookstores or the back shelves of the megaplexs. (Although I'll give Borders and B&N credit - they are getting better - I've seen collections of the classic writers and a few newer better ones grace their shelves. Recently actually saw two Elizabeth Bear books. But she's the only one from lj that I've seen. Pamela Dean? Nope. Elizabeth Hand - you have to look hard, but nope. John M. Ford? Forget about it, he's not even on the shelf - I'd never heard of him until I went online and I've read fantasy and sci-fi for years. What you do find? Ursula Le Quinn, Philip K. Dick, Charlain Harris, La Banks, Kim Harrison, Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey, Octavia Butler, Harlan Ellison, while some of these guys kick ass, others not so much. And most feel more or less mainstream now. I can't tell you how many times I've searched the racks of huge NYC bookstores for novels by writers people mention online - just to check them out, see if I want to sample before spending the dough - and can't find them.

Have you EVER asked yourselves why this is? Why does sci-fi get such a bad rep in the publishing and entertainment biz? Why do people like me want to hide the novels when we read them on the subway? Part of the problem is the marketing of them - the cheesy pulpy covers. Which are getting better, but not by much. And sci-fi's background of being a dime store novel or pulp short story. If you've ever taken a creative writing course at a university or college - you probably got the lecture: "Don't write sci-fi unless you can first prove the ability to write good characters and plots." Why? Ah, too many people write bad sci-fi stories in these classes. Stories that feel like an old Star Trek or Twilight Zone episode. All about the world, the creatures, the mythology, the details - but no characters you can grab hold of or memorable plots. Thematic sure. Sometimes very plotty. But the characters, they just don't pop. They aren't there. I got that lecture all the way through. And I've tried to write sci-fantasy. I suck at it, because I don't like the boundaries I have to work within. My creativity suffocates under all the rules and detail requirements. You have to be a great juggler to do good sci-fi. Because - it's not just about characters and plot, it is also about creating a credible universe or world - one the reader can enter and feel at home in or have nightmares about.

Many sci-fi writers have been known to write a complex outline of their world first. Detailing everything in it. The plants. The animals. The flying machines. The rules of their world. I remember doing it as an exercise way back in 1994 or thereabouts. Wrote an outline for a universe that I called, Catworld (don't laugh, okay, never mind, chortle at will). Then after writing it, I attempted the novel. The novel did not work. I kept running against all the rules. Also, there was another problem, not a scientist and I knew the science in my novel did not work. Fantasy is easier actually - because you don't have to know science or rather be frigging accurate regarding science. Not that every sci-fi writer is. Star Trek, Star Gate, Farscape, Star Wars, and Firefly got into all sorts of troubles with the science community. So did Angel - I remember people having long debates on whether Fred's string theory made logical sense. But they got the basics right more or less.
The good sci-fi writers are good scientists - they get that part of it.

Problem with Fantasy is how to be unique. I mean you see one dwarf, elf, fairy, socerer, wizard, enchantress, sword-fighter - you've seen them all - right? I have one friend who scoffs at the genre as being basically swords and socerary or middle ages with magic. Some writers have gotten around this dilemma by writing hybrids - sci-fantasy, horror - gothic fantasy, dark fantasy, or erotica fantasy. But you still run up against the same problem - how do I make it unique and how do I avoid the cheesy cover?

Now Fantasy can sell a lot of books. Terry Brooks and whoever wrote the Sword of Shannara, was that Terry Brooks? Probably is. I get him and Piers Anthony confused. Not overly found of either - they feel a bit too much like Ann McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackney - writers who after a while feel like they are repeating themselves or each other. And do not do the genre as the whole much good. Neither does Anne Rice - who I'm starting to wish had stopped with The Body Thief. But every genre, you'd say, has it's pop writers or mainstream writers - the ones who make *cough*the NYTimes Bestseller List*cough*. And sure they can write well enough. They sell a ton of books and tell a good story. JK Rowlings is the latest.

*Oh, an interesting point on JK Rowlings, which may or may not make you laugh if you are a sci-fantasy writer or fan, my former boss and people in my workplace said this about the Harry Potter Books: "I don't know where she gets all these ideas. She's so creative. No one has come up with this concept before. She has an amazing mind. It's so new." Sigh. Yes, none of them have read any fantasy novels outside of Rowlings in their lives. I know, I asked just to see. And wouldn't consider picking up one. They never read Ronald Dalh or CS Lewis. They never made it through JR Tolkien. And I seriously doubt they know Jim Butcher, Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Quinn, et al exist.

What frustrates me about sci-fantasy and has since I was in the fifth grade is how hard it is to get your hands on new and invigorating writers unless you have inside knowledge or go to conventions. I took a class on the genre in college - that's how I discovered William Gibson. In grade school, my Aunt, a sixth grade librairian for a school made up of only six graders (it was in Vegas, they do things differently out there), sent me sci-fantasy books and through her I discovered Tolkien, Keatley Snyder, McCaffrey, Andre Norton, Le Quinn, Herbert, Donaldson, CS Lewis along with others. But it was hard. Took years to discover Dick and it was through my mother, I found Bester.

In most book stores - the sci-fi section is taken up by role-playing books, graphic novels, star trek and other tv show novelas, the bestseller names or ones who've made it to the mainstream, but the underground - the gnarly good stuff - which people mention online? Ugh. It took forever for Butcher to hit bookstores - read all his books through a friend. Prachett is there of course, as is Gaiman. But not that many of the women. You have to hunt for Bujold. Bear? Only Hammered or Worldwired. Did see Blood and Iron, once. Gaveriel-Kay? Good luck, took me two weeks to find Wandering Gyre. George RR Martin - easier now that he's become popular. Most stores have such small spaces for it and it doesn't help that they combine the fantasy and the science fiction. Horror - like Stephen King, Rice, and Straub gets in the mainstream fiction section so that helps.

I don't know how to solve the problem. I do know that I tend to not tell people that I love the genre. It remains a guilty pleasure. Whenever I get really stressed, I go there. Escape. But it frustrates me that I can't find the stuff I want within it. In the way I want to find it. Without having to tell someone that I'm a fan. Without having to make a big fuss. Being a fan of the mystery genre is much easier in a way. And that's a shame. Because I do adore it. It remains my favorite. I just wish I could locate the writers of it easier.

Comments

HEAR, HEAR!!!

[fara-shimbo.livejournal.com]

Warning, you pushed one of her oldest buttons, and she rejoices!

HEAR, HEAR! She stands up at her computer and cheers.

Actually, you know, I remember arguing these same points back in the seventies, when there were just all the rabid Trekkies to cope with.

Somewhere around 1975, or maybe it was a little earlier, all the science seemed to go out of science fiction. I've been mourning its loss ever since. Now and then comes along someone who knows their stuff, like Greg Bear, but its rare. Really rare.

As for why this is... here, I'll tell you a story. I swear to all the ghods of space and time, THIS REALLY HAPPENED.

I write science fiction. I mean, I write science fiction. I've been writing AI code longer than most of the people I know have been alive. I have a Ph.D. in animal behavior and also degrees in genetics and biopsychology, so I know my stuff, or, especially in the case of genetics, I did at the time. It's gone on ahead without me lately.

I'm one of those writers you mention who writes the universe before writing the story. I can tell you in great detail minute things about satamuri "hormones" and how they work. I know the birthdays, addresses... well, you get the idea.

Back in the 1970's, 1974 I think this happened, I was trying to sell my stories. I don't remember if it was Analog or Amazing I approached at the time, but I met one of the staffers at a convention in New York City, and asked, "What about my story?"

"Well, we like the concept," the guy said, "but we won't publish it unless you change the lead character. He can't be an android. We're trying to appeal to women now, and women won't read anything that doesn't have a love interest in it."

(Sit down. It gets better!)

I'd been hearing things like this for months and I'd had enough at this point. I picked up the hem of my shirt and pulled it up to my shoulders. "What the {shocking bad word} do you think THESE are?!" I roared (much to the delight of many lookers on). "And I WROTE the damn thing!"

His reply?

"Well, you're different."

Hell, yeah, I'm different!

Well, that was the end of me trying to sell my stories. Now I just write them because I enjoy it... or rather, I enjoy the research that goes into some of them.

The trouble is that books are published not because they're good, but because they'll appeal to a wide audience. The wider the better. And even back in the seventies, people weren't studying science anymore, not in nearly the numbers they used to. Science was for nerds and other low-lifes. I think it's even worse now.

I never got into Star Trek like many of the people I knew because I always found it appalling that the "science" in Star Trek was twenty years behind the times. But I did talk to a lot of people connected with it and one thing became clear; it was easier to talk to people about "popular" science--things that, to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, had an old, familiar, "sciency-ness,"--than to try to explain to them how something really worked. They didn't want to know. (And the proof of that was what came in Galaxy magazine's slush pile, which I was reading at the time. There were a lot of high-school science teachers crying themelves to sleep.)

But hey, if you find some good, new science fiction with some real science in it, PLEASE let me know!

Hear, hear!

Re: HEAR, HEAR!!!

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I used to have long conversations about the lack of science in most sci-fi with a work colleague on the subway ride home from the library reference publishing company in which we were working at the time. She had a lot of "scientist" friends and loved the "science " in sci-fi. We'd debate the loss of the science in the books that we were able to uncover. There are a few that still have aspects of it - Dan Simmions isn't bad, nor for that matter was Crichton - when he wrote about medicine, his Andromeda Strain has a bibliography. There was one guy who wrote a real-life account of the Andromeda Strain - which I can't remember the name of and may or may not be in a box beneath my bed at the moment - the book not the guy (*g*).

I'd loaned Maria Doria Russell's science fiction novel The Sparrow to my friend and I remember how she had a love/hate relationship with the book. Russell has a background in biological anthropology. So the portion of her book that deals with that topic is spot on, as far as I can tell, the portion that is completely off is well, the bits about space travel.
Over the years we've recommended stuff to each other - I recommended one bizarre novel which is actually more of a fantasy than a science fiction novel entitled "Only Begotten Daughter" by Joseph Morrow. While she rec'd an Asimov novel about a world that had to deal with complete blackness and never seen it before. Also the latest William Gibson, and a Dan Simmons. Neither one of us located many female sci-fi writers - the problem with the women, which is also true in the mystery genre - is they tend to get talked into doing sci-romance novels by their publishers.
We have to have the cheesy romance. And granted sometimes it works. Sometimes it feels as if you are reading a romance novel that just happens to take place in the fantasy or sci-fi genre.

People excuse it - by stating "well it's popular" or this is what people want. Truth is? I don't think they really know what people want. I've worked in the publishing industry and have had friends who were editorial assistants, literary agent assistants, and or acquistions editors themselves and most of them? Don't read. They scan. One of my friends worked in the sci-fi division of Simon and Schuster for a while, one of Schuster's imprints, she used to give me all their new sci-fantasy releases, but she had no clue whether they were any good or for that matter if I'd like them - because she didn't read sci-fantasy. Didn't like it. I remember how much it used to annoy me. Yet at the same time, thought, well that explains a lot.

In college whenever I met a fellow fan of the genre, they'd invite me to play Dungeons and Dragons (ugh.) or scroll off from memory every single episode of Star Trek and why the science in Trek made sense. I'm not a scientist and even I knew that the science in Trek was a bunch of hooey. It got to the point that I just did not tell people. The people who loved it, frankly, scared me or just turned me off.

One of the reasons I stayed online was to be able to get the suggestions. And I've got a little list of purchases I want to make from Amazon - when I get employed again and can afford another book shelf.

One's a sci-fi called Blindsight by Peter Watts that Elizabeth Bear rec'd on her lj.

http://www.amazon.com/Blindsight-Peter-Watts/dp/0765312182/sr=1-1/qid=1159799311/ref=sr_1_1/002-8509175-2421658?ie=UTF8&s=books

Another is a fantasy novel that has come back into print called "The Iron Dragon's Daughter".

I've read so much crap. Finding the good stuff takes work. And time.

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

It is hard to find Scifi books in mainstream bookstores, I agree. The sections and selections are small and limited to the authors who are mainstream enough to be recognized.
I'm a fan of the genre, although I don't read as much of it as I used to. I am lucky: my friends own a wonderful SciFi/Fantasy bookstore here called WhiteDwarf Books which has a huge selection. Jill and Walter have an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, and are really good at helping their customers find writers they like.
BTW, they will mail order books to the US, and elsewhere.
http://www.deadwrite.com/wd.html

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

See that's the thing, I don't want to do the mail-orders. Reason for that is once I'm working again, getting deliveries at my apartment is an exercise in frustration. No one can sign for it.
They can't leave it on the doorstep. So no UPS. Only priority mail. And if you get priority mail - expect to ask for it to be resent on a Saturday and wait around all day for the guy to deliver it.

This is why I prefer book stores. Unfortunately the book stores that aren't "mainstream" are disappearing. There are a few, the ever popular "Strand" that is located somewhere on the lower east side of Manhattan and specializes in used books - but also in mold spores and dust mites that make me feel like I can't breath and if you look hard, a couple of comic book stores.

So it is a dilemma. Apparently a sci-fi fan has to be willing to mail-order. And I *hate* mail order - don't do it for clothes, shoes, food, or books - due to the fact it is so unreliable where I live. Netflix - is different - that fits in the slot at the bottom of the door.

I think my lament above is - you shouldn't have to. I've been to the literary and mystery sections and those have far greater selections. They aren't as "mainstream".

[atpo-onm.livejournal.com]

In the past I usually felt as you did with regards to movies, namely that I was irritated that I couldn't just go to my local stores and find the titles I was looking for.

But after a while I just gave up. Times change, and like most people in the country I don't live in an area where you can find very much in the way of obscure films in the neighborhood.

I was reluctant to go the mail order route, but now I vastly prefer it. I've found dozens of titles at Amazon and the other vendors they directly link to.

As to SF, my solution to finding good new writers and new stuff from the seniors in the field has been to subscribe to The Magazine of F&SF, still the best overall collection of wide-ranging genres out there in magazine form. I don't collect books anymore, because they just don't get read after I get them, but I suspect if I was so inclined to do so, I'd go to Amazon or just Google the names of authors whose works I liked and buy on-line.

Finally, I suspect why there seems to be less "hard" SF these days is because the world has become (in a techological sense) amazement-proof. People simply expect routine miracles from the scientific community these days. I think that if next year someone debuted a synthetic humanoid life form that could reasonably pass for one of us, the general public reaction would be "Oh, that's clever."

In short, science has become passe, almost boring. The "gee-whiz", wonderment aspects are dying away fast.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

I buy all my sci-fi/fantasy in used bookstores, haunting the aisles for hours on end reading the backs of all the books. But then, I'm looking for particular themes and character types that speak to me, and many times, even the same author doesn't interest me for more than one book.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I started getting into sff way before the internet. Picked up on names I'd heard here and there (e.g. Le Guin when Wizard of Earthsea won the Newbery, saw other works by her on library shelves). Found (I forget how) a mail-order company that did US imports and secondhand books (because v little of the stuff I found I liked was available in UK editions). Picked up various anthologies and 'Best of' collections in local libraries and tried to get more works by authors I liked - this was how I discovered Suzette Haden Elgin ozarque. Read various histories and critical works on the genre. Started going to the specialist import bookshop in Soho (which was then about as male-dominated as the more characteristic bookshops of Soho, porn capital of the UK). Started buying books (by women authors mostly) on the new books display that looked interesting - this was how I discovered Barbara Hambley and Lois McMaster Bujold, but boy, did I also pick up some real duds and timewasters. And have got very pick-picky about what I read - one of recurrent themes in conversation with Reclusive Cult Author is It Ain't What It Used To Be and Wot a Lotta Crap There Is Out There These Days.

But on 'coming out' as genre reader, when went from my first Wiscon straight to massive women's history conference in California, discovered various people I knew already or met there were also closet sff fans, which was... interesting.

[arethusa2.livejournal.com]

I've nearly stopped reading science fiction too because it's so hard to find good women writers; most male science fiction writers have dreadful female characters. I can't spend a lot of time at used book stores, which is where I find the best selections, because I usually fit in trips to book stores between errands, or have the kids in tow, who spend the entire time asking to go to the kids' section. (Same with libraries.) Even good male writers are, as you say, hard to find. I would spend years trying to find Richard Matheson books that were out of print.

I liked "Castledown" by Joyce Gregorian very much but could never find the first of the series. I'm really hesitant to order online too, I do enjoy the chase, but might be forced to go online. Simon Hawke is slight but amusing. Linda Evans' "Far Edge of Darkness" is pretty good, with lots of historical information.

[arethusa2.livejournal.com]

I just checked and I call get all three Castledown books for a few dollars on Amazon. That's hard to resist.