One of the things that puzzled me when I was a kid (I almost typed kitten. In case this is not obvious by how late I am in posting, it’s already been a day) and reading the Bible (because I wanted to know what was in it) was how adamant the Lord was against counting the people. I kept thinking “what is wrong with that.”
Now that I’m a little older and have experienced census where the “people who don’t want to be counted” get made up and added on, polls, districting, lies, d*mn lies and statistics, it is – with His reluctance to establish a king – one of the most persuasive points for the existence of G-d.
But it is not just in politics or in statistics that counting people is wrong. Pretty much anytime you take people or the works of people and substitute them with numbers, you’re thingifying them. Now, I know in some circumstances this is needed. Say there’s a nation wide epidemic and I need to know how many doses of medicine I need. Or say that I’m expecting people for dinner, and need to know if it’s five or sixteen. (Being me, I cook double. I believe in leftovers.)
And this is not the semi-annual Sarah throws a fit about numbers. Yes, numbers from publishers are wrong. Even the best publishers, who are honest get bizarre numbers from the distributors (and are hurt by them too) because the entire industry runs on guesstimates, for reasons that made sense 100 years ago.
But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a more fundamental difference between traditional publishing and what indie can do – which reflects a more fundamental change in the way the world was and the way the world is becoming.
It used to be that book publishers had to classify books in categories to sell them, and even the most micro-genre-specific slicing will betray the book, if the book is truly original. As control from the top down increased in publishing (and there’s rumors of a merge between Penguin and Random, which only increases the centralization) this effect became worse.
Truly original things might get published, if they could be broadly pushed into a category, but then they tended to die on the vine because the house didn’t know how to market it and people who read it as it had been marketed “Another L. K. Hamilton” and found it was nothing like would feel betrayed.
This is not a defect of traditional publishing so much, as it was part of how things were, the only way things could be marketed at that stage of industrial and population development. I’m highly amused by Sabrina Chase’s Industrial-entertainment complex dig, but it was in fact that, and it required – as societies do above a certain number – the shoving of product into categories.
This used to stop me cold, because, well… how can I submit a book when they’re asking me whose it is like? Particularly early on, when I was writing from within – like the epic of Horse and Bull – I found myself UTTERLY bewildered.
Even now that I’m published, I tend to find my books are mostly like themselves. Yes, I’m very glad DST got compared to Heinlein. I wanted to do THAT before I died, but “like” is not the same or even close enough, even if I more or less unwittingly stole a ton of his terms.
Editing has made some of my books like other books, but… well, we’ll see when/if I get copyright back.
But here’s the thing – as a reader, yeah, I do have times when I say “I wish I could read some new Agatha Christie, only she’s dead.” (And in my copious spare time, perhaps after the kids leave, I’d like to write mysteries set in England between the wars, that have SORT of that flavor – but they’ll be of course different when I’m done.) However, again as a reader, I have never stumbled on something UTTERLY ORIGINAL and well done, and thrown it aside because I couldn’t read it, since it wasn’t like something I’d read before. However, the categories were so tight that I never sent Witchfinder proposal out. The fact that Nell comes from our world or an analog meant my agent had no clue how to market it. “It’s neither SF nor Fantasy.” Now, of course it’s fantasy. It just has our world as part of its multiverse. But categories were too rigid for that.
This is something that the system just couldn’t support, as it was in traditional. With electronic books and new marketing, the publishers that survive will learn, I think, to act in different ways.
And the societies that survive – in a world where where you live and pay taxes has nothing to do with where you work for most professions (yes, I know, doctors will still need physical presence, and some engineers, though even there remote robots offer possibilities.) – will also have to figure out how to deal with more individualized choices. And individuals used to not having to pick their choice from a block will be different too – less able to fit themselves into the expected pigeon hole.
As a libertarian I look forward to this and to the reaction to it with mingled fear and excitement.
In writing and in the world at large, we’re in for interesting times.
According To Hoyt 
Amen.
Wayne
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Ah, the old-publishing game of-categorizing-your-book-and-rejecting-it-because-we-don’t-do-THAT-category. Been down that road, several times. I always describe my own books as ‘historical fiction set on the Western American frontier,’ but had them turned down by various prospective agents and publishers (with varying degrees of snottiness, I might add) on the grounds that they ‘didn’t do Westerns.’ So, OKAY-FINE, they’re Western adventure, sort of. And there is romance in them, kind of, but NOT the bodice-ripping sort … so Western/Romance, maybe. If you squint and look at them sidways.
This kind of categorization makes my head hurt, actually.
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It is worth keeping in mind that publishers turned down Harry Potter in part because it lacked simple categorization. Is this Fantasy or British Boarding School? How do we sell this???
It is also worth considering that Louis L’Amour’s Westerns are, in fact, Romances (absent the graphic sexual elements that have come to characterize contemporary “Romance” — which brings to mind the broad swath of books that are most aptly categorized with the suffix -porn: combat-porn, sex-porn, engineering-porn. Character & plot subsidiary to action)
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Being interested in deeds and having a simple plot is prurient?
So fairy tales are porn, being as how character and plot is relatively unimportant?
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Please, leave us eschew reductio ad absurdum. When the dominant element of a story is reader stimulus and arousal via graphic descriptions of action then the work contains significant elements that typify porn. John Ringo has referenced his Posleen books as “carnography”, explicitly recognizing that aspect of the works.
That don’t mean John is right, as I found his books contained significant other elements and that the graphic combat descriptions served a purpose beyond the titillation of readers’ adrenal glands. But it does recognize the fine line he trod.
For purpose of this discussion it would be useful to eschew the taint normally associated with the term “porn.” For purpose of reference, in my home the Lands End menswear catalog is received as “Wife-porn”, the Levenger catalog is viewed as “Reader-porn”, the various yarn catalogs are “knitter-porn” and the Daughtorial Unit’s catalogs from Victoria’s Secret are recognized as “porn.”
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Please keep in mind that this all occurs within the context of a screed warning against the dangers of facile categorization.
I employ Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of porn, with the proviso that your mileage may vary. Just because a work qualifies as porn does not make it lacking in literary merit.
Moreover, recognizing that lap dances may have significant artistic merit does not require me to observe that their primary purpose is commercial in effect and therefore is as subject to taxation as any other commercial endeavor.
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Great Course’s Catalogue: “Learner porn”
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At this point, I hope we can agree that the term ‘porn’ is being used so loosely as to be meaningless. Its only remaining value is to convey a sneer, without actually carrying any information about why the target deserves to be sneered at.
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But what else is the Internet for, if not Porn?
>;)
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That one’s great, but I really like the WoW version.
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For the irony impaired it apparently wants observing that, in the contexts exhibited, the term “porn” is facetious, premised on the fact that the explicit purpose of catalog is arousing desire.
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When the dominant element of a story is reader stimulus and arousal via graphic descriptions of action then the work contains significant elements that typify porn.
Well, I’m glad to hear that the Iliad is smut, then.
Let us NOT eschew reductio ad absurdum, shall we? It’s so handy for making it obvious when someone is making an absurd claim.
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You do realize that all claims are fundamentally absurd when reduced to base elements? Including this one, of course.
If you think the Illiad is essentially the adrenal stimulus of combat description I think you have not read it.
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Or, Tom, is your problem with interpreting the term dominant?
When you have to drop terms to fit an argument the problem may be your argument, not the terms.
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Dominant is subject to the sorites problem. You yourself have not defined what constitutes ‘dominant’. Your terms could be used to define any adventure story as pornographic, because in an adventure story, by intention and design, the depiction of action is dominant over other aspects of story.
I’m sorry, but when you yourself use terms without bothering to define them, you don’t get to chew other people out for not telepathically grokking exactly what you meant by them. If you meant something stronger by ‘dominant’ than what I interpreted it to mean, well, you wrote unclearly; I did not read incorrectly.
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“Dominant” is left to be interpreted by the reader, not ignored. By eliding the term you engage in an invalid argument.
We can argue over what constitutes “dominant” in specific instances, and people’s mileage will likely vary, but that is a different matter.
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“Dominant” is left to be interpreted by the reader, not ignored.
You assume that I ignored it because I did not interpret it in the way that you meant it (even though you never defined your terms). This is an error.
Since you have offered no definition of ‘dominant’, I shall suggest one straight from the O.E.D.: ‘having power and influence over others’: antonym, ‘subordinate’. In any adventure story, by definition, what you call ‘reader stimulus and arousal via graphic descriptions of action’ is the raison d’être of the work. All other elements of the story are subordinated to it: they exist in its service and are not (if the work is done with skill) permitted to detract from it. This is a position of dominance.
Now, it may be that you meant predominant instead, which the O.E.D. helpfully defines as ‘present as the strongest or main element’. An element can predominate, in the sense of having the largest share of the text, without itself being the purpose of the work. George Bernard Shaw was known for writing plays with long prefaces; but even if the preface were longer than the play, that would not in itself indicate that the play was written for the sake of the preface and not vice versa.
However, if you meant ‘predominant’, you should not have said ‘dominant’.
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Pulling from convenient web source, so your mileage may vary:
Several of these fit my usage. Ruling or governing (1) or predominant (3) seem most suited.
Readers will differ on what they consider dominant themes in a story. Some will think The Illiad merely about combat, others will consider the warfare merely the background against which the author’s moral precepts about pride, arrogance, jealousy and other human behaviours are portrayed.
My view is that you have inverted the paradigm. An adventure story exists to explore moral dilemmas and how individuals under pressure react to them. At their best they are explorations of moral, even noble behaviour and the consequences of principles under pressure.
They can even be subversive, as Fraser’s Flashman novels or Dumas’ Musketeers, where Richelieu is apparently the only person acting in the interests of France, others are pursuing individual agendas — honor, glory, lust. The adventurous action is merely to preclude the moral discussion becoming polemical. Heinlein’s Moon is in one light merely a tale of revolution and how to do it, in another light it is a discussion of what constitutes just government and how do those principles play out in human life.
And no, I did not assume you ignored it because you “did not interpret it in the way … meant” — I assumed you ignored it because you did not interpret it, period. Your argument failed to acknowledge or recognize the term; it did not interpret it in any way other than as a null term in the argument.
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Y’know – this discussion grows increasingly narrow (as displayed on the site, where twelve characters seems to be the line width.) Disagree, agree, agree to disagree, whatever. I see no point in my further pushing against the right hand margin.
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You do realize that all claims are fundamentally absurd when reduced to base elements? Including this one, of course.
Well, that claim is fundamentally absurd, because it is self-refuting. I deny that what you say is true of claims in general. It is entirely possible to make claims that are logically consistent; it is even possible to make claims that are true, believe it or not. And I must say I do not see how any claim that is either true or logically consistent can be meaningfully described as ‘fundamentally absurd’ — unless you define ‘fundamentally’ or ‘absurd’ (or both) so loosely as to deprive it (or them) of all meaning. But if you do that, you might as well not use the words; a word defined as meaningless is a mere expulsion of wind, and conveys no information.
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Has it escaped your notice that reductio ad absurdum is a fallacy? Defending it in terms of logic seems oxymoronic.
Moreover, “either true or logically consistent” easily permits fundamentally absurd arguments. An argument can slip through that “either/or” loophole, being “true AND logically invalid” or “false AND logically valid” while still meeting the terms of your standard while defining terms quite precisely. I suspect it is even possible to make an argument both true and logically consistent but still susceptible to refutation by fallacy. It is sorta the essence of fallacy, in fact.
I bow to your greater familiarity of expulsions of wind conveying no information.
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“reductio ad absurdum is a fallacy.”
Um, no. It’s a form of logical argument that attempts to show that a statement is true by showing that it’s denial leads to a contradiction. Used properly, there is nothing fallacious about it. As with any form of argument, it may be misused, but the technique itself is an entirely valid one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdam
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Conceded – but it is a week form of argument which is prone to straw man fallacies. For example, by ignoring a significant term in an argument so that the reduction to absurdity is easier.
It is sort of like a prostate exam: done properly it can be enlightening, but improperly performed it is mostly just a pain in the behind.
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No weaker or stronger than any other form of argument. Ignoring a significant term can cause any other form to fall flat just as easily.
And any kind of argument that disputes ones cherished beliefs or positions is “a pain in the behind.”
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I suspect it is even possible to make an argument both true and logically consistent but still susceptible to refutation by fallacy. It is sorta the essence of fallacy, in fact.
No, if an argument is logically consistent, it is by definition not fallacious. An argument may be false without being fallacious, by being based upon false premises, It may be true without being valid, by containing logical fallacies.
In any case, your original claim (that ALL arguments without exception are ‘fundamentally absurd’) is untenable and indefensible.
I bow to your greater familiarity of expulsions of wind conveying no information.
Your insult is duly noted. When you can’t defend your position with facts or logic, there’s always rudeness, isn’t there?
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Wait. Are all these people arguing abouit arguing? That’s absurd!
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Is this According To Hoyt? Looks at masthead. Yep. it sure is. And you’re surprised? People call my kids the rolling argument — apparently I do this to everyone.
And now I’m going to have coffee and see if i can shake this sickish feeling and get chapter ready to go up.
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Dreamer’s Law of Argument: All arguments are about definitions.
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No, it merely relies on a broad interpretation of absurd. I believe Life is absurd, ergo …
My position remains that as reductio ad absurdum can be used to take any argument to the point of absurdity, therefore it is a weak (and often fallaciously used) form of argument.
Given that the image was originally used by you, Tom, I submit to your superior appreciation of what is and is not insult. Complaining about insults and rudeness constitute argumentum ad hominem.and does little to strengthen your logic so much as your sense of self-pity.
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Oh, and this represents a misstatement of my initial argument:
My argument was that use of such argument is fallacious, not that the argument is fallacious.
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At that, what was Twilight? Romance? Vampire? Horror?
Not saying it’s a good book, but it sold tens of millions of copies, and I’m not sure it fits neatly into a category either.
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Paranormal romance. That’s a recognized category in and of itself with its own awards and everything.
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Exactly.
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OK – I learn something new everyday.
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An accountant by profession, I mistrust all numerical conclusions, and especially the ones that present with high accuracy. I know too many of the pitfalls to which they are prone.
Coincidentally I also distrust categorization. They are typically superficial and frequently misdirect, producing a patina of knowledge. A favorite film, Bang the Drum Slowly is only superficially about Baseball; the actual subject is mortality, friendship and how we treat one another. If you approach it as a Baseball film you commit an egregious error.
Similarly, Science Fiction is a category without meaning – except we know it when we see it. Looking at the breadth of work which has appeared in this field for the last 70 years there is little to connect the major works beyond the fact that they do not take place in our mundane world. This is either self-evident or you have not read enough SF.
We are comparing apples, oranges and grapes — all are fruit, all are round, all are juicy — and thinking we are creating a meaningful category. Sure, book publishers and vendors have to sort their wares for marketing purposes, but readers would be wise to keep in mind that their one true goal is a tale well told, regardless of the dust jacket.
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Well, yes and no.
When I’m really in the mood for something light and fluffy and purchase a book based on the cover (front art and back copy) which looks “light and fluffy” as desired, and instead get an emotionally wrought drama of moral greys and ambiguous endings…. Yeah, I’m annoyed. The book I’m referencing was, indeed, well-written. If I’d been in the mood for that sort of book and it had been presented as such, I would have been happy with it. But it was misrepresented (by the publisher – I don’t hold anything against the author) and my enjoyment suffered in waiting for it to start picking up into lighthearted and finally about halfway through realizing it would never do that.
I’ve been “tricked” like this pretty frequently and if it’s better-written than I had any expectation of, I usually forgive the misdirection/ misinterpretation/ missed connection. But I won’t enjoy it as much, however well-written, if what it delivers is different from what I “need” at the moment. If I need adventure and am given navel gazing, or need quirky romance and am given morally ambiguous relationships, or need something dark and twisted and am given screwball comedy… it’s not going to go well. If the book (or occasionally movie) is lucky, I’ll stop and set it aside and start over when I am in the proper mood to do it credit.
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The dust jacket should accurately convey the content to avoid the problem you describe, for the reasons you convey. But these days, doesn’t it seem publishers come up with the dust jacket and then buy a book to fill it rather than buy the book and then craft a suitable DJ.
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We’re all going to re-create ourselves as the tech changes the world. Or we’re in the process of doing so. And it won’t be a matter of relabeling the holes. I think we’ll see a lot of people with more than one peg, running two or three “careers” simultaneously.
The publishing industry is getting into the change early. The square pegs are still sitting in their square holes, but a whole bunch of others are looking around for a new hole, and a bunch are leaping off the pegboard. Writer, Publisher, Artist, Blogger, T-shirt designer . . . No single hole will do, even staying in the industry. Then look at the Barflies with their varied background. IT, lingusitics, geology, law, marine biology, physics . . . We can alot time however we need to, jump back and forth. No paying work, at the moment? Write on spec. Big project comes along, cut the writing time way back.
I think we’ll all be self-employed, temps, and consultants. In the end.
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Yep – I am already a self-employed subcontracter – a freelance writer, publisher, website designer, marketing coach and now and again I do office work.
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[Insert obligatory “So – you do Windows” joke.]
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But of course … also Contribute, Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, and Corel, too. (One of my semi-useful gifts – I get up to a workable level in various programs with blinding speed.)
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Exactly. If absolutely needed, I’ll teach languages online — but I’d prefer to stay with the writing. Though these days I also find myself being journalist and — occasionally — cover designer. Odd’s life.
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When somebody asks me, “What do you do?” I reply, “What do you need done?”
When I was interviewed for my current job, I told them that the phrase “That’s not my job” was not in my vocabulary. (Although I then added that the phrase, “I’m not sure that’s the best use of a very expensive lawyer’s time, and here’s why” was.)
I believe there’s a famous saying about specialization and insects. :)
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Wait, what, your agent couldn’t identify a portal fantasy/multi-world fantasy? Has that agent never read Barbara Hambly’s The Time of the Dark or The Silent Tower? How about The Rainbow Abyss? Or, oh, gee, how’s about NARNIA??? O_O
I was writing Mary Sue Self-Insert (into a made-up world) over 20 years ago, with no doubt that it was fantasy, even if it started in “our” world, on my dadgum street, with ME. :p
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The book I just published is a, let’s see (scrambling for a generous review that came in today from a publication):
“Alright, I admit it, I was sceptical about this one. I had thought that trying to combine the fantasy and crime genres, with side orders of conspiracy, mythology, and a strong dose of hunting might prove a plotline too far. Happily, I can admit just how wrong I was.”
Gee, I just thought it was a fantasy of someone in the present world passing thru to an otherworld in parallel. Kinda typical stuff, surely.
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BTW, I got smart about categorization (I think). Taking the point of view that it’s better to be a big frog in a small pond, I was able to get Amazon to re-categorize it as “Fantasy/…/Arthurian” (hey, some of the characters come from the Mabinogion so it’s not really cheating). That’s a defunct Amazon category with about 100 entries, vs SciFi (198000) or Fantasy (92738) or Fantasy/Epic (12648) or Fantasy/Contemporary (9900).
You can’t select the defunct categories when you define your book, but Amazon will change them for you to any category that already exists in use, if you ask them to.
If I can’t stay in the top 10 or 20 of a 100-item list, I don’t deserve any success.
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The question then, I suppose, is how valuable it is to be in the top 20 of a list that nobody looks at.
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If you’re below the top 500 of a big list, it might as well be a list no one looks at, plus the first many many are multiple editions of Game of Thrones, etc.
Which of these things looks more useful?
Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#215,240 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#16 in Kindle Store > Books > Fiction > Fantasy > Arthurian
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Frankly, neither one looks very useful to me. When I check out Kindle Store > Books > Fiction > Fantasy > Arthurian, I see only 28 books listed altogether, and the one with the highest ranking is #40,734 altogether. I reached numbers in the 40,000–50,000 range myself with my first release in August, and that was in the massive Fantasy > Epic list. This suggests to me that hardly anyone ever even looks at the ‘Arthurian’ list.
You may talk of being a big fish in a small pond, but some ponds are just too small to support any fish at all. Books > Fiction > Fantasy > Arthurian seems to me to be very close to that limit.
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Perhaps it is better to be in a pond than flopping about on the shore.
At any rate, her book, her option. I doubt your conclusion that “hardly anyone ever even looks at the ‘Arthurian’ list” is supported by your evidence; it could as well be that lots of people are looking at that list but saying “Oh, darn – nothing there looks particularly interesting. Pooh! I was so hoping for something combining fantasy and crime genres, with side orders of mythology, conspiracy, and a strong dose of hunting.”
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oooh, oooh yea
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Perhaps it is better to be in a pond than flopping about on the shore.
I’m not following your extension of the metaphor. If Fantasy > Arthurian = small pond, and Fantasy > Epic = big pond, what exactly is it that = flopping about on the shore?
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Misc.
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As for my conclusion: There are only 28 books in that entire category. The Mists of Avalon is not one of them, just by way of example. If the list were attracting eyeballs, it would be attracting books — because there are large numbers of people whose principal business is gaming the Amazon system to optimize product exposure, either for their own products or for other people’s. At this point, I am highly skeptical that there are any low-hanging fruit of that kind still waiting to be picked.
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What I like esp. is that, when the column on the left shows this:
‹ Books
‹ Science Fiction & Fantasy
Fantasy
Alternate History (3,691)
Anthologies (8,362)
Arthurian (100)
Contemporary (9,935)
Epic (12,734)
Historical (5,381)
History & Criticism (1,043)
Magic & Wizards (5,721)
-or this-
‹ Kindle Store
‹ Kindle eBooks
Fantasy
Anthologies (34)
Arthurian (28)
Contemporary (8,584)
Epic (8,619)
Historical (3,093)
Series (392)
The point is that “Arthurian” is a highly visible category under some circumstances and will tempt the occasional click where I will figure well. I can’t say that for any other category. Also, listing the “#16 Bestseller” of any list, however silly, does give some credibility in my opinion.
And after all, I still show up in Fantasy. I don’t see that my case is improved if it’s “narrowed” down to Epic or Contemporary.
You don’t have to take my suggestion, just wanted to give you all something to think about. Take a look at this: http://mlouisalocke.com/2011/10/24/categories-key-words-and-tags-oh-my-why-should-an-author-care/
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Well, being listed under ‘Arthurian’ may, as you put it, ‘tempt the occasional click’. I only say that if the clicks were more than occasional, we would not see a situation where the #1 bestseller in the category is not even in the top 40,000 in the Kindle Store overall. If books are being put into that category as a deliberate strategy, it doesn’t seem to be a terribly effective one.
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Oh, nice trick! How does one find their list of categories?
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I’m fascinated by the debates/arguments over what is sci-fi, what is fantasy, what is speculative fiction, and if [book] fits a certain category, especially after hearing that readers refuse to read books that don’t clearly fall into [genre]. (Another memo that I missed, apparently). What about the unnumbered elements? For example, telepathy is sci-fi unless it is in a medieval setting, when it becomes fantasy. Transmutations are magic unless you have a machine that rearranges molecules. Then it becomes sci-fi. Where do publishers put Andre Norton’s first Witchworld novel, or the Merovign Nights books (aside from the reject bin)?
I should note that I’m listening to a Celtic rock tribute to the Book of Kells at the moment, and that iTunes has no idea how to classify the recording. :)
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I don’t remember saying anything clever about the industrial-entertainment complex… but who am I to contradict Teh Sarah? :-D (Probably my evil twin did it. I’m going to have to do something about her one of these days.)
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> Yes, I’m very glad DST got compared to Heinlein.
Pokadyne of the Power Trees?
( I’m about 50 pages in right now. )
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Um… traces of that, yes. Friday meets Podkayne, meets Red Planet meets TMIAHM. (Though more of that in the next one and in AFGM.)
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> Red Planet
Ooh, can’t wait! That novel is near and dear to me, because it’s the first science fiction I EVER read. I was in first grade, it was library day at my elementary school, I liked science, and I saw this one book that had a sticker of an old 1950’s drawing of an atom on the spine and picked it up thinking it would be about science.
…and I was blown away to realize that there were books that both had space AND stories in them! I then went on a bit of a Heinlein binge, reading all of his juveniles over the next few weeks. I can still remember the black-and-white picture of a youngish RAH on the back cover (or maybe inside the black flap). I thought it was so bizarre that some actual PERSON had written the story.
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You know, I read him in Portugal, so I never saw a picture until I came to the US at 18 and my reaction was just like yours. “He’s a real person? He’s human?” Later on I got to talk to Ginny on phone and via the net. Never had the courage to write while HE was alive, though. But my husband made me send Ginny a birth announcement for our eldest Robert Anson…
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> He’s a real person? He’s human?”
I met Isaac Asimov once, at around the age of 14, and shaking his hand was bizarre. He wasn’t supposed to be flesh-and-blood – he was just a VOICE ON THE PAGE.
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That’s OK. I’m not entirely sure Asimov thought of Asimov as flesh and blood. The voice on the page was more real to him, somehow.
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I really liked Asimov until he wrote his autobiography. I still like his I, Robot series, but the autobiography kind of ruined my idea of him. (He didn’t have the integrity that I expected from reading his stories.)
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The 1956 radio show, Biographies in Sound, has an episode (#64: Ticket to the Moon) about sf. They interview Asimov, Campbell, Van Vogt, Bradbury, Willy Ley, Ackerman, etc…. Possibly Heinlein is in there too. After a while, I was just too freaked out to remember.
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The conflict between the author implied by the book and the author in flesh and blood can be severe, and the implied author generally comes off better.
It’s all that revision.
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This conversation about the publishing industry’s need to catagorize reminds me of Ilona Andrew’s book “On the Edge” Ilona writes: “When I showed to our agent, she loved it, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was. Then our editor at Ace, Anne Sowards, looked at it. She called back next day saying that she wasn’t quite sure what it was, but she wanted to buy it. The art department was excited about the idea (and made the fantastic cover, which I love to death and it’s my precious) but they also weren’t quite sure how to classify it.” And the book is fantastic and ended up spawning a series. I hate that some books don’t get a second look because the publishers are not sure what to classify it!
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For some reason, your comment reminded me of Tom Paxton’s song ‘The Marvelous Toy’. If I ever find myself trying to peddle to a publisher (unlikely) a work of uncertain genre (vanishingly improbable), and the editor asks me what it is, I shall reply, ‘It goes “zip” when it moves and “bop” when it stops and “whirr” when it stands still.’
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I have sought and failed to find an online version of Paxton’s introduction to this song, telling how he came to write it while in the Fort Dix typing class. I confess to owning it on vinyl, a two record set that well rewards aficionados. Sigh, not the least of my life’s regrets. For a lefty he writes some good tunes.
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If I have a favorite number it is the number 8. I have liked that number since I started to count. As for the other stuff– well, I do the best I can and ignore the trends. I write what I would like to read and hope someone else will like to read it too. BTW my favorite reading material is the multi-genre books especially if there is fantasy and mystery in it at the same time. (fantasy detective?) Sci-fi if it is done right and doesn’t come off pedantic is fun too. So I’ll get to the point– I don’t like my sci-fi geekified too much. I like it to have a logical consistency, but not to the expense of the story.
Story first imho. I have been called a geek… but apparently I am not a TRUE geek.
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It was said that Lord Darcy was created when somebody told Randall Garrett that it was impossible to write a Fantasy Mystery story. Randall decided that it was possible and proved it. [Wink]
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TY – I am going to have to look for that series or book anyway.
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Baen Books collected *all* of the Lord Darcy stories in a book titled _Lord Darcy_.
Here’s the eversion: http://www.baenebooks.com/p-255-lord-darcy.aspx
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They published it inside-out? But how does the binding work?
e·ver·sion (ĭ-vûrzhən, -shən)
n.
1.
a. The act of turning inside out.
b. The condition of being turned inside out.
2. The condition of being turned outward.
(I know. I’m being a twit. But sometimes, folks, hyphens are worth keeping.)
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Not currently available. :c Which is a shame since I probably would have impulse bought it right there, as I think I’ve had it on my Amazon wishlist for at least five years.
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It was originally published as an ebook in 2002. Maybe Baen only had rights for a limited number of years? Rusch has been pushing that kind of rights reversion for some time now. It’s too easy to game “performance” measures like in-print.
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Weird.
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Baen ebook-buys ARE for a limited number of years.
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Can you say what the number is?
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I have no idea. My Shakespeare trilogy was sold (non-exclusive) for two years and it’s just been up a little more than one. I’d guess each contract is different.
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Couldn’t “categorize” witchfinder because it involves a person from the “real” world (or a close approximation thereof) transported to the “fantasy” world where magic type stuff works? I kind of thought that was a pretty well established trope of fantasy in and of itself. You’ve got Narnia, The Dray Prescott books, the late Joel Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame,and oh so many others. It’s even a category over on tvtropes: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrappedInAnotherWorld
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Oh, and it’s practically a staple of Shoujou anime and manga.
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I think Christopher Stasheff’s “Warlock In Rhyme”, the de Camp/Pratt Harold Shea series and Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions would effectively establish the genre. And of course, Heinlein put his thumb on it in 1963’s Glory Road.
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Exactly. The whole idea of “where would we put it?” is silly. Just look for where these _other_ books, and there are many of them, are put.
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Well, there’s a reason I no longer have an agent, right? Well, many reasons, of course…
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And of good few of Barbara Hambly’s books, too – like the Darwath Trilogy, and the trilogy that we are still waiting the final book from the Suncross world. Alas, she seems to have been drawn into doing historical novels (yay, my genre!) at the expense of fantasy.
It’s hard not to like an author who wrote a Star Trek/Here Come the Brides fan-fic, though.
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Celia, I never heard that Barbara Hambly was *planning* to write another Suncross novel. For that matter, I got the idea that she didn’t want to write another one. Rhion’s world is going though as dark of time as our world did so she didn’t want to go back to his world.
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Ah Celia, I checked Barbara’s site and as of May 2000, she was thinking about another book. My mistake.
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I gave up on one of her fantasy-cycles – I thought the story was devolving in a sickening and horrid way; didn’t care AT ALL. There’s a very early one, sent in ancient Rome, titled “Search the Seven Hills” or “The Quirinal Hill Affair”- that’s very light and amusing, with a serious undertone. Check it out, if you can find a copy.
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The second and third Dragon’s bane books . . . well, I tend to think she ought to have gotten an office job to pay the bills and stopped writing until she was over grieving and guilting. “Devolving in a sickening and horrid way” pretty much sums it up. Her SF shorts since then have perked up nicely, but there’s still that horrible blotch . . .
Mind you, she’s a favortie of mine, and I’m really, really glad she, or at least her writing, has recovered.
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I know a lot of people liked Barbara Hambly’s books, but I have not had the ability to finish any of her books. I have tried a couple of times. So I am glad there are people here who like to read her books. I don’t want to try them again.
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Hambly has written sequels to her Antryg stories, for anyone who didn’t know. They’re electronic only, short stories, and only available at barbara-hambly.com. (They’re also a tad expensive, from my point of view, but considering everything, I buy ’em anyway. In part because, well, ANTRYG! Have I mentioned my huge crush on that fellow?)
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Sheesh. Dunsany has stories like that.
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If Random House and Penguin merge, does that mean we’ll be getting books from Random Penguin? :)
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Anthea Lawson, in a comment on The Passive Voice, suggests ‘Ruindom Penhouse’. I rather approve of that name.
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I would totally be willing to buy books from a place called Penguin House.
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They’re the owners of Berkley imprints. I worked for them for ten years.
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Will books from Penguin House be short but well rounded?
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*fights down the desire to use ‘Some Random Penguin’ for a nom de black-and-white plume.*
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I was surprised recently by a friend in chat when he asked which of my books I would suggest for his wife. He indicate she wanted to read some BLUE COLLAR science fiction.
He explained how that category arose, but I still don’t understand it. I don’t take offense at it. They can call it anything they like if they just buy it and read it. But it was a new experience being cataloged that way.
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I’m confused, but I would like to understand. Did his explanation indicate that the term Blue Collar was in reference to the Writer (you, of course), or the content of the books? And if the content, are you sure he was categorizing your work as such, or merely asking if you had written books that would qualify?
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I would call Ric Lock’s work blue collar scifi. It doesn’t matter that much what the writer’s done. It matters what’s in the book.
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He referenced people working in factories as part of the writing. Now I admit “Paper or Plastic?” was written simply from a chat comment that you don’t see scenes from grocery stores in science fiction, but I have no factory scenes. Puzzled me too.
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Thanks. I was curious, because it wasn’t clear to me whether he meant stories with Blue Collar elements, whether his wife was looking for the slant that would come from a story written BY a Blue Collar worker.
I will admit, though, that i am at a loss for thinking how such content would make an interesting story, except for perhaps a short story or two, without it being a story where said Blue Collar worker got pulled into some adventure outside his normal experience (which could certainly make for an interesting story, where the application of the MC’s more pedestrian approach to problems would surprise and confuse those who would supposedly be more sophisticated and intellectual).
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I immediately thought of ‘The Blue-collar Comedy tour’; rest assured, if Larry the Cable Guy decides to write SF I’ll at least give it a try. :)
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