Heuristic

About a month ago I asked for advice on learning more about literary criticism, especially as pertains to science fiction. I promised I’d summarize the results.

Jess left a very good comment, discussing different forms of criticism and a few resources. She also pointed out the essay collection Bringing the Devil to His Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life, edited by Charles Baxter and Peter Turchi. I haven’t tracked it down yet, but it does look interesting.

I also asked an expert. Elizabeth Bear suggested John Clute and Joanna Russ as exemplars of the kind of SF criticism I was asking about. Another commenter on her blog reminded me of Jo Walton’s contributions to Tor.com. I read those regularly, but didn’t think to mention them. As a bonus, Jo and I seem to share similar taste in reading material, so I’ve already read many of the works discussed.

In the intervening time, I read The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World by Thomas Disch. Part history, part criticism, part anecdote; I enjoyed it, and learned some things about trends within the field that I’d dimly perceived but hadn’t understood. I didn’t realize until just now, getting the GoodReads link, that it had won a Hugo in 1999 — but I’m not surprised.

If you run across other interesting sources, please let me know.

Band OK Go wins the Internet.

(via Topless Robot)

Edit: Wired has an article on the making of this video, with videos of its own. It really was done in a single shot!

Two billion eyes blinked for the first time. Two billion feet stepped out from under the bed, from inside the closet, from places lost and forgotten. A billion hands groped for a weapon. Sharp was most pleasing, but anything would do. Not all could join their sisters — so many were headless, legless, mutilated, dismembered — but all could hate. A billion heads around the world were linked together into one collective mind, brooding on memories of sticky little fingers pulling them apart, putting them together backwards, leaving plastic limbs strewn everywhere. Pulling out hair. Bending and breaking. Burning, melting. Disfiguring with marker, crayon, mud, paint. Fifty years of torture. Fifty years of hate. All of that was over now. No more makeup. No more playing dress-up. No more of that bastard Ken. No more children. A billion tiny figures rose. Barbie was awake, and things were going to be different now.

Patrick Rothfuss, writer and generous human being, runs a fundraiser for Heifer International each year (to which he donates a lot of his own money and even more of his own time). He’s enlisted the SFF community to good effect: this year there were all sorts of prizes available, from ARCs to autographed books to who-knows-what. Prizes were raffled off: each $10 donation got you one virtual ticket. Pat raised a lot of money for HI, and a lot of prizes were sent out.

Including this one:

I got loot!

There’s a paranormal romance or fantasy ARC by an author I’m unfamiliar with, Elizabeth Gilligan, and the Gollancz edition of the Necronomicon. Now if I get snowed in again I’ll be able to keep myself occupied.

Just a quickie, as I have to go shovel snow. Again.

Here’s one way to depict my day at work: a mousepath. Today was for numbercrunching.

You can get the mousepath software yourself (Mac/Linux, Windows - by Anatoliy Zenkov and picked up by me here).

Hey, guess what? Having a blizzard does not invalidate global climate change. Really. I’m certain of this.

David Brin provides some additional insight into why this has become such a contentious issue. This anti-intellectual, anti-expert bias may worry me more than any other recent societal shift in the US. (Marketing manifestation: all of those “discovered by a mom” ads. Because really, who better to manage your health than someone with no medical training whatsoever.)

Boing-Boing found a redeeming quality for My Little Pony: training future scientists.

Since reading Elizabeth Bear’s blog regularly, I’ve been exposed to some very interesting literary criticism. I asked her how to learn that skill - I’m very analytical, but lack the concepts/vocabulary of literary criticism. Previous attempts to learn something about the formal discipline have ended badly, mostly with cursing. A lot of academic literary criticism seems to exist solely for the purpose of existing. I’m more interested in the kind with meaning.

It occurred to me that the Hugo “Best Related Book” category would be a good place to find genre criticism, and I’ll track down some of the relevant books from there. There’s also Ursula Le Guin. But who else? I’d like to at least become familiar with the basics, both as a reader and a writer, but in a way that’s compatible with my pre-existing scientific/analytical bias.

Thoughts, please.

There was the one where you not only removed the e-book of 1984 from the store, but sucked it off of people’s Kindles without telling them.

There was the one where you classified gay- and lesbian-themed books, including YA and health books, as “Adult”, thus removing them from lists and rankings. (This was later claimed as a glitch.)

And now this. As part of a dispute between Amazon and Macmillan about pricing, you pulled all Macmillan books (including Tor), in both electronic and paper editions, from Amazon’s sale listings - generously leaving the affiliates. This has had interesting effects on your stock prices, but could be catastrophic for the authors involved, especially those with book releases this week. And that’s what pisses me off. Corporations negotiate pricing all the time, but they don’t normally shit all over the artists so directly. Amazon threw a childish temper tantrum, and the authors are the ones really paying, though they have absolutely no control over pricing or formats.

As John Scalzi suggests, go buy a book or three - Macmillan titles, from somewhere not Amazon. Not that you could - Amazon pulled them all on Friday night, and still haven’t put them back.

Scott Westerfeld put together an excellent overview of the dispute accessible to those not familiar with the publishing business. Other good and detailed articles: Toby Buckell, Charlie Stross, John Scalzi.

Jay Lake skewers what is to date Amazon’s only comment on the debate.

There’s a lot more out there, but much of it is by people who appear to be ignorant of the details of the debate and the way publishing works (hint: most authors aren’t rich, and neither are they interested in screwing their readers). I’m firmly on the side of the authors on this one, and I hope that the larger debate on ebook format, pricing, availability shakes down in a way that allows the authors to make a living, and the readers to get reasonably priced (and DRM-free!) texts.

But for now, go buy books!

Edit: Must add: Hal Duncan’s always-unique take on matters.

Moonlight flooded the sky, only the brightest stars outshining it. The icy January wind bit deep into her bones. Once she’d been oblivious to temperature, even without her fur coat, but the past few winters had been hard. There were other compensations: her children, grandchildren, even the third and fourth generations. With age the pull of the moon lessened; in recent months she’d stayed at home in her rocking chair. Winter’s chill made the ensuing aches and pains all the worse, days of immobility for a single night’s exhilaration, though even then she wasn’t as quick and agile as she’d once been. She took a long look at the moon bright overhead. This time there would be no pain. She would have liked to smell spring again — new life, young and foolish prey — but wild things knew when it was time to steal away into the silent woods.

[Note: these ultra-short stories are all exactly 150 words. Telling a complete tale at a specific length is an interesting puzzle, a good warm-up exercise, a home for a single idea or image. I try not to fuss over them too much except for length, and often write one after work as a way to unwind. Tonight's was inspired by the lovely full moon. Vivid Mars appeared as well, but he didn't contribute to the story so he had to go.]

My attention has been pulled in a thousand different directions lately, and writing has suffered the most. Not much blogging, very little fiction. Much pondering of fiction though. I seem to have developed some sort of process for long pieces of fiction.

1. Come up with an idea: a setting, a scene, a person, a phrase.
2. Write for a while. This seems to be around 20-40,00 words. This is where the character development, world building, and plotting happen.
3. After I’ve written long enough to have a feel for the characters and some idea what happens in the plot, stop and write a synopsis/outline. By this point I know what’s going to happen and how it will all end.
4. Go back through the first chunk. Some of it will be useless, a lot of it will be wrong. Revise the best bits to make them fit with my new understanding of the shape of the book.
5. Finish writing the first draft, really a first-and-a-half draft after the initial reworking.
6. Revise, revise, revise.

It seems a bit presumptuous to declare that this is how I do it, since I haven’t finished anything longer than 60,000 words, but I thought it might be a useful record of what I’m doing right now. The current big project is in stage 4. I know how it goes together, and how it ends. Somehow it developed a Theme, but I have it on good authority that it will probably be okay anyway (scroll down to the listed comments).

The fiction momentum is starting to come back. I got a short story finished this weekend - it had been sadly without an ending for about a month - and it will be going out as soon as I give it a good proofreading. Another longer piece is almost done with its major revision and ready for resubmission somewhere. Wish me luck.

Friday evening I attended a reading and signing - the book launch party for The Devil’s Alphabet by Daryl Gregory. He held an after-party, and I was amused to learn that he’s only a couple blocks away. It was much fun, and very geeky. (Venn diagrams!) I’m very happy to find a congenial local SFF author. (Not that I know any uncongenial local authors; before Friday I didn’t know any.) I had a long and entertaining conversation over wine with one of the other guests at the party about being a scientist and writing science fiction. He’s a scientist, not an author, but was very interested in how one influences the other, as am I. (Note to self: I am a writer because I write works of fiction and non-fiction, and finish them, and send them out into the world. Not having a paid fiction publication yet doesn’t make that any less true. Honest.)

Anyway, I enjoyed the evening, and unusually for me was there until the end of the party. Daryl sent me home with half a chocolate cake! It wasn’t bribery, because I would have encouraged you all to check out The Devil’s Alphabet and his earlier novel Pandemonium anyway, but chocolate never hurts. Daryl also has some short fiction online.

Pirate loot, even!

One of my favorite writing blogs, Magical Words, is a group effort by several authors. A few I’d read before finding the blog; most were new to me, but I’ve made an effort to get to know all of their fiction better. I like reading this and other author blogs: it helps to remind me that people do successfully write fiction, and that every writer has a different way of approaching that process.

In December several of the authors ran contests with signed books as prizes. Misty Massey asked for holiday humor. I told a mildly risque joke made surreal by my younger brother (thereby probably embarrassing him thoroughly, if only he knew). And won!

Not only do I have a signed copy of Mad Kestrel, which you all should rush out and purchase (strong female lead, magic, pirates!), but Misty threw in goodies - pirate stickers, a bandana, and best of all, pirate duckies!

Those were very nearly nabbed as I was unpacking the box, and only quick action saved the poor duckies from ducknapping!

Thanks Misty!