Science Fiction Authors of Wrath
Science Fiction Authors of Wrath
We here at Two Dudes don’t consider ourselves a big part of SFF fandom. We don’t go to conventions, vote for Hugos, or take an active part in the blogosphere. Neither of us has the bandwidth to keep up with this sort of thing, or the spare money/time to read all the newest books and join the hottest discussions. With the recent Christopher Priest vs. The Clarke Award blowup, our initial inclination was to laugh, then go back to writing snarky posts about whatever currently intrigues us. Jose checked out a few of the articles, snorted with wry amusement, and returned to the book mines where he diligently labors. Pep liked the Internet Puppy meme so much that he caved in and decided to share some morsels of opinion.
*****
I wrote this the first time with a school marmish tone about not saying anything at all if one can’t say something nice, punctuated with a touching episode from my youth. Then I realized that, a) nobody cares, and b) if I’m going to suplex books for overwrought prose, I’d better not write any of my own. Article overhaul ensued. For now, a brief summary of the mayhem is best found here. Established and successful author Christopher Priest is not happy with the Clarke Award shortlist and, for whatever reason, decides to tell the world exactly how he feels. Bagging on award selections is a favorite pastime no matter what the prize, but few do so with such literate, scathing personal attacks on the recipients. Fewer still resort to angry accusations of incompetence on the part of the jury. Rigged? Sure. Conspiracy? Of course. Blindly following the herd? All the time. Self-serving? Without question. Incompetent and deserving of ignominious dismissal? Um, maybe you’ve had enough to drink there, old timer. Let’s get you home.
Because he can, John Scalzi writes a reasonable, calm response (complete with intelligent conversation in the comments!) that manages to make everyone look good and still be funny. I don’t know how he manages to be so beatific all the time. Then there is this post, oddly vulnerable and poetic, by Cathernne Valente. It is full of beautiful passages, especially the description of the Clarke Award as “for the type of person who goes on the Internet to weep about the death of hard science fiction,” but sometimes reads like the pleas of an abuse victim huddled in a corner while Mr. Priest rages about young punks with their low hanging pants and backwards ball caps.
I haven’t read much more than this, but have been amazed at the firestorm Priest kicked up. We should all be thankful, I think, because there is no such thing as bad publicity and boy are people talking about science fiction now. The Clarke Award owes him a nice fruit basket. My own response was triggered by Valente, who suggests in her post that possible reactions to Priest’s rant are “curling up in the fetal position and being depressed for weeks” and “getting motivated by anger and making the next book so amazing that it will impress the grumpy old dude.” I have this completely opposite vision of Greg Bear grunting in non-committal fashion at the screen, then turning over to watch the Mariners lose again, perhaps complaining later to his wife about all the rain.
At any rate, in honor of all the crap flying around science fiction-dom right now, let’s take a quick look at the short-listed books that so enraged Herr Priest and his replacements for them. I’m obviously not qualified to say anything about the ones I haven’t read, but there are four authors that I can address.
1. Hull Zero Three (Greg Bear) – Bear has been around enough and won enough acclaim that I would be surprised if he noticed or cared about this poop storm. Of course, if he’s still in Seattle, nothing would surprise me. The man could be sitting in a dark room, listening to Pearl Jam and sadly watching old Sonics highlights; he could be in a geodesic dome halfway up Mt. Ranier eating nothing but smoked salmon and Pirate’s Booty. As for the book, I am a bit surprised to see it on the list. I liked it well enough, but to me it felt like something he tossed off to pass the time between bigger projects.
2. Embassytown (China Mieville) – I think the consensus is that Priest’s attack on Mieville was the most surprising. Does Mieville deserve a fourth Clarke Award? I don’t know. Was anything better written in 2011? Quite possibly not. To call this book lazy strikes me as a massive misunderstanding of what an accomplishment Embassytown is, even moreso when Priest is decrying the current batch of SF for failing to rise above hard SF cliché and best-seller list porridge. Embassytown is a rare book that deserves, and has received, the attention of stuffy lit types for its examination of language, depiction of societal collapse and transformation, and uncanny ability to push far into contemporary literature’s territory without compromising its science fiction foundation. If this were Mieville’s first nomination, I suspect Priest would have had nothing bad to say about it. I admit to not reading enough of last year’s publications, but if I were to pick one book from 2011 to represent SF to the rest of the world, it would probably be Embassytown.
3. Rule 34 (Charles Stross) – I haven’t read this one, but since Priest’s attack is entirely personal (and hilarious), it seems appropriate to respond in a personal way. I’ve read three Stross books: Glasshouse, Halting State, and Singularity Sky, so I feel qualified to make this judgment. Stross is, I think, exactly the kind of author that the old guard will love to hate, much like William Gibson and his cyberpunky ilk pissed off the establishment back in the 1980s. He is part of the new cultural background of science fiction, long since expanded beyond physics and astronomy. Cyberspace, nanotech, the environment, gamer and otaku culture, globalization, and mobile devices are the new language of SF; style has been usurped by LOLcats and smart aleck bloggers. Priest obviously doesn’t like Stross, but I suspect that the latter is merely a proxy for the former’s disgust with contemporary SF. Oddly enough, Stross and his carpet peeing Internet puppy are the big winners of this craziness.
4. Osama (Lavie Tidhar) – This is one of Priest’s recommendations for a replacement on the shortlist. I haven’t read Osama, but I enjoyed The Bookman and think that anyone who writes something called Jesus and the Eight-fold Path deserves broader recognition. He also does great work on the WorldSF blog.
And there we have it. Things are calmer at the time of this publication, because this is the Internet and nobody has an attention span longer than 36 hours. (72 if breasts are involved.) Fortunately, the Hugo shortlist will be announced soon and we can all enjoy the subsequent paroxysm of disgust.
Jose and Pep Talk Fantasy
Jose and Pep sat down the other day to mull over various mundane topics like work and family. Talk, however, soon turned to books, in a spontaneous State of the Genre conversation about fantasy. None of this was rehearsed, prepared, or planned (though it has been edited a bit), merely a glimpse inside the heads of the Two Dudes brain trust.
Jose: I’m going to take something up for reading on my trip this weekend.
Pep: Have you picked it yet?
Jose: Was thinking about some Glen Cook.
Pep: Good times. Though I’ve only read the first Black Company books. He’s someone I need to read more of.
Jose: Agreed. Also, Steven Erickson has finished up his entire series now. I probably should just buckle down and read the whole damn thing from start to finish.
Pep: I need to read book four, but it’s kind of a long investment of time.
Jose: KARSA ORLONG. I’ve read up to book eight, though he’s never hit quite as good as book three. You’ve read Memories of Ice, right?
Pep: Yes.
Jose: So cool, from start to finish. The crazy artists and their frog? Amazing. “Go eat another clod of paint.” Books 6 – 8 are generally awesome.
Pep: Slowly I will get there. Right now I am about to finish my first Guy Gavriel Kay.
Jose: I like him.
Pep: I wish he would declaim in stentorian tones a little less.
Jose: (laughs)
Pep: His story is good enough without the soap opera narrative asides. Seriously, I smiled once at p. 181 and haven’t since.
Jose: Kay has a problem where he wants to make things dramatic, and it’s a big problem. Fantasy authors need to get away from the concept of serious human interaction. Seriously, they’re not good at it. What we do appreciate is descriptions of some dude hacking millions of crazed cannibals into a house and then setting it on fire and turning into a war god. THAT is what fantasy is for.
Pep: (laughs) It’s true though. I’m not reading these books for insights into human nature. I’ll read Hemingway or something for that. I want something awesome on my way to work, nothing more.
Jose: I enjoy Stephenson’s answer, actually. He shies away from serious human interaction and places all of it within the boundaries of some crazy issue; either crazy complex calculus or ontology [ala Anatheum] or the completely ridiculous. That way he can say whatever he wants and it seems to be relatively legit.
Pep: Agreed. You can say things about people without dripping in sincerity.
Jose: Right. That’s a serious problem. The things in real life where we learn most about people aren’t in some heart felt break down. It’s in the little asides, how they phrase their day to day life. Not some stunning reveal of their emotions.
Pep: Some of these genre writers remind me of Mormons. We so desperately want to be taken seriously by other Christians, and the writers so desperately want to be taken seriously by lit snobs.
Jose: It’s a good analogy I think. And I think you’ll find that, generally speaking, good fantasy only comes in a singular variety. It doesn’t bother so much with character and instead focuses on a world that’s so completely alien that it becomes a fantastic reality. It’s why I hate George R.R. Martin, by the way – his concept of people is totally awful.
Pep: I’ve never tried to get into him, except for about 50 pages of Game of Thrones, which didn’t impress me. I just got the feeling that 1) nothing good is going to happen here and I will just get depressed, and 2) I’ve read all the plot/world details before.
Jose: He’s revered because he doesn’t have a good guy.
Pep: And kills people. Er, characters.
Jose: Right. But the problem is he’s still awful. It’s why I appreciate people like Glen Cook, Erickson, or Gene Wolfe. No attempts at “AWESOME AND DEEP CHARACTERIZATION.” It’s about making a world that’s internally consistent and blows your mind.
Pep: The thing is, Cook nails it with the first Black Company trilogy. I loved some of those people. I even got behind the romance angle, which is unheard of.
Jose: And you never actually get any serious monologues.
Pep: Wolfe is just on another planet. That guy has no peer.
Jose: The problem is, of course, sometimes Wolfe is just on another planet.
Pep: Also true!
Jose: Whether or not that is a good thing is to be determined. But as a general function, Gene Wolfe does things in the Book of the New Sun [not really read much of his other stuff] that I think most fantasy authors should take serious notes from.
Pep: I haven’t read anything either, but need to. Most current fantasy doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t get Martin, never got into Rothfuss, won’t touch Sanderson because he’s a BYU product.
Jose: Fantasy wants to be mainstream. It’s yearning for the accolades of the Protestant pulpit as it were. I think basically Erickson is the sole author carrying the torch right now.
Pep: He might be.
Jose: Pinto was awesome, but his book [s?] descended quickly into “I want to write about gay relationships.” But the first 250-ish pages had a.) people getting killed, b.) weird blood rights, c.) strange fantasy aliens, d.) best of all, opium trips. Then it descended into happy happy homosexual relationship land, which, while not a problem, became sort of preachy.
Pep: I haven’t read those, but Hal Duncan was the same. I’m ok with gay characters, but am not happy with manipulation via gays. I wish I had more fantasy names to throw out there, but I just haven’t read a lot. I get a craving once in awhile, then I end up reading something weird like Hal Duncan and have to get back to space opera for awhile
Jose: I think the perfect mix is always a combination of hard sci-fi and fantasy. You want the ability to manipulate the rules via unobtanium; things like magic do that.
Pep: Midnight at the Well of Souls.
Jose: But it has to be about the environment and the world; NOT some goofy David Eddings rip off. Because let’s be frank, the Belgariad did protagonist-based fantasy better than anyone else.
Pep: Har. THERE’S someone I don’t dare return to. Can’t ruin my childhood memories.
Jose: Actually, it holds up pretty well. You can sort of see the artifice when you return, but it works well and he knows it works well. To this day the 1500-esh page romp of the Belgariad is probably the best protagonist based fantasy I’ve read. The Mallorean is good too, but mainly because it doesn’t suck and it’s fun to watch Belgarion yell at people and throw lightning bolts. Other than that, Eddings is awful,
though the Redemption of Athalus is pretty much the greatest book for the first 500 pages, and then the worst book for the last 300 pages.
Pep: Hmm. You tempt me to retry those sometime. I loved those books like you wouldn’t believe, so I’m scared to touch anything he’s done now. See, Belgarion and the Dragonlance crew pretty much defined my childhood, up until the time (partway through Tad Williams) I gave up fantasy and moved to Hard SF. I knew Dragonlance was silly, so it didn’t hurt to reread it and know that it was bad, but I don’t want to lose those happy memories of Garion, Polgara, et al.
Jose: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is amazing. If you haven’t read it, you have to. It’s really that good.
Pep: It’s on my list. That’s the one I gave up partway through. Of course, he wasn’t finished writing it at the time and I just ran out of fantasy steam.
Jose: Its 4,000-esh pages of awesome, though it takes time to get into.
Pep: I do need to sit down with a butt kicking fantasy soon.
Jose: Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is a good choice. Simon has some very good moments, like attacking a dragon.
Pep: It’s been on my list for awhile, though of course I don’t move methodically down that list.
At this point, talk turned elsewhere, then wound down for the night.
NPR Top 100 Flowchart
Alert readers may remember that NPR released the results of their Top 100 all-time best ever SFF books a couple months ago. Opinions vary on how awesome or moronic the list is (ours is here), but people can probably all agree that the unannotated list is difficult to glean recommendations from. SFSignal to the rescue! Somebody with more time and graphic editing skills than anyone here at Two Dudes collated the entire list into one gigantic flowchart that will decide Your Next Book.
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2011/09/flowchart-for-navigating-nprs-top-100-sff-books/
They have even included a printable version, for those needing an excessively nerdy wall hanging or checklist. While the chart doesn’t change my feelings about the list, it certainly makes it easier to figure out. Highly recommended.
Late Edit: “Prodigious Breeders” killed me.
NPR Top 100 SFF
NPR’s Top 100 SFF
First of all, click here to check out the Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books, according to a poll conducted by NPR. I looked at it today and had some strong reactions. First of all, the big caveat is that NPR didn’t make the selections, they merely accepted nominations and conducted the voting. Nobody claims that these are the “best,” “most influential,” or have “literary merit.” These are just whatever people tossed out there, which for many no doubt means, “whatever NYT best-selling fantasy doorstop was last in my bathroom.” All I can say is, at least Twilight was excluded.
NPR’s blog does their own analysis of the list, so I won’t belabor the points made there. After all, those people are much more well-read than I am, and probably real live literary scholars or something. Instead, I’ll just give my reactions to the list: things I liked, things that caused me to spray my Talking Rain fizzy water on my screen, and things I think were unfairly left out. As an overall reflection, I get the feeling that SF voters tended towards lifetime achievement medals and an appreciation for their forbears, while Fantasy voters went with The Tome of the Month and gave little thought to what came before and what may follow. More on these as my rant goes on.
Let’s being with the Yes, Yes, a Thousand Times Yes Division. That has to start with #1, a very deserving J.R.R. Tolkien. According to NPR, LOTR didn’t just take first place, it crushed all comers. I think any way we look at it, nobody can deny Frodo & Co. their place at the head of the line. Dune is also well deserving of its place, though I would have it even higher. I think it is admirable that Orwell, Bradbury, Verne, Shelley, Wells and Huxley are all present, though I wonder if these authors are mentioned because the books are genuine favorites, or because well-informed SF readers know what a debt we owe to the writers. Likewise with the Big Three (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein) and other prominent writers (Niven, etc.). Some of the selections may have got in based on name recognition rather than quality. For example, Ringworld is Niven’s best known work, but possibly not his best. I need to reread Foundation (among others) to see if it is really the 8th best series ever. Stranger in a Strange Land gets the nod of course, even though I prefer others from Heinlein. I’m glad that people remembered A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Forever War, and Hyperion, though again, Dan Simmons should be in at least the top 20. Finally, Robinson’s Mars Trilogy is a worthy addition. Readers of Two Dudes will know how I feel about those books.
Now for the AAAUGH Fer Ignert! Division, which is more fun. My first thought when reading this list was, “When did Neil Gaiman take over the world?” I’ve read one of his books, and it was alright, but the man is holding even with legends like Asimov, Niven, and Vonnegut. I guess I should pick up American Gods so I too can fall in line. My next thought was, “Fantasy types, I know you are weird, but this is too much, even for you.” I will say nothing of George R.R. Martin, since I didn’t finish Game of Thrones and probably never will. But Patrick Rothfuss in the Top 20? Ahead of Malazan, Phillip K. Dick, Zelazny, and LeGuin? Good heck, people. And who is this Brandon Sanderson, and why is he out-polling The Book of the New Sun? There is no accounting for taste. (To be fair, I haven’t read Sanderson, and he may be amazing. But I doubt he’s Gene Wolfe amazing.) Oh, and did I mention Robert Jordan? At #12? Aaaaarrrrghghghgh. I’m not going to comment on Xanth or Shannara, but I will mention in passing that any list where Drizzt books top Rendevous with Rama and Iain M. Banks is not one to take to the bank.
In a category all itself, what to do with #2? I love Douglas Adams books. Zaphod and Marvin have been heroes to me for decades. But I suspect that Adams himself would be puzzled to find himself the second best SFF (and first best SF) writer of all time.
And now for those left home, alone, on Prom Night. I’m not going to create my own Top 100, because it would take a long time and accomplish nothing, but there are several authors that I think should be on there. They should be far ahead of anything mentioned in the last paragraph, though I suppose I risk the wrath of Wheel of Time disciples everywhere. (We live on the edge here at Two Dudes in an Attic!) In (mostly) alphabetical order, here are some Better Than Terry Goodkind Winners. How about Poul Anderson? I’m less a fan than in the past, but surely he’s worth a mention? Or Greg Bear! Blood Music and The Forge of God are pretty good. Alfred Bester anyone? He won the first Hugo. I seriously can’t believe that Brin’s Uplift isn’t on there. Chalker’s Midnight at the Well of Souls and Cook’s Black Company are better than most of the fantasy on the list. CJ Cherryh? David Drake might deserve a spot, though he may be more divisive. I wonder if Andre Norton was relegated to the YA list. Speaking of fantasy, Patricia McKillup (especially The Riddle Master books) and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast are better than The Sword of Truth. Frederick Pohl! They passed up Pohl for Terry Pratchett? Alastair Reynolds may only be my favorite, but surely Tad Williams deserves to have a doorstop on the list? I’m starting to froth.
To sum up, this is a puzzling list. I alternately nod my head in wise agreement, then frantically try to prevent that same head from exploding. The contrast between SF, where Jules Verne and H.G. Wells hold prominent positions at the expense of younger writers, and Fantasy, where pioneers like Fritz Leiber and Fred Saberhagen are tossed off a cliff in favor of (teeth gnashing) Robert Jordan, is telling. Are fantasy readers that ignorant or apathetic about their heritage? Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser will abide long after The (Weapon) of (Noble Quality) has passed into obscurity. Oh well. I will now invoke several spells of protection around the house, lest it be burned to the ground by furious Wheel of Time acolytes.
Rating: Wayne Rooney. There’s some great stuff going on, but R.A. Salvatore’s books and a string of World Cup red card inducing frothy outbursts go hand in hand.
