User: desperance Date: 2006-11-16 07:50 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Only SF is heavily invested in permanent novelty-seeking.

This - and what follows, where I do find your thought persuasive - may only apply to, what, high-end SF, the leading edge, the best & most thoughtful of the genre. The other genres also have their equivalent leading-edge seekers after novelty; I suspect there is as much of a rump in SF readership that just wants more intergalactic empires and rocketships as there is a rump in fantasy that wants elves & dragons. Etc.

In short, you may have identified an inherent problem, but it may not be that which costs us readers. All genres go through cycles. Fifteen years ago, in the UK, you couldn't sell a historical; now the genre's booming. Horror's been down for a decade, and may be recovering. The world will listen to SF again; when it does, you might find that what it wants is just "the same but different."

User: matociquala Date: 2006-11-16 13:31 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: Sapphire not sorry about this

I've been saying for a while that one of the problems with SF *criticism* is that it privileges the appearance of novelty. (This happens in fantasy, too.) The first question many SF critics ask is "But does it do anything new?"

Usually, well, it doesn't. But if they can, if they like a book, they will invent novelty.

It's not what costs us existing readers--they know where to find what they like--but I think it may help make the genre seem impenetrable to those outside the ghetto. And it means that books are judged on a binary metric. Is it new? Or is it junk?

Most of us aren't doing all that much new. We have literary antecedents: Leiber, Zelazny, Lovecraft, Moore, Smith, Tiptree, Dick, Brunner are particularly strong right now, and Heinlein is staging a comeback.

The emperor is at best in a loincloth, and it's silly going on about his spats.

I think it makes sense to analyze the structure of *ideas* as part of the whole literary package--character, plot, subtext, prose style, thematic elements, symbolism, etc. So, yanno, saying a book is "Arthurian fantasy" doesn't actually tell you anything about the book--because that describes The Summer Tree and "The Last Defender of Camelot" and The Mists of Avalon and The Idylls of the Queen and The Once and Future King.

So, yanno. Which one of those is "derivative?"

User: etcet Date: 2006-11-16 12:14 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I agree with much of what Desperance says here; as a consumer of "year's best" anthologies (because that's what time and budget allow for), I may not have the most all-encompassing perspective in the genre (since Messers Hartwell & Dozois, Missuz Cramer and others, have done the second-tier sifting to find "the good stuff").

However, that said, even the leading lights in the short-fiction end of the pool are treading familiar ground on a number of themes, situations, and plot conceits. Sometimes it's done to excellent effect, sometimes less so.

I think that anyone who peruses the SF section has some notion of what they're looking for - some combination of novelty and familiarity, which varies by reader and mood - and while it's ultimately the author's job to deliver this, it shouldn't chew up too many brain cycles during the creative process (or, in any case, these should be co-branded within the author's mind under the heading "writing my own story and not somebody else's").

New ideas will occasionally show up and become quickly ubiquitous - nano-scale devices, for instance.

I disagree with your assertion that SF has a lot of encoding; any good story will be able to stand naked in a parking lot as a complete entity in its own right.

Additional layers of meaning and nuance may be evident to readers who are familiar with the genre's canon, or certain works within it, but those ought to be treated like the fine cutlery and crystal that are placed on the table to accent a steak dinner - they are not necessary to enjoy the meal, but heighten the experience.

The example I trot out to illustrate this topic every time is the Schwarzenegger flick The Sixth Day, which was absolutely loaded with SF and cyberpunk nods, winks, and in-jokes, which my girlfriend and other friends were completely and utterly blind to, but they were still able to enjoy the movie as popcorn theater. I, being more immersed in the genre, got both the popcorn, as well as a healthy amount of amusement from gratuitous-but-transparent material (the protagonist's name is Adam Gibson, fercryinoutloud). It's not a great movie (or even good SF) by any stretch of the imagination, but it achieved the balance between non-genre fan accessibility and genre awareness very well (actually, it probably wouldn't work nearly as well as a short story, because it was so full of tips o' the hat to other works in the genre).

If absolute and complete novelty is a necessity to the author, that's their stone to roll uphill.

User: etcet Date: 2006-11-16 12:20 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I should clarify on the point where I disagree with you (though, as you point out, we may in fact not disagree at all) - a new reader to the genre ought to be able to jump in anywhere. If they want to then explore some of the historic boulevards and alleyways, they're welcome to do so. I can't begin to trace my own path to SF fandom nearly as readily as I can with horror, but I made an intentional pass back to look at some Heinlein, and have a shelf devoted to "classic" dystopian futures (1984, F451, etc).

User: matociquala Date: 2006-11-16 13:36 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: plot octopus

Should be, maybe, but can't.

Actually, I dislike that word "should." I think there's a place for impenetrable SF based on a proximate knowledge of 75 years of slang and history: there are certainly SF books that are COMPLETELY INCOMPREHENSIBLE to people who don't know our specialized dialect and understand our reading protocols. (I run into this in writing fantasy--some fantasy readers have a very hard time with being brought up to speed by methods that SF readers are trained for and find easy to manage.)

There is a place in the world for Accelerando, in other words. Just as there is for Finnegans Wake. But neither is a book that is easy for the general reader to get through.

User: etcet Date: 2006-11-16 15:38 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I take your point; for all my bluster, I'm still the rank amateur around Blog Lake. :-)

Of course, i'm having a tricky time wrapping my head around the notion of a genre book that is as incomprehensible as Joyce's stuff (primarily because my latent knee-jerk reactionism to some of the ideals pushed forward by my english profs has me saying "joyce wasn't a novel writer, he was a fucking poet without the sense to use white space or shut the fuck up." i recognize that this is my baggage *laugh*)

this hedges quickly into the realm of SF "Literature," a subject I am leery of breaching not because it isn't interesting, but because i suspect that it is a maelstrom that will devour the smarts, time, and energy of a lot of people who have far better things to do. :-)

now, to see where i can find a copy of Accelerando....

User: jaylake Date: 2006-11-16 15:41 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I'm still the rank amateur around Blog Lake

Hardly, sir. I think you're one of the OGs among my repeat commentors, actually.

User: etcet Date: 2006-11-16 16:00 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I appreciate that; your blog is essentially my surrogate for attending Cons until I can justify going to the real thing. [I will spare the readership a link to your subsequent post about attendance and participation; we don't need to get recursively fractal this early in the day. :-) ]

Until ten minutes ago, I was putting myself firmly into the "literary dilettante" bucket, because I'm little more than a fan and occasional keyboard-whacker (admittedly, one with a penchant for sharing thoughts and opinions, whatever they may be).

However, I have to point a finger at you as being more or less responsible for my impending addition to the field of paid writers, because something I conjured for shortshort, after a small bit of hand-wringing, has been accepted for publication. So, thanks to you for that. :-)

User: jaylake Date: 2006-11-16 16:01 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Hey! Excellent!!!

User: danjite Date: 2006-11-17 02:56 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Another notch in the old Underwood... or are new writers a crosshatch?

User: jaylake Date: 2006-11-16 14:40 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

It is in fact the case that I've seen very few truly original short form or novel works. (That's generally true of literature, not a disparagement.) On the other hand, no amount of encoding experience could prepare someone for "Lobsters", right?

And my path to fandom (small "f") was essentially historical. I began by reading the classic juveniles because that's what my elementary school library stocked in the early 1970s -- 1950s and 1960s kids' books. I moved from the Silver Age good stuff to the New Wave, then onward.

So I got the encoding in more or less the right order, which actually isn't that common in someone my age or younger.

User: klingonguy Date: 2006-11-16 13:13 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: Publicity shot

I posited that the challenge in SF is that we consider ourselves the literature of ideas, and a repeated idea is much harder to make interesting.

Nyah. I think you're conflating novelty with interesting.

SF can take old ideas (robots, trips to other worlds, utopia) and do amazing things with them still. Novelty can be an adequate substitute in a short story, but novelty alone won't substitute for an interesting tale in a longer work.

That's my nickel.

User: swan_tower Date: 2006-11-16 15:16 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: writing

I'm increasingly of the opinion that our artistic production in general is concerned with novelty, for reasons having to do with copyright law. If people can own ideas, then using someone else's idea is bad and/or stealing, therefore you should come up with new ideas. 'Twas my education in folklore that opened my eyes to how using the same old ideas is quite to be expected, and how the focus used to be on your execution of the idea rather than its novelty.

The core idea might be more stable in other genres, but they're constantly trying to find other forms of novelty, too.

User: danjite Date: 2006-11-17 03:07 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: Authorial

You get there before I did.

My background is in intellectual property law as relates to the music industry- if musicians borrowed as much thematically as do creators in SF-F genre, the number of lawsuits would increase a thousandfold or more.

Yes, one can write yet another song about John Barleycorn or even John Baldry for that matter, but if one recycles a phrase from some one else's work- be it lyrical or melodic- the cease-and-desist orders will descend promptly as the media scorn.

That, among other reasons, is why it is important- critical- the Britian not extend copyright- as USistan already has- to 95 years.

There are only so many notes and rhythms and melodies that sound good to the western ear. With a coming improvement in scan-and-search that will allow lawyers to check every song recorded against every copyright on record... creativity will be stifled. The are a finite number of new ideas, and the subconcious bases new ideas on old ones.

Could you authors imagine not being allowed to repeat the same three words in the same order as any other copyright work?

Perhaps this should be a seperate post somewhere...

User: jaylake Date: 2006-11-17 03:09 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Perhaps this should be a seperate post somewhere...

Go for it. Linkage will be provided.

User: gvdub Date: 2006-11-16 19:01 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Yet another recommendation from the GVDub bookshelf: Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence. Although it was written specifically as a theory of poetry, it deals with the conflict between tradition and the individual writer - between drawing from that which has come before and the desire to do something authentically new. A lot of it is overly intellectualized theory of criticism (then again, I believe that any "theory of writing" is claptrap. Any book I've ever read that was written according to some theory or other has been absolute claptrap unless the writer has, consciously or not, transcended the theory and ended up putting himself on the page), but there are some good points in there as well.

User: gvdub Date: 2006-11-16 19:08 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

And again I say "claptrap" (note to self: proofreading before hitting that "Post Comment" button is a good thing).