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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.
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.