How to spot bad science fiction (or fantasy)
February 8th, 2009 by Kim | Published in Blogging, Books, Writers & Writing, Feminism | 72 Comments
The SFnal post of the year (so far) has to be Shannan Palma’s “How to know if you’re reading a bad book” at the Feminist SF Blog. Well worth reading!
A couple of related posts – buying into the whole “mainstream”/”slipstream”/genre fic argument – A Very Public Sociologist (who doesn’t like John Birmingham’s work but does like Bourdieu’s) and Sam Jordison at the Guardian‘s book blog on Philip K. Dick’s excellent The Man in A High Castle.
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/2579839724_441346fe6c.jpg"
I Ching coins image courtesy of rossaroni at flickr – reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.
LeGuin has a nice jab at the maintainers of the ‘genre ghetto’ here.
Ghetto or otherwise, I just wish her latest was in an Australian bookstore already!
Actually there’s perhaps an interesting little story about the genre thing in Jordison’s post about Man in the High Castle – by concentrating on the lit/genre distinction he seems to me to have missed precisely what’s interesting and unique in the Dick novel. And a very public sociologist seems to me to be doing Bourdieu by rote, but perhaps he’s trying to be pedagogical or something.
But that Feminist SF post is just about teh. best. evah!
Also, what Kim said about the new Le Guin. It isn’t the best time to be buying books from Amazon, and I’m really hanging out for it! In the meantime, after another hopeful visit to a few bookstores today, I’m going to console myself with Murakami’s collection of short stories – Dance, Dance, Dance inspired by a friend’s facebook status update! As you do. ;)
The whole genre v. quality lit thing is going to get a serious working over soon when the Hollywood adaption of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road comes out. I read at the Onion AV club that many are concerned about it being a dumbed-down version of Mad Max; scifi fans may end up ignoring the concerns they have of ghetto-isation if it looks like the whole oeuvre is going backwards in the eyes of Joe Public.
Yes, Birmingham has a very questionable belief system, his grasp of history and culture is shaky, but the motherfucker can write action sequences. If you think that doesn’t count for anything then try writing prose, try developing a story arc, develope characters and then move them across the pages so as to create visceral excitement in your readers. It’s the hardest thing to do. (See Gore Vidal’s essay in appreciation of Edgar Rice Burrough’s talents.)
Okay, maybe that’s really a defence of popular novel writing, but in the greater scheme of things it pays the rent for genre…
I enjoyed the first Axis of Time novel but the plot rapidly piles up in the second and he can only propell it to a halfhearted conclusion in the third by massively dumbing down the villains and having everything they do fail. Tense and exciting it is not.
On the criterion of wispy females looking up to heroes to rescue them, would that make Dickens and Hemingway a bad writers?
The list though, is excellent. Almost a check-list on how to avoid mistakes.
Hmmm, that’s generalising a bit about Dickens, isn’t it? Cf. Bleak House.
Not sure about Hemingway. Never read him. Too boysy an image.
Anyway, not saying off topic here, Paul, but the list does specifically refer to sf and fantasy. Though maybe that opens that can of worms about genre/lit fic! ;)
Reading every Hugo award winner for a blog? That’s not reading, that’s researching!
Anyway, call me a cynic, but I’d be more impressed with Listmania Sam if he introduced his audience to Ward Moore’s ‘Bring the Jubilee’, a pulp AH classic written almost a decade before Dick’s book, by an author who isn’t painfully fashionable…
I think he’s been at it for a while – might be worth checking his archive!
Kim wrote:
“The Old Man and The Sea” is what you want Kim – it’s short, is a nice reflection on the whole macho vs. aging thing. I’m struggling to remember the name of another Hemingway book that kind of semi-lampooned his public persona as big game hunter/macho womaniser that features a war veteran trying to recapture his masculinity after getting injured in the manliest parts of his man parts. He’s not quite as cut-n-dried as he projected. Not science fiction though :-)
I generally enjoyed the Axis of Time trilogy but his latest, Without Warning, is not very good. I’ve dusted off a review that I’ve had sitting in draft for a while now. Essentially, Birmingham has written a sort of right-wing fantasy that is sort of dated being now in the age of Obama.
Thanks for the link to the list Kim, I’d add another indicator; how are drugs portrayed in the opening scenes, if they are simply a device to illustrate the evil character’s depravity or the hero’s weakness then you may be reading a bad novel.
Cheers for the plug :)
Nickws, granted, Birmingham is good at fast paced action, but his style is not dissimilar to Harry Turtledove’s. He really does battle sequences brilliantly but when you’re writing novels with next to no action – such as his Colonisation and American Empire pieces – then extra talents are required.
YMMV, but if the book has an exercise in creative cartography at the front, you are almost certainly reading a bad book. The author thinks it means they can do a secondary world but if you need a map, the author hasn’t done a very good job of it.
David Rubie @ 11,
Fiesta or The Sun Also Rises.
Kim, David Copperfield? And various other simpering heroines. And the list isn’t precisely abou SF.
Bad, inreadable SF – Greg Bear.
“Fiesta” – that’s the one Paul.
“The author thinks it means they can do a secondary world but if you need a map, the author hasn’t done a very good job of it.”
I was grateful for the map in my penguin edition of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’! But then, I probably wouldn’t put that forward as an unambiguously ‘good’ book.
If the protagonist of your detective story WHO IS NOT EMPLOYED AS A DETECTIVE suddenly starts questioning people and investigating crimes, without having some kind of plot device allowing them a licence to detect, you might be reading a bad book.
Hmmm … dunno about the cartography thing, gilmae, as LeGuinn’s “Earthsea” books leap to mind here (as does LOTR, although, despite re-reading the things every couple of years since 1963, I wouldn’t exactly call Tolkein a good writer).
Still, there’s a lot of crap books with maps in them, too.
That’s your workerism speaking, Liamista! How about the self-starting innovative aspirational self employed private detective? ;)
You’re reading a bad book if that back cover has a sentence as ridiculous as this on it:
Do your female characters sit around a lot thinking about how stupid they are
.
Has there ever been a book where female characters do that? Thing is stupid people usually don’t sit around thinking at all.
yeti @ 22, any book that has romantic vampires is sure to be bad. Much better when they are running around being blood thirsty monster, or someone has a creative take such as Charlie Huston’s Joe Pitt.
It’s interesting how certain genres are thought legitimate and others not. Science fiction, for example, was for a long time out in the cold. The hard-boiled crime story was okay, you could talk about Raymond Chandler at literati cocktail parties but Sci-fi? Nuh.
.
Why?
.
One reason I’d think of is that the hard-boiled story has produced some excellent literary stylists like Chandler or Elroy. I can’t think of an SF writer who has quite the same way with words (‘cept Vonnegut Jr). The ability to write well poetically speaking isn’t necessary to be a successful genre writer.
.
Take Robert Ludlum. He doesn’t produce sentences as downright ugly as Stephen King has but his style is pedestrian, his dialogue often so corny as to be unintentionally comic and characters made from standard molds out of the cheapest wood. But somehow you can’t put the stupid things down.
If the book has a map in the front of it, but none of the places mentioned in the first chapter are located on the map, then you are probably reading a bad book!
If the book has a map in the front of it, but none of the places mentioned in the first chapter are located on the map, then you are probably reading a bad book!
.
Ian Fleming set You Only Live Twice in Japan. When Ken Adam went there to get ideas to design the movies sets he found out the places Fleming wrote about didn’t exist. :)
Unless you’re fortunate enough for the book with the kooky map to be “The Phantom Tollbooth” in which case it’s okay… Then you’re reading a good book.
I always found people who liked reading sci-fi really boring and nerdish. Still do.
FF – That’s only because you haven’t come down to my ham radio group discussion with soda n’ pie nights and met the guys. And one girl. Well she said she was coming but then she had to wash her hair.
.
Who’s your favourite? Klingons or Vulcans?
An invaluable guide to my domains.
If you’re going to talk sci-fi, you’ve gotta talk Jung, Adrien.
Let’s start with Alien.
If you’re going to talk sci-fi, you’ve gotta talk Jung
.
What happens if you don’t? Does something erupt from your chest during dinner and then kill all your colleagues and co-workers?
.
I always thought the alien in Alien was more Freudian than Jungian. It was a large penis with two sets of sharp teeth. Kinda like Derryn Hinch.
And a chart of the strange creatures you may encounter during your travels.
“The alien was more Freudian…”
Hence the movie’s slogan, “In space, no one can hear you talk.”
No, no, you’re thinking of Vlad the Impaler.
‘Alien’ is a male womb envy thing. Men trying to imitate Zeus swallowing Metis to claim sole parenthood for Athena (born subsequently from his head). Or Zeus’s other trick of snatching Dionysus from the ashes of poor Semele and sewing the godling in his thigh to gestate.
You and other sci-fi nerds just want to give birth, Adrien, and usurp our reproductive power. Well, you can’t!
“If you’re going to talk sci-fi, you’ve gotta talk Jung”
Well I always thought Logan’s Run was Jung at heart.
Not to mention in the top five films for gratuitous robot scenes.
I second #14′s observations about John Birmingham. It’s a lot harder than it looks to write good action scenes. You really need to know what you’re doing with words as a craft. And there were some well observed details such how not just mores but even body language would change over 70 years.
But really fuel air explosive-powered carrier catapults!!??! That’s just asking for it.
Incidentally one of SF’s great masters has a blog and very sprightly it is too for a ninety-year old. He’s not yet turned full Struldbrug.
Adrien @ 30. The crazed spiritual-warrior Klingons, of course.
#30 Melniboneans
But really fuel air explosive-powered carrier catapults!!??! That’s just asking for it.
you have SO, got to be shitting me, ITS set in the future you halfwit and its easily seen you have ZERO imagination or even knowledge about writing let alone tell one, who has obviously gotten further than yourself, what he SHOULD or SHOULD not perhaps do. I have never read a bigger load of tripe, by halfwits than what i have here. WOMB ENVY, FFSAKE get a life, as for the cretin who is going to DUST OFF HIS REVIEW, good luck to ya buddy. BTW, when did you write it, and without reviewing whats a Satre class, MS pallet or hammerhead run. I’ll bet you cannot remember. i would also venture due to the obvious disdain in your post, you failed to read all three. VERY OBJECTIVE THAT!.
Arrogant self centered we know it all arseholes is about what I would classify this lot as. You are only missing the tea, scones and stiff stick up your arses. The world, literary would be an eminently better place with you. And that’s after reading just this one threat.
Nice boy, HAVOCK. There now.
Adrien was right. “Alien” is Freudian too (Kleinian, to be precise).
You see the Alien is an embodiment of a primitive psychotic process. It is a vagina with a penis protruding from it with sharp teeth with slime dripping all over the place. As designed by H.R. Giger, the Swiss artist, the Alien of these marvellous films exaggerated female genitalia, with its inner and outer vulva, to create a primal horrow: a devouring, persecuting monster that lives within the dark, cylindrical shafts and membrane-like walls of women’s bodies.
It is a phallic mother with oral-sadistic and cannibalistic destructive tendencies.
Get it now?
Lord Fiddlefang @ 31, I love Diana Wynne Jones. That anthology hits the nail on the head re stereotypical sci-fi/fantasy characters. Have you read the Dark Lord of Derkholm?
If the book you are reading has a page count exceeding 250, you are reading a bad book. Elric sacked Immyr in fewer pages than it took for Elayne to have a goddamned bath!
I can’t see ALIEN as vagina dentata, it’s more like a beserker or amok.
Well hello there HAVOCK @41 (Incidentally if you’ve named yourself after the RAN sub in Birmingham’s WW 2.1 trilogy, you’ve got one K too many in there).
Why yes I have read all three WW 2.1 books, and quite possibly with more thought than you.
I thought John made a damn good fist out out of extrapolating miltech an decade or so ahead. Except for the FAE catapult thing. It’s an inherently unstable piece of technology where failure could well lead to catastrophic damage. Which, as you no doubt recall, actually happened in the first book.
I suspect John knew what he doing here. He needed to disable the Big Hill quickly in order to level the odds and so boost narrative tension. So I reckon he went for a deus ex techno thing there.
Unlike the USN, who are now equipping their next generation of carriers with electro-magnetic launch systems instead of adding more tubes of inflammable materials underneath volatile flight decks.
By now HAVOCK you may be feeling like others who know far more about the issues at hand are just effortlessly and urbanely condescending towards you.
And you’d be right. For once.
But yes it’s true, I have no idea what a ‘satre class’ is. Is it anything like a French Sartre class stealth destroyer? Which I thought was one of funniest pieces of nomenclature in the series.
I’d say this is the silliest thing ever posted on the Internet, but I haven’t read your other stuff.
As opposed to the wit and sophistication of your own blog, Jim.
You think you’re being sarcastic!
As a person who doesn’t get sci-fi and fantasy much, except for the occasional Poe and Peake, let me throw in a pulp fiction alert for other novels: If an attractive man whose eyes “crinkle” at the corners appears early in the piece, you are holding a piece of chicklit or at best an aga saga.
I know I’m being sarcastic!
Helen – ‘aga saga.’ ????
‘Oohh i miss my aga.’ moaned Jeff
‘Gordan Ramsey’ barked Davo, ‘You have the technological wonders of three star systems and you want to cook in a carbon eating particulate belcher.’
‘It’s the tiles Davo, they retain the heat’ Jeff’s eyes lit up and his laugh lines crinkled as he warmed to his subject. after the roast is finished . . .’
‘Roast?’ interupted Davo.
‘Yeah, lamb is best’
‘Lamb’ wimpered Davo
‘Lamb and agas, Davo, they go together like tomatos and basil.’
‘tomatos and basil’
‘Anyway after the roast is done there is still enough heat to cook a sponge, my nan gave me her recipie before she died. She got six CWA blue ribbons for that sponge, but it only works in the aga.’
‘Jeff we are going to make you an aga and you are going to cook lamb and sponge.’
‘Oh Davo, you can’t vat grow a leg of lamb, the algorithm just doen’t get the fat right.’
‘Well then Jeff, we had better go home then.’
‘Home?’
‘Home!’
‘Oh Davo.’
‘Jeff.’
As Grace Jones says, “you can guess the rest’.
I know that’s what you think!
Ooooh, how postmodern!
For reference, this is the silliest thing ever posted to the internet.
You may link to this comment whenever in the future you need to cite maximum internet silliness.
“As Grace Jones says, “you can guess the rest’.”
In the interest of giving credit where due, that one’s Mister Ferry’s originally.
“How to spot bad science fiction or fantasy”
Why, there’s Grace Jones!
Spotted!
‘aaarrggghhh’
Bows head in shame
leaves to wash the floor and seek solace in yum cha / Dim sum
I’ll pay that japerz.
The only bad thing she was ever involved in, and still pretty great for a larf.
Much as I’d like to spend the afternoon debating the extent to which I’m beholden to false consciousness, I must decline on this occasion. No doubt another opportunity will arise. After all, Jim’s resolute and indefatigable involvement in this particular bloggy milieu hint at endless future exchanges along the same lines, should I care to indulge.
Jeez Klaus – I’d just finished popping the corn!
Oh well!
I’m about halfway through Without Warning. It’s totally right-wing, because 99% of America gets wiped off the map overnight and yet the world isn’t changed for the better.
Book review via a faulty generalisation. How quaint. And wrong.
Then why did you write it?
Jim, just a pithy response to your glib comment @ 62.
Wimped out yet again, he did, Helen.
When I do it, it’s glib. When you do it, it’s pithy! ;)
Anyway, calling Birmingham right-wing is ridiculous beyond measure, but it’s probably not your fault.
Well of course Jim.;-)
Speaking of Birmingham, I don’t really know his political leanings. But “Without Warning” does take a collection of looney right wing ideas of what would happen if the USA disappeared to base the plot around. Even with the suspension of belief in regards to how the US disappeared, Birmingham’s application of politics is clumsy.
But it would be just as clumsy if he used a caricature of the looney left as a basis for what would happen if the US disappeared.
As I said in my review, a good idea gone bad.
Is that what happened, Posey? I won’t bother asking you to explain how that is the case: I’m sure it all comes down to something ineffable that I can barely comprehend. My fear of life perhaps. Or is it to be another variant on false consciousness?
So, which member of the liberal intelligentsia will you be dobbing me in to this time? I’m holding out for David Malouf, but I’ll settle for Inga Clendinnen.
I *was* holding out…
Information leading to klaus k’s capture can be forwarded to the Committee for State Security, Meanjin Directorate.
He’s a bit older now of course and may well have succumbed to the “no heart-no brain” aphorism; but Birmingham did a pretty good job of impersonating someone not of the Right in Falafel and Leviathan. Particularly Leviathan.
In light of that, I choose to believe that any perceived Rightism is a) in the eyes of the beholder, b) influenced by the genre itself, and c) driven by the need to have plot, and you can’t really have a techno-thriller plot if it turns out that the USA is the root of all geo-political conflict and after it disappears we solve all our problems without a big stick lurking in the background.